Magic Steals (Kate Daniels #6.5)(17)

The air turned, twisted, and shaped itself into a car. What the hell? I’ve never heard of a magic car appearing out of thin air . . .

My brain blazed through the evidence, making a connection. My older brother died on his way from school, Amanda’s voice said in my head. He was run over . . . Oh my gods.

The car turned solid. Its engine revved. There was nobody behind the wheel.

“Jim!” I pointed at the boy. “Save him!”

He whipped around, saw the car, the boy, and leaped right through the window into the street, shards of glass flying everywhere.

A knobby elbow pushed its way out of the sack, followed by a bony hand, each finger armed with a two-inch, black talon. The hag was coming.

Jim dashed across the parking lot. The car, a huge ’69 Dodge Charger, snarled like a living thing, racing straight for the boy. Jim sprinted, so, so fast . . . Please make it, honey. Please!

The head of the hag emerged, one baleful pale eye then the other, a crooked long nose and wide slash of a mouth filled with shark teeth.

The muscle car was almost on the boy. Jim was ten feet away.

Please, please, please don’t get killed.

Jim swept the boy off his feet and the car rammed him and smashed into a pole.

It hit him. Oh gods, the Charger hit him. Something inside me broke. I froze in agonizing horror.

The hag crawled out of the magic and perched on Mr. Dobrev’s chest, clutching at him with her long, creepy toes. She was my size but emaciated, bony, her meager flesh stretched too tight over her frame, while her skin sagged in loose folds and wrinkles.

The car revved its engine. It was still there. It didn’t disappear and that meant its target was still alive.

Jim leaped over the Charger’s hood, the boy in his arms, landed, and sprinted to us.

The hag reached for Mr. Dobrev’s throat. I painted the last stroke on the curse and slapped it on her back. “Poisoned daggers!”

Three daggers pierced the hag, one after the other, sticking out of her back.

The Charger reversed and chased after Jim.

The hag screeched like a giant gull, spat at me, and kept going. It didn’t work.

I grabbed a new paper, wrote another curse, and threw it at her. The curse of twenty-seven binding scrolls had worked for me before. The hag clawed at the paper. It pulsed with green. Strips of paper shot out and fell harmlessly to the floor. They should’ve tied her in knots. Damn it!

The car was feet behind Jim. Please make it! Please!

The hag clawed at Mr. Dobrev’s neck.

I grabbed a pickle jar and hurled it at her head. It bounced off her skull with a meaty whack. She howled.

“Get off him!” I snarled.

Jim leaped through the broken window. The Charger rammed the opening, right behind him, and stopped, its engine roaring, wedged between the wall and the wooden frame. Stuck!

I grabbed another jar and jumped on the counter. The hag screeched in my face and I pounded her with the jar. “Get off him, you bitch!”

The Charger snarled. The metal of its doors bent under pressure. The car was forcing its way in.

The jar broke in my hand. The pickle juice washed over the hag. She clawed me, too fast to dodge. Her talons raked my arms, searing me like red-hot knives. I screamed. She let go and I saw the bones of my arms through the bloody gashes.

Jim released the boy. The child scrambled to the back of the store. Jim leaped to the Charger and hammered on the car’s hood, trying to knock the vehicle back. The Charger roared. Jim planted his feet, gripped the hood, and strained. The muscles on his arms bulged. I’d seen Jim lift a normal car before, but the Charger didn’t move.

I punched the hag in the head, putting all my shapeshifter strength into it. She wasn’t getting Mr. Dobrev as long as I breathed. The hag clawed at me again, screaming, slicing my shoulders, her hands like blades. I kept punching her, but it wasn’t doing me any good.

Jim’s feet slid back. A moment and the car would be through.

It was a car. I knew cars and Jim knew hand-to-hand combat. “Switch!” I screamed.

Jim glanced at me, let go of the car’s hood and leaped onto the counter. His knife flashed and the hag’s right hand fell off.

I dashed out of the store, jerked a mirror off Pooki’s driver side, and ran back in. The Charger was halfway in, its wheels spinning. I wrote the curse, slapped the paper onto the hood, and planted Pooki’s mirror on it.

Magic crackled like fireworks.

The car’s hood buckled, as if an invisible giant punched it with a fist. Its left front wheel fell off. Its hood bubbled up, as if another punch had landed. The windshield cracked. Something inside the car crunched with a sickening metallic snap. Water shot out through the hole in the hood. The roof of the car caved in. Both passenger and driver doors fell off. The headlights exploded. With another crunch, the entire vehicle shuddered and collapsed into a heap, looking like something with colossal teeth had chewed it for a while and spat it out.

Jim stopped next to me. He was carrying the hag’s head by her hair. We looked at each other, both bloody and cut up, and looked back at the car. Jim raised his eyebrows.

“The curse of transference,” I said. “This is everything I’ve ever done to Pooki. Except all at the same time.”

Jim looked at the ruined car. His eyes widened. He struggled to say something.

“Jim?”

He unhinged his jaw. “No more racing.”