Five (Elemental Enmity Series Book I) (3 page)

I turned toward bike guy to see what had freaked her out so badly. He should have been six miles ahead of us by now from the speed he’d been going. Maybe she had the same tantalizing snapshots rolling around her mind and wanted to call him back?

The minute my eyes locked with the scene next to me, I screamed. Instinctively, I jerked away from the thing, no longer resembling a motorcycle, next to my car. The back end fishtailed, but I managed to correct us before I gunned it. I looked again, sure I had imagined whatever that was.

It was still there. I blinked several times to dislodge the image. Nothing changed.

Instead of seeing chrome and leather, flank and sinew of what looked like horseflesh rode beside me, black as midnight, taut as a cord. The low flap of an enormous, obsidian feathered wing sent a shudder through me. I was losing it. I was totally losing it. Was I dreaming? Had I fallen asleep at the wheel, and was I even now careening toward a gruesome death?

The only sound louder than the roar of the motorcycle was Cassie’s chant of, “It is not there,” which oddly enough did not comfort me. She gave a final scream before she covered her eyes with trembling fingers. I wished I had that option.

The creature was colossal, bigger than all the horses I had ever seen. He was the stuff of legend.

A pegasus was supposed to be white. This monstrosity was deeper black than a bottomless pit. Smoke billowed forth from his nostrils as though he had a fiery furnace for innards, while a purplish-black glow radiated from him.

After every thrust of his gargantuan wings, my car veered. I had been going nearly a hundred miles-per-hour, yet the thing kept up as if we were out for a scenic drive.

The rider was a mammoth of a man, suited in what looked like leather armor. His jacket strained under bulging muscles as though the seams would burst. A helmet blocked any view of his face, but his head was turned toward me. Ghostly white knuckles gripped the handlebars.

Wait, what happened to the pegasus? A breath before, a mythical beast rode next to us: one that could have only escaped from the depths of Hades. Now, an ordinary motorcycle flanked my car.

Well, ordinary was not right. The chrome gleamed in the dim light as though it were alive. Once again absurd thoughts about that man and motorcycle stole my mind. I ached to settle into the supple black leather while I curled my fingers around the high-set handlebars. Even from here, the rumble of the powerful engine shook my entire frame. Still, it was only a bike.

I refused to analyze the intrusive images of the mysterious stranger, especially because I wouldn’t have minded if he scooted back a bit to give me some room.

I reacted to him on a cellular level, as if he was a new source of gravity and I a wayward comet. An emotion I didn’t want to recognize stirred underneath my overpowering fear: undeniable need. My mind screamed at me to pull a one-eighty to get away from him yet my body craved to get closer to the stranger. I felt as though I were his somehow.

I didn’t like it one bit. I was not the type of girl to lose her brain over a guy. I couldn’t even see his face, but I wanted to. In fact, the curiosity left me feeling cheated.

Cassie kept her gaze locked blindly forward as if nothing abnormal was happening. I wished I could be so calm. The specter of insanity loomed close by me, ready to strike at any moment.

The man cocked his head to the side, saluted me.

Then bike, rider…everything just disappeared into the hot night air.

This time when I hit the brakes, the car skidded wildly to a stop. I craned my neck in all the unnatural angles I could manage. He was gone. What the heck? Had a trap door in the road swallowed him?

I pummeled the steering wheel to ease the tension welling in my heart. The loss of him surrounded me still. How could I lose something I never had? How could a stranger cause such a deep reaction from me? What was that thing he’d been riding? Where did he go? Was he there in the darkness, waiting for me?

“Bum-scum!” I shouted into the night. My shrill words hung momentarily in the air before shattering into silence. I shoved my hands through my hair and squeezed my eyes shut.

Cassie shifted in her seat. The aged leather let out a shadow of the groan I currently had caged. I glanced over at her.

Her gaze locked onto mine before she licked the side of her mouth and sighed. “I wish you’d swear like a normal person, Rayla.” Her tone held and irritation that conflicted with her placid expression. “That is so disgusting.”

I gawked at her. “Are you really razzing me about my cursing habits now?”

Her full lips pursed before she gave me a faint smile. “This seems as good of a time as any.”

Wait. What was going on here? She saw him, and she saw that thing. There was no way she would have screamed the way she did from seeing an ordinary guy. What was she doing? This was the worst time I could think of for her to start messing with me. I shook my head. Maybe she was in shock. Maybe she needed a little reminder. “You don’t find anything odd about being run down by a man on a motorcycle that turns into a pegasus and back again just before he disappears?” I frantically searched the sky again. “Where did he go?”

She seemed to be trying for casual indifference, but fear transmuted her normally delicate features into a mousy mask. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I smirked, narrowing my eyes at her. I could only guess what was going through her mind right now, but there was no way she was going to make me think I hallucinated that thing. “So when did ‘it is not there’ become your new mantra?”

Her fingers worried the bright white seam of her dark designer jeans. She shot a glance at me but barely made eye contact before she looked out the window again. “Rayla, drop it. We’re fine. He’s gone.” She shrugged. “You should be happy.”

“Happy?” I choked out. “I just had a real hell’s angel chase me down, and you’re acting as if he was a dorky date!” A maelstrom of emotions swirled throughout my body. My heart pummeled my ribs. My breath came in halted gasps. Rivulets of sweat trickled down my back as though I had run twenty miles. If that wasn’t bad enough, my right front tire perched on the gravel shoulder. A few more inches would have sent us plummeting onto the endless sea of sagebrush below the high desert highway. I grunted. “Was he a figment of our collective imagination?”

“Maybe he—”

I refused to let her explain this away. “Come on, Cassie. I know you saw the thing so don’t bother denying it. That guy was weird. Did he make you feel strange, like you knew him or something?”
Like he was your prince charming come to collect you from the real world?

She looked out the window, but I still caught her grimace. “Could we just get moving again? We’re going to be late, or would you rather go back to Snow?”

Snow College was in the opposite direction. I was not turning around. She’d already given up her chance to change her mind. “You’re actually telling me you didn’t see a pegasus?” Why would she have acted like that otherwise?

She slapped her hand against her thigh, startling me. “Mythical creatures are just that. They do not exist!”

I would have agreed with her ten minutes before, but that beast and rider would forever haunt me. I was pretty sure, even with my imagination, that I couldn’t have come up with something like that on my own. How had he disappeared?

A tiny part of me had hoped to see the guy fly through the air for affecting me that much—only without the aid of his demon mount. I needed to make it clear to him, and more importantly myself, exactly who had control over my body.

I had never liked the dark. Now I had an actual reason to distrust the inky hours that had always brought a shiver of trepidation to my spine. I had expected my maiden voyage away from home to be full of excitement but nothing like this.

There was no point in arguing in the middle of the highway. Cassie was right. We needed to get going. We had a lot to get settled before school started and this subject would be one of those things we’d sort through, hopefully before we actually arrived on campus.

I shoved my fingers under my shirt to scratch my scar again. I needed to stop, but I couldn’t. It was already raw. What the heck was wrong with me? Could this trip get any worse?

Lunch was awkward. Cassie was really quiet. We came out of the cheesy restaurant in utter silence. The place had saddles for barstools, wagon wheels for chandeliers, and a mechanical bull in the corner. The only entertainment I’d had for the past hour had been watching complete strangers repeatedly fall off the thing.

As I walked to the car, the air grew thick with electricity. Every hair on my body tried to take flight. Suppressing a shudder, I glanced around the desolate landscape but didn’t see anything that looked out of the ordinary.

Although my scar had been itchy, tingling almost nonstop since my near-miss with that motorcycle, my terror had vanished with the sunrise. However, it was back like recurrent heartburn. I snapped my neck around when a throaty rumble sounded from somewhere close by.

A leather-clad rider pulled onto the road from the gas station across the street. Figures I only caught the back of him. It could have been the guy from last night, but there had to be thousands of black motorcycles in America ridden by huge men in leather,
right
? When her gaze locked to the motorcyclist, Cassie’s face dropped three shades paler than vanilla ice cream.

I leaned closer to her, whispering, “Do you think that was him?”

She hadn’t moved a muscle, as if she was frozen where she stood. “Who?”

Why was she acting like this? She’d have to do better than that if she wanted me to drop the subject. “Don’t,” I said.

She glanced up at me coolly. “I really can’t imagine what you’re talking about, Rayla.”

I steeled my expression, still not getting why she refused to admit what had happened. “You should try harder, like when we were kids.”

She glared at me before stalking away. Arm outstretched, she waited at the driver-side door.

I tossed her the keys. “Why won’t you talk about it?” I asked, sliding onto my seat. “We both saw the thing.” My mind told me I couldn’t have really seen that pegasus, but something in my heart refused to deny the experience.

Her hands shook while she fumbled to get the key into the ignition, and her usually steady voice held an edge of fear. “You should get some sleep. You look exhausted.” She hadn’t even glanced at me. In all the years I’d known her, Cassie had never been this freaked out.

I couldn’t blame her. Even though the motorcyclist was gone, his presence clung to me like a second skin. How was I supposed to sleep while believing that man was somewhere in this world? I hoped my senses were wrong—that he wasn’t actually following us, unseen. I tried not to think about it, but the vision of him haunted me every time I closed my eyes.

The rest of the trip was a blur. Nothing weird happened, so I had turned my mind to more important things…like school.

When I pulled into Le Mans Hall’s humungous circular driveway, my mouth fell open. This was going to be my home for the next four years.

The building was amazing—sort of gothic mansion meets military barracks. The square bell-tower loomed above us, nestled between a regal set of flanking wings.