Speeding through a crossing Venetian style: Counting on people will see you coming. Counting on that they'll stop. Steamroll paranormal obstacles.
Jacklyn closed her eyes and tried to make her mind go blank. The noise from the dark cloud made her ears hurt.
Brakes screeched. No hit. Someone pressed their horn and didn't let go. Angry cusses. Proof some poor pedestrian wasn't run over and could still cuss.
The angry buzzing faded.
Jacklyn opened her eyes. She looked in the side mirror.
The dark cloud had separated into many confused smoke strands.
She prayed the smoke creatures were blind. She prayed she and Matt didn't leave a trail of feels in their wake that the smoke things could pick up on.
Matt stopped at the stop sign by the next crossing like any sane, law abiding driver. He slowly drove across after politely waiting for his turn.
Behind them, the dark strands melted back into a singular cloud, darker than before. This time it assembled a pitch black center.
Jacklyn felt a call go out like a current. The cloud slowly poured after them. At the crossing more smoke strands joined from the cross street. The cloud grew in size and blackness. Worse, it seemed to be picking up speed.
Jacklyn saw thin dark wafts sliding out of their hidey holes attracted by the growing power of the dark cloud. They rolled aside as the Ford pick-up passed, like they weren't aware of Jacklyn and Matt at all.
Matt drove slowly like he had all the time in the world.
"The little things don't sense us yet," Jacklyn said, "but the thing behind us is a hive mind. It's drawing them in."
"You're saying we should get out of here?"
If looks could kill.
Jacklyn could hear the static from the dark cloud now. She was itching to go horsey. She could run. She wanted to run.
"Can you tell if they're just pissed off, or if they know it's us?" Matt asked.
"Why don't you ask them?"
Matt turned right and stepped on it. At the next corner the traffic light turned red with two cars ahead of them.
The dark cloud cleared the corner behind them.
Matt didn't wait. He maneuvered the pick-up into the opposite lane where cars were coming in after turning left.
Jacklyn was suddenly grateful he'd picked a big car. For a moment the wild honking drowned out the static of the cloud.
It didn't last.
They broke the headlight of a red Volkswagen, the sound crisp. The female driver's mouth made a surprised red O. Next, metal crinkled with a soft, but merciless crunch as they plowed away the Volkswagen's fender.
"I'm sorry," Matt said, as if the shocked woman in the Volkswagen could hear him.
He inched on, forcing the Ford forward, ignoring the chaos of traffic coming at them from both directions.
YOU ARE READING
Shifting Life
Paranormal[COMPLETE] Magic is all about the rules. You mess up, you fix it. Or pay the price. Not that Jacklyn Morse has a choice. She's a new shape shifter paying the price for saving a notorious thief who is as hot as the supernatural loot he's stolen. To J...
