Page 107 of Hijack the Seas: Tsunami

“Yes, and they’ll do the same to you if they can!”I added as they needed to understand that much, at least.“Don’t give them the chance!”

And suddenly, I had a knot of people closing around me as everyone tightened the hell up.I barely noticed, being too busy watching the city coming swiftly closer.The ghosts weren’t wasting time, rushing us across the desert as if we’d been shot out of a cannon and straight toward—

“Watch out!”I yelled because I didn’t know who was driving this thing.And taking us straight at—

“Fuck!”Somebody yelled.That sounded like Pritkin, who was right behind me and holding onto my waist, but I could barely hear him because of the wind.Or the babble of thousands of voices, I realized, which is why it got worse as the ghostly brigade veered sharply to the right to miss a patrolling god.We were going so fast that it looked like he’d flashed into existence out of nowhere.

The ghosts screamed by him before I could tell if the god had sensed our passing, and we were too far away in an instant for craning my neck to do any good.Not that I could see anything with the masses of white, churning energy behind me, literally thousands upon thousands of ghosts, combining their strength to do this, but not, it seemed, entirely coordinated.Because the next time we saw a god—

“Auggghhhh!”I yelled as my party split, with half abruptly going one way and half another.Pritkin held onto me with a death grip, but Mircea, Alphonse, and the fey were jerked away.The witches somehow stayed on this side, however, holding tight and no longer looking quite so much like they were enjoying things.

“Get us back together,” I yelled, although I wasn’t sure who I was talking to.“Tell them!”I yelled at Hansen, who I still had by what I hoped was the scruff of his neck.

“I’m trying,” he said, sounding entirely too calm for the moment.Especially as buildings were whizzing past us now.Not all in a row, as would be the case in a moment, but close enough to indicate that we were passing through the city’s outskirts.

And unlike the rest of the world I’d seen so far, Vegas was...well, not intact.There were burnt-out buildings and empty lots with just a few ruins, misshapen by the occasional rainstorm that happened a few times a year and scattered by the wind.But there were other buildings still standing and even looking pretty solid.

Better than I’d have expected, although that wasn’t the point, Cassie!

Thatwas the point, I thought, as I watched Mircea’s group trying to curve back toward us like people riding the world’s craziest motorcycle.They were all leaning this way as if attempting to influence direction, but it wasn’t enough.Maybe because the gods we’d passed had company.

I didn’t know if they were there in anticipation of an assault or just doing the usual hunt for food, but there were a lot of them.Most looked human, albeit multiple stories tall, and appeared as if they were the godly version of street people.Their robes were tattered and dirty, their faces slack and staring, and their eyes burned with a hunger I knew all too well.

And there were enough of them that Mircea’s crew were having to dodge in and out of the crowd, which had gathered around something that—

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, shit.

“Don’t look,” Pritkin said roughly into my ear, but it was too late.I’d already realized that it was another god on the ground, one who was only faintly moving, maybe because he’d been ganged up on.I stared as another crouched beside him, ripping into the prone body with ravenous savagery and pulling out what would have been intestines if the gods had any.Instead, wild pieces of power burst out in lightning-like filaments, causing a mad scramble by everyone in the vicinity.

“Hold on!”Pritkin shouted because the ghosts had all started to babble at once, making the roar around us increase despite the fact that we’d slowed way down.

His arms also tightened around me, probably with worry, but he didn’t need to.I wasn’t remotely tempted right now.Maybe because I was too far away from the feast, or maybe because they werehurting him, all those hungry gods now tearing into his body.They looked like a pride of lions savaging a gazelle, only the damned lions would have killed it first!

The gods hadn’t been so kind.

I finally looked away, horrified and sickened, and then screamed because we were about to plow into another man-shaped tower ourselves.

He was heading at a run for the feast and had cut across our path unexpectedly, causing us to dodge just in time and almost spill out onto the desert scrub in the process.But we were caught at the last minute by the mass of ghosts and thrown back up into the air, just in time to encounter another body that was somehow in our way.And this one we didn’t miss.

I had a half second to see a godly torso, bare except for a few livid welts that spoke of the savagery of god-on-god violence.And then we were plowing right through the middle of it, tearing past skin and bone and through blinding, brilliant energy that I could see all around me for a second but not touch.Not on the wrong side of the barrier of non-space, with its membrane separating us from our reality, if only barely…

For an instant, I felt it anyway, or at least an echo of it, all that burning, delicious, dangerous power—

And then we were out the other side and circling around in a wide parabola because that seemed to have freaked out the ghosts, too.But the god was either too mad or too crazed with hunger to have so much as paused, although he had prey closer than he realized—much closer.That little trick had almost thrown us out of non-space.

“No, no, no!”Hansen was yelling, I guessed to his fellow ghosts.“You can’t touch them!They’re too powerful, and their magic can pull us back in.You must avoid them!”

There was a rumble like thunder all around us as if the other ghosts were saying “No shit” all at once, or words to that effect.And then they started to straighten up, only another body was in the way.And this one definitely did not look human.

He was too late to benefit from the feast, as the fallen god had already disappeared, consumed by the crowd now fighting over scraps.So the hulking, fiery, massive thing beside us screamed its rage at the heavens as we circled him, mouths agape.Or at least mine was until I managed to tell my brain to shut it, but I didn’t have to tell anyone else.

For once, no one was saying anything, not even the quarreling ghosts who had gone dead silent.They seemed to know and fear this one, and why the hell not, I thought wildly.He looked like a goddamned Balrog.

It shouldn’t have surprised me.Gods were energy beings and could look like anything they chose.Zeus had demonstrated that often enough, seducing various women in a multitude of disguises, many of them not remotely human.And while those with some brains probably preferred human guise, as it made it marginally easier to interact with their followers, the rest...

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