Thin Air Page 0,93

I struggled with the steering wheel as the tires screamed, propelling us down the road at a terrifying rate of speed. "Don't slow down!"

"I'm sorry," Ashan was saying. I had no idea if he was sorry he was in the car, sorry we were all going to die, sorry that he'd done what he'd done to Imara, and to me. Or just a sorry excuse for a human being. It didn't really matter, and I could barely hear him over the shriek of tires on the curve. The Camaro was drifting over the line. I fought the wheel and got her straight by sheer force. Come on, baby. Work with me.

I didn't know what was chasing us, but whatever it was, it was scary enough to panic one badass Djinn, and one who at least used to be.

Sounded good enough for me to panic, too.

I loved driving fast, but this was a little too fast, on a road that snaked like a car commercial and featured oncoming tractor trailers loaded down with raw lumber and giant tree trunks. Venna didn't enhance my ability to keep my cool; she continued to put the mystical hammer down on the Camaro while looking steadily out the rear of the car.

Leaving me with the not very enviable task of steering in overdrive.

"Slow down!" I yelled at her, and tried to downshift. The gear knob didn't budge. I yanked at it anyway. The clutch pedal didn't respond, either, even when I jammed it to the floor. Ditto, brakes. In desperation I yanked the emergency brake, but it flopped uselessly.

"If we slow down, you die," Venna said. She sounded unnaturally calm. I was glad I was too busy to see her face. "So does Ashan."

"News flash: If we don't slow down I'm going to die, and ruin a perfectly beautiful car!" I shot back. I nearly bit my tongue off as the Camaro hit a patch of ice, tires broke traction, and the whole thing started going sideways with a vengeance. "Shit!" I'd heard somewhere that these days, that was most often a person's last word. I didn't want it to be mine, and I fought the skid, begging the car to find some traction.

It did. The tires caught, squealed, bit, and slewed us back in the opposite direction just in time to avoid an oncoming RV. I kept the Camaro off of the steep, narrow shoulder, sprayed gravel, and managed to point it in the right direction.

Another truck barreled past us, buffeting us in its wake. Busy road.

"Venna!" I yelled. "Plan B! Because plan A's not working!"

The engine seized up again. It was catastrophic, a crunching grind of metal followed by the sound of parts coming off, breaking loose, and ripping apart everything in their path. Steam erupted in a white cloud from beneath the hood, and no amount of magical gas pedal pressing was going to get us moving again. Not unless Venna was one hell of a roadside mechanic.

The car lurched, clunking metal, and slowed drastically.

We coasted, moving more and more slowly, and I found a slightly wider spot on the shoulder that would double as an emergency breakdown lane, flipped the hazard lights, and hit the brakes-which, finally, worked.

The road, which had been choked with traffic a few seconds ago, seemed quiet now. The last eighteen-wheeler was disappearing over the ridge, grinding gears, and there didn't seem to be anybody else in view. I was having trouble getting my breath, and I was shaking in reaction to the adrenaline rush.

"Venna, what the hell-" I began, but I didn't even make it to the end of the sentence.

"Get down!" She reached over, grabbed my head, and forced me sideways across the seat, with the safety belt digging into my neck nearly to the choking point.

I forgot to complain about the discomfort of that, though, because I started to feel it, too. A disturbance in the aetheric, one even somebody like me, who was all but a novice, could feel.

There was a sound. I'm not sure what it was like, because there was nothing in my mind I could equate it to; it was a chaos of sharp snapping sounds, thunderous crashes, howls, screams...

Venna threw herself on top of me just before a wall of wind hit the car and flipped it, end over end, through the air.

I blacked out when the car slammed into the ground, which was probably lucky. When I woke up I was out of the wreck, lying on the