Page 7 of Ruled By Fate

After this, things will be good. Right after this.

After two stops at Texaco and Starbucks, she was back on the road, latte in hand, feeling significantly more prepared to meet the challenges of the day. Hours passed as she listened to music and let every single car pass her while she stayed in the slow lane, as far away from large trucks as possible, opting to take frontage roads and backcountry routes whenever available. Call it a trauma response, but she had a thing about oncoming traffic and avoided large, fast-moving highways whenever she could.

She stopped in Charlotte to grab a quick bite and ate in the car.

“Siri? How much further to Yorktown?” she asked her phone.

“It is four hundred forty-six point four miles to Yorktown, Virginia,” Siri answered.

Brie nodded before clarifying, “And how long will that take?”

“The remainder of your drive is five hours and seven minutes, Sexy Beast,” came the reply. Brie paused mid-chew and silently reminded herself to figure out how to change the settings on her phone before any of her new colleagues heard that.

She threw out the chocolate cupcake that had come complimentary with her meal and got back on the road. After the accident, two of her childhood loves had disappeared for good: her love for speed and her chocolate frosting addiction. It had never tasted the same.

Before long, pines reached skyward, interspersing themselves among the ancient oak trees as the road began to wind in earnest. Towns became fewer and farther between. She drove past giant slabs of limestone jutting from the earth, lovely groves of apple trees overlooking little vineyards, and actual amber waves of grain. Before she knew it, she passed the Welcome to Virginia sign and let out a little whoop of excitement.

“See that?” she asked her plant. “We’re nearly there. And you wanted to stop for tacos.”

The plant received this with its signature stoicism. She patted it all the same.

“I know you have your doubts, but you’ll see. I have a good feeling about this place. It’s a prestigious hospital, you know. I’m sure Sherry had to bat her eyelashes at somebody over there to convince them to hire me, or I don’t know if I’d ever have been accepted fresh out of school.” She took another sip of her now-cold dregs of coffee and looked firmly at the road ahead of her before whispering to herself, “I think Mom would be proud.”

When it happened, they were just off Highway 311, near Madison County.

The plant was stubbornly disintegrating, and she was playing with her necklace while vowing to broaden her social circle when the pendant suddenly glowed red-hot.

“Ouch!” she exclaimed, looking down to see what could possibly be on fire. She stared in shock for a split second before yelling, “Ow — OUCH!”

The car itself was forgotten as she let out a screech, clawing frantically at her chest and trying to remove the metal sizzling against her skin. A simple chain, yet it seemed strangely reluctant to come off. She braced her knees against the steering wheel and attacked the thing with both hands, lifting it over the crown of her head.

The second she did, everything changed.

A burst of cold air hit the back of her neck, chilling the entire car. The windows crackled as ice slowly formed a thin film, obstructing her view. She looked around in confusion, her breath clouding suddenly in front of her.

That’s when she saw it. Through the ice, there it was — the monster from her nightmares, in the middle of the road.

Oh, my God…

Acting on nothing but instinct, she dropped the chain back over her head and swerved to avoid the creature, only to let out a piercing scream as three more winged horrors swooped down on her, attacking the car on all sides.

One ripped the trunk door clean off and scrambled its way inside. As she whirled around to look, still screaming, the car drifted for a second before hitting the curb exactly wrong. Her forehead hit the steering wheel with a sickening crack, and she went limp.

Then, all at once, the image shifted.

The world turned upside-down as the car flipped twice and landed on the roof, leaving her floating in and out of consciousness, the necklace hanging precariously from her hair.

Memories splintered. The picture began to fade.

There was a flash of white, a hellish noise, and an impossible creature dissolving into thin air. Like nails on a tortured chalkboard, shrieks ripped through the once peaceful woods. More flashes of light, a muted hiss, then quiet. A sudden, breathless quiet.

The sound of footsteps.

It felt like hours but must have been minutes later when a pair of strong, gentle hands slid under her head and shoulders, lifting her from the car as though she were as light as a child’s toy. The moment they touched her, nothing else mattered. The dizzying chill vanished, and the sun filtered warm through the trees. It felt like Christmas morning when she was five. She felt protected and loved, wanting for nothing. The hands settled her onto the street with infinite care.

Her eyelashes fluttered open, and she found herself gazing up into a pair of bright blue eyes. Eyes that looked exactly the same as they’d looked five years ago.

“Hello, Brianna. I told you we’d meet again.”

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