Teeth

Drive

"Are they... are they chasing us?" I'm still reeling over the attack. I keep seeing Bill's face, right before Carolyn yanked me down. I'm used to seeing him light up in a huge, shit eating grin that has always heralded humor that's almost inevitably just barely appropriate. The kind you laugh at and then feel like an asshole for laughing at, just the way he likes it.

This time there wasn't a grin. The happy grinning bastard just... wasn't there. Like someone wiped it clean off of him like running a paper towel over a white board. All the smiles bled out of him and his eyes turned flat and far away and...

...And then he shot at us. I'm pretty sure he shot at us. I'm not sure what else could have actually happened, I just don't want to believe it. I keep wanting to wake up and have this be a horrible dream that I can turn into a great story.

If Carolyn hadn't been there, I'd...

"They'll pursue, but not immediately. Their desire to chase has to be weighed against the desire not to be..." She glanced back at me as she came to a stop near an surprisingly mundane looking blue minivan. "Arrested." She finished as she fished out a set of keys, and popped open the locks. "Get in. "

I don't need to be told twice, if only to get off my feet and favor my still throbbing heel.

"Great. So they can still get in trouble for trying to gun me down, that's really comforting in an not-at-all-comforting way since it didn't stop him from trying." I point out, grabbing the handle inside the door and pulling myself into the back  passenger seat. She doesn't offer the front passenger seat and I don't ask for it.

"Less for shooting at you and more for endangering regular civilians. He saw a window of opportunity and took it." She shrugs, as though this is normal. "They know they'll have more trouble later on."

"Unless you're hiding a light-sabre in here and a Jedi Master to teach me how to use it, I'm not sure how I get to be any more challenging than this."

I keep looping back to what could have just happened, and what already happened, and how useless I feel.

"Well your goals are ambitious but no. Besides I figured you were hoping I'd tell you that you were secretly from Krypton and we'd just been spiking your horrible coffee with kryptonite for years."

"I might secretly be holding out for that. Being impervious would be really nice."

The joking helped a little, which I think she knew, and I thought she even cracked a glimpse of a smile, however briefly, and pulled out her parking spot with a confident abandon that completely failed to take into account other cars in the garage, one of which honked loudly. The sound echoed off the concrete structure, and brought back every ragged shred of the headache that had only partially faded, and rattled my nerves like a toddler with pots and pans trying their hands at percussion instruments.

Carolyn made a rude gesture out her window, which was one of the least composed things I had seen her do, and pulled out as I sunk down in the seat and carefully buckled my seat belt. She didn't bother, and I wasn't sure if that was just her personality, or if she was that confident in whatever powers seemed to come with working for a Vampire.

She drove off with the same sort of attitude that suggested she might have been better off in something like say, a Tiger Tank, and I couldn't help reaching for the handle above the door and clinging to it for dear life, though admittedly the idea of being slammed into by another driver pulling out of their spot was probably the least dangerous thing that could have happened in the last... what... forty eight hours?

I don't even dare ask questions for fear of distracting her as she barrels the large vehicle around the tight, uncomfortably narrow curves of the Parking Garage.