Page 40 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Briar massaged the furrows off his forehead. After the past day with me, he was going to need anxiolytics. “They’re not guys, Amy. They’re flying monsters who are really,reallyhard to kill.”
I almost ran into a parked car, distracted as I was by his nonsense. Briar cursed, flattening against his seat just before I swerved to miss it.
“Are you mentally ill?” I asked, concerned for his wellbeing. “We don’t live in Oz, Briar—flying monkeys don’t exist.”
“They do, actually, but these are more like bats.”
“Shut up and be serious! This isn’t funny!”
“I’m not joking! You wanted the truth—this is it. We’re not from this world, and neither are these assholes you want to fight. They’re fast and lethal, and if they catch you, they’llkillyou.”
My guts clenched, but I wheeled onto my lamplit street, rejecting his portents of doom.
“How gullible do I look?” I snarled, hysteria mounting. “You can’t scare me away from helping my father with a child’s campfire story—”
An object hurtled down on Briar’s car, the Fusion’s roof crunching upon impact.
I stomped the brake pedal, yelping, and we screeched to a halt two houses away from mine. Propelled forward, Briar gripped the dashboard.
The debris rolled off the roof and banged down on the hood. Dead weight.
I screamed reflexively. Every atom in my body poised to flee, registering that the mangled bulk before me had once been a Danann man—Sy Rockrose, his remnants dressed in black.
Sy’s throat flapped open, his bloodless silver head hanging by a stringy tendon. His severed bottom half, gnawed on like gristle, slammed down onto his torso. Rocking our world. Popping the Fusion’s front tire and robbing us of escape too.
“Shh,” Briar hissed, muffling my scream. His breath misted my face as a series of strident squawks pierced the quiet. Something whooshed overhead as we trembled in our piss-poor shelter. “They have impeccable hearing. They hunt by scent, though. We’re lucky we smell so bad, or we’d be under attack right now.”
I clawed his arms, damn near hyperventilating. “We need to get to my house!”
“No,wedon’t.” His breath sawed. “You’re going to stay right here and keep silent.”
When I made to protest, he re-clamped my mouth. “Yes, you damn well will. I’m going to sneak over to your uncle’s car. If he followed protocol, the keys should already be in it. I’ll back up, so the passenger’s side lines up to your door, and you’ll jump in. Then, I’ll drive us the fuck out of here and hope the bogeybats don’t follow us.”
Bogeybats? Could he have picked a more menacing term?
“But what about my dad?” What happened to Sy couldn’t happen to Daddy. Someone needed to reach him. Now!
Briar looked ready to shake me. “Amy, these creatures came here for one purpose—to kill your father.”
Fuck if I’ll let them!
“They won’t stop until they’ve done what their master sent them to do. If they’re here, we’re too late.” His eyes pled for reason, but I had none.
“No!” I yanked away from him. “He’s still alive, Briar. I canfeelit. You’ve got to get him out of there!”
“No, Amy, I don’t!” Briar wrangled my flailing arms. “Your father made it abundantly clear that my only duty is to keepyousafe, and I’m not compromising that for anything!”
“I don’t fucking care about your supposed duties!”Goddamn, we were wasting valuable time! “I won’t fucking abandon—”
We heard the squawk beforeithappened, the sound penetrating my skull. Then razor-sharp talons punched through the Fusion’s ceiling. And wrenched us off the ground.
Briar didn’t even try to contain my shriek. In fact, he joined in with me as we rose above the houses with the flap of what must’ve been effing ginormous wings. Our screams only ceased after the bogeybat tossed our car like a steel shot, and we crashed into the ground with the force of a 70-mile-per-hour headlong collision.
When I came to, I lay sprawled on the blacktop road outside my front gate, glass in my hair, my joints scraped raw, and Sy Rockrose’s mutilated torso draped over me. Blood dripped in my eye. Mine or Sy’s, I couldn’t tell, but it stunk like rust.
Briar’s Fusion was a hunk of gnarled steel, the trunk now in the front seats. Its airbags had deployed and burst open, its horn stuck on a steady blare.
I should be dead.An impact like that should’ve killed me.
