Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
“We’re stealing a car?” I ask Luke as we stroll through the junkyard.
“Assuming there’s someone to steal from, yes.”
On either side of us, decrepit vehicles line the narrow stretch of dirt path we walk along.
Some are missing doors or windshields or bumpers.
Others are so rusted I can’t make out the original color.
The overall trend is they’re all in subpar condition, looking as if they might crumble if anyone sits in them, let alone hits the gas.
That’s assuming they even run on gas and not on, like, the screams of tortured orphans or some equally dark shit.
“Not that I want to walk all the way to Death Valley, but I’m kind of doubting these will get us there any faster,” I say as we pass an exceptionally rough-looking truck that is more of a steel skeleton than anything else.
“All we need is four wheels and an engine.” Luke turns down one of the many rows. I go one over from him to cover more ground.
“Even that’s a tall order,” I mutter. Most vehicles have two or three tires or none, and are propped up on cinder blocks. “How do you plan on starting it?”
“Using a key?”
“I thought maybe you’d have to hot-wire it.” The visual of him leaning under the hood of one of these beaters with his brows scrunched in concentration makes a wave of something I’d rather ignore sweep through my lower body.
“Maybe I will. But a key is preferable.”
I move on to the next row, but each option is worse than the one before it. By the time Luke and I make it through half the yard, the sky has darkened past the point of the clouds. Night crept up.
“What’s the verdict?” I ask, shivering as the crisp air turns biting.
“We keep looking.”
“Here?”
“We have to find something,” Luke says, the patience in his voice wearing thin. “I don’t want to go to the Night Market on foot.”
“You want a car in case we need to make a quick getaway?”
It’s mostly a joke, but he hesitates before saying, “As long as we’re not detected, a quick getaway shouldn’t be necessary.”
A realization hits as I lose him behind the van separating us. “You want a car so you can leave me in it, don’t you?”
We emerge on the other side of the van. He stops and turns to me.
“I want to be in and out. No scenes. The Night Market is full of deception and tricks. If you don’t escape it by dawn, when it disappears, you disappear with it until the next night when it reappears.
We don’t have time to waste a day stuck in it. ”
“I already told you splitting up is a bad idea,” I remind him, trying to keep my tone office-pleasant and not betray the frustration brewing within. “If you get stuck in there while I’m sitting in the passenger seat of one of these rust buckets waiting for your return, we’ll be no better off.”
Luke’s eyes light up. “Perfect.”
“What?” I ask. But he’s not paying attention to me. I turn in the direction he’s heading. “What are you— No.”
“You’ve never ridden a motorcycle before?” he asks as we stop at a black bike.
“No, and I don’t plan to. Besides, we can’t make it all the way across the country on that.”
“Why not?”
“We’d get permanent crotch cramps! Not to mention back issues. There has to be something with more than two wheels.”
He sweeps a hand at the junkyard surrounding us. “Take your pick. Everything needing four wheels only has three or less. At least this can run on two and they’re in decent condition.”
“It probably won’t start,” I say with equal parts hope and dread. The latter intensifies as Luke plucks a chain with a key dangling from it off the left handlebar.
“Let’s test our bets.”
He inserts the key and the engine sputters. With a huff, he tries again, meeting similar results. He glances at me. “Don’t look so smug.”
“Me?” I say with an air of innocence. “Never.”
“It’s got gas, so it might just need a kick.”
To make matters worse, my suppressed visual comes to life.
Luke drops his backpack and shrugs off his leather jacket, leaving him in just his ripped black T-shirt.
I lean against a nearby truck with the bed rotted out, but my gaze betrays me to wander over to him.
He’s on his knees inspecting the exposed engine of the bike, hands already dirty.
His T-shirt stretches across the broad expanse of his shoulders and a bout of longing to run my nails over his skin beneath the thin fabric slugs me.
I force my eyes to the sky, where a moon must hide behind the congealed clouds. Despite the coverage, it’s not as dark as it could be. We still have enough light to see by. For now.
“Can I ask you something?” I say after the press of silence and his noises of annoyance become too much.
“Do you have to?” he grunts.
“Yes.” I suck down a deep breath, preparing to ask the question I’m not sure I want the answer to. “You’ve been here before, obviously. Hell. Why? For how long?”
From his backpack, he’s removed a few small tools, which he tinkers with on the bike.
“Exorcisms don’t work on all monsters,” he finally says. “Some need a more direct approach.”
“What about the obsidian blades?” I ask. “I thought those can send anything back to hell?”
He takes a minute to answer, fixated on the engine. “When a demon possesses a human, I can’t just stab them. It will hurt the human, too. Besides, these blades are very rare and I don’t like dragging attention to them, so don’t go waving it around.”
I tug mine out to inspect it. “How’d you get these ones?”
“My mother,” is all he says.
“So they’re a family heirloom? Are they both yours, or was one your brother’s?”
Faster than I can comprehend, he’s on his feet and in front of me, so close I press my body into the truck to make more space.
He glowers down at me and says, “I let you come with me. I let you deflect my own questions with your cryptic responses and half-hearted humor. I let you keep your dirty little secrets. So let me do the same. We don’t need to get to know each other past niceties. ”
His words sting, but even worse is the way dirty makes my body flush with heat. I refuse to let that be what wins, so I choose the closest boiling emotion to replace it: anger.
“What makes you think I have dirty little secrets?” I challenge him.
His intense eyes flick down to my lips, which are so close to his I can feel his breath ghost across my mouth. He leans forward until I’m sure they’re going to touch. At the last second, he shifts to whisper against my ear, lips brushing the shell. “Beliar wouldn’t want you if you didn’t.”
It feels like a slap, because it’s true. I do have secrets. And as Melinda confirmed on the train, so does he.
I push against his chest and he steps back, allowing me enough room to escape the cage of his body and the heat burning between us. But it’s not enough. I need to be away from him before I pull him back to me and do something I’ll regret. Before he sees how much his words have shaken me.
Turning my back on him, I head in the opposite direction of the bike.
“Where are you going?” he calls after me.
“To find some helmets in this fucking ghost town!”
Storming away feels childish, but standing before him as our unspoken dirty little secrets stretch between us is worse. He doesn’t come after me, which is all the better.
On the other side of the junkyard, there’s a mountain of crap I passed earlier.
Still fuming from our heated exchange as my eyes blur with frustrated tears, I start rifling through the things closest to me.
Most are random engine pieces and filthy car carpets.
I handle them with my fingers pinched like tweezers, not sure what kind of critters lurk in hell and might have made the pile of shit their home.
“What are you doing?”
I all but leap out of my skin, spinning to take in a little girl just a few paces away. She stares at me curiously, her blond pigtails lopsided. Her right hand holds the paw of a stuffed bear that’s seen better days. Its feet drag on the dirt.
It’s a disconcerting image in itself, made worse by the fact that her pink dress is splattered in what looks a lot like dried blood.
“What are you doing?” she repeats, voice high-pitched. Instead of sweet, it’s grating. “You’re not stealing, are you?”
My heart hammers as I carefully place the busted side mirror in my hands back on the pile. I force my voice to come out casual. “Of course not. What are you doing?”
“I live here,” she says simply. “You?”
“Passing through town,” I say. “Sorry to trespass on your home. I can leave.”
She frowns. “Not yet. You have to stay for the tea party.”
I do a quick surveillance of my escape options. She’s blocking the direct route back to Luke, but the junkyard is a labyrinth of paths. If I go right or left, surely one will lead back to him.
I hate that I can’t do something as simple as look for helmets on my own. Maybe I am in over my head and should have stayed back in Tarrentown.
Too late now.
“Sadly, I’m more of a coffee girl,” I tell her, backing up. Demonic little girls should have been higher on my list of hell expectations. She blinks innocently up at me, but Luke’s not going to catch me slipping again. I’m onto her.
“Mommy doesn’t let me have coffee,” she murmurs. “Says it’ll stunt my growth.”
“She’s right. You should listen to her.” I can’t back up any farther with the pile of junk behind me, so I work at an angle, rounding it until I’m in line with a clear path between two cars. It might not be a straight shot to Luke, but at least it’s open.
“I can’t listen to her anymore,” the little girl says remorsefully. “Not since I slit her throat.”
There it is. I give the creepy child a smile, hoping enough space is between us to get a decent head start. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I turn on my heel, sprinting in the opposite direction. Expecting the patter of footsteps to follow me, I glance back after a handful of sharp turns and shimmies between cars, but no one is there. I pause to catch my breath, pressing my back against the front of a decaying semi.
“Why did you run away?”
My neck cracks to the side, where the girl blocks the direction I was running toward. She wasn’t there a second ago. There’s no way—
“Why. Did. You. Run. A. Way,” she repeats, fury simmering beneath her words.
“I—”
My voice is stolen by the roar of an engine. Luke skids past her, stopping in front of me. “Get on!”
Helmets be damned. I scramble on the bike as the girl starts screaming her head off.
“I can’t leave, so you can’t, either! We can never leave! Nobody can leave!”
“Hold on!” Luke commands. I wrap my arms around his waist as the bike lurches forward. Instead of dodging the little girl, he hits her.
“No!” I gasp against his back, squeezing my eyes shut. Because suddenly, it’s not the little girl we’re hitting, but an animal with glowing golden eyes. We’re not in a junkyard, but driving along a forested stretch of road. And Luke’s not steering—I am.
I’m back in the car the night my parents died.
“Stay with me!” Luke’s shout tugs me out of the traumatic flashback, bringing me back to the here and now—speeding through the maze of car corpses and junk.
I tighten my hold around him, trying to look back at the little girl. “We just hit—”
“We went through her,” he shouts back. “That is no normal little girl.”
“Where did she come from? She appeared out of nowhere!”
“You were right,” he says, taking a turn so sharp I’m sure the bike will teeter over. I cling to him, fingers digging into his abdomen, and he somehow rights us.
“I was?”
He brakes hard as we come to the intersection of two paths. A crossroads. “You said this place is a ghost town. I should have realized it as soon as we entered and everything felt deserted. It’s a town of vengeful spirits. They sleep during the day and wake at night to haunt the place.”
“An entire town of vengeful spirits? Full homeowners’ association–style? Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately. We have to get out of here before others wake up.”
Something flickers past his shoulders. “Might be too late for that.”
I nod at where the little girl materializes with a woman at her side. Her mother, I assume, if the gaping wound on her throat and matronly nightgown is any indication.
“Not that way, then,” Luke mutters, gassing the bike and making a sharp left. We fly down the alley between two rows of boxcars, emerging at the other end.
And slam to a stop.
“What the fuck?” I breathe against the back of Luke’s neck. The gates to the junkyard are blocked by what look like civilians, until I truly take them in. Their clothes hang loosely on their bodies, their eyes shine with a phosphorus glow, and all are sporting open wounds or injuries.
“You’re not leaving.” The little girl is at the front of the lineup, her bear still clutched in one hand and her mother’s hand in the other. “Not until the party’s over.”
Luke revs the engine of the bike, which sounds like it’d rather he didn’t if the responding sputter is any indication. He tilts his head so I can hear him over the roar and says, “I really wish you’d found those helmets.”
“What’s that supposed to— Ah!”
He guns the gas and we bowling-ball ourselves straight toward the spirit pins.
When we hit them, the bike fishtails but Luke miraculously keeps us from careening into the ground.
I bury my head in Luke’s back to make myself as small as possible.
Shrieks from the spirits rise past the howl of the engine, though the bike bursting through their ghoulish forms doesn’t seem to harm them.
Fingers reach for me, dragging against my arms and legs, there one second and gone the next.
Pain blooms in their wake, the marker of an unpleasant truth that these ghosts aren’t as incorporeal as the souls on the train.
I have no doubt my jeans and jacket are sporting fresh rips.
My knee throbs as my legs press in to hug the body of the bike.
“You okay?!” Luke yells as we soar through the gate and skid onto the cracked pavement of the main road we came from.
“Peachy!” I reply shakily, though my vise grip doesn’t relent. “Did we lose them?”
“I was about to ask you. I’m driving!”
Glancing over my shoulder, my chest spasms at the sight.
“Well?” he asks.
The spirits follow us, descending the hill we zoom down in a tirade. They move swiftly, like they’re floating, their feet dragging against the ground. Despite the speed we’re going, they’re not just keeping up.
“They’re gaining on us,” I tell him. “A lot of them. Twenty, maybe thirty. And it doesn’t look like they’re slowing anytime soon.”
“Shit.” He hauls us impossibly faster. The boost puts more space between us and the spirits, but not enough to ditch them. “Remember how I told you I didn’t want to make a scene at the Night Market? Change of plans.”