Lu pressed her palm against my chest, over my heart. I rested my hand over the back of hers and counted my exhales until I was gone.
CHAPTERFIVE
“It’s wet,” Abbi noted.
The windshield wipers on the old truck were going hard and losing ground to the flash flood that had opened over our head a second after Lu had gotten a weather warning on her phone.
Rain rattled against the metal roof and hood of the truck, like some shitty weather deity throwing buckets of gravel at us. I was starting to think even Lu’s good eyesight wasn’t going to be enough to keep us on the narrow, twisting road.
“Really wet,” Abbi added. She was sitting between Lu and me, her legs crisscrossed, and was holding Hado against her chest like he could keep her dry.
“Rain’s rain,” I said. “It’ll pass.”
“The road is a river now.”
I nodded. “Lu will pull over before it gets too bad. Maybe at the next pull out on higher ground?”
Lu looked relaxed behind the wheel, one hand on the top of it, the other resting on her thigh, but she was tense. “I can,” she agreed, “but the storage isn’t too much farther. We should just drive through and shelter there.”
The sky flickered and thunder rolled like a celestial bass drum. Gravel turned into rocks, hammering away any answer I might have had.
Abbi squished in on herself, then turned to me and wedged behind my side, pulling my arm in front of her and holding on.
I patted whatever part of her was near my palm—her knee—and kept my eye on the road.
The flash flood dragged dirt off the hillside, blood red rivulets running onto the road, rusting and staining the water. Lu scowled through the next corner, the visibility even worse.
The water was rising. I yelled that we needed higher ground, a place to stop, but the racket swallowed my words.
We skidded up out of the gully we’d been in and took another corner slower than the last. Lu, her knuckles white on the wheel, had to be guessing where the road was.
The sky flashed, blinding, and Lu gestured, shouting, but I couldn’t hear a word over the explosion of thunder that broke the world in half.
Abbi yanked on my arm. Lorde jumped down to the floor near my feet, which was why I was looking down.
Lu yelled, a furious curse-laden warning.
I jerked my head up—
—In time to see the headlights aiming straight at us—
—Abbi shrieked, Hado writhed and shifted—
—Lu was still swearing, her lip curled in a snarl as she yanked the wheel trying to force four thousand pounds of steel to do the impossible and avoid impact—
I braced my feet, trying to grab for Lorde, and hold Abbi in place, as the headlights swerved, but not fast enough, not far enough.
The world slapped us sideways. My head bounced off the window, pain sliced through my legs. Metal screamed. Sky, trees, water rolled around us like dirty laundry in a coin wash. A flash of sand-colored eyes, sharp teeth, and a woman’s foot crushing my face, her strange laughter joyous and horrifying.
Then everything stopped.
I couldn’t breathe. Water covered my head. I was drowning.
I thrashed, frantic with panic, while a wry voice in my head noted I was right about this old truck being the death of us.
Abbi pushed—no, pulled. I thought she was behind me, but she was in front, tugging at my shirt. I got my eyes open. My lungs burned. Air, I needed air.
It was too dark, the lightning and flash in the sky snuffed out by rain. Water everywhere, swamping my vision, stinging and blurring the world. Two hands yanked hard and dragged me out from beneath the water.
