Down a cross street just ahead, moving slowly to avoid the biggest trash heaps, rumbled an old, World War II era cargo truck with a cloth canopy and way more wheels than it needed. I had no idea who would be crazy enough to be driving around down here, and for a moment wondered if we were about to be targeted by the triad along with everything else. But then I saw what popped out of the cloth covered back.
“Bertha?”
I honestly wasn’t sure if I was seeing things; it had been that kind of a day. But, yes, there they were, in all their glory, Bertha’s massive assets, draped over with a couple dozen bandoliers of bullets. Somebody appeared to be using her as an ammunition mule, and I only knew one person alive who would think of something like that.
And then a head poked out of the passenger side window, and I was sure of it.
“Zheng!” I screamed, never so happy to see anyone in my life.
I saw his eyes widen and his mouth form a very bad word, and then I grabbed Louis-Cesare’s arm and pointed. The truck didn’t stop because it was already going fairly slow, and in fact, seemed to pick up speed as we tried to catch it, maybe because the driver had just spotted what was in the street behind us. But it didn’t work. We shambled that way, but we shambled fast.
“Slow down, you bastards!” Tomas yelled, and half a dozen dark heads poked out of the cab to blink at us. Zheng’s guys, I assumed. And then a dozen hands followed, trying to pull us on board.
And suddenly, we were having another reunion.
“Hello,” Bahram said.
“You’re not ditching us that easily,” Rashid snarled.
“Oh, trust me,” Louis-Cesare replied. “It hasn’t been easy.”
It looked like I’d been wrong, I thought, as the cloth side of the truck rolled up. There was a couple dozen of Zheng’s guys in there, and they made my team look underdressed. Their hands slid off our shield for a moment, but only for a moment. Then it gave up the ghost, and we were jerked into a truck already stuffed with heavily armed locals.
And a royally pissed-off master vamp who had the nerve to glare at me through the missing back window of the cab.
“You’re the jinx!” he told me. “Every time I get involved with you—every time—”
“Then why are you here?” I asked breathlessly. I didn’t know why I was gasping; I’d been moving—at best—at a brisk walking speed. But then, my usual workouts don’t involve dragons.
“I didn’t go to all the trouble to get a decent alliance to let it fall apart now! You do not get to die on me!”
“Okay,” I said happily, as we rumbled off, while our pursuers devolved into a snarling, squealing, and roaring knot, too busy attacking each other to remember us. And blocking the road in the process, creating a natural barricade to anyone else joining in.
I felt my spine unclench.
“Where the hell’s Ranbir?” Zheng demanded.
“We don’t know,” Sarah said. “We got separated—”
“He’s dead,” Tomas said flatly.
“You don’t know that!” She turned on him.
“After what we just went through? Yes, I know that.”
I was actually kind of with Tomas on this one, but didn’t want to say so. Sarah looked like she might cry. I wondered if she’d ever lost a team member before.
It didn’t look like it.
“Well, that’s just great,” Zheng said.
“It’s worse than you think,” Jason said. “He had the map. Without him—”
“What map?”
“The one they made from their past explorations,” Louis-Cesare said smoothly, causing Tomas to do a double take. Probably because he wouldn’t have been able to lie that quickly or that well. “The one to the approximate location of Eternity’s base.”
“But you know the general locale, right?” Zheng said. “I better not have come all this way for nothing!”