they were burnt black in their own private infernos, their limbs melting in the heat to mere bones. And I saw other immortals streaking away at invisible speed through the sluggish human press.
Louis was stunned as he turned to me, and surely the look of amazement on my face only stunned him more. Neither of us had done this! Neither of us had the power! I knew but one immortal who did.
But I was suddenly slammed back by the car door opening and a small delicate white hand reached out to pull me inside.
“Hurry, both of you!” said a female voice in French suddenly. “What are you waiting for, the Church to pronounce it a miracle?” And I was jerked into the leather bucket seat before I realized what was happening, dragging Louis in on top of me so that he had to scramble over me into the compartment in back.
The Porsche lurched forward, scattering the fleeing mortals in front of its headlights. I stared at the slender figure of the driver beside me, her yellow hair streaming over her shoulders, her soiled felt hat smashed down over her eyes.
I wanted to throw my arms around her, to crush her with kisses, to press my heart against her heart and forget absolutely everything else. The hell with these idiot fledglings. But the Porsche almost went over again as she made the sharp right out of the gate and into the busy street.
“Gabrielle, stop!” I shouted, my hand closing on her arm. “You didn’t do that, burn them like that—!”
“Of course not,” she said, in sharp French still, barely glancing at me. She looked irresistible as with two fingers she twisted the wheel again, swinging us into yet another ninety-degree turn. We were headed for the freeway.
“Then you’re driving us away from Marius!” I said. “Stop.”
“So let him blow up the van that’s following us!” she cried. “Then I’ll stop.” She had the gas pedal floored, her eyes fixed on the road in front of her, her hands locked to the leather-clad wheel.
I turned to see it over Louis’s shoulder, a monster of a vehicle bearing down with surprising speed—an overgrown hearse it seemed, hulking and black, with a mouthful of chromium teeth across the snub-nosed front and four of the undead leering at us from behind the tinted windshield glass.
“We can’t get clear of this traffic to outrun them!” I said. “Turn around. Go back to the auditorium. Gabrielle, turn around!”
But she bore on, weaving in and out of the motor coaches wildly, driving some of them in sheer panic to the side.
The van was gaining.
“It’s a war machine, that’s what it is!” Louis said. “They’ve rigged it with an iron bumper. They’re going to try to ram us, the little monsters!”
Oh, I had played this one wrong. I had underestimated. I had envisioned my own resources in this modern age, but not theirs.
And we were moving farther and farther away from the one immortal who could blow them to Kingdom Come. Well, I would handle them with pleasure. I’d smash their windshield to pieces for starters, then tear off their heads one by one. I opened the window, climbing halfway up and out of it, the wind whipping my hair, as I glared at them, their ugly white faces behind the glass.
As we shot up the freeway ramp, they were almost on top of us. Good. Just a little closer and I would spring. But our car was skidding to a halt. Gabrielle couldn’t clear the path ahead.
“Hold on, it’s coming!” she screamed.
“Like hell it is!” I shouted, and in an instant I would have jumped off the roof and gone into them like a battering ram.
But I didn’t have that instant. They had struck us full force, and my body flew up in the air, diving over the side of the freeway as the Porsche shot out in front of me, sailing into space.
I saw Gabrielle break through the side door before the car hit the ground. And she and I were both rolling over on the grassy slope as the car capsized and exploded with a deafening roar.
“Louis!” I shouted. I scrambled towards the blaze. I would have gone right into it after him. But the glass of the back portal splintered as he came through it. He hit the embankment just as I reached him. And with my cape I beat at his smoking garments, Gabrielle ripping off her jacket to do the same.