Those Who Fall

by Rachael Arsenault

  “Hold your breath!” I unbuckled my seatbelt as I rolled down my window. Half-standing from my seat, I leaned outside the car, one palm pointed toward the pursuing green car while the other gripped desperately at the Jesus-handle. More than anything, I wished I had fire or ice or something other than poison at my disposal. But I didn’t, and no amount of wishing or whining would change that.

  So I pictured a pool of blackness in my gut, pulled it through my arm, and held on as tight as I could with my other hand while the wind whipped through my hair. A fine black mist poured from my hand, faint but still stronger than the first wisps I had managed. It was caught up in the wind, pulled away from us — away from our speeding vehicle and toward Destiny’s battered car.

  I wasn’t sure it would work. There was a long, tense second as I hung out the window, Emily swerving wildly along the road as she continued hurling curses and insults at me, Tara in the backseat shrieking and panicking. And then the smoky darkness started filtering in through the crack in Destiny’s windshield.

  Two things happened at once: Her car suddenly swerved and nearly careened into the ditch, and Emily gasped as though she had just been dunked in ice water.

  “What the—” She shook her head with a frustrated growl. “What the hell was that?”

  “Magic would be my guess,” I panted, collapsing back into my seat. My arms were shaking and I felt light-headed — but I wasn’t unconscious or paralyzed. That was an improvement.

  “I’m sorry. You know I would never—”

  “I know.” I smiled tiredly at her. “That was my first clue.”

  “That must be her power,” Tara said, voice shaking. “Messing with people’s emotions. Now we know what to brace ourselves for.”

  “Not just my emotions,” Emily said. She gave her head a shake as though there was a residual fog she was trying to clear. “It was like she took over my mind, somehow.”

  “Whatever. At least we know what powers we’re dealing with.”

  “What we don’t know is how they keep finding us,” I said.

  “Well,” Emily said, glancing at the rear-view in a paranoid sort of way, “let’s make sure we at least lose this one.”

  Chapter Eight

  My head was throbbing when I woke up, which wasn’t helped by the fact that my forehead was leaned up against the window and rattling with every bump we drove over. At some point, the strain from fighting Destiny had set in, and now I had stiff limbs and a nasty headache. It was completely dark outside, a dramatic contrast to the bright sun that had been in the sky when I dozed off. It was disorienting. How long had I slept for?

  I sat up, wincing as I rubbed at my brow and arched my back in a much-needed stretch. A few vertebrae popped.

  “Nice,” Emily said. “Have a good sleep?”

  “Good enough, I guess.”

  “You talk in your sleep.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay, you don’t. I just wanted to see how you’d react.” She smirked, glancing sideways at me. “See if you have any secrets you’re worried about spilling.”

  I rolled my eyes at her.

  “More importantly,” Tara said, leaning forward so she was almost between the two front seats, “I scryed again. Looks like Farida is settling in to camp for the night.”

  I finally glanced at the clock on the dashboard. 7:54? Damn. I’d slept two or three hours. “Okay. Sounds good. I’ll take over driving.”

  ~

  After we’d pulled over, we swapped seats. I was behind the wheel, Tara was beside me, and Emily had gone to the back. After fussing with her seatbelt and snooping around the compartments for a bit (“Emily, why is there a green rock in your glove box?”), Tara eventually conked out, head lolling to the side to rest against the window. Emily wasn’t long falling asleep after her, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  It was strange being back in the driver’s seat again. It filled me with a terrible sense of déjà vu, and a lot of unpleasant memories from my last time behind the wheel kept invading my thoughts. A high-speed chase. A dragon grabbing us in its claws…

  I tried to distract myself from the creeping unease by flicking on the radio as I cruised along the highway. It was hard to focus, though. We were back to square one with people following us, not knowing how they kept finding us or how to avoid it. Only this time none of us were especially good at fighting or defending ourselves. Emily couldn’t fight at all, though she unfortunately might actually try to, given the chance. And Tara, well… I glanced over at her. She was fast asleep. Her head lolled to the side and her mouth hung partially open, a little bit of drool on her chin. She was helpful with her scrying, but I wasn’t sure she could do much else. It was hard to believe I had ever been afraid of her.

  We wouldn’t last long like this.

  My eyes kept darting to the rear-view. No dark green car. No black car. No blue Pontiac… I shook my head. This was a mess. Every car I saw had me tensing up, ready to lash out or run or something. I didn’t even trust the road itself — not after Imani had ruptured it into battering spikes of earth.

  What would I do if they caught up to us again? Destiny we might be able to handle. But Imani? We had gotten lucky last time, plain and simple. I knew I couldn’t fight her, even in the best condition. Right now, even though I had slept since our encounter with Destiny, my arms were still stiff and sore, and I had a throbbing headache.

  It didn’t help that I barely knew where we were and only sort of knew where I was going. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say to Farida if (when) we found her.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this.” Too cliché.

  “I know what you’re going through.” Not even true.

  “I can help you get through this.” Hardly convincing, as much as I wanted it to be true.

  “Masika wouldn’t want this.” I couldn’t claim that. She knew Masika better than anyone. And bringing up her grandmother — reminding her of her grief — might just make things worse.

  My grip tightened on the steering wheel as anxiety seized my gut. God, I wished I could go home.

  “Grow up,” I muttered to myself. “You’re an adult now. This is your life. Deal with it.”

  I knew I was right. I knew dwelling and complaining and wishing things were different wouldn’t actually help matters. But it was hard to stop myself from imagining what my life could have been like right then — what it should have been like. I should have been in class. I should have been ironing out the details of my thesis. I should have been stressed about grades and due dates and remembering to pay my bills, not running for my life and trying not to get anyone else killed.

  I turned up the radio, determined to drown out my thoughts.

  The newscaster, a gravelly voiced woman, droned about stock prices, pipelines, and a car dealership in Nova Scotia closing down. I was half-listening, still obsessively checking my rear-view, but then she mentioned something that had my full attention.

  “… freak earthquakes, and one witness even claimed to see the driver throw fire.”

  I turned up the radio, heart in my throat.

  “Though the reports are scattered and inconsistent, police are still investigating this morning’s incident. Affected areas of the highway have been blocked off and traffic is being rerouted, which may affect some New Brunswickers’ commutes. When asked of their assessment thus far, police declined to comment.

  “This most recent incident follows barely more than a week after reports of a so-called ‘dragon’ causing significant damage to the Friedman Museum in downtown Fredericton, as well as sightings of a large bird that appears to be crossbred with a lion or other large cat. Police are advising residents not to feed into speculation and to let officials investigate the facts before drawing any conclusions, but many locals have expressed the opinion that there is no explanation except the obvious, however absurd it may sound.”

  I wondered if I would ever stop feeling so nauseas. It shouldn’t hav
e been surprising — of course there were witnesses. Of course police were investigating. So why did hearing it confirmed on the news make me feel like the Earth was falling out from under me?

  By then, I had reached the exit Emily had instructed me to take before falling asleep. A light rain had started, which the growing wind was trying to coax into lashing against the windshield. I gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary. Night driving already made me nervous and, even though I barely needed to turn on my wipers, the rain just made things worse. The falling leaves didn’t help, either. Red, yellow, and brown danced around me in the wind as I followed the long, curving exit onto the next section of highway. Tara grumbled from the passenger seat as the shifting gravity of the turn made her head loll to one side. The road slickened with wet leaves. I slowed to a crawl as I struggled not to slide off course. Just when I thought I had gotten the hang of driving, something came up to remind me how much I hated it.

  High beams flared to life ahead of us. I slammed the breaks, which made the car start to skid. As I fought to pull safely to the shoulder, I yelled, “Guys! Wake up! They’re back!”

  In the glare of high beams, I didn’t know who exactly “they” were, but I knew few people would be driving the wrong way on the divided highway.

  “This is getting really old,” Emily grumbled. She was leaning forward in the middle backseat, straining against her seatbelt so she could peer out between me and Tara.

  Absently, I knew I should tell her to sit back. But the other car wasn’t slowing down. It was in our lane, heading toward us—

  I grabbed hold of the quartz in my pants pocket and all but prayed. A flash, a roar, and a rush of lightheadedness answered, followed by squealing tires.

  “Don’t know how to, my ass!” Emily cried. “Good work!”

  The red-scaled dragon loomed in front of our car, its long, spiked tail coiled around us protectively. Black smoke drifted lazily from its mouth and I was glad all our windows were closed.

  I had barely registered a second of vibration when I realized my mistake. The earth heaved, throwing us sideways. Gravity rocked my body as the world turned topsy-turvy, my seatbelt locking and fighting to keep me in place. My ears filled with the deafening crunch of denting metal and shattering glass and screaming — so much screaming. Everything was a blur of screeching metal that suddenly, jarringly stopped as the car reverberated with the impact of settling back onto the ground. The world outside the shattered windshield hung sideways and my head was spinning and rolling, stomach churning so violently that I vomited on myself before I even noticed the bile burn its way up my throat. The sharp, acrid scent of my own puke hit my nose, mixing with smoke and blood and oil. My lap was full of glass. I was struggling to make sense of up from down as I stared out the not-there windshield, the ground to my right and the sky on the left. Everything ached but I felt so numb — so separate from my own body.

  The screaming hadn’t stopped. I couldn’t piece it together at first. It was high pitched and wailing and panicked.

  A hand grabbed my arm. “Emily! It’s Emily!”

  I turned, wide-eyed, to Tara, her bloodied and tear-streaked face not making any sense. But someone else was still screaming and that was when my rattled brain finally recognized the sound.

  I whipped around to look into the backseat, wincing at the pain shooting through my neck. Emily had been flung across the backseat and I realized, with a flash of horror, that she could have just as easily been catapulted out of the car. She sagged in her seat, gripping her arm and alternating between raw, wordless screams and swearing profusely.

  “Emily!” No, not her. Not like this.

  With renewed rage, I turned back to the scene in front of us. Light, misty rain blurred the world outside, as did the white smoke rising steadily from the hood. Cloaked by mist and smoke, Imani was a smudged figure stepping out of the other car. My dragon lunged, its massive, toothy jaw opening wide, ready to bite down on the vehicle. But there was a flash of blinding, brilliant light and I could only stare in open-mouthed disbelief.

  An enormous, white, reptilian creature had appeared. Its two back legs were thick and strong looking, in contrast to its spindly front legs that supported a pair of massive, leathery wings. It crawled forward on the knuckles of its forelegs, roaring in the face of my dragon. A jet of flames spewed from its mouth. I could only watch, horrified, as my dragon crouched low to the ground, crying out as it was skimmed by the fire.

  Then the other dragon shimmered and, in another burst of light, was gone. Behind where it had stood, Imani collapsed to her hands and knees. That man she travelled with was out of the car and rushing around to her side. A new spark of anger lit in my chest and my dragon reacted; it shot forward, grabbing the car in its jaws, rearing up as it crushed the vehicle with a shriek of protesting metal, shaking its head wildly. It tossed the ruined car toward the ditch.

  “Emily!” I turned, scrambling to reach her. My seatbelt locked. I couldn’t breathe. Injury? Or panic? I didn’t know. She was still crying and swearing. Tara was crying, too.

  ‘We need a healer, we need a healer, we need—’

  Farida was so far away, and we couldn’t drive anymore, and the grey fog of over-exertion was clawing at the edges of my vision.

  “I’m okay,” Emily panted unconvincingly. “Think it’s just my shoulder.”

  “Get us out of this car!” Tara screamed.

  “How?!” I snapped.

  “I don’t know! Just do it!”

  The dragon had moved back over, seeming to sense my need. The familiar, frightening black mist was still issuing from its snout with every exhale.

  “Just… keep your distance,” I told it. (It? Him. The strange thread of magic between us told me “him”.) “And help us get out of here.”

  The beast stepped back, turned away, and then stretched his tail toward us. The hooked tip caught on the edge of the shattered window. He pulled and, after a few rocky attempts, managed to haul us back onto all four wheels.

  “Oh, fuck,” Emily choked. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

  And she did. Spectacularly. Out her broken window and all over the side of the car.

  “God damn it! My car’s completely ruined.”

  “Is the puke really the breaking point on that?” Tara asked shakily.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I murmured as I opened my door and staggered onto the wet pavement. Tiny, glittering shards of glass clung to my puke-soaked sweater, but I hardly noticed any of that.

  My dragon had backed up, keeping a careful distance as I limped over to the smouldering wreck that was Imani’s car. There were deep punctures through it from the dragon’s teeth and it had been crushed like an empty pop can. Glass from its windows were scattered all over the road, glinting like a thousand tiny diamonds in the moonlight. I was glad we hadn’t encountered any other drivers on this stretch of the highway.

  I limped over to where Imani’s car had been before it was destroyed and tossed aside like garbage. As I walked, I could sense my dragon watching me, could feel him waiting for me to command him. It was strange and daunting, but also somehow comforting.

  I slowed to a stop. There was no sign of Imani or the guy she had been traveling with. The woods loomed dark and impenetrable across the ditch and I knew that must have been their easiest escape. But there was no way I was in any shape to follow.

  Emily was hurt. And Farida…

  We needed to find Farida. For our own good and for hers.

  “It might—” Emily broke off with a gasp as she struggled to get out of the mangled car door. She managed it, with Tara’s help, and then paused to lean heavily against the car with her left arm. Her right arm hung unnaturally from its socket. Panting, she continued, “It might technically drive — most of the damage is to the doors and windows — but I wouldn’t trust it. I’d need to have a really good look under the hood, but, well…” She gestured to her injured arm.

  “So we’re stranded?” Tara ask
ed, her voice squeaking to an uncharacteristically high pitch. She was shivering, and I didn’t think it was from the chill of the rain.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” I said, hurrying back over to them (well, as best as I could — I could feel the bruising to my left leg with every step).

  Unbelievably, Emily shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s just my shoulder.”

  “You are not fine!”

  “What do I need my right arm for right now? Nothing!”

  “You don’t know that that’s your only injury!”

  “She has a point,” Tara said, earning a glare from Emily.

  To me, Emily said, “Look, if I’m going to a hospital to get checked out, then so are you.”

  “It’s just some bruising. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t know if that’s your only injury,” Emily said in a poor imitation of my earlier tone.

  “Guys,” Tara said, moving to stand in between us, hands up placatingly. “Let’s not fight right now, okay? You’re both right — we need to go to the hospital. All of us.”

  Emily scoffed and said in a flat voice, “You don’t look very hurt.”

  Tara pointed wordlessly to a cut on her forehead, which had already stopped bleeding.

  “Okay,” I said tiredly as I pushed my wet hair from my face. “I’ll humour you. Why, exactly, are you so against going to the hospital, Emily?”

  “Because either you guys drop me off outside the hospital and run off, or you come with me and you”—she gave me a very pointed look—“get recognized and arrested. I’m not being left behind and I’m not risking your freedom. So we’re not going to the hospital.”

  I stared at her, considering her words. She wasn’t wrong. As much as I wanted her to get to a doctor, I knew going to the hospital myself could only end in disaster. But was it a bad thing if Emily had to step down from helping me deal with this madness?