this way, we won’t have to. This is Texas, someone will shoot us.”
“It’s not my fault you have barbaric gun laws.” He switched lanes again.
“Stop driving like a maniac!” Bug yelled. “Slow down.”
Behind us a horn blared. I turned. The huge semi we’d passed was moving into the left lane, which was illegal.
“Oh shit,” Bug said.
The semi finally merged over. Behind it the Guardian sped up, a huge barrel pointing at us. Holy crap, that thing could put a hole in a tank.
“There’s no way they can fire that cannon at us,” I said. “The shell would go through our car and wipe out three lanes around us. Diatheke would be finished.”
“That’s not for us,” Alessandro said. His eyes scanned the lanes ahead of us, but there was no opening. We were stuck.
The top of the Guardian came open and Celia climbed out in her pink Chanel suit. She stood, her arms out, trying to balance on top of the Guardian in her pumps.
What the hell was she doing?
Long dark quills thrust out of her, piercing her suit. Her skin stretched and tore, and a creature twice her size burst out of her, muscles bulging under dense red fur. It sat on its haunches, the sickle-shaped tiger claws of its hind feet digging into the metal of the Guardian. Its forelimbs, thick and powerful, like a gorilla’s, clutched at the barrel of the Guardian, anchoring the beast. A dense red mane that was more hair than fur thrust from its head and shoulders. Two-foot-long quills protruded from the mane and the backs of its forelimbs. Its face was horrible; a meld of cat and ape, with beady eyes sunken deep into its skull, a simian nose with huge nostrils, and feline mouth filled with long dagger teeth. A long, whiplike tail snapped behind it.
A metamorphosis mage. Shit.
The gun wasn’t for us. That cannon was for her, in case she went off the rails. When a metamorphosis mage transformed, they lost most of their ability to reason, reverting to a primal state somewhere between an attack dog and an enraged ape. There would be no reasoning with her. Anything short of a lethal injury would just piss her off.
“Can you nullify her with your magic?” I asked.
“Not once she’s in that shape. She’s fucking immune to everything.”
Celia’s enraged eyes fixed on us. She opened her mouth and howled, flinging spit into the wind. Oh God.
“Drive faster, Alessandro!”
“Go,” Bug screamed from the phone. “Go, go, go!”
There was nowhere to go. We were in the second lane from the right. Traffic clogged the interstate ahead of us. Even if we managed to force our way into the far-right lane, this section of the I-10 ran above the ground and a concrete wall guarded the edge. We couldn’t jump it. The Alfa was too small and low.
We had to exit.
“We can’t maneuver here. There’s an exit ahead,” I said. “Take Bunker Hill. We’ll lose them on the surface roads.”
“No!” Bug yelled. “Don’t take Bunker Hill, it’s closed. The tanker truck, remember?”
Two weeks ago, a tanker truck carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline overturned on the Bunker Hill exit and burst into flames. It burned for hours, and the fire ate through the concrete. A section of the exit had collapsed, plunging the burning wreck down to the street below. It was the biggest story on the news for a week.
“Bug’s right, don’t take the exit, there is a hole in it.”
“How big a hole?” Alessandro asked.
“Too big,” Bug said. “Twenty feet.”
“How many meters is that?”
“Six.”
“Ascending or descending?”
“Descending, right at the top of the curve.”
Alessandro darted into a tiny gap between a white truck and a black SUV on our right.
“Don’t do it, dickass!” Bug barked.
The green exit sign flashed over our heads, an orange warning strip across it screaming, “EXIT CLOSED.”
If h is the difference in height between the two sides of the gap, then θ is the angle of the exit’s slope, V is the velocity, and g is the standard acceleration of free fall at 9.8 m/s2; the required velocity would equal the square root of g *36m2 divided by 2(h+6tan θ)*cos2 θ . . .
I kept my voice calm. “Alessandro, you’re going to kill us. This only works in the movies and it requires a ramp. The moment our wheels leave the ground, the car will start dropping. Even if we make it, the vehicle will be crushed from the impact.”
“It will be fine.” The Alfa roared up the slope, accelerating.