Brothersong (Green Creek #4) - T.J. Klune Page 0,81
side, almost tipping out and over the back of the truck.
Gordo slammed his foot on the gas. We shot forward just as Livingstone leapt, mouth open wide with what looked like endless rows of fangs, his misshapen hands in front of him, claws like black utility hooks.
I screamed for Gavin to stay down as Gordo regained control. The engine shook the cab as we shot forward, Livingstone roaring as he sailed over the bed. Gavin lay flat, but Livingstone reached for him, one claw gouging Gavin’s shoulder. Blood sprayed against metal. Livingstone snarled in fury as he crashed down onto the other side of the road and rolled off into the trees, which were torn from their roots. He got up almost immediately.
Gordo looked in the side mirror, hands tightening on the steering wheel as Livingstone began to chase us. “Oh, I have such a bad idea.”
I gaped at him. “What? No! No bad ideas!”
“Take the wheel. Keep us straight.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” I yelled at him but did as he asked. Joe and Kelly were a couple hundred feet ahead, tearing down the road. “Maybe you should have let me drive, you dick!”
“You’re a terrible driver,” Gordo muttered. He turned in his seat, keeping his foot pressed against the gas. He pushed open the driver’s door, hanging out the side. Cold air rushed into the cab, whipping his hair around his head as he narrowed his eyes. He muttered under his breath as his tattoos flashed brightly. The roses twisted around the scar tissue where the raven had once been. The feel of his magic was at once familiar and strange. There’d always been an order to it, even after he’d lost his hand, but this felt different. It crawled over me as the roses bloomed larger than I’d ever seen them. They grew along his arm, the vines stretching tightly, the thorns so real I thought they’d prick my skin if I touched them. The roses and vines curled around the stump of his wrist. I looked back as the road behind us split apart as if the tectonic plates beneath the earth had awoken angry. Tons of cement rose in the air as Livingstone roared. He tried to run through it, but a chunk of black rock slammed into his head, knocking him to the side. Gordo grunted as he brought his arm down, and I could actually smell the roses, the scent thick, as if I stood in the middle of a garden.
Livingstone hit the ground as the remains of the road fell down around him and on top of him. A red eye flashed once before it disappeared under rock.
“Take that, motherfucker!” I crowed.
Gordo pulled himself back inside the truck, pushing my hands away from the steering wheel. He hit the brakes hard, the hood of the truck pointing toward the road before we came to a stop. Ahead, Joe and Kelly did the same, and I could see them staring back at us with wide eyes.
Gavin pulled himself to his paws in the back. The wound was slowly healing. Damage from an Alpha always took longer. His fur was matted with blood, but he paid it no mind as he stared back at the ruins of the road.
“Was that it?” I asked. “Is he dead?”
Gordo shook his head, staring at his side mirror. “I don’t…. It can’t be that easy.”
“You dropped a fucking road on him. How the hell did you do that?”
“You’d be surprised what I can do now that I’ve been unleashed.”
A phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to me. I looked down to see Kelly’s name on the display. I answered. “Did you see that?”
“Why are we stopped?”
“I don’t—”
“Fuck,” Gordo said, and I looked back out the window again.
At first there was nothing.
And then a pile of cement shifted.
“No,” I whispered.
But it wasn’t the beast who rose.
A pale hand appeared. Human. Five fingers reached toward the sky. They flexed once, twice before another hand appeared, the skin bloodied.
And then Robert Livingstone stood.
He was nude, his body covered with nicks and cuts in various stages of healing. His white hair fluttered around his head in the breeze. He only had one eye, the other shut tight and scarred over, a mass of tissue that wrapped around the side of his head. He shook himself and craned his neck from side to side.
“Jesus Christ,” Kelly whispered through the phone. “He can shift.”