by Alan Marble
Rebekah guided the car down a couple of turns before coming to a stop in front of an otherwise unremarkable home, situated on a row of likewise unremarkable homes. Except for the striking red color of the earth that surrounded them, the neighborhood looked like it could have been in any residential neighborhood. Stepping out of the car and glancing around, Jonah thought that the view might have been somewhat nicer in good weather; the homes were situated on a bluff that overlooked a lake in the distance.
“Come on, I don’t want to stand here all day and get soaked,” Rebekah said in a slightly annoyed fashion. The rain had picked up a little and had reached a moderate drizzle, so the pair made their way up the little walkway and huddled onto a cramped porch while she rang the doorbell.
Waiting for a response, Jonah stuffed his hands in his pockets, more chilled than he thought he should be in the desert. “Why here?”
“What do you mean?” Rebekah turned to look at him, ringing the doorbell again when there was no immediate answer.
“Why here? Why would someone pick a place like this to live?” He glanced around the neighborhood again, feeling slightly chagrined at the fact that one of the neighbors might have overheard him. “Kind of in the middle of nowhere.”
With a shrug, she rang the doorbell once more. “How should I know? You’re going to have to ask him. Some folks don’t like living in the big city, you know. It can be pretty nice out here, what with the lake and all. Besides, I think he runs some kind of business here.” Pausing to crane her neck, trying to peek in the window, she pulled the screen door open and rapped on the door. “Jeff? You home?”
Jonah shrugged his shoulders again. Perhaps she was right, but he could not imagine living in such a small town, so far away from everything else. It was just too quiet here for his tastes. “Maybe he’s at work, then.”
“Not unless he walked,” she said, motioning to an old beat up truck sitting in the driveway, turning to knock on the door again. “Besides, it’s getting a little late in the day to be out working, don’t you think?”
“How should I know? Doesn’t seem like he’s home, either way.”
“Maybe. Probably. Doubt he’s gone far though,” she murmured, giving the doorknob an experimental twist. When the door popped open, she managed a wry smile. “I’m sure he won’t mind us waiting inside, not when it’s all cold and wet …”
Her voice trailed off when the door was pushed open to reveal that the interior of the home was completely trashed. Potted plants that had stood near the doorway had been overturned, the soil scattered in every direction. The face of a nearby grandfather clock had been shattered, and several of the chairs surrounding the table in the adjoining formal dining room were tossed about, while the china cabinet next to it had fallen onto the table, spilling now shattered dishes all over the place.
“Oh my god,” Rebekah whispered softly, drawing her hand to her face, her eyes going wide. After a moment of standing in shock, she bolted across the entry way and through an arched passage into the living room, her voice rising to a shout. “Jeff! Jeffress?”
Jonah followed behind, not giving any thought to closing the door behind him. Rounding the corner into the living room he saw that it, too, showed signs of something violent having taken place. A large, flat screen television had been broken nearly in half as if something rather heavy had been thrown right into it, pushing it against the wall with enough force to cause the wall to cave in slightly. Parts of both of the couches had been shredded, slashed apart with the padding spilling out, cushions left haphazardly across the floor. A glass coffee table had been wrecked, and the curtains on the windows had been either torn or pulled down.
“Jesus Christ. It looks like someone let a wild animal go to town,” he muttered under his breath, turning to look at Rebekah.
To his surprise, she was kneeling on one knee, near where the kitchen was. The wall near where she stood looked blackened and charred, as if a fire had been set and put out before taking the whole house down. The charred wall was not what had her attention, however; she was looking at the ground. When he moved over, glancing over her shoulder to see, he was at first confused by the strange brown colored stain on the ground. Until he realized what it was.
Without looking up, Rebekah began to speak. “Well. He put up a good fight,” she said, reaching forward and gingerly touching her fingers to the spot on the ground, leaning over to inhale. “It’s not his. Not very fresh, either. Two, three days at least.”
“What … what happened?” Jonah felt a little stunned, looking around again, suddenly feeling as if the home might still be unsafe.
“I can’t say for certain.” After a moment, Rebekah pulled herself to her feet, looking around with a sober expression. “They must have found him. No idea how, but they found him. Gods. And there was a hell of a fight. There were at least two of them. Maybe three,” she pondered aloud, brushing her fingers against the scorch mark on the wall and turning to glance into the kitchen.
Pots and pans were strewn about wildly, cupboards opened, some of them torn clean from their hinges. “They? Who are they?”
“The Syndicate. Or their goons, at least. Probably caught him at the door. Fought them off pretty good, drew blood back there in the living room. See, you can see where the wounded attacker bled his way into here,” she said, pointing at a series of browns splotches that led into the kitchen, marring the tile floor. “Quite a bit, too. Jeff got him pretty good.”
Jonah still felt uneasy about the home. It was too quiet inside, and too quiet outside, no sounds except for their own breathing and the steady patter of raindrops on the roof. He half expected to see the dark haired maniac that had been pursuing him jump out of the shadows at any moment. “And … your friend, Jeff? Is he …”
Rebekah turned to look at him a little skeptically. “Dead? Maybe. It’s hard to say. One, maybe two of them and he’d have a chance. But these weren’t just bull drakes. These were a different breed, more feral, quicker, nastier. It could have been a hit, but they might have been here to take him alive. Here, look,” she said, pointing to a sliding glass door that had been shattered open, the hanging blinds swaying slightly in the breeze from outside.
There were obvious signs that the fight had made its way outside. There were several large divots in the lawn just outside of the door, a set of lawn chairs were overturned and tossed about. If there had been any blood stains on the ground here, however, the rain had surely washed them away. “Maybe he fought them off and got away?”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t immediately dismissive of the possibility, but as the rain was already beginning to wet her hair, she took a step back inside of the house, choosing instead to look outside from the dry safety within. “Anything is possible, but if he’d made it out he’d have contacted us. They took the elder alive, so maybe they took Jeff alive, too.”
A part of Jonah still wanted to disbelieve what was going on. His life had been normal, dull even, only a few days before, but he had since witnessed the death of a friend, been accused of murder, dragged across the country only to be told he was a dragon. Now he found himself thousands of miles from home in a house that had been ransacked, signs of a bloody fight all around him.
What could have been signs of claw marks, of dragon fire blasting a wall, he could dismiss those in other ways. Knife fights, an attempt to burn evidence, things of the sort. Supernatural or not, however, he had been dragged into something big, something sinister. It was no dream, and he would have to deal with it somehow.
He just didn’t know how. Sighing, he closed his eyes. “Now what?”
“Well, I’ve definitely got to tell the others,” she said, stepping further into the kitchen and away from the chill that was seeping in through the broken doorway. “They’ve got to know what is happening. Somehow the Syndicate is finding us, tracking us down, and the others might be in danger.”
“And your meeting? Convocation, or whatever you called it?”
Breathin
g in deeply, she seemed to square her shoulders and calm herself down a little. “Well that simply has to go on. Come on, let’s get going.”
“Right now?” Jonah almost gasped at the thought, and instinctively put himself in front of her to keep her from charging off. “Look. You’ve been driving all day. And all day before that. You’ve got to be exhausted. I’m sure there’s a place in town here we can stay for the night …”
“Not necessary. I can go a long time without sleep.”
He shook his head, defiantly. “No. You’ve said that before, and it might be true, but you look tired. I can see it in your eyes. Come on, at least a few hours rest.”
She did look tired, and his pointing it out seemed to make it somehow more obvious. Her red hair was drooping around her face, her eyes dull and sporting a pair of dark, heavy circles. Nodding, sighing in resignation, she let her expression drop a little bit as well. “I suppose you’re right. But no hotels. We may as well just stay here for now.”
“What?” Suddenly he was regretting his insistence on delaying the trip, looking back over his shoulder into the relatively ominous darkness inside the house. “I mean, are you certain it’s safe?”
Without answering right away, she stepped past him and into an unlit hallway. Flicking the switch on, the light revealed that the hall seemed to show no real sign of damage, the carpet unmarred and the doors all closed and intact. “They’d have no need to stay here, or come back here. Even if they’ve been tracking us, it’d take them a while to act. We can relax here for a few hours, anyway,” she muttered, pushing one of the doors open and pointing inside.
It appeared to be a guest bedroom, made up neatly and not obviously used in a little while. With a wry grin, she turned on down the hallway. “You rest up, too, but since I’m driving I’m gonna use the comfy bed.”
Again, he found himself wanting to protest. Something about the way she got over the shock of seeing the house in disarray, at the possibility of her friend being kidnapped - or worse - seemed too cavalier for him. The way that she felt comfortable inviting herself to the home seemed callous. There was a certain logic to it, but Jonah wasn’t sure he felt comfortable with that logic.
Regardless, the room did look comfortable and he did suddenly feel tired. Luxury seating or not, sleeping in a car was only so restful and his bones ached to lie down in a proper bed. As he slipped beneath the blankets to warm himself up, the steady patter of rain on the roof lulled him rather quickly into a deep and needed rest.
#
The respite had been too short and not nearly sweet enough, and when Rebekah had come to rouse him Jonah felt a bit cheated. He had been lost in welcome dreams, back at home in the Florida sunshine, cruising along the highway on his motorcycle, the warm waters of the Atlantic swelling lazily to one side, tourists and local beach bums in scanty clothing sprawled out in the sand soaking up the rays.
Night had once more fallen, but the rain that had been falling when he dozed off had not abated. If anything it had graduated to a heavy and steady downpour, the constant dancing of raindrops on the roof transforming from a gentle and soothing rhythm to an almost annoying sort of buzz over his ears.
Standing at the doorway and peering unhappily into the night, the two of them seemed to be gauging the distance to the car parked along the side of the road, trying to decide on whether or not it would be worth the effort to run. “I thought this was the desert,” Jonah muttered unhappily, sticking a hand out into the rain experimentally, pulling it back rather wet.
“Even the desert gets rain sometimes. Apparently sometimes a lot,” she responded a with a crooked little smile, shrugging her shoulders. “Come on. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to let up anytime soon.”
Jonah had decided to make a break for it, dashing across the yard and into the car as quickly as he could, but still wound up quite soaked for his efforts. When Rebekah fired the engine up she flicked the heater on to get it going, and, much to Jonah’s delight, the seats themselves began to warm up. “I think I could get used to this kind of luxury,” he said with a faint grin.
“Tell me about it,” she replied, smiling as well, flicking the windshield wipers on.
“So. How much farther is it to … where were we going again?”
“Lake Tahoe,” she responded, putting the car into gear and glancing behind to make sure there was no oncoming traffic before pulling out into the road. “Something like twelve hours.”
Realizing that he did not know what time it was, Jonah peeked at the console and found the clock. Nearly a quarter after nine; it was going to be another one of those all nighters. “Any reason we couldn’t have just stayed till morning?”
“Don’t want to be late. Besides, I’m feeling pretty refreshed. Dunno about you,” she said, still smiling, her voice taking on something of a perky quality to it. She was very obviously teasing him.
Briefly he was tempted to make some kind of snarky comment about it. She did seem to always be more positive than she should be. Even when they were being chased by someone, even when she had just seen the home of a friend torn apart, its owner gone missing. He had no idea how she could continue to smile in a situation like that, and part of him wanted to think that there was something wrong with that kind of attitude.
Even so, he realized, he wished that he could do the same. He had led a fairly easy, if uneventful life. He had little to be so sour about, and most every reason to be a more happy person. Hell, he could have considered the last few days the kind of adventure that he had always wanted but never worked up the gusto to actually undertake.
He also realized that she looked considerably nicer wearing a smile, quite attractive, really. It was not the first time the thought had crossed his mind, bringing with it a somewhat uncomfortable mix of emotion. As soon as it surfaced he dismissed it by shaking his head and glancing out the window into the night.
The wipers moved back and forth, thump-thumping in their steady rhythm, the sheets of rain falling fast enough to keep them busy. Small puddles had formed along the sides of the roads, forcing Rebekah and the rest of the light traffic to keep their speeds down. They passed a couple of shops, dark and closed up for the night, before finding their way back to the main road, passing a couple of small, older hotels before the road turned and wound its way down a short but steep bluff, hooking up with the highway once again.
From here Jonah could make out the sight of the dam nearby, holding back the significant weight of the lake behind it. It was too dark to see the lake, itself, but the dam was illuminated, the top of it easily visible, though the bulk of it was hidden away in a deep gorge. Craning his neck a little, he spoke up again. “That Hoover Dam?”
“Nah. That’s closer to Vegas. This one is … uhm. I can’t remember what this one is called,” she confessed, shrugging her shoulders.
As the road dropped down the bluff his view of the dam diminished, until he could barely see the top of it lit. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You’ll get a better view of it from the bridge. Heck, I could stop and let you walk out … well. If it weren’t raining so hard.”
Stopping for a moment to let some traffic pass by, Rebekah turned the car along down the highway and in the direction where the dam was at. He had not noticed it before, but there was a bridge just in front of the dam spanning the gorge. It was obviously their destination.
Signs just shy of the bridge warned of a slower speed, and Rebekah obliged, particularly in light of the heavy rain that was coming down. As they crossed from solid ground onto the bridge Jonah again craned his head, trying to get a better look of the dam, which seemed to glow a brilliant white, lit up as it was against the dark of the night. Even from this vantage point he could not see all the way down to the bottom, realizing that it must have been hundreds of feet from here to the river below. The thought of it suddenly made him feel a little dizzy. “Damn. That’s a long ways down.”
“Hey. No ‘damn’ jokes when we’re b
y the dam, ok?”
The little attempt at humor made him smile, and he turned to look at her with a bit of a chuckle. As he turned his head, though, a flash of light ahead caught his attention, a vehicle pulling onto the bridge from the opposite side, a big tractor trailer. The bridge was fairly long, perhaps a quarter mile, but not so far that Jonah couldn’t tell the truck seemed to be moving a lot quicker than the posted signs allowed. “Looks like someone is in a hurry.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, her voice lined with something like concern, her grip on the wheel tightening some. Her concern seemed to be warranted, however, as the truck crossed the gap disturbingly fast, halfway across the bridge already and, it seemed, picking up speed along the way. Abruptly the truck shifted lanes, swerving in front of them, tires beginning to squeal. “Shit!”
It all seemed to happen very quickly. Jonah watched with a strangely detached sense of horror as the big truck swerved wildly into their lane and then back into the other one, quick enough that the trailer behind it whipped around like a wagging tail, blocking their path. Rebekah slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel of their car to the side, skidding, trying to stop, but Jonah knew that it was far, far too late.
In the fraction of a second before the trailer hit, Jonah thought he got a good look at the driver of the truck. Big, broad shouldered, with dark hair and a sinister expression. He’d seen that face before. Far too many times.
The impact jolted the car with enough force to nearly tear him from the seat in spite of the belt that he was wearing. Airbags suddenly appeared in front of him and to his side, keeping his head from slapping angrily against the window of the door, but they were not enough to keep him from being whipped around like a rag doll in his seat. The sound of crunching metal and shattering glass - along with a scream that came either from him or Rebekah, he could not be sure - assailed his ears. His view out the front window was briefly obscured by the airbag, leaving him bereft of any visual cues, but he knew that the car was tipping over, on its side, then to its back. Loose items in the car flew past him as it rolled, his arms flipping up over his head and then whipping back down again as inertia carried them, whipped him around, left him flailing.
