They come veering in, one from either side. A stink fills the air. A smell of landfill. Malik brakes hard and the Reapers dive-bomb us. A brutal gust of wind. A ripping noise, wings thrashing, beating the air. They streak past us, right in front of the bike’s nose and wheel up into the night. Malik explodes forward. I snap my head around and see the Reapers separate and turn. My heart shakes.

One descends. It comes hurtling towards us from a sheer height, at incredible speed. I shut my eyes, duck and scream. Too late. Something hooks my backpack and wrenches hard and my stomach drops. I’m being lifted off the seat.

“MALIK!” I yell, grabbing at him.

He hauls out his gun, one hand on the throttle, leans to the side and fires.

A flash. A loud boom! followed by a scream that flattens into a thin whine.

I feel a release and I drop back into the seat. But before I can take a breath, I get another sharp tug. Drenched in fear, I pull my arms free of the straps of the backpack. As soon as I jerk out my left shoulder, the bag is ripped away.

Malik floors the engine and we fly onward. He slams us into a tight bend and leans us so low I can hear a grinding noise, metal on tar. A shower of sparks. The bike makes a throbbing, whumping sound and we pop upright and swerve left. Everything merges. The engine. The wind. The screeches. My heart feels as if it’s about to burst through my chest. We’re going so fast the trees and the buildings blur into a wall of blue blackness. Four words repeat in my helmet, over and over.

We’re going to die.

We’re going to die.

We don’t. We stay alive. Malik rides without fear, as though born to the bike, as though his body and the metal have melded.

I clutch him hard, fingers locked under his ribs, feeling his heart thump.

They follow. I hear their screeches ripping through my skull.

Malik swerves us into a network of narrow roads that slice between high buildings, and unbelievably, the terrifying sounds begin to fade, buried by the engine.

I squint up at a strip of sky—empty, bar the new moon. They’re gone. He’s lost them. I feel exhausted, flooded with relief. But when I look at the buildings flashing past us, I’m reminded of a terrible truth: this is not my London.

The night is blue madness. The road comes rushing.

14