Curse the Dawn (Cassandra Palmer 4)

“Because it is fantastically dangerous, even with youthful reflexes,” Pritkin amended. “No one wanted to see you explode.”

“Explode?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Marsden assured me. “We’re shielded.”

And that’s when I noticed the pale golden shield all around the car, flowing over us like an elongated soap bubble and about as sturdy looking. I’d seen something like this before, a magical ward that allowed craft carrying multiple passengers to navigate the lines. It made me feel a little better . . . for about ten seconds. Until a jolt of power sizzled past us from the pursuing mages—the same ones who had just collapsed a much sturdier-looking shield around the house.

Pritkin twisted around, lying over the trunk of the car to fire a spell at them. “Do you remember what happened last time somebody did that?” I screeched, grabbing him by the waistband.

“The Belinus Line is perfectly stable!” he told me just as Marsden hit a patch of turbulence. If I hadn’t been hanging on, Pritkin would have gone flying, taking my body with him. As it was, we both hit back down hard, while Orion howled and Marsden cackled like the madman he undoubtedly was.

Something smashed against the shield around us, almost rolling the car and threatening to give me whiplash. “Marsden!” I screamed. “They’re gaining!”

“Not for long!” He jerked the wheel to the right, throwing me half out of the car. Pritkin grabbed me, pulling back hard enough that I almost kept my seat. We burst free of the line in a shower of silver-white fire—right into the middle of thin air.

It took me a second to realize what had happened, because piercing cold hit me like a fist, knocking the breath from my lungs. It felt like my body had been encased in a sheath of ice. I tried to move, but nothing happened. I decided that I should probably worry that it didn’t feel like I had any legs, but I was too busy freaking out about the fact that I couldn’t seem to breathe.

Most of my senses were useless: everything was utterly silent, and if there was any wind, I didn’t feel it. I gazed around, but there wasn’t much to see. The only clouds were miles below, leaving the sky an incredible, dazzling blue. . . .

It was the view from an airplane, I realized, except we weren’t in one. We weren’t even in the shield because it was designed only to operate within a ley line. We were thousands of feet above the ground in a car that had no business being there. I stared at the Earth, so ridiculously far below, but I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs to scream.

And then I was thrown back against the seat as Marsden nose-dived straight for the ground. The wind caused by our sudden plummet hit my eyes and I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think through the sheer terror of it. We were going to die, I thought blankly, we were all going to die—and then we hit another ley line head-on.

This one was tiny, barely large enough for the car, almost brushing us on either side of the newly re-formed bubble. In the few seconds we’d been outside, my eyebrows had frosted up, my skin had turned a vaguely purple shade of blue and I swear my eyes had iced over. I blinked them rapidly, trying to see, and finally managed it—just in time to watch us slide straight down into a tunnel of leaping red fire.

I’d gotten my breath back, so I used it to scream, but the engine noise mostly drowned it out. I eventually trailed off, my throat raw, and yet we kept falling. It was like being on a roller-coaster ride with no bottom. The seat belt was cutting into my lap, threatening to bisect me; devil dog’s hair was floating straight up; and Pritkin was gripping the back of the seat with both hands t

o keep from being thrown against the top of the bubble. And still we dove.

Then the brilliant red suddenly shifted to crimson as we plunged through some kind of border. The car went from an almost perpendicular plummet to a steep slide, throwing me half out of the car. My arm flung out in an attempt to grab something, anything, to steady me, and plunged straight into freezing water.

Part of the car was outside the narrow confines of the line, creating a hole in the shield. My arm had gone out the hole and a flood of water was coming in. It hissed against the line’s energy, throwing a cloud of steam in my face.

“Get back in!” Marsden yelled. “I can’t see!”

“I’ll get right on that!” I snarled as the forward momentum did its best to rip my arm off.

Pritkin tried to drag me back. But with only my strength to work with, it did no good. I turned, bracing my feet against the side of the car, and pulled. My arm popped out of the hole, the car swerved back into the line and devil dog shook himself, spraying me in the face with waterlogged fur.

“The Channel,” Marsden yelled, looking perfectly normal except for the high energy in his eyes. “And I’d keep your hands inside the car, if I were you. The energy of the line tends to attract attention. Went a little offsides once and next thing I knew, there was this great dolphin in the passenger seat, flapping and writhing and thwacking me with its tail. Took me forever to get it out. Cost me the race.”

I just stared at him until my attention was caught by the huge, dark shape that coasted by outside the line. It was indistinct through the jumping energy, but was easily as big as a house. “Whale,” Pritkin said from over my shoulder. “Some animals can sense the lines; we’ve never determined quite how.”

“Damn nuisances!” Marsden declared. “That’s how Cavanaugh died, you know. Middle of the All Britain back in ’fifty-six, and this great blue decides to breach the line. Dove in right in front of him. Must have been daft.”

“Then perhaps we should attempt to leave this one behind,” Pritkin pointed out.

Marsden apparently agreed, because he floored it. We flew ahead along a twisting, perilous course, but the whale kept pace, ducking and diving and following the same crazy path from the outside. Until we suddenly shot up again, leaving the ocean behind along with the ley line.

I hung over the side of the car, staring down at the ocean and the huge head that bobbed for a moment among the iron-gray waves and then disappeared. We continued upward for another few seconds and then started to drop like the large hunk of steel we were. I kept waiting for another line to snatch us away, but nothing happened and the waves were close enough that I could see the foam cresting on them and—

We fell into a brilliant purple line and rocketed forward just over the top of the waves. “Can’t we slow down?” I yelled.

Marsden shook his head, his wild white mane flowing out behind him. “Have to pick up speed. There’s some skipping ahead.”

Pritkin made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a whimper, and I clutched Marsden’s shoulder. “Skipping?”

“Yes, like a rock over a pond. Ah, here we go,” he said, and the next second we were sailing into thin air again. I was hit in the face with some spray before I could point out that iron cars do not float, and then we were crashing in another line—yellow—which we stayed in for barely a heartbeat before launching into the air and hitting a deep purple line. The whole thing had taken maybe fifteen seconds.