Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,100
door jamb. I manage to wrap my throbbing fingers around the handle and pull as I drop back into the seat and press my foot to the gas. My shoulder burns and my hand tears free of the handle. The door lifts once again, flung into the air by the jostling cab.
A quick glance and I know the locking mechanism is gone, torn free when the jamb shattered. There’s no way to secure the hatch now. There’s rope in the outside toolbox. But even if I could get to it and tie the hatch shut, the jamb took so much damage, the door will never seal properly.
Without a stop and serious repairs, there will be no keeping kol out of the cab. I swallow down the twyl juice on my tongue—the flavor is long gone.
I chance another look in the side mirror and see that Hyla and Kyn dispatched the climbing Abaki. Hyla is manning the turret gun, her back to Kyn’s as they take aim at Winter’s monsters.
The Dragon’s frigid now, the cab growing colder as we pound down the road. My brain wheels with one simple truth: Hyla, Kyn, and I each need another twyl blossom. And soon. I’m going to have to stop to grab the bag if one of them doesn’t crawl back into the cab soon. But stopping is a terrifying proposition with so many Abaki in the road. The plastic windows suddenly seem a foolish idea. It wouldn’t take much at all for the monsters to tear inside.
And then I hear her. Winter.
She’s in the cab with me. Sitting on my knees, the wheel in her hands.
The image makes me laugh and the twyl pokes me in the cheek. It’s dry now, like the hay Lenore spreads for her chickens.
Oh, Leni.
Tears blur my vision and I steer the Dragon into a pothole. Overhead I hear boots and hands scuffling. I hear people screaming and monsters laughing.
LET ME, Winter says. GIVE ME THE WHEEL.
“No,” I say. “You’re trying to stop us. You want us to go back.”
But she bites at my fingers and I loosen my grip if only to brush the tears from my eyes. The rig stays steady with Winter at the helm. Steadier than I could keep it at any rate. My eyes blur again.
IT’S THE TWYL, Winter says. IT’S MAKING YOU SAD.
But I think maybe it’s the kol.
THE TWYL, Winter insists.
I shouldn’t trust Winter. But it makes sense. I wasn’t sad until the twyl lost its flavor.
“And I’m so tired of being sad,” I say. I pull the twyl from my mouth and let a gust of wind tug it up and out the hatch.
The world is a shimmer of black magic and rolling waves. I can hear them in my head, and I wonder what it would be like to feel them under my hands.
“Sylvi,” Kyn says, suddenly next to me. “What are you doing?” He’s anxious, I feel it in my gut, but it’s a soft squishy thing. Easy to ignore.
He curses and then he’s gone, scrabbling into the back as I hit another pothole and then another. But Winter’s doing the driving. Not me. And the bouncing makes me laugh.
The flint striker is loud next to my ear and I try to swat it out of Kyn’s hold. But he moves his hands away and lights the twyl blossom. The stench is itchy as it crawls into my nose. And then the twyl is in my mouth and it’s warm and . . .
My stomach is sick.
The black glitz trimming the sky begins to fade and I twist the wheel in my hands.
“Fluxing Blys, Kyn. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he says, a lot of shame in our shared bag of emotions. “I should have prepared all the twyl before we hit the road. It would have been easy enough to do.”
My eyes are slow to clear, but I’m aware enough to pull the rig back to the center of the highway, where the thoroughfare is less damaged.
“The hatch broke,” I say.
“Yeah.”
The Abaki aren’t swarming now. They’re spread across the road. Some staring as we fly by, some giving chase, some still clawing their way up and onto the roadway.
“I’ve got it,” I say, pointing the Dragon at the headless monster dead ahead, pushing my foot to the floor, angry to have been bested by the kol yet again, angry that Winter took advantage.
Angry that I can’t puzzle out what she wants with me.