John thought briefly of the small granny with her broom, and hoped she’d be all right. And then he hoped he would, as he pointed at the fast approaching behemoth, and then at the gap. “Protect!”
The doughboy didn’t hesitate, flinging its still mammoth body across the opening and creating a wobbly, orange, rapidly evaporating bridge that the vampires looked at with almost identical you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me expressions.
John was not kidding.
“Go!” he yelled, because they didn’t have much time. And not just because of the mages. Enormous clouds of orange steam were already boiling off into the night, making it look like a fog machine had been set up on the rooftop—and not just theirs. Within seconds, orange clouds had billowed across the surrounding buildings, the streets, everything, to the point that John could barely see his hand in front of his face.
Damn it! Where the hell was the thing? he thought, wondering how he’d managed to lose something that big—a second before he bumped into it. And there was no mistaking what it was. The “flesh” was hot and getting hotter, since he’d basically put a pan of water over an open fire. But not dangerous—not yet.
He caught a fistful of squashy, too-warm orangeness and heaved himself upward.
He heard Zheng behind him, cursing at his extremely reluctant vamps, or maybe at John, or maybe at all of them, John didn’t know. He was busy trying not to look down at the gap between the buildings, and at the conflagration trapped under all that fake blubber. But it was hard to ignore. It was almost exactly like being in an oven, hot as the hinges of Hades, with fiery tongues licking the underside of his creation and causing clouds of steam to well up beneath the translucent flesh, turning it into some kind of hellish light show.
The vamps didn’t seem to like it any better, John noticed, when he finally tumbled off the other side. And looked back to see half of them following him, their faces scrunched up, their eyes closed, being guided by whatever other senses they possessed. Because, if they looked down, they were lost.
And they were the brave ones.
The rest were still on the other side, appearing completely panicked by the surrounding conflagration, the fiery, floating trash piles, and the billowing orange steam. And the bridge to hell in front of them, looking thinner by the second. Which it damned well was, which was why they needed to hurry!
“Go! Go! What are you waiting for?” John yelled, at the same time that Zheng bounced over from the other side.
He’d dragged two of his men along with him, one tucked under each arm the way he had towed John up the side of a building. That left only Kong behind, who the big vamp had obviously planned to go back for, but John grabbed his bicep. Because the “bridge” had just sprung a leak, sending a massive geyser of steam shooting upward.
It was soon going to be joined by others, judging by the numerous thin spots in the body, which wasn’t so round and roly poly anymore. The geyser had gone a long way toward deflating it, leaving it less of a mountain and more of a flat skein of rapidly thinning power stretched over the gap, one he was not at all sure would support Zheng’s weight. Or anyone else’s.
Kong seemed to realize that, too, and to finally understand that he’d waited too long. It was in the suddenly jittery motions twitching his limbs, in the rapidly whipping head that was trying to look in two directions at once, and in the hugeness of the eyes that he turned on his master. Right before he took off for the side of the building, obviously preferring to take his chances with the war mages below.
Only that wouldn’t work out any better, considering how they responded to anyone who got in their way. And that included anyone kamikazeing them from above! He was going to get himself killed.
Zheng obviously felt the same, making a quick gesture with his hand that, despite being nowhere near his vamp, served to trip him up. But that wouldn’t help for long. Not with the war mages practically on top of them, the manlikan’s energy almost gone, and the roof under their feet threatening collapse.
And then Zheng tried to grab his wayward child—from across a couple dozen yards.
For a moment, John thought the flickering firelight and the fog were playing tricks on his eyes. But then he blinked and saw the same thing: two ridiculously elongated arms chasing a panicked vamp around a rooftop. Master’s powers, he realized, the kind of freakish abilities some of the older vampires developed. Although they were usually more deadly!
And more effective. Because the rubber like appendages had to be withdrawn a second later, when the doughboy erupted in another geyser, this one at least two stories high. The flames weren’t getting through yet, but it was only a matter of seconds.
They were out of time.
“Envelope!” John yelled, pointing at Kong. Who stopped running long enough to stare at him, obviously wondering what the hell he was talking about. Before his eyes slowly slid over to what was pulling off the building, what was rising into the air, what was—
“Auggghhh!” Kong screamed, as what looked for all the world like a dark orange lava monster rose to its shapeless feet, its melted looking hands, face and body brilliant against the darkened sky, its untethered mouth a gaping wound in its lump of a head, one that appeared to be screaming a warning as it lunged for the petrified vampire.
And did as it had been instructed.
A second later, John and Zheng were still looking at Kong, only now he was suspended in the midst of a gelatinous mass of magical power, staring out at them in terror from his orange prison. But not as much as when the manlikan responded to another command, in the form of the wild, beckoning gestures John was making. And took a run and then a flying leap over the huge gap between the buildings, the hapless vamp along for the ride whether he wanted to be or not, the lava like flesh taking and absorbing several more energy bolts from the pursuing mages—
Before finally bursting apart high overhead, in a shower of what felt like boiling rain that pattered down all around them.
Along with a completely freaked out, utterly traumatized, and—for once—completely silent vamp. Kong hit the rooftop steaming and juddering and coated with orange goo, and Zheng snatched him up. Then the whole group took off, dodging the spell bolts streaming after them—although there weren’t many. Because the pursuing mages were piling up on the other side of the roofline, behind what was now a leaping wall of flame.
“Why the hell . . . didn’t you do that . . . before?” John demanded, running alongside Zheng.
“Do what before?”
“The arm thing!”
Zheng shrugged. “Didn’t want to risk stretching over the fire. Besides, it’s one of my master’s powers. An ‘if I tell you, I have to kill you’ sort of thing.”
John stopped running.
Zheng laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’re safe, war mage— ‘till you start to annoy me. Now keep up!”
John endeavored to keep up.
Chapter Seventeen
C aleb made it. John picked up his signal once they reached the ground again, using the other half of the tracker charm. He’d affixed it to the inside of his arm, where it pulsed with a steady, regular heartbeat—his friend’s. If it had been his own, it would have been a hell of a lot faster.