“OK. Might be quickest then if I just scan your mind for the information…”
“Yes! Do it!” He stared at her, and she felt her frontal lobes light up as the gentle touch of his mind caressed hers. Flashes of memory ran through her mind of her mother as she gave her lessons. It was over quickly.
“Got it,” he said, facing forward again.
He reached out a single gloved hand and held it over the dashboard. “Internal combustion, controls replaced mostly by electronics. This goes here, that goes there…”
She frowned. “Are you kidding me?”
He glanced at her for a split second as a fraction of a smile once again appeared at the edge of his lips.
Her mouth gaped open, and she clasped her face in her hands—he was joking again!
With a mere flick of his outstretched hand, the car came to life. The gears shifted, and the pedals began to move at his feet. A series of lights lit up the dashboard. Outside the window beyond him, Jane saw the rest of the wall come crumbling down, destroyed by explosive bolts of energy. Some of the rock came crashing down just outside the car.
“Oh, look at that,” Max said as he pointed toward the crumbling wall, glancing at her. “Looks like he’s getting used to this reality again.” Then he returned his attention to the controls, and a few new lights appeared on the dashboard.
Jane frowned at how casually he was speaking as the black humanoid mass climbed over the crumbling debris, crawling toward them block by block.
“Time to go!” Max said as the accelerator pedal was pushed to the floor. The wheels screeched beneath them, and the engine roared.
For a few seconds, the car didn’t move. Then Jane screamed out, and her hands reached out to the windows as she was slammed back against her seat. The wheels had found their grip and the car lurched forward violently.
Max kept his left hand outstretched toward the controls, and the gears began to shift rapidly as the sound of a revving engine came up around them and the mall whizzed past in a quickening blur. He had his other hand hovering above the steering wheel, controlling it deftly.
They were rapidly approaching the other side of the mall, and Jane resisted the instinct to reach out and grasp his arm. “Max!” she screamed. Beyond them, there was only a concrete wall, and Jane knew it most likely marked the perimeter of the structure. Adrenaline was flooding her veins now, and she watched again in awe as Max reached out his left hand, holding it upward—palm facing toward the windshield—while keeping the other pointed at the wheel. The thick concrete wall they were approaching exploded outward, leaving a hole about three meters across. Beyond it was the dusky sky and the lights of the city.
The debris from the wall had flown out into the night, but the headlights on the car were bright and illuminated the twirling rocks perfectly. Jane watched as the concrete slowed in its motion and began moving back toward them. She squinted, trying to see if what she thought she was witnessing was actually happening, for it seemed that the rock was reshaping itself into something else. Indeed, she saw that the large, broken chunks of rock and plaster were flattening out and spinning toward them from various directions. They came together just beyond the hole in the wall, forming a road.
She yelled as the car went through the hole and they flew out into the night onto the makeshift road that had so recently formed. Then they were surrounded by darkness and silence. The only sound came from down below her, where Jane could once again see the moving trains and the thousands of cars that lined up in evening traffic—a problem that no longer existed in her time.
“Jane…”
Ahead of them, in the car’s headlights, she could see the remaining chunks of rock continue to fly into place in front of them, creating more of the new road. It seemed that the road was slanting downward, but there were only a few pieces left, and surely, only a further ten seconds remained before the road would run out.
She turned to Max to find him staring into the rearview mirror. She followed his gaze, and glancing into it, she could see that the rough human form the creature had taken had followed them out onto the road, cutting off part of the light from the mall.
“I need you to open the gate again, OK?”
“Max…”
“Jane, I can carry the car, but it won’t do us any good to stay here. We have to get away from him. Open it!”
“Where?”
“Anywhere!”
She closed her eyes, determined this time. In the darkness, she could see the Machine once more with its spinning rings. She reached out for it and felt electricity run through her. Again, there was a blue flash somewhere in her mind’s eye. When she opened her eyes, a rim of energy encased the car just as the road ran out and the vehicle began to drift toward the ground. The same blue light she had seen in her mind flashed all around them, lasting only for a split second. Then it was gone. The night skyline disappeared and was replaced by the glaring light of a sunlit day. The car bounced down from a height of just a few inches onto the solid earth below.
Jane looked around in astonishment. Through every window in the car, in every direction, there was flat, barren earth. It was a slightly red-brown color. Above, the sky was a beautiful blue. “Where are we?”
“Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico.” He looked at her as he continued to control the car with his left hand stretched toward the dashboard. “Not bad, Jane. Although you could have brought us somewhere a little more… picturesque.”
She glared at him. “Like where, Paris?”
“Paris would have done fine.”
“You said outside of a city!”
“Yeah, I know.” He glanced at her. “But you can never beat Paris.”
He smiled, and after a moment, she couldn’t resist the urge, and returned the gesture. She turned away from him slowly, glancing back out the window at the road and the desert beyond as the car picked up speed. “I suppose that’s true,” she admitted as the car continued to gain velocity, leaving a cloud of red dust in its wake.
“Uh, also, you shifted us through time. It’s 2016.”
Jane rolled her eyes.
CHAPTER 19
VIOLENCE
Jane was tired and had leaned against the side of the window with one leg drawn up underneath the other. Her eyes opened and closed on the red desert landscape that passed by beside her. The sun had already set, and it was dusk outside. Inside, the car was incredibly comfortable. The chassis was close to the ground, and it almost felt as though she was in a space ship.
Occasionally, she looked over at Max, astonished by his presence and hardly able to believe that he was human now. At one point, she had actually reached out a hand and felt his coat. He looked down at her briefly, his eyes glazed over, as though drawn from some incredibly complex task. Then he had smiled and turned his attention back to the road. Distantly, she could hear the sound of the rough terrain pass by below her. She wasn’t sure how much time they had been driving for—she was sure it couldn’t have been longer than an hour—nor did she know where they were going. She hadn’t asked yet because she was thankful for the much-needed rest, but she could feel an obvious question hanging in the air.
“It’s beautiful,” she said as she looked out at the rapidly moving landscape beyond the car. It seemed as though they were moving too fast—faster than any car could really move—and she wondered about that.
“Yes, it is.” Max looked over at her.
Jane could see his reflection in the window, but she didn’t look back at him as she spoke. “Can he still find us?”
“Yes, most certainly,” he answered as he returned his attention to the road.
“What do we need to do?”
“The only thing we can do—destroy the Machine and return to your present time.”
“Will that stop him?”
He didn’t respond for a moment and simply stared out the window straight ahead. Then his
lips moved, and he spoke slowly. “I think so.” He gave her a quick glance, but there was no assurance in his face that that would be the end of it—no glimmer of an indication of finality.
As she closed her eyes on the rapidly passing landscape, in her mind’s eye she saw her mother, sitting in her kitchen nursing a steaming cup of coffee. She was staring right at her and smiling. Jane opened her eyes and gasped as a feeling of unspeakable dread overcame her. She looked at Max. He was glaring straight at the road ahead, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“I know,” he said.
“He found us!” she yelled.
They both stared forward as, fifty feet away, the black mass appeared directly ahead of them in the center of the road. It had solidified into something that resembled a human body much more closely, and it reached out an arm toward the vehicle.
The impact came before Jane had a chance to form any coherent thought. The car came to an immediate stop as the entire front section of the vehicle impacted an invisible barrier and was completely crushed.
Jane had been wearing her seatbelt, but an unseen force ripped it away from her, and she heard a popping sound as it came undone. She was floating through a haze of broken glass and debris. Max floated around her. She saw him reach out a strong arm, and for a second, she felt herself lock into the grip of his tremendous power. But then there was a vast pulling sensation from in front of her, and she was torn forward through the opening in the broken windshield, her shoulder impacting Max’s. She looked behind her as the car continued to recede, as though in slow motion.
Stopping suddenly, she looked up and found she was no longer moving. She looked into the swirling face of the thing that held her in place beside it, and then all of reality flashed out of existence. She had one brief second to glance in Max’s direction just before he—and the rest of the desert—disappeared.
***
Max felt the presence before it arrived in the desert, but its connection to Jane was somehow stronger, and it arrived before he had a chance to react. It landed on the road directly in front of them. But Max was human now, and his reflexes were somewhat slower. He turned to see the flowing, unrefined black mass form in front of them.
Max reached out with his power, but the car was moving too fast, and there simply wasn’t enough time to stop. The impact happened, and the vehicle was pulverized. Immediately, Max retreated inward to the network of nerves and neurons that ran his simple human form and sped them up; this allowed him to react quicker. He was moving toward the front section of the vehicle, and his body was just lifting off the seat when he sensed that Jane was about to jerk forward in her seatbelt in a dangerous manner. The impact would have killed her. He snapped it easily, and then she began to move forward past the confines of her seat.
His body had already moved into an elongated position and was heading straight for the front of the car, where, if he were any ordinary person, he would have crashed onto the ground in front and died a violent death. Instead, he curled his body around so that his back was facing the front of the vehicle, preparing to focus his power on Jane and protect her. Instead, he felt an incredible psychokinetic force grip Jane and pull her forward. She hit his shoulder as she moved, dislocating it, and his mouth gaped open as the first taste of pain surged through his mind and body. She was gone before he had a chance to react. He turned and looked to see the creature—the being he once knew under different circumstances—holding her up by a black mass that resembled an arm.
The creature reached out his other hand, extending his power toward the car. The remains of the vehicle closed around Max rapidly. He erected a shield to protect himself—a bubble of psychokinetic energy—but felt every bump as he was thrown against the interior of the crushed mass of metal, which turned end over end. He did his best to minimize the impacts, and for the most part, he was successful. Still, he knew he would have some injuries that needed healing.
The car was still spinning when Max finally recovered his senses and anger gripped him. He reached out, and gritting his teeth, he pushed hard. The car exploded in a blaze of fire and metal, scattering fragments all over the desert floor. He flew from the center of the explosion and stretched his arms out to his sides, steadying himself and coming to a stop standing in an upright position just a foot off the ground. He glanced down at the reddish-brown earth below and dropped down onto it. The remains of the car were still falling all around him up to a distance of two hundred feet, some of them still engulfed in flames. When the final pieces of the wreckage fell at last, he let out a long-held breath and looked down at his body, scanning for injuries.
A jagged piece of metal had penetrated his side. Glaring at this, he focused on it and pulled it out. Raising it up in front of him for a moment, he gazed at the blood that dripped from it. For a second, dim light reflected off the red liquid in a glimmerring haze. He held up his left hand next to the metal and used the power to draw the blood clean off its surface. It flowed away from the jagged tip in a string-like syrup and formed into a pool in his hand. Then he glanced once more at the jagged piece of wreckage and threw it aside. He looked down at the open wound and saw that blood was flowing rapidly from it.
“Uh,” he gurgled, realizing he was losing his balance. He was glad of the lesson, though. It had been a rough reminder that the mortal frame was delicate, and he would have to be more careful in the future, especially for what lay in wait. For a brief second, he caught a glimpse of Jane’s thoughts and what was happening, and thought No! But that would have to wait.
He looked up at the stars, and many of their details quickly went through his mind as he began to lose his train of thought. Forcing himself to concentrate, and ignoring the urge to simply fall on the ground and pass out, he glanced down at the pool of blood that had formed at his feet. Focusing on it with the power, he drew it back up toward the wound, clearing out any dust that had collected in it as it had briefly lain in the sand. The feeling of warmth that flowed back up his leg was unusual, but he was glad when he felt the last of it pass upward underneath his clothes. He looked down again, opening his eyes to see the last of the blood move up the surface of his flat stomach and flow back into the wound.
“Clean,” he said aloud. Huh. Must still be a little confused. This is an unusual state. Haven’t experienced…. it’s disorientation… haven’t experienced this in over a century. Must concentrate. Earth time. Can’t pass out. Would be… the worst thing to happen.
He held his hand with his palm facing the wound and focused on the small remaining pool of blood there. It streamed from his palm and flowed into the now clean opening near his navel. When the last of the blood had disappeared inside, he focused on knitting the wound closed, and his flesh quickly began to fasten over the open, red hole in his stomach. Within ten seconds, the wound was closed, and only a scar remained. He focused on that, and fresh skin began to knit its way across the gash in a new mesh. A moment later, there was hardly any evidence of a wound at all.
He opened and closed his eyes, shaking his head. On his right, he noticed that there was an incredible pain in his shoulder. He remembered what happened when Jane had impacted him: His shoulder had been dislocated. He would have to heal the wound, but his first thought was about Jane: Was she OK? He analyzed his memory of the event, and he thought that she would be. She had impacted him at a different angle—her shoulder would be bruised, but otherwise all right.
He focused again, becoming stronger now, and scanned the wound, pushing inward with his mind’s eye until his vision allowed him to see inside the joint itself. Without thinking of the pain he might face, he grasped the joint with his power and popped it back into place.
At first, there was an incredible jolt of pain—like lightning—and he took huge gulps of air. After a moment, it began to pass, but mostly, he just ignored it; he had far too many other things to think about.
As he focused on the rest his body, he
felt that there were only minor wounds, and he could heal them in the background unconsciously as he put his mind to the task of finding Jane. He closed his eyes and looked up toward the darkening sky. As he expanded his mind outward, he traveled far, feeling as though his thoughts could take him anywhere—and they could—but he needed something very specific, and within moments, he had found it.
Jane was stuck in some kind illusion. He could see the entity’s psychic grasp on her mind, and he could see that Jane, as of yet, knew little of its desires. He could see into the kitchen, where the illusion had been created, but before he could act, a vast beam of psychic energy reached out in his direction, catching him off guard, and he yelled out loud as he fell to the ground. Blackness overcame him as he was drawn into his own illusion.
***
Max woke to the sound of clip-clopping hooves on cobbled streets. Slowly, his vision returned as the black spots that had crowded it began to disappear, and the place he had called home for quite a while now—the city of Paris—came into view. He was holding a rolled cigarette in his right hand, and he looked down at it as his vision fully returned. He stopped for a moment. He had been walking, but from where? He frowned, shrugged, and shook the thought from his mind, continuing toward his destination.
Smoke was rising from the cigarette, and he breathed in deeply the tendril that drifted up toward him. It was an exotic, exquisite aroma—one of the finer things he had become used to about this world. But he knew the pronouncements about its negative health effects would eventually—and rightly—come. He did it because he could heal the damage to his body easily, though he rarely found himself using the power in this simple world. He would, within moments, be declared a god, and the history of the world would be forever, irrevocably altered. There were times, though—with one person—when he summoned lightning. His gaze drifted from the paper as he thought about this, and he laughed gently.
Rise (The Ethereal Vision Book 2) Page 26
