Chapter Twenty-Eight
“This first section is called The Jungle of Orion. What’s Orion?” Radley grunted as Cricket swerved to the left immediately to avoid the demon team’s Jaguar suddenly swerving toward them. Apparently, the demons were going hard right at the beginning.
“Orion Leopold was a famous wizard back in medieval times,” Cricket answered without taking her eyes from the road. The Ferrari roared as she shifted gears and swerved around an opening sinkhole. The demon team squealed behind them as they did the same, going around the opposite side. “He used to set traps in the jungle as a way to chase away potential enemies.”
“How convenient,” Radley grumbled, tapping at the map. “We need to get the demons off us, but we won’t have weapons for another fifteen miles.”
“I’m working on it,” Cricket grunted, swinging the car around another sinkhole that another car in front of them triggered.
They were in sixth place currently. Though the demons didn’t have any weapons, they’d apparently taken a page out of the goblin’s book because they were literally throwing things out of the car at them. The problem? It was completely random things.
“I think one of them just threw their shoe at us,” Radley said, his face twisted in confusion. “Do they really think that’s going to help?” He smacked his hand against the door. “Necromancers incoming from the right!”
Cricket slammed on her brakes. Just as her nose tipped, the Necromancer team flew by in front of them, their tires squealing. They’d been attempting to slam them off the track and into the trees, food for whatever beasts came through the jungle. They cut off the demons, who immediately switched to throwing their items at the necromancers out of anger, distracting them both from their true target. Without missing a beat, Cricket dropped gear and slammed on the gas again, shooting them forward.
“That was awesome,” Radley breathed. He glanced over at her. “So sexy.”
Chuckling, Cricket gripped the steering wheel tighter. Though she was tense with worry, she couldn’t help but flash a small smile at him. They managed to go a few miles without being attacked by anything and it only made Cricket’s tension raise higher.
“There should be more traps here,” she murmured. “This is too easy.”
“A false sense of ease,” Radley nodded. “Something big is coming.”
Ahead of them, they could see the tail end of another car though the scene around them was too dark to make out whatever it was they suddenly swerved around. Radley squinted his eyes.
“I can’t see it,” he murmured. “It’s as if the darkness is manufactured or something.”
“It probably is. Witch spells,” Cricket added helpfully. Though the witches didn’t race in the Games because of its barbaric practices, it didn’t stop them from taking the job of building the race course each game. They were paid heavily for their spells, so while they wouldn’t race, they happily supplied the traps that killed the racers. Hypocrites, most of them.
They drew close to the area where there could be a trap. Of course, the car could have simply been swerving around another car or a creature, but they couldn’t see anything there.
“Is there a warning on the map?” Cricket asked, peering around them.
“Nothing,” Radley shook his head. “There’s nothing marked for the next mile. Maybe it’s more false security?”
Almost as if the track heard Radley and wanted to make him eat his words, Cricket saw the flash from the left. The giant axe began to swing toward them from the tree line where it had been suspended and hidden. Eyes wide at the suddenness of it, Cricket slammed on the gas and trusted her instincts, forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be a team.
“Go left!” Radley said, his eyes on the map.
But Cricket’s instincts took her right, around the front of the axe. The sharp edge of the axe grazed the back of the car, a touch that they barely felt inside, but that wasn’t the problem. The road lit up when a new trap triggered and the sinkhole began to open up beneath them.
“Left!” Radley shouted again, bracing himself against the door as the front wheel threatened to go off the slowly expanding edge.
Cricket grunted as she jerked the wheel left, forcing the car around the sinkhole in the direction Radley originally shouted, likely because his sharp eyes had picked up the symbol on the street at the last minute, and she’d ignored his command.
They flew around the sinkhole to continue forward, and Cricket let out the breath she’d been holding. Only then did she risk a shame-filled glance toward her partner.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ve done this a million times on the practice track,” Radley replied, no anger in his voice. “We’re a team. We’ve got this.”
Cricket nodded and breathed deep before letting it out. “We’re a team. We’ve got this,” she repeated.
A horn sounded throughout the racetrack and Cricket’s eyes widened. Before she could ask which team was deceased, Radley was tapping the screen and sighing.
“Necromancers,” he murmured.
Light flashed in their rearview, lighting up the darkness, and Cricket glanced in the mirror. The car quickly came up beside them and she got a good look at the yellow Bugatti. “Dragons,” she murmured.
Cricket didn’t know many dragons. They tended to avoid the fae and she didn’t blame them. Once upon a time, way back in history, the fae had enslaved the dragons. Grudges had been held for centuries so that it wasn’t a common occurrence to see a dragon and a fae together. The only one Cricket knew was a bar owner in Manhattan who didn’t care for grudges, only for profit. These dragons didn’t seem too happy with her, however, though she’d never met them in her life.
“Delayed trap coming up five feet to the right,” Radley said, offering a way to get them off their case.
The dragon car wasn’t as fast as theirs, so it began to fall behind as Cricket opened up their Ferrari, but they needed them to back off. Nudging the car to the right, the lit emblem appeared in the road a moment later.
“Here we go,” she said just as the car ran over the symbol and the light went off, triggering the trap. Only for a moment, nothing happened. “Are they not working?”
“It says they are,” Radley replied, tapping the tablet. “Oh.”
“Oh, what?” Cricket asked, risking a quick glance at him despite the dragons roaring behind them as if they’d already won. Silly dragons couldn’t help but roar for everything. If anyone was ever unlucky enough to mate one, things were always loud.
“Cornish pixies,” Radley answered just as the hoard of the tiny savages swarmed from the trees and converged on the dragons. Radley grimaced. “I don’t envy the bastards.”
Cornish pixies were vicious creatures. Though they were small and generally cute in their stature, they had a brutal bite and their saliva acted like acid. It could melt even the strongest metal. The bastards were lethal and apparently the dragons weren’t prepared for their attack. Their car began to swerve almost immediately, and they fell behind.
“Four miles until Mount Chaos,” Radley said, his eyes flickering between the tablet and the road. “Not very creative with the names, are they?”
“At least we know it’ll be mountains,” Cricket laughed. “Sometimes, you can’t tell what’s coming.”
The ground shook beneath them and Cricket swerved, unsure what she had triggered until the magic darts shot out at them from the thick jungle. They both ducked just in case they came in through the window, but the window didn’t seem to be the target. One of the darts hit the fender and dug in. The car began to lose power immediately, shutting down.