Burning Road

Bad Blood- Part III

Prince ordered three whopper meals and dropped them off at the van before crossing the street to the 7-Eleven.  As he walked through the small parking lot he thought of what Bladewyrm had said.  His family was cursed because Asa and his cronies tried to save their people from making a terrible mistake.

They'd tried to do the right thing and the reward was the damnation of generations. Finding a way to break the family curse seemed more daunting than ever.  He stopped short as a woman pushing a noisy shopping cart crossed his path.  Her filthy cherubic face looked familiar but he couldn't place it.

"Stay the course.  If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward," she said.  She reached into her junk filled cart and produced a chrome zippo lighter decorated with a naked angel.  She offered it to him.  "Dr. Martin Luther King said that.  Yoda said: Try not.  Do or do not, there is no try.  I'm not sure who said it best."  She began to cackle like a crazy person.  She placed the zippo on the ground at Khouri's feet and walked away laughing to the sound of her rattling junk.

He watched her leave with a mix of confusion and inspiration.  The curse was just another enemy to add to his list.  He merely needed to figure out how to break it.  He went inside the convenience store and grabbed sponges, disinfectant spray, antibacterial soap, a brush, and a slurpee.  He paid in cash and left.

Across the street he could see Cali and Mimi sitting on the bumper block, joking as they ate their burgers, the latter hidden in her oversized hoodie.  Mimi was cursed too, and if he could help her break it he would.

Thinking about her made him want to touch her, a feeling that grew stronger the longer he went without one of their playful taps or squeezes.  She'd turned his world upside down and with everything that was going on around him she was becoming more important to him with every passing day. There was something unnatural about their attraction. It gave him pause.

Khouri looked down, and on the ground was the lighter left behind by the homeless woman.  He bent down and picked it up, the weight felt right in his hand.  Khouri looked around for any sign of the homeless woman but she was nowhere to be found.  Putting the lighter in his jacket pocket, he went back to the van.

He put the supplies inside and was immediately struck by the smell of death waiting inside.  If they didn't do something about Sully by nightfall, he would likely get up on his own to escape the stench. Mimi had his meal, minus a handful of fries.  He took the bag and sat down beside her.  She leaned into him.

Khouri ate his burger and tried his best to ignore how good it felt to have her near.

It was a beautiful day, and Khouri was hit hard by the unfairness of it all. Neither Charlie nor Sullivan would ever see such a day again, and it was his fault. He didn't deserve to feel the sun's warmth when they couldn't.  Whether Both were victims of the Prince Curse or casualties of happenstance he blamed himself.

The savory flavor of the burger lost its richness.  It became a reminder of what his friends would never have again.  Prince gave Mimi the rest of his French fries and tossed the sandwich in the trash.  His list of friends grew shorter everyday while his list of grievances grew longer.  There was work to do.

He climbed into the van and honked the horn.  The girls jumped in and he pulled out of the lot.  The dark mood had faded, he merely wanted to finish what he'd started.  Get Mimi home, then get revenge for Charlie and Sully.

Uncle Moses said to trust his team, something which never came easy.  He was Khouri Prince, son of Noah and Danielle Prince who died on a mission when their team broke ranks and ran in the face of a demon.  Trust had gotten his parents killed.  Trust came hard and just when he let his guard down people he cared about dropped like flies.  Khouri felt a bone-deep need to change the trend, to defeat the family curse.

They were heading east on North Conduit Avenue when he noticed her jeep two cars behind.  Rooster.  Khouri knew it was her the way one sensed an orc ambush just before the brutes sprung their trap.  It was a kind of intuition, unreliable but rarely wrong.  He hit the turning signal but instead of getting on The Belt Parkway at the next onramp he stayed the course.  The cars directly behind him joined the expressway traffic, but Rooster didn't take the bait.

"We have company," he said as he put more pressure on the gas pedal.

Cali put Little Chi Chi in a padded pocket in her backpack.  Everyone's seatbelt was already on. 

Rooster sped up and pulled along the driver side.  Her baleful eyes bored a hole into him, and through her gaze Khouri felt all of the loathing and hate he held for Littlehawk.  Her gaze was hypnotic, stealing his attention from the road and the world around him.  It felt like he had an eternity to admire the command she had over a talent he'd never been able to manifest.

His second mind reflexively took over driving, using a mental image of the road from moments before.  With time seemingly standing still he acknowledged his increased skills.  He was more resilient, shown through his nearly healed wounds, and his mind was more acute.  It all started when Mimi fell into his lap... there was something about that goblin, something it-

"Khouri!"

Cali's scream broke the trance and suddenly he was staring down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. He ducked and Rooster fired simultaneously. The bark of the gun was frightening from the business end. Glass shattered and sprayed through the van.  Prince wrestled with the wheel which went wild as he lost control of the vehicle. The tail whipped left then right, tossing around anything not strapped down. The goblin whooped in excitement even as she clung to her seat for dear life.

Khouri poked his head over the dash only to duck again as Rooster's gun barked a second time. He felt a searing line of pain cut across his scalp from a bead of buckshot. He jerked the wheel hard to the right causing the van to spin wide. They smashed into Rooster's jeep with the sound of metal folding upon metal.

Prince sat up as that noise became a tearing sound. The jeep shot away from them and directly toward a homeless woman pushing a cart along the shoulder. His instinct was to slam on the breaks but he fought them and leaned into the van's spin. The homeless woman dove aside and Rooster collided with the shopping cart. The jeep should have obliterated the cart's metal frame. Defying all logical expectation, the vehicle was thrown into the air, over the intersection and shoulder rails, and into the grass beside The Belt Parkway.

They rolled into the intersection and Khouri turned off of North Conduit.  He looked in his rear-view mirror, his mind just starting to process the fact that a woman he shared drinks with had just tried to kill him.  Standing in the middle of the road, surrounded by a half dozen cars, was the homeless woman.  He remembered her then.  The same one from 7-Eleven, and the job in Staten island, and the night he met Cali.  She waved as if bidding him farewell, around her people scrambled to the shoulder to witness the spectacle of Rooster's crash.  Part of him wanted her to survive despite his bleeding scalp, but he didn't slow down.  He just drove into Queens.  There was no way they could make it to Fort Green without drawing a lot of unwanted attention.