Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [167]
What happened to that?”
Logan shrugged. “They were expecting me to try to break him out. Maybe they were even hoping I’d try.”
“So you gonna do nothing, Mr. Knight of the Word?” Panther was furious.
Logan met his gaze and held it. “No, Panther, I’m going to do what I came here to do. I’m going back and get Hawk out. Tessa, too, if I can manage it.
Because now they won’t be expecting it.”
He reached out and tapped the boy on his shoulder. “And you’re going to help.”
Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
ANGEL PEREZ AND Ailie were three hundred miles up the road on their first day after starting north to find the Elves when the tatterdemalion said, “Something is following us.”
Not anything Angel wanted to hear. She was hunched forward over the handlebars of the Mercury 5, the throb of the engine rippling through her body, wind tearing at her face. Even at the slower speeds they were forced to travel on the dangerously debris-strewn highway, her eyes were tearing.
She glanced over her shoulder at her passenger. The tatterdemalion clung to her like a second skin, bluish hair flying out behind her. She was so insubstantial that Angel could barely feel her presence. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
The dark eyes blinked open. “I sense when the demonkind are near. One of them is near now, following.”
It was that female demon from the compound. Angel knew it instinctively.
She should have found the reserves of strength she needed and killed her when she had the chance. Johnny always told her not to leave enemies alive; they would always come after you later. They would always think you were weak. Johnny knew.
“How far back?” The wind tore the words away and the roar of the ATV engine buried them.
The dark eyes met her own. “I can hear the sound of another ATV engine.”
Angel gritted her teeth, then throttled back the Mercury 5 and pulled over to the side of the road. She cut the engine and waited as the ringing in her ears faded and the throbbing in her body eased. She climbed down and stood in the middle of the roadway, listening. All around her, a steadily darkening sky was pressing down to meet the twilight shadows, the world empty and gray.
Within seconds she heard the other engine’s roar, big and powerful and instantly recognizable. A Harley Crawler.
Stupid, stupid girl! She chastised herself in fury. First for not killing the demon and second for not destroying that other machine. She had thought that taking its cells and hiding them would be enough, but the creature that hunted her was no ordinary demon. It had tracked her down and found her once, back in the ruins of Los Angeles, and it clearly intended to do so again.
She glanced over at the Mercury and the dark length of her staff, tucked down in the buckled grips of the storage slot. She did not think she was ready to do battle with this creature again so soon. It wasn’t that she was afraid; it was that she recognized a hard truth about herself that she didn’t much care for. She had been lucky to escape from her pursuer the first time. She might not be so lucky again.
It gave her pause that the demon was so intent on catching up to her. It had worked hard at finding her back in LA. It had discovered what she was doing to save the children in the other compounds, then ferreted out her secret entry into the one in Anaheim and set its trap for her. It hadn’t bothered with bringing help to destroy her; it had sufficient confidence—and likely pride—in its own abilities to want to do it alone. As it almost had. Luck had saved her.
Luck, and a determination that matched that of the demon’s.
Still, to have it tracking her like this . . .
She glanced around quickly at the highway ahead and saw where it branched off into what must have once been an old logging road. Little more than a dirt track, the road dipped down off the embanked highway and disappeared into the trees. So, she thought. Easy enough to drive a hulk like the Harley Crawler down the middle of a paved road. Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy down a narrow, rutted trail.
She returned to the Mercury, where