They're certainly going all-out, aren't they. Whoever they are. I wonder if I'll ever find out. Does it matter?

I can move very quickly, especially since Japhrimel taught me to use the demon-born strength he'd given me. McKinley kept pace, having enough breath to yell when I instinctively bolted left at the next intersection, impelled by the idea that I had to find some cover. The city thrummed, a deep well of ambient power at its core beckoning. There was enough static in those depths to hide me, maybe.

Except for the sudden ravine cutting across our path, a waist-high railing and hover traffic whizzing by. A major traffic lane, an artery feeding the city's throbbing heart.

Oh, shit. I was moving too fast, dug my heels in, and skidded to a stop.

McKinley almost ran into me, gasping for breath. He snapped a quick glance down into the hovertraffic. "Do you trust me?"

What? "What?" I looked over my shoulder. The street seemed clear, but the shadows warped in a way I suddenly didn't like. As I looked, one of the shadows developed legs and skittered out into the hot sun, sending up a high piercing cry.

"Do you trust me?" McKinley repeated. He still held a knife, the blade reversed along his right forearm, his metallic left hand limned with pale violet.

I had no time to lie. "No." I don't trust you. I don't even like you.

"Fine." He grabbed, his left hand tangling in my rig's straps, and hauled. The railing hit me at hip level, he yanked again, and we tumbled over the edge.

Instinct pulled my arms and legs close, I twisted like a cat in midair and almost crunched into the side of a freight hover, its wash of warm air stinging my eyes. Gravity eased for a heart-clenching moment, McKinley fell free, and we landed hard on a moving surface, the breath driven from my lungs in a hungh! of effort that might have been funny if it hadn't hurt so goddamn much.

"— ow-" My voice was very small in the rushing wind.

He'd aimed us for a hovertrain, bulleting along at the bottom of the trough. If I'd been human, the fall would have killed me. As it was, I shook the stun out of my head and made it to my feet, sword in one hand and Knife in the other, miraculously mostly unharmed. Wet warmth dripped into my eyes before black blood sealed the hurt away. The top of the train was dimpled from my landing, lines of force clearly showing in the plasteel.

Hope we didn't scare anyone inside.

McKinley was on all fours, coughing up bright crimson blood. He looked terrible, and his ribs on one side were malformed, hammered in by the force of our landing. Oh, lovely. This is ever so much better. I opened my mouth to say it, but a motion further down the flexible snake of the hovertrain caught my eye.

Shit. I spared another glance at McKinley, whose eyes had rolled back into his head. The violet glow around his left hand flashed, getting brighter, and crackling noises punctured the wind-sound as his ribs snapped out, mending.

He'll live, the voice of experience inside my head whispered. But not for long, if they get to him in this state. Loping on all fours up the hovernain's bouncing back, their bald heads glistening in the golden light and their eyes firing when they passed through brief shutterclicks of shadow, were imps. Their long, waxen-white flexible limbs bent in ways no human's would, and they snarled and chattered through the roaring wind as the train took a sharp bend, my knees flexing to keep me upright. My sword came up, blue flame streaming and dripping from its keen edge, its heart burning white-hot, visible even through daylight.

I could just leave him here. I really could.

I launched myself over McKinley, who blurted out something through his coughing and choking for breath, and ran headlong for the imps, not realizing I was screaming in defiance until I ran out of breath and slammed into the first imp with a sound like hovers colliding. The Knife rammed into the thing's chest, and its screech was sweet music as rage took me again, the inside of my skull turning into a grassfire, smudges of charcoal and dull stained crimson taking the place of thought.

Front foot planted, yank the Knife free and swing back foot around, whirling to extend in a lunge as effortless as it was deadly, a roar of speed-laced wind stinging my eyes, my hair rising and obscuring my vision. It didn't matter, I wasn't using my eyes to track them anyway. They were smears of black-diamond fire on the landscape of Power, interlocking cascades of intent and threat. I lost track of myself in the clear light of what Jado called mind-no-mind, moving with a speed and clarity I had rarely achieved in my human life and never since — until now.

The enemy vanishes, Danyo-chan, and all you face is yourself.

The leap uncoiled, my knees coming up, and I kicked, my boot meeting another imp's face. The sound of a watermelon with glass bones dropped on scorching pavement was satisfying, to say the least, but not as satisfying as carving the thing's arm off on my way down, landing splay-footed and bouncing again, the train's rollicking passage suddenly a rhythm I had no trouble catching.

Just like riding a slicboard, eh, Danny?

The flood of feverish Power up my arm from the Knife was almost natural. Gritty ash exploded, demonic flesh sucked clean of vitality, and the sound I heard — a falsetto giggle, high and clear as ringing glass in an empty room after midnight — was my own insane laughter. I was laughing as they swarmed me, jaws champing and sharp teeth clicking through foam, maddened by daylight or by my presence, I couldn't tell.

I was still making that sound when McKinley grabbed the back of my rig again. The train halted for one vertiginous second, and I realized what was happening as it fell away from underfoot and we launched out into space again. The hovertrain was heading down a sharp almost-vertical slope to plunge underground, probably a commuter line, and we were in freefall again as one imp leapt the sudden distance, slavering and champing, for my throat.

Landed, hard, breath driven from my lungs again and something snapping in my right leg, a sudden sickening sheet of pain bolting through the clarity I'd just achieved. McKinley was cursing, low and steady in a hoarse broken tone. My hair stung my eyes, whipped into a tangled mass by the wind. I fetched up on my side, trying to get in enough breath to scream as the freight hover we'd landed on bounced, a sudden application of force controlled by its whining gyros. The imp vanished into the slipstream, not lucky enough to catch our trajectory.

Oh, ow. Ouch. Agony rolled through the rage, sharpening it like a shot of vox sharpens a sniffer's senses. Pulling everything into a different kind of clarity. "Sekhmet sa'es," I moaned, the words filling my mouth like hot copper blood. Why does it take getting the shit beat out of me before I feel human again?

"Don't ever do that again!" McKinley yelled. "Goddammit! I'm trying to protect you!"

You didn't look in any shape to take on those guys, buddy boy. My right femur crunched with pain as the bone swiftly healed itself, demon metabolism running fiercely, heat blurring out from my skin. It actually felt cold with the wind howling as us, the freight hover moving at a good clip away from the trainline.

Caracaz wheeled above and below, skyscraper spires piercing hot hazy sky, stretching down to pavement crawling with crowds below. Ambient Power stroked my skin, interference rising like steam to cloak my aura. This is better.

This, I can work with. I coughed, swallowed a mouthful of something too warm and nauseatingly slick to be spit, and tested my right leg. It hurt like hell, but it was better. I made it up to hands and knees, the hilts jarring against my palms as the hover bounced again. The Knife hummed, a low satisfied sound that suddenly made me feel like emptying my stomach.