The Lost: Book Two of The Whitechapel Chronicles

Chapter 29

The car sped away from the traffic lights with a shriek of rubber on asphalt and I pressed my feet down instinctively, bracing myself by clutching the door with one hand and the other curled tightly around the edge of the seat.

As we had sensed the Varúlfur scouts, they had clearly detected us also and when our car fled the lights, they followed in close pursuit, almost bumper to bumper with us.

Shop fronts, neon lights, bars and restaurants whirled past in a blur as Harper hit the accelerator, the road ahead suddenly rushing towards us as if we were in some first-person racing car video game. Only there was no pulling the plug on this game, we couldn't even hit the pause button and no matter what Grand Theft Auto might have you believe, the streets of London were not built for car chases.

I hissed as Harper took a corner sharply, the tyres screaming as we turned into the next road, causing the late-night pedestrians to stop and stare as we careered along the road with the Varúlfur's car shadowing our every move.

"Surely they can't keep this up?" I looked over at Harper in panicked desperation. "Not here? We're attracting too much attention. Pretty soon the police are going to spot us."

Harper glanced in the rear view mirror. "They'll keep it up alright. And you can bet your ass they've called in reinforcements. They'll keep it up until they've driven us off the road or cut us off down some dead end."

I turned back to look at the road ahead, staring wide-eyed through the windscreen and feeling my chest tighten painfully as I desperately tried to control my breathing. The Varúlfur might have been able to keep this up but I wasn't sure we would be able to. Their 2014 four-wheel drive Mercedes compared to our battered 2005 BMW was like pitting ten Goliath's against one David. It was going to take more than one stone-throw to get us out of this.

Another set of lights guarded the junction up ahead and I gasped out loud when I saw the green change to amber and Harper slid the gears into fifth, pressing down harder on the gas as he risked the wrath of the red stop light. We hit the junction doing fifty in a thirty zone and I let out a horrified shriek as I saw the cars waiting on either side of the crossroads start to make their way across the intersection, car horns resounding loud and shrill when they realised we'd jumped the lights and weren't going to stop. I screwed my eyes shut and waited for the crunch of steel and the bone-breaking impact, only to hear the screech of brakes and the choir of horns fade as we cleared the junction, leaving mayhem and panic behind us.

My hope was short-lived however when I realised we hadn't left everything behind us.

Still in persistent chase, the Varúlfur remained doggedly on our tail, having managed to escape unscathed from the chaos we had left in our wake. They were so close. I could see them, the two scouts, looking to anyone who might see them like perfectly normal people, they probably even looked like police considering they were in the shiny new car and we were in the beat-up wreck being chased. But I could see their grins from here, just a little too wide for their faces and the occasional glint of amber sparking in their eyes as they enjoyed the thrill of the chase. I could only imagine the smell in their car, that awful gut-churning odour of Varúlfur sweat created by their excitement and eagerness to catch their prey. Flashes of Brandon's torture room scarred my mind with unwanted memories; where the stench of the beasts was so strong I could almost taste it on my tongue, the rabid fevered look in their eyes, the saliva that coated their mouths in a slick, nauseating sheen.

I was flung back into the present with a shudder-shock to the heart, when I saw the two women stepping out into the road ahead, their arms linked as they staggered off the kerb, clearly drunk and too lost in their own laughter to spot the cars hurtling directly towards them.