You can fly, Gavrikov said, and as he spoke in my mind I felt a strange tingle run over my scalp at the thought.
“I can’t—” I said, but stopped midway through. “I can?”
I give you my power, he said, urgently. I will help you. Just … save my sister, please.
I blinked, and the hellish chirps of shots passing over my head caused me to duck down lower, involuntarily. “I—”
PLEASE, he begged. Please. His voice lowered. I will help you.
Please.
I fired my last round blindly out the window over my head at the van just outside then ejected the magazine. I reloaded it with the spare from my holster and jerked the slide as I heard return fire blasting at me from outside. I glanced toward what I could see of the front seat. Reed was hunkered lower than before, and I felt him ease off the gas, and then felt the hard jarring as the van behind us—now presumably under someone else’s control—slammed into us again. The sound firing from the van beside us receded slightly as it continued down the freeway, no longer pointed directly at us for the moment it would take their shooters to readjust their aim.
It was now or never.
Taking a deep breath, I ripped at the door handle and pushed. The SUV’s door resisted for only a moment, the momentum of the car and the speed of the wind pushing back. I opened it just enough and lunged forward. I saw the pavement blurring beneath me as I hurled myself out of the relative safety of the vehicle and into the open freeway beyond.
And a half an inch before my skin met pavement with deadly force, gravity seemed to just … switch off. I hung there for half a heartbeat until my thoughts caught me and told me to go up, up, up. And I did.
I flew.
Chapter 16
The freeway and the ground raced away as I shot up into the air. It was a weightless sensation, like I’d bounced really high, but without the feeling that the ground was going to come rushing back up to me anytime soon.
I paused for a second above the fray. It was a fray, too, a free-for-all taking up all three lanes of Interstate 494 heading north. Cars were pulling away wildly, hugging the shoulders of the road as the vans spewing bullets out of their open hatches continued on, sliding back into place on either side of the SUV that carried my friends.
I caught my breath for a beat, wondering if anyone had seen my exit from the car. I stared down at the spectacle below and realized I had no time to think about it.
The van on the passenger side of our car was lining up to shoot again, and I doubted my brother would survive another round of it. As if to punctuate that thought for me, I watched as one of the shooters lined up his shot, holding off on opening fire as he aimed his gun barrel into the SUV, the driver easing them across the dots between lanes and closer to our speeding car.
I darted down with a thought, my body flying through the air, wind tearing at my jacket’s sleeves. I dove forward and found myself suddenly pacing along with the vans and then catching up to them. I changed my body’s position, slinging my legs down, and with a thought I willed gravity to come back to me.
It did.
With a vengeance.
I dropped from ten feet above the van on the right of our SUV and slammed into the roof with all my weight. I felt the metal crumple beneath me as I kicked upon landing, trying to do some damage.
I sunk a good half-foot into the metal of the van’s roof, creating a small impact crater that caused the vehicle to swerve to the right. I jumped, wanting to be able to fly again, and it happened with only my will. My feet lifted into the air and I was flying along again, fifty miles per hour over the van’s roof.
I glanced to my left and saw the van on the opposite side lining up for a shot. “Reed!” I shouted. “Out your window! Let ’em reap the whirlwind!”
I didn’t hear him answer back, and for a second I wondered if he’d heard me over the roar of the highway. Then I saw the hood of the van on the side jerk violently to the left and crash into the concrete divider that separated the lanes of the highway. The van tipped upon impact and crashed onto its side, skidding to a stop as we blew past.
I didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief yet, though. All it would take is one of the two remaining vans getting a good shot at Reed and the whole SUV would come to a sudden, violent stop. The only question at that point would be who would die, because death would be certain for at least one of them.
I arced into the air above the van that was still holding on the right side of our SUV. I was pacing them, just above the dented roof where I’d landed on them. I could see some metal scars where shards of the grenade had exploded. I wondered if it had hit any of their gunmen, and realized that if it had, the evidence was either inside in the form of wounded, or somewhere along the freeway about a mile back in the form of a corpse.