Burn for Me

The old man walked out between the cars, the wires stretching from the cup in his hands.

“Shhh,” the old man said. “Don’t struggle, it will make it worse.”

He touched his hand to his left ear. An earpiece. Didn’t see it before. His hair had hidden it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I have her.” He took his hand from his ear and looked at me. “Give me the gun.”

I wheezed, trying to suck some air. He wasn’t getting the gun from me. He would have to take it.

“Come on.” The old man held his hand under my right fist. “Just let it go. Be a good girl.”

No, I don’t think so.

The old man squeezed the cup and the wires tightened, cutting my throat. I tried to scream but managed a hoarse hiss instead.

“Always has to be the hard way, doesn’t it? Fine.” He reached over, on his toes. His hand closed over the barrel of the Kahr.

I dropped the gun and clamped my fingers on his wrist. Pain rolled down my shoulder, and I let it blossom into agony. The feathery lightning gripped him and the old man bent back, his spine rigid. His eyes rolled back in his head. Foam bubbled up at his mouth. I let go and he fell to his knees, landing facedown on the pavement.

The wires fell. I crashed to the ground, dug my nails at the metal noose around my neck, and pulled it loose. Air. Sweet, sweet air. Bright red stained my fingers. My blood. The wire must’ve cut me.

I had to move. The others were coming. I glanced up.

A silver sedan hurtled toward me through the air. I saw it with crystal clarity, every single detail plain, as if I were looking at an enormous HD image: the oblong headlights, the tinted windows, the shiny hood, the top of the car as it turned before crushing me. No time to run. No time for anything.

I’m dead.

I jerked my arms up in reflex.

The sedan froze six inches from my fingertips. It groaned, the metal twisting, and shot up and back, revealing Mad Rogan. He was incredibly, monumentally angry.

The car flew over him, aiming for the attackers. The woman in the sundress tried to dodge the sedan. It smashed into her, sweeping her from her feet.

I yanked the rest of the wires off my ankles and wrists and got up.

The sedan bounced on the woman’s body, screeched, scraping the asphalt, spun, and slapped the taller of the two men. He crashed down and the sedan rolled over him, pounding him flat. The vehicle bounced and flew at the third man, who was wearing a dark blue T-shirt. The man leaped up, like he had wings, and perched atop the sedan, standing on one foot, perfectly balanced.

“Are you okay?” Mad Rogan ground out.

“I’ll live,” I croaked and grabbed my gun.

The sedan jerked six feet into the air, rotating. The man ran over the spinning car as a lumberjack during a logrolling competition, leaped at the parked row of cars, and dashed toward us, running across the cars like they were solid ground.

I sighted him and squeezed the trigger. The windshield of the white truck to the right cracked. The bullet hit him dead center and ricocheted into the windshield. Lovely.

“A wind mage.” Mad Rogan clasped his hands together and jerked them apart. Two hoods flew off the nearest cars and flew at the mage. The aerokinetic dodged with room to spare, as graceful as a ballet dancer, and punched the air. Mad Rogan leapt right. A foot-long gap sliced the asphalt next to me. The second gap split the pavement two inches closer to Rogan’s foot. Holy shit.

The hoods shot back to us and hovered like shields.

Anything small would bounce off the wind mage. Anything heavier would be too slow to hit him. Catch-22.

Mad Rogan held out a chalk. “Draw an amplification circle around me.”

I grabbed the chalk. Amplification circle was magic 101. Small circle around the mage’s feet, larger circle around him, three sets of runes. I’d just never tried to draw one on the asphalt while a wind mage was throwing invisible air blades at us.

The hood directly in front of Rogan split with a screech. A bright red line swelled across his chest. He grimaced. The hoods spun around us, faster and faster.

I finished the smaller circle. It wasn’t perfect, but it was round.

Something pelted the hoods, sounding like hail. The mage couldn’t see us, but we couldn’t see him either.

I finished the second circle.

Another hail of air blades, this time from the right. The aerokinetic had us pinned.

I drew the runes out. “Done.”

A tiny puff of chalk escaped from the lines into the air. Rogan flexed, his arms bulging. A vein shook in his neck.

The hoods kept spinning. If I were a wind mage, I’d try to get a drop on us . . .

I looked up. A graceful figure soared above us in the sky.

“Up!” I yelled.

The aerokinetic raised his arms. We were wide open.

A Greyhound bus smashed into the wind mage. I caught a glimpse of him, pressed against the bus’ windshield like a bug, his eyes wild. The bus crashed into the pavement in front of the mall, sinking three feet into the ground but remaining half upright.

Mad Rogan smiled, like a smug cat who’d just gotten away with stealing something off the counter. “Wind mages. They’re all fancy dancing until you drop something heavy on them.”

I stared at the bus like an idiot, still holding the chalk in my fingers. A car tire was heavy. He had dropped a damn bus.

My wrists and ankles were bleeding. My knees too—I must’ve scraped myself trying to draw the circle. So far today I’d seen a woman almost die, I’d shot a person, I’d killed another person with my shockers, I’d been strung up on wires and almost crushed by a car, and now I was bleeding all over the place. If I could, I would punch today right in the face.

Bern’s black Civic pulled into the parking lot and swerved to avoid the bus.

Mad Rogan looked down at my chalk lines. “This is the lousiest circlework I’ve ever seen. Were you drawing with your eyes closed?”

That was it. I threw the chalk at him, got up, marched to the Civic, and got inside. “Drive, Bern. Please.”

To my cousin’s credit, he said nothing about the blood, the bus, or Mad Rogan. He stepped on the gas and drove straight home.

Chapter 12

Bern drove with steady surety, obeying all traffic laws and regulations. Leon and Arabella both had their learner permits. Five minutes in the car with one of them behind the wheel was enough to turn my hair white, but riding with Bern was completely stress free. He had made a simple calculation: the cost of a speeding ticket in Houston ranged from $165 to $300 and would bump up his insurance. He didn’t have $165 to spare.