Page 27 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)

Obligatory

I accelerated up to sixty… not the wisest thing to do on a backwoods road riddled with holes, rocks, and curves.

Whoever drove the Cadillac handled the car pretty damn well for the terrain, managing to keep up with us.

The truck lagged a little ways behind...

and for the time being, the bumpiness of the road kept the guys in the open bed clinging for their lives rather than trying to get a shot at us.

One or two raised their rifles, but either the trees got in the way on a bend or their truck bounced over something hard enough that they worried more about not going flying than trying to fire at us.

“They’re chasing us,” said Crystal, oddly calm.

“Yeah, it’s in the rules. Just like the pretty girl who gets involved with a PI ends up kidnapped? There’s gotta be a car chase.”

She flashed this cute smile at me that made my heart do bad things. Well, good things, but palpitations in the midst of a car chase are kinda bad.

“Wonder how much they’re paying those idiots,” I muttered while nearly losing control on a sliding left turn.

“They could be vampires… falling out of a truck at this speed would be more annoying than deadly.” She peered out at the sky. “It’ll be dark in less than an hour. This could get messy if we don’t make it to Ironside.”

I debated going faster, but didn’t trust the truck’s ability to stay on the road or avoid rolling. Doing sixty-five here already well exceeded my comfort level. “Why are you so convinced they’ll leave us alone if we make it there?”

“Two reasons. First—” She yelped and grabbed the roof handles, clinging for dear life as I hurled the truck into a sliding right turn when the road decided to go all hairpin on me unexpectedly.

Branches hammered the roof and side of my truck like a Neal Peart drum solo for a few seconds before we skidded back onto the road. Both the Caddy and the Dodge chasing us decided to hit their brakes hard for the same curve. My driving like an idiot bought us about sixty yards of distance.

“First,” said Crystal, giving me an intense ‘you’re not supposed to kill us either’ stare, “The families don’t have anywhere near the same amount of influence there. They haven’t bothered infiltrating the police, town council, or mayor’s office as deeply. Second… there’s a ton of werewolves.”

I damn near stomped on the brakes to take my chances with the guys behind us… but didn’t. “Werewolves?”

“Don’t sound so incredulous. You’re fully aware that vampires exist. You have magic, and you’ve met me.” She sprouted her horns long enough to wink at me.

If anyone had ever asked me if I’d have considered a girl with little curved ram horns adorable, I’d have laughed and probably made a joke about people doing illegal drugs. But… somehow, they worked for her. And yes, adorable.

“Great. Werewolves.”

“Relax. They won’t give you any problems at all. They’re big on nature, too.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. You know, wolves? They’re nature spirits.”

“What about that full moon stuff? Murder sprees?”

She pointed at the rear window. “They’re getting closer. And I dunno. I’ve never heard of a werewolf seriously losing their mind at a full moon. They revere the Moon as a force of nature. It’s probably vampires giving them bad PR.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that—but not the ‘they’re getting closer’ part.

The truck had taken the lead, better able to cope with the rough road than the Caddy.

Of course, as car chases went, we basically sped along at the equivalent of a lazy Sunday drive.

Sixty MPH didn’t make for breakneck speeds on a freeway, but on back country lanes, I expected death to leap out at us any second.

The crack of a rifle startled an F-bomb out of me and made Crystal yell in surprise.

So much for slowing down. The narrow road with thick trees on both sides didn’t offer me much room to evade gunfire, and constant blind curves ahead made the idea of going into the oncoming lane about as fun as a game of Russian roulette.

This area didn’t exactly have a lot of traffic, but it would be just my luck that the one other car on the road within fifty miles would show up as soon as I strayed out of the lane.

More gunfire went off behind us in an urgent, albeit random peppering. Nothing—as far as I could tell—hit us. I swerved randomly between lanes on a maybe quarter-mile stretch when the firing intensified. There, I picked it up to about ninety.

Crystal screamed as I slammed on the brakes ahead of a hard left turn.

Something—branch or bullet I couldn’t tell—clanked off the truck bed.

Fading daylight made the road even more treacherous.

If I hadn’t spent most of my life driving around this area, I’d have been scared shitless.

Though, the approaching darkness did make us a harder target to shoot.

Unless they were vampires...

Trees flashed by in the glare of my headlights, bullets whistled overhead, and time blurred.

Some part of my brain knew it would take us about a half hour to circle Shadow Pines on the outskirts and reach the highway connecting to Ironside.

I called it a highway, but around here, that only meant it had been paved and didn’t have too many curves.

And the half-hour estimate also included driving like a sane person.

The road ahead of us straightened out for about two miles… and the forest receded back, leaving us out in the open.

Crap. We’re going to be sitting ducks. “Take the wheel.”

Crystal glanced at me with an ‘are you serious?’ face for only a second or two before she climbed into my lap and grabbed the steering wheel. Good thing she’s thin.

Distracting as that was, I managed to slide out from under her and crawl into the passenger seat, where I faced backwards.

Using my newfound abilities on people bothered me, but I’ve never been a big fan of body piercings and I certainly didn’t want one from a bullet.

The Dodge behind us might be carrying vampires, might not.

Either way, I didn’t have to kill them to protect myself—and Crystal.

I could just stop them.

And if they were vampires... well, I would deal with them later.

Both hands up, I concentrated on the earth.

A shaft of stone about as thick as a man’s thigh sprang up—behind the truck.

The Caddy swerved around it, though scraped the side, the mirror exploding in a blast of shimmery glass bits.

Shit. The ground is moving by so fast, aiming at the road between us won’t work.

Against my instinct, I focused my—magic for lack of a better term—straight down and drew another rock spire upward.

It took a second or two to form, plenty of time for us to be away before it erupted.

The Dodge attempted to swerve but didn’t have anywhere near enough time.

They crashed into the column close to the passenger side, smashing that headlight.

While the column broke away from the ground from the force of the collision, the truck’s rear end swung out into a spin…

and the Dodge careened out of sight. Two of the guys in back fell out of the bed before it went off the edge of the road. .. and down into the stone quarry.

A flicker of spiraling headlights illuminated the wall of the quarry canyon.

Before I could think ‘aww, shit,’ a loud metallic whump echoed up from below.

“Nice!” yelled Crystal.

“Not nice…” I sighed, staring at the Caddy’s headlights, still following us. “I just killed a bunch of people.”

“People who were trying to shoot you, Max. Self-defense. And they might be vampires… in which case, they’re going to get back up and continue the chase on foot, perhaps.”

A bloom of orange flames illuminated the quarry behind us.

“Or not,” said Crystal.

“Still.” I took a deep breath, held it a moment, and let it out my nose. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

“Wow, you’re a sentimental kinda guy, aren’t you?”

“Killing is wrong.”

Bang! An orange flash came from the Caddy’s passenger side. My truck’s rear window disintegrated into a rain of little snowy bits, and a two-inch hole appeared in the windshield.

“Tell that to them!” shouted Crystal, swerving back and forth across both lanes.

At least on the straightaway, we had the luxury of knowing no other cars came at us from the front.

The gun went off twice more, missing both times.

“Can I suggest you throw that car into the quarry, too?”

I stared at the headlights through my missing back window. “You want me to kill them?”

“The thought has crossed my mind, yes. Or at least do something to get them off our ass.”

If they hit another rock column dead on, it should stop them cold.

But, they’d try to swerve and might go spinning into the quarry like the truck.

I didn’t want to risk killing them. Bah.

I’d rather risk revealing myself to be something paranormal than slaughtering people, even idiots trying to kill me.

Somewhere, I’d read about a thing the cops had to kill engines with an electrical jolt. Maybe I could do the same thing.

Since they’d obligingly destroyed my rear window, I pointed a hand at the front of the car chasing us. Lightning moved much faster than stone. Concentrate… desire…

Boom!

A thick, jagged shaft of blinding electricity connected my fingertips to the grille of the Caddy. Sparks and smoke erupted from under the hood, washing up over the windshield.

Crystal screamed in surprise at the painfully loud blast.

The Caddy’s headlights went out, and the car limped to a halt. My companion slowed down and stopped as well, then glanced over at me. “Should we deal with this now or keep going?”

I took out my cell phone and started recording video of the car, hoping I’d be able to later read the license plate. “Nah. There’s at least one guy in there with a gun. Keep going.”

The rear driver side door flew open. A thin white-haired guy in a nice suit jumped out, raising a handgun toward us.

“Go, go, go!” I shouted, ducking.

Crystal stomped on the gas. The guy opened fire, hitting the truck a couple times, but in the tailgate, or somewhere that didn’t blow out a tire or cause a gasoline fire.

At the end of the straightaway, with no one in hot pursuit, Crystal slowed again to a speed that wouldn’t make a cop working a radar trap spill coffee all over themselves.

Finally, I allowed myself to breathe again and sighed at the hole in the windshield. It didn’t even occur to me how close I’d come to death, no… I only saw dollar signs.

Damn. That’s my luck for you. Replacing the windshield and rear window, patching body damage…

my truck is going to set me back more than I charged for this case.

Can’t exactly drive around with a giant hole in my windshield.

.. or bullet holes everywhere. Ugh. At least Hank—the mechanic I always go to—lets me pay him when I can. .. which was few and far between.

To distract myself from financial misery, I tapped the phone screen and played the video.

After a few repeats, I paused it on the clearest shot of the old bastard and zoomed in so his face filled the screen.

Other than a strong suspicion he came from the Farrington family, I didn’t recognize him.

Never did understand how that happened. Those families basically owned Shadow Pines and controlled ninety percent of what went on in and around it, but almost no one outside of their circles knew what the hell they looked like.

That didn’t make any sense to me. What’s the point of having all that money and power if you spend every waking moment hidden away somewhere?

“Hey, you know who this guy is?” I held the phone out so she could see.

“Yeah. Nigel Farrington.”

“Nigel?”

Crystal laughed. “Isn’t there always a Nigel in those rich families?”

“Only in British sitcoms.”

She giggled. Actually giggled… and it was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen.

“So, who is this guy?”

“Umm…” She bit her lip. “I think he’s Bradford Farrington’s brother.”

I glanced at her. “Great. That tells me everything I need to know. And in case I’m not being clear, that’s sarcasm.”

She sighed. “Bradford is the current elder patriarch. His younger brother, Nigel, is in his sixties, but doesn’t have a lot of clout within the family.”

“Enough to get a truckload of guys with rifles to chase us around. Guys that I freakin’ killed.” I rubbed my forehead.

“You don’t know that…”

I blinked at her. “They went off a forty foot cliff and blew up in a fireball.”

She shrank a little. “Okay, maybe we do know that. But still… they were shooting at us.”

“Right.”

“And they tried to kidnap me!” She made this imploring face at me that melted away my guilt.

Fairly sure she used some kind of charm power on me.

Suppose being a sucker for a pretty face goes hand-in-hand with being a private detective, but even I’m not that bad.

Wide blue eyes don’t normally erase guilt over taking life.

But, okay… if someone was about to shoot Crystal, I’d put a .

44 in their heart without a second thought.

I’d probably be messed up about it for a while afterward, maybe forever, but I couldn’t let someone hurt her.

Unable to sort out how I felt about causing that crash, or, worse, how I felt about not feeling much of anything about it at all, I settled down in the seat and let Crystal drive us to Ironside.

Great. A city full of werewolves—just what we needed.