All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(12)
As she reached the Dumpster, her hands came down, and her head turned to towards the lids. With shaking hands, in spite of her attempts to resist whatever was compelling, she lifted the lid.
At the same moment, metal shrieked. One corner of the club’s door peeled back into a sharp, neat crease, the way tin foil folds, and on the other side of the door was darkness and that thing, that vicious, insatiable, insane hunger.
I was almost to Becca. Ten feet. Five.
The door ripped free, screeching across the asphalt in a shower of sparks. I collided with Becca. She was staring down into the Dumpster, screaming, and I looked too. He was there: a tangle of pale limbs and blond hair, covered in blood. The boy from Bighorn Burger. I stared at him not because I wanted to see, but because I knew if I looked up, if I even moved, I would see that thing coming for us. For a moment, I was paralyzed. Then fear and instinct made me move. I dragged Becca down, and inside myself, I fumbled for that door, that door at the edge of my consciousness. I scraped around for the latch or the doorknob or the handle or whatever the hell it was, and the beast—I could only think of it as the beast—loped towards us. Its breath was hot on my neck, and its teeth closed, and—
And I jerked the door shut. In that hidden, mental space, I piled everything I could find in front of the door: nightmares and daydreams and memories, habits, lists, the alphabet song—any scrap of mental debris that I thought might prove a barrier. That door, that secret door, rattled once. A laugh reached me, and then a voice: Luke’s voice. Mr. Big Empty’s voice, saying in a sing-song voice, “I know I am deathless.” Then it was quiet.
It took me a moment to realize where I was: half-fallen out of the booth in the Big Swirl, coffee soaking my shirt and scalding me as I stared up at a roomful of strangers. The mixture of concern and embarrassment and indecent curiosity on their faces faded from my attention, though, when I saw Becca’s expression. Standing over me, her mouth open, cheeks pale, she stared at me like she’d never seen me before and said, “What are you?” Then she pushed through the crowd and disappeared.
Slipping in the spilled coffee, I scrambled after her. The jumble of people, though, slowed me, and by the time I burst out of the Big Swirl, she was already at the car. I sprinted across the parking lot.
“Stay away from me,” she shouted, yanking the door open.
I flew over the pavement, and the engine roared to life as I reached the car. Hauling on the latch, I opened the door and dived inside just as Becca hit the gas. The Ford lurched backwards, and I crashed against the dash and then bounced back into the fabric seat.
“Jesus, Becca, calm down.”
“Get out.” Digging through her purse, she flattened herself against the door, but she didn’t stop driving. The Ford whipped out into the street, and the passenger door flew open again. I grabbed the seat to keep from being thrown from the car.
Fastening one hand on the steering wheel, I jerked it to the right, guiding us back into our lane. “Stop panicking.”
“I’m not panicking.” With vicious satisfaction, Becca whipped something out of her purse, pointed it at me, and squeezed.
The next moment, I was swearing and shouting and crying, because my eyes had turned to fire. Releasing the steering wheel, I dropped back into my seat, wiping my face. Even through the pain, though, I felt the bump as the car rode over the curb, and the squeal of metal, and Becca whooped, “Oh, shit” as I crashed into the windshield.
When the fresh wave of pain cleared, everything had gone very quiet. My eyes still burned, and now my nose was running. Over my ragged breathing came the sound of the little Ford’s engine purring, and the ding-ding-ding of the car warning me that a door was open.
“Becca?” I said, blinking to clear my eyes.
Another quiet moment passed, and then, in a tiny voice, she said, “I’m here. Are you—are you ok?”
I settled for nodding my head.
“I, um—” She stopped, and then the sound of fabric shifting reached me, and her arm bumped mine. Something slipped into my hand: cool, crinkling plastic. A water bottle. “For your eyes.”
As I got out of the car, still blind, Becca flopped out after me. I undid the cap and splashed some of the water on my face. It helped more than I expected.
“Here,” Becca said. “Let me.” I shook off her hand, and a trace of the old Becca came back as she said, “Don’t be such a big hulking muscley moron.” Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the bottle and, with her other hand, tilted my head back. “You should probably keep your eyes open. So it washes out, you know?”
It took two more bottles of water, but eventually I could see. The first thing I noticed was on the front seat of the car: a small glass bottle of perfume, Becca’s impromptu pepper-spray. Better than getting hit with the real stuff, I guessed. I took stock of myself. My nose, swollen to almost twice its size from when I’d smacked into the windshield, was congested with drying blood, and reddish-brown stains mixed with the coffee on my shirt. One of my three shirts I had left. Two shirts, I decided, considering the extent of the stains. This one was trash.
Becca, shoulders rolled forward, stood at an angle from me, puffing on a cigarette and studying something in the distance, the way people pretend to be focused on something far away in hopes that no one will notice them. A red line marked the center of her forehead, and I touched her arm and pointed to the mark. “Ok?”