Under Wicked Sky - Book 1 - CH: 4 The Vision (Patreon)

Dylan

I crouched as low as I could inside the Land Rover. I was in the back row and could hear muffled sniffling from the two girls in the seats in front of me. My hands had finally stopped shaking, but my throat was thick and clogged with my own tears.

The sky turned a toxic orange in the setting sun, and terrible, high-pitched griffin shrieks bounced from tree-to-tree all around us. There must have been hundreds of voices. Hundreds of people who were now animals.

I hadn't heard human voices in at least an hour, and those had been screams.

I wiped my wet eyes with the heel of my hand. I had to do something. I was the oldest, so it was up to me to take charge. Instead, I was sitting in the back having a breakdown.

My father was right. I was weak.

I clenched my fists so hard the nails bit into my skin. Five minutes. I'd give myself another five minutes to freak out, and then I'd man up and figure out what to do next.

Closing my eyes, I forced my breaths to come out even, instead of stuttered gasps. Breathe in, hold for the count of three. Exhale.

My pulse slowed and a sensation of inner stillness grew in my heart. It was cool and soothing, like the kiss of fog on an early spring day. When I rubbed my face again, my skin was dry.

The spicy scent of cedar tickled my nose. When I opened my eyes, I found I wasn't in the car at all.

The ground under me was reddish dirt, pounded flat and swept clean. Now, the air tasted hot on the back of my tongue, the result of the small fire cheerfully burning before me.

I looked around, curious but not concerned. The walls were made of long strips of dried redwood bark, leaned together in a tee-pee shaped structure, with a triangle gap for the doorway.

"It's an ummuucha," my mom said, next to me.

I glanced over. My mother had always been a small boned woman, but now in death she looked so skinny she was wraith-like.

Her skin was like leather, lined and aged on her face. In the unreliable firelight, her eyes were like sunken pits.

Even though I knew she was dead, I felt no fear seeing her again. No surprise, either.

"A bark house. I know," I said. "You took me to a Native American village exhibit back before the accident."

She had always been into alternative medicine, crystal healing, and Native American spirit animals. In the end, none of it had helped.

My mother nodded and cast a dry branch into the fire. It caught the flames and spit sparks into the air which danced and died. "Dylan, it's important to remember the old ways. They have power in them, and you have power in yourself."

I shivered. "Father is dead," I said, remembering.

"The old world is dead," she corrected. "It's up to you to build the new."

"The old world?" I repeated, but when I blinked the redwood bark walls had disappeared, and I was stuck again in a stuffy car. I jerked and looked around.

"What the…?” Had I fallen asleep? Dreamed?

"Dylan, shut up!" Lilly hissed from the seat in front. "Those things will hear you!"

But the griffin cries had tapered off. It was darker, too. Maybe a half-hour of weak daylight left. I had been... out. Asleep, maybe.

Or maybe I had been away.

Cautiously, I sat up and inched to the window. Nothing moved in the trees overhead, but the parking lot still looked like a war zone.

"Maybe they’ll go to sleep, soon. Like birds," I whispered. "Lilly, I—" I stopped myself before I said, 'I think I spoke to Mom' because even I knew that sounded bad. "Do you remember what Mom used to tell us?"

"What?" My little sister popped up from her seat, scowling. "What about her?"

"She used to talk about magic, remember?"

Lilly rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and she thought the government was listening in on her through electric lines."

And when her hoarding got bad, our father had Mom sent to a hospital. When she got out, she went to go live with her brother, my Uncle.

That's when our cousin, Terry, had come to live with us.

Maybe I hadn't been dreaming at all. Some mental illnesses ran in families. Was this how a psychotic break started?

Lilly's friend, the redheaded girl, sat up, too. Her face was a blotchy mess of tears. In comparison, Lilly seemed perfectly composed. As usual. She hadn't even cried at mom's funeral.

"If the griffins are going to sleep, we need a plan." Lilly turned to her friend. "Give me the keys, Merlot."

"N-no!" Merlot's bottom lip trembled as she shrank away. "This is my grandma's car. We can't take it!"

"She's dead," Lilly said flatly. "She won't care."

Fresh tears sprung up in the girl's eyes, and I felt a surge of anger. "Knock it off, Lilly."

"It's true. She's dead, just like Dad!" Her voice broke on the last word, and she turned away from me.

Some of my irritation faded. Lilly was hurting. She just never learned to show it very well. I also knew from long experience that comforting her would just make her snap at me, so I didn't bother.

I looked to Merlot. "We should get somewhere safe if we can. Where do you live?"

"Carson City," she whispered miserably. "My parents have me driven up the mountain for school."

I nodded. It sounded like Merlot and Lilly attended the same private girl's school. "Okay, well, our house is on the way, just on the other side of the city. How about we go there first and try to figure this all out?"

She didn't answer, but her shoulders relaxed a little.

I looked at my sister. "You have your phone with you?"

"Duh." Lilly dug it out of her pocket. A slim glittery thing. "I tried to call for help while you two were crying. All the numbers I dialed got busy signals. I was on hold with 911 for, like, twenty minutes before I hung up. Even the internet is down." Her scowl deepened. "And I didn't want the keys to drive the stupid car. None of us can drive. I wanted to turn on the radio." She held out her hand to Merlot and snapped her fingers for the keys.

"I can drive," I protested.

"You had one lesson, and Dad said you sucked at it." Snatching the keys away from her friend, Lilly scrambled to the front seat and jammed them into the ignition. She flicked quickly through the preprogrammed stations, and then used the scan button to search for new ones. Every frequency was either static or dead silence.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I didn't know why, but maybe in a world gone completely bonkers, it was the simple things breaking down that hit hardest. The radio wasn’t working. It had always worked, even after the worst winter storms blew in with snow so deep you couldn’t cut through the drifts with a snowblower.

The old world is dead, Mom had told me.

You're not real, and I'm not going crazy. I wouldn't turn out like her. I had to do what my father would have done—take charge. Be a man.

I scrambled to the front seat. "Move over, Lilly." It was near full dark now, but none of the street lights had come on. The electricity must be out. "I'm driving."

"No way!"

"I have my permit." And one disastrous lesson, which had lasted twenty minutes. I had accidentally tried to turn onto an oncoming lane on a left-hand turn. There hadn't been any other traffic on the road, but my father had grabbed the steering wheel and ordered me to pull over. And that had been that.

Lilly didn't budge. "Can you drive, Merlot?"

"I'm fourteen," Merlot whispered.

Lilly glared at me, but then muttered, "Fine."

We awkwardly moved past one another.

It took a few moments for me to adjust the seat to my height and figure out the pedals in the dark. The long skinny one was the gas, right?

I turned the key and the engine purred to life. Breathing out, I caught myself just before trying to take off with the parking brake still on. I pressed the gas and the car leapt forward. Panicked, I slammed both feet on the brake, nearly bashing my nose into the steering wheel as the car jolted to a stop.

"Idiot!" Lilly yelled from the back.

That's when the griffin landed on the hood.

It slammed down so hard the entire car shook. In the dim light, the red wing feathers looked brown. Screeching, its needle-sharp talons scrambled to keep balance and drew long gashes into the metal. One yellow eye stared straight through the windshield at me.

Merlot and Lilly screamed. I reacted on pure instinct, stomping on the gas. The engine roared and the griffin fell forward against the windshield, cracking a spiderweb into it. Then, screeching, it fell backward off the hood as I hit the brakes hard.

But the Land Rover still had forward momentum. Before I could do anything, the wheels hit the downed griffin—a huge bump as we rolled over it. And again when the back wheels hit.

Lilly’s scream turned into a cheer. I slammed the brakes again.

That was a person, I thought in shock. I clutched the steering wheel as the world blackened at the edges of my vision. A few hours ago, that griffin had been a person. Somebody's mother, or father, or sibling. And I had just run over them.

"Don't stop! What are you doing?!" Lilly pounded on the headrest near my ear. "Go, go!"

My body reacted, it seemed, without my consent. I hit the gas and lurched forward again.

As we rolled out of the parking lot, I glanced in the rearview mirror. In the last of the light, I saw three other griffins drop down from the trees above and land on the bloodied body we left behind.