Epilogue

Epilogue 2.20

---Crawford---

     Beneath the bridge, the entire forest is up in flames like the comment section on a Yewtube video. I back the hell up—with the pillars already crumbling salt, I wouldn't be surprised if the bridge collapsed any second now. In backing up, I gently bump into Mya. By accident, of course. She glares at me. Too bad I can't stuff myself into the hood of that flipped over convertible and bask in my shame.

     Gisela's crouched down in the middle of the bridge, sniffing the ground. She is so dead. Not even Jun is stupid enough to walk over that pit of hellfire. Bent on providing an anticlimax, Gisela makes her way back over to us, shaking her head.

     "The trail goes cold," she says.

     "Cold? I'm sweating like a pig in a blender."

     She crosses her arms. "That doesn't even make sense."

     I shrug. It's too hot to be making sense.

     Fireballs shoot up from the blaze below, raining debris all over the plateau. Jun's throat tenses, like he's choking or something. Poor kid. Best we can hope is that Jewel was a jumper—better that than be burned alive. "So what?" he asks, his fists trembling. "Are we just going to abandon her?"

     "Sweetie, I'm not going down there, if that's what you're thinking," says Mya. "That'd be like willingly flinging yourself into the pits of hell."

     "Uh, guys?" I gulp, noticing a shadowy figure shoot up into the sky. "I think hell just came to us."

     Jun stumbles backwards, tripping over his shoelaces. "That... I think that's Jewel!"

     I squint at the hovering figure. Glowing violet orbs settle into the hollows of her eyes, and her shadowy cloak billows in the wind. She flicks her wrist and lightning crackles, illuminating her corpse-pale skin and the wriggling black tendrils of her hair.

     I catch a sparkle in Jun's eye. He dashes over to one of the piles of fireball debris and starts combing through it with his bare hands. Is he nuts? Rummaging through smouldering brimstone is just about the last thing we should be doing right now.

     Possessed-Jewel surges forward and lands on the pavement in front of us, forming a sizeable crater and setting off a shockwave that sends us flying backwards. Luckily there aren't too many abandoned vehicles around here to crash my head into. Just the nice, hard, concussion-inducing pavement. I grab my ice pick. Mya draws her katana. Gisela breaks out her pistols.

     But Possessed-Jewel doesn't even acknowledge us. She snaps her neck to the side and summons one hell of a storm. Torrents of rain pelt the asphalt and pound against our raw skin. Thunder claps along the sky, and a fierce wind rattles the earth at its very foundation. The fire continues to crackle beneath us, despite the downpour. Hell of a day to go for a hike.

     Each flash of lightning bathes the apparition-like figure, who's oozing out a tainted aura of misty shadows, in phantasmagorical light. A bit of the mist flies up my nose and I gag. Then my brain gets all scratchy, but my nails can't get to it because my face is in the way, and it just won't stop—

     Everything goes black. In the next flash of lightning, possessed-Jewel's chalky face hovers above me, the rest of her body consumed by the shadows. I scream, squirm, and plead with her to spare my pathetic existence. But I'm not the one she wants—she glides right past me.

     I turn around and catch sight of a headlight, obscured by the heavy rain and mists. Hear the rumble of an engine beneath the cacophonous howls of the wind. The light sputters out, and heavy footsteps splash in the puddles on the pavement.