Spirit Prophecy

by E. E. Holmes

  “For gatecrashing your shower the first time we ever met! And you were so nice, covering for me, even though you had no idea who I was, and you were naked as the day you were born,” Savvy said.

  “I forgive you,” I said, as I managed to get my neck out of what was now more strangle hold than hug.

  “No, you don’t. You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” Savvy said. “See, you don’t even want my hugs.”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “Your hugs are wonderful. You can give me lots of hugs later, when your balance is better, okay?”

  “’Kay,” she said, and attempted to straighten up. “Can I make it up to you?”

  “You don’t need to. I forgive you, I promise.”

  “Yes, I do need to. I need to, Jess!” she said.

  I stopped walking with an exasperated laugh. “Okay, fine. How are you going to make it up to me? You better make it good, now. I don’t want a half-assed apology.”

  Savannah’s face scrunched in thoughtful consideration. Then she said, “Wanna see my tits?”

  “NO!” I cried.

  “You sure? They’re pretty great,” she said, reaching for the buttons on her shirt.

  “No, NO!” I said, wrenching her hands from her shirt before she could start removing it. I tugged on her elbow and started to pull her forward again. “I’m sure they’re lovely, but I do not want to see your tits right now.”

  “You sure?” Savvy asked.

  “Positive. We’ll come up with another way to make it up to me.”

  “’Kay,” she said with a shrug. Then after a moment’s silence, “But everyone loves ‘em. I’ve never had a complaint.”

  “I bet.”

  “It’s true! I bet anyone here would like to see them. I bet he would,” she said, and cocked a thumb back over her shoulder.

  “Who?”

  “That guy that’s behind us. He’s been following behind us since the bar. Keeps taking our picture.”

  “Huh?” I stopped and whirled around. About fifty feet behind us, a man in a black hooded sweatshirt and dark trousers stopped in his tracks. He was holding a cell phone out in front of him, pointing in our direction, as though he’d just taken our photo with it.

  “Say cheese!” Savvy said, flinging an arm back over my shoulders and posing. “How ‘bout it, mate? Don’t you want a photo now that we’re looking?”

  He said nothing but continued to stare at us as he pressed a button on the phone and put it to his ear.

  “Not interested? Oh, I get it, you’re an ass man, eh?” Savvy said, turning again and shaking her rear end in the man’s direction. “There you are, have a good look, then.”

  My heart began to race. “Come on, Sav, let’s go.” I pulled her along, walking as quickly as I could.

  “’Smatter with you?” Savvy said. “Why are you walking so fast?”

  “I don’t like the look of that guy behind us,” I said, chancing a glance over my shoulder. The man was walking now too, still talking, maintaining a steady distance, but keeping pace with us. “Ah, come on. Don’t go all country mouse on me, Jess!” Savvy said. “We’re city girls, you and me, we know how to handle ourselves. He’s probably just looking for a good time, anyway.”

  “I’d rather not find out what he’s looking for,” I said, as we rounded the corner onto Blackfriars Road. I took a deep breath as I walked. I tried to reason with myself. This guy could be anyone—a random creep, a drunk idiot. He could be a total pervert, cruising for vulnerable girls to attack. None of these things frightened me much. Savvy was right; I was a city girl, and I’d dealt with this sort of thing before. And not for nothing, but I was pretty sure that Savannah could beat the hell out of any guy who messed with either of us. What scared me much more was the idea that this guy might not be a random encounter at all. Maybe he’d been following me since we’d gotten into the city, or even before. He wasn’t dressed like a Caomhnóir, but then again, he might have dispensed with the obvious attire in hopes that I wouldn’t notice him. I couldn’t tell if I recognized him or not; his face was too obscured in the shadowy recesses of his hood.

  And then there was Annabelle’s warning. There could be others out there besides the Durupinen who might want to follow us … “Savvy, keep walking, but listen to me for a minute. If you needed to run right now, could you do it?”

  “What are you on about?” Savvy giggled, then caught sight of my face. Whatever she saw there wiped the grin off her own. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but I think we might be in trouble. Can you run?”

  “Yeah, I can run. You want to tell me what I’m supposed to be running from?”

  I hesitated. I hadn’t planned on telling her anything about my meeting with Annabelle, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice.

  “A friend of mine found out too much about the Durupinen and now he’s missing. I’m afraid that guy following us might have something to do with it.”

  “Is that why we’re here tonight? Because of your friend?”

  “Yeah. I was hoping to find out what happened to him, but instead I think I landed us in a dangerous situation.”

  “That bloke behind us?”

  “Yeah.”

  Savvy made to look back, but I grabbed her arm. “Don’t look! I don’t want to draw any more attention to us.”

  “I got you. Hang on,” she said, and started digging around in her purse.

  “What are you —”

  “Play along,” Savvy muttered, pulling her phone out of her bag. Letting out a high-pitched laugh, she said, “Selfie on girls’ night out!” Then she pulled my head against hers, knocking them together as she raised the phone high in front of us and snapped a photo.

  She pulled up the photo. “No, let’s take another one, my eyes are closed!” she said to cover the moment as we examined the photo, in which the tops of our heads were barely visible. But behind us, the man was still there, staring right at us, and much closer than when we’d first noticed him. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet away.

  “No, let me do it, you take the worst pictures!” I shouted, pulling the phone out of her hand as we continued down the sidewalk. Then I added in a whisper, “Right, we run for the bridge on three and see if we can lose him on the other side.”

  She didn’t even bat an eyelash. Her eyes, as she looked into mine, seemed to instantly sober up through sheer force of will. “On three, then,” she said.

  “One. Two. Three!”

  We broke simultaneously into a run, hands clasped, and sprinted as fast as we could for the bridge. I heard the man curse loudly and then his footsteps pounding behind us. I chanced half a glance over my shoulder. He was still on the cell phone, and was talking into it as he ran.

  “Milo!” I called between my ragged gasps. I felt the connection open, like a tiny window in my brain.

  “Don’t bother me, Jess. This Gucci trench and I are having a moment.”

  “You need to come and meet us on Victoria Street where the car dropped us off. Now!”

  “What, you’re done already?”

  “Yes, and we’re in trouble. Some guy is chasing us.”

  “What the hell —”

  “Just do what I asked, please! We have to get out of the city now!”

  “Okay, okay!” Milo said.

  I broke the connection and we flew up the ramp onto the Millennium Bridge, our footsteps clanging loudly on the metal. Small knots of people were still strolling along it and stopping to take photos of London in the starlight. Savvy barreled through them, knocking several people into the railings as we pelted for the other side.

  “We’ll have to try to lose him on the other side,” she said, shoving a man with an enormous camera out of our way. “Clear off, you! Then we can call the driver and tell him where to meet us!”

  As we tore off the end of the bridge and onto the sidewalk, one of Savvy’s shoes caught in a crack in the pavement and the heel snapped off, sending us fla
iling in a heap onto the ground. We scrambled back up just as the hooded man reached the sidewalk. He ran toward us, arm outstretched as though to grab us, but Savvy pulled off the broken shoe and flung it, as hard as she could, at his head. Yelling, he ducked for cover behind a trash barrel as she reached down, yanked the other shoe from her foot, and threw that as well. We took off again, dodging into traffic, causing a cab to slam on its brakes and beep loudly at us.

  “Oi! Watch where you’re going! What are you chasing after girls for, eh?” said a booming male voice.

  We turned to watch as our pursuer ran smack into a knot of men, who began to shove and shout at him. He struggled to get past them, but they closed around him, jeering and laughing.

  “I don’t think they fancy you!”

  “How about I rearrange your face? They might like it better that way!”

  They continued to taunt and push him in a bizarre display of alcohol and testosterone-fueled chivalry. He struggled, but couldn’t get around them. I could hear him cursing angrily over the laughing. Nearby, a car skidded to a stop with a deafening screech.

  “Jessica! Savannah!”

  I turned at the sound of my name and my mouth dropped open. Finn Carey was leaning out of the window of one of the black Caomhnóir SUVs, motioning at us frantically to get in.

  Savvy gasped. “What the —”

  There was no time to think about it. “Come on!” I said, and we dashed for the car, flinging open the door and jumping inside. It peeled away from the curb before we’d even shut the door.

  We’d barely had time to sit upright when Milo materialized between us.

  “Forgetting someone?” he said.

  I ignored him and turned to Finn instead. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Fixing to become a big city statistic, apparently,” Savvy said, sounding every bit the smoker as she hacked and wheezed. “Wow, that was way too close for comfort. Thanks, Finn, mate, you really — “

  “I’m not your mate,” Finn practically growled. His eyes found mine in the rear-view mirror. “What are you playing at?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

  I pulled my eyes from his penetrating stare and fumbled with my seatbelt. “None of your business.”

  “Of course it’s my business! Everywhere you go and everything you do is my business!” he said. He took the corner too quickly and the tires squealed in protest. “I’ve sworn an oath to protect you, and I can’t do it if you’re sneaking off in the middle of the night!”

  “How did you even know I was here?”

  “I saw you on the grounds tonight, heading for the woods with your bag.”

  “And so you decided to spy on me?” I said. I sounded like a tween busted climbing in her bedroom window after a night of drinking wine coolers in the woods. This realization only made me angrier.

  “I just wanted to see where you were going. And it’s a good thing I did, or who knows what would have happened when that guy caught up to you,” Finn said. “Who is he?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, which was only half a lie.

  “And you don’t know why he was chasing you?”

  “No. We were walking along the south bank, minding our own business, and he just started following us,” I said.

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Not a word,” Savvy answered. “Just started snapping pictures, bloody pervert.”

  I could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe a word of this, so I quickly changed the subject. “How did you get here?”

  “I saw you get into that car and head south, so I borrowed one of the Caomhnóir vehicles and took the front entrance road. I knew I’d catch up with you eventually; there’s only one road that comes by Fairhaven.”

  “But how did you find us in the city?” Savvy asked.

  “I’ve been waiting since the car dropped you off. I just parked a block behind him and waited until you came back. Then I saw you running by and followed you.”

  “Are you allowed to take these cars out?” I asked.

  Finn gave a humorless bark of a laugh. “Does it matter? I needed it to do my job, so I took it. I don’t think anyone will take issue with that, and if they do, I’m not bothered.”

  Silence fell in the darkened car. I watched the lights of the city pass one by one over Finn’s stormy features.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re here in the first place,” he said at last.

  “I know.”

  “Well?”

  I hesitated, throwing a sidelong glance at Savvy. “We needed a night out. You know, just to unwind and have a little fun.”

  Finn’s brows contracted so tightly together that he looked for a moment like some giant bird of prey. “A little fun?” he repeated, his voice dripping with contempt.

  “Yes, fun,” I said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. It involves laughing and socializing and other such foreign concepts.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said baldly.

  “Believe it or not, I don’t really care.”

  “That’s all the explanation I’m going to get? After I stole a car and risked my neck tracking you down after curfew?”

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” I said, staring out the window so that I wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. “I never asked you to do any of this. Look, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t always need your protection. I can take care of myself.”

  “Is that so? Didn’t look like it from where I was sitting.”

  I said nothing. Of course he was right, and we were damn lucky he’d decided to follow me, or who knew what might have happened when that man caught up to us. On the other hand, there was no way I was going to admit this, at the risk of encouraging his habit of treating me like a damsel he was constantly and grudgingly rescuing from varying degrees of distress.

  “Sorry to interrupt this really awkward silence,” Milo said, “but there’s been an SUV behind us for the past couple of minutes, and whoever is driving it just blew through a red light to stay on our tail.”

  We all turned to look out of the back windshield. Between the darkness and the tint on the vehicle’s windows, it was impossible to make out anything about the driver.

  “Let’s not panic,” Finn said. “Plenty of people ignore traffic lights. Everyone turn around and pretend you haven’t noticed them, just in case. I’ll see if I can’t shake them off.”

  Finn took a few side roads that pulled us away from what would have been the most direct route out of the city. The SUV stayed unobtrusively but undeniably on our tail. We came to a roundabout. Finn started around it, and put his blinker on as though he were going to take the first exit. The SUV did the same. At the very last moment, he pulled the car sharply back into the flow of traffic, eliciting several angry honks from the cars around us, and revealing what Milo had already suspected; the SUV veered away from the exit at the last moment as well, almost sideswiping a small blue hatchback and causing another volley of beeping. We had all looked to see what the SUV would do, in spite of Finn’s warnings to ignore it, and now we all faced the front again. The mounting panic was tangible, a toxic fume that had permeated the car and was threatening to suffocate us all.

  Finn caught my eye in the mirror. “Are you still going to tell me that you have no idea who these people might be?” In my panic I nearly told him my suspicions, but kept my mouth shut. I nodded instead. “I really don’t know who they are,” I said.

  Finn shook his head at me, clearly frustrated, and then floored it. We were all pressed back into our seats as the car shot forward, picking up speed alarmingly fast and weaving through the traffic recklessly. I clutched at the door handle as we peeled around the next corner, thinking wildly of those arcade video games where you careened through digital landscapes and, more often than not, ended in a fiery wreck behind a flashing red “Ga
me Over.” I swallowed back the urge to scream.

  “Finn, mate, you’ve got to shake them off before we hit the M11 or we’ll never be able to —” Savvy began.

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Finn shouted. “I’m driving like a maniac, here!”

  Then, as though to prove his point, he veered onto the wrong side of the road to pass the car in front of us, narrowly missing colliding with the oncoming traffic. We all screamed.

  “Bloody hell,” Savvy hissed through clenched teeth as we watched the SUV barrel halfway onto the sidewalk, taking out the front of a shabby newsrack and emerging directly behind us again.

  We screeched through a red light at the next intersection. The driver followed, dodging a cab and nearly spinning out in the effort to keep behind us.

  “Shit,” Finn kept muttering under his breath. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Soon the city began to fall away and we merged onto the M11 at breakneck speed, the SUV still behind us and surging to catch up. “I don’t know what to do!” Finn said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “It’s open highway, there’s nowhere to go.” We wove from lane to lane, dodging cars like so many traffic cones, but the SUV followed, closing the distance second by second.

  “Brace yourselves, he’s going to hit us!” Savvy suddenly shouted.

  With a shattering crash, the SUV slammed into the back of our car. Everyone shouted, and the car fishtailed wildly as Finn struggled to get control of the steering wheel and stop us from spinning out. I reached right through Milo to grasp onto Savvy, and Milo vanished.

  “Milo!” I called frantically. “Milo, where are you?”

  Crash.

  The SUV collided with us again, clipping the corner of the car. We swung wildly around, spinning, completely out of control. Everything was a blur, and then for one, perfectly clear moment, I saw Finn’s face, and the guardrail rearing up behind him through the windshield.

  His eyes found mine, and in that tiny but endless moment, they said they were sorry. Then he closed them, almost gently.

  We were crashing, rolling, and sliding all at once. The car was tumbling down the embankment, glass exploding from every window, needling through the air. I threw my hands above me as the roof of the car came down to meet them. Everything was a blur of pain, confusion, and heart-stopping terror.