Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (42 page)

David stroked
Stephanie’s hair reassuringly and looked out onto the
forecourt.

From behind the
counter, West called over to Stanwick, “What about the other
two?”

“I told them to
stay in the back office for five minutes, then dial 911 and notify
the dispatcher that a seven-year-old child mauled a guy who was
trying to make off without paying.”

West looked
uneasy, “Was that wise?”

Stanwick
laughed, “I’m sure you’d rather we just bundle everyone into the
cars in some vague hope that we can convince them everything will
be just fine and dandy. We have to leave now, we don’t have time to
go over the finer nuances of my logic.”

West nodded,
slapped two hundred dollars on the counter top and then threw a
small wad of notes onto Staci’s lap so that she would have
something to smile about when she awoke. As he walked towards the
exit, West imagined the gas station exploding in a ball of flames,
wiping away all of the DNA, fingerprints and bad decisions in one
glorious blast; any thought to block out the voices. He knew the
Jim’s Joint
employees had made the call already. He just
hoped they would be on the road before the police showed up.

It felt to Stephanie
as if the sirens had been following right behind them for an
eternity. The thought of being separated from her parents had been
frightening, even though she was already starting to feel
comfortable in the presence of Charlene and West. Now, hunkered
down in the rear seats of the Boss, she was certain that she was
going to die or they were going to be arrested. Her head bumped
hard against the passenger door and she was forced to revise her
thinking; they were definitely going to die.

As far as she
was concerned, her immanent demise was West’s fault. Yes, attacking
the man may have been an ill conceived plan on her part, but it had
been West who had convinced her father that she would be safer with
him, because he had the only car that stood any chance in a high
speed pursuit.

She heard the
rapid thudding overhead which had faded in and out of earshot a few
times. Against David’s wishes, she’d seen enough t.v. shows to know
you can’t outrun the helicopter. Every time she’d watched those
police camera programs, she’d thought, “Yeah, but what if …” and
every time, well, almost every time the result was
catastrophic.

“Stephanie, how
are you doing back there?”

West’s voice
was calm, happy almost.

Stephanie
hadn’t realized she was crying until she attempted to reply, and
could only manage a ragged, “Are we going to die?”

Charlene
reached back and clutched Stephanie’s small clammy hand in hers,
“We’re fine sweetheart, don’t worry.”
Stephanie heard the whisper, even over the sirens and the thudding
of the helicopter, and the Boss’s engine roar, “We
are
going
to be fine right?”

West patted
Charlene’s knee, shouting over the din, “Just focus on your skull
and your heart.”

“What?”
Charlene asked, desperately trying to sound calm for Stephanie’s
sake.

“We should be
fine,” West replied, “but in the event of a crash, your skull and
your heart are the only things to worry about; as long as they
survive, you’ll be fine.”
Charlene squeezed Stephanie’s hand tighter, “Did you get that
Stephanie?”

West weaved in and out
of traffic with gentle nudges of the steering wheel, his reactions
considerably more in tune than those of the average dashboard
camera quarry. The helicopter was a concern, but he guessed that if
the traffic opened up ahead of them, the helicopter wouldn’t be an
issue. He knew the roads of America like the backs of his hand, and
in West’s case, this was not a hollow metaphor. Still, he thought
as he clipped the front bumper of a police Charger with his tail
end, it wasn’t obvious how he was going to make it to the parking
lot of the public library in Mechanicsburg without leaving an
incredibly conspicuous trail.

Mechanicsburg
had been an arbitrary choice for a meeting place. It wasn’t far off
the interstate and he had been convinced he would be able to lose
the police and make it there for three in the afternoon. The
pursuit had so far not been particularly easy, taking him off the
interstate twice in an attempt to shake the police. He took his
eyes off the road ahead for a moment, checking the time on the
car’s console; twenty miles in six minutes. Well with no traffic,
the Boss could definitely do it, but that was hardly the point.
Charlene’s involuntary scream drew his attention back to the road
just in time for him to tuck the car in front of an eighteen
wheeler, narrowly missing a Cruiser which was dawdling at a
pedestrian pace in the fast lane.

West had
developed theories over the years about the type of people who
drove certain car brands, but eventually, he’d come to the
conclusion that most drivers were simply ass holes. This experience
was doing little to dissuade him from that opinion. A marked Tahoe
came into view in the driver side window and he could see a police
officer in the window, hand pointing towards the shoulder of the
interstate, his voice issuing from unseen loudspeakers, “Pull
over!”

Spotting an
opening in the traffic ahead of him, West floored the accelerator
and shouted, “Stephanie, I need you to get off the floor, get into
a seat, and fasten your seatbelt. It’s just a precaution, but it is
necessary.”

If this opening
developed into a good clean stretch, he would loose the two Tahoe
and the Chargers quickly. If he could keep his driving clean for
eighteen miles, he could plausibly build up a lead of several miles
on the helicopter by the time he reached the exit ramp.

In less than a
minute, he could see the chopper falling away in his side mirrors.
This was good, it meant that the police weren’t pursuing in a
particularly high caliber helicopter, or that the wind was on his
side. Within two-minutes, the helicopter had become a barely
visible spec in the mirror. Three minutes, with only a couple of
easy passes on the road and the pursuing vehicles were nowhere to
be seen.

“Up ahead West
… cars either side of the road.” Charlene’s fingers gripped his
thigh as she spoke, but West was oblivious to her touch, “There
might be spike strips?”

“Stingers.”
Stephanie yelled from the back seat, correcting Charlene.

West nodded,
“We can handle stingers. The tires are self healing.”

As they
approached roadblock, West could see that two of the cars were
pulling onto the road to form a blockade. He tried to calculate the
variables that were weighing in on their predicament. The Boss was
a masterpiece, and he was proud of it. It took something pretty
special for West to feel that sense of achievement. Still, there
was a blockade, and even given the wonderful advantage conveyed by
his hand built engine, the Boss just couldn’t fly. Shame, thought
West as he cut the steering wheel to the left. When they hit the
grass embankment in the middle of the interstate, they were
traveling at a steady pace of two hundred and seventeen miles per
hour.

The car had flipped
four times before West became too disoriented to keep track of what
was happening. There was no traffic in the oncoming lane, which was
a blessing, but the front end of the Mustang Boss tore through the
barrier on the far side of the road with enough force to sheer the
chassis immediately before the cockpit, the engine block tearing
away with the bulk of the front bodywork. The car continued to
somersault, still traveling over one hundred miles per hour without
the engine. The passenger side collided with a tree, altering the
spin of the car and slowing it considerably.

When it finally
touched down again, the rear end of the car hit the forest floor
with enough force to cut a twelve foot trench through the mud,
bracken and foliage, collapsing the passenger door and a large part
of the roof. They came to a rest in the middle of a heavily wooded
area, rocking back and forth before the Boss creaked and moaned its
final death rattle.

Stephanie’s breathing
was shallow and wheezing. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she
knew that breathing was a good sign. It hurt to breathe though, not
like asthma, although the couple of times she’d had attacks they
had been very unpleasant. This felt more like someone was turning a
knife in her side every time she inhaled.

She opened her
eyes and was dismayed by the fact that she couldn’t see anything.
As she let her eyes adjust to the light, dismay turned to horror.
She could sense that there
was
light, vague dark shapes
moving against a glowing field, but she couldn’t see anything. She
opened her mouth to shout for help; the sound was distant and
muffled. She wondered momentarily if this was due to the fact that
she was struggling to vocalize because of her restricted breathing,
but the realization dawned quickly that all of the sounds she could
make out were muffled and distant. With her mouth open, she felt
her stomach twist in knots and the bile rise in her throat, but
unable to move, she began to choke on her vomit. She didn’t believe
in hell, but sometimes she’d tried to imagine it. She longed for
that now; that imagined vision of fire and brimstone would surely
have been more bearable.

“Pull it.”

“It’s going to
rip her hand off!”

“What do you
not understand about what we are? Pull it!”

Charlene yanked
on the twisted car door which was pinning Stephanie’s arm beneath
it. The creaking sound of metal formed a grotesque counterpoint to
the sound of crunching and tearing which Charlene could still make
out over the cacophony of noises and she gagged as she suddenly saw
the child’s face with bloody vomit dripping from the side of her
mouth.

West kicked the
front seat out of the way, bolts shearing from the body of the car
effortlessly. He stooped into the wreck and pushed an arm under
Stephanie’s head and down her back with a fluid motion, lifting her
with the rigid support of his locked joints and tight muscles. With
his free hand, he ripped the front passenger seat away from
Stephanie’s legs and then cradled them as he pulled her slowly away
from the crumpled rear of the car.

Stephanie was
destroyed, eyes recognizable as such only because of their
positioning, the sides of her skull caved in such a way that he
could see her jaw bones jutting through the skin of her cheek.

“She’s …”
Charlene started, hurrying around the wreckage to be by Stephanie’s
side.

“She is
Leechborn Charlene. She is Leechborn and she listened to me and she
will live.”

Looking at the
child, Charlene couldn’t imagine, even given the things that she
had witnessed and the changes she had undergone herself, she
couldn’t fathom what force of nature could bring Stephanie from the
brink.

With great effort,
West bit into the flesh of his arm and tried to remember the need,
the controlling force that would bring the leeches out of the
wound. The ripped flesh healed almost as quickly as he had bitten.
He stared at Stephanie’s face and tried to imagine David, the
devastation and despair that would pull his world apart if he was
to return to him now. The thought solid and fixed in his mind,
again he tore at the flesh of his arm and again, the wound healed,
the skin pulling inward and knitting together perfectly.

“What’s wrong?
What are you trying to do?” Charlene asked, frenetic, desperate to
help, but at a complete loss as to what she could do.

West felt the
child’s body convulse and saw the veins of her forehead bulge as
she coughed up more of the deep red vomit. And it was there; the
thought, the desperation, the memory that had been lost to him for
more than a century. He watched the flesh of his arm, the bulge,
the ripple of movement, then he opened his mouth wide and bit,
flesh, leech and blood, spitting the unsavory mess onto the side of
Stephanie’s skull. She was Leechborn, yes, he could see that she
had survived where others would have died, but survival wasn’t
enough now. He needed her to be fighting fit and he needed it to
happen now. The sirens were distant, but they were there. He looked
about, trying to get some sort of bearing on their position, but
the trees were thick enough that he was unable to see the road.

His words were
forceful and commanding, “Charlene, pull up as much of the leaves
and bracken as you can and cover the car. Do it quickly.” He
watched the adult leech at work on Stephanie’s skull, the skin
already taut over the bone, the rips and cuts sealing, the bones
being broken down quickly and rebuilt. It had been many years since
he’d seen a one so beautifully wrecked as she; beautiful because
she would be whole again, beautiful because in her ruination, West
could bare witness to all that they were, their ability to endure,
the absolute resilience of his kind. Almost unaware he was doing
it, West tore at the flesh of his other wrist, fluting his lips as
he sent the life giver, the Delver of Allim, the Tongue of
Antrusca, licking away the blood, swallowing the pain, rebuilding
its new host body.

A thousand images, all
at once and all of a one. Stephanie let her eyelids fall, her head
rocking against West’s chest as he ran. She tried again, allowing
the light in, eyelids parting slowly; a thousand thousand images, a
million hues with depths of tonal saturation varying so wildly that
it was like seeing the world through a kaleidoscope viewed through
a prism viewed through a migraine induced hallucination.

“West?”

Unseen by
Stephanie, West smiled. Her recovery had taken a matter of minutes,
scarcely enough time for the police to have made it off the exit
ramp, let alone time for them to figure out where the Boss’s
cockpit had finally landed.