Kass sounded so confident that Cat obeyed, turning for the hills. Somehow, she’d managed to avoid being hit by any bullets in the short time she’d stopped.
Meanwhile, Kass eyed up her targets. Most of the camp was still in chaos and they’d managed to make it pretty far before anyone had even noticed that they’d taken to the desert. But Kass knew they’d have snipers and decent marksmen and it only took one bullet to end their luck.
Kass didn’t intend to stop for long. Just enough to give them a bit of time. With eagle-eyed precision she picked off several following soldiers. Then she felt something clip her cheek.
Where had that come from? She searched all the good sniper spots in that direction. And then she found him. Perched up on top of another truck, lying prone just like she was, a proper good sniper with a decent gun.
She ended his run before he could get another shot out. Then she got to her feet and took of running after Cat.
By taking up the aggressive stance she’d made herself the prominent target. Luckily, with the exception of the one guy, most of them had been trying to shoot long range with short range weapons. A really good marksman might have been able to aim at that distance but these were just regular soldiers. The larger danger had been the number of them and Kass had just drastically reduced those. Unfortunately there was more where they had come from. But Cat was already at the top of the hill and just disappearing down the side. Only Kass remained for them to aim at.
Now that she no longer had Cat to worry about, Kass used her powers to speed up her movement. She aimed a hand down at the ground and pushed herself along in leaps and bounds. She was imprecise with it but every shove sent her off at an angle that would maker her hard to shoot. She stumbled and nearly fell on the landing several times. She wasn’t so much pushing against the earth as many people assumed. Telekinesis didn’t work like that. The energy might be conserved but the forces were not. Rather she was moving herself the same way she might lift her boots on their own. It was just that she was attached and part of the boots. Amanda had once jokingly referred to it as bootstrapping.
It was strange to think about lifting oneself though and it had been Amanda who had taught Kass how to do this. She had told Kass just to think of her body as if it were its own separate thing. Kass kind of understood. She knew what it was like to sometimes feel as if she were outside herself and looking down. But Amanda was good. With a telekinetic infusement Amanda somehow had even more precision than Kass did. She could hover completely in place. For Kass, it was more like brief, uncontrolled, bursts of movement.
She’d send her foot flying up toward the direction of her body and if she was angled just right then the rest of her would move as well but angles were hard to get right. She didn’t put too much force it. She didn’t want to go flying up high. What went up, must come down after all. Kass could sort of prevent that but it was easy to accidentally overcompensate which only exacerbated the issue so she focused on single thrusts and trying to transition into a run when she landed. At least her uncoordinated leaping made her hard to hit.
Bullets went flying by but Kass was moving so fast that by the time they hit one spot she was already moving through the air to the next spot. She was sure a good sniper could have picked her off like a little clay pigeon but thankfully this army didn’t seem to have a spare one of those.
Occasionally she’d feel another telekinetic try to shift her but Kass had more power than all of them and she simply pushed back in reply.
One bullet did come extremely close as Kass crested the hill and she was glad when she finally dropped down beneath its shadow.
Cat was there, waiting at the top. She’d kept low, peeking over the top.
“Why aren’t you in the car?” Kass was immediately annoyed. Any decent sniper could have found Cat’s head sticking up and picked her off.
“I was making sure you didn’t get shot.” Cat scowled as they fled down the hill.
“What were you gonna do if I was? Run out under a hail of bullets and carry me up the hill?” Kass knew that situation only would have resulted in them both being shot.
“And what if I was? Besides I couldn’t just wait in the car not knowing who was gonna come over that hill. What if it had been the soldiers?” Cat scoffed.
Kass didn’t reply. Cat kind of had a point. Kind of. She could have set a time limit and gotten the car ready. Getting it wrong if Kass had been shot could have been deadly though.
Just as they were about to scramble into the car a ball of fire came flying over the hill.
Kass raised her hands and sent up a strong updraft of wind and sand. She was glad whoever this firestarter was that they weren’t as good as Amanda.
The fireball was followed spikes of ice. That was easier for Kass to handle. The fireball had tired her though. She got in the car, willing that the tyres would move and not just spin in the sand like Cat had worried about earlier.
But Cat knew what she was doing. She was easy on accelerator, even though it slowed their escape, they did start moving.
Kass watched the sky and the hill for any sign of movement. She rolled the window down as Cat got the car moving faster. She focused on the sand at the top of the hill, every little grain up there, she pushed her magic into them and she lifted them up and threw them over the top, hopefully destroying any visibility on the other side and slowing their pursuers down considerably.
She kept doing that as Cat drove them faster and faster across the sand. Behind them, bright balls of fire mixed in with the sandstorm, randomly sent in the hopes of hitting a target.
As Kass watched, she felt the scene grow kind of distant and she relaxed almost as if she were simply watching a pretty fireworks display. She felt sad they were running away from it. Maybe they should stop and watch. That wasn’t right though. Her thoughts were wrong. No. Her emotions were. The facility had evidently located one very powerful empath. But the adrenaline coursing through her veins and the stinging of her cheek all combined to help her fight back. She shook the feeling off long enough to grab her knife and slice a cut in the back of her forearm. It hurt but that was the point. It sent physical signals that overruled whatever the empath was trying to do.
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She reached out and cut Cat’s arm as well.
“Oi! What the hell?” Cat shouted as she jerked slightly in reflex. She didn’t lose control of the car though.
“Empath’s trying to make us want to stop running. From this distance physical pain overrides it,” Kass explained.
“Well, I think he was focused on you. I can’t feel a thing except for that damn dreamwalker. He’s been trying to make use fall asleep since we were half way to the hill.”
“He has?”
“Yeah, but I can keep him at bay.”
Something pinged the back of the car. A bullet.
Kass glanced back. The soldiers were cresting the hill.
Another shot pierced a tyre. Then a third one right through the centre of the rear windscreen. Cat swore but didn’t ease up on the driving. They hit the road and Cat swung them around the corner, twisting the steering wheel first one way and then the other as the car started to skid. They slid around around the bend like a gymnast’s ribbon might curve around its handle. Cat straightened them up and then they were off even faster than before but now running slightly parallel to their enemy.
Kass had a perfect view of them and through the window she more ice spikes coming their way.
Kass sent them flying back toward where they had come from.
A large ball of fire melted them in response. After that, no more fire or ice spikes were sent their way. She felt the empath’s hold lessen too. Perhaps that person was too far back now.
She saw movement in the sand and a couple of quickfoots approached them rapidly but Kass threw them back and then she lifted the sand again and sent it flying. They wouldn’t be able to run forever, probably. She was surprised they’d even risked getting this close.
Twice more she raised the earth. But on the fourth attempt nothing happened.
As the remaining sand from the previous attempt fell, she turned to Cat. “We got another borrower. You better drive fast.”
“And here I thought slow was the plan,” Cat replied in a tone heavily laden with sarcasm.
Kass lined up her rifle, knowing her magic was going to be no good. The bigger problem was, she was still wide open to their magic. But did they know that? They’d already proven their comms to be slow and inefficient. Thank the gods for budget cuts.
Cat’s car saved them in their final hour. They were out of sight before the sand had settled and if anyone followed them now, Kass doubted they could keep up with Cat. Still, she eyed the surrounding landscape for any potential teleporting snipers.
She didn’t let herself rest until at least 30 minutes had passed and the view out rear window remained empty.
Cat pulled over about an hour after their initial escape to check on the state of the tyre that had taken the bullet. She changed it to the spare and was back in the car in under two minutes.
After that, they drove non-stop for hours, all the way almost to Nin. It was at the edge of Nin that Cat suddenly pulled off down a back road and found them a secluded and empty campsite to pull into. She parked up under some trees and switched the engine off. The sun was just rising.
“Wait here.” Cat got out and walked off, probably to find a bathroom.
Kass waited patiently for her return. While she waited she inspected the damage to her cheek in the rear view mirror. It was bloody but only the skin had been nicked. She’d been very lucky.
Cat returned while she was still inspecting the wound. She frowned at Kass and then got right up close with narrowed eyes.
“You get hit by a bullet?”
“It’s jut a graze,” Kass replied.
“Mighty close graze.”
But her reply seemed to satisfy Cat, who slid back into the driver’s seat with a sigh. At moment later she said, “Listen, I’m too tired to keep driving, especially through those mountains.”
“I could take over,” Kass offered. She didn’t think it was likely she was getting much sleep if they stopped and she was eager to get home, for this adventure to be over. To curl up in her own bed, knowing Jesse wasn’t far away and was safe. She doubted she’d actually be able to rest once she got there but if they kept going, at least she’d be exhausted enough to collapse into sleep.
But Cat shook her head. “Not through those mountains.”
Kass gave a nod of acquiescence. “Okay, so we get a room then. Sleep today and drive tonight?”
“No, not at night. There’ll be more dragons out at night. We can hole up here today, get to bed early tonight and then get an early start tomorrow.” Cat glanced back at the rear window. “Plus, first we gotta fix that. We can’t park up in a public street with what looks like a bullet hole in the rear window. Also, I need to get a new tyre. We got lucky it was a slow leak and didn’t damage the rim driving as far as we did but what I’ve swapped it to is just a compact spare and it’s not suited to driving through the Dragon Mountains. It’ll limit our speed too much.”
“You have to replace the entire windscreen right?”
Cat nodded then started looking around the car for something.
Kass glanced back to look at the windscreen. It was a small hole. The morning rays of the sun made the edges glint. She got out of the car walked around toward the back. She opened the rear passenger door and pulled out her rifle.
A sudden smash made Cat look up. “Oi! What the hell?!” Cat exclaimed.
Kass had deliberately put the butt of her rifle through the back window. The small hole was small no longer.
“Well, it doesn’t look like a bullet hole anymore,” Kass explained as she got back in the car.
“I could’ve said it was a stone chip.”
“Little too round for a stone chip. Wherever we go to get glass is going to require someone sees it and the sun’s up now. Cops in Nin aren’t like the ones in Little Rock. They’ll ask questions,” Kass replied.
“I could have taped over it. Now, it’s even more obvious,” Cat replied with a calm scowl. “And I know a garage who won’t ask questions. Just as soon as I find my phone.” Her eyes scanned the car again and she gave an annoyed sigh.
“Where did you last have it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want me to call it?”
“Sure.” Cat threw her hands in the air and leaned her head back against the head rest in exasperation.
Kass found Cat’s number in her phone and hit the call button. “It’s ringing,” she remarked with the phone to her ear. “But it doesn’t seem like it’s here, unless you left it on silent?”
Cat screwed up her face and then shrugged. “I’ll find it later, can I borrow your phone?”
Kass handed it over with a narrow-eyed look. “Who are you calling.”
“A guy, who knows the guy that we need to take the car to.”
Kass watched Cat dial a number off by heart.
“Hey Thumbs!” There was a moment of silence then, “Hey, you remember that mechanic you recommended in Nin? ... Yeah, that’s the one, you still got his number or the address of his garage? ... uh huh, yup... 503 Oleary Road, got it. Thanks Thumbs... Will do. See ya.” Cat hung up then looked to Kass. “What’s the time?”
“You’ve got my phone,” Kass pointed out with a smile but she twisted her left wrist over anyway. “Just shy of half seven.”
“Oh, right.” Cat glanced at the phone and then handed it back. “They should be open by the time we get there then. Some places start at 7 unofficially anyway.”
“Do you know where we’re going?” Kass asked.
Cat shook her head. “We’re gonna need a map. “Plus we’ll want somewhere to stay. We’ll find a touristy motel. They’ll have maps and they shouldn’t ask too many questions.”
Kass frowned. “In my experience,it’s the touristy places that ask the most questions, and Nin is pretty touristy. We could keep going to Broomstick Beech?”
“I’m beat and I don’t think Broomstick Beech has a mechanic,” Cat admitted after a moment’s silence. “And the more touristy a place the more people there are to blend in among.” But she hesitated slightly and her tone indicated that was more of a question.
Kass considered it a moment and then nodded. The truth was it was a double edged sword. Numbers were safer if you knew how to blend but it also meant a lot more witnesses if you couldn’t. How many people had seen them back at that facility? Would they chase them this far? Did Cat understand what it actually meant to blend in? Either way, she did look pretty tired and she had good point about the mechanic. The only other place close enough that would have a mechanic was Myst. There was an argument for going there. Mercy soldiers would be unlikely to follow them into sorcerer territory. But the sorcerers came with their own risks. Kass wasn’t sure how closely they might look at a broken window. It probably wasn’t that uncommon given the proximity of the dragon mountains but there were more mindwalkers in Myst than anywhere else, not to mention it wasn’t really on the way.
Kass nodded. “Nin’s fine.”
“Alright.” Cat put the car into gear and once again they were off.