The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

Julie breaks a glow stick and holds it up.

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“Forget it. It’s too open. There’s not enough light up here.”

“I didn’t want to do this,” she says.

She pulls out a phone and punches in a code.

I say, “Why isn’t that fried?”

“It’s shielded from the EMP.”

“Calling us a cab?”

“Better. A chopper.”

I can already hear it in the distance. As much as I hate the Vigil, I’m suddenly thrilled with them and Uncle Sam for blowing all that money on a helicopter and the fuel it’s going to take to rescue my sorry ass from a bunch of demonic accountants.

We move to a clear area near the street where the chopper can get in close. Julie sets off a blinking light and drops it at our feet. The chopper circles around, finally coming back to the building and hovering over us.

The thing about helicopters is they’re very loud. Loud enough for a metric ton of security guards in night camo to sneak up on the roof behind us and open fire.

Someone gets a lucky shot and hits the tail rotor. The chopper spins in a wild circle. It tilts away from the building like it’s looking for somewhere to land, but it’s way too out of control for that. It swings back around, the guards still firing, and crashes into the roof, punching through and into the floor below. There’s a small explosion, smoke, and the stink of burning rubber and fuel.

Now that the chopper is down, some of the guards are looking lean and hungry in our direction. I seriously do not have time for more bullshit tonight. I bark some Hellion and use a version of the hex I used on Candy earlier tonight. The one that knocked her off me. Only I don’t hold back and rip the hex as hard and long as I can.

It’s like a giant bowling ball blown by a hurricane. It knocks over the twenty or so duckpin guards, tossing some off the roof and others into the hole where the chopper went down.

But we still need a shadow. There’s only one good light source in the area and only one wall that’s going to have shadows.

I grab Julie and Saint Nick and bring them to the edge of the hole where the chopper went through. The fire is at the rear of the copter. Its fuselage throws a nice fat shadow on the wall. Julie sees it too. I lead her and Saint Nick a few yards away from the hole.

“The chopper blocked the stairs,” Julie says. “How are we going to get down there?”

“Do you believe you can fly, Wendy?”

Her eyes narrow. Saint Nick snickers.

“What?”

I grab them both and run like a son of a bitch, jumping at the last second, hoping really, really hard that carrying two lumps of meat with me hasn’t fucked up my aim.

Turns out it did a little, but not enough to kill us. Saint Nick catches the edge of the wall with his forehead. We come out of the shadow rolling like someone threw three Raggedy Anns from a car at a NASCAR race.

Eventually, we stop, and lie there on the cold Vigil floor like the lunch meat we are.

I push myself up on one elbow.

“You okay?”

One of the Vigil guards pulls Julie to her feet. She wobbles but with help stays up.

“Saint Nick is bleeding,” she says.

I look over at our cargo. Ten Vigil guards stand over him with nonlethals while a ­couple more squirt restraint foam over his hands and ankles. Nick has a nice gash on his forehead, but he’s blinking and looking around, lucid enough to know he’s out of the cube and with ­people who probably aren’t much friendlier than Der Zorn Götter.

“Damn,” he says. “That’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”