Chapter 4
We drove down the road in silence until we reached the interstate, I slammed the brakes hard at first glance of the sight before me. The expressway was littered with cars that had been abandoned around the largest fifty-some-odd car pile-up I’d ever seen. “Whoa! Look at that, Kylie! It looks like all those drivers just disappeared.”
“Yeah, it does.” That is exactly what happened.
“I’m going to get out and see if I can tell how far down this goes on.” Mason hopped out of the car and climbed on top of the hood. “Kylie, you’ve got to see this!”
Getting out of the car, I joined my brother on the hood. From this view I could see for simply miles. The sight before me was alarming. This part of the interstate was nothing compared to the rest of the highway.
“How are we going to get through?”
Shaking my head, I admitted, “I have no idea.” Then I spied a black land rover a half mile ahead, off on the shoulder, and an idea came to me. “Grab your stuff!” I hopped off the hood. “Get as much as you can carry.” Opening the trunk, I slid on my backpack then began loading myself down with duffle bags. Pulling out the two rolling suitcases next then I tossed Mason his pack and his shotgun when he came around the car to join me.
“Why? What are we doing now?”
“We’re going off-roading.”
A huge grin spread across his face. “Sweet!”
Mason and I hustled, hiking up and around the abandoned and demolished vehicles and were almost to our destination when I caught a scent. A strange odor I couldn’t quite place, although it was familiar to me on some peculiar level. Putting my arm out to stop Mason from walking ahead of me, I asked, “Do you smell that?”
Puzzling me, he shook his head, “What smell? You mean gasoline?”
“No, it’s something else, something—wrong.” I whispered the last word as I felt my nails begin to curl. Oh, no! It was happening again. Feeling the air around me shift suddenly as if someone had just rushed by us, had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on edge.
“What’s wrong with you, Kylie?” I quickly covered his mouth with my hand and drug us behind one of the cars where his gun clattered to the ground. Holding my finger over my lips, I signaled for him to keep his trap shut and waited until he nodded before I released him. Setting all my gear down, I readied my bow. Mason’s eyes all but bugged out of his head when he got a gander at my hands and I knew I had claws again. There wasn’t time to reassure him, though; something was coming, something evil.
“Valkyrie…” I heard the word drawn out like a hiss before a long sword whipped passed my head, striking the door of a wrecked car and slicing cleanly through it.
“Kylie!” Mason screamed. I had ducked out of the way a mere millisecond before his next strike.
Anger filled my veins like hot lava as I met his eyes for the first time; a black hood surrounded a white, leather-faced creature that stood about eight feet tall with blazing red eyes. Slasher! my instincts screamed, recognizing the horrific creature where my conscious brain did not. It began rattling off the pertinent information like a walking encyclopedia. Slasher—undead that sustain their life by blood kills of thriving life forces. Weakness is the thin, almost transparent skin, may only be killed by the removal of their head.
His sword came down a second time and I leaped atop a pile of cars before firing off a shot. My arrow whizzed past his speeding frame so quickly I felt a little dizzy from watching the movement, waiting.
“Ah… a youth. What trap is this? Valkyrie youth are never allowed to hunt alone. Where are the others hiding?” I had absolutely no clue what this mad creature was prattling on about, so I attempted not to let him disturb my concentration.
Suddenly, however, pain exploded from my left thigh, causing me to scream in fury. He’d landed a shot, opening up my thigh. Blood welled up at the site and was soaking through my pants. My scream wasn’t an ordinary scream, either; it was a shriek, a sound that I hadn’t a clue I could make. It was so loud and at such a high pitch that the glass in the vehicles near me shattered.
As my anger grew, lightning struck overhead; somehow I knew it was strengthening me. Through the sound of crackling lightning, I could still make out a grunt over to my left. Abandoning my bow, I crouched down, listening. A second later, I heard another grunt and then the tearing of skin.
Leaping over three cars, I pounced, landing atop the Slasher immediately, digging my claws into his neck and twisting hard. Blood splattered everywhere as his head detached from his body. Throwing his nasty head to the ground, I stomped on it, feeling a great deal of satisfaction when it exploded.
“K—Kylie.” I heard Mason whisper. Anger filled me once more, whatever was after my brother was going to die miserably and painfully. I exploded over the cars, landing on the balls of my feet, claws and fangs bared, ready for another fight, only to find Mason shaking and screaming. It took me a minute or more of scanning the area to realize what he was terrified of. It was me!
Taking a few steps backward, I said, “Mason, it’s me.” Covering his eyes with his hands, he wouldn’t or couldn’t look at me.
Hurrying through the wreckage, I finally found a car with a side mirror intact enough for me to get a look at myself. Not believing my eyes at what was staring back at me, I began to freak! Blood covered my face and hands, my eyes were neon green in color and I had fangs; albeit they were tiny, not the fangs you’d see in a vampire movie, but still, they were fangs!
Spying a bottle of water on the floorboard of the car, I reached in and doused my face and hands with it, attempting to scrub off the blood. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” I couldn’t believe this was happening. I rubbed my skin so hard it became sore to the touch, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
A rumbling sound snapped me out of freak out mode. I turned to investigate, nails already curling again as I hurried over to where I had left my brother. My jaw almost dropped to my knees when I saw the most gorgeous guy to ever grace this planet rolling up on a Ducati black on black Streetfighter. Yes, I know my bikes. I begged my parents to consider letting me have one on my sixteenth birthday. The idea of cruising the streets with the wind whipping around me made me feel alive and free, in my imagination anyway. Not going to happen! Was the last that had been said on the subject. Needless to say, I never got my Streetfighter.
“Yo, little dude, you okay?” When he stopped next to Mason, I was there in two seconds flat. We had yet to see another living person in months and after what happened a few moments ago, I wasn’t about to take any chances. Gorgeous or not, this punk was dead if he made one wrong move.
“Back off,” I warned, stepping between him and my brother.
Both of his hands went up in the air as an easy smile spread across his face. “Hey, uncurl those claws, sweet cheeks. I’m a friend of the Valkyrie.” His teeth gleamed as white as those people in the Orbitz commercials that I can’t stand.
Glaring at him, unsure of my next move, I waited as he dropped one hand back on the handlebar of his bike and the other ran through his inky black hair. I couldn’t help noticing that his eyes were the oddest golden color; I’d never seen anyone with eyes that shade.
“Your little dude is experiencing some major shock. It happens when humans cross paths with others like us.”
"Others, wait… you’re not—–"
"Human, thanks be to Freyja, no! Quite frankly, I’m surprised he made it through the attack alive." He glanced around. “From the looks of things, none of the other humans did.”
Standing still as stone, I just stared blankly at him, blinking. I was trying desperately to process the words and the meaning of what he had just explained to me, however it wasn’t quite sinking in. Had he said thank Freyja? Who was Freyja? What attack? He wasn’t human?
“Hey, slow down there, doll face, you’re going to give yourself a headache.” He reached out, stroking my cheek with his fingers. His touch was electric
, causing me to jump. Have you ever been walking through a store and touched a shopping cart and received a shock? Yeah, it was like that, only amplified by ten.
“That Slasher back there, you did that?” I nodded numbly. “Impressive, your how old? Fifteen, sixteen?”
“Six—sixteen,” I stuttered like a complete moron.
His smile faded as his head cocked to one side as if he was hearing something I wasn’t. “Gotta jet, sweet thing; the cavalry have arrived.” His hand dropped from my face. That easy smile was back on as he revved the engine and took off, giving a whole new definition to the phrase, burning rubber.
Wasting no time—seeing as I had no idea what dreamy guy meant by the cavalry, but if they worried him, they worried me—I knelt down beside my brother. “Mason, you’re okay.” I rubbed his arms. “Come on, buddy, you need to get up. Remember the plan. We decided together that we needed to keep moving.” When he still didn’t budge, I lifted his chin, peering into his face to find that he was pale and his eyes appeared vacant. “Mason! Please; you have to snap out of this. It’s still me.” No response. Tears began to fill my eyes, blurring my vision.
A horn blaring off in the distance caught my attention. I tenderly placed my brother’s face back into his hands then took a running leap to land atop of a car. Not believing my eyes when I saw a yellow t-bird as old as my dad bashing its way through the crowded freeway. Even from this distance, I could make out that two women were in the front seat; one of them was laughing hysterically every time she plowed into another vehicle, and the redhead in the passenger seat was putting on lipstick of all things. When the raven-headed driver spotted me, she began beeping the horn like crazy. Wait, she saw me. From that great distance, her vision was like mine. Nobody’s vision was like mine.
The driver smacked the redhead on the back of the head, resulting in her face slamming against the dashboard as the driver howled in laughter. I knew it was time for me to get lost when the other woman decided to seek revenge, pouncing on the raven-headed driver and then the two began brawling right there in the front seat, sending the car racing out of control.
Leaping back down, I rushed over to Mason, throwing him over my shoulder before I took off running as if my life depended on it. I ignored the sting of pain in my thigh when I heard the two women yelling from behind me.
"Yoo hoo! Here little, Valkyrie, come to Auntie Bryn." I glanced briefly over my shoulder to see the red-headed woman whistling to me as if I were a dog as the two of them leapt from car roof to car roof, both seeming completely unaffected from their previous brawl.
The woman with raven hair was right on her heels. "Her name is Kylie, you lunatic."
"Rune, I don’t care what her name is. Did you hear that little Valkyrie?!" she shouted in my direction. "If you make me late for karaoke night, I'm going to kick your little butt from here to Valhalla!"
"Listen to her; you might as well learn this early, your Aunt Bryn has a one-track mind and nothing gets in the way of her party nights." The one called Rune shouted with a finishing snort.
"YOLO, Baby!" The redhead called Bryn yelled in response.
I kicked it into another gear as the land rover came closer into view. I had no idea where Valhalla was and I had no intention of going there with either of them. Once I'd made it, I opened the driver’s side door, stepping up inside the cab. As I quickly deposited my catatonic brother into the seat next to me, I buckled him in, noticing that his knuckles were white due to the vice grip he still had on both of our backpacks.
Without another thought, I fired up the engine. Flooring it, I went up and over the grassy hill, trying not to jostle Mason around too much. As I glanced in the rearview mirror, I spotted the redhead giving me the finger, followed by her shouting every swear word in the English language at me, which I could plainly make out, even over the roar of the engine. Needless to say, she was royally pissed about karaoke night.
Life as I knew it had officially now become a total and complete Weirdville.