It Happened One Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  “Screw that,” Rane said. “Where’d that hunk of junk go?”

  The Mustang swung back around onto the driveway, its tires spinning. It straightened out and headed toward them again, engine roaring.

  Still in stone form, Rane climbed to her feet. “I can take him.”

  “No. His friends are coming. Get in!” Dru pointed to the back seat of the Prius, then got into the passenger seat and buckled up. Rane climbed in behind her, making the car sink almost to the ground. With a surreal sense of detachment, Dru noticed that the airbags had never gone off. So much for safety features. Or had Greyson intended that?

  “What is that thing doing?” Greyson mused.

  Instead of ramming them, the Mustang cruised past to the garage and slowed to a halt, engine thudding. From the darkness of the garage, the reptilian demon streaked out, pounding on all fours toward the Mustang. The red door on the driver’s side swung open, waiting for it.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Rane said from the back seat. “That’s one of the Four Horsemen?”

  Greyson swore under his breath and launched the car back onto the driveway, heading away from the garage. No matter how well he drove, Dru knew they didn’t have any chance of outrunning the demon car. Especially not with Rane’s weight in the back seat.

  From the look on Greyson’s face as he checked the rearview mirror, he was thinking the same thing. “Even if we make it back to the main road, he’ll catch us.”

  “We still have to get past those guys,” Dru said. She pointed into the distance, where the two dust clouds had converged into one huge plume. The mean profiles of a sleek, old silver sports car and a blocky white truck raged toward them, side by side, filling the road.

  “Bronco. Ferrari. Late sixties.” Greyson glared at the dirt road ahead, the muscles taut in his face. “Each of them has something behind the wheel.”

  Something. Not someone.

  “We have to get off this road.” Dru craned her head around, looking for some way out. She spotted the stone archway in the distance, behind the mansion, and remembered the symbols on the diagram.

  “Sekura koridoro,” she whispered. Safe road. Escape route.

  She pointed. “That way! Turn! Now!”

  “Hang on!” Greyson stomped on the brakes. The Prius pitched forward hard, then leaned steeply to the side as he whipped the car into a claustrophobic reverse skid.

  The Mustang roared past in a blood-colored blur. It tore off Dru’s passenger side mirror with a crack like a baseball bat hitting a line drive.

  Greyson drove off the pitted road and into the sand, fishtailing his way up a steep rise. The Prius burst over the top of the rise in a spray of dirt and an explosion of dry grass.

  They trundled down the treacherous far side of the rise, toward the archway in the distance. As they went over rocks and bushes, the entire car shook, rattling Dru to the bone.

  “You realize,” Dru said, her teeth chattering, “this is not an off-road vehicle.”

  “This was your plan,” Greyson shot back.

  “I meant take the road out to the archway.”

  “Next time, be more specific.”

  Greyson steered through a maze of rocks, scrub brush, and dry gullies, yanking the wheel left and right. Spiky yucca plants scraped down the sides of the car, the sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. Loose rocks and bushes pelted the windshield.

  Dru cringed. Some neurotic part of her brain that she couldn’t shut down told her that no amount of car wax or detailing would fix Nate’s beloved little earth-friendly car.

  The stone archway loomed up ahead. Dru pointed. “Over there!”

  “We’ve got company,” Rane said flatly.

  Greyson looked back over his shoulder, eyes fierce with alarm. “That thing doesn’t give up.”

  The red Mustang charged down the brush-covered hill after them, bounding over rises like a living creature. Its tires gouged the desert hillside as it closed in.

  From behind, Rane’s solid rock arms locked around Dru, like a safety bar at a carnival ride. So tight Dru could barely breathe.

  “I got you,” Rane whispered in her ear. For once, Dru was thankful for Rane’s uncomfortable embrace.

  “Almost there,” Greyson said under his breath, over and over, like a prayer. “Almost there . . .” They darted around one boulder, then another. His eyes flicked up at the rearview mirror again, and his voice kicked up to an urgent shout. “Heads up!”

  An impact that could only be the Mustang slammed into them from behind. They slid, hit something with a painful, metallic crunch. Went airborne.

  Blue sky filled the windshield. Sparse white clouds rotated clockwise as the Prius lazily rolled over in midair.

  Brown sand, sharp rocks, green bushes all zoomed into focus. The car slammed into the ground and rolled.

  The whole time, a shrill scream filled the air.

  Dru realized it was her.

  25

  GOING NOWHERE

  The crash was over in an instant, so quickly that it felt unreal. As if the thunderous impact hadn’t happened in that moment but was just a distant memory. The crushing force and cacophony of shattering surfaces felt like a half-remembered nightmare, too chaotic and short-lived to be real.

  The white scorching-hot fabric of the airbag deflated away from her, shriveling in the blinding sunlight shining in through the hollow window frame on her right. The collapsing cloud of the airbag left nothing but dust swirling in the air before her unfocused eyes, a galaxy of infinitely tiny points of light.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

  Maybe it was easier this way. Not feeling anything. Not knowing anything. Suspended in darkness that was nonetheless filled with light.

  The palpable silence that cocooned her gradually dissolved into an aching ringing in her ears. A man’s voice called her name, over and over. Greyson.

  Close to her ear, Rane said, “Dude, I think she’s out cold. Get her seat belt off.”

  Dru forced her heavy eyelids open, even before she realized they were closed. At the top edge of her vision, she was surprised to see her hair standing completely on end. Somehow gravity had reversed itself.

  Rane slowly released her stony grip on Dru, and she slid toward the car’s rippled ceiling. With heavy arms, Dru propped herself up inside the car, beside the smashed remains of the glass skull-shaped potion bottle.

  The heady stench of herbs and potent liquor burned Dru’s nostrils raw, jolting her. The broken face of the glass skull grinned up at her. Greyson’s potion lay wasted in a pool before her, slowly soaking into the fabric.

  Strong arms wrapped around her and pulled her from the wreckage. The dying sunlight bathed her.

  Greyson gently lowered Dru to the rocky ground. He stripped off his motorcycle jacket and folded it, leather creaking, into a pillow for her head. He leaned over her, his glowing red eyes filled with worry. “Dru! Can you hear me?” A trickle of blood ran down the side of his face from a gash just beneath one of his stubby horns. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  He frowned. “None.”

  “Oh, wait.” She held up three fingers. “How about now?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled.

  Everything came rushing back to Dru. The mansion. The Four Horsemen.

  “The Mustang!” she realized out loud. “Where’d it go?”

  “It can’t follow us down here,” Greyson said. “Not unless it can fly.” He helped Dru to her feet, then handed her glasses to her. She wiped off the dust that coated them.

  Fighting a wave of dizziness, she quickly scanned their surroundings. They had crashed at the bottom of a dry, washed-out ravine, surrounded on all sides by uneven ground littered with ruddy boulders and parched scrub brush.

  Greyson was right. No car could drive down that incline. “That leaves us with two bad options,” Dru said. “Climb out, or stay trapped down here.”

&nb
sp; Oily curls of smoke drifted around them, from something ruptured in the crashed Prius. When Dru breathed in, a sickly sweet chemical smell coated the back of her throat and scoured it raw.

  Above, the relentless sun dipped toward sunset, burning a gold glow into the edge of the crystalline blue sky. An encroaching curtain of dark gray clouds approached from the direction of the archway, cooling the horizon and sapping the color from the landscape.

  There was no visible sign of the Mustang, but the echoes of throaty engines thudded all around them. It was impossible to tell where the noise was coming from. The sounds grew louder, then faded, as if the cars were circling around them like vultures.

  “They’re all up there,” Rane spat, hauling herself out through the shattered window. Still in stone form, she crawled through a halo of broken glass that shone like diamonds in the sun. “I want to take those things apart with my bare hands. Pretty sure I can.”

  “We have to keep moving,” Dru said. “If the other demons—the other Horsemen—leave their cars behind and find a way down here on foot, we’re in real trouble. I don’t know what happens when all four get together, but I’m thinking it’s not poker night.”

  Greyson let out a pained grunt, then pressed his hands against his temples.

  Still on all fours, Rane shot a worried look at Dru, then back at Greyson. “Hey. He doesn’t sound so good.”

  “I’m fine . . .” Greyson’s deepening voice broke into an anguished groan. He leaned against the upside-down wreckage for support. His fingers curled into fists, and the muscles stood out on his arms, beaded with sweat. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. The red glow in his eyes grew brighter. “Not now,” he whispered.

  “That magic fire at the ceremonial pits, I think it did a number on you.” Dru put a calming hand on his arm. “Greyson. Look at me.”

  He jerked away. “Stay back!” His skin darkened before her eyes. His fingers bunched the white sheet metal, wrinkling it as if it were nothing more than fabric. He let out a long growl that didn’t sound entirely human.

  Dru’s knees went wobbly. The potion that could stop his transformation was currently nothing more than a puddle soaking into the roof of the Prius.

  Rane wearily got up and planted her feet, hands balling into fists. “Dru, get behind me.”

  Greyson needed the potion. But the bottle was smashed. That meant she had to get it to him some other way. But how? Maybe if she could soak it up into something.

  “Wait, wait! I have an idea. Hold him.”

  “Gladly.” Rane stepped around the groaning Greyson and expertly pinned his arms behind his back. He didn’t resist.

  Dru looked around for something absorbent, but the loose rocks, sandy dirt, and scrubby plants offered nothing.

  “Oh, hey, his T-shirt,” Dru realized out loud. She reached for Greyson, but he reared back, snarling. A wild look filled his glowing red eyes, and his teeth started to grow into fangs. His darkening chest swelled with muscle. His horns grew longer. His lips curled back and let out a snarl.

  Rane struggled to hold him in place. “D, whatever you’re thinking? Think faster.”

  Despite her fear, Dru stepped close and put both hands on the collar of Greyson’s T-shirt.

  She yanked. The collar stretched out amazingly far, but it didn’t rip.

  Rane peeked over Greyson’s thrashing shoulder. “The hell are you doing?”

  “Jeez, it’s like spandex or something.” Dru kept tugging on his collar, first one way, then the other. “This made more sense in my head.” With a final heave, she yanked the collar past its breaking point and was rewarded with the welcome sound of tearing fabric. His shirt tore off in her hands, leaving him bare-chested and glistening in the last rays of the sun.

  Rane peeked over Greyson’s shoulder again, one eyebrow quirked up. “Seriously?”

  “Just hang on.” Dru got down on the ground and reached in through the crumpled window frame of the Prius. With some difficulty, she flopped the torn T-shirt down into the puddle of potion and let it soak in.

  The whole time, Greyson snarled and fought Rane’s stone grip.

  “Dru!” Rane said. “We don’t have all day!”

  When the fabric had soaked up all it could hold, Dru pulled it out, dripping wet. She wadded it up and, after a little ducking and weaving, stuffed it into Greyson’s open mouth. “Okay, good! Rane, give him a head lock or something. Don’t let him spit it out.”

  With a kick that was more savage than absolutely necessary, Rane brought the thrashing Greyson to his knees, then snaked a stone arm around his neck. As she held firm against his struggling, Rane lifted her gaze to give Dru a meaningful look, her killer instinct rising to the surface.

  “This will work,” Dru said. It came out a whisper.

  “It better.” Rane wrapped her arm tighter around Greyson’s neck. “Or else.”

  26

  LAST EXIT FOR THE LOST

  Bracing herself for the worst, Dru watched as the damp rag unceremoniously dropped from Greyson’s suddenly normal teeth.

  “Told you we should’ve taken my car,” he croaked out. His dark reddish skin faded, and his horns began to recede. Not all the way, but at least back to unobtrusive stubs. Rane released him and turned human again.

  Dru tilted his head left and right, inspecting him closely. “Feel any pain? Tingling, numbness?”

  He shook his head no.

  “Well, you’re a work in progress. You start feeling anything funny again, tell me.”

  The red glow in his eyes dimmed until it was nearly imperceptible, but it was still there. His gaze dropped to her lips, and she felt them smile of their own accord. His attention lingered there, then focused back to her eyes. He lifted his chin, a fraction of an inch, to indicate his assent. “Believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Better be.” Feeling shaky, she drew in a long breath and let it out. “Sorry about your shirt.”

  He picked up his leather jacket and stood. “Sorry about your car.”

  Dru looked past his bare chest to the demolished wreck. Upside down, half flattened, one wheel folded in at the wrong angle.

  “Nate is going to murder me,” she said.

  “Not if those demons get down here first,” Rane said.

  Greyson shrugged into his leather jacket, then nodded toward the top of the steep incline. “You two head that way. I’ll double back on foot and try to lead them away.”

  “Good idea,” Rane said.

  “No, it’s a terrible idea,” Dru said, retrieving her purse from the wreckage. “Look, the schematic of the archway said that it’s some kind of hiding place or escape route, and it’s unlocked by crystal magic. If that’s true—”

  “Big if,” Rane said.

  “If it’s true, then it’s our only chance. We can’t outrun them, and we can’t outfight them.”

  Rane folded her arms, disagreement plain on her face.

  “We can’t,” Dru insisted. “Not until we know more about these guys. We need to get back to the shop and check the books. Especially that journal with the seven-fingered hand. These Harbingers were serious about bringing on the end of the world. And from the looks of it, they’ve done a bang-up job so far. So we can’t risk going in there all gung ho and making things worse. We need to figure out what kind of escape route is at the archway.” She didn’t wait for them to agree. She just started climbing up the ravine, hoping they would follow.

  Rane caught up quickly, her big feet knocking pebbles loose. “No offense, D. But this archway sounds like a long shot. How’s it going to get us back to the shop?”

  “Right now we just need a safe place to hide. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. We’ve got three Horsemen of the Apocalypse on our tail, plus their demon cars. Greyson’s iffy at best. We don’t have a lot of options.”

  The engine sounds were fading, Dru noticed, but it was too much to hope that the Horsemen had given up.

  Rane cast a wary eye back at Greys
on as he climbed up behind them. “We need to keep him at a safe distance. Having him around is getting seriously risky.”

  “We need to risk it,” Dru said, thinking it through out loud. “I have to break his curse. Because somehow I’m connected to him, and he’s connected to them, which means together we might be the key to stopping Doomsday.” Dru reached the top of the ravine and stopped.

  The desert was ominously silent. There was no sign of the demons or their cars. Ahead, a dry, flat stretch of sandy dirt led past a few boulders and bushes to the tan stone archway.

  Up close, the archway’s precisely smooth outline stood out starkly against the craggy contours of the desert. The sorcerers must have used obfuscation spells to hide it, she realized, like they’d hidden the mansion.

  Rane climbed up next to her and pointed at the sandy ground, where multiple sets of tire tracks dug through the dirt. They circled the archway and headed back the direction they’d come, over a nearby rise. A faint haze of trail dust still hung in the air, tinting it like an old photograph. “They’re waiting for us to make a move. Whatever you’re going to do, D, make it quick.”

  Greyson appeared over the edge and joined them.

  Dru dug through her purse until she found the dark-mirrored cube of galena. “Ready?”

  They both nodded.

  She took a deep breath and sprinted for the archway as fast as she could.

  Powerful engines growled to life nearby. The red Mustang rocketed over the rise toward them, sunlight glaring off its chrome. A moment later, the white Bronco followed, dirt spewing from its huge, knobby tires. Through the windshield, Dru spied a hulking, spiky white creature with glowing sapphire-blue eyes.

  “Incoming!” Rane yelled, transforming into stone as she ran. “I’ll hold them off!”

  “Keep going!” Greyson grabbed Rane’s arm on the way past. “We stay together!”

  Dru didn’t wait to see if Rane would go along with the plan. She kept running, her breath coming harsh and ragged as she dashed up the smooth stone ramp. Atop that, the archway towered like a sculpture, two stories tall at least.

  She stopped before it, breathing hard, looking for some clue that could save them. The ramp beneath her looked like a suspiciously good place to hide something. One block at the top of the ramp seemed slightly different from the rest. The gaps around it were probably just wide enough to pry apart with a crowbar. If there was a secret trapdoor, it would be right here, at her feet.