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Corden looked over his shoulder and into the rear of the four-by-four. Chambers was wide-eyed, intense concentration on his face. He was cradling a blaster in one arm, the hand of the other unconsciously stroking the barrel. Thornton looked almost asleep, heavy-lidded eyes masking his expression. A remade Glock and an old PPK .38 were lying loosely in his lap, his hands barely touching them.
Corden’s weathered skin creased as he looked from one to the other. ‘Get ready, boys. Showtime.’
Thornton sat forward, his eyes barely opening any farther. “’Bout time. I’ve got a hot date with some craps, and this is taking way too long.”
Chambers shook his head. “Man, you’re gonna lose that before it’s even dented your pocket. Might not get a payday like this for some time to come. You should be more careful.”
“Like you, eh?” Thornton murmured with a sly grin. Chambers looked uncomfortable. He thought that his little jolt habit was a secret. He should have realized that a person couldn’t keep such secrets in a small ville like Brisbane.
Corden, seeing his expression, barked a harsh, loud laugh and reached across, clapping Chambers on the shoulder.
“Who gives a fuck, as long as you do the job. Just keep that in mind, boy.” With which, he turned back to the plain unfolding in front of them. There was less distance between the wags than before. With each turn the vehicle ahead made, it lost a little. With each spin of the wheel Demetriou made, they gained a little more.
It wouldn’t be long now. And while the four coldhearts rode every bump and dip in the plain, knowing from long experience where Demetriou’s driving could not avoid disturbance, Corden knew that the six people in the wag ahead would be bounced like a pig in a barrel, until their heads were ringing and they couldn’t see straight.
Easy meat.
“GAINING,” JAK SAID simply.
“How much?” Ryan snapped over his shoulder.
“Too much,” Krysty replied. She was in the front, next to Ryan, and had wedged herself—as much as was possible—between the seat and the dash. Her head was against the roof at an angle. She risked her neck, but at least she had some stability and her bastard ribs didn’t hurt so much. It also gave her a view that was the equal of the others, and another pair of eyes for the driver, who could not risk a backward glance.
“No way we’re gonna outrun them, lover. This is their land. We’re gonna have to stand and fight.”
“Always assuming, my dear, that we can work out which of them we should fire upon,” Doc said softly. “I fear that I will be seeing double, at the very least.”
“If we didn’t jump so much on this bastard surface, then at least we could get off some fire at them,” J.B. muttered as much to himself as to anyone else.
He knew what Mildred was about to say before the words came out of her mouth. It was the natural repost: “They know we can’t. That’s why they were so keen to follow us out here.”
Ryan’s mind whirred. That was the key: their pursuers’ knowledge of the territory had allowed them to bide their time. Just keep driving, and the land wasn’t going to get any flatter. Sooner or later someone would get injured—already had, if he was any judge of how Krysty had positioned herself—and if it was him then the wag crashed. They were making it easy for the coldheart bastards.
So give them something they wouldn’t expect.
“Stay frosty. This is gonna hurt,” the one-eyed man yelled as he threw the wag into a spin.
TILSON HAD NO INTIMATION of what would happen to him when Demetriou admitted him to the darkened room. He had some good information. Corden paid him well. In the wake of a convoy there was always someone who wanted to get out of the ville. They headed off, and no one knew if they ever reached their destination. No one cared. It was that simple. This time, there was more jack involved than usual. He should get paid well.
Not that this was the only kind of information he peddled. You fade into the background, keep alert and you hear all sorts of shit. Tilson knew that Corden would do anything to rake in the jack. And there were always things going down that Big Bal Hearne wouldn’t like, things that could be kept secret at a cost.
“So what brings you here when you should be tending bar?” Corden asked from where he sat on the room’s only chair. “Something good, I hope.”
Tilson told him as concisely as possible. He knew he had to get back to the bar.
Corden nodded, then shrugged. “Sounds good. We’ll keep an eye for them. The usual arrangement, right?” Tilson nodded. “Okay. Fuck off.”
Tilson had hurried out, closing the door behind him.
DEMETRIOU YELLED incoherently, throwing the wag into a spin and throwing Chambers and Thornton into each other, their blasters clattering to the floor of the vehicle, the noise mingling with their shouts of incomprehension and fury.
Corden, on the other hand, just smiled. Softly he said, “Well, well, they got balls, I’ll give ’em that. Even the bitches.”
Demetriou slewed the vehicle counter to the grain of the land, bucking as he hit a rise that he would otherwise have avoided. Corden braced himself, looked over his shoulder at the coldhearts in the rear.
“Ready to rumble, boys. Looks like they want some action.”
JUST AS CHAMBERS and Thornton had been taken by surprise, so, too, had the companions in the wag ahead. It was only the fact that there were four of them squeezed tighter in the rear of the vehicle that saved a greater injury.
“Ryan, what—”
“I get it. Take the fight to them.” J.B. grinned. “Why not?”
Ryan’s jaw was set tight in concentration, but still the ghost of a smile flickered across his lips. “Attack is the best form of defense.”
He was headed straight for the wag that had been pursuing them. For the first time, he got a clear look at his opponents. Two in front, two in back. The wag jockey had an intense, focused look about him. The man next to him—older, more battle-scarred—had a little more insouciance. A veteran. He didn’t get a clear look at the two in the back before the wag slewed to one side, trying to flank them. With their knowledge of the territory, he couldn’t let them do that. Ignoring the jolting, bone-rattling impact of each rut in the plain, he altered his own course so that he could stay head-on.
Krysty had maneuvered herself around so that she was facing front. Impact on one rut lifted her from her seat and slammed her against the dash, eliciting a yelp as her ribs felt like they were turning in and spearing her, driving the breath from her body.
Dust clouds from the two wags as they crossed paths and tried to circle back rose in swathes around the vehicles. The choking blanket obscured vision and trapped in throats and noses as it billowed into the glassless windows. Even in an attempt to counter the attack, Ryan might have miscalculated his play. The other wag had glass to keep the dust clouds at bay. They might not be able to see, but at least they weren’t choking.
Ryan tried to guide the wag over the treacherous terrain, but now even his visual guide was gone. In the yellow-ochre dust cloud he could see little more than a yard or two ahead.
Over the whine of their own engine, he could hear a keening note, growing louder, as the coldhearts’ wag bore down on them.
But from where?
TILSON DIDN’T EVEN KNOW what had hit him until it was too late. He’d made it back to the bar, where Ling and Smith were still deep in incoherent discussion, still half badmouthing their baron, and half holding back lest they be overheard and reported. The other drinkers stayed apart and kept their heads down, lost in their own private hells.
Tilson didn’t have to serve another drink between getting back and closing up. These guys didn’t really want to drink anymore, they just didn’t want to go home because of what awaited them, either awake or sleeping.
As he locked up, Tilson was kind of scared about what waited for him when he closed his eyes. Visions of Corden and Demetriou. Maybe of what they might do to him, which made him think a little more of how he felt about the two men: the way they had greeted his information, the way he had been dismissed…. It was not like usual. He couldn’t exactly say what it was that got under his skin, crawling like a roach up and down his spine, making him want to piss with fear. Just a feeling.
It should have made him careful. It should have made him look over his shoulder. But it didn’t. It just wrapped itself around him, making him look inward rather than out. The slightest noise should have made him start.
He didn’t notice Demetriou, waiting in the shadows for him. The young man was going to step out and take him before he had a chance to yell. Seeing how distracted he was, grinning to himself all the while, Demetriou decided to let him pass. Would Tilson spot him? Would he realize? That would make it more fun, like chasing rabbits.
Tilson was oblivious. Demetriou slipped out of the shadow, fell into step behind him. Nothing. He wasn’t even going to jump, turn around in fright, give Demetriou a chance to show how quick he was by cutting him before he could yell. This was boring. He needed to get it done with.
Demetriou quickened his pace and was on Tilson in three steps. One hand snaked around to cover his mouth. The other, holding a sharp blade, slipped up under the ribs at the back, piercing and twisting.
Tilson’s eyes bugged as the pain hit. Any sound was deadened by Demetriou’s hand and the blood that welled in his throat, filling his lungs. Already dark, the night slipped away to black.
Demetriou let Tilson fall back against him. Twisting the blade to break the vacuum of suction, the young man eased it out. He let Tilson slump, his face up, and looked into his eyes. Demetriou laughed softly before he melted back into the shadows, leaving the corpse alone in the alley, barely aware before its chilling that life had been snuffed like a candle.
Chapter Two
Ryan didn’t even get a chance to curse his shock as they were broadsided by the four-wheel-drive wag. Sky that was visible through the thinning clouds of dust as they rose now became perpendicular to the ground, the lurch of the vehicle as it reached its optimum tilt making their guts spin and churn.
The dust raised by the pursuit had served their opponents well. It had allowed them to flank and corner, to take their prey sideways-on and attempt to halt their progress by simply tipping them over.
But the dust also hindered Ryan’s aim.
Inside the wildly shuddering wag, Mildred and J.B. were thrown against each other and into Jak, who felt his ribs creak at the impact. Sandwiched between the two older companions and the side door of the wag, the albino teen felt breath squeezed from his body, saw flashing lights and stars in his head as he cracked it on the metal of the wag.
Doc was flung over the seats at an obtuse angle, his spine twisting in a way that he wouldn’t have thought possible. The back of his skull cracked on Krysty’s knee, and for a moment all went black before the rising bile in his gullet brought him back to wakefulness. He retched the thin strings over Krysty’s boots, and over the LeMat he had dropped in the shock of impact.
Ryan gripped the wheel. He could do nothing to right the vehicle, but an instinct—perhaps a finely tuned sense of balance—told him that the vehicle could not tip onto its side. There was something about the way in which it slowed and came to a halt, if only momentarily, that told him there was not enough momentum to tip them.
If they landed upright, there was still a chance. He tried to speak, to yell, to tell the others to ready their blasters. But with no breath in his body, and dust choking his lungs, all that emerged was a strangled, hoarse croaking.
The wag engine died. Outside, he could hear the engine of the other wag, purring and ticking over. It was still. Why?
Inside his wag, Ryan could hear the others painfully rasping and coughing as they sucked in breath and dust, trying to break past the pain caused by the collision. He forced himself to move, even though every muscle seemed to have lost its strength and solidity. He felt as if he was moving through quicksand, the dust in the air echoing the effect by his seemingly breathing the same way.
At the back of his mind he felt the urge to give in to the blackness that wanted to enfold him.
He knew he couldn’t do it, even though it seemed so inviting.
“WOO! JASE, what the fuck are you—”
Thornton, raised from his torpor by the impact, yelled at the driver of the coldhearts’ wag, slapping him on the back of the head. Demetriou turned in his seat and glared at Thornton, his eyes dead and cold, looking through his very being as they sized up how he could chill him, slowly and agonizingly. Chambers, eyebrow raised, watched Thornton shrink back.
Corden put a hand on Demetriou’s shoulder, turning him back to the wheel.
“Not now, Jase. He can keep, if you want. We got more important hunting.”
He spoke softly, and with no apparent urgency, even though he felt a quickening pulse in his chest. He knew from experience the way to deal with the young hothead. Jase was the best wag jockey he’d ever known. He was also a stone chiller, with no thought for any consequence. Fearless. Thornton was lucky not to have had his throat slit already.
They were wasting precious seconds while this continued. Corden looked out of the windshield. The dust raised by the close pursuit and stalk was now beginning to settle. Both wags had stopped moving. Closed windows let in little of the dust, but outside it was like looking at a wall. The purple-and-ochre-tinged blue of the sky was forming a larger slice of the picture framed by the windshield, but at ground level it was a wall of swirling brown hues.
Demetriou wasn’t sure of the other wag’s location. Then there was a break in the wall, the chance to hit the wag when they couldn’t see from where the strike would come. Corden didn’t have to tell the wag jockey what to do. Demetriou acted on instinct. He knew that the constant circling was losing his orientation, and thus his advantage. He knew that it evened the odds. And that was something none of them wanted. So he took his chance.
Only thing was, he didn’t bother to tell anyone of his plan. Corden had a split second of warning as the wag appeared from the swirling dust. Chambers was always braced for any dangers. His natural caution and nervousness served him well in this instance. Only Thornton had been blindsided.
And now they stared at the wag in front of them as the dust settled. Now, without the churning of the wags to stir it up, the dust fell rapidly to the ground.
“Shit, thought I’d put ’em on their side,” Demetriou whispered.
“Figured you had, too,” Corden agreed. “Still, gotta work with what we’ve got. Tell you something, that was one hell of a hit they took. Must’ve scrambled their brains a little.”
“Sure hope so,” Chambers murmured.
“Only one way to find out,” Thornton added. His hand had reached for the wag door before Corden had a chance to speak. Corden’s jaw tightened. He was supposed to be the chief here. He couldn’t have Thornton getting uppity and above himself.
“Wait, Sean,” Corden said mildly. The fact that he was so mild was a threat in itself. Thornton and Chambers had run with Corden long enough to know that he was at his quietest before he struck.
Thornton’s hand froze. Corden looked from Thornton to the windshield, taking in what was happening in front of them. As the dust began to lay flat back to the earth, he could see that the figures in the other wag were hardly stirring.
“Yeah. Let’s go, then. But take it slow. We know they’re good. Just a matter of how fucked up Jase got ’em.”
Demetriou giggled. “Fuck ’em up some more.”
KRYSTY GROPED for her blaster where it had fallen beneath the dash, then pulled herself upright. She hawked out a glob of dust-heavy phlegm and blinked heavily. Her eyes were running with tears, and her sight was blurry, but at least the grit was shifting. A wag stood about fifty yards from them. Four doors were opening, and a man was getting out of each, blaster in hand.
She could hear Ryan’s raw, painful breath behind her shoulder. She could sense when he was in trouble, when he was struggling. Now was such a time. Even though Krysty’s ribs felt like knives, her head was clear, and she could feel that he was struggling to clear his own.
She knew without looking in back that the others were beginning to stir. Jak, Mildred, J.B.—they were all moving, but they were slow. As fogged as Ryan.
Doc was an easier proposition. He was at her feet, coughing up the last of the bile jolted from him by impact. With a final spit, he picked up the LeMat and dusted it off with the tail of his frock coat, rising steadily to her level. Clear eyes on the wag a short distance away, he spoke without looking at her.
“My dear, when one’s mind is as apt to wander as mine, it is surprising what concussion can do to focus and center oneself.”
“Glad one of us is,” she murmured.
“Two, I think,” he replied. “We need time. Can we purchase such a commodity?”
“Only one way to find out,” she said, raising her blaster.
“Admirable,” Doc whispered, raising his own.
“THEY MAY BE POSSUM.” Corden gestured to his own blaster. “Shoot first.”
“Takes the fun out of it,” Demetriou snarled with a vulpine grin.
“Ain’t s’posed to be fun. S’posed to be business,” Chambers said from behind.
“Mix ’em up,” Thornton said with a snigger.
“Easy now,” Corden muttered as he stepped forward from the cover of the wag door. It was as much to himself as to any of the others. As soon as the coldheart broke cover, a shot from the wag ahead kicked up dust at his feet.
He fired a volley in reply as he stumbled back to the cover of the wag door. It whined as it hit metal and ricocheted into the blue sky.
“Possum it is,” Chambers said. “Gren?”
“Right, and whoever throws it is an open target, even with covering fire. ’Sides which, we blast that fucker and we lose what we’ve come out for in the first place.”
“So what do we do, then?” Thornton asked.
Demetriou smiled slyly.
“HOW WE DOING?” Krysty rasped as soon as she had snapped off a round.
“Fucked, but not chilled yet,” Jak replied. He had disentangled himself from Mildred and J.B., who were still struggling to clear concussed heads. Like Ryan, whose soft moans bespoke of his attempts to break through the concussive fog, they were temporarily out of action. It was down to the three who had clear enough minds.
“We can keep them at bay, but that’s about it for now,” Krysty said. “Reckon Ryan can get this wag going again?”
“Not likely,” Jak said shortly.
