Out of the Black - Lee Doty [91]
Grudgingly, she released the handle above the window, and grabbed the pistol grip of the fletcher. She relied on her seat belt and the force her legs were applying to the floor to hold her in place. The way Ping was driving, there was no way she was going to stick hand or weapon out the window, but she wanted to be ready when the opportunity presented itself. Until then, she tried to make herself as small a target as possible, slouching down in her seat, pressing her right elbow against the door to steady herself, and keep the fletcher pointed away from Ping.
Here she was again, just waiting for the chance to kill someone. Determination drove away doubt, desperation kept guilt at bay. Could she really just suspend morality like this? Fair-weather moralist, rainy-day sociopath.
Bright headlights flared in the night behind them, forcing Ping's eyes into slits, leaving two round purple shadows floating through his vision. "Hold on!" He shouted as he cranked the wheel hard to the left. With another squeal, the car rocketed from the driveway and into the foliage.
Alex existed in the wider world of the Loom, receiving only a small percentage of his sensory inputs from his physical body, which was now being tossed and jostled limp in the back seat of the car leaving the driveway for the forest. His seatbelt kept him from serious injury through the tambourine-stable drive- he'd have to thank Rae later for buckling him in. Heaven knew he wouldn't have remembered to do it himself. A sudden flash of heat surrounded him in the abstract realm of the Underworld as he thought about Rae. It was almost time for her, for them. He hoped they both lived long enough.
Bullets approached the car from the three killers braced in and around the car blocking the driveway. The bullets left the muzzles of the rifles in rapid succession, only a few meters apart, stretching out across the distance, reaching for Alex and the others. They tore through the air, spinning for stability, leaving trails of turbulence and radiant sound. Some of the shells were slowed and deflected by intervening trees; Alex deflected the rest.
The hot, spinning shells sieved through the bands of force he'd wrapped in expanding patterns about the car; their paths becoming eccentric arcs, vectors changing as the skeins of Alex's weaving altered the relevant physics of the space through which they flew. They thudded into the ground, curved off through the trees, flew up into the air- every direction but toward the car.
Unbelievably, Alex's hasty weave was holding. Unbelievable because he had never Cast this type of weave before. Sure, he knew how to do it now, but he hadn't a few moments ago. Weaving the Cast had been much more like inspiration than the usual hard-fought solution that usually took him hours, weeks, or months. Something was different now, either in the Loom or in him.
When the Savant with the attackers had attempted to apply Sleep to the inhabitants of Roy's house, somehow it had awoken Alex to the Underworld, drawing him to the Loom with no pattern stretching. Ivo would be proud. Would be- if these monsters hadn't killed him.
He stretched out his Vision, encompassing Roy'slarge wooded front yard. In addition to the maybe fifteen commandos in the house and the three by the car, there were two snipers in gray microvans a block away from Roy's gate. Thorough little killers, Alex thought. Then he noticed the things moving impossibly fast through the trees to intercept them. Better warn Ping.
Ping cranked the wheel to the left and jammed the brakes with his right foot as his left deactivated the Traction Control system. The wheels locked as the car tore across the leaf-covered clearing, bumping across the irregular terrain, nose sliding around. He jammed the accelerator as the car slid into a semblance of 'forward'. The last part of the hundred-eighty degree spin was facilitated by his TC-suppressed all wheel throttle up. Geysers