Out of the Black - Lee Doty [92]
The car accelerated forward, dodging the first tree on the other side of the twenty-meter clearing. In the rearview mirror, Ping could make out Alex's ten thousand meter stare. Next to him, Rae stared at Ping- obviously impressed. He smiled, arching an eyebrow at her while swerving around some rock landscaping.
"I coulda' done that." she mumbled.
The resonant hum of the car's four motors stuttered. The car began to slow.
The Savant with the attackers was somewhere back by the house. Alex couldn't feel exactly from where, but the Savant was trying to reach out and touch them. But working with the Loom becomes more difficult the farther away you get from your target, and fortunately they were driving directly away.
The Savant was pretty good. Though he- definitely a man, tall, dark suit, standing by a wall- couldn't pull off any extravagant Casts at this distance. Still, he managed to set up a weak damping-field around the car's motors. The electromagnetic fields were weakening somewhat and the motors were losing efficiency.
Alex had the advantage of distance because the target of his counter-Cast was the car around him. He unwound the patterns of force even as the distant Savant struggled to maintain them. This was a battle he could win.
Numbness lanced out from the unwinding fibers of the other Savant's Cast. Alex struggled against the sharp, icy energy that he had mistakenly engaged. He'd misconstrued the intent of the Cast. It was a Trojan horse... too weak to kill the car, but subtle enough to hide the real danger. When Alex had carelessly immersed himself in the hostile weave, he'd become vulnerable.
He tried to extract himself, but it was like trying to bathe without water, removing each speck of dirt individually. Hundreds of dark, ethereal spiders swarmed over him, stealing away the speed and power of the Loom. His consciousness seemed to narrow, the light faded from around him.
Touché, he thought in the final shimmer of light.
The motor sputtered again, but then the powerful drone evened. They were approaching the fence along the front of the property. Ping held the accelerator down. "Hold on!" His eyes flashed to the rear view where Alex lolled in his harness, apparently unconscious.
Something that had way too many teeth landed on the hood of the car, slamming its headinto the windshield. Spider web cracks radiated away from the impact point and one or two of the thing's teeth flew away from the face-glass collision. Ping let out a shout that he'd like to think sounded like "yow!" but memory informed him it sounded more like an introverted librarian screaming her guts out in a horror movie.
Ping swerved right, attempting to dislodge the wolf-man or whatever had so wronged his windshield. However, the claw-studded knobby black things at the end of its oily arms had found purchase in the crack between the hood and the windshield. Its eyes burned with what Ping sincerely hoped was reflected light. It howled, showing curving teeth and a gray worm-like tongue.
He briefly considered braking, but didn't think he'd get enough traction out of the soft soil to dislodge the beast. It released the hood with its left hand, cocked the fist back and swung it forward, shattering the cracked windshield.
Twin explosions tripped over each other, blowing more glass out of the car as Rae added her opinion to the discussion. The two shots blew out most of the windshield and showered the hood with its rough diamonds. The departing fletchettes made a much less pretty impression on the oily man-thing. It's ink-black skin parted, arm deconstructing near the shoulder, face yielding... don't want to look at that!
Then it was gone, head over claws into the rushing night air.
Ping squinted into the wind rushing through the shattered windshield. "What was that?" he shouted, glancing toward Rae.
"Don't ask me!" Rae shook her head, trying