The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) (38 page)

              Once again, I passed by everyone I knew. My brother and sister, Sparks, Nichols, everyone was still rooting for me, shouting encouragement that I desperately needed. I didn’t know how much adrenaline it would take to kill someone, but I had to be getting close to the limit. I was going buster through the streets of my home city and I reached the docks in no time at all. Rigel met me there and joined me as I dashed out to my ship.
              “I took out everything you don’t need,” he said as we ran. “I made sure she was as light as she could be. I left your gun, though.”
              “Good,” I said, straining to form words through my panting. “If there was ever…a time…to use it…it’s now.”
              “Don’t do that,” Rigel said, staring over at me. “The
race
matters. Not her. Don’t focus on her. Remember what you were saying to me in Shiloh? Don’t let the race turn you into something you’re not.”
              I didn’t reply, but he knew I’d heard him. His words, while not said with any kind of flair or dramatic effect, cut deeply. When I reached the
Kicker
, I threw open the hatch and turned to him. “Come on! It’s you and me!”
              Rigel shook his head, his chest heaving. “Not this time. You need to win solo. Besides, I’ll just be extra weight.”
              I looked around the other cradles. Audra had already taken off, and the crowd had gathered on the docks to cheer me on. The only one out with me was Rigel. We had started the race together, I couldn’t help but want to finish it with him.
              “You can do it,” he said to me, as if reading my thoughts. “We all know you can. I know you’re not gonna let anyone beat you. You’re the Blood Racer! You’ll find a way! Now go! Kick the tires!”
              I smiled at him and ducked inside the ship, only to hear him call out my name.
            “And Ellie!” he shouted.
             I looked out the hatch, and he gave me a devious grin before adding, “Kick her ass.”
              I let out a cackle and slammed the hatch door, cranking up my turbines and letting them propel me off the cradle and into the backflip that I had practically mastered by then. As soon as I had brought the
Kicker
level, I stomped on my hydro thruster switch and held on tight. I still should have had plenty of juice left, and I would need it all to catch Audra. Her ship was insanely fast, so I couldn’t afford to fly on just throttle alone.
              As I powered toward Rainier, my feet were bouncing nervously along my pedals. My skin felt cold and clammy, and I was still having trouble drawing a steady breath. If Audra didn’t kill me, the pressure surely would. Everything I had gone through for this stupid race was coming to an end. I would be able to relax and sleep. I would be able to afford anything I, or my loved ones, could ever need. All I had to do was get ahead of the
Mistress
.
              I could see her now, ahead of me, streaking like a shimmering bullet through the clouds. I was catching her. At this rate, though, we would reach the Rainier docks in just a few minutes, so I couldn’t waste any time in passing her. Over the next minute, she grew steadily in front of me, until I had pulled just a few ship lengths behind her. I knew she had the gun, the one that had killed John Deseo, and had almost killed Rigel, and I didn’t want to give her an opportunity to use it. I had to pick my moment…but I wasn’t planning on waiting long. It only took another few seconds for me to gather the courage to try and overtake her.
           This was it.
            I was actually doing it. My exhaustion had evaporated entirely. Every nerve in my body was arcing with electricity as I swooped out from behind her stern. My hydro thrusters were still at full burn and I was pulling up alongside the sleek, metal tail of her ship. If I could maintain my speed and composure, I would pass right by her and have the finish line in my sights.
              “Come on,” I urged the
Kicker
. “Come on, we can do this!”
              A gunshot was the only response I heard. Instinctively, I ducked my head and pulled away from Audra’s ship, cursing loudly as another shot glanced off of my starboard wing with a bright, flashing spark. Incensed, I glared at Audra’s cockpit, my face full of shock and rage. No. No, it wouldn’t be that easy for her. She wasn’t going to keep me from getting around her. Still burning the hydro thrusters, I swooped low beneath her tail and came up on her starboard side, leveling out so that I could keep gaining on her. I knew my hydro tanks were going to let out any minute now, so I needed to make them count. My throttle was pressed forward to the limit, I was going as fast as I could…and it was working. I was drawing even with her.
              I didn’t want to look over at her, but I had to. I had to show her the face of the girl she couldn’t defeat. I put on my most smug smile and turned to look at her, only to see the flash of her gun barrel. I didn’t even have time to react before the bullet smashed through the double-paned glass of my sidescreen and grazed along the upper left section of my ribcage.
              The round tore through my jacket, my shirt, and splattered my instrument panel with dark crimson as it lodged itself in my altimeter. I cried out in surprise more than pain, although the pain that followed was more like agony. With my teeth gritted together, I slapped my left hand over the wound, feeling the warm blood seep out from between my fingers. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It burned like white fire in my side, like someone was pouring acid onto my flesh.
             
You’ve just been shot!
Somewhere in the back of my head, a voice was screaming that same line over and over, as if trying to convince me of it. The burning of my ribs was proof enough, but I still had other things to focus my mind on, like the fact that the cold wind was now roaring at a deafening volume as it swirled about the cockpit. Every paper, every shard of charcoal, every molecule of dust was suddenly in the air, creating a violent maelstrom that whipped mercilessly around me. I only had the wherewithal to pull my goggles down over my eyes. Aside from that, all I could do was let the pressure equalize and ignore the popping in my ears and the whooshing sound coming from the hole in my windscreen. The whole ordeal had only taken about twenty seconds, but that was all the time Audra needed to pull ahead once more. The chilly wind was still pummeling me from every angle, but now I could see. Audra was only a ship length in front of me. I still had a chance.
              Wincing against the pain of my gunshot wound, I used my right hand to crank the yoke and slip into her dirty wake, drafting behind her until I had pulled close enough to her tail to see the rivets. Using the momentum I’d built up, I pulled hard to starboard again and within seconds was neck and neck with her once more.
              More gunshots rang out. I dipped down beneath her as I felt the
Kicker’s
hull vibrate with each impact. “Damn it!” I screamed, watching as she slowly began edging me out again. “That’s it!”
              Momentarily releasing the stick, I growled out the pain as I pulled my own gun from the hidden compartment under my console. I took my blood-soaked hand from my ribs and gripped the hilt of the pistol, sticking it out the fresh hole in my sidescreen and firing three successive shots at her. To my great surprise, I watched all three rounds burn into her fuselage, leaving large black holes behind them. Immediately, she swerved away from me, peeling off to the left to escape my barrage.
              “Yeah!” I bellowed in fury. “How do
you
like it!?”
              My celebration was short-lived, however. My wound was burning worse than ever, and despite all I had seen, despite the blood still leaking from my own flesh, I was still underestimating Audra’s cold ruthlessness. Just seconds after my bullets had punctured her ship, she was veering right back at me, clearly intent on ramming into my side. With a shriek of panic, I pulled to starboard just in time to keep her thin, pointed wingtip from slicing into the belly of the
Kicker
. As she pulled away again, I felt my pedals start to vibrate, followed by the unmistakable sputtering of my thrusters. My hydrogen had all but run dry. I had to even the playing field now or she would just plain outrun me. Once more, she came careening wildly toward me, intent on sending me into Veil. This time, though, I was ready for her.
              With my left hand again sticking out of the hole in my windscreen, I used my right arm to torque the stick to the port side and barrel roll over top of her. In that split second, the fleeting moment when I was passing upside down above her, my cockpit passed right above hers. It seemed like slow motion as our eyes met. She was gaping up at me, her mouth hanging wide open in surprise. I know she saw my gun pointed down at her. I know she knew what I was about to do. In that second, in that evanescent blink of time, I fired four more shots into her pretty little ship. As I came out of the roll, now on her left, I pulled my arm back into the cockpit and watched with pleasure as puffs of grey smoke began trailing out of her tail. I hadn’t even been aiming for it, but one of my rounds had penetrated into one of her exhaust headers and she was already losing power. This was definitely a good thing, especially since my hydro thrusters had completely run dry. I also realized that the shot that took out her exhaust header must have been only inches away from hitting a fuel line, which would have been the end of her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
              My throttle was still maxed out, but with her new mechanical problems, she and I were traveling at virtually the same speed. I was still at a disadvantage, though. She wasn’t about to let me pass her without putting every slug she could into my hull. Now, after I had wounded her ship, she had to be seething with anger. If I made any attempts to fly by her, she would shoot to kill. There was no way I was going to get ahead of her with conventional maneuvers. With Rainier coming up fast in front of us, I had to think of something. I didn’t come this far to let her slip away at the end. She had killed John Deseo, she had killed my mother, she had nearly killed Rigel, and she had done her best to kill me. It was about time for a little payback. Looking through the empty slots in the cylinder, I saw that I still had two shots in my revolver. If I could get her cockpit in sight again, I could end it once and for all. Rainier was getting so close, just a few minutes away. I had to do it. It was the only way I could make it to finish line before her.
              My ribs were on fire. The terrible pain made it so hard to concentrate, but I fought it with everything I could muster. I eased off the throttle just a bit and slipped back into her wake, letting her take all the wind resistance while I rode in her jet stream. Unfortunately, this meant I was now having to inhale the intermittent puffs of black smoke that billowed from her tail. With my windscreen broken, I was getting lungfuls of it. Coughing and fumbling around behind me, I found the satchel that contained Dan Canter’s gas mask gift. I had to remove my goggles, but I was able to slip it on over my helmet before switching on the filter. The clean oxygen was a relief as it cleared out my windpipe, and it allowed me to focus once more on closing the gap between myself and Audra.
              Just like the last time, it was working. Even with lowered throttle, I was still gaining on her as long as I stayed in her wake. Also, just like last time, as soon as the
Kicker’s
nose was a few feet from impact, I veered to the side, using the momentum to glide up beside her.
              “Come on,” I muttered, holding my pistol level again. I kept an iron grip on it as I stuck it out the windscreen hole, making sure the wind didn’t rip it from my bloody fingers. This was it. Her cockpit was in sight. It was only a fifteen-yard shot from here. I couldn’t miss. She was hunched over her yoke, her eyes locked on Rainier. She wouldn’t even see it coming. I was going to win this race. Just like Rigel had said, I wouldn’t let anyone beat me. Not Audra, not the Archons, no one. At the thought of Rigel, however, my finger suddenly paused on the trigger. He had said something else to me, too. He had told me not to let the race decide who I was. That’s exactly what I was about to do. I was not a murderer, so what was I doing?
            With this epiphany unexpectedly cropping up in my brain. I knew I wasn’t going to fire at her. I wasn’t going to murder her, despite all she had done and all she had taken from me. That wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. I wasn’t going to let this stupid race turn me into the same monster that had taken hold of Audra.
              I suddenly felt nothing but pity for her. She was just a victim of the Dominion. So much importance was placed on this event, so much weight. She may have been just like me before entering. She could have been a normal woman, just trying to find a way to a better life. The money was a powerful motivator, though. She’d felt like she had to do whatever it took to win, including killing other competitors. Somewhere, she had crossed that line and had never come back.
              “Not me,” I said, retracting my gun back into the cockpit. “You were right, Rigel,” I said myself, lifting the glass case that protected the Leap engine’s ignition. “I’ll find a way.”
              Since I knew Audra wouldn’t let me past her without blowing by ship out of the sky – and since I wasn’t going to kill her – I had only one more option: outfly her. If she couldn’t see me, she couldn’t fire on me. I was already wearing the gas mask, so my course of action was clear. I just had to hope and pray that I would end up all right.