That time, the glass cracked.
My forehead hurt like a motherfuck that time. I knew it was the thickest part of the skull, but also that it was the part of the head with the most nerve endings, so it would hurt the most, thick head or no. Still, I’d be less likely to kill myself. Or give myself brain damage.
“You crazy fucking bitch!” Evers yelled back at me.
He swerved the car, nearly hitting a pickup truck that had been traveling alongside him. I saw him glaring at me in the review mirror once he’d corrected the wheel.
“Stop it!” he snapped.
“Stop it!” I said, mimicking his voice.
It wasn’t easy through the gag, and he probably couldn’t hear my words, per se, but I got that little-kid-mocking tone down enough that he got the idea.
His face turned ever redder.
“You fucking cunt!”
“You fucking cunt!” I mimicked, still using the little kid falsetto, only louder, to be heard over the gag and the sound of the engine.
“I’m going to stop the fucking car if you do it again!” he snarled. “I’ll stop the car and beat you senseless right now! Right in the middle of the road! You won’t like it, I promise!”
Actually, that’s pretty much exactly what I wanted.
Not the getting beat up part...more the swerving all over the road like a drunken crazy person part, and the me breaking the window for real and maybe catching the attention of one of the other drivers on the freeway part. Maybe even the Evers losing his shit in public part and him pulling onto the shoulder part, where someone might notice well enough to rubberneck us, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.
Maybe ID’ing Evers in the process.
If I made enough of a ruckus, someone would call the cops, right?
One could only hope at least one concerned citizen lived out here.
It was a slim hope, but right then, it was the only one I had.
I knew I couldn’t get out the window, not handcuffed to the car...but I could possibly get someone to notice Evers acting like a psychopath in broad daylight. Maybe even long enough to buy Gantry some time. Maybe long enough to buy Nik some time, too. Maybe long enough for someone to see me and Jazzy and Hilary in the back seat, trussed up like, well...like the victims of a kidnapper and psychotic serial killer. Maybe some good Samaritan would see us and care enough to do the right thing.
Maybe I could get Evers to rethink the wisdom of what he was doing. After all, there was a reason he’d never been caught. Usually he was smarter than this.
I was about to smash my forehead against the glass a third time...
When something really damned big slammed into the side of the car.
I gasped, shocked out of the windup I’d been going into, getting ready to hit my head against the cracked glass. I was already dazed...and not looking forward to adding another blow to the migraine forming inexorably behind my eyes.
When the car got hit by...whatever it was...the force threw me backwards, more or less into Jazzy. The locked seatbelt stopped my body in midair, and I found myself staring blankly at a long, pushed-in, crushed part on the inside passenger side of the car.
My wrists were still attached to that metal ring under the door handle, but that had been pushed in towards me, too. Which is why, I realized slowly, I felt Jazzy behind me now, despite still being cuffed to the door. It was also why the cracked window was gone, completely shattered as the bottom part of the door got pushed into the SUV’s frame.
My face was bleeding, but it took me a few seconds longer to notice that.
I blinked at that long, pushed-in piece of metal, unable to comprehend how it had gotten there.
Then my eyes shifted up.
Outside that tinted black window, I saw a giant gold eye.
The thing was the size of a dinner plate...or maybe a garbage can lid.
For a long few seconds, I was mesmerized by the sight of it. Then my heart lifted for real. “Nik!” I cried out through the gag, staring out the window.
The thing slammed into the back of the car again.
I got thrown backwards, hard, against the seatbelt strap, into Jazzy.
Before I could fully recover, the animal slammed into us yet again, making me gasp against the gag in my mouth. The pain in my upper body had worsened to the point where I almost couldn’t breathe against the strap, it hurt so much. I was being pushed deeper into the middle of the car, I realized, which jarred my arms, my shoulders and my legs. It also forced me up against the locked seatbelt, which now had a stranglehold on my ribs and chest.
I watched, helpless, as the lizard threw its shoulder and head into the body of the SUV yet again. That time, it hit closer to the back of the car, thank goodness. Next to me, Jazzy screamed in terror anyway, writhing and shrieking against the gag she wore.
When I glanced over at Hilary, though, the blond girl looked completely blank, just...gone. Slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, she obviously was in shock.
I couldn’t help thinking Jazzy’s screaming was probably better.
Cursing and snarling at the thing outside the car, Evers skidded all over the road, correcting for what the lizard had done and then accelerating. I glanced forward at him, then back out the window, crying out against the gag when the dinosaur-like thing slammed into us again, that time, hitting into the back of the SUV from behind.
That time, the rear window shattered.
Glass sprayed over the three of us, nicking my face and arms a second time.
It hit me suddenly that, whatever this was, it wasn’t the same animal Nik transformed into that day on the golf course, when he flew us out of there. The golf course creature had looked more like a medieval dragon. This thing looked an awful lot like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Well, apart from those big eyes and the much more functional-looking front claws and arms. It still ran on powerful back legs, but yeah, the longer I looked at it, the more I realized I didn’t really recognize it, not even from science books.
So definitely not anything from Earth.
Also, unlike the dragon, this thing didn’t have wings. Just a long tail, thick at the base for balance where the extra appendage ran up into its powerful hind quarters. The thing tapered sharply about ten feet back, though, eventually turning whip-like at the much narrower end, which stretched out far behind the car, for what must have been at least twenty feet in total.
Its head was massive, completely out of proportion to the thinner neck. The teeth looked like glass razors, each one around two feet long and nearly translucent.
He slammed into the car again, and I let out another muffled yell, along with Jazzy.
That time, when the creature rose up higher on its muscular hind legs, I saw a large gash in its back, and a hole in the middle of its chest framed by green lizard blood.
“Fuck,” I muttered, staring up at the thing.
It wasn’t Nik. It was Razmun.
Evers hadn’t killed him.
Just then, the lizard ran at the car even harder...hard enough to throw the SUV briefly off the road entirely and into the grass just beyond the dirt shoulder. I noticed only then that other cars were screeching and veering all around us, trying to get the hell out of the way. I have no idea what the other drivers were thinking, meaning about the giant lizard and its whipping tail and long claws...but I knew it couldn’t be good.
Evers himself was back to flooring the SUV...which could move, incidentally, given that it was a German engine, after all.
He was a good enough driver to be able to correct for the massive hit to the car, but I knew he couldn’t keep that up forever, either.
I glanced at Evers himself in the rearview mirror again, but that time, he didn’t spare me so much as a sneer. He glared out the window of the SUV, his eyes wide but with fury not fear, his skin flushed bright red and sweaty with that same heat. He seemed to exude hatred and fury from his very skin, staring at that thing out the window.
“You fucki
ng asshole!” he screamed, honking his horn like a crazy person.
I wondered if he had any idea of what he was really looking at...or if he’d just snapped in a fit of homicidal rage and egomania.
When Razmun slammed his head into the vehicle yet again, it dented in the door right next to me even further, and shattered the glass window on the back of the SUV’s hatchback at the same time, sending more glass whipping around us in the wind tunnel of the back seat.
Jazzy screamed long and loud that time, and when I looked at her, I saw that the gag in her mouth had somehow gotten dislodged. Well enough that she managed to spit out most of the rest of it.
Looking away from her, I found myself gazing up at that gold, dinner-plate sized eye, even as wind rushed through the window, forcing more air into my lungs. I probably would have screamed again, if it wasn’t for the gag. As it was, I only stared, even as the thing slammed its head into the front end of the car, right into the door where Evers sat.
Evers cursed, once more yanking hard on the wheel as he corrected against a violent skid.
That this was going to turn the car into a crushed can.
Jerking back when the lizard looked ready to slam into the vehicle right near me again, I was shocked when my feet moved with me. I looked down, and realized my ankles had been knocked free of whatever had been holding them to the driver’s chair.
Looking at the bolt where my hands were cuffed in the same set of seconds, I saw that the metal had been bent out of recognition under the door handle. I gave a hard yank and managed to pull the eyebolt loose with my cuffs still attached to it.
Not freedom, exactly, but at least I could move.
Even so, being locked to the seat by the safety belt kind of limited my options.
Remembering the glass, I scrabbled my newly freed hands over the back seat, looking for a piece big enough that I might use it for a knife. It was safety glass, so crappy as hell for that kind of thing, but I managed to find a piece sharp enough and big enough to grip in my fingers that I could start trying to saw through the nylon strap.
After examining the belt for a few seconds, I decided to cut the band behind the actual lock so I could slide under the shoulder strap along with the one around my waist.
Leaning down, I started sawing, hard, with the piece of glass.
The next time Razmun hit into the side of the car, the glass shard slid sharply to my right, cutting my palm. Even so, maybe because I had a goal now, a real one at last, I went right back to sawing at the strap down by my hip. Blood ran in a slow trickle over my hand, but I managed to keep a strong enough hold on the strap to keep cutting into it.
And I was making progress. Sort of.
The dinosaur hit the SUV again, hard, forcing a hard squeal out of the tires as Evers tried again to correct and failed. The back end of the BMW slid to our right, over the dirt slope of the highway shoulder, and into what felt like a ditch and grass.
When I looked up next, we were driving across a field.
“Hurry!” Jazzy said, shouting at me. “Hurry! Please! Hurry!”
I realized she was watching me saw through the belt, waiting for me to get free so I could free her and her friend. Without meeting her gaze, I bent back over the belt, sawing with renewed energy. Wincing and losing my place in the nylon strap when the dinosaur hit the car again, I was about a third of the way through the nylon strap, when a loud screech from outside the car jerked my eyes off the shard of glass.
Refusing to look up that time, I tensed my shoulders and arms, sawing harder on the strap.
It was going faster now, maybe because I was past the melted pieces of nylon around the edges of the belt itself.
Another screech got louder outside the car, sounding even more dragon-like. That time, it almost sounded like there were two of them.
Even so, I didn’t look up that time, either, but kept on sawing.
I was almost halfway through the strap now.
I started to think I was going to get the damned thing off after all, when suddenly, Evers slammed on the brakes. The SUV skidded violently, tried to a stop...then tipped off its center of weight and began to roll.
I knew we’d been going fast...faster than was safe, given what was happening outside the car doors. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d felt Evers accelerating still more as soon as we entered that flat stretch of field.
But I don’t think it really hit me how fast we’d been going, not until the car began to roll. I screamed through the gag, flying up as far as the seatbelt would allow, reaching up with my cuffed wrists towards the car’s roof, the glass shard still clutched in my hand.
More shards of glass flew around us, nicking our skin and faces, hammering the top of the car’s roof like crystal rain. Next to me, Jazzy screamed for real, belting out her terror at full volume now that the gag was out of her mouth.
Hilary appeared to be in shock again. She looked glassy-eyed, on the verge of fainting as she flew up with me and Jazzy, all three of us stopped by the locked down seat belts before we would have been thrown from the car altogether.
At about the third roll, a ripping sound tore across my hip, accompanied by a jerk, right before I flew out of the cut and ripped seatbelt and slammed up against the roof of the car. I let out a shocked cry, throwing up my hands to cushion my fall, then the SUV flipped again, and miraculously, landed on its tires and stayed there that time.
The door next to me had been broken open somehow, too, popped out by the rolling car and probably the weight and pressure on the car’s frame.
It hung dragging the ground now, creaking and swaying lightly, like a broken wing. Staring at it, I found myself glad I’d gotten the eyebolt loose before we rolled. If not, my arms probably would have been ripped out of their sockets when that door wrenched open.
For a long moment, I only lay on the floor of the back seat, behind the driver’s side chair.
Panting, I looked up at Jazzy and Hilary, pretty sure I had a concussion at that point.
Even so, I dragged myself up at once, and miraculously, found I was still holding the glass shard in my hand, so tightly that it had cut my palm for real, and blood ran down my wrist and arm and onto my jeans.
I looked forward first, to see what Evers was doing.
But he wasn’t there.
I couldn’t see him through the open door of the car, either. But the driver’s door had popped open, at some point, too...so I found myself thinking he’d probably been thrown clear once the vehicle started rolling. Or maybe before, if he’d decided to jump.
Indecisive, wondering if I should find him, first, I saw the dragon-thing outside the window and decided I wasn’t going to risk going out there right now. I turned my attention back to my teenaged charges instead. Finding the same connecting point on Jazzy’s seatbelt as I’d cut on mine, I started sawing at the thing with even more energy than I’d used on my own.
Maybe for that reason, or maybe for the better angle, I made progress almost at once, cutting through the first chunk of it in a matter of minutes and then making my way deeper through the plastic-like, nylon-y threads.
I didn’t look up until Hilary screamed.
Once I had, I couldn’t decide if I should be relieved or horrified.
18
Fighting with Dragons
Two of those dinosaur-like creatures now circled one another on that field. I didn’t use the link to find out if the second one was Nik...even then, in some half-conscious part of my mind, I didn’t want to do anything that might distract him and get him killed.
After a bare moment of hesitation, where I watched the two creatures facing off, lashing tails at one another like whips and hissing with those glass, knife-like teeth, I forced my eyes back down and went back to sawing at the seatbelt locking Jazzy to the car.
“Hey,” I told her, looking up. She stared down at me with wide eyes. “See if you can get started on hers,” I said, motioning towards Hilary with my elbow, which was also bruised b
y now and covered in blood, probably from where I’d hit the ceiling of the car.
Jazzy blinked at me, then nodded. Seconds later, I saw in my peripherals that she was feeling over the seat, looking for her own piece of glass to use as a knife.
I’d already gone back to sawing at her seatbelt with my own piece of glass.
Even so, I winced and tensed, hearing the crash of limbs outside the SUV, fighting not to look up so I wouldn’t freak out about Nik being hurt or killed.
Assuming that was even Nik.
“What are those things?”
I shook my head, not looking up, noncommittal. Instead of answering her, I asked something else. “Do you see Evers anywhere?” I glanced up, but only just. “The blond guy. The one who locked us up in here...”
I felt Jazzy tense. She looked around and although she was higher up than me, being on the seat where I was more or less kneeling on the car floor, she tried to lift herself higher, probably trying to see past the hood of the car.
“No,” she said. Fear touched her voice. “No...I don’t see him. Did he leave?”
“I think he got thrown from the car,” I said.
“Where?” she said, her voice still afraid. “Would he just leave? Run away?”
I opened my mouth to answer, when another voice cut me off, from right behind me, on the other side of that broken and hanging door.
“No,” the voice snarled, sounding like a rabid dog. “No, he didn’t leave...cunts.”
I froze, even before I’d turned my head.
I already knew, somehow, that he still had the gun. Glancing back at him, I raised my hands off where I’d been working at cutting through Jazzy’s seat belt. I still held the bloody shard in one of my handcuffed hands.
When I finally glanced back, Evers didn’t look so hot himself.
Blood ran down from under his hairline, covering one side of his face. Small pieces of glass had embedded themselves in his forehead and pitted the skin of his neck above the suit jacket. The jacket itself was stained with blood and dirt, making me think he’d been thrown from the car after all. He held his side with his free hand, and I could tell from his face he was in pain, despite the fury that eclipsed his expression.
Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two Page 26