“No. However, we’re still technically under the parameters of your first one. All you broke was the deal my dad added. It’s howyou were able to do it, because really it shouldn’t have been there at all. It was a commandeering of the blank space you left. Now it’s gone, and so the rules arewhollyyours. The reality is yours. If your mind can’t go further than this, than neither can anything else.”
“Hell iswaymore fair then I imagined it would be.”
“Don’t speak too soon. We’ve got incoming of the things youcanaccept.”
“So, spindly weird monster creatures with ten mouths and razor tails?”
“Oh man, why say it out loud? They’redefinitelygonna be that now,” he said, and just as he did the truck lurched.Violently. Her stomach almost left her body. If it hadn’t been for the twelve seat belts, she most likely would have sailed by Jack and out the driver’s-side window.
Either that, or Jack would have caught her.
Which seemed pretty likely, considering how fast he caught the pen that flew out of her hand. He snatched it out of the air while driving one-handed. And not even straight-line driving, either. He spun the wheel, until the whole car slid into a near jackknife. Then he hauled on the hand brake so hard it really should have sent them flying or turning or god knows what.
Though the hand brake not actually being real probably had something to do with it.Everything in here isn’t a truck, she thought, as it screeched to a stop. But it didn’t seem like the thing they ran over knew that. There was an almighty crunch and something awful splattered over the window at her side. And while she was still gasping from that, Jack punched the dashboard. “Come on, man, get it together,” he yelled, and the truck took off again.
Though this time it wasn’t at lightning speed.
Like the threat had changed, it had stopped being a chase.
Now it was about dodging things that flung themselves at the truck. That tried to get on the hood, until Jack braked and flungthem off. That snapped at their wheels, and the side mirrors, and almost took off Jack’s arm when he tried to snatch at one as it went for his window.
The only thing that stopped it was her.
She wrote fast without thinking, and slashed.
And the thing fell away. Only for another to almost immediately take its place. It came for him again, fast as anything, and she got it. She got four of them, in quick succession. But then they seemed to get smart. She could see them out of her side mirror, skulking around the right side taillight. And when she aimed, she couldn’t get the angle right.
Even though she had no clue why an angle was even needed.
It felt like she should just be able to fire a heat-seeking missile and explode them from the inside out. But rules were rules were rules—and so she changed tactics. She waited until Jack was looking away, and wrote quick, quick, quick.Steve holds no dominion over me, she put.
Then she wound down the window.
And eased herself up and out, until she was sitting on the rim of it. One hand on the roof of the truck to hold on. The other ready to cast her spells.No problem, she thought. But of course Jack didn’t seem to think so. “Hey, hey, youget back in here. Nancy, do you hear me, get your butt in this truck before I let it get ahold of you,” he bellowed. But the truck answered for her. “Impossible,” it played. Much to Jack’s utter fury. “You let her spell-lock you, you stupid piece of shit? When we get out of this I am going to strip you for parts.”
Then she felt Jack’s hand brush her shin.
Like he was fucking reaching for her while trying to stunt-drive around monsters. He was trying to haul her back in. So she paused in the middle of attempting to get one of the things in her line of sight, and flung a word at him. A hot one that made himyell in outrage. “Did you just jab me with a nonexistent fork, you little shit?” he wanted to know.
“Next time it’ll be a nonexistent hot poker,” she said, as she turned, shut one eye, and aimed down the barrel of her pen.
And this time her aim was true.
She got three in one go.
But she didn’t get a chance to thrill at the evidence of her power. She couldn’t, because just as she went to, she saw it. She saw that the maze of teeth had taken on shape and form. It had amassed into more, into hundreds of them, into thousands of them, stretching as far as the eye could see.
And she knew it wasn’t going to be enough.
There were too many of them, too many to fight. And they were still so far from the store. They weren’t even on Main Street yet, and truthfully she wasn’t sure they should be. People wouldn’t be able to see these things. They couldn’t be swallowed by nothing that was only intended for her and Jack.
But a monster could be smashed through a window.
Someone could be knocked off their feet.
It was too much.
“Jack,” she said as she slid back inside. “We can’t.”
