Green - a werewolf story

34. Tailgate

Green brought the car to a halt. "Now, what?" he asked.

"Now you put me on speaker," Letitia told Vanessa before she could forward the question, "and then you'll both do exactly as I say."

"We're going to discuss your bossiness later," Vanessa said and did as she asked just as the part of Mario's pack traveling behind them honked.

"If you both survive, I'll look forward to the discussion," Letitia said.

Green looked at Vanessa with raised eyebrows.

"Letitia will tell you which direction to go in," Vanessa explained. "She's had a vision."

"That's right," Letitia said. "Now reverse hard enough to trigger the airbags of the car behind you."

"You want him to dent my car?" Vanessa asked, aghast.

"So what? He's rich, he can buy you a new one," came Lettie's deadpan reply.

When Vanessa looked over at Green he shrugged as if to say "she's not wrong." Then he put the car in reverse and slammed into their escort.

Vanessa felt the seat belt tighten around her and her head smack against the head of her seat.

"If I get a whiplash because of you, Lettie, I'm..."

"Oh, stop being such a baby. You have supernatural healing for heaven's sake. Now, Aiden, I want you to signal left, head right and go as fast as you can."

"Yes, ma'am," Green replied and did exactly that.

"How do you know his name's Aiden?" Vanessa asked as they accelerated down a bumpy country road.

"My mom's psychic," Letitia said dismissively. "Me too know, apparently. Alright, take a left when you can."

"And how long have you known?" Vanessa continued as Green turned left unto an even bumpier road.

"Since the first time you mentioned him. Mom had a dream where you married a tall guy with green eyes. She said the priest called him Aiden Colt."

Vanessa was so stunned at this new information that it took her a moment to reply. During that moment, headlights from another car appeared in the rear window.

"Lettie?" Green said. "We've got someone following us."

"Good."

"Good?" Vanessa sputtered, breaking out of the shock of hearing Madame Genevieve having predicted her getting married to Green. Someone who, Vanessa couldn't fail to notice, didn't seem shocked at all. Did he really think it was going to be that easy to get her to the altar?

"We want them to follow. There's a ravine coming up and..."

"We can't have them fall into a ravine!" Vanessa protested.

"I didn't know you were so fond of your former packmates," Letitia said. "Here I was, thinking that they had traumatized you to the point where you could hardly form any lasting relationships out of fear that one day the white wolf worshippers would find them and..."

"What do you mean by my old pack?" Vanessa asked, feeling her trepidation turn into full fledged panic. "It's Mario's packmates who..."

"There are no red wolves in the car behind you," Letitia said.

"But I..."

"The White Wolf Pack have been told about you and they're closing in," Letitia cut in. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but you have no choice but to run. Remember what you did to them?"

Vanessa shivered. Yeah, she remembered.

"We're coming up to the ravine now," Green said.

"Good! There's a small bridge. I want you to cross it."

Green did as she asked. The bridge was in a poor state and Vanessa held her breath as they drove across it. They made it to the other side alright and Letitia told them to stop the car and get out of it.

"You might want to get your things too," she said.

"Why?"

"Because you're going to push the car into the ravine and go the rest of the way on foot. Or paw, more likely. So take only what you can comfortably carry in your mouth."

"You want me to destroy my car?" Vanessa gasped.

"It's not like you've had it for long and like I said, your boyfriend's rich."

"But I – "

"It's either destroy the car or be captured and tortured to death."

Well, when she put it like that... Vanessa froze when she heard the other car approach them. It was speeding up, having no doubt seen them on the other side of the bridge.

"Er... are you sure we should just be standing around out here?" Green asked.

"Positive."

"Because that is a large car and it's coming towards us fast," Green continued.

"Excellent."

Green and Vanessa looked at each other. She shrugged. It was absolutely possible that Letitia had had a spell backfire in the last couple of days and lost her mind as a result of it, but Vanessa didn't have any better ideas and she trusted her friend.

"Oh, yeah, mom says you should both take a few steps back."

"Are both of you having this vision?" Vanessa asked. She'd never heard of that kind of magical double vision before.

"No, I'm having the vision, but mom's tuned in on it and since I'm new at this she's helping me with the finer details."

Vanessa took Green's hand and stepped back exactly three steps. Letitia might be a little mad sometimes, but Madame Genevieve definitely wasn't. And if Vanessa got hurt for not following her order she'd never hear the end of it.

"What do you think's going to happen?" Green whispered to her.

"I think they're going much too fast in a much too heavy car for that bridge to hold up," Vanessa whispered back and they watched in horrified fascination as the oncoming car reached the middle of the bridge. 

They heard the groans of the wooden beams, the snap when it broke and the eerie silence as the car fell. Then the noise it made when it finally landed in the ravine.

When Green tried to take a step forward to look, Vanessa held him back.

"Wait," she said.

A moment later the rest of the bridge collapsed and a surprisingly large amount of debris landed right where they had been standing before receiving Madame Genevieve's warning.

Green gasped.

"Mom says you can move, now," came Letitia's voice over the phone a second later.