Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(85)

I feel weak as shit and woozy, but I drag myself back behind one of the Mercedes G-Wagens. Penelope’s in the other one. I lie on my belly and army-crawl between the SUVs, hoping the guns are pointed in any other direction. I’m halfway to the second Mercedes when it literally bursts into flames. I leap up into a run, yanking one of the back doors open. Smoke pours out. And then the blond girl. Then Penelope. They’re alive. They’re … surprised, I think. I untie their hands. But their mouths are glued shut, and I can’t get them open.

Penelope reaches frantically into my pocket and pulls out my Swiss Army knife, holding it up to her face.

I try to keep my hand steady. I try to ignore the blood.





63





BAZ


Go ahead and shoot me. This isn’t my favourite shirt.

These vampires don’t know what to do. I’m biting off pieces of their president and CEO. He’s very strong. But I’m also very strong, and very angry, and very determined to tear him into pieces, even if he can grow them back like a starfish.

Let’s tear each other into pieces and see what grows back. I won’t miss this suit.

Lamb is trying to restrain me. Go away, Lamb. Brutus. Betrayer. Vampire.

“Baz!” he shouts. “We can still save ourselves!”

Ha! There’s no saving me. Everything I am is already gone. My teeth are like knives. I use them.

“Baz! Listen to me!”

One of the vampires jumps on my shoulders. Lamb sighs and pulls him off. “I guess we’re doing this.…”

Lamb fights like someone who’s stayed alive for three hundred years.

Lamb isn’t afraid of machine guns.

“Baz!”

That wasn’t Lamb.…

I let go of Braden (some of him still sticks to me) and spin around— Simon Snow is getting up on his knees.

Simon Snow is alive.…

Somewhat.

“Simon!” I scream. “Stay down!”

Of course he doesn’t listen.





SIMON


Baz is fighting twenty-six vampires, and I’m getting up to help.

I’m probably going to get shot again.

Before I get the opportunity, one of those expensive Land Rovers catches on fire. The vampires scramble away from it. One of them has a metal cane. The telescoping kind. I snatch it and drive it through his heart. It’s not a wooden stake, so maybe it won’t do the trick. I’m prepared to keep trying.

Penelope was in that car. I try my wings. They work. Ish.

I spear another vampire.

And Agatha.

I bring the cane down on someone’s back. It feels like hitting a brick wall with a lead pipe.

I’m just warming up to avenging their deaths when Penelope and Agatha themselves walk out of the flames, holding hands, both of their mouths bleeding—looking like their own bloody ghosts.

Penelope raises one hand and screams, “Swords into ploughshares!”

The machine guns fall into the sand. She’s turned them into … ploughshares, I reckon. My cane changes, too. Which seems fair given the circumstances.

“Penelope Bunce,” Baz says, his eyes lit up with wonder.

The vampires seem confused, on both sides.

I look down.…

A ploughshare is basically just a really wide axe head. It takes two hands to swing it.





BAZ


Penelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I’ve never minded saying it.

She’s just escaped from handcuffs and a flaming car. She’s casting spells without her wand in a dead spot. Harry Houdini himself couldn’t top it.

And she’s got Agatha—alive.

“Basil!” Bunce shouts. “There’s magic!”

She’s pointing at something in the distance. A line of trees? No, it’s moving. Are those people?

The vampires have turned on each other again. One of Braden’s friends is charging at me. I whip out my wand and point it at him. “Off with your head!”

Nothing happens.

But I feel it. The magic. I feel it stuttering in my wrist and on my tongue. Like an engine trying to catch in my belly. “Off with your head!” I try again.

That does it. I can’t help but grin.

When I turn away, I see that Lamb is watching me, his blue eyes wide. The vampire at his throat is staring at me, too. “You’ve done it,” the man says to me, awestruck. “You’ve levelled up.” Lamb rams his forehead into the man’s nose.

The magic here is a capricious thing. Half my spells fail. So I cast twice as many. And the tide—it wasn’t a tide so much as a melee—turns: The vampires don’t have guns anymore. But Simon has some sort of scythe. He looks like the grim reaper. Drenched in blood, his T-shirt as red as his wings. One of his wings is drooping, I don’t think he can fly. He doesn’t really need to. Unarmed, untrained vampires aren’t much of a match for Simon with a blade—any blade will do.

Penelope and Agatha are fighting together, holding hands and using their free hands as flamethrowers. The vampires go up like tinder, any of them who get too close; the girls and the fire aren’t discerning. Lamb’s vampires are leaving the fight, running up the sand dune or already running down the other side.