The Serpent’s Curse. Tony Abbott

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      “Is everyone …,” somebody was saying when Wade lifted his throbbing head. The Hummer had spun around fifty yards up the bridge, pulled into the outside lane, and was now aimed at the damaged limo, revving its engine.

      Wade yanked up on the door handle. “Get out of the car!” The door wouldn’t open. He kicked it. Pain spiked his leg. “Darrell—”

      A thin stream of blood trickling down his cheek, Darrell kicked too. The door squealed open a crack. Lily and Becca threw themselves at it. The hinges groaned and the door fell to the roadway. The sudden loss of weight in the back sent the limo teetering forward. There was a moan from behind the wheel.

      “The driver!” Wade’s father said. He shattered the divider to the front compartment, then grabbed the man’s shoulder and squirmed carefully over the seat to him. First puncturing the air bag, he jerked open the passenger door to his right and dragged the driver through it onto the pavement, just as the Hummer pulled up. Four black doors flew open and four oak-sized men emerged.

      One of the men walked out into the road and gestured for the oncoming cars to go past. Was he smiling?

      Yes, he was.

      Wade’s frantic thoughts drew to a point: stay close, physically close, to Darrell and the girls. He huddled them together, himself in front. His father staggered over with the driver leaning on his shoulder.

      One thick-necked thug, somewhere between seven and ten feet tall, glared down at them with eyes the color of iron. His face was dented and garbage-can ugly.

      “Make no movements,” he said in a voice like a truck shifting gears. Then he must have thought better of his words, because he added, “One movement. Give us relic and daggers.”

      Seriously? Wade thought. He’s clarifying his threat? Who does that?

      But there was nothing funny in the guy’s features. There were lumps all over his face as if he’d been the one in the accident, but they were neither recent nor red. He’d grown up a monstrosity, Wade guessed, so what choice did he have but to become a thug?

      No, that wasn’t right. Everyone had a choice.

      “Now,” the man grunted, drawing an automatic weapon from inside his tight-fitting jacket. He stood with his big boots planted flat on the pavement like one of the bridge girders.

      Sirens sounded from the streets they had just come from.

      “Or we could wait for the cops,” Wade said, stepping forward as if his new toughness meant being aggressive and blurting stuff at bad guys. His father, still holding up the driver, yanked him back.

      In a move Wade didn’t quite understand, one of the thugs splayed his thick fingers and grabbed Lily by the arm. Then he lifted her off the ground like a rag doll—probably because she was the smallest—and strode with her to the railing. “She goes over.”

      Before Wade could react, before he could think of moving, his father slid the driver onto him and jumped at the thug, wrenching his arm to let Lily go, which the man didn’t—until there was a sudden flash of silver, and the goon screamed.

      Shouting incomprehensibly, Becca had thrust Magellan’s priceless dagger into the man’s arm. Its ivory hilt cracked off in her hand, while the blade stayed in him. She pulled Lily from him and staggered back, stunned at what she had done.

      Wade whipped out his own dagger, ready to fight, when a sleek white town car raced up the bridge from the Manhattan side, a blue light flashing from its dashboard.

      The other goons dragged their wounded comrade into the Hummer, Becca’s hiltless blade still in his arm.

      “Ve get you all, dead and dead—” one goon was muttering idiotically.

      Not this time, Wade thought, staring at Becca. Because of you …

      The town car shrieked to a stop, and the passenger door flew open. “I’m Terence Ackroyd,” the driver said. “Everybody in!” Then he helped Wade’s father slide the limo driver inside. As the Hummer tore back to Brooklyn, the others piled into the town car, and they roared away, shaken but alive and mostly unhurt.

      Wade couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Becca was amazing, he thought. She saved us. She … He quaked like an old man, his hands trembling uncontrollably as they sped across the bridge into the winding streets of lower Manhattan.