Kevin’s out and drawing his gun before I can even get the seatbelt undone. His reflexes are surprisingly good for somebody who’s rapidly turning into a vegetable. He puts two rounds center mass into the biker who low-sided. The guy must have protections other than just his motorcycle gear, because the bullets aren’t doing anything.

I get out to handle the other biker, but I don’t have to. His head hangs at an impossible angle on a neck that bulges wrong in too many places. He went so fast I barely felt him die.

I turn back to Kevin, who’s fired two more shots with the same effect. Before he can get off any more, the biker lets loose a spell. I try to get my shield to give Kevin some cover from whatever’s coming—I can tell it’s big—but I’m too slow and the spell hits him like a freight train.

Kevin literally turns inside out. The entire front of his body from his face to his crotch splits down the middle and wraps backward, legs and arms doing the same inverted peeling action, turning everything into a bloody mass of organs and cracked bones. His eyeballs pop and his teeth shoot out like popcorn as his skull folds in on itself. He’s dead before he hits the ground.

I could feel the spell burning through a lot of magic and the biker drops to one knee. He starts to pull in more magic to top off his tank.

I expect him to throw a spell at me, so I bring up my shield to bounce it back, and instead he draws a samurai sword from his back.

A sword. Really. Who brings a sword to a magic fight? The least he could do is kill me before he tries chopping my head off. He yanks his helmet off, tossing it to the side. Sweat and blood from a cut over his eyebrow is running into his eye. But I don’t think that’s why he took the helmet off.

“You’re fucking kidding me. Dan? It is Dan, isn’t it?” The kid who ambushed me outside his mom’s burned-out house in West Adams is standing in front of me with a fucking samurai sword. “I brought you back to life, you little shit.”

“But you killed me first,” he yells.

“You shot at me.”

“You killed my mom.”

“I did not, I— The fuck am I doing?” I raise the Browning and pull the trigger. Whatever he’s enchanted his motorcycle gear with might stop a round from a regular gun, but I can feel the Browning wanting to take a bite out of him. Kid’s a fast learner, though. He’s got a shield up and the bullet ricochets off into the trees.