Page 53 of On the Road

We would stop him. We had to. I wasn’t alone anymore. I had Zee, and Victor, and the demons, a few hundred gremlins, and maybe a few extra werewolves? But I couldn’t stop him here, not now. I wasn’t ready. If we fought, everyone around me would die. I needed space and time to figure it out.

“Yeah . . . I guess . . . okay.” I scratched my chin, buying precious seconds. “Seems like I don’t have a choice, so—” A sudden shove, and over went the tower of Oreos. My brother’s yelp followed as I dashed out of the room and bolted toward the van. “Start the engine!” I yelled, arms waving.

Victor was behind the wheel, with Zee—his Jasyn disguise gone—leaning on the open passenger door. They stopped chatting and looked over.

“Victor! Start it, right now!” My shoes splashed through puddles. I almost tripped, then righted myself.

They both stared, surprised, and their eyes widened when they saw what must have been Syros leaving the motel room behind me.

“Who’s this guy?” Zee asked.

“Get in the back!” I barked. Zee poofed into the back of the van just as I reached the door, swung around it, and flung myself into the front passenger seat. “Go, go, go.”

Victor turned the key, but the old van coughed and whined, its engine struggling to start.

“C’mon,” I whined. “We need to go right now.”

Zee leaned between the two front seats. “He doesn’t look like much. I can take ’im,” he growled, staring through the windshield.

I looked up, and there he was—Syros, walking toward us as though he had all the time in the world. If Zee went out there, Syros would crush him like a bug.

“No, you can’t, Zee,” I snapped. “Victor, make the van go!”

“I am attempting to do exactly that.” He flicked the key off then on again, and pumped the throttle pedal as the engine whined.

Syros was almost on us. His smile filled his face. His scar stood out crimson against his skin.

The engine coughed again, then stuttered, almost catching.

“Uhm . . . Adam?” Zee mumbled. “What the⁠—”

Syros’s human glamor exploded, and in the wake of that sudden blast of power came the unfurling of a scaled body a whole lot bigger than our van, and growing.

Zee gulped. “The fuck?”

Bigger, Syros grew. Glossy green scales filled the windshield.

“It’s a dragon! Sweet baby Gareth, we gonna die,” Zee squeaked. “Adam, it’s a fuckin’ dragon!”

“I know!”

The van’s engine caught with a shudder. Victor rammed it into reverse and spun the vehicle backward, away from the enormous, still-growing dragon. He swung the van in a savage J-turn, squealing the tires as we hit the asphalt of the road.

Zee shifted to the back of the van now, and peered out the rear window. “Drive!”

Thrusting the stick into gear, Victor lurched our beat-up old van forward, plowing into the murk.

“Guys, Godzilla with wings is comin’.”

I peered in the side mirror and saw Syros’s massive jaws snap together close to the back of the van. Another lunge like that, and he’d swallow us in one bite.

Zee yelped. “Faster!”

Victor’s glance caught mine. The accelerator pedal was on the floor. The van was maxed out.

“I’m too young to die in this shitty rental van. There’s too much I want to do. I haven’t ridden a camel yet! Victor, do something!”

“I’m doing it!”