It Happened One Doomsday (28 page)

He had a plan, she could tell. Which was good, because right now, she had nothing.

More car headlights flashed across the wreckage of the store. On the night-darkened street out in front, the red Mustang pulled up with a squeal of tires. The curvy silver Ferrari glided to a stop behind it. The other two Horsemen had arrived.

She recognized the red reptilian Horseman from the mansion, the one that had erupted from the pit. As he stepped in through the gaping hole where the front windows had been, he produced a sword composed entirely of flames. Its flickering light reflected off his shiny scales and the carpet of broken glass. A sinuous purple tongue slipped between his jagged teeth and switched back and forth through the air.

Close behind him came a translucent, skeletal creature with shimmering green eyes. This one scurried on lanky legs. His entire body seemed to be formed of glassy needles, fused together in a malformed mockery of a human skeleton. As he approached, he twitched fingers nearly as long as his forearms. The air between his finger bones wavered, rippling with intense heat or unholy energy.

All three of the Horsemen stared hungrily at Greyson, who slowly lowered Opal's limp form to the floor.

“Wait, wait,” Dru said, her throat tight with worry. “What are you doing? Pick her up!”

He shook his head, eyeing the Horsemen closing in on them. In a low voice, he said, “There's no way I can get Opal out of here safely, not with them after me. Our only chance is if I distract them, lead them away.”

It took her a second to find her voice again. “That won't work.”

“I can get them to chase me.” He tensed. “Ready?”

“No. No!” This was a terrible plan, but she had nothing else. They needed to fight their way out, together. They needed Rane.

Dru cupped her hands around her mouth, about to yell Rane's name. But a blur of movement from the back of the shop beat her to it.

The flickering fluorescent lights illuminated a streak of motion. Rane charged out of the darkness, gripping a rust-dotted length of iron pipe in both hands like a super-sized baseball bat. The flashes of light caught her in midstride as her body transformed into rust-mottled metal.

With a flying leap, Rane came straight up behind the white Horseman, her lips drawn back from her teeth with savage fury. She swung the pipe around and down in a deadly arc with enough force to crush any mortal creature.

Without turning his burning sapphire gaze away from Greyson, the white Horseman raised his horn-studded arm and swatted Rane's blow aside.

But Rane had fought demons and monsters all her life. And what the white Horseman hadn't anticipated was that the metal pipe was a feint. A mere distraction.

The real weapon was Rane herself.

In one fluid motion, as the metal pipe spun away, Rane drove all of her mass and velocity fist-first into the base of the white Horseman's skull, plowing him facedown onto the floor.

He toppled with a resounding crash, Rane astride his back.

“I'm on this,” Rane said, her voice ringing like empty pipe. “You two grab Opal.”

Before Dru could respond, the red Horseman came at Rane with his flaming sword, swinging a fiery crescent at her head. She ducked under the blade, the crimson flames shining off the muscles flexing in her iron body. She stepped beneath the infernal sword and brought her fist up, twisting into the force of the blow.

The impact lifted the red Horseman off his feet, hurling him into his pale skeletal companion. The two of them flew into the far wall, crushing one of the few shelves left intact.

Greyson didn't hesitate. He scooped up Opal again and motioned to Dru with a jerk of his head. She stumbled over the rubble, following him away from the fight, toward the back door.

As Rane closed in on the other two Horsemen, ready to strike, the white Horseman stirred. He got one spiky arm beneath him and pushed himself upright. He stretched out his other arm, his empty fist pointed directly at Rane's unguarded back.

Dru didn't know what that move meant, but it looked dangerous. “Rane! Behind you!”

Rane turned, crouching down just as one of the white Horseman's spiky horns shot out as if fired from a crossbow. It whistled across the open space of the demolished shop, missing Rane's head by inches, and punched a hole through the far wall with a wicked splintering sound.

Immediately, another horn sprouted into place on his arm.

Rane dodged to the side, ducking and leaping as the white Horseman rapidly fired more horn spurs, chopping apart the wreckage around her.

The other Horsemen got to their feet and closed in on either side. Suddenly on the defensive, Rane was quickly surrounded.

“Keep going!” Greyson barked to Dru as he carried Opal toward the back of the shop.

Sparking electrical wires hung down from the ceiling. The lights flickered on and off, illuminating the Horsemen of the Apocalypse fighting through the destroyed remains of her shop. Nothing was left standing, other than a few shelves of crystals along the periphery of the shop.

The Horsemen were all surrounded by crystals, Dru realized. If only she could power them up.

Dru quickly looked around. She needed copper wire, but there was no telling where her spool of wire had gone. Probably crushed under the white Bronco.

She spotted an orange electrical extension cord. The wires in it were copper. There was no time or tools to strip the insulation off them, but it would have to do. She climbed over the massive pile of wreckage to where her biggest amethyst crystal still sat against one wall.

“What are you doing?” Greyson shouted. “Come on!”

As fast as she could, she tied one end of the cord into a loop and fastened it around the huge rock, then jabbed the three copper prongs at the end into the purple crystal.

At the front of the shop, the red Horseman howled in triumph. Rane let out an agonized gasp, retreating from him with a sizzling red-hot gash glowing on her arm.

“Dru!” Greyson waited for her. “Come on!”

“I need your help!” Dru charged across the shop, stumbling over debris. The cord wasn't long enough to reach the knee-high mountain of smoky quartz in the other corner. “Greyson!”

He left Opal somewhere in back, out of sight, and ran to Dru, looking as if he was about to drag her off by force. “We need to
go
!”

“Not without Rane.” She put as much fierceness into her voice as she could, and Greyson stopped short. She held out the electrical cord to him. “Take this.”

Though obviously puzzled, he took the cord.

“You remember the circle I put under your car? This is a big, ugly version of that. When I say so, grab my hand. But not until I say.” She stepped up to the monstrous smoky quartz and put her palm flat against its cold, rough-hewn point. She drew in a deep breath and shouted, “Rane! Bail out!”

Rane's head snapped around, getting a good look at Dru, the crystals, and the wire. Her eyes flashed with understanding. She left the red Horseman behind, dodged around the skeletal pale Horseman, and slid on her knees under the swinging spiky arm of the white Horseman. She vaulted off the side of the white truck and leaped past Dru, landing with a crash.

The moment Rane was clear of the crystals, Dru held her hand out to Greyson. “Now!”

The three Horsemen charged at them.

Dru stretched until her fingers met Greyson's. The moment their skin touched, a spark of magic shot up her arm. His powerful energy flowed into her, completing the circuit, and the quartz beneath her hand lit up from within.

It grew dazzlingly bright in an instant, powered by Dru's fear and rage. With all of the wreckage, she couldn't see the protective grid of crystals that she had evenly placed around the circumference of the store, but she could feel them interact with each other as she closed a dangerous loop.

With Greyson's power amplifying her own, the energy level surrounding the room quickly spiraled out of control. It rang through Dru's bones, whined in her ears, formed a smoky, metallic taste in the back of her throat. Eerie light burned around the periphery of her store, growing brighter by the second as each crystal in turn lit up.

The white Horseman drew up short, as if sensing the danger, and the other two Horsemen hesitated on either side of him. His blazing azure eyes pierced Dru where she stood.

He knew what she was doing. When he bared his teeth and raised both arms to point his deadly spikes at her, she realized she had no way to defend herself.

In a moment, it would be her who died here, not Rane.

A helpless fury rose up inside Dru, focused on the three creatures before her. They had destroyed everything. Everything she had fought her whole life to build.

Tried to kill her and her friends.

Tried to bring about the end of the world.

And she would
not
let them win.

She shut her eyes tight and channeled her anger into the crystals, charging them levels beyond anything she'd done before, letting the awful feedback rip through her body.

Pain scorched through her, out of her, at a terrifying frequency. The magic glow pounded through her tightly shut eyelids. A roaring wind swirled around her.

The Horsemen howled and screeched. Energy sizzled as they hurled their bodies against the magical vortex, trying to get out, trying to escape the pounding destruction Dru brought down on them.

Her ears rang. Her sense of balance abandoned her. She struggled to stay upright, fought to open her eyes, but she was lost in a searing maelstrom. The roar built into a bone-jarring thunder, crashing over and over. The energy backlash blew out the protective crystals around her one by one, like old light bulbs overloaded by too much current.

When her body could take no more, she collapsed, breaking the connection. Her consciousness faded to a thin, fine line lost in an echoing distance. In the muffled silence, the world toppled and crashed.

She opened her eyes to darkness. Greyson leaned over her, his face inches from hers, calling her name.

She worked lips that felt too dry to speak. “Did we do it?”

He helped her sit up.

Her shop was utterly demolished.

What little had been left intact after the Horseman crashed in through the front windows was now pounded into unrecognizable bits, pocked here and there by guttering pools of fire.

The white truck was crushed into a charred wreck, and beside it, the three Horsemen lay facedown on the floor.

Seeing what remained of her shop filled her eyes with tears. A wrenching despair washed over her, hollowing out the victory until there was nothing left.

Greyson grimly pulled her to her feet. “You didn't have any choice.”

She had to lean against him to stay upright. He helped her into the back room, where Opal lay unconscious in the near darkness.

Rane, her body still formed of rusty metal, took Dru out of Greyson's arms. “You're okay, D. Easy does it.”

Dru was about to thank her, but a meager scratching sound caught her attention. Slowly, painfully, she turned her stiff neck and looked over her shoulder.

One of the white Horseman's fingers scratched against the floor, and then the rest of his hand quickly joined suit. With nightmarish slowness, he turned his horn-crowned head and opened glowing blue eyes. To either side of him, the other Horsemen stirred. As they did, the crushed hulk of the white truck began to uncrumple and smooth out.

The air seemed to leave Dru's lungs. She couldn't speak a warning, couldn't breathe.

She hadn't accomplished anything. She'd thrown everything she could at the Horsemen, sacrificed everything she had, and still she'd failed.

Greyson saw, but he didn't hesitate. “Rane, get her clear. I'll carry Opal.”

“Where?” Rane demanded, her face twisting in rage. “Where else can we go? What the hell else can we do? We can't make a stand against these guys!”

“No,” he said in a low voice, “but we can outrun them.”

“How?”

In Greyson's eyes, an inner fire burned brighter. “We've got Hellbringer.”

35

SPEED DEMONS

As they lowered Opal into Hellbringer's back seat, Dru heard sirens getting closer and louder. “I don't like moving her like this,” she said.

“The hospital's not far,” Greyson said grimly. “Get in.”

Rane swung one long iron leg into the back, then the other, and slid in beneath Opal, cradling her head in her metal lap, using Greyson's leather jacket as a pillow.

Dru could barely tear her gaze away from Opal's motionless body. Even though she seemed to be breathing fine, she was still unconscious, and that could mask any number of injuries.

As Dru got into the front seat, she noticed the biotite lockbox sitting on the carpeted floor mat, next to her plastic hardware case full of crystals. “How did you . . . ?”

“I didn't have a chance to grab everything,” Rane said at Dru's questioning look. “But I grabbed the essentials. We had company.”

“Way to go.”

Hellbringer rumbled to life before Dru even had the door shut. With a lurch, Greyson pulled them out of the parking spot behind The Crystal Connection and sped down the tight alley. The fact that he had already backed in saved them a minute of turning around. It wasn't much, but it could be enough of a head start.

Both sides of the street were lined with parked cars and storefronts, many of them closed up early, probably because of the widespread panic about the foul air and the meteors. The sidewalks were unusually empty. A strange haze choked the air, wrapping a halo around the streetlights, giving a weight to the light.

As they pulled out of the back alley onto the side street, the red Mustang whipped around the corner from the front of the shop, sliding sideways on four howling tires. Its fiery headlights speared through the night, sweeping toward them.

“Damn,” Greyson spat and spun the wheel away from the Mustang. Hellbringer's engine revved up with an earsplitting roar, and the acceleration pressed Dru into the seat. They rocketed away down the street, with the Mustang hot behind them.