Tempt the Stars

fire spell and barely missing us on its way to slam into the floor far below. And then to get up, still burning. And to run to the nearest building to rejoin the fight.
    A second later it burst back onto the roof, moving so fast that the oxygen made the flames lick up all the faster. Its outer robes were already mostly gone, with just a few flaming tatters still clinging to the metal underneath, which was now glowing red hot. Not that the Allû appeared to notice.
    But Casanova did, the flames from the burning demon reflecting in his horrified eyes as he stared at me. “Are you
insane
? Shift us out of here!”
    “I only have strength for maybe one shift, if I’m lucky,” I told him. And that was assuming I could concentrate. But it was the only chance Pritkin had.
    The good news was, the Allû didn’t use spells. The bad news was, they didn’t need them. They were freakishly strong, unbelievably fast, and impervious to pain since they didn’t seem to actually have bodies in there. As far as I’d ever been able to tell, they were nothing more than animated suits of armor.
    Which kind of limited attack strategy. The only way I’d found to get rid of them was to completely destroy that armor. As in shred it to bits with a submachine gun or blow it the hell up, or else they just kept coming back.
    Or got bored and decided to start tossing those wicked blades around. Suddenly, the air was filled with shiny death, one of which Casanova grabbed as it passed over top of us. And used it to bat away several others that were tumbling our way because of our crazy course or plain bad luck.
    But not because they were being aimed at us.
    They were being aimed at Pritkin.
    “Get me up there!” I told him, in a panic. Our tiny craft was still bouncing around, but it was well below the level of Pritkin’s now. He and Rosier had just sent a bunch of their attackers flying, and the sudden lack of weight had caused them to shoot upward.
    “I’m not a mage!” Casanova said furiously. “I don’t know how to drive this thing!”
    “Then think of something!”
    “What do you expect me to do?” he demanded. “Jump? There’s simply—” He caught sight of my expression.
“No
.
”
    “You’re a vampire. You’ll live.”
    “It five floors down!”
    “It’s closer to four now—”
    “That’s four too many!”
    “—and there’s a wagon down there with hay—”
    “It’s fake! This whole place is fake!”
    “You owe me!” I said, grabbing his arm. “You led me into a trap!”
    “I led . . ” If possible, he looked even more outraged than usual. “You
kidnapped
me—”
    “A trap that almost got me killed!”
    “I didn’t know what Rian was going to do!”
    “So you say. But there’s nothing but your word for it, is there? Help me now and I’ll vouch for you with Mircea.”
    “You—
Dios!
” he spat. Followed by a lot of things in Spanish that probably weren’t complimentary as we came as close to the floor as we were going to get.
    And then he jumped. But I didn’t get a chance to see how or where he landed. Because without his extra weight, the yo-yo effect became more like a slingshot.
    The ride up was a terrifying blur, the jump from my perch onto Pritkin’s rug was worse, and then I was screaming and Pritkin was cursing and Rosier was stabbing—a guard and not me, for a wonder—and I was shifting—
    And going nowhere.
    “Get him out of here!” Rosier growled, grabbing my arm. “Do it now!”
    I stared at him, desperately trying over and over to do just that. But all I felt was the metaphysical equivalent of grinding gears. Hauling four people through three worlds had left me as dry as the sand that had finally tapered off, after depositing a few dozen more guards on the rooftops of the fake ghost town around us. Rosier must have managed to pick up every damned one off the hillside as he passed, and we couldn’t fight them all.
    A view he seemed to share. “If you’ve cost me my son, girl—”
    “Stiff-necked pride did that years ago,” Pritkin said, knocking his father’s hand away. “Yours and mine. This is not her fight!”
    “She’s made it hers! She insists on making it hers!” Rosier snarled, and the hand was back, this time around my throat. A pair of green eyes, so like his son’s but so different, burned into mine. “Shift him now!”
    But I couldn’t shift him, couldn’t access my power at all, and there was no time for recovery. Because the Allû had