All Wounds (12 page)

“Hey! Help!”

“They can’t hear you, Bit,” Billy said as he tugged her hard around a corner and out the main doors. “Can’t see us neither, but them demons can, so knock off the yellin’.”

He thrust her in the passenger seat of an old blue Mustang before she could utter another word and half an instant later was behind the wheel. In seconds they were backed out of the parking space and out of the school parking lot, barreling down the street at a highly illegal speed.

She looked over at Billy. He had a silly grin on his face as he rolled down his window.

He’d just been in a fight to the death with demons and he was smiling about it.

Rebecca couldn’t help but laugh, then put her head in her hands and started sobbing.

“Aw, Bit,” Billy said. “Don’t do that. We’re all right. You ain’t hurt too bad.” Billy turned the car sharply to the right. “I’ll have you home in no time.” Rebecca cried harder. “What...those things...! They just...and you...!” she managed between gulping sobs.

“Demons ain’t nothin’ to get upset over,” Billy said. “They’re complete wimps.”

Rebecca just looked at him. Nothing? Wimps?
Those things
?!

Billy grinned at her. Human-looking or not, he was covered in blood and...demon goo.

She choked on a half-sob, half-giggle and sniffed hard. She wiped her eyes and tried to smile for him.

“There you go,” Billy said. “No crying. I can’t stand a woman crying.

Makes me feel all funny. Let’s get you home, you can patch up—I’ll even get you some dinner. I don’t know about you, but fighting makes me hungry.” Rebecca was about to ask how he could think about food at a time like this when he growled and glared at the rearview mirror.

“Uh oh,” Billy said.

Her stomach tightened at his tone. “What?”

“Company,” was all he managed to get out before the car’s roof crumpled between them.

Rebecca shrieked and pressed herself hard against the passenger door.

They were in the middle of town—people were everywhere on the street, in other cars. Wasn’t anyone seeing this? It didn’t look like they were.

Why not? Why weren’t the cops all over Billy for his insane speeding and dodging in and out of traffic? She’d give anything for red-and-blue lights and sirens right about now!

“Damn it!” Billy yelled as he punched the roof hard above his head.

“DUCK!”

Rebecca just managed to comprehend and slide down in her seat before was showered with glass from the window. She screamed again as a black-clawed hand entered the car, followed by a gray-skinned arm.

A loud bang deafened her and she clamped her hands over her ears as she looked up. Billy’s arm was extended across the seats above her. Rebecca barely had time to realize there was a gun in his hand before Billy fired again.

There was another thud from the roof followed by an outraged howl.

Billy tossed the gun in his hand into Rebecca’s lap and punched the roof again. “Stop beating up my car, you horror-movie reject! Bit, hang on!”
Hang on to what?
Rebecca thought as she grabbed the door handle next to her.Billy jammed on the brakes, bringing the Mustang to an abrupt halt.

Rebecca slid from the passenger seat and barely caught herself against the dash, or she would have ended up on the floor like the gun that had just been in her lap. She braced herself against the dashboard and looked out the windshield.

The demon on the roof hit the ground in front of them. Before it could get to its feet, Billy hit the gas and the car leapt forward. Rebecca heard a crunch as they ran over the demon and cringed before she realized something.

She hadn’t felt anything when Billy had ripped the demons apart like she did when she hurt a spider. Like now, she could feel Billy’s wounds hurting and bleeding. Why not demons? She was sure there was a simple answer and didn’t have time to think about it as she pushed herself back into her seat and grabbed for her seatbelt.

It wouldn’t give. She tugged and tugged at it, but Billy’s insane driving had locked it tight. She gave up, let it go, and looked back behind them. She didn’t see anything and took a deep breath.

Billy looked in the rearview again. “Damn. Hellspawn just don’t know when to give up. Hang on! I’ll have to jump this thing.” That didn’t sound good. Jump what? Ten cars, like some dude on the Extreme Sports Network?

“Oh, cripes,” Rebecca moaned, and shrank down in her seat again, this time sliding into the small space on the floor between her seat and the dash.

There was a feeling of weightlessness before there was a hard thump beneath her. Rebecca was knocked from her crouch onto her behind, and she yelped as a bolt of pain shot up her spine.

“You okay?” Billy asked. He leaned down and hauled her up into the passenger seat, and she’d just managed to nod when she noticed it was dark outside.

Hadn’t it...it had just been afternoon! Why was it dark? Where were they?

She didn’t have time to ask as the car was again hit from behind.

“Damn demonic jerks,” Billy growled.

Another loud bang from the back of the car tore the wheel from Bil y’s hands. He grabbed at it and pulled the careening car out of the near spin it had gone into.

“KNOCK THAT OFF!” Billy yelled over his shoulder. “DO YOU

HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND STOCK PARTS FOR

A ‘65?”

The insane thought that she didn’t think they’d care flashed through Rebecca’s mind.

She glanced out the windshield.

Long, sharp spikes covered the hood of the car, stuck between rows of what looked like chain on fire. The blue hood of the car was now black, but Rebecca wasn’t sure if that was just the darkness around them or if it had actually changed color along with...growing spikes and fire-chains.

The rear window shattered into tiny pieces.

Billy swore again and grabbed hold of what looked like some kind of gearshift. “All right, Rox, don’t let me down, girl.”

“Who’s Rox—” Rebecca managed to get out before she felt a strange sense of being squeezed and that weird feeling of weightlessness enveloped her. Another hard crash—this time from beneath them—rocked the car, and it was once again daylight. An overpass was directly in front of them, and Rebecca recognized it as the highway intersection that led out of town.

The car spun onto the ramp and cut off three cars as Billy accelerated once again to a speed that was far beyond legal.

Rebecca watched the cars they swept by as Billy dodged in and out of the lanes like a maniac.

No one seemed to notice.

“Why can’t they see us?” Rebecca shouted over the noise of the wind whistling through the broken windows.

“Humans are the blindest race in history,” Billy replied with a laugh.

“They never see anything, not even when it’s right in front of their face!” Billy took an off-ramp and made three left turns. He turned the wheel hard to the right and cut through a field.

“Ha, ha! Crop circles!”

Rebecca put her face in her hands.

“Here we are! Told you I’d get you home in no time!” She looked up and sure enough they were on a street that paralleled her own.

No time? It had seemed like hours passed before Billy turned onto her street and even longer before he reached her driveway.

As they passed the fence marking the property, Rebecca felt her fear ease. She looked back over her shoulder at the rear window. Billy found the gun he’d tossed in Rebecca’s lap on the floor of the passenger side and got out of the car to look behind them before the car even stopped rolling.

She heard a howl and a shriek of outrage and got out of the car just in time to see a gray-winged thing look like it hit a pane of glass in thin air and fly off into the dark past the orange light of the streetlamps.

Streetlamps? But...they’d just left the school, hadn’t they?

Billy’s laugh brought her attention back to the moment.

“Ha! Suckers! Good thing the boundary’s back up, hey Bit? I’d say we stirred up them up like a nest of hornets.” Billy tucked his pistol back into the band of his jeans. He turned to look at his car and his mouth fell open in horror. “Aw, look what they did to Rox!”

Rebecca turned and saw that the car looked like a beer can someone had crushed. She was amazed that they weren’t mashed inside like sardines.

It looked like it was back to being a shade of blue, though Rebecca couldn’t tell if the spikes and chains had been smashed into the car body or were just gone.

“
That’s
‘Rox’? Your
car
?”

“Yeah,” Billy said, looking a little embarrassed for a moment. “Short for ‘Roxanne’. She’s gotten me out of more trouble than I can remember.”

“Is she...uh...alive?”

Billy laughed and shook his head. “Nah. Well, I say all cars have attitude of their own, but she ain’t any more alive than any other mortal car. Good thing, too. She took one hell of a beating.”

He leaned down and kissed the hood of the car. “Don’t you worry, girl. Billy’ll get you back in top shape in no time. Thanks for saving our butts. What about you?” he asked as he straightened and leaned against the mangled hood of the Mustang. “You hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” Rebecca said. “I mean, my arm, but I don’t think anything is broken. I think I might have cracked my head against your dash, but since you probably saved my life, I won’t hold it against you.”

“You probably did more damage to Rox than she did to you anyway,” Billy muttered.

“What about you?” she asked. “You look...um...”

“Ain’t nothin’,” Billy said again. “I’ll heal up. Just glad I got to you in time. Syd sent me. Demons are nasty.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that,” she said with a tearful sniff. She laughed a little. It was either laugh or cry. She looked toward the street. “They’re gone now, right?”

“Yep,” he replied. “For now, anyway. The boundary’ll hold ’em off.

They’ll figure out a way past it, though. They always do. Stupid they might be, but demons got patience like you wouldn’t believe. Persistent, too. Don’t give up.”

“I noticed that,” she said, looking at Billy’s car again. “What’s. .I mean..

where’s the boundary?” she asked, trying not to seem
too
ignorant.

Billy looked at her sidelong for a split-second before running his fingers over a large dent in his car hood. “It’s where the worlds meet. Otherworlds and this one. Where Ethereal power has more of an effect,” he explained.

“It’s kind of like a border between states. You cross it and you’re in your own territory, not in anyone else’s.”

“And where is it?” she asked, still confused, but hoping the answer to the
where
would answer the
what
.

“See the fence, around your house?” He continued at her nod. “That’s not just there to define a property line. It’s a boundary line. Your house is old, and built on an even more particular line called a ley line. It’s where the veil between worlds is thin, and more easily negotiated. The boundary holds that power in, and keeps other influences out.”

“‘Other influences’?” she asked, confused.

“Okay, let’s put this in easier terms,” Billy said. “You ever see
Star Trek
?” She nodded. “Yeah. Robin’s dad is a nut about it.”

“Okay, so you known what a force field is,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah,” she said again. “Something that holds whatever in or keeps something out, like a jail cell.”

“That’s kind of like the boundary,” Billy said. He gave the front tire of his car a soft kick and nodded. “It’s where the force field is, and just like in
Star Trek
, if you’ve got the key or know the way, you can go in and out of it. Some things it keeps out, other things it keeps in, and still other things can cross it as they want. Make sense?”

“A little,” she said, her brow furrowing. “When...I mean...Nana asked Syd to ‘see to the boundary’. What did she mean?”

“Few years back Martha closed off the portal to her enclave and brought the boundary around her place down,” Billy answered. “It basically was like putting up a ‘no vacancy’ sign at a hotel. No room at the inn, so to speak. No welcome there, no help available, closed to business, however you want to phrase it. For things needing to get back across the boundary, or back into one of the Otherworlds, it was a real pain in the—” Billy reached under the wheel well and tried to push out a dent above it. He cursed and growled and it finally gave under his insistence. He leaned back with a grin.

Rebecca gaped. Wow. He had to be seriously strong to bend molded steel back into shape with his bare hands.

“Need tools to smooth that,” he muttered. His satisfied smile disappeared and he straightened a little as he noticed her still standing in front of him. He cleared his throat and went on. “So that meant they had to find another place, and believe me, there aren’t many. When Martha told Syd to

‘see to the boundary’, she was telling him to put her shingle back out—raise the force field—and make the place safe again for those needing a haven.

Kind of like a stop on a train line that had been closed, and now the train goes there again. It will be slow at first for things to get back to normal, because everyone knows the train doesn’t run to that stop anymore and they’ve had to find other ways and means to get around and get help, but eventually word will spread that the Eastern Enclave is back in business, and things will go back to normal.”

“‘Normal’?” Rebecca echoed. “Normal for who?”

“For us,” Billy said as he stood up and went to the open driver’s side door. He shoved it closed with his foot. The handle fell off and clattered to the cement of the driveway. He cursed again.

“‘Us’?” she repeated, still confused.

“Yeah, us,” Billy replied with a scowl. “But don’t you worry none. Got you across the boundary. Nothin’ gonna touch you here. Well, nothin’ smart anyway. It would have to really be worth something’s while to take on the vamps, werewolves, ghouls, ghosts, shades, goblins, zombies—”

“Zombies?!” Rebecca interrupted, her eyes wide. “There are zombies running around?!”

“Well, they don’t really run too good, and only sometimes stumble into the Regular realm, but yeah, there are ‘zombies running around’,” Billy said.