Wickerman Cove

Part 26: Gas Station Food

Penny insisted that they follow in the hearse while the sheriff went on ahead. It wasn't a bad idea. If Mansfield ended up arresting anyone, it wouldn't really be okay to have to make Renard sit in their lap like a therapy animal for crazy doomsday cultists.

The sheriff's cruiser moved in a way that Steph had never expected a police car could, despite the fact that it was probably made for pursuit. It tore through the country roads, almost slaloming around corners, somehow never getting into trouble or taking a turn it couldn't make.

Then again, Mansfield knew where she was going better then Penny and Steph did.

That didn't stop Penny seeming to see it as a challenge.

The night had come in hard now, suspiciously early for August. It brought a biting cold more suitable to the Fall.

Penny put the lights on high and pressed her foot to the floor, trying to match the sheriff pace for pace. Renard lay on his belly in the back and stared into the middle distance, his eyes like a veteran flashing back to 'Nam.

Steph tried to reason with herself that if the Guide existed, and she could teleport through doors and be in two places at once, there probably was a God, and they wouldn't let her die because a goth got car envy.

"Okay," Steph said, as Penny took a corner without breaking, daring the world to prove that physics existed. "We don't need to beat the sheriff there. I mean, are we sure we can even find the gas station again? Maybe it's better to let her take point?"

Penny shook her head. It was such a small, spasmodic motion that Steph wasn't sure if it was a response, or if she was trying to shake loose whatever demon had possessed her to drive at eighty miles an hour, on a moonless night in rural Maine.

Ahead, Mansfield switched on her lights and siren, which Steph took as a sign they were getting close. She'd been able to refill her magazines from the huge bag of bullets the sheriff had bought, which meant she had two clips for the SIG again, plus twenty shells for a shotgun Mansfield had loaned from the cruiser.

Even on the off-chance the firing pin was missing from this gun, too, at least it was big enough to use as a club.

Steph loaded it as Penny, mercifully, slowed. "That trick you did back there," she asked. "Any chance you'll be able to do it again?"

Penny messed with the phone in her lap. "I can't. YOU WOULD. Die."

"Is that why I've been getting these damned headaches?" Steph asked, fighting the urge to check her black streak in the mirror. "If I get through all this and die of brain cancer, I'm gonna haunt you."

Red lights cut through the rain, and Penny's reply was lost as she went into a sliding emergency stop. Her phone shot into the darkness of the footwell, and in the back Renard stayed bravely quiet as he tumbled around with Penny's backpack.

The hearse's back end swung out as Penny slid it sideways, passing behind Mansfield's cruiser and straightening out to slide backwards up the country road. A grey van – the same grey van The Church of the Eye had used – shot past. For a split second, Steph thought she saw the woman – The Marian's – face over the steering wheel, her eyes wide and wild with fear, as the van wallowed through a clumsy arc and swayed around the corner, threatening to flip at any second.

In her pocket, Steph's phone rang. She put it on speaker.

"You two okay?" Mansfield asked.

Penny leaned over the back of the seat to reassure Renard, who seemed insulted that he'd been subjected to an assault from mere luggage.