Supernatural secrecy was apparently gone. I searched for my car and saw with relief that it was still in the alleyway I’d parked it in earlier, and it had gone completely unnoticed by police. We could still make it.
I looked up when I heard wingbeats. Esther was here, hovering in the sky before the bank, her angelic wings spread out wide like she owned the very world.
But we’d gotten fucking lucky, because none of her friends were with her. They had to be doing other dirty jobs for the Warden.
Wasn’t going to prevent her from trying to kill us. Shrieks rose throughout the street as Esther used her light magic to blind us. I cringed away from the harsh light, and Oberi whipped her head away.
I heard the sound of a pistol going off, and Esther screamed. Abruptly, the blinding light immediately ceased, and a crashingthudboomed ahead of me.
Charlie had taken a shot with his good arm, and he’d managed to hit Esther in the wing. She’d fallen from the sky and landed on a squad car, breaking the windshield.
She cringed and went to get up, but I was already firing. Blood spurted from her front as several of my shots connected, and she collapsed flatly on the broken windshield with a pained groan.
My Fire bullets weren’t going to kill her, but they’d keep her down for a while. I flattened myself to Oberi’s neck, and she galloped through the zigzag of patrol cars as Union cops flung spells after us. Oberi jumped, sailing us over a squad car as Kallie and Charlie darted around it and Marcus slid across the hood.
My heart was pounding when we finally reached my car. Charlie swung me off of Oberi’s back with one arm and threw me in the driver’s seat before he slipped into the other side. Oberi changed into a husky, jumping onto Charlie’s lap. Kallie and Marcus barely had time to jump in the backseat before I revved the accelerator.
I was a damn good driver, and I knew I could outrun these assholes. We were pinned back in our seats by the force of the car shooting forward. I immediately turned out of the alleyway and onto a side street, racing down that before I got to the main road.
The Union cops were immediately on our tail. Red and blue lights flashed behind us, and police sirens wailed as squad cars followed us on a high-speed chase throughout the streets of Paris. Pedestrians screamed and dove out of the way as iron tables and chairs bounced off the hood. I winced as the furniture scratched the paint and left dents in the hood of my new baby.
My car was faster than theirs, so I was able to make it to the highway, where I had more room to maneuver. I swerved around other vehicles as I pushed the odometer past a hundred.
Marcus and Kallie leaned out the windows in the back and fired shots at the chasing patrol cars. They clung to the sides of the car to hang on as I swerved to avoid battle orbs whizzing toward us from behind. Squad cars tried to avoid their shots. Several ended up spinning off the road or crashing into each other, tumbling over into the ditch.
Traffic slowed up ahead due to construction. I went around it and started driving on the median, though it slowed us down. As we sped past the traffic and into the construction site, I searched the surrounding area, looking for something we could use to escape.
Oberi barked like crazy. One patrol car sped past us and went to box us in, but I spun the car around in a one-hundred eighty degree turn and got back on the gas, driving head-on toward a line of approaching squad cars.
“Ava, are you fucking nuts?!” Kallie screamed.
Absolutely.I had the balls to pull this off. Monica and I had stolen a car before, and the race we’d had with the cops backthen hadn’t ended well. I was determined not to let this be a repeat.
There was a ramp to my right, used by construction workers for repairing a nearby overpass. I jerked the car to the side and drove up it, launching the car off of the ramp. My stomach dipped as the car went airborne, and we flew over the squad cars that had been racing toward us seconds before.
Kallie, Charlie, and Marcus screamed as we sailed through the air, but I tightened my grip on the steering wheel until my fingers were white and my arms were shaking.Come on, baby, you can do this.
The car slammed against the concrete, bouncing off the tires. I swear I heard a couple of parts in the undercarriage come snapping off. The windshield cracked with the force of the fall.
Holy shit, that was going to be a lot of repairs. I nearly wanted to cry.
“We can fix your car later, let’s go!” Charlie shouted, reading my thoughts. I pushed the car even faster, laying on the turbo.
The cars we passed became a blur, and dismay built inside my chest as we drove down the wrong side of the highway. I jerked the car to the side several times in order to avoid slamming head-on into vehicles that were barreling straight toward us.
“They’ve got people in the sky!” Marcus cried. I noticed out the front of my cracked windshield that several helicopters were trailing us from overhead, and getting closer.
I couldn’t outdrive a fucking copter, that was for certain. We needed an escape, somewhere to take the car and hide. If we didn’t disappear, and fast, they’d catch us, because I couldn’t keep this up. Eventually, the car was going to break, and if that happened, we were fucked. I had to get this car to a place we could take a portal out of here without them following.
I had to get us out. Losing the cops and portaling away was our only shot.
Then I saw a line of patrol cars up ahead. The highway was blocked behind us, and the Union police had set up a barricade in front of us. It looked like the highway was blocked off at all angles. I needed to go back into the city.
I immediately slammed to a stop. I heard Marcus yelp as his face hit the headrest behind me, and blood spurted from his nose onto my arm. The vehicle made a screeching noise as I threw the car into reverse, and I painfully turned in my seat so I could look out the window behind me. My spine screamed in protest— I still didn’t have great control of twisting my upper body, and fuck if it didn’t hurt like hell to do so, but I had to right now. I drove backward at over sixty miles an hour, before I whipped the car back around and took an exit that curved into Paris.
The Union was waiting for us off the exit, of fucking course, and they’d laid down spikes on the road ahead. I did my best to swerve, but I couldn’t avoid them all. I groaned as I heard the spikes pop the right tire.
“Great! Now we’re screwed!” Kallie snapped as the car leaned to the side. I didn’t slow down, but kept on the gas as we sped back into the streets of Paris— this time, a business district with a variety of expensive skyscrapers.
