~Peregrine Storke~
For a long while, there was no conversation, only the repetitive sound of rain and nervous silence as we drove. This wasn’t a vacation. It wasn’t a carefree jaunt out of state. This was the next step in our lives heralded by gloom and thunder.
“I think the storm is getting worse,” Camilla murmured.
Her gaze moved to the window, to the rolling black sky and cloud-to-ground lightning. We were surrounded by a web of bright electricity, like flies being drawn in by a supercharged spider. Unexpected storms, especially bad ones, weren’t a rarity in Louisiana, but there was something about this one …
“Maybe there’s an update on the radio,” I suggested.
Foster turned the windshield wipers on high, but it didn’t help. The rain was coming too hard and too fast to keep up. He tuned the stereo, but the only thing that emanated from the speakers was a high-pitched buzz. An emergency alert.
Camilla began shaking. “Tornado?”
Foster looked up, his eyes widening before his foot hit the brakes. “No!” he cried. “Flood!”
The car began to spin, the sound of Camilla’s scream filling the cab. It was eerily similar to the one I’d imagined from Elspeth an hour before.
“Hold on!” Foster ordered.
I watched him in the rearview mirror, took in the calm expression on his face. Despite the danger, despite the spinning vehicle, and despite the water I glimpsed rushing toward us, he remained composed.
Time stood still, the sound of rain loud, the continuous buzz from the radio creating a strange, mesmerizing static. My fingers gripped the door, but I didn’t scream; there wasn’t any time to scream.
I knew before the water struck us that we weren’t going to make it. Foster hit the buttons on the door, rolling down the electric windows, and I knew he was giving us our only possibility of escape.
Water lifted us, tilting the vehicle forward before rolling us down an embankment and into an even deeper body of water. Water wasn’t just water in Louisiana; it was alive and dirty, full of danger and hidden secrets.
“Get out!” Foster shouted.
I scrambled for my seatbelt, pulling at it desperately. Water seeped into the open windows, flooding the floorboard before climbing up my calves. There was splashing and a bright flash of lightning as Foster broke free of the vehicle, pulling himself through his window just as Camilla released her seatbelt.
My belt wouldn’t discharge!
Water climbed up to my knees, the dark, murky depths consuming the bottom of my legs and gripping my thighs. It was evil, the water, staring at me with a brown gaping mouth filled with drool.
“Perri,” someone whispered.
I was alone in the vehicle. Camilla had gotten free, and I caught a glimpse of Foster pulling her to the embankment before the water began eating my stomach, its cloying fingers reaching for my breasts.
I was going to die before I’d even gotten a chance to live.
“Perri.”
Cold liquid swallowed my chest, lapping at my neck before sucking at my hair. Something moved against my leg, and I fought not to cry out, tears leaving a trail down my cheeks. My fingers pulled at the seat-belt, tearing at it until my fingernails bent painfully, my flesh raw.
“Perri!”
Foster’s hand swept into the TrailBlazer, his fingers searching my lap. Water kissed my lips, a chilling good-bye. It was too late.
“Damn it!” Foster swore.
My eyes met his, and I saw the defeat there. It seemed a sick sort of justice, really. My last sight the hazel eyes of a guy who’d shamed me once with his unkind jingle, “Perri, Perri, quite contrary, my how your stomach grows.”
The water stole any chance I had to speak, the dark monster seeping into my nose, my ears, and my eyes. It blinded me, pulling me down to a watery grave inside of a metal coffin.
Foster’s hand slipped away, and I drifted, the only sound the gurgling water as my chest filled with fire. The instinct to breathe was too strong, and I took in a mouthful of water, the liquid stealing any breath I’d had hope of saving.
Something gripped me under the water, but I’d closed my eyes against the liquid onslaught, an unconscious need to save my contacts. Silly, really, that I thought to maintain something as unimportant as contact lenses even in death.
The grip on me tightened, and I realized Foster had followed me down, his hands still digging desperately into my arm. Maybe it was the military that had done it to him, drilling in him this innate need not to leave someone behind.
It was too late.
There was only blackness now, a desperate need to breathe, a burning fire inside my chest as visions floated through my mind. Crazy visions. I wasn’t supposed to picture sketches in my final moments. I was supposed to see a reel of my life, not the awkward faces of Princess Elspeth, her parents, her prince, and the creatures of the world I’d drawn into a sketchbook. And yet, there they were waiting for me, in all of their awkward glory, their arms open.
Chapter 3
“That awkward moment when you discover your delusions are real.”