She shook her head. “Selena really ought to have briefed you. These cat-people, they like their pranks a little bit too much. Sorry, Jeremy, there’s not time to explain it all just at present. I’ll have to ask you to trust me for now. You may not have to worry about police involvement, but are more of these goons patrolling the area. The Beta Team, whoever they might be. And maybe others, too, and I don’t want to run into them just now. Let’s clean this up and get out of here. Explanations can wait.”

When I didn’t reply, Astrid proceeded to move between the other men, absorbing the essence from the corpses one by one. She left behind nothing, not even their clothes or weapons.

I watched half in horror and half in amazed fascination. I’d never heard of an essence battery being able to consume fabric or metal—the sophistication of this magical device was well beyond anything the government used, at least to my knowledge. Well, at least there was no evidence of a crime now. It made me feel a little better about the whole situation.

Astrid’s mouth curved up into a smile. ”That’s that. We don’t have time to hang around here. Let’s go.”

She started walking toward my car. When I didn’t move, she turned and spread her hands, smiling widely at me. She was stunning, I had to admit it. The single headlight illuminated her lithe, curved silhouette. Her tail swished back and forth slowly and her ears flicked twice.

She grinned. “Come on Jeremy! You have to drive!”

I shook my head and laughed. Despite every rational faculty I had arguing otherwise, I followed her, jumping into my car and sitting down behind the steering wheel.

Astrid slid into the passenger seat beside me. I took a few long, slow breaths as I massaged the wheel with my hands.

Astrid was smiling at me from the corner of my eye as I turned to look at her. She had large, vampire-like canines, and her golden eyes glowed like little LED lights. Behind her smile, I could see that she was tense.

”Well?” she asked. ”Are you going to drive?”

I pushed down my questions. Fuck it. I was in too deep to try to back out now. This was something I was going to have to see through whether I wanted to or not.

I nodded and turned the key in the ignition.

My car grumbled to life, and I started to drive. With whatever danger awaited us, I almost wished I’d given my car more defensive enhancements. At the moment, the Force Barrier was the only one I had which would be any use in a confrontation.

I pulled the car onto the dirt road and began driving, carrying on in the direction I’d been heading in when all this shit kicked off.

“This way?” I asked.