“Ow!” I held my face. “Ow, Jesus!” When my fingers left my mouth, blood colored them. I felt my cheek swelling already and my shock and pain turned into something closer to rage. “Are you kidding me?” I touched my lip. “You hit me!”
“Stay here, Allie!” he said. “Do whatever you have to, but stay the fuck in your body...I cannot do everything!”
“You hit me!”
He glared at me. “Yes.”
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” I said.
“Yes.” He released the front of my shirt.
Taking another breath, he exhaled sharply, leaning back in his own seat.
“They are draining you, Esteemed Bridge...you will get tired. You will get very tired, but you cannot sleep! I hit you only to bring you back. If your body perceives itself in mortal danger, your light will return.” His eyes returned to my face.
“Pain is fastest. Understand?”
Something rammed us, hurling me into the dashboard.
Revik veered when the truck accelerated to smash into our rear bumper again.
Suddenly a police car blazed behind us, siren on as it flashed its lights.
Revik yanked the wheel left, throwing us into the grass and tree-filled island between the north and south-bound lanes. I gripped the dashboard as we bounced down the grade. We hit hard at the bottom, then Revik gunned the GTX up the grassy hill.
Behind us, the cop car hit that same grade at a different angle and got stuck, wheels spinning in the dirt after it smashed its grill into a boulder.
Revik entered the south-bound traffic going north.
I let out an involuntary cry as horns blared, cars spun and veered with a squeal of grinding metal and burnt rubber. He straightened the car’s trajectory and accelerated.
I looked back through our half-missing rear window.
Glass covered the back seat. I touched my face, realized I had tiny cuts on my arms and hands that I hadn’t noticed.
Cars screeched to a halt, swerved to avoid hitting us, slamming into one another instead. I counted five...six separate vehicles wrecked just past where the GTX dragged dirt tracks onto the road. Taking a breath, I gripped the armrest under the side window and stared at the blurring trees, flinching at the view out the windshield.
He spoke up as he weaved between cars.
“The Rooks would rather convert you,” he said. “But killing you would be an acceptable outcome for them...”
I gripped the dashboard, not looking at him. “Great. Nice to know. Revik...just drive the damned car, okay?”
He swerved again, causing another car to slam its brakes too hard and flip.
I watched through the rear window as that same car came crashing down in the middle of the road, facing the opposite direction as traffic, like us. I looked to my right, saw the truck driver pacing us in the northbound lanes up above, flashing between the trees of the wide divide.
“...The reality is, no one knows what causes the end.” Revik was saying. “Your death itself might start the wars.”
He drove up and over the gravel shoulder. He aimed us back into the island between the north and southbound lanes, bouncing a rough diagonal line through the sloped grass. I realized he was heading back towards the north-facing lanes.
“Your presence here complicates things for both sides. The fact that you are telekinetic—”
I shouted over the engine and bouncing car.
“You pick now to get chatty?”
The GTX slammed into a hole and a rock, and I smacked my head on the roof, yelped. We were nearly across the island.
“Hold the wheel,” Revik said.
“What?”
He turned to look at me...
...and his eyes are silver once more, metallic. Inside, pictures flicker in an organic projector, a war happened and happening and about to happen in shadows and exploding lights. I see vultures around his head, raptors...
...and snapped out.
His body lay slumped over the steering wheel.
I leapt onto him without thought. Pushing his torso back, I slid into his lap and gripped the wheel, turning it sharply to avoid hitting a tree. Shoving my legs down between his, I jammed my foot on the accelerator over his leather boot.
Still, we’d slowed down, enough that the trucker pacing us miscalculated.
I drove us through a narrow gap between two trees as that same trucker hit his brakes, trying to head me off. Managing to just get in behind him anyway, I headed for the right lanes, swerving on asphalt and gravel as we abruptly accelerated out of the lawn...
When Revik jerked beneath me.
He grabbed the wheel over my hands, as if to steady himself. Remembering what he said about pain, I dug my fingernails into the skin of his knuckles.
“Wake up! REVIK!”
His eyes clicked into focus.
He looked up at me, briefly, then turned away, coughing. Blood speckled the glass of the driver’s side window. He wiped his mouth, but when I started to climb out of his lap, he grabbed my wrist.