“We’d like to find a Master Vampire, but all Dealer’s readings point to off-road,” Castle said, shaking his head. The Road could take you where you wanted to go, or where you needed to go. If you didn’t have a specific destination, it ended up at the latter.

“Well, everyone’s got Zephyr in one form or another, we should be fine.” Trying to go through an off-road bumpfest without the Enchantment was nigh impossible for an armored vehicle.

Off-road meant something planar, probably a city or something being besieged by devils or the like.

“In Great Bear’s Russia, barbecue serves you!” Natalya called out, the general summons to eat. She purposely played up her Russian accent, but it could vanish as smoothly as water at will.

There was a general convergence of Drivers and Riders and their passengers. Most of the checking that had to be done was finished before we got here, they were all just waiting for the time.

Natalya made good ribs, too. Forewarned, she even had a double set juiced up in a sauce from Dealer, and Mr. Hill and Ben made appropriate lip-smacking sounds as they dug in. The bone was the best part, naturally enough...

------

There was a short discussion about formations and the like. Johnny Blaze usually rode point, the Ghost Rider having a supernatural affinity for The Road, the Evil often upon it, and their route to take. Torch and Grimm would take the right side of the battle van, which would flank the Mick at second point, Chopsaw’s monster truck on the other side with Gun and Bunny’s Jeep, and Wheel’s Charger bringing up the rear.

Ben bringing out a twenty-foot pole as thick as his wrist, which bloomed all the way to a forty-foot pole he could swing around like a willow wand, did a lot for assuring everyone that nothing much was going to get past on the flank.

Everyone mounted up, engines roaring to life, some like thunder, some like purrs. Nothing here ran on gasoline, of course, everyone way past that step of engine evolution.

Ben stepped up on his floating Disk, put his toes into the clamps, and locked tight to it. For all intents and purposes, he was now molded to the thing, and regardless of how much he was whipped around, nothing was going to shake him. The fact the Chain linking him to Torch’s Bike could also extend quite some distance was a surprise someone was going to learn, and the fact his own inertia wouldn’t affect the bike at all if not desired was another one.

Technically speaking, neither Dealer nor I needed to be here. This was a grind for Karma, training for the plunge into Hell. Both of us were naturally well past the point we needed to train for this, and all we did was make the trip harder in the meantime overall, as The Road bumped the challenge of the encounters to compensate for us.

But, y’know, since it was so kindly providing such entertainment, Dealer and I dealt with the truly nasty stuff, Mr. Hill could deal with the nasty stuff (and probably Grimm could, too) and everyone else dealt with everything else.

Mick’s Mustang pulled out, and everyone lined up beside him, Blaze and Wanda pulling up next to him. With a faint scream, hellfire boiled over Blaze, taking off his flesh and skin and coursing over his motorcycle, turning wheels to hellfire and the engine into a screaming furnace from Hell.

Over on the other side, Johnny’s flames poured down into his Bike, together with the winds from his Cloudstepping Sandals, and the wheels of his Bike also burst into flame, although they were much whiter than the bloody red and black of Blaze’s Hellfire.

Wanda just held onto Johnny Blaze, flickers of crimson Chaos magic around her making sure she wasn’t going anywhere, and even the screams of the hellfire were muted at her magic’s touch.

“Go!” The Mick punched it, Blaze was right alongside as he gunned it for the far end of the warehouse.

There was no slowing down, only increasing speed as the wall loomed up before us, The Mick slammed into it, and it tore away, revealing The Road beyond it.

---

Around us was a timeless expanse of unnaturally level ground, the entry to The Road. Here and there rose odd formations of stone, metal, crystal, or other substances, strange markings representing a connection to the mortal world, but they were shadowy things that seldom stayed the same from one hour to the next.

The Road was always in motion. Like those atop it, it was always moving.

The sky was blue-black, weird stars and moons streaking across it, countered by swathes of shadow, meteoric streams, or even shooting comets. Here and there you might see ribbons and swathes of something cutting across space, distant parts of The Road visible, leading off to who knew where.

Despite the dark sky, it was lit up as clear as day, too.

Nothing could fly on The Road, of course. You could walk it, and for travel, that didn’t necessarily take any longer than Driving or Riding it, but it was rarely safer, as there was a lot of stuff that made its way onto The Road.

Still, if all you wanted to do was put your foot to the floor and haul ass, The Road was quite literally made for it.

Blaze pushed ahead in a swirl of crimson sparkles and a flaming trail, easy to follow and track. Cryptic signposts standing on outcroppings in the middle of nowhere indicated destinations with arrows in strange languages and glyphs, leading to who knew where.

Roads have markers, and someone strong enough to put some down had done so in the far past. It was kind of amusing.

“Mist coming,” the Mick’s voice came over the coms, as the horizon swirled ahead of us. We were making good time; it had only been a couple minutes and we were already hitting the on-ramp.

Something between a fog bank and a sandstorm came up on us, and took away the endless plain. Visibility shrank down, The Road redefining itself, and then we were out and on a Highway.

The scenery off to either side was spectacular. Alien mountains towered up at all angles, as forests of trees and plants in odd colors, complete with flying creatures far too big to be natural, extended off to either side of the Highway as we tore past. A great draconic head made out of wood rose slowly from the right side as we tore past on burning wheels and engines, the kaiju glancing down at us as we raced past, and left it behind at speed.

We were all doing 300 mph-plus, even the battle van and the monster truck, both of them warded by force fields giving them perfect slipstreams and no wind resistance, a necessary effect for truly high-end Driving. While The Road would compensate for style of travel to a great degree, it was totally true that the faster you went, the sooner you’d arrive where you were going.

The Highway split, here, there, and again, Blaze choosing a branch without fail, and we all followed.

Sometimes we were on elevated tracks suspended on nothing as we tore through alien worlds, some of them magical, some scientific, both ruins and civilizations sprawling around us at different times. At other times we were on the ground, going up hills and down valleys, jumping into the air at ramps and coming down in ways only Master Drivers could do at this speed, not slowing down, taking The Road as it was, and earning its respect as we did.

Mr. Hill was in the back of the monster truck. He handled the jumps by increasing gravity to minimize the up, and low gravity to minimize the down, keeping the truck low and in control, above and beyond the effect of Zephyr’s ability to ride the down and smooth any impacts, gliding over any bumps or imperfections in the trail without fault.

---

“To the right!” Blaze’s voice called out a quarter-mile ahead, suddenly veering off the highway along the hill.

“Whoa!” came Torch’s callback, as a worm as big around as a cruise liner came up out of the canyon below us, arched completely over the highway and the hill, and started pouring itself down the other side.

We didn’t get to see how long it was, as the side exit, barely visible on The Road, came up at speed on a curve, and wheels and tires spun madly to gain the friction to speed through. Heavyfoot came down, nailed the tires to the ground, and nobody missed a beat as they all skidded and drifted into the new dirt path off to the side.

This section of The Road was only double-wide, and the formation instantly shifted up to single file. We ended up second to last, just ahead of Wheels, guarding against surprises from behind.

“Ben, turn around and call it when something pops out behind us.” My Red Eyes were starting to look ahead and behind. “Everyone, we have trouble!”

Ahead of us, Wanda looked back urgently. “Cable!” she shouted.

“Got it,” sneered the Mick, as the horn on the front of his car gleamed.

The steel cable, anchored into the rock to either side of us, hit that horn, and the other half scissored shut, adamantium edges shearing the cable apart and sending the edges whipping back to either side. Humanoid bodies screamed as it caught them, and we raced on by.

“Cars behind!” Ben grumbled, as a fleet of vehicles came burning out of cover behind us.

“Cars ahead!” Blaze also called out in burning speech, and we could hear the roar of his hellfire shotgun going off, foreign engines raging around him.

You couldn’t block The Road or dig into it. A trick like the cable would only work on one vehicle at most, The Road would send the wrecked vehicle off itself, every time, meaning a scrapper or salvage crew would have instant leavings.

Ben pulled one of the spikes on his pauldrons, which deCompressed into a fairly sizable shoulder-mounted missile launcher. He propped it up, aimed it right over Wheels, whose turrets had popped up and were being aimed backwards by Shotski, and Ben let fly.

The rocket hit the first vehicle in pursuit, flipped it right over and into the air, while tracer fire from Shotski raked the windshield of the second car. Cause-and-effect lined up nicely, as car one fell right atop car two, and both of them tumbled and bounced and went smashing into the purple scree and yellow brush off to the side of The Road.

Jennifer had a glowing sloped force field just above the ground in front of the Mustang as The Mick powered forwards, eating up ground towards Blaze as our vanguard juked and slowed, maneuvering between the mix of ramshackle and glittering vehicles around him wildly, their shots exploding against Wanda’s shields.

His shotgun flipped over and blew away the tire of an incoming bike with side-car, and Wanda flicked a Hex at it at the same time. As it dug into the ground and went flying into the air, it took a bad tumble and veered into the front of an armored car trying to sweep in, shattering the glass and sending both of them off The Road.

“Looks like a scavver crew, nothing special,” Blaze said into coms, veering to the side and braking hard as a battlewagon tried to shove him off The Road. Side-mounted flamers roared at them, and then the force-ramp Wanda put up under the big truck flipped it up on its side. It crashed and spun and went tumbling off The Road. A hellfire round into its underside fuel tank blossomed into a mighty fireball as it crashed and burned.

The Mick had our lead as he powered ahead, and those coming from behind couldn’t catch us quite yet. He was powering forwards towards a couple of battlewagons spraying Jennifer’s shield with exploding tracers, totally ignoring them as he ran cover for everyone.

Mr. Hill was spinning his Flail, and he smoothly tossed it out ahead, over the Mick’s shield.

It arced up beautifully, trailing its magically-long chain... and then it came down at one hundred gravities.