Chương 22: | A Blue Chevy Escape

Jack's heart was beating hard enough to punch a hole through his ribs. He wondered if the wolf inside him, sensing death close at hand, would rise and fight. He gritted his teeth and prayed it would stay hidden and die with him, alone in its darkness.

Patience's powerful leg muscles tensed. She was about to jump when the whole of the far wall seemed to collapse in an explosion of brick and plasterboard.

Jack threw his arms up over his face for protection and fell back against the door. The old wolf squealed as the debris piled down on her.

Giant yellow eyes shone through the dust as something huge roared and screeched into the room from the black night outside.

It was a blue Chevy, its skewed headlights glaring out from its bashed-in front. Hadn't Patience said she owned a …

'Get in, you idiot!'

Through the cloud of thick dust, Jack made out Ava's willowy form behind the wheel. 'What the—?'

'Quick!' she snapped, checking the rearview. 'There are wolves everywhere!'

Jack scrambled across the rubble to reach the passenger door. Patience, still in her wolf form, was whimpering, bloodied, and half-crushed beneath a pile of brick and debris.

Jack jumped over her with a shudder, flung open the door, and slid into the seat beside Ava. 'Nice driving.'

'It wasn't,' she remarked, pumping the pedals and grappling with the gearshift. 'I got the brake and accelerator mixed up, I was trying to stop outside.' A metallic rasp belched across the sound of the idling engine. 'Jesus. Where the hell is reverse?'

'Look out!' Jack exclaimed. A shape had detached itself from the shadows outside the pool of the car's headlights, a monster bounding towards them so fast he could barely track it.

'Finally!' Ava cried, as the car lurched backward.

The werewolf threw itself onto the car, landing with an impact that might have shattered the suspension. It scrabbled for a hold as Ava reversed the Chevy at sickening speed. As she went screening out into the quiet suburban road, the beast's front claws punctured the metal of the hood, securing it while its back paws scrabbled to find a hold.

Ava braked and the car almost stalled but she revved it back into noisy life. Jack's hand met her trembling ones on the gearshift.

Craning its neck, the wolf's jaws snapped at them through the windshield, its breath clouding up the glass.

'Hit the clutch!' Jack shouted and rammed the stick home, staring it into first. Wheels spinning, the Chevy screeched forward, but the wolf clung on, eyes narrowed with hatred and determination.

'Put your belt on,' Ava screamed.

Ava scrabbled for his seatbelt. The fastener clicked home just as Ava steered them into the back of another car. There was the hollow smack of metal on metal, and the wolf's muscular body was jolted clear. Its nightmare form slithered away into the darkness.

Ava shrugged as she slammed the car back into reverse. 'Car's screwed, anyway.'

'So's my neck,' mumbled Jack, rubbing the back of it. 'Can we stop playing fast and furious now?'

'I guess so,' Ava retorted, thrashing the engine as they accelerated away. 'I don't think any of his friends are going to ask for a ride, do you?' she added mildly.

Jack shuddered and looked out at the lights that were flickering on at most of the windows along the street. Warm little squares that spoke of cozy normality.

With the likes of Patience Sterling living in their midst.

'I thought it was traditional for the wolf to eat the grandmother, not for the grandmother to eat every poor bastard who comes to call. Though I guess she might have lost her appetite for a while.' A flash-frame of her broken body spliced itself into Jack's mind, and he shuddered. 'She said Marcie had "put out the word". There'll be others after us, won't there?'

Ava nodded. 'You can bet on it. She'll have posted our details on all the news councils, mailed all her special contacts…"

'News councils?' Jack echoed. 'Werewolves on the Web?'

'It's just like any other society, Jack,' Ava replied, 'only a lot more secret and a lot less harmless. You might've noticed, werewolves don't all skulk about in scary places – in Frankenstein's castle or misty graveyards. They're everywhere, OK? Everywhere.' She cut across two lanes to reach an exit, ignoring swerving cars and blaring horns. 'And they were using the Internet years before there was a PC in almost every home. Reaching out to each other. Sharing information. Uniting. Organizing.'

'OK, Ava, how about we slow down a little, huh?' Jack suggested over the rising whine of the engine. 'We don't want the cops hitting us with a speeding fine right now.'

'The werewolf community has never been stronger, Jack,' Ava said, gripping the wheel so hard her knuckles showed white. 'And now they're after us. There is no one, no one we can trust right now, OK? You got that?'

'I got that!' Jack yelled. 'I got it, now will you stop the god-damned car before you kill us first?'

Ava braked hard and pulled over to the side of the road. The car lurched giddily as one wheel mounted the sidewalk beside a streetlight. The orange glow drowned out the sickly silver of the moonlight. She killed the engine and the cooling metal ticked noisily, like a bomb waiting to go off.

'Where'd you go, Ava?' Jack asked.

Ava kept on staring out at the quiet highway.

'You were gone. And so was your rucksack – with all the money.'

'It's on the back seat,' Ava replied.

Jack saw her eyes brimming with tears. He swallowed. 'You ran out on me, didn't you?'

She shrugged, then nodded.

'What's the matter, my snoring that bad?'

'Yep.' Ava looked like she was trying not to smile. 'Are you mad at me?'

'Mad at you?' Jack stared at her for a long moment before deciding to answer. 'Sure. I am so mad at you, I can't see straight. But all of that is nothing compared to the hurt I felt when I discovered you had just left me without saying a word.'

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