"It's..." His voice trailed off, then he almost shoved me away. He was out of the car before I could ask what was wrong, but one look around answered that.
When I'd glanced out the window moments ago, the sky had been bright blue. Now, it was deepest indigo that was fast turning to black. With all the crazy lightning, I would've thought a storm was rolling in, except there were no clouds.
Adrian jumped back into the car, slamming it into gear and hitting the gas. The instant velocity knocked me against the seats hard enough to risk whiplash.
"Call Costa." His tone was urgent. "Tell him to aim for the lightning and get out of here, now."
I began to tear through my purse looking for my cell phone. "What's going on?"
Lightning continued to flash on every horizon, until the perimeter of the landscape was bathed in strobes of dazzling white. At the same time, the sky turned pitch black, and more terrifying, somehow looked like it was starting to fall.
Adrian floored the gas. "This area is being swallowed by a demon realm."
CHAPTER TEN
I'M THE FIRST to criticize when people ask dumb questions during a crisis. Seriously, I can't count the times I've thought, Just shut up and run! while watching a horror movie. In reality, stupid-babble was a side effect of shock, and despite all that I'd been through, I still wasn't immune to it.
Take me saying, "What? How?" while dialing Costa's cell phone with shaking fingers.
Adrian didn't take his eyes off the nearest lightning storm, which he was driving us straight toward.
"Told you, demon realms are created when they cause parts of their world to slam into ours. I've seen it done before, and this is what it looked like."
Yes, he'd explained realm creation to me months ago. Not that understanding it helped when a nightmare-black sky was bearing down on us like a giant foot about to squash an ant. Costa answered on the second ring, and I didn't wait for him to say hello before blurting out Adrian's instructions.
"Drive for the lightning. A realm's coming down on us!"
"What?" Costa demanded. See? Stupid-babble.
"A realm is about to swallow us," I yelled. "The only way out is through the lightning, so drive, drive, drive!"
I heard Costa shout something to Jasmine, then the line went dead. I checked the phone. No bars. With two worlds about to collide in the same space, that wasn't a surprise. Darkness had now completely enveloped the area around us, making it difficult to see the bands of lightning we were headed toward. Without our headlights, we'd be driving blind, and we needed to see or we'd crash into one of the area's many boulders. When we'd gone on our joy ride, we'd driven well away from the bus, not knowing that there would be any consequences. Now, I only hoped that Costa and Jasmine were closer to the lightning belts than we were, because despite Adrian pushing the muscle car to its limit, the horizon around us was turning completely black.
Then several loud booms shook us. Adrian skidded to a stop, narrowly avoiding a large fissure that opened up in the ground in front of us. The air became heavy, compressing us as if each square inch had been filled with invisible weight. Something far louder than thunder echoed across the sky, making me clutch my ears in a futile attempt to lessen the painful noise.
Adrian put the car in Park and shut off the engine. When his gaze met mine, the grim expectancy in those sapphire depths made what he said almost redundant.
"We can't outrun it. It's here."
I looked out the window-and a scream trembled in my throat. I barely noticed Adrian unclipping his seat belt and pulling me into his arms. With those awful compressing sensations growing worse, only his grip kept me from running out of the car in an instinctive, useless attempt to get away.
"Brace yourself!" he shouted above the deafening noise.
I did, unable to stop staring out the window. The wall of black rushing down upon us lost its impenetrable, inky darkness. Instead, for a few terrifying seconds, it looked like a smoky mirror. I could see the top of our car amid the rock-littered landscape, see the cracked ground shuddering and fissuring as if caught in the grip of an earthquake, and then I saw my own pale, stricken face staring up from the windshield when that mirrored reflection crashed down on top of us.
Glass pelted my face before Adrian shoved my head into his chest. I tried to concentrate on how tightly he held me, not on the sudden heaviness in my gut that made me feel like I was being eviscerated in my seat. The noise was the worst; a roaring, blasting sound that seemed to reverberate through my entire body. The urge to run was overwhelming, but at the same time, fear kept me frozen in place.