by S. R. Witt
Chase considered gunning the van, slamming it into the bonfire, and crushing the bodies of the Sleepers into their vehicles. But Sarah was right. More Sleepers were converging on their location, like hunting hounds drawn to the scent of blood. Chase realized she could see their auras if she concentrated. There were far too many yellows mixed in with the whites and greens.
The Sleepers behind the bonfire raised their rifles to their shoulders and took aim.
“Goddammit,” Chase snarled. She twisted the van’s wheel and shoved the accelerator in. The van sloughed around, its rear wheels leaving a smoking circle of burning rubber on the road.
A rifle roared, and a moment later the windshield in front of Chase was crazed with cracks around a bullet hole.
The night filled with the roar of engines as more expensive cars joined the chase. Rifles barked, and bullets ricocheted off the van’s body.
“They knew we were coming,” Chase growled. “They were ready for us.” She clung to the wheel for dear life as the van bounced over the bump where the crude pavement turned to gravel on the road out of Crucible, sliding back and forth as the wheels struggled to maintain traction. She glanced in the rearview, and saw a train of cars chasing after them. While there were enough cars on her tail to be a serious problem, Chase was more worried about what she didn’t see. If the Sleepers had known Chase was coming into town, they might all be converging on her location. She needed to switch roads, soon. “Hang on, we’re going to have to take some evasive action.”
At a narrow intersection, Chase whipped the wheel to the left, and sent the van into a dangerous drift around the corner. The Dodge tilted, and slammed back onto all four wheels, leaving a smoking trail of rubber from the rear tires. The vehicle lumbered forward, grumbling down the wider country road, but it was no speed demon. The cars behind it were much nimbler and clung to Chase's tail with ease.
“I'm going to try something, but you have to take the wheel,” Chase told Sarah.
The librarian's eyes went wide as dinner plates, and she shook her head. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“You did fine on the hill. Just keep the van on the road, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Chase eased out of her seat, keeping her hands on the wheel. Sarah hesitated, but Chase's glare got her moving. The girl slid under Chase's arms, took the wheel, and put her hand on the accelerator. “I hope you know what you're doing,” she told Chase.
“Yeah, me too,” Chase shot back. She ducked down and moved into the shifting shadows in the rear of the van. She needed to be entirely out of sight to use her new ability from the Phantasm power.
Chase closed her eyes.
“Here goes everything,” she whispered and activated her new Horrifying Apparition ability.
Time slowed to a glacial crawl. Chase's view of the world shot up as if she were a bird soaring high overhead. From her aerial viewpoint, she saw the road was only wide enough to allow cars to drive single file. There was no way those Mercedes and Jaguars could leave the road without tearing their undercarriages to shreds. If Chase could somehow stop one of her pursuers, the others wouldn't be able to get around the wreck to catch up to the Caravan.
Chase focused her attention on the Sleepers in the car closest to the van. Their auras glowed a vibrant yellow.
“Ready or not, motherfuckers,” she whispered, “here I come.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Car Wars
Chase’s body flew apart like a flock of spectral ravens startled by a gunshot. One moment she was in the van, the next she was scattered through time and space aware of everything and nothing at the same time. Then she was in the backseat of a Mercedes E-Class, grinning at the black-masked driver in the rearview mirror.
Holy shit, Chase thought, it worked.
The driver was frozen with terror, unable to move or even speak. It reminded Chase of the old slasher movies she’d seen, where the killer appeared out of the darkness to catch the teens by surprise.
“Trick or Treat!” Chase shouted. She reached past the driver with her left hand, and the knife appeared in her grip. Chase yanked the blade straight back. There was a strange slithery sound followed by the hollow pop of cartilage separating, and finally the crunch of bone being chopped through. The driver's head lolled to the side, as a fountain of blood gushed from his neck and sprayed onto the window. A bump in the road jarred the severed head’s precarious balance and it fell into the passenger's lap.
The passenger, momentarily stunned by his partner's death, stared helplessly at the head. A keening scream erupted from behind the Sleeper’s mask.
A dark thrill ran through Chase’s body as the dead driver’s yellow aura faded and three spirit orbs settled into her pattern. She drank in the bloody excitement, and it goaded her to continue the cycle of violence.
Chase grabbed the driver's headrest with her left hand and lunged forward to attack the passenger. She slammed her right elbow into the man’s temple, smashing his head against the window to his right. The Sleeper went limp, and his chin fell onto his chest. “So far, so good,” Chase mumbled to herself.
She grabbed the wheel with her right hand, keeping the Mercedes steady on the road. With her left hand, Chase slashed through the driver’s seatbelt with her bloody knife.
Leaning between the headless driver and the steering wheel, Chase hooked her knife’s curved tip inside the door handle. A quick yank popped the latch, and the door flew open. Chase let her weapon vanish and used her left hand to pull on the driver's blood-soaked collar.
The driver’s corpse tilted to the left and then slid out of the car to bounce off the road with a meaty thwack. The body tumbled down the road, and the gravel surface chewed ugly holes through its skin. A split second later, a silver Tesla plowed over the shredded sack of meat, splattering it like a blood bag piñata.
Without the driver's foot on the gas, the Mercedes began to slow. Chase pulled herself through the gap between the seats to situate herself behind the wheel and was just getting her foot on the accelerator when the passenger recovered from having his head hammered off the window. He drew a snubnosed revolver and pointed it at the side of Chase’s head.
“Fuck you!” he screamed and squeezed the trigger.
Chase howled a curse as she ducked away from the shot. The bullet missed her head but plowed into her shoulder, where it took a quick detour around the bony joint and exploded through the thin skin above her collarbone. More blood sprayed across the windshield, hiding it behind a sticky red veil. She could still make out the van's taillights ahead of her, but the rest of the view was obscured by blood.
Chase's arm dropped to her side, nerveless and loose.
“This is my favorite jacket,” Chase roared. She twisted behind the wheel and lunged at the passenger.
He was preparing to fire again, but Chase’s sudden attack was faster than his finger on the trigger.
Chase’s knife slipped between the passenger’s ribs on the right side of his sternum. She dug the knife in, ripping the blade through the Sleeper’s lungs and heart. Chase hooked the knife’s extractor tip around the passenger’s sternum and then yanked it free to reveal the glistening ends of his shattered breastbone and the pulped remains of his thoracic organs.
The rush of spirit orbs flooding into her talisman drew a long, shuddering sigh from deep inside Chase. She’d always been an adrenaline junkie, but the thrill of mortal combat and the gushing power of the kill was beyond anything she’d ever experienced. It was as if she’d spent her whole life thirsting for something without knowing what she was missing. She closed her eyes and reveled in the deaths of her foes for just a moment.
Chase never saw the fallen log blocking a quarter of the road. The Mercedes’ left bumper slammed into the dead tree with a sound like the world’s biggest spoon falling into a giant’s garbage disposal. Shards of wood and twisted curls of tattered metal bounced under the car amid a flurry of bright orange and yellow sparks. The impact swung t
he Mercedes’ nose hard to the left, and the sedan spun out of control.
Oh, Chase thought, as the Mercedes rotated through a sharp half circle to face the oncoming Sleepers, shit.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Berserk
A gleaming silver Tesla Model S slammed into the Mercedes’ grill, forcing the electric car’s tapered nose down and into the pavement. The electric car’s bumper disintegrated and flung shards of fiberglass spinning in every direction. The impact lifted the Mercedes’ nose, but the heavier vehicle slammed back down and trapped the Tesla under its weight.
The impact spun the entangled vehicles, and Chase lost her grip on the Mercedes’ violently twisting steering wheel. The cars’ front tires screamed as they whipped around on the narrow road, and the rear tires chattered onto the rough shoulders on either side of the road. Roster tails of grit and gravel sprayed into the air, concealing the whirling vehicles in a gray cloud.
The rest of the Sleepers had been following so closely they never had a chance to avoid the mangled Mercedes and Model S. A tricked-out Dodge Ram plunged into the dust and hammered into the Tesla’s left side. The collision demolished the Tesla and crushed the masked driver like a sledgehammer landing on a jar of strawberry preserves.
Chase lost her grip on the wheel as the Model S was torn away, and the Mercedes spun again.
Really shouldn't have cut through that seatbelt, Chase thought.
The Ram hardly slowed after it shoved the Tesla off the road. The oversized truck slammed into the Mercedes and plowed it sideways down the narrow road for a few yards.
The Mercedes’ wheels burst with a sound like twin gunshots, and the naked wheels dug into the gravel road. Metal screamed, and the Mercedes vaulted into the air. It landed hard, then tumbled again, flinging Chase through the windshield.
She landed on the road and bounced down its length a half-dozen times before sliding to a stop on her back. Her leather jacket had lost most of the studs across its shoulders and sleeves, but its protection had saved Chase’s skin from being grated down to raw meat by the rough gravel. Her jeans, on the other hand, hadn’t fared as well. The knees were shot and Chase’s skin visible through the holes were twin patches of ugly road rash.
The Ram’s engine screamed as the big truck pushed the battered Mercedes at Chase like the world’s deadliest snowplow. Sparks flew from under the Mercedes as it bore down on Chase with terrifying speed.
There was no time for Chase to run from the onrushing tangle of shrieking metal. Flat on her back, her legs battered and bruised, she could barely lift her head. But the dark anger churning around her heart like a storm cloud wasn’t ready to let her die.
The raw animal need to survive pushed Chase to trigger her Horrifying Apparition ability.
When she opened her eyes, Chase's vision was a washed-out smear of bloody red. A yawning chasm of ravenous hunger had opened in her stomach, and her teeth itched to bite, to chew, to rend. The need to kill was an overwhelming urge that drove her to consume at all costs.
A dim flicker of horror pushed its way through the haze of rage and hunger clouding Chase’s thoughts and she realized her instinctual use of her Slayer powers had transported her to the one person who wouldn’t tried to kill her. She was in the back of the van, standing behind Sarah with her hands braced Dodge’s ceiling.
The golden aura surrounding the librarian was no longer faint or wispy. It was an ardent, solid wall of light that called to Chase like nothing she'd ever experienced. Her appetite surged until she felt hollowed out. Electric thrills ran up and down her spine at the thought of destroying Sarah, of peeling her apart and digging the marker out of her body.
Lost in the throes of bloodlust, Chase imagined splitting the girl's chest open and burying her face in her steaming innards. She licked her lips, and the taste of dried blood on them pushed her past the limits of her endurance.
Sarah, horrified by Chase's sudden appearance in the van, was powerless to do anything but stare at the rear-view mirror with wide, terrified eyes. The steering wheel wobbled under the librarian’s hands, rolling dangerously from side to side. But Sarah was frozen with fear, her mind reduced to a quivering ball of primal terror, and she couldn’t right the van’s course.
A small part of Chase screamed for her to grab the steering wheel and keep the van from plunging off the road and into the trees lining its sides. But a much larger part had no time for such petty concerns. The hunger demanded blood and death, and its needs came first.
“Come here,” she snarled and groped for Sarah's hair. Her fingers closed on the golden strands, and she clenched her fists, jerking the librarian's head back against the van's seat.
“Chase, no!” Sarah shouted. “Fight it!”
In her fear, Sarah's hand slammed down on the accelerator, and the van roared ahead. Without her hands on the wheel, the vehicle bounced and veered from side to side at the mercy of the road's uneven surface. The Dodge’s wheels growled as they churned through the soft shoulder and dragged the van toward the trees beside the road.
A hard bounce shook Chase loose from the librarian, and Sarah lunged forward to grab the wheel in a desperate effort to get the van under control. The Dodge’s suspension groaned as the heavy vehicle wallowed back onto the gravel road, spewing gravel behind it in a stinging cloud. But Sarah had overcorrected and had to throw all her weight on the wheel to keep it from sliding into the ditch on the far side of the road.
The hunger gnawed a hole in Chase, forcing her back to the attack. Her knife appeared in her left hand, and she staggered forward to carve Sarah’s throat out. “Stop the van,” she snarled, “no more tricks.”
The small part of Chase’s mind not consumed with inhuman hunger watched in horror as her body slashed at the back of Sarah’s seat, ripping open the upholstery and scattering shredded foam through the van’s darkened interior. Stop it, Chase screamed into the enraged hunger wrapped around her thoughts, but the primal need to kill was too powerful, too relentless, for her to stay its hand. Chase was a helpless passenger trapped in the cage of her own skull, a paralyzed witness forced to witness the horrors of her Slayer’s body.
But even as her death drew near, Sarah struggled to survive. She slammed her hand on the brake and twisted the van's wheel hard to the right.
The sudden move bounced Chase off the inside of the van with bruising force. Stunned, she flopped onto the mattress as the van tilted onto its side and fell onto the gravel road.
Metal screamed as the van’s side scraped along the gravel road. The driver’s window shattered, and the windshield soon followed suit. Dust and dirt billowed through the van’s shattered windows, filling the interior with a choking gray cloud.
Chase rolled off the mattress and onto the inside of its left wall. The grinding of gravel against the sheet metal vibrated through the Dodge and rumbled against Chase’s hands as she crawled forward, eager to get her hands around Sarah’s delicate throat. The librarian was limp in her seat, trapped by the seatbelt. Easy prey…
The Dodge slid off the road and slammed into a tree, and the brutal collision spun the van like a child’s top. The vehicle whipped around once, twice, and then smashed to a stop against an ancient oak in a cloud of falling leaves and splintered wood.
The impact bounced Chase around the van’s interior like a bloody pinball. Each new pain stoked the fiery rage in her belly, pushing her deeper into the embrace of berserk fury. She needed to kill, to feed.
Chase stood, bracing herself against the inside of the van’s rear door. She tasted blood from where she’d bit through the tip of her tongue, and the coppery tang stoked the fires of her hunger. Her hand found a handle, and the van’s battered door crashed down onto the leaf-strewn ground. Chase staggered into the night, dazed from the crash and tormented by the hunger burning in her belly.
Fire shot into the night sky from the tangle of wrecked cars and demolished trucks down the road. The smell of burning meat and the screams of the wounded and dyin
g brought a feral grin to Chase’s lips. Her plan had worked, and she’d slowed those who had pursued her. The Sleepers were still out there, still coming for her. She’d killed a few of them, but there were many more out there in the dark belly of the night. A red vision filled Chase’s mind, and she considered stalking back to the carnage and murdering every last one of the masked freaks.
But the hunger didn’t want revenge. It didn’t want to rescue Chase’s mother or brother. It didn’t want to win the Nightmare Game.
All the hunger wanted to do was eat Sarah.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hunger
Chase scrambled around the front of the van, head held high as she snorted deep breaths of cold autumn air in through her nose and exhaled clouds of steam through her mouth. The creamy, coppery tang of Sarah's blood floated on the wind, entrancing Chase and leaving a ravenous ache in her stomach and a flood of saliva gushing over her lips. She’d never been so hungry, so desperate to chew and eat in all her life. She wanted blood, she wanted meat. But almost as much as she wanted to feast on the librarian, Chase wanted to smell the pain and terror oozing from Sarah’s pores when she tore her to pieces.
The hunger wanted Sarah to suffer before she died.
The forest grew denser around Chase as she hunted the Sacred Martyr. Branches swiped at her face and clawed at her arms and legs. Brambles snared in her torn jeans and snagged the bloodied flesh of her knuckles. Chase ignored it all, shoving through the undergrowth at a steady, relentless pace. The hunger would not be denied, even as Chase’s saner thoughts struggled to regain control of her body.
Chase stalked the librarian through a sea of red shadows. The terrain was washed out streaks of crimson, blurred together like a child’s smeared finger paints. The hunger reduced the world to a cold and desolate wasteland, but Sarah glowed in Chase’s sight like a beckoning golden beacon.
