Chapter 33 Roulette
Roulette
Falling snow gathered in wet white clumps on windshield wipers; the SUV swayed dangerously as it lurched halfway onto the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding two parking meters and a fireplug.
Liv let out a short, blurting scream, her hands flying to her ears as Erik twisted the wheel.
The popping noises were gunshots; the SUV’s back window disintegrated as a high, keening cry scraped through her skull, digging in with hideous, misshapen invisible claws.
The sound was wrong, and that wrongness burned.
Liv’s head bobbled as Erik wrenched the wheel again, taking a sharp left and plunging down a street she remembered walking along with her grandmother, bright shop windows on either side and her hand caught in warm safety.
The necklace was a steady spot of heat against her shirt, and that comforting touch made the memory clearer, more tangible, filling Liv with fiery steadiness.
The invisible thing digging inside her skull screeched, retreating with a last vicious twist. The necklace’s soft blazing effect dilated, but she didn’t have any time to wonder or worry because Erik sent the SUV into a skidding, looping turn, stamping the gas and exhaling hard as tires bit through slush and fresh snow.
She barely realized she was screaming as Rochester’s downtown, snow-choked and eerily empty, revolved around them and cold air poured through the broken back window. More gunfire popped and pinged as the vehicle’s hind end lifted, dropped with a sickening thump.
He’d run over something.
That’s not good. The sudden grinding lurch turned her stomach over, and the latte she’d had hours ago tried to crawl out her throat. The worst thing was utter helplessness, trapped in a seatbelt while the world went mad around her.
No, that wasn’t the worst. The worst was that high keening screech again, trying to dig its way into her brain. Into her mind, and Liv’s right hand flattened over the lump of the oneiros, fingers curling and pressing carved iron into her palm hard enough to bruise.
It helped. The stone’s scorch intensified; sudden deep silence folded around her with soft heartbeat wings.
She had time to study Erik’s profile, mouth drawn tight and dark eyes lit with a cloud of pale specks in the very center of the pupils. It wasn’t like Ignatius’s gaze with its terrible blue pinpricks; the gleams in Erik’s reminded her of stars.
He looks worried, she thought, and the windshield showed a long straight shot up Rochester’s Cameron Hill, great sledding this time of year if you didn’t mind the prospect of being run over or cracking your head open at the bottom.
Her hair fell in her face—she was motionless, but the rest of the world was moving forward, albeit at a snail’s pace.
The dangling curls swayed as the SUV began its lurching for the hill, and she knew exactly what was going to happen.
Paradoxically, there was no time to brace herself.
A stunning impact hit the back passenger door, and the vehicle slewed wildly.
A stinging snap like a rubber band against an unsuspecting wrist in grade school, weightlessness like the one time she and Mika had done bungee-jumping at the county fair and Jada had chickened out, and the thing that had hit them was scrabbling through silver crumbles of falling safety glass while Erik, in calm, complete defiance of rationality, kept his left hand on the wheel.
His right, now full of a very businesslike gun with a squarish barrel and a dull black finish, snaked between the front seats.
A deafening roar, a gush of foulness, and Liv’s stomach was a bubble trapped in a splashing stream as the SUV lifted on its two left tires, wavered for a moment, then fell, skidding like a trapped beetle on a greased plate.
The jolt tossed her out of that strange, floating stasis. Iron sky, snowy air, and dirty stained slush all changed places; now she knew what the ball felt like when spun along a roulette wheel.
Another strange sensation, a temporary skip like a song stuttering through headphones, and the car came to rest on all four tires, canted to the right because both rubber donuts on that side were popped.
Erik freed himself of his seatbelt with a quick motion, and freezing, iron-scented air filled the interior.
Well, that’s my second car accident in the last twenty-four hours.
These guys sure are exciting. Liv found herself clutching the necklace to her chest, afraid to let go, and staring through the cracked windshield as snow fell down in a heavy curtain, Erik a moving shadow sliding across the hood Dukes-of-Hazzard style.
“Look out!” The cry burst from her mouth without any conscious volition just as a hideous, misshapen shadow-shape hit him with a devastating crunch she felt in her own chest.