Reapers - Thirteen Brothers

IV - The Sinclairs

The wind hollered furiously, whirling around us like a vortex. In the middle of the vortex, patches of light slowly materialized until it formed a rectangle that looked like a door. I didn't know how, but I knew it was time for the girl to go.

"You are bound, crossover, REST IN PEACE!"

The boy's voice resounded painfully inside my head, I felt like it was going to explode.

SCREEECH!

I woke up at the angry noise of tires against the pavement.

Dad looked as shocked as I was. He rubbed his tired eyes. It looked like he dozed off while driving. Again.

He turned the wheel as fast as he could before hitting the brakes so hard that my brain almost got scrambled inside my skull.

"Dad! Look out!" I cried, pointing at a fast-approaching vehicle—a 4WD Land Cruiser that looked very much like a military vehicle.

Dad cursed and steered the wheel to the opposite direction.

We veered sharply out of the Cruiser's way. But the truck kept skidding across the road, doing a three-sixty degree spin. We swerved to the edge of the street and almost hit a tree before the engines finally stopped dead.

The seatbelt was choking me.

Coughing, I fumbled for the buckle and freed myself. I took a puff out of my inhaler and looked around.

By some weird miracle, Dad and I were still alive.

The yellow Cruiser swerved smoothly to the roadside and parked in front of us. A tall man came out of the driver's seat. He didn't look too old but his hair was silvery-gray.

With a worried look, he knocked on Marcel's window. As it turned out, my dad was too busy gawping and checking if his body parts were still intact.

The truck's hood was smoking like crazy. Before I started to suffocate, I got out of the cab and gulped another dose from my inhaler.

"Are you okay?" the man asked me.

"I... I'm fine." I stooped over the car window. "Dad, are you okay?"

He appeared to be in a daze. "I didn't mean to... I think I..." he stammered mostly to himself.

Dad looked horrible. He looked like he didn't sleep all night. And worse, I didn't think he brought his driver's license with him.

"I think he's in shock," the gray-haired guy said as he leaned over to check on my dad.

"Arch— Err... Dad?" called someone from behind us.

My jaw almost dropped. Getting out of the Cruiser was no other than Vincent Sinclair. Great. Just the person I most wanted to meet first thing in the morning.

Not.

He stepped towards us tweaking the fringe of his effortlessly disheveled dark hair away from his eyes, though I couldn't really see them through his light-adaptive glasses. The lenses constantly changed colors with the subtle rays of the sun.

"You okay?" he asked with a hint of disinterest—like he just said that because it seemed like the polite thing to do.

I was too distracted to answer.

"What's the holdup?" Vincent asked the gray-haired man, looking annoyed. "We're going to be late... Dad."

The guy who happened to be Vincent Sinclair's dad turned to me.

"I think we have to take your father to the hospital." Mr. Sinclair looked a little flustered, eyeing worriedly at his son like he was afraid he might get scolded for talking to me.