He did it again. He killed my source of information.

Alessandro marched up to me. His magic coiled and flexed around him, so potent I could actually see it. It shimmered like hot air rising from scalding pavement, flashing with orange fire that burst into life for the briefest of moments and melted back into transparent heat. He walked like he was a fallen angel, looking for someone to punish.

Breath caught in my throat. So much power . . .

He reached to grab my forearm. “We have to go!”

I stepped out of the way. The little dog let out a surprisingly vicious snarl.

Alessandro halted. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s my dog.”

“Fine, bring it, but we have to leave. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Catalina, we can’t stay here. They called for backup when they got here. More of them are on the way.”

“That’s fine.” I couldn’t go anywhere with him. I had no idea how he was involved in any of this. “You go your way and I’ll go mine.”

“How? They shredded your tires. Your car isn’t going anywhere, you’re not going anywhere, your little dog isn’t going anywhere. Come with me.”

“No.” I jerked back from him.

“I’m trying to keep you alive!”

“I don’t need your help. I’m doing fine on my own.”

“Don’t make me carry you out of here,” he snarled.

“Try it.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

The little dog barked at him.

“We don’t have time for this.” He spaced his words out, speaking slowly and clearly as if to a child. “Why are you being . . . difficult?”

“You just killed eight people! I don’t even know why you’re here, how you’re involved in this or why, and you want me to just get into the car with you.”

He growled and thrust his gun into my hands. “Here, you can have my gun. You can point it at me the entire way.”

“No thanks. I have my own.”

“Cazzo.” He raised his arms. “Is there another elephant I can shoot to make you come with me?”

I shut up and ran for the door.

Chapter 8

I jumped into the passenger seat of a silver Alfa Romeo 4C and buckled my seat belt, the little dog on my lap. Alessandro slid behind the wheel and pushed the start button. The tiny car purred. He fastened his seat belt, put the Alfa into gear, and we sped off.

“You shot the elephant?”

The remains of my Element with bald wheels and bullet hole scars in the doors flashed by us.

“Of course I shot the damn elephant.”

At the other end of the parking lot another Guardian roared, coming up the street. Alessandro took a turn at an insane speed. The Alfa all but floated above the pavement. We circled the mall and shot out onto Old Post Road like a bullet.

“Who’s in that Guardian?”

“Celia.”

“What? Rose-gold Celia?”

“Yes. I told you to let it go. I told you to go home. And what did you do?” His magic pulsed with a flash of orange. “You flounced straight into that snake pit.”

“Flounced?”

“Like a lamb, Catalina. Like a stupid, pretty little lamb bouncing over green grass straight into the wolf’s den. Do you have any idea what Benedict does to women?”

“No, why don’t you enlighten me?”

“The man is a degenerate. Ma porca puttana! What were you thinking?”

Well, look who lost his temper. I would have agreed with his assessment of Benedict, except in Italy “that whore of a pig” only applied to situations, and never to a person.

“I was thinking I have a client whose mother was murdered and whose seventeen-year-old sister is missing. Instead of posturing and cursing, you could help me. Where is Halle, Alessandro?”

“I wish I knew so I could kidnap her back and leave her on your doorstep with a bow to keep you from sticking your pretty nose into things you don’t understand.”

He said I had a pretty nose. “Stop treating me like I’m an idiot.”

My phone rang. I answered it. “Hello?”

“Good news,” Bug said.

I put him on speaker.

“I found your vomit muffin. He’s driving a crappy silver Italian import. He’s about to merge onto the I-10. Where are you?”

“In the passenger seat of the crappy import.”

“This is a great car.” Alessandro executed a hair-raising merge and cut across three lanes of traffic with three inches of room to spare. “Italians make the best cars.”

Bug sputtered. “Ask Captain Vapid if he knows what Fiat stands for. Fix It Again, Tony!”

Alessandro shifted lanes again. “You better ask Tony how good he is at fixing surveillance drones.”

“You son of a bitch! When I get my hands on you—”

“You’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Will the two of you shut up?” I snapped. “Bug, there is a Guardian following us. We need to lose it.”

Alessandro cut across two lanes to the right, weaving in and out of traffic. The Alfa slid between two trucks about an inch from the front vehicle’s bumper. Someone laid on their horn.

“I don’t understand why we couldn’t just fight her at the mall,” I squeezed out through clenched teeth.

“Because your magic won’t work on her in her active state and I don’t have a gun large enough to take her down. I looked.”

“I have the Guardian,” Bug reported. “Bad news. They’ve got a Cockerill MK III 90mm cannon mounted on that thing. People are getting out of their way like the Red Sea before Moses.”

Alessandro stepped on the gas. The Alfa jumped forward into the lane on our left, sped around a semi, and slid in front of it, nearly skidding.

“Find us an exit strategy,” I barked. “Before we wreck.”

“We won’t wreck.” Alessandro’s voice was completely calm.

“If you keep driving this way, we won’t have to. This is Texas, someone will shoot us.”

“It’s not my fault you have barbaric gun laws.” He switched lanes again.

“Stop driving like a maniac!” Bug yelled. “Slow down.”

Behind us a horn blared. I turned. The huge semi we’d passed was moving into the left lane, which was illegal.

“Oh shit,” Bug said.

The semi finally merged over. Behind it the Guardian sped up, a huge barrel pointing at us. Holy crap, that thing could put a hole in a tank.

“There’s no way they can fire that cannon at us,” I said. “The shell would go through our car and wipe out three lanes around us. Diatheke would be finished.”

“That’s not for us,” Alessandro said. His eyes scanned the lanes ahead of us, but there was no opening. We were stuck.

The top of the Guardian came open and Celia climbed out in her pink Chanel suit. She stood, her arms out, trying to balance on top of the Guardian in her pumps.

What the hell was she doing?

Long dark quills thrust out of her, piercing her suit. Her skin stretched and tore, and a creature twice her size burst out of her, muscles bulging under dense red fur. It sat on its haunches, the sickle-shaped tiger claws of its hind feet digging into the metal of the Guardian. Its forelimbs, thick and powerful, like a gorilla’s, clutched at the barrel of the Guardian, anchoring the beast. A dense red mane that was more hair than fur thrust from its head and shoulders. Two-foot-long quills protruded from the mane and the backs of its forelimbs. Its face was horrible; a meld of cat and ape, with beady eyes sunken deep into its skull, a simian nose with huge nostrils, and feline mouth filled with long dagger teeth. A long, whiplike tail snapped behind it.

A metamorphosis mage. Shit.

The gun wasn’t for us. That cannon was for her, in case she went off the rails. When a metamorphosis mage transformed, they lost most of their ability to reason, reverting to a primal state somewhere between an attack dog and an enraged ape. There would be no reasoning with her. Anything short of a lethal injury would just piss her off.

“Can you nullify her with your magic?” I asked.

“Not once she’s in that shape. She’s fucking immune to everything.”

Celia’s enraged eyes fixed on us. She opened her mouth and howled, flinging spit into the wind. Oh God.

“Drive faster, Alessandro!”

“Go,” Bug screamed from the phone. “Go, go, go!”

There was nowhere to go. We were in the second lane from the right. Traffic clogged the interstate ahead of us. Even if we managed to force our way into the far-right lane, this section of the I-10 ran above the ground and a concrete wall guarded the edge. We couldn’t jump it. The Alfa was too small and low.

We had to exit.

“We can’t maneuver here. There’s an exit ahead,” I said. “Take Bunker Hill. We’ll lose them on the surface roads.”

“No!” Bug yelled. “Don’t take Bunker Hill, it’s closed. The tanker truck, remember?”

Two weeks ago, a tanker truck carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline overturned on the Bunker Hill exit and burst into flames. It burned for hours, and the fire ate through the concrete. A section of the exit had collapsed, plunging the burning wreck down to the street below. It was the biggest story on the news for a week.

“Bug’s right, don’t take the exit, there is a hole in it.”

“How big a hole?” Alessandro asked.

“Too big,” Bug said. “Twenty feet.”

“How many meters is that?”

“Six.”

“Ascending or descending?”