It Happened One Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  Rane’s head snapped around, getting a good look at Dru, the crystals, and the wire. Her eyes flashed with understanding. She left the red Horseman behind, dodged around the skeletal pale Horseman, and slid on her knees under the swinging spiky arm of the white Horseman. She vaulted off the side of the white truck and leaped past Dru, landing with a crash.

  The moment Rane was clear of the crystals, Dru held her hand out to Greyson. “Now!”

  The three Horsemen charged at them.

  Dru stretched until her fingers met Greyson’s. The moment their skin touched, a spark of magic shot up her arm. His powerful energy flowed into her, completing the circuit, and the quartz beneath her hand lit up from within.

  It grew dazzlingly bright in an instant, powered by Dru’s fear and rage. With all of the wreckage, she couldn’t see the protective grid of crystals that she had evenly placed around the circumference of the store, but she could feel them interact with each other as she closed a dangerous loop.

  With Greyson’s power amplifying her own, the energy level surrounding the room quickly spiraled out of control. It rang through Dru’s bones, whined in her ears, formed a smoky, metallic taste in the back of her throat. Eerie light burned around the periphery of her store, growing brighter by the second as each crystal in turn lit up.

  The white Horseman drew up short, as if sensing the danger, and the other two Horsemen hesitated on either side of him. His blazing azure eyes pierced Dru where she stood.

  He knew what she was doing. When he bared his teeth and raised both arms to point his deadly spikes at her, she realized she had no way to defend herself.

  In a moment, it would be her who died here, not Rane.

  A helpless fury rose up inside Dru, focused on the three creatures before her. They had destroyed everything. Everything she had fought her whole life to build.

  Tried to kill her and her friends.

  Tried to bring about the end of the world.

  And she would not let them win.

  She shut her eyes tight and channeled her anger into the crystals, charging them levels beyond anything she’d done before, letting the awful feedback rip through her body.

  Pain scorched through her, out of her, at a terrifying frequency. The magic glow pounded through her tightly shut eyelids. A roaring wind swirled around her.

  The Horsemen howled and screeched. Energy sizzled as they hurled their bodies against the magical vortex, trying to get out, trying to escape the pounding destruction Dru brought down on them.

  Her ears rang. Her sense of balance abandoned her. She struggled to stay upright, fought to open her eyes, but she was lost in a searing maelstrom. The roar built into a bone-jarring thunder, crashing over and over. The energy backlash blew out the protective crystals around her one by one, like old light bulbs overloaded by too much current.

  When her body could take no more, she collapsed, breaking the connection. Her consciousness faded to a thin, fine line lost in an echoing distance. In the muffled silence, the world toppled and crashed.

  She opened her eyes to darkness. Greyson leaned over her, his face inches from hers, calling her name.

  She worked lips that felt too dry to speak. “Did we do it?”

  He helped her sit up.

  Her shop was utterly demolished.

  What little had been left intact after the Horseman crashed in through the front windows was now pounded into unrecognizable bits, pocked here and there by guttering pools of fire.

  The white truck was crushed into a charred wreck, and beside it, the three Horsemen lay facedown on the floor.

  Seeing what remained of her shop filled her eyes with tears. A wrenching despair washed over her, hollowing out the victory until there was nothing left.

  Greyson grimly pulled her to her feet. “You didn’t have any choice.”

  She had to lean against him to stay upright. He helped her into the back room, where Opal lay unconscious in the near darkness.

  Rane, her body still formed of rusty metal, took Dru out of Greyson’s arms. “You’re okay, D. Easy does it.”

  Dru was about to thank her, but a meager scratching sound caught her attention. Slowly, painfully, she turned her stiff neck and looked over her shoulder.

  One of the white Horseman’s fingers scratched against the floor, and then the rest of his hand quickly joined suit. With nightmarish slowness, he turned his horn-crowned head and opened glowing blue eyes. To either side of him, the other Horsemen stirred. As they did, the crushed hulk of the white truck began to uncrumple and smooth out.

  The air seemed to leave Dru’s lungs. She couldn’t speak a warning, couldn’t breathe.

  She hadn’t accomplished anything. She’d thrown everything she could at the Horsemen, sacrificed everything she had, and still she’d failed.

  Greyson saw, but he didn’t hesitate. “Rane, get her clear. I’ll carry Opal.”

  “Where?” Rane demanded, her face twisting in rage. “Where else can we go? What the hell else can we do? We can’t make a stand against these guys!”

  “No,” he said in a low voice, “but we can outrun them.”

  “How?”

  In Greyson’s eyes, an inner fire burned brighter. “We’ve got Hellbringer.”

  35

  SPEED DEMONS

  As they lowered Opal into Hellbringer’s back seat, Dru heard sirens getting closer and louder. “I don’t like moving her like this,” she said.

  “The hospital’s not far,” Greyson said grimly. “Get in.”

  Rane swung one long iron leg into the back, then the other, and slid in beneath Opal, cradling her head in her metal lap, using Greyson’s leather jacket as a pillow.

  Dru could barely tear her gaze away from Opal’s motionless body. Even though she seemed to be breathing fine, she was still unconscious, and that could mask any number of injuries.

  As Dru got into the front seat, she noticed the biotite lockbox sitting on the carpeted floor mat, next to her plastic hardware case full of crystals. “How did you . . . ?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to grab everything,” Rane said at Dru’s questioning look. “But I grabbed the essentials. We had company.”

  “Way to go.”

  Hellbringer rumbled to life before Dru even had the door shut. With a lurch, Greyson pulled them out of the parking spot behind The Crystal Connection and sped down the tight alley. The fact that he had already backed in saved them a minute of turning around. It wasn’t much, but it could be enough of a head start.

  Both sides of the street were lined with parked cars and storefronts, many of them closed up early, probably because of the widespread panic about the foul air and the meteors. The sidewalks were unusually empty. A strange haze choked the air, wrapping a halo around the streetlights, giving a weight to the light.

  As they pulled out of the back alley onto the side street, the red Mustang whipped around the corner from the front of the shop, sliding sideways on four howling tires. Its fiery headlights speared through the night, sweeping toward them.

  “Damn,” Greyson spat and spun the wheel away from the Mustang. Hellbringer’s engine revved up with an earsplitting roar, and the acceleration pressed Dru into the seat. They rocketed away down the street, with the Mustang hot behind them.

  At the next intersection, traffic screeched to a halt as Greyson forced the long black car through it, swerving through a sea of oncoming headlights and angry honks. When they were clear, he accelerated again, the force of it jolting Dru.

  Behind them, the Mustang charged straight across the street without pause.

  “Main streets are clogged. We’ll take the back way.” Greyson spun the wheel, and Hellbringer slid around the next corner, skidding past a slow-moving taxi. Ahead, an oncoming SUV blared its horn.

  Hellbringer’s engine howled, and they shot around the taxi, swerving out of the SUV’s path. Its horn warbled as it streaked past them, its taillights leaving a red glow in the darkness.

  As they dodged
and weaved through the traffic, Dru craned her head around, looking for the Mustang. It drove up onto the sidewalk, smashed through a blue mailbox, and closed in on their right. “Over there!” She pointed.

  “I see him.” Greyson’s right hand worked the shifter, cranking Hellbringer into a higher gear. “Hold on!”

  He spun the wheel left, yanking the car hard across the street, between oncoming cars, and toward a narrow alley framed by trees. The car’s long rear end swung around wide, nearly making them overshoot the alley.

  As the brick corner of the building loomed over them, Greyson straightened out and steered them back into the turn. They squeezed into the alley. Newspapers and trash swirled in their wake.

  The Mustang crossed the street behind them, bumped up onto the curb, and clipped the tree at the corner. Leaves and branches exploded over its hood.

  Hellbringer shot down the dark alley. Dumpsters and telephone poles whipped by in a blur. Behind them, the Mustang closed in, and a streak of red-hot fire erupted from the driver’s window.

  Through the Mustang’s windshield, past the glare of streetlights sweeping over the glass, Dru could clearly see the glowing eyes of the reptilian Horseman hunched over the wheel. He held his fiery sword high out the window, trailing flames into the night.

  Hellbringer soared out of the far end of the alley and rocketed across lanes thick with cars and trucks. They headed uphill, leaning into a hard turn that brought them into the next lane at easily twice the speed limit.

  The Mustang exploded out of the alley behind them, the Horseman’s sword billowing with flames. The car plowed between two parked taxi cabs, sending them spinning away in opposite directions.

  As Greyson straightened Hellbringer out, Dru got a good look at the pursuing Mustang’s smashed front end. It seemed to snarl at them, its headlights glaring from above a jagged, hollow mouth filled with sharp steel teeth.

  As she watched, the crumpled grill smoothed itself out with a ripple of chrome. The headlights realigned themselves, staring like a wide-eyed predator closing in on its prey.

  They crested the hill, fast enough that the tires left the ground for an instant, and Dru’s stomach dropped. They sailed over an empty set of railroad tracks and landed hard with a crunch of metal and a chirp of tires.

  Greyson cranked the wheel right and took a fast turn at the next block, cutting off a delivery truck just before it could turn onto the same street.

  The truck braked, its tires screaming a shrill warning. The deep, heart-stopping blare of its horn shook Dru to the core. Its huge grill closed in on them, filling the windows on Greyson’s side as they flashed past.

  A moment later, safely behind them, the truck bumped up onto the sidewalk and stopped, filling the road.

  Greyson accelerated down the street. On their right lay a row of broken-down houses with boarded-up windows and junk on their lawns. On their left, a rusty guardrail blocked off the edge of the road, where the dry grass dropped away into the pitch black ribbon of the river below.

  Ahead, a frontage road to the highway led to a motionless expanse of headlights and taillights. Traffic was completely locked down.

  “Can’t go that way,” Greyson muttered, his voice nearly drowned out by the thunder of Hellbringer’s engine.

  Dead ahead, an ominous pair of classic car headlights swung around the corner, coming straight at them. A flush of fear froze Dru’s veins as she realized what she was seeing.

  It was another Horseman. The silver one.

  Behind them, the delivery truck still barricaded the street. The long, flat side of the truck buckled outward and exploded in an eruption of crushed cardboard boxes and flying sheet metal.

  The Mustang burst through the side of the truck as if fired out of a cannon. It sailed through the air, the Horseman’s sword leaving an arcing banner of fire, and slammed onto the road with a trail of sparks and wreckage.

  They were trapped. They had one Horseman closing in from the rear, another straight ahead, charging toward them. The only other route was the highway, and that was dead still.

  They had nowhere to run.

  In front of them, the silver car swung sideways and skidded to a stop, blocking the road. Its headlights burned twin lines out over the darkness of the inky black river.

  Trapped, Hellbringer slowed until nothing moved on the blacktop.

  “Greyson?” Dru asked, unable to keep her voice from trembling. “Maybe we can make it on foot?”

  The Mustang pulled up behind them. Its door swung open.

  The reptilian Horseman slid out, sword flaming in the night. It flourished the blade in a quick figure eight, leaving a dazzling afterimage in Dru’s vision. With a snaggle-toothed grin, it lurched toward them, serpentine tongue licking at the air.

  In the back seat, Rane snorted. “They think they’ve got us cornered.”

  “Don’t they?” Dru turned in her seat.

  Rane nodded toward the river. “I go running down here all the time. Hello? Bike trail!” She pointed one long metal arm to a gap where the guardrail ended, and a line of dry grass and bushes marked the edge of the road. Beyond, the shoulder dropped down into the dark nothingness where the river lay.

  Somewhere in the middle, unseen, the bike trail split the distance between the road and the river.

  Greyson’s gaze ticked up to the rearview mirror and then over to the darkness at the edge of the road, as if calculating the odds. Then he turned to Dru, his face unreadable.

  She nodded once. “Do it.”

  Greyson’s stubbled jaw set in a determined line. He jammed the long shift lever into reverse and dropped the clutch. Tires smoking, Hellbringer flew backward, headlight beams piercing the clouds of burning rubber.

  The red Horseman’s snakelike eyes widened in surprise just before Hellbringer’s wing hit him in the snout. A split second later, the black car’s rear end slammed into the creature’s body, pinning him against the nose of the parked Mustang.

  Greyson shifted again, and Hellbringer lunged forward, releasing the red Horseman. The creature stumbled after them, limping and angrier than ever, and let out a blood-chilling screech.

  Greyson whipped Hellbringer around in a tight circle just as the red Horseman’s flaming sword flashed down in a deadly arc, too late, carving a red-hot trench in the asphalt road.

  Hellbringer headed straight for the gap in the guardrail and the impenetrable darkness beyond.

  The black car’s long nose dipped, and they sped down the steep slope of dry grass toward the narrow strip of concrete that ran along the edge of the river, nothing more than a sidewalk bisected by a chipped yellow line.

  The headlight beams glittered off the swift-moving water as they swept past. Dru could imagine drowning in the cold depths of the river. Her fingers dug into the armrest next to her, fighting the urge to scream.

  “Yee-haw!” Rane yelled behind her.

  Greyson turned the car as they plowed down the steep hill, tilting them sharply to one side. The front tires slid onto the concrete and held on, with the rear tires whipping around right after them. In a heartbeat, they were centered on the narrow concrete track, rocketing along the edge of the river.

  From behind, the silver car tried to follow them down the steep slope onto the path. But its demonic driver didn’t make the turn in time. It hit the bike trail at an angle, sliding diagonally across the narrow strip of concrete with a squeal of burning rubber, like a terrified animal desperate to hang onto the precarious ledge of land.

  For a long moment, the silver car seemed to cling to the bare strip of grass and dirt at the edge of the trail, its headlights shining in the blackness like two eyes glaring out from a wide chrome skull.

  Then, unable to resist the forces of gravity, it rolled off the side of the trail, its momentum pitching it over onto its roof before it hit the river with a thunderous splash. Water erupted on all sides as it plowed its way beneath the murky surface, its headlights still burning all the way to the bottom.
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  Greyson didn’t slow Hellbringer down but charged them straight ahead on the tight, uneven trail. They drove beneath the highway, under an echoing expanse of cement and shadows. Graffiti flashed past in the narrow glare of the headlights.

  Then they were out, on the other side of the packed highway, where the trail stretched onward into the night, empty and welcome. A minute later, a steep exit ramp led away from the trail. Greyson drove them up, one wheel spinning on bare grass, until they bumped over the sidewalk and back onto a deserted street in front of a used furniture store.

  “How far are we from the hospital?” Dru asked, completely disoriented.

  “Five minutes, tops.”

  Back on the road, the engine picked up speed. She peered over her shoulder. “How’s Opal doing?”

  In response, Opal turned her head and blinked at Dru. “Hey. What on earth just happened? Were we on the bike path?”

  Dru could feel the silly grin as it plastered itself across her face. She laughed out loud in relief. Seeing the twinkle in Opal’s eyes, she reached back and took her hand. “Are you okay? Don’t move.”

  “I’m all right. Except for lying on the lap of the Iron Maiden here. Not helping my headache any.”

  “Hey.” Rane’s metal face scowled. “Could be worse.”

  Greyson ran a light just as it turned red, swerving around an eighteen-wheeler. They headed back underneath the highway again, as the road ran at an angle through the smog.

  Every pair of headlights seemed threatening. Every honking horn made Dru jump. When she saw a flash of red in the right lane, her heart raced. But it was just a red station wagon.

  “We’re almost to the hospital,” Greyson said.

  “Dru,” Opal said faintly. “You really going back to that mansion in the desert?”

  “We have to. The scroll is there.” Through the rear window, Dru could see the jam-packed highway above and behind them as they passed beneath it. A river of motionless white headlights.