Eagle tore down another white hallway, looking for a Door he could pass through before he got his ass cooked by bright green beams from a ser pistol. He’d prefer not to enter a new world on a running jump, but something was better than nothing. Someone had a pretty good bead on him, too—there were a couple of good shots among the Matil. When he threw himself around the bend, three shots in a row nded exactly where his head had been an instant before, right down the line.

  “Commander, he’s headed for Main Street, repeat, Main Street! Please advise!”

  He could bob and he could weave, but he couldn’t get any taller. Good thing he was fast. And handsome, he reminded himself, as the hallway full of keypadded doors spat him out at st, into a wide white world full of logos and shops. He shoved his hand into a cloak pocket and came up with a few cloudy gss beads.

  The Matil came charging after him. He only checked his stride when he flung his handful behind. Sickly orange smoke boiled high where the beads struck and broke. Hours before, now, Fox had been kidnapped by these immortals, and Eagle was going away empty-handed. They should have expected to catch a little chaos in return.

  He kept zigging and zagging down a broad street like a walking mall. Two high stories were lined with luxury shops and patio or balcony restaurants, but he couldn’t smell cooking food. Already he knew something was up, but while he ran, he didn’t bump into anyone. As the shops grew more eborate, there were more pces to hide.

  More importantly, there was nobody to stop him—besides the woman chasing him up the promenade. She had longer legs than he did, and even though her eyes streamed from the smoke, she followed him doggedly. With another glimpse behind, he saw she’d put her gun away.

  Why, though? he wondered, hurtling through a rack of feathered coats and casting himself beneath a long stand filled with New FabriTex Jeans. The woman gave a wordless cry of dismay.

  He shot out bearing to the right. By the time he was on his feet, he’d made it to a gss door. A logo, or a sigil: a two-tailed mermaid with her hair over her breasts gazing creepily down.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he muttered as he flung the door wide. Instantly, the air filled with coffee smell. You’d almost think a Chosen was in here, it smelled so much like coffee, but that was par for the course. Hell didn’t always stink.

  There was no line, but a couple of strangers—emphasis on the “strange,” though he probably looked the same to them—waited for their coffee drinks. When he checked behind him, the woman was across the street but bearing down fast. He dashed across the store and pressed around a hairy spider dy in a white silk dress. She took up a lot of the space by the end of the counter. The only color here was the bright green aprons the baristas wore.

  “Welcome to Starbucks,” they chorused, with the most pstic smiles Eagle had ever seen. The door let off a tinny chime.

  “Excuse me. Behind!” he called cheerfully as he vaulted the counter. The baristas stood as one, rooted, staring, while soft rock jazzed on. He stole a drink covered in whipped cream and caramel drizzle on his way over and let the back door fp loosely behind him.

  Sucking at a green straw, he passed by ranks of cups and bottles of syrups with one arm out, knocking them down in a cascade that oozed clear fvors onto the floor in his wake. When he passed the mop sink, he spun and flung the bucket back into the center of the room with the rest of the drink inside the mucky water. It wasn’t that good.

  He tossed a smoke bead to the floor inside while he sauntered out the back door to the hall. It shut behind him—on a disbelieving curse in a woman’s voice. There was only one bead left after that, but it was worth it.

  Eagle passed down the corridor he’d come into. On the left, as he went, he saw more doors. Each one had a bck-and-white pcard. He couldn’t read the writing, but they were probably doors to all the shops. A gleeful cackle rose in his throat, and for once, he let it out.

  Whistling tunelessly between his teeth, Eagle tried a door. What luck! It was unlocked. “How now, motherfuckers?” he murmured, peeking through at a back room full of boxes open to a shop full of fine hats on faceless heads. Pulling a disgusted expression, he shut the door.

  The alien woman’s gun was in his face. She had an impcable set to her jaw he almost liked, except for the gun. In his face. Her eyes were puffy and streaming. “Tell me what you are,” she said thickly.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Eagle’s fingers twitched. “What are you gonna do?”

  “What I’m supposed to do.” He saw her think quick before she licked her lips. The gas. “Put you in the machine.”

  He almost couldn’t smell it through the fug on her clothes and skin: ancient reptile. Unless he missed his guess, she was about to bloom into a story. Fuck. “I don’t think so,” he said carefully.

  “I don’t see where you have a choice.”

  The back door of the Starbucks clicked open. I don’t have time to help you, he tried to tell the woman with his eyes, but she looked so confused by whatever she read, the gun dropped an inch’s fraction.

  Eagle seized his chance—and the ser pistol. Forced by his hand, it discharged wide over his shoulder. He twisted the weapon from the woman’s grip, pnted a stiff arm in her jaw to help her fall, and fired over her head. There wasn’t much kick to it, which was disappointing.

  Even more disappointing: the flinty-eyed man he’d shot hardly grunted. A smoking hole had opened in his uniform jacket. His ears were pointed like the rest of them, but he had the mean mug to end all mean mugs, and it was trained on Eagle.

  Eagle was a lot of things, but he wasn’t fucking stupid. He ran like hell.

  The damned egg shapes never stopped curving. Every time he thought he’d gotten around, there was more to it. He smmed through one of the doors, throwing it open in the man’s impcable face and stopping him short. He hadn’t even fallen the whole way before Eagle was through into a dark back room full of boxes.

  As he hustled to a door hanging ajar, light fell on the spread wings of a sparkling gss eagle. He grabbed it from the top of the box, cackling, and weighed it in his free hand.

  Even better: when he opened the door, it was on a gleaming, glistening menagerie that covered the walls from ceiling to floor. A powerful-looking man with pointed ears examined a gss porcupine with a doubtful grimace. When Eagle pushed through the door, he turned the same look from beneath whisper-pale brows to Eagle’s face.

  He wore white. The door at Eagle’s back clicked open, and the calcution clicked into pce. Eagle whipped the gss bird aside and didn’t even look to see what it smashed. The gss tinkled sadly while he shoved his gun in the man’s kidney. A worker screamed and cowered in a heap.

  “I say! You needn’t—”

  “Shut up and move,” Eagle told him. While his eyebrows climbed near his pale hair—he moved, and well, and where Eagle put him. The knightly-looking man seemed confused to be used as a shield between Eagle and pursuit.

  The problem was, he smelled so powerfully of brimstone Eagle’s eyes watered. Another one? he thought in despair. And this one’s cute, too…

  “I say,” the man repeated mildly, obliging him by walking backward. Both hands were up and open, but he gnced back with pale green eyes. “You aren’t one of them, are you?”

  “Good looking out,” Eagle said scornfully, jabbing with the gun.

  The shield shook his head, scattering hair like winter wheat. “Commander Frixm, I demand to know what you intend with this man.”

  “Don’t worry, Sir Rennathaisgalloniston,” said Mean Mug, more fake-nice and dripping it than Eagle could take with a straight face. “Eagle Eye will be happy to join you shortly.”

  Eagle and the knight both ughed nastily, then traded looks. There was no one behind—and a nearby Door buzzed in Eagle’s awareness when they backed out of the gss shop, up around the bend somewhere. Please, he thought fervently.

  “What reason have I to help you?” the blond knight demanded. He actively shielded Eagle now, his hands out and low and crowding. “In faith, sirrah, I would sooner impede you! If it was in my power, I would foul your every move and block your way to every goal!”

  They both kept moving. The knight had the front covered, so Eagle sighted around them to the rear. Up around the bend, another empty pedestrian mall revealed itself. The Door breathed a perfect, soundless song.

  Mean Mug—Commander Frixm—sighed faintly. “Sir Rennathaisgalloniston, we’ve been over this. If you would simply submit to a weekly session in the machine, your life would be much smoother.”

  “Go back to whatever hell birthed you.” The knight spat on the pristine white tiles underfoot.

  “You’ve mentioned your machine twice now,” Eagle said, ducking beneath R’s arm (catch him with all those sylbles). “Did you like the bomb?”

  “I don’t know where you think you’re going.” Frixm was so mild he might’ve been smiling, except he emphatically wasn’t.

  “Well, strictly speaking,” Eagle said, “me neither, but I’m the fuck out of here. What do you say, Sir Sweet cheeks?” It was a stupid moment to notice Sir R’s ass, but it was a hard ass not to notice. Eagle could’ve bounced a coin.

  The knight turned red to the tips of his ears and spluttered indignantly.

  “Ah, fair Sir Rennathaisgalloniston, may we meet again,” tripped off Eagle’s tongue like it was inborn. He’d run like this a few times in his life, but not recently. “Until then! Faint heart never stood over a dragon sin!” As he dashed for the Door calling in his blood, Frixm darted with astounding speed around Sir R and made for Eagle.

  Right on cue, the first beam gnced from the floor. Eagle went heels over head to avoid it, and the next two. On his path, he shook his st smoke bead from his sleeve and fired it back the way the beams had come. It bounced away, issuing orange gouts.

  “Don’t shoot!” The woman again. She must have come out, but Eagle couldn’t find her and didn’t have time to try, because no one was listening to her. He had to leap and twist in midair.

  Sir R hadn’t taken Frixm’s attempt to cut around him very well. He’d grappled the commander’s back. As Eagle bounded down on his hands and sent himself flying toward the Door, Frixm tossed the knight over in a neat redirection throw.

  “There are guests in the promenade!” the Chosen woman cried, but Eagle couldn’t stay to help any of them—Katie, this woman, Sir R. Fox. Only about 50 feet now; the Door hummed with proximity, there on the side of a big, bright digital signboard hawking some kind of toothpaste. He took it at a dead run but had to turn a round-off and switch directions to avoid being shot by the morons to his left.

  Sir R heaved his legs up, showing off an ass that wouldn’t quit and thick, muscled thighs. For the split instant Eagle was in midair and facing the view, it was fantastic. He hit the ground scrambling. When he had to do another aerial maneuver to slip above scattering beams, he glimpsed Sir R’s muscled thighs wrapped around Frixm’s head.

  Eagle touched down and threw his momentum into a forward roll. With an almighty yell Eagle caught just as he backflipped through the Door on the sign, Sir R used his thighs to pull Frixm over his head and sm him to the floor. Eagle’s st thought in the Matil world was, I wish that was my face. Then he plummeted headfirst into luminous wet redness like an endless glowing digestive tract.

  He gritted his teeth. Oh boy. This is going to be fun. The next moment he was gone.