Five

by Christie Rich

  We trudged along a lone stretch of Wyoming highway. The newness of our trip had swiftly worn to raw-edged fatigue. I was going to have to wake Cassie up soon. Even if I could manage the weight of my eyelids, I couldn’t shake the dread that had attached to my spine ten miles ago.

  Icy gooseflesh erupted across my neck, skittering down my entire body like a million frosty spiders. I shrugged off a shiver before I checked the rear view mirror again. No monsters lurked in the back seat with the sole desire of making me their next juicy snack, so why did I feel like Satan himself was stalking me? And to make things even better, my horrendous scar picked this exact moment to sprout sensation. I found it odd that the usually—void of any kind of feeling—jagged patch of skin suddenly wouldn’t stop itching. Having the thing erupt with sensitivity for the first time since my horse riding accident seven years ago was more than a little weird, but it wasn’t as though I had a doctor on hand to do an impromptu exam.

  Cassie rested against the passenger door, blissfully sleeping away. I stretched my hand toward her, but pulled back just before I touched her shoulder. No way was I going to wake her again because of my absurd paranoia. This trip didn’t need me complicating it to make it unbearable. My fear of the dark would not cripple me anymore. Hopefully St. Mary’s offered counseling.

  Out of nowhere, a thunderous rumble shattered the milky silence, sending a quiver through my bones. Even though the empty dawn had greeted me in the mirror moments before, a motorcycle rocketed toward us. Where had he come from? I shook my head and took a calming breath. It was just a stupid motorcycle. No need to panic.

  I expected him to zoom by, but he matched my pace instead. The bike zigzagged haphazardly in the lane as if the driver was loaded. Great, just what we needed.

  I honestly wouldn’t have cared if he did wheelies behind me if he hadn’t been centimeters from my bumper. Why was he craning his neck in my direction?

  He flashed his lights repeatedly as if I was hogging the entire road. My car wasn’t that big. I rolled my eyes and inched closer to the shoulder. When my tires hit the rumble-strip, I jumped. He had plenty of room to pass. No other vehicles were in sight. What was he waiting for?

  Even if Aunt Grace had miraculously figured out what I was doing, she wasn’t ridiculous enough to send this lunatic to bring me home. What could he possibly want from me?

  If I had more than noodles for a backbone at the moment, I would have pulled over to see what the heck was wrong with him. I sped up instead. I was weaponless—like it would have helped if I had an entire arsenal in my car. You sort of have to know how to use a gun for it to do you any good. I was not stopping. He could be a rapist or a serial killer.

  My entire frame quaked under the reality that this man was most certainly trying to get me to stop. I shook my head and motioned for him to go around me. I slowed down, sped up, gunned it, took the other lane, but the jerk wouldn’t back off no matter what I did.

  Something I hadn’t considered hit me. What if he was in trouble?

  After a moment of hesitation, I shoved the thought aside. It was too risky to stop. This wasn’t the Sixties. Besides, his bike worked fine from where I sat.

  I took a deep breath then clutched the steering wheel harder, and moved the car back into the center of the lane where it belonged. Biker dude would just have to pass me. Eventually he’d get sick of hanging onto my tail end. All I had to do was wait him out.

  I just wished the butterflies in my stomach would chill. A strange urge to stop the car bombarded me like a repeating alarm. I would have sworn on a Bible this dude was secretly weaving puppet-strings around me; it was all I could do to keep my foot on the gas. Worse was the barrage of absurd thoughts swirling in my head about the stranger.

  I hadn’t even really seen him, but in my mind I was neatly tucked behind him on that beast of a motorcycle. The vision grew into something almost tangible. The heat from his body warmed me while the wind whipped my hair around us. I leaned closer to him, inhaling spice and man. Even the daydream of him smelled divine.

  My foot tapped the brake, slowing the car down. Cassie gave a slight groan, snapping me back to reality.

  What was I doing? Vivid couldn’t come close to describing this fantasy. No one should have that kind of power over me.

  My back stiffened automatically, determination welling up in my heart. He wasn’t going to terrorize me an instant longer. A calming sensation washed over me, threatening to steal my will. Something about this guy was off.

  I stomped the brakes, hard. He was either going around me—or over the car.

  He was next to me in a nanosecond.

  Cassie woke up with a startled yelp. “Rayla, what are you—what the hell?” She jumped away from me as though I were ablaze.

  I turned toward bike guy to see what had freaked her out so badly. He should have been six miles ahead of us by now from the speed he’d been going. Maybe she had the same tantalizing snapshots rolling around her mind and wanted to call him back?

  The minute my eyes locked with the scene next to me, I screamed. Instinctively, I jerked away from the thing, no longer resembling a motorcycle, next to my car. The back end fishtailed, but I managed to correct us before I gunned it. I looked again, sure I had imagined whatever that was.

  It was still there. I blinked several times to dislodge the image. Nothing changed.

  Instead of seeing chrome and leather, flank and sinew of what looked like horseflesh rode beside me, black as midnight, taut as a cord. The low flap of an enormous, obsidian feathered wing sent a shudder through me. I was losing it. I was totally losing it. Was I dreaming? Had I fallen asleep at the wheel, and was I even now careening toward a gruesome death?

  The only sound louder than the roar of the motorcycle was Cassie’s chant of, “It is not there,” which oddly enough did not comfort me. She gave a final scream before she covered her eyes with trembling fingers. I wished I had that option.

  The creature was colossal, bigger than all the horses I had ever seen. He was the stuff of legend.

  A pegasus was supposed to be white. This monstrosity was deeper black than a bottomless pit. Smoke billowed forth from his nostrils as though he had a fiery furnace for innards, while a purplish-black glow radiated from him.

  After every thrust of his gargantuan wings, my car veered. I had been going nearly a hundred miles-per-hour, yet the thing kept up as if we were out for a scenic drive.

  The rider was a mammoth of a man, suited in what looked like leather armor. His jacket strained under bulging muscles as though the seams would burst. A helmet blocked any view of his face, but his head was turned toward me. Ghostly white knuckles gripped the handlebars.

  Wait, what happened to the pegasus? A breath before, a mythical beast rode next to us: one that could have only escaped from the depths of Hades. Now, an ordinary motorcycle flanked my car.

  Well, ordinary was not right. The chrome gleamed in the dim light as though it were alive. Once again absurd thoughts about that man and motorcycle stole my mind. I ached to settle into the supple black leather while I curled my fingers around the high-set handlebars. Even from here, the rumble of the powerful engine shook my entire frame. Still, it was only a bike.

  I refused to analyze the intrusive images of the mysterious stranger, especially because I wouldn’t have minded if he scooted back a bit to give me some room.

  I reacted to him on a cellular level, as if he was a new source of gravity and I a wayward comet. An emotion I didn’t want to recognize stirred underneath my overpowering fear: undeniable need. My mind screamed at me to pull a one-eighty to get away from him yet my body craved to get closer to the stranger. I felt as though I were his somehow.

  I didn’t like it one bit. I was not the type of girl to lose her brain over a guy. I couldn’t even see his face, but I wanted to. In fact, the curiosity left me feeling cheated.

  Cassie kept her gaze locked blindly forward as if nothing abnormal was happening. I wished I could be so calm.
The specter of insanity loomed close by me, ready to strike at any moment.

  The man cocked his head to the side, saluted me.

  Then bike, rider…everything just disappeared into the hot night air.

  This time when I hit the brakes, the car skidded wildly to a stop. I craned my neck in all the unnatural angles I could manage. He was gone. What the heck? Had a trap door in the road swallowed him?

  I pummeled the steering wheel to ease the tension welling in my heart. The loss of him surrounded me still. How could I lose something I never had? How could a stranger cause such a deep reaction from me? What was that thing he’d been riding? Where did he go? Was he there in the darkness, waiting for me?

  “Bum-scum!” I shouted into the night. My shrill words hung momentarily in the air before shattering into silence. I shoved my hands through my hair and squeezed my eyes shut.

  Cassie shifted in her seat. The aged leather let out a shadow of the groan I currently had caged. I glanced over at her.

  Her gaze locked onto mine before she licked the side of her mouth and sighed. “I wish you’d swear like a normal person, Rayla.” Her tone held and irritation that conflicted with her placid expression. “That is so disgusting.”

  I gawked at her. “Are you really razzing me about my cursing habits now?”

  Her full lips pursed before she gave me a faint smile. “This seems as good of a time as any.”

  Wait. What was going on here? She saw him, and she saw that thing. There was no way she would have screamed the way she did from seeing an ordinary guy. What was she doing? This was the worst time I could think of for her to start messing with me. I shook my head. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe she needed a little reminder. “You don’t find anything odd about being run down by a man on a motorcycle that turns into a pegasus and back again just before he disappears?” I frantically searched the sky again. “Where did he go?”

  She seemed to be trying for casual indifference, but fear transmuted her normally delicate features into a mousy mask. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I smirked, narrowing my eyes at her. I could only guess what was going through her mind right now, but there was no way she was going to make me think I hallucinated that thing. “So when did ‘it is not there’ become your new mantra?”

  Her fingers worried the bright white seam of her dark designer jeans. She shot a glance at me but barely made eye contact before she looked out the window again. “Rayla, drop it. We’re fine. He’s gone.” She shrugged. “You should be happy.”

  “Happy?” I choked out. “I just had a real hell’s angel chase me down, and you’re acting as if he was a dorky date!” A maelstrom of emotions swirled throughout my body. My heart pummeled my ribs. My breath came in halted gasps. Rivulets of sweat trickled down my back as though I had run twenty miles. If that wasn’t bad enough, my right front tire perched on the gravel shoulder. A few more inches would have sent us plummeting onto the endless sea of sagebrush below the high desert highway. I grunted. “Was he a figment of our collective imagination?”

  “Maybe he—”

  I refused to let her explain this away. “Come on, Cassie. I know you saw the thing so don’t bother denying it. That guy was weird. Did he make you feel strange, like you knew him or something?” Like he was your prince charming come to collect you from the real world?

  She looked out the window, but I still caught her grimace. “Could we just get moving again? We’re going to be late, or would you rather go back to Snow?”

  Snow College was in the opposite direction. I was not turning around. She’d already given up her chance to change her mind. “You’re actually telling me you didn’t see a pegasus?” Why would she have acted like that otherwise?

  She slapped her hand against her thigh, startling me. “Mythical creatures are just that. They do not exist!”

  I would have agreed with her ten minutes before, but that beast and rider would forever haunt me. I was pretty sure, even with my imagination, that I couldn’t have come up with something like that on my own. How had he disappeared?

  A tiny part of me had hoped to see the guy fly through the air for affecting me that much—only without the aid of his demon mount. I needed to make it clear to him, and more importantly myself, exactly who had control over my body.

  I had never liked the dark. Now I had an actual reason to distrust the inky hours that had always brought a shiver of trepidation to my spine. I had expected my maiden voyage away from home to be full of excitement but nothing like this.

  There was no point in arguing in the middle of the highway. Cassie was right. We needed to get going. We had a lot to get settled before school started and this subject would be one of those things we’d sort through, hopefully before we actually arrived on campus.

  I shoved my fingers under my shirt to scratch my scar again. I needed to stop, but I couldn’t. It was already raw. What the heck was wrong with me? Could this trip get any worse?