Queen's Gambit (Dorina Basarab 5)

But someone else did.

Jinxes are outlawed because they cause bad luck—really bad, in the case of talented ones. Which I assumed that Sarah was, or she wouldn’t be able to target her gift. And she could absolutely target it, judging by the lightning that flashed overhead, and then speared down, straight at our enemies.

It burned through a couple dozen riders, turning them into blackened shells of themselves, which started to dust away even as they rode. But it wasn’t done yet. It also leapt from them to those around them, hopping along rows until maybe thirty or forty had been sidelined. It gave us a short breather, mostly because the riders behind them had to navigate past the tumbled bikes and burnt bodies.

Which they did pretty damned fast.

It wasn’t enough, but it gave me an idea.

I bent down and grabbed Zheng’s shoulder through the window. “Floor it.”

“It’s already floored!”

“Through there!” I pointed ahead, to where a large building with double doors was looming at the far end of the street.

He stared back at me, his expression a cross between outrage and disbelief. “Have you seen this truck? It’s not going to fit!”

“No, it isn’t. That’s the point.”

“Have you lost it? ‘Cause you need to tell me if—”

“Zheng! These things got distracted a minute ago and forgot about us—”

“So?”

I held up the second little disk I’d taken from my munition’s stores. “So, we need them to forget again.”

“Shit,” he said. And then he was yelling a bunch of other stuff in Cantonese that I guessed was informing the guys or maybe cursing; it was hard to tell.

“Sarah!” I yelled.

She looked back.

“Can you do another lightning blast?”

“When?”

“Now!”

She nodded. “Thirty seconds!”

“Get ready,” I told Zheng, and passed down my last two smoke bombs.

“What are you talking about?” Louis-Cesare asked. And then, when I pulled the bracelet for my one-person shield out of my purse, he grabbed it.

“What the—give it back!” I demanded.

“Not until you tell me what it’s for.”

I would have argued, but we didn’t have time. “When the rooster attacked the dragon, it got the rest of the bogies off our back,” I said quickly. “They got into a fight with each other and stopped pursuing us.”

The blue eyes narrowed. “You want to start a fight?”

“No. I want them to believe that there’s nothing left to fight.” I grabbed for the cuff, but he was too fast. Damn it!

I glanced at the upcoming building, and there was no time to argue. It had to be now. And then lightning cleared a path around us, bright enough and powerful enough to cause all the hairs to stand up on my arms. I crawled into the cab and pushed at Zheng’s huge shoulder. “Go!”

“They’ll see us leave!