Vacation IV (The Shattered Lights)

(( CHAPTER 13, THE SHATTERED LIGHTS ))

The car was there, just as she remembered it. She walked from the doorway of what turned out to be an abandoned gas station toward it. Nobody was inside it, she could tell, and she cursed inwardly. It wasn't going to be that easy, of course.


As she got closer to it, she could tell some sort of struggle had occurred. Generally, nobody but Jacob or another Road Man would even be able to start the car, but the Sightless were themselves very powerful and had likely found a way to do so anyway. Jacob hadn't let his car be stolen without a fight. Scratches decorated the car, ichor still dripped from the bumpers where he'd ran some over, and dents were all over the place. The rear window had several cracks, and the trunk was ajar.

Jacob was no longer there, though judging from the bloodstains he had been, and it had taken quite an effort to put him there. She began moving to the front of the car, hands tracing over the metal. She could feel that a great deal of chaos had come up against the car, and lost. Had it, too, been caught up when the storm exploded? It had probably saved its inhabitant only to lose him later. The driver's side window had been broken in.

She moved to the front of the car, sighing, and closed her eyes to concentrate again. She'd been able to sense John, and she was hoping her new attunement would pick up any creatures of chaos, not just ones bound to her.

It did. She felt it as a wrongness behind her about a block, a concentration a lot like a storm, though not so powerful. She turned, and her heart leapt into her throat.

The headlights of the car had been smashed in.

She ran toward the building where she felt the wrongness – it was a run-down house, probably abandoned, without lights or any sign that anyone lived there. She knew there was someone there, though, they ached in her mind. Pain like a rotten tooth seemed to emanate from the place, so she didn't hesitate at all when she rammed her shoulder into the door, knocking it from its hinges.

Harpies. They made some inhuman noise as she entered, probably an alarm, and though she dispatched them with terrifying reflexive ease she couldn't cut them off quickly enough.

A Sightless slid from one of the doors, opened its mouth, and began to cry out something in a language she dared not try to comprehend. She silenced it, too. They were fast, she knew, but when she moved everything else stopped. She closed the distance and ended what remained of the monster's life without even a thought.

She felt the others converging on her location and thought angrily to herself: Let them! There were perhaps a half dozen in the house, and she slaughtered them with ease. She'd destroyed untold numbers of them earlier that day and beaten a Soldier, these were nothing to her. They seemed to realize this, at least those who got there after she'd made corpses of the others, and tried to flee. She wouldn't allow it, though, and she was faster than they.

Six corpses, leaking ichor and less identifiable liquids, were on the floor. Less than a second had passed.

She felt one more presence, one that hadn't moved. She walked cautiously down the stairs, to a bare and broken basement, and saw the something she'd felt lying in a pool of blood on the concrete floor. It was Jacob.

He wasn't dead, she could tell that from where she stood. She rushed down, the whole while feeling that something was wrong, something was horribly horribly wrong with the situation. There weren't any other Sightless, she knew, but something persisted, the feeling of wrongness about the place had not dissipated with the deaths of its keepers. Then she got to Jacob and turned him over, and found out why.

His eyes were missing.


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