Twenty-four

A little before six thirty, the rain stopped. By seven, the clouds were breaking apart, a sky of fresh-scrubbed late summer blue showing for the first time all day. Aaron handed me a ski mask and I folded it into my pack. Chogyi Jake and Midian were in their riding outfits. I nodded to them both as I slipped my backpack over my shoulder. I couldn't deal with any more emotional good-byes.

"Are we ready?" I asked.

"Guns are in the car," Aaron said. "We've all got masks, right?"

"I'm ready," Kim said. She looked perfectly calm. I had the feeling I could have known her for years without learning how to read her expressions.

"Okay," I said. "Let's do this."

Candace and Kim took off in her car first. Aaron and I followed about five minutes later. The traffic was thicker than I'd pictured it, but Aaron seemed pleased. We parked on the street near the Marriott on California Street, then went to the Starbucks for overpriced lattes and down to the bar. I turned on the laptop, connected to the network, and started up the chat program under a screen name I'd built just for this. True to form, Extojayne was on and waiting for Jayneheller to show. It was seven forty. He wouldn't have to wait long. We were three longish blocks from the convention center. MapQuest said it was about a third of a mile. It felt like a thousand miles away until I imagined Coin there. Then it seemed way too close.

Ten minutes later, Candace called.

"He's there," Candace said. "We're by his car. I saw him going in."

"Did he notice you?"

"No," she said.

"Okay," I said. "Hang tight. We'll be right there."

I dropped the call and dialed the house. Chogyi answered before I heard it ring.

"Jayn¨¦?"

"Yeah," I said. "Spark it up. I'm pulling the trigger now."

"I understand."

"Chogyi?"

"Yes?"

"Live through this, okay?"

"I'll do my best," he said, and hung up. I put the cell phone in my backpack and signed on as Jayneheller.

JAYNEHELLER: Ex! Are you there? EXTOJAYNE: Yes. I'm here. What's up? JAYNEHELLER: Change of plan. Coin's at the convention center right now. We're going with plan B. The U-Haul with the fertilizer bomb is on its way. We can take out his house now while it's unprotected. You should meet us at the airport ASAP. We're scrambling now. EXTOJAYNE: Wait. I don't think this is a good idea. Can we talk about it? JAYNEHELLER: No time, babe. Fortune favors the bold.

I closed the laptop, took a deep breath, and nodded.

"Hornet's nest now officially kicked," I said. "Let's see what happens."

Aaron actually grinned and slammed down the rest of his coffee. I put my cell phone in my backpack and left my cooling latte untouched on the table. We walked fast out to the Hummer. The stolen Hummer. With the rifles. I had to pull myself up into the passenger's seat. Aaron started the engine. I put on the seat belt like I was strapping in to drop from a plane.

If I'd guessed right, there were about a hundred things happening right now. Extojayne, whoever he was, was raising the alarm about an imaginary truck bomb cruising toward Coin's house and the enemy-meaning us-meeting at the airport. Whatever resources the Invisible College had watching for Chogyi Jake and Midian were also getting action for the first time, the two of them heading fast in opposite directions. And, with any luck, someone was calling Coin.

We pulled out into traffic. I plucked my cell phone out of my pack and called Candace. Kim answered.

"They're out," Kim said. Her voice was a tight whisper. "They're getting into the car now. I think it worked. It's just the two of them. Coin and the other one. The driver. The driver's huge."

Candace's voice came over Kim's, talking loud.

"They're pulling out. We're going after them."

"Tell Kim that's great," I said. "Just let me know where you guys are, and we'll fall in behind you in a couple minutes. Just don't follow too close. I'm going to put you on speaker here. Let me know if the background noise gets too bad."

"Okay," Kim said.

Aaron gunned the engine, cursing under his breath. The downtown traffic was thick. We passed the Sixteenth Street mall, turned right on Fifteenth and then left again on Champa. I tapped my foot anxiously. We'd been right not to try taking him out down here. Too many people. Too much traffic. Someplace else would be better. I hoped that the right place existed. Kim reported in breathlessly. Coin was on Fourteenth, going the opposite direction. I cursed.

"It's okay," Aaron said. "He's heading to Colfax. We'll get there ahead of him. We're going to be fine."

We passed over the two separate streets of Speer and the creek running between them, water high from the day's rain, and curved to the left. At the intersection of Colfax, two cars kept us from turning right. Aaron murmured something under his breath and reached toward the dashboard. Looking annoyed, he pulled his hand back.

"Miss having a siren?" I said.

"Hell yes," he said, and Coin drove through the intersection ahead of us. I didn't recognize his car so much as feel its presence in my gut. My eyes tracked it as it flowed away to my right. Candace's car flashed through the light just as it shifted yellow, speeding after Coin. Aaron leaned forward as if he could push the cars before us out of the way by force of will. We got onto Colfax, Aaron gunning the engine as we turned.

The voice that came from my cell phone was Candace's.

"We're past Eighth," she said. "I think he's getting on I- 25."

"He'll be going south," Aaron said. "We'll do this on the loop. Get in behind him and get ready to put on your hazards when we come past you."

"Kim?" I said. "Are you ready?"

"She's ready," Candace said. "I'm getting in behind him. We're about to hit the on-ramp. Where are you two?"

We were coming to the intersection at Seventh Avenue. The last one before the highway. The light was red. We weren't going to make it.

"Hang on," Aaron said, then leaned on the horn and the gas pedal at the same time. The Hummer leapt forward like someone had goosed it as we cut across the intersection. Brakes screamed and I closed my eyes, waiting for an impact that never came. The engine roared, acceleration pressing me back into my seat. My heart was pounding like it wanted to get out. Aaron wove the great black box through traffic like he was playing a video game, cutting off a semi as we slid onto the on-ramp doing sixty.

"We're going to flip the car," I said.

"We aren't," he said through gritted teeth. "This is perfect. Candy! You with me? I'm coming up right on your ass. Pull to your right."

"Slow down," Candace said.

"Not happening," Aaron said. "As soon as I get by, get in the middle of the road with your blinkers going. Don't let anyone past."

"Okay," Candace said.

"Put your mask on," he told me.

We buzzed past Candace's car like it was standing still just as we passed under the great concrete bridge of a surface street. Coin's car was six car lengths ahead of us, passing under the highway itself. We barreled toward it. My hands were on my knees, gripping so hard the knuckles ached. I couldn't unclench my fingers.

There was no sound that announced Kim's cantrip. She didn't say anything or call out physically, and yet there was no question when it happened. It was like the world clicking into focus when I hadn't realized it was out before. The car in front of us, the asphalt speeding by, the Hummer with its mingled scents of new car and old marijuana. Literally in the blink of an eye, all of it went from the rich, complicated, uncertain world I knew to a gorgeously complex mechanism. All emotion was gone, all sense of morality, of uncertainty, of fear or hope or dread. I could almost see the microscopic gears that made up the universe, the laws of physics triumphant. This was what the world looked like utterly without magic or emotion or soul.

Aaron drove up on Coin's left, sliding the Hummer's nose even with Coin's back tires, as if we were going to pass him on the inside of the curve. Then, violently, he cut the wheel right. The impact jarred us, and then Coin's car was fishtailing out in front of us, the driver's side of the car at a right angle to our oncoming grill. Gray smoke came off their tires like clouds. Aaron stamped the brake as Coin's car slammed into the concrete barrier. We were stopped in the middle of the long, slow curve that would lead to the highway. Aaron undid his seat belt and pulled on his ski mask. Of course he did. It was just physics. I undid my own, snatched my rifle up from the backseat, and slid out of the car.

I walked out to kill the thing in Randolph Coin's body, and my mind was perfectly calm. I didn't remember picking up my backpack, but there it was on my shoulders. I'd need to go back for the laptop. I didn't want to leave that behind. Candace's car was coming around the curve and beginning to slow. There were other cars behind her. I lifted the rifle to my shoulder.

The driver's door burst open. The big man rushed out. There was blood on his face. Blood and ink. His pale skin was covered in markings and tattoos. He raised his hand to us, palm out, and I saw the markings on his arm writhe like living things under his skin. He shouted and something moved past me, something unreal and angry and rich with malice. I felt something like teeth touching my mind.

In my peripheral vision, I saw Aaron raise his rifle with fluid grace. The report was a single barked command. The big man staggered back. There was blood on the car behind him. The thing with teeth-invisible, abstract, magical-shuddered against me and fell away. Blood darkened the big man's shirt. His illustrated face went slack, and he slipped to his knees and then to his side, lying on the dirty street in a pose that could never be mistaken for sleep.

Aaron dropped his rifle and motioned me forward. One of the bullets was gone. Used. One of the Invisible College's riders was dead or cast out of the world. The only bullet left was in my rifle, and I walked toward the back of Coin's car. Candace and Kim stopped by the Hummer. Kim was out of the car. I ignored them.

He was there, sitting at the far side of the seat. His glamour was gone, his face inhuman with glyphs and sigils. His eyes were wide and stunned. He looked old. I lifted the rifle again and he threw open the door and fell out on the car's far side. I sidestepped to my right, moving around the car's back. Its nose was crumpled against the concrete barrier. There was no place Coin could go.

"Move it!" Aaron shouted, pointing me forward. "Get him! We've got to get out."

I nodded and stepped forward, around the car. The traffic on the highway above us filled the air with the buzz of tires against pavement, the thump as they crossed the expansion joints. The smell of burned rubber was thick in the air, and there was something else. Blood. Death. Something.

Coin was on his knees, one hand to his chest just over his heart, the other pressed to his forehead. His lips, red striped with the black of his markings, were moving fast. His eyes were closed. I thought at first he was praying.

His eyes opened. There was writing on the sclera, tiny words worked on the whites of his eyes. He spoke a single word, but it resonated like we were standing in a tunnel, just the two of us.

"Heller?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Hurry!" Aaron shouted. I heard horns blaring and the crunch of tires on gravel. Candace's car rolling toward me. I leveled the rifle at Coin's chest. I couldn't miss at this range. Even I couldn't miss. Coin shrieked, his mouth hinging open wider than I'd imagined possible. There was writing on his tongue. His teeth were like scrimshaw. I squeezed the trigger.

I didn't have the rifle snug enough to my shoulder. The kick was like a blow. I stumbled back as Coin's body folded forward. I stepped closer, the rifle still at the ready even though there wasn't a round left in it. A curl of smoke rose from the barrel.

He looked up at me.

He smiled.

He held out his hand to show me-shining, clean, searing his flesh with the heat of the discharge-the bullet, its etched markings squirming as if they were in pain. It was my turn to shriek.

Aaron was at my side. I hadn't known he was there until he pulled me back. A black pistol in his hand fired three times, four. Coin stood up, brushing the grit and gravel from his knees, ignoring Aaron as if he wasn't there.

"The car!" Aaron yelled. "Get in the car!"

I turned and ran. Coin shouted out words I couldn't comprehend, and something detonated. I skidded and fell on the pavement, my hands and knees skinned. I wasn't gong to make it to the car.

Candace was in the driver's seat, her face pale. She'd forgotten to put on her ski mask, or else had already taken it off. I saw Kim in the backseat, her hand pressed against the window. She could have been a world away. As I rose to my feet, I wondered whether she'd gotten my laptop. It was a disconnected thought, something plucked from the middle of a car wreck.

Aaron was on the ground. Blood flowed from his nose. His eyes weren't focused. Coin stood over him, head tilted like a man considering a crossword puzzle. I knew the next thing the rider would do would be to kill him. Or worse.

It was pointless. The Hail Mary throw. I gathered my qi the way Chogyi and Ex and Midian had taught me. In the thinned universe of Kim's cantrip, it seemed weak even to me. I pushed it out my mouth as I shouted.

"Leave him alone!"

Coin looked up. His eyebrows rose. His hand moved faster than a human's. The fabric of the world pulsed. The sense of being in a clockwork of physics faded. Someone was honking. I heard tires squeal. We were causing a traffic jam. If the plan had worked, Kim and Aaron and Candace and I would already be gone, speeding south on the highway, Coin dead on the road behind us. Aaron groaned, rolled over, rose to his elbows.

"Leave him alone," I said again. "He isn't your problem."

"And you are?" Coin asked. "My problem. It's you?"

"Yeah, it's me," I said. "So leave him the hell alone."

We stood there for the space of five fast heartbeats. I had time to hope that Midian and Chogyi Jake had gotten away. I heard a car door open behind me.

"You aren't Eric Heller," he said. "Who are you?"

I pulled off my ski mask. I'd almost sweat through it in the few minutes I'd had it on. The air felt cold against my neck. I shook my head to get the hair out of my eyes. Candace stepped into my peripheral vision, a pistol in her hand. Coin didn't even bother to look at her. His eyes were on mine. I felt something cold traveling up my spine. Aaron rose to his knees. Coin stepped forward, and Candace started firing. Four fast shots. Someone off to my left started screaming. An engine revved. Coin looked at her, his lips drawing back.

"No! Candace! Get Aaron and get back in the car!" I said, stepping between them. Then to Coin, "Leave them out of it."

"As you've left Alexander out?" Coin said. He meant the big one. The one we'd killed.

"Alexander was mine too," I said. "They were all mine. You want this stopped? I'm the one. Just me."

Coin looked back over his shoulder, toward the body of his fallen man. I thought I saw something like sadness in his eyes. Then he turned back to me and nodded.

"Just you," he said.

He closed his eyes, balled his fists, and shouted. The sound was deafening, a thousand times louder than anything human, and more complex. There were storms in his voice. Earthquakes. Huge beings moving underground. I felt my body tip back and thought I was falling.

When I looked down, the streets were a hundred feet below me. Aaron and Candace were gone, but I saw her car, just beginning to move, finishing the long arc to the south. I saw the tangle of cars and trucks, semis and motorcycles that had piled up behind us. The stolen Hummer, its black doors standing open. Coin's car with its crumpled hood. The huge man's body. I could even see the pool of blood.

And then it was two hundred feet below me. And then a thousand. I dropped the rifle, the small black stick flipping down through the empty air. The great asphalt cloverleaf of the highway spun in the distance. I felt a sudden regret. My plan hadn't worked any better than Eric's. I wondered what I could have done differently. If there had ever really been a way to win.

Something profoundly cold touched the back of my mind, and the gray world went black.