“Aggie is… uhhh… slightly unhinged,” I say.
“Slightly?” Jayden scoffs. “She chased me all over the gas station, screaming and waving her stick at me. That’s a bit more than slightly unhinged.”
“Um, Jayden?” Thad sits forward in the middle seat, squinting at the road ahead. “What in Hades is that?”
I turn to face forward and my heart pounds in my ears at what’s in front of us. There’s almost like a film coating everything and the highway turns into a dirt path not one hundred feet in front of us.
“We need to stop,” I shout.
“I can’t. It’s like it’s pulling us in. I have my foot slammed into the brake but we’re still moving.”
The acrid scent of burning rubber fills the car and I gag. That’s awful but it doesn’t stop pulling us as if this portal or whatever it is has a gravitational pull all its own.
“There’s no stopping it. Stop trying before you wreck the tires and we’re even worse off.” I grip Jayden’s arm.
“Do we even know where this place it’s pulling us to is?” Kira yells.
“Nope, it could be taking us to another country for all I know.” I shake my head.
The sensation of thousands of ants crawling down my skin makes me shiver as we pass through the gauzy film into the unknown.
“Is everyone still in the SUV?” I ask, turning to the others.
“Yeah, no one got left behind,” Draven says from the back.
“Um, I think we have a much bigger problem on our hands,” Jayden says.
A shiver rolls down my spine and my stomach drops as dread fills me. “What’s the problem?”
“The SUV won’t go. The engine is dead.” Jayden turns the key but nothing happens, not even a click.
“That’s not possible.” Kira sits up straighter. “We did a full diagnostic on it just yesterday to make sure we were ready for anything. Ben made sure.”
“It’s not even pretending like it works. It’s just dead. Where the fuck did we end up?” Jayden asks.
“The only way to find out is to keep moving, I guess.” I remove my seat belt.
“I can check the engine and see what’s going on.” Kira taps on Draven’s shoulder to get him to move out of her way.
“Okay, but I’m going with you. We have no idea where we are or what we’re dealing with.” I open the door and hop out of the vehicle.
Kira pops the hood but she’s too short to lift it up high enough so she climbs up on the front and latches the stick into the hood so it doesn’t crash on our heads. I touch my shield charm, calling the sword that Claud made for me. The back of my neck tingles and I scan our surroundings.
We’re being watched. Jayden shuts the driver’s door and calls his shadow sword. It crackles with energy as he stands next to me.
“Something isn’t right,” he hisses.
“We’re being watched. I don’t know how many there are, but I can feel it in my gut. We’re not alone out here.” I scan the tree line repeatedly.
“I have a sinking suspicion that we’re not in California anymore.” Raven sidles up to my other side.
“I don’t think we’re on Earth anymore,” I whisper. “This is crazy.”
The leaves on the nearby trees have a slightly blue glowing tint to them. The shrubs appear to glow as well. The flowers are vibrant shades of pink and purple unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and they sparkle in the sunlight.
“Hermes warned us that we could end up lost in another realm.” Jayden runs a hand through his hair.
“There is nothing wrong with this SUV,” Kira says as she jumps down off the bumper.
