Chapter 48: Enter the Lane
Eleanor’s POV
For a moment, the sound of the chase—the roaring engines, the screaming tires—faded into a dull hum. I could only stare, my mouth agape.
I had a hunch they were wolves, Beatrice commented, her tone annoyingly smug in the confines of my mind.
You... you knew? How? I mentally sputtered.
I just do. It’s a sense. A vibe.
And you didn’t think to tell me?!
Even if I did, you wouldn’t have believed me. Besides, I don’t need to tell you everything I think. You should be smart enough to figure things out yourself.
I was about to retort when Roxy’s voice cut through my internal argument. "Eleanor, you gotta learn to keep your face neutral when you’re talking to your wolf. Otherwise, people really will think you’re really a mental patient."
I recalled the accident i had with them. And Roxy’s voice: "Is Eleanor a werewolf?" I’d thought I’d imagined it in the haze of pain and shock. It was true.
"So that..." I began, but Mira cut me off, her focus absolute.
"Look, I bet those creeps know you’re a werewolf," she said, swerving around a delivery truck. "But that still isn’t enough reason for this level of obsession. There’s something else."
"It’s reason enough sometimes," Roxy countered, bracing herself as we hit a pothole. "Or you offended someone. Badly. Think, Ellie. What happened when you were kidnapped"
Another memory surfaced, this one laced with panic and rage. My claws, slashing across a man’s face. "I... I used my claws on the man who bought me. He looked... important. Like a political figure."
Roxy snapped her fingers. "That’s it. That’s definitely it. You didn’t just escape; you humiliated a powerful man. He wants revenge, and he wants to make an example out of you."
Up ahead, brake lights lit up the night—a sea of red. A traffic jam was blocking the main road.
"Damn it!" Mira hissed.
But she didn’t slow down. Instead, she wrenched the steering wheel, and our car mounted the curb, lurching into the pedestrian walkway. People screamed, scrambling out of the way. We clipped a café table, sending chairs flying, and smashed through a standing advertisement sign with a sickening crunch of plastic.
"Careful! Its the company’s car" Roxy yelled, though she was already hanging out her window, shouting, "Move! Get out of the way!"
"I’ll help you pay for the damages!"
As we careened down the sidewalk, the vans still relentlessly pursuing us from the street, a desperate idea sparked in my mind. A place they might not dare to follow.
"I know where we can go!" I shouted over the chaos. "Somewhere they might not be able to follow!"
"Where?" Roxy demanded, pulling herself back inside.
"The Serpent’s Kiss!"
Mira’s eyes went wide in the rearview mirror. "You mean the same race track that’s now crawling with monsters? That Serpent’s Kiss?"
"That could be it!" Roxy’s eyes lit up with a feral gleam. " I can drive and avoid the monsters, but those bastards won’t stand a chance with their van."
Mira agreed. In a move that defied physics and common sense, Mira unbuckled her seatbelt and scrambled over the center console as Roxy slid into the driver’s seat, never taking her foot off the accelerator. The car swerved violently for a heart-stopping second before Roxy’s hands, steady and sure, gripped the wheel.
"Hold on!" she yelled, and the car surged forward with a new, terrifying purpose.
We shot out of the pedestrian walkway, clipping the corner of a newsstand and sending a spray of magazines into the air, and swerved onto a narrow service road that ran parallel to the main highway.
Roxy drove like a woman possessed, weaving through some obstacles in the way. I told them about an access road that led directly to the Serpent’s Kiss, used only by maintenance crews and, apparently, werewolves in company cars.
The vans were still behind us,their bulkier frames struggling with the tight turns and debris-strewn path.
In the distance, I could now hear the distinct wail of police sirens joining the chaotic symphony. They were following the trail of destruction we’d left through the city.
Roxy didn’t slow down. She aimed the car straight for a gap in the temporary barrier, and we plunged onto the infamous asphalt of the Serpent’s Kiss.
The moment our tires hit the track, the air changed, growing heavy and cold, the city sounds muffled as if we’d entered a tomb.
POP. POP. POP.
The sharp sounds weren’t from the engine. Gunshots.
Mira cursed and immediately shoved me down, her body covering mine. "They’re trying to kill us now that there are no witnesses!"
As she leaned over me, I saw it. In the frantic shadows of the car’s interior, her eyes flashed a brilliant, feral green before the glow retracted.
My breath hitched. It was real. Mira was really a werewolf. She’d been my co-worker, my best friend. And I’d had no idea.
A part of me felt a pang of hurt, but it was quickly washed away by a wave of understanding. Of course she’d kept it secret. I had done the same.
"Well," Roxy muttered from the driver’s seat, her voice tight with concentration. "The welcoming committee is here."
I risked a look over the dashboard. Up ahead, the track itself seemed to be boiling. Dark, twisted forms were materializing from the asphalt, pulling themselves up from the ground like nightmares clawing their way out of the earth. They were vaguely humanoid but moved with a broken, skittering gait, their forms shifting and unstable.
"Rogues," Mira said, her voice grim as she peered out. "You’ve heard of them, right?"
I had. But the descriptions in the sites i read them didn’t compare to the visceral horror of seeing them in person. They were voids of darkness, radiating pure malice.
More gunshots echoed, but they were sporadic now, punctuated by shouts of panic from our pursuers.
Roxy wrenched the steering wheel, swerving around a cluster of the creatures that lunged at the car. Her driving was a terrifying dance of precision and brute force, the car skidding as she dodged another grasping, shadowy limb.
A loud BANG and a violent shudder tore through the car. "They hit a tire!" Roxy shouted, fighting the steering wheel as we swerved uncontrollably before lurching to a stop. We were sitting ducks.
Almost instantly, the rogues were on us. Dark claws slammed against the windows, and the sound of cracking glass filled the air.
"Eleanor, stay put!" Mira commanded, but her voice was changing, becoming deeper, more guttural.
I watched, frozen, as her eyes glowed that fierce green again, her entire aura shifting into something predatory and deadly. Roxy turned and i see her eyes burned a bright, electric purple, and she seemed to grow, her muscles straining against her clothes.
"Time to send them back to their grave."
With a final shattering crash, a rogue completely smashed through the windshield, its maw gaping. Roxy didn’t flinch. She met its charge, slamming her body into it and tearing it from the car frame with a raw snarl. Mira was right behind her, a blur of motion as she launched herself out to join the chaos.
I could only watch in a mixture of awe and horror. They moved with a brutal, professional efficiency. Every dodge, every slash of their now-fully extended claws, was precise and lethal.
I expected it from Roxy, but seeing Mira dismantle a monster with such cold fury was a shock that rattled me to my core.
Another rogue, seeing the open windshield, scrambled inside. Its breath hit my face, and I screamed, fumbling for the door handle and tumbling out onto the road. I scrambled backward, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.
You need to protect yourself! Beatrice roared in my head.
But I was paralyzed. This... this thing was a walking nightmare, something from a storybook designed to prey on primal fear.
If you won’t do something, I will! Beatrice’s voice was a whip-crack. Let me take control!
The rogue lunged. Its claws raked my arm, and its teeth snapped inches from my face. I cried out, shoving at its weight, but it was like pushing against a wall of solid muscle and hatred.
"Let you... how?" I gasped, desperation overwhelming my terror. "How do I even do that?"
Beatrice’s voice shifted, dropping into a lower, deadly register that was no longer just a voice in my head, but a presence. Accept me. Believe I can do it.
In that moment, as the monster’s foul saliva dripped onto my cheek, I felt a surge of raw, primal rage, a need to survive that was older than thought.
Alright.
The agreement was silent, but it was absolute.
Power, raw and untamed, flooded my veins. The fear vanished, replaced by a cold, focused fury. My hand, which had been weakly pushing against the rogue’s chest, shot up and clamped around its throat.
I felt a strength I had never known. With a sharp, satisfying crack, I snapped its neck and flung the twitching body off me as if it were a ragdoll.
I stood up, my body humming with this new energy. And then, I heard it. A new voice, not Beatrice’s, but something deeper, older, echoing from the very depths of my soul.
’Our Master is finally awake.’