Page 179 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

watched my shadow soar across the pavement beneath me,
framed in moonlight, closing on what I quickly recognized
as an ambulance.
My father and I crashed through the back of the speeding
vehicle, my body raked by riven steel and glass. Bottoming
out upon the road from the weight of my fall, the ambulance
called up a shower of sparks. Glass and steel fragments were
still turning through the air when I returned my father to
his rest. Plunging my open hand beyond the small window
into the driver’s compartment, I closed my fingers over the
intervening steel partition, tearing away the divider to reveal
the driver—a hapless professor of folklore, overfilled with
the unwholesome essence of the God of Secrets.
Producing a handgun, he emptied its contents in my
direction, laughing hysterically above the din of screaming
steel and shrieking rubber. “Do you feel their hatred,
Vincent? Their righteous rage reaching out from your own
broken mind, demanding retribution?” The god’s aim was
terrible. A shot struck something volatile behind me, causing
it to explode, splashing fire and glass and debris into my
back. I didn’t care.
The ambulance careened out of control and skidded into
a tight knot of traffic. The weight of the barreling vehicle
prevailed over the smaller cars caught within its zigzagging
path, smashing them into the moonlit darkness where they
wheeled and corkscrewed. The impact hurled me through
the windshield, but not before I caught hold of Tom. We
tumbled through space, my fingers passing through the
flesh of his shoulder and alighting upon bones that shattered
beneath my grip.
My other hand punched through the hood of the flaming
ambulance, allowing me to deny my momentum. The roar
of the engine spoke to a stuck accelerator as we screamed
through the wreckage and continued barreling through the
streets. I drew him close to me and growled, “I will crush
whatever lives you hide behind, creature, until there is only
182 | Mark Anzalone