No Sleep till Doomsday by Laurence MacNaughton

Author:Laurence MacNaughton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books

20

BAT MOBILE

The bat hit the long purple Lincoln Town Car with a startlingly loud thud. That was quickly followed by the thin screeching of its clawed feet scrabbling against the glass as it tried to shatter the window. But none of that matched the piercing volume of Opal’s panicked scream, which threatened to rupture both of Dru’s eardrums.

On impact, the bat’s long leathery wings wrapped all the way around the windshield and back window, plunging the car into near darkness. The only light came in through Dru’s window, where the trembling edges of the wings couldn’t quite reach. In the gloom, the dozen crystals Dru had carefully hot-glued around the inside of the car glowed softly as the grid worked to keep the protean sorcerer from breaking in.

“I can’t see!” Opal shrieked, pointing unnecessarily at the flapping ribbed wing covering the windshield. As the sunlight passed faintly through the bat’s leathery skin, it turned the licorice-black wing into more of a brown cola color, pulsing with a feathery network of veins.

“Stop the car!” Dru advised, during a fleeting moment of quiet as Opal sucked in another lungful of air to start screaming again.

But instead of stopping the car, Opal swung the steering wheel violently back and forth. “Get this ugly thing off my beautiful car!”

The bat’s glistening pink tongue, easily a foot long, slathered spittle across Opal’s window as it tried to gnaw on the doorframe. Its beady black eyes pressed up against the glass, staring with ferocious intensity. Dru couldn’t be absolutely certain, but she had the distinct impression it was staring hungrily at the book in her hands.

Since the spell book was her only way of finding Lucretia, Dru knew she had to keep it safe. But before she could even begin to think about that, first she had to make sure they didn’t die in a fiery car crash. She rolled down the window on her side.

“Don’t you let that thing in here!” Opal hollered.

Dru tried to brace herself against Opal’s wild evasive maneuvers as she stuck her head out through the open window. Up ahead, an eighteen-wheel truck was stopped at the next traffic light. Unless they did something right this moment, they would crash into its rusty rear end. Dru gulped down a breath. An empty side street led off to the right. “Turn right! Now!”

Opal yanked the wheel right, and the Lincoln’s tires squealed in protest. The heavy car sagged to the side like a capsizing boat, and for a moment Dru was afraid they would roll completely over and die. But by some miracle, they made it around the corner in one piece.

Sensing an opening, the bat scrambled over the car toward Dru’s open window, flapping its wings enough to afford brief glimpses of the street dead-ending ahead. Tall chain-link fences penned them in on the left and right. The street widened somewhat but then ended in a gate that was chained shut. A spray-painted plywood sign proclaimed, “No Saturday Deliveries.”

Dru rolled up

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