There was something about the sound. As though Sean had heard it before. Or maybe it resonated inside him. Like the scream vibrated at the same frequency as his bones.
Dillon stabbed the front windshield. “There!”
Sean saw it too. A Nissan low rider streaked up and halted directly in line with them. Eric sat behind the wheel. He leered through his open window, like the sole reason for him being there was to mock them. Like this was what he lived for.
He draped one hand on the wheel. The other was clenched around Carey’s neck.
She fought Eric’s grip with frantic futility. She looked straight at them and shrieked, “Help me!”
Eric shook her like a misbehaving doll. Carey’s hair caught the sunset in a ruby blush. Then Eric goosed the engine and burned rubber in a high-pitched farewell. Dust lingered with the smoke.
Dillon mashed the stereo’s off button. In the sudden quiet Sean heard his brother growl deep in his throat.
Brunette complained, “I liked that song.”
The words jarred inside Sean’s brain. He wanted to ask how she could be so unconcerned about another woman’s distress. But Dillon slammed the car into drive and mashed the accelerator.
The Charger responded like it had waited all its short life for this moment.
Up to that point, the engine’s noise had been both beautiful and muted. Now it was all bellowing menace. The tires burned with the same rage that flooded Sean and flamed in Dillon’s pinched features. Dillon fought the wheel, oversteered momentarily, then took aim for where the Nissan swiftly disappeared. The crowd formed a channel of cheering salutes to their departure.
The blonde to Sean’s left kissed his neck and shouted into his ear, her words as hot as her lips, “Isn’t this fun?”
The lure was too perfect. That was the thought that slapped Sean awake. He tore his gaze off the road ahead and stared at the girl. She met him with an inviting smile. As though this was exactly what she wanted. Him, the race, the danger high. All of it. Perfect.
Yet there was something else now. Perhaps it had always been there. But the roaring engine and the racing acceleration and the adrenaline rush all formed a piercing clarity. And Sean saw beyond the woman’s beauty. Into her gaze.
And he realized that this wasn’t real.
Logic was no more important now than when he was walking through walls. Despite everything his eyes saw, he was certain the spark in the woman’s gaze was alien. He could not say why he knew. Only that he was certain.
This was a setup.
He tore his eyes away. He could not let her see that he knew. So when she leaned in close and breathed fire on his ear, he did not respond as he wanted, which was to jerk and shudder with revulsion.
She shouted, “Don’t you just love this?”
Sean felt his lips pull back from his teeth and hoped she did not catch the lie in his expression or his reply. “This is amazing!”
Only it wasn’t. It was terrifying. Because as he saw the road race up toward them, he became instantly, utterly certain of one thing.
They were going to die.
The Charger ate up the straight-line road. The red Carolina clay exposed by the building sites rushed past on both sides, blurring with their acceleration until they tore down a street lined with dried blood.
They gradually caught up with the Nissan. But Sean wasn’t watching the car now. He knew that wasn’t real either. He had no idea what Eric drove, but he was positive it wasn’t this. The thoughts punched his brain faster than the Charger’s forward momentum. They were trapped, and this was why the women were here. Or whatever they were. Their job was to get them into this position. So that they could be . . .
Murdered.
The instant he made this connection, the Nissan up ahead of them disintegrated. One moment the four exhaust pipes were flashing flames with each gear change. Then the car was no longer a car at all. Only smoke. A single puff of reddish-silver exhaust. And the Charger punched through.
Directly at the trees.
The road jinked to the right. The curve was too sharp for their speed. They were milliseconds from a strike and their deaths.
And the women shrieked their triumphant laughter.
The Charger struck the curb and was catapulted up. The nose dragged the earth, the car now at a ninety-degree angle.
And still the women laughed.
A tree limb was aimed straight at the front windscreen. Another second and it would become a lance through Sean’s heart.
Sean did not think. There was no time for deliberation. He acted.
He shook off the women’s hold, then enveloped himself and Dillon in a single protective shield. Sean then used the car’s motion to lunge him and Dillon forward.
And transited them through the portal he had fashioned.
He and Dillon tumbled across the polished stone flooring of the massive train station.
People shouted and leapt aside. Sean took down seven people. Dillon collided with an even dozen as he slid a hundred feet or so and came up hard against a massive electronic sign. One of the metal posts crumpled, but the sign remained upright.
Dillon did not get up.
Sean rose, ignoring the angry protests, and raced over.
Dillon’s hands were bloody. He gripped a shard of tree limb that stuck out of his side, just above his belt. But the pain on his features had nothing to do with his injury. He looked up at Sean and cried, “I killed them!”
“They weren’t real,” Sean replied. But his brother probably didn’t hear. Because Dillon’s eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out.