Page 3 of Queen of Ruin

When she slumps back, something wet lands on my wrist and I glance down.

Blood.

Droplets of blood glimmer against my bare wrist and for a single, cold moment, my heart stops.

Did I get shot?

Did she shoot me, and I didn’t even notice?

There’s no pain on my next breath and my heart resumes beating. No pain. I wasn’t shot. Not my blood.

It’s hers.

A single glance at her panting heavily in the passenger seat gives me a glimpse of a horror movie. There’s blood everywhere.

It’s soaked into her torn jeans and ripped shirt, matted into her auburn hair, staining her pale skin. Her eyes, wild like a trapped animal’s, dart back and forth out of the windows and behind us, with each movement sending another spray of blood droplets all over the inside of my car.

“Listen,” I start to say, driving with no direction. “You’re clearly hurt. Should we be going to a hospital? Or—or the police station or something because⁠—”

“Shut up,” she snaps. “Just keep driving, okay? Have you got a phone? I-I need to m-make a call.” Her voice trembles as violently as the tremors moving through my arms.

Don’t piss her off. Don’t scare her. Don’t grab the gun.

Should be easy, right?

“Uh, yeah, yeah, it’s⁠—”

A sharp, ear-piercing squeal of brakes fills the air and suddenly, vibrant, blinding headlights flood the inside of my car from a vehicle behind us. No sooner have the lights utterly blinded me from a glance in the rear-view mirror than the vehicle slams into my rear bumper and shunts us both forward into the dashboard.

A yelp of pain escapes the woman beside me but she grits her teeth, spins in the seat, and aims her gun at my back window. She opens fire, deafening me with two gunshots that send the car behind screeching to one side as if trying to avoid them.

“What the fuck!” I yell, hunching down in my seat. “What the fuck is going on?!”

“Just keep driving!” She fires again, three shots this time, and then she suddenly doubles over with a pained, breathless gasp. “Shit. S-Shit.”

“H-Hey.” I spare a single glance toward her as her forehead comes to rest against my shoulder and bloodied, matted hair drapes over my arm. “Hey, if you’re about to die on me or something, y’gotta tell me where to go. I don’t wanna die here, either!”

“I-I…” Her head snaps up and our gazes meet.

My heart stops.

Golden-brown eyes, light like sun-kissed toffee, squint at me for half a second before contorting into pain and flickering closed. “Phone,” she chokes out. “N-Need your phone!”

“Yeah, yeah, let me get it.”

The stranger sinks back into the passenger seat as the revving engine of the chasing car fills the air again, and those glaring headlights illuminate even the smallest specs of dust within my car. I steady the car with one hand, grab my phone from my pocket with the other, and hand it to her.

She reaches for it, but just as her crooked, blood-stained fingers grasp it, the car behind slams into us with such force that the phone flies from my fingers and hits the dashboard.

“Shit!” Both my hands end up back on the wheel as I wrestle with the shudder tearing through my poor car. The woman dives for my phone and the car behind slams into us again, then a third time.

The fourth one seals our fate.

Metal screams and crunches as it twists and dents under the force of the pursuing car and the rear-end of my car lifts into the air, then crashes back down. We jolt and shudder like we’re caught in a blender and then, suddenly, I’m weightless as all control fades from the steering wheel and my car flips.

The seatbelt snaps against my shoulder and chest, restricting any possible breath I try to take. My stranger isn’t so lucky. There’s no seatbelt to save her and she’s thrown hard against the dash, cracking the windshield and then hitting the roof as we roll once and thunder to a complete stop.

Darkness takes me briefly.