Page 20 of Saving the Last Heir
“One second,” Jackson said, never taking his eyes off the road.
Panic had bile rising up my throat, and I clamped my mouth shut, gripping the seat in front of me like my life depended on it. Jesus, I didn’t even have a seatbelt on.
Jackson reached down, keeping his eyes on the road and one hand on the wheel, and slipped off his boot. “When I tell you, I want you to grab this wheel and hold it straight,” he said, still calm and collected, as though he did outrageous shit like this every day. The guy was a maniac.
“Wait, what?” I said, unable to look away from the oncoming ramp.
“Grab the wheel,” he shouted, though his tone wasn’t unkind.
“Okay? Then what? We’re gonna die, Jackson. Hit the fucking brakes!”
He actually smirked, and had I not been about to meet my maker, I would have found it charming and attractive. “We aren’t dying. Trust me,” he said as he rolled the driver side window down.
Wind buffeted inside the car, billowing my auburn hair around my face. I didn’t think my panic could have gotten worse, but when the sports car jolted as it crossed from the road to the rapidly rising bridge, I truly felt like I might have a heart attack. From what I could see out the windshield, it looked like a rollercoaster going up a hill for a drop.
“We’re gonna die!” It was too late to hit the brakes. If we stopped, the bridge would keep rising, and we’d fall back and slam to our deaths below.
“Don’t be dramatic.” Jackson glanced back to look at me, face still as stoic as it would have been if he’d been cruising into a drive-thru to pick up burgers. “I’ve got you.” He winked at me.
The way he said that, all confident and controlled, meant he either had an amazing plan, or he’d already come to terms with his imminent death.
“Grab the wheel.” Before I could even register that he’d said it, he shoved his boot down, wedging it against the gas pedal, and leaned out of the window.
“Jackson!”
I lunged forward to grab the wheel, trying my best to keep the car straight. The boot, jammed down and locked in place by the upholstery, sent the engine revving like mad. The speedometer was at one-hundred-and-fifty miles an hour when we flew off the edge of the bridge. I screamed, my life flashing before my eyes as the car, and me along with it, went weightless. The night sky shone with twinkling stars. The only thing I could see as we rocketed forward was that dark blanket of the cosmos. Not a bad last sight, I supposed.
Jackson had vanished out the window, most likely having jumped to his death. Coward. That was disappointing. He’d looked like a stronger man than that. I clenched the wheel and gritted my teeth, calling out in my mind to my father, hoping and praying that this wouldn’t break him. That he’d go on living even without me.
A second after the car stopped rising and gravity wrapped her hands around us to pull us to the earth, that weird shadow appeared over the car again. To my left, a massive pair of leathery talons slipped inside the window and grabbed the car.I jerked away, screaming again as a second dinosaur-like hand grabbed the other window. Three loud, flapping sounds erupted in the night, and the car actually lifted into the air.
My body tumbled aside into the passenger seat. Lying there, jaw clenched and eyes clamped shut, I waited for the crash, the explosion, the agony of my body being shattered or burned alive. Instead, all I felt was a gentle, up-and-down bobbing. When I finally managed to open my eyes, I looked out the windshield and nearly fainted. A gigantic shadowy creature had a hold of the car. Easily twice the length and two or three times the mass of the vehicle, it held the car tight and glided through the night.
Slowly coming to the realization that I wasn’t going to die at that very moment, I sat up, gazing at the strange and monstrous claws that held the car. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t going mad while the reptilian fingers tipped with wicked claws flexed and dug in. The talons left small puncture marks in the suede roof of the car.
“That’s gonna cost him,” I muttered to myself, then giggled hysterically. I clamped my hands over my mouth, afraid that if I started laughing, whatever tenuous hold I had on my mind might slip away.
Once I’d gotten myself under control, I took a few deep, steadying breaths and tried to work up my courage to lean out the window and look up. The wind blew my hair back and stung my eyes, but what I saw above made me so woozy that I nearly blacked out. Afuckingdragon was carrying the car. Massive, webbed wings flapped every few seconds. Dark, scaly skin the color of inky glittered in the moonlight, and a huge, wedge-shaped head extended forward, guiding the rest of the humongous body onward.
I scrambled back and clamped my eyes shut, slapping my cheek as hard as I could. The stinging pain of my palm on my skin sent sharp electric jolts down my chin and up to my scalp, making my eyes water. When I opened them, the talons were still clenching the car.
“Holy fucking shit,” I whispered.
Dragons werereal? No, that was crazy. This couldn’t be real. Was I already dead? Maybe that was it. I’d crashed that stupid car while trying to escape from Jackson, and this was all the afterlife. Maybe when you died, you didn’t go to heaven or hell, but instead you went to some sort of fairytale land. Of course,I’dend up getting kidnapped by a bloodthirsty dragon rather than getting bent over a couch by a big hunky knight or prince. That was just my luck.
I kept glancing out the windows as we flew, trying to see Jackson. Though, I was too scared to lean out too far for fear of the dragon. I didn’t see or hear him anywhere. Finally, I slumped down into my seat, and hugged my knees to my chest.
Poor bastard. The guy must have fallen…
I sat forward, a sudden yet impossible lightbulb going off in my mind. I thought back to my escape from the garage, the shadow that had fallen over the car, and Jackson leaping through the window. Then, he’d climbed out the window a second before the car flew off the edge of the bridge. He’d vanished, and a few seconds later, the dragon had appeared, saving me and carrying the car away.
“I’ve got you.”
His words reverberated through my skull, echoing back and forth over and over again, gaining more and more weight and heft each time I heard them.
“No way,” I muttered, my voice a husky whisper. “Absolutely no fucking way.”
There was no way in the world this was actually happening. Dragons didn’t exist in the real world. Yet, hadn’t I noticed how incredibly fast and graceful he was back in the garage? Strength and power beyond what should have been natural? In my mind’s eye, I saw him punch through the solid wooden door and crack brick while trying to climb through a window. What if he hadothergifts as well?
