Chapter 14 #2
"Where are we going?" I shouted over the wind.
"Mountain pass," he called back. "Once we get across the Forge Bridge, there are a lot of remote roads, places to lose anyone following us. Then we'll figure out our next move."
The bike flew along roads Jack had traveled a thousand times before, and I knew he could navigate them blindfolded. The October night whipped past us, cold air stinging my cheeks despite the hood pulled up over my head.
But something was wrong.
It took me a moment to realize what it was. The darkness. It was too dark. Too complete.
"Jack," I said against his back. "The sky."
I felt him tense, felt the subtle shift as he glanced up without slowing down. There were no stars. No moon. Not even the ambient light pollution you'd expect from the town we'd left behind. It was like riding through a void, with only the Harley's headlight cutting through absolute blackness.
"What the fuck," Jack muttered.
Then I saw them.
Eyes. Glowing yellow eyes in the darkness on both sides of the road. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Pacing us as we rode.
"Jack!"
"I see them," he said grimly, and the bike accelerated.
The eyes kept pace impossibly. And now I could see shapes moving in the darkness—shadows that were somehow darker than the lightless night around us. They had form but no substance, like living smoke that occasionally solidified enough to show claws and teeth.
One lunged for us from the left side of the road. Jack swerved, and I felt the cold of it as it passed through the space we'd just occupied.
"Shadow wraiths," I yelled.
"Hold on!" Jack shouted.
He was weaving now, the bike responding to his every command as the shadow creatures tried to force us off the road. They reached for us with smoky appendages that left trails of cold wherever they passed.
Jack pulled his gun with one hand, steering with the other. He fired three shots into the mass of shadows on our right. The bullets passed through harmlessly, but the muzzle flash made them recoil, shrieking in voices that hurt to hear.
"The gun's no good. The light hurts them!" I shouted.
"Okay," Jack called back, turning the high beams on the bike. We saw the shadow wraiths pull back into the darkness, creating enough space for us to surge forward.
The bike climbed. Jack knew every curve, every dip, navigating in near-total darkness with only instinct and memory.
As soon as they appeared, the shadow wraiths were gone.
I allowed myself a moment of relief, my cheek pressed against Jack's back, feeling his heartbeat through the leather.
Then from behind us, I heard something growing louder. The roar of motorcycle engines.
I turned to look, and my blood turned to ice.
Headlights. Two of them. Riding them were the purple and green clowns. I could hear him laughing—that same terrible shrieking laugh from the carnival.
"Jack!" I screamed over the wind. "Clowns!"
He glanced in his mirror and cursed. "Fucking hell."
The bikes were gaining impossibly fast. They should have been limited by the same laws of physics that governed us, but they weren't. I had no doubt they were covered with some sort of power or powder.
The green one pulled alongside us on the left, grinning maniacally. "Come play with us, gorilla man!" His voice carried over the wind and engine noise with unnatural clarity.
On our right, the purple one matched our speed. "Hi, pretty bird!" He reached out with one hand, his fingers stretching longer than they should, trying to grab me off the back of the bike.
I pressed myself tighter against Jack, making myself as small a target as possible.
Jack fired his gun at the purple clown, but the bullet passed right through him. The clown just laughed.
The green one got close to us. He made to reach for Jack's hand, but Jack pulled his gun and fired not at the clowns but at the road directly in front of the green one's bike. The bullet sparked against the asphalt, and the clown instinctively swerved to avoid it.
It gave us a few seconds. Jack poured on the speed, the Harley's engine screaming. We pulled ahead, but I could hear the bikes behind us, still giving chase. Then they were gone.
"They're gone," I shouted. "How much farther to the pass?"
"Where did they go? Two miles, maybe less. What the hell?"
I looked around Jack and saw the road ahead was filled with animals. Deer, dozens of them, standing in a line across both lanes. But their eyes glowed red in the Harley's headlight, and their movements were wrong—jerky and unnatural, like marionettes controlled by an amateur puppeteer.
Jack didn't slow down. "Hold tight!"
He aimed straight for a gap between two deer and gunned it. We shot through the opening, close enough that I could have reached out and touched them. They turned their heads to track us as we passed, moving in perfect synchronization.
One of them—a massive buck—broke from the line and charged after us. Jack swerved, barely avoiding its antlers.
It felt like the night had gotten darker. I looked up and saw them—ravens. Hundreds of them, diving toward us in a black cloud.
"No," I whispered. I knew exactly who was doing this. He wasn't dead after all. But he had to be. The binding was gone.
The ravens struck like living missiles, their beaks and claws tearing at our clothes. A raven flew directly into his face. Jack batted it away one-handed, the bike wobbling dangerously before he regained control.
I opened my mouth and thundered out a series of warning cries in bird language. The ravens stopped what they were doing and scattered. Giving acknowledgement to the larger predator.
"Almost there!" Jack shouted. "I can see it."
Suddenly, potholes appeared out of nowhere, forcing Jack to swerve wildly. The asphalt seemed to ripple like water, creating waves that threatened to throw the bike off balance. Tree branches reached down from both sides, trying to sweep us from the saddle.
I held on tighter.
Jack navigated through it all with a skill that seemed impossible, his gorilla reflexes pushed to their absolute limit. Then, finally, we broke through.
The bridge lay out in front of us.
An old stone structure spanning a deep gorge, its surface barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The forest below was invisible in the darkness.
"Ghosts," I breathed.
It was covered. Hundreds—no, thousands—of ghostly spirits rose from the sides of the bridge. They filled the air above and around the bridge, glowing with a sickly pale light, translucent forms of what were people. Their forms still somewhat human.
And standing at the opposite side of the bridge, illuminated by the supernatural glow, at his full eight-foot height, was Ringmaster Mortis.
Jack brought the bike to a stop about fifty yards from the bridge. The engine idled, the sound suddenly loud in the unnatural silence that had fallen.
"How?" Jack said. "I saw him."
Behind us, the clowns appeared. This time all five of them were there, blocking any retreat.
"We're trapped," I whispered.
Mortis raised one impossibly long arm, and his voice echoed across the distance, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"You've taken something of mine," His voice could be heard like he was standing right next to us.
I shuddered, hearing him. Jack put a hand on my leg, calming me.
"You've been a very bad bird, Kai." His tone was almost playful. "Enough of the playtime with this naughty monkey." He pointed. "COME TO ME!"