A Time To Kill (Elemental Rage Book 1) (18 page)

Chapter 15

~~ Raven ~~

After taping garlic
all over the van, Raven said, “I’d like to see them get through that.”

Claire shuddered,
“I hope they can’t.”

They ate dinner by
flashlight.  Claire tossed a couple of grapes into her mouth, “So, I might have
been wrong about the fruit.”

Raven’s mouth
dropped open. “Claire. I can’t believe you said that.  Wait, I need to record
this. Raven pulled Mindy’s drawing pad of paper out of the net behind the
driver’s seat. How exactly did you put that? 
Might have been wrong.
Can
you autograph it for me?  In case you get amnesia or something?”

Mindy giggled
which set Claire into peals of laughter.  At first Raven’s smile was just a
begrudging
go along with it
smile, but then Claire threw a grape at
Raven which bounced off her nose.  That started Mindy laughing so hard she was
gasping.  Claire made a little yipping sound while she was laughed which made
Raven start off which made Claire laugh harder.  Soon tears were rolling down
Raven’s cheeks.

Grabbing a grape
of her own, she pinged it at Claire, hitting her on the top of the head.

“More. More.” 
Mindy clapped, her eyes shining with delight.

“The princess has
spoken,” Claire said, taking a half bite of grape.  She threw it so that the fleshy
side hit Raven in the cheek.

Raven rubbed her
cheek, laughing so hard her stomach hurt.  “As royal princess of the Gray clan,
I declare grapes to be heretofore banned from…”

Mindy tossed a
grape that bounced off the top of Raven’s head.

“Pee.” Mindy said,
her eyes shining while she giggled.

Raven and Claire
suddenly stopped laughing.  Claire leaned against the window, a hand around her
eyes as she peered out of the van into the darkness.

“Maybe she should
just go in here,” Claire said.

Raven spoke to
Air. Air whispered in her ear. With a nod, she grabbed the shopping bag and
pulled more garlic cloves out, “It’s safe. We’ll make a run for the restrooms.
While we’re in there, we’ll do a little decorating.”

 They did their
business and taped garlic to the walls of the restrooms.  Mindy pointed to the
door and said, “Uninvited. No vampires.”

Raven tousled
Mindy’s hair and gave her a sideways hug. “That’s right Min-Min.”

They trouped back
to the van, getting settled in for the night. Raven read
The Monster at the
End of This Book
to Mindy. Not for the first time, but the irony was not
lost on the older sisters.

They lay in the
dark and tried to sleep. Tossing and turning, Raven couldn’t get comfortable. 
Her anxiety rose with each passing minute of the clock. Air was keeping watch. With
a sigh she rolled over again, punching her pillow.

Claire whispered,
“Do you think they’ll come tonight?”

Raven thought of
Jade’s fangs glistening in her mouth and her blood-red eyes. She had no idea
but said, “No. I’m just worried about Jade.  If she takes the oath…”

She couldn’t say
it aloud—that they might not get their sister back.  The thought was too
terrible.

Claire stretched
and yawned, “She won’t.  Jade’s responsible.  It’s her duty to return to us.
Water is on the way back.”

The bottle was
open and sitting on the passenger seat of the van.  The window was rolled down
slightly, just enough for Air and Water to pass back and forth.

Eventually Claire
fell asleep. Raven stared at the ceiling of the van.  She jumped at every
sound.  Finally succumbing, she fell into a restless sleep.

Sometime in the
night, Air tickled her nose. Wakeup, wakeup, wakeup, wakeup.  Startled awake,
Raven sat up quickly. 

Shaking Claire,
Raven said, “Claire. Vampires.”

Claire rubbed her
eyes, “What? They’re here?”

“Air said they’re about
fifteen minutes away.” Raven found her jacket and dug into her pockets for the
keys.

“Wait,” Claire
said, “We’re just going to drive away?  But the restrooms here are
vampire-proofed.”

Crawling over the
console to the driver’s seat, Raven said, “That’s just a guess.  Until we know
how strongly they react to garlic, our best chance is to make a run for it.
Wake up Mindy and get her buckled in.”

Claire was gentle
with Mindy.  Raven was touched at the changes in Claire since Mindy’s
near-escape from death.  “Come on, Min-Min. We’re having an adventure.  I just
want to get you buckled in and then you can go back to sleep.”

Making sure Mindy
had a tight grasp on her teddy bear, Claire helped her into her seat before she
grabbed the middle seat next to the window.  Buckling herself in, Claire said,
“Okay, Raven, we’re ready.”

Raven turned on
the headlights, and slowly accelerated out of the rest area parking lot. Her
eyes were gummy and scratchy, and she felt tired all over. They drove into the
darkness. She was concentrating on the road when a thump suddenly hit the top
of the van.

Claire squealed as
a face hanging upside down appeared in the window beside her.

Raven braked, but
didn’t stop.  She rounded the corner to find vehicles blocking the highway.  Braking
hard, the van still didn’t stop in time.  Raven slowed it down enough to
prevent serious injury, but even with her foot heavy on the brake, the van hit
the Prius the vampires had used to block the road.

“They’re
everywhere!” Claire cried out. 

Raven blinked. 
Her heart was pounding, her adrenaline charged.  The van was still running.
That was something.  Hands pounded on her window, scaring her into a scream.  A
laughing face appeared, its lower jaw covered in blood, whether from feeding or
injury Raven didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.

“Raven, do
something.” Claire wrenched at her seatbelt as more faces sneered at them from
the darkness.

Mindy hugged her
teddy bear and cried.

“They can’t hurt
us,” Raven said.  “They haven’t been invited. We have garlic. We’re okay.  Just
sit tight.”

Seeing Claire push
her way out of her seat, Raven said, “Get your seatbelt back on, we’re not done
yet.”

Raven threw the
van into reverse.  She didn’t have time to wait for Claire. As soon as Claire
was sitting down, she punched it.  Driving backwards was terrifying, especially
on a curvy road without lights.  Raven hit a few vampires. She could hear the
thumps against the car.

They were at the
curve and she had to drive really slowly. She couldn’t see behind her, and the
roads were dangerous.  As she pressed on the gas, she realized that the van was
no longer moving backwards. The van was rising in the air. Even if she’d run
over a dozen vampires, there were a dozen more to take their place.  They were
lifting the van and now it was moving off the road. 

Raven put the van
in forward. Nothing worked.

Claire scrambled
back to Mindy and the two younger sisters clung to each other.  The child part
of Raven wanted to be back there with them, crying and waiting for Mom to save
them.  Mom wasn’t coming.

The van tilted as
the vampires released the van on the edge of the road. Raven said, “Claire,
they’re going to roll the van.  Hang onto Mindy.”

That was all she
could say before she found herself slammed against the door. The van slid down
the embankment before falling on its side. All Raven could see were the hints
of faces flashing in the moonlight. Hundreds of vampires surrounded the van.

Raven reached for
the Keeper’s bottle that had rolled off the passenger seat to the driver’s side
of the car. She jammed it into her coat pocket. Her head hit the side door as
the van fell completely on its side, pushed by a hundred vampire hands. They
were strong.

She could hear her
sisters screaming as the van came to a firm stop against a tree.  Thumps and
bumps echoed from above as vampires jumped on top of the van which was now on
its side. 

“Is everyone
okay?”  Raven yelled to the back.

“Define okay,”
Claire said with a shaking voice. 

“No bleeding. No
broken bones?” Raven asked.

“I’m okay.” Claire
said.

“I’m okay.” Mindy
said, a slight waver in the tone of her voice, a precursor to a sudden torrent
of emotion.

“Hang on. I’ll be
right there.” Raven removed her seatbelt.  Movement in the van was strange. 
The van was on its side with their duffel bags now resting on the windows.
Claire had unbuckled herself and was now helping Mindy free herself from the
restraints. They couldn’t see anything in the dark.

She took a deep
breath. She needed to focus.  By standing, she could reach the glove box and a
flashlight.  She turned it on. The beam reflected off the passenger window
which was now the top of a van.  A hungry face peered in through the window.

Raven was proud of
herself when she didn’t scream. Swallowing hard, she squeezed and climbed her
way to her sisters. Mindy had a lump on her head from a bag of foodstuffs that
fell.  All of the sisters had seatbelt bruises.

“Wow, you don’t
even have your driver’s license and you already wrecked the van,” Claire said.
With a hysterical laugh, she said, “Mom’s going to ground us all until we
graduate.”

From above,
something started pounding on the windows.

The whole
situation felt surreal, like something that couldn’t really happen.

“They’re coming
in,” Raven said.

“But we didn’t
invite them,” Claire sounded betrayed.  Raven understood.  Sometimes life had a
way of moving in a consistent path for so long that when things went sideways,
it was a shock.  She still remembered the day after her Dad’s death, how
strange sitting in the kitchen without him felt, how weird it was to see his
World’s Best Dad coffee cup sitting in the dish strainer waiting, but he would
never use it again.

Another heavy
branch thudded against the window, cracking it into a spider web pattern.  “Put
your heads down,” Raven gathered her sisters to her, holding her arms around
them and using her body as a shield.  Mindy was protected best with Claire and
Raven both shielding her.

The window broke,
raining down sharp little pebbles of glass onto the sisters. Raven shook her
head, pulling pieces of glass out of her hair.  That was when the fight began
in earnest.

The vampires
thrust the stick through the window waving it to poke the sisters. The stick
hit Raven across the face, and knocked the flashlight out of her hands.  A
sing-song voice taunted them, “Come out, my tender morsels.”

Raven grabbed the
stick, pulling it with all of her weight and tearing it out of the vampire’s
hands. Mindy wailed. Claire hugged her sister, “Hush, Min-Min. It’s okay.”

“Get the light,”

Raven felt a dozen
eyes on her.  The vampires peered down into the van. One knelt at the edge.
This one held a gun, “You know, it’s not all about stakes and garlic.  We have
our weaknesses, but yours are so much bigger.”

“If you shoot us,
you can’t eat us,” Claire said.  Her jaw jutted and she stared at the vampire
with that same look she got when someone told her she had to eat her peas or
watch Mindy for a few hours.  Raven was proud of Claire.  Sometimes a person’s
biggest weakness was also their greatest strength.  Claire might be stubborn
and proud, but she was also tough.  Raven grabbed Claire’s hand and squeezed as
a show of support.

The vampire said,
“We’d shoot you last. You can watch your sisters die…or you can come out.”

“Give us a few
minutes. We’ll come out,” Raven leaned to Claire, “Just do as they ask. Get
anything we need together, clothes, jacket, food, and then we’ll go out.”

“But they’re
evil…” Claire was going to go off on a Claire diatribe about how they shouldn’t
give in to evil people, but Raven cut her off.

“Yes, they are,
and evil people don’t play by rules and they don’t have a conscience so we do
what they say and live another ten minutes,” Raven was on her hands and knees
shining a light and searching the van for something.

Tearing the tape
away from a clove of garlic, Raven peeled it while Claire begrudgingly searched
for clothes and Mindy waited wide-eyed and frightened. Raven slipped the garlic
into Mindy’s mouth.

“Eat this,” she
said, while she bit into her own, her mouth recoiling from the caustic taste.

Mindy made a face,
“Ewwww.”

Raven passed one
to Claire, “Chew it down.”

Claire nodded
solemnly, and took the garlic. 

Raven hoped that
her plan would work.  They gathered the duffel bags with their belongings. The
vampire at the top peered down, “You’re out of time. We’ll pull you up.”

“I’ll go first,”
Claire said.  She climbed the seat and held up her hands for the vampires. 
Their fingers were cold but gripped her skin like iron bands.

~~ Claire ~~

Claire stood in
the darkness surrounded by monsters.  She limped away from the van. Her ankle had
twisted when the vampires dropped her to the ground. Mindy came next.

“They smell like a
cess pit,” a young vampire who looked about Claire’s age circled her, sniffing
the air like a beagle. Claire thought of the garlic and felt instantly grateful
for Raven’s quick thinking. 

Raven was passing
their duffel bags up.  One of the vampires on top of the van threw the first
one at Claire, knocking her over.  She landed on a rock.  The jarring pain and
laughter shocked Claire into motion.  She picked up the duffel bag and swung it
at the nearest vampire.

The vampire
grabbed the duffel bag, yanking it away from Claire and threw it on the ground. 
She wiggled her finger back and forth, “Now, now.  You’re our dinner guests. I
don’t like my entrees to be too spicy.”

Under the light of
the moon, Claire could see the vampire’s smirk. It reminded her of the boys at
school laughing teasing her because of Mindy.  She had punched one of them, and
her Mom got called into school.