“Do you think it will wake up?”
“That things full of so much tranq, there’s no way. ‘Sides if it does we shoot it full of lead.”
The words register but only barely. There’s a hum drowning them out, one that she feels rattling in her bones. A sharp sterile scent lingers in the air. As if in the throws of sleep she tries to move only for the motion to be aborted with the rattle of chains. The instinctual mix of emotions the largest of them rage and panic force her to act. Glowing molten golden eyes snap open as slit pupils flit around wildly to gage more of her situation.
The steel room is almost entirely bare except for one bench to the right of her, where two humans sit. She cannot tell the looks on their faces beneath the faceless helmets they wear but she knows, especially when she reaches for the burning rage and heat within her chest, that it is an expression of shock.
The air burns in her lungs as she inhales. The shackles binding her turn to slag as flame engulfs her. The roaring inferno of flame and voice are accompanied by the horrific song of snapping and crunching bone as she lets her true form free. The sound of their snapping bones follow soon after as she sweeps her arm along the bench and grabs on to the one at the end. She lifts him and slams him into the rear door with a forearm in the same moment she exhales molten fire hot enough to burn through both him and the motel. Incoherent screaming turns into the shout of a name.
A deafening sound follows not long after, followed by white hot agony. Shyvana lashes out with her tail as she throws herself forward and out of the newly created exit. She hits the ground hard and rolls for a disorienting amount of time. Elemental flame gathers in the back of her mouth as she breathes deep the fire of her soul. With a roar she launches a ball of flame at the far off vehicle she leapt from and watches as it explodes with vindication. The fading adrenaline brings the pain back but also clarity.
Lost and disoriented from pain she takes off into an unsteady flight and flies until her body gives out and darkness takes her.
Jarod is pretty far off from his usual route, but he has to be. He knows how these things work by now, how he has to go where nobody will expect him to be so that nobody will connect him to the freshly dead woman in his trunk. She was tall, thin, with brown hair past her shoulders—in a word, some might describe her as beautiful, but not him. Her shining smile sent ice coursing through his veins, and he knew immediately upon seeing her what he had to do.
He had taken her out into the desert—bound, of course, so that she couldn’t tear off across the sand—just to toy with her a little bit first. She tried to convince him that she wasn’t Sonya Sanchez, and for the most part, he already knew that. Obviously, he would never allow himself to become convinced that she was the real Sonya. Her dress was too cheap, her skin two or three shades off, her makeup more subdued, her nails unpolished and not as well-maintained. He watches Sonya’s show religiously, takes in every mannerism, soaks up every minute change in her appearance so that he might recognize her when he does find her, the real one.
But even if he wasn’t really as delusional as he led his most recent victim to believe, she had still made a good stand-in. He hopes that the real Sonya cries and begs him just as hard—no, harder.
But now, the fun is over, and he has got to get rid of her. The good thing about running his own business is that he is able to set his own hours, going wherever he likes in the meantime, and he still has a bit until prime time, anyway. So, he is here, driving down a route he doesn’t typically service at a leisurely pace, not keen on drawing attention to himself by speeding.
He comes to a halt, though, when he sees a van—or what remains of a van—flaming in the middle of the road. Must be the work of the Brigades, he thinks to himself, but he can’t be sure. He sets things on fire plenty himself, but he is an exception, not the rule, and usually when this kind of thing happens, it can be chalked up to them. Though, he doesn’t know what message they think they’re sending by attacking someone all the way out here.
He pulls around it very slowly to make sure his tires don’t slip in the sand and carries on his way. He gets a few minutes farther down the road, and then he runs into another peculiar sight, a large animal lying wounded in the nearby ditch. It seems to be some kind of reptile, much larger than anything he has ever seen, and he can still see its chest rising and falling laboriously. It is almost like… a dinosaur, but he knows that can’t be right because they all went extinct millions of years ago.
Still, it could be the closest thing he will ever see to a living dinosaur, so he pulls over and gets out of his cab, his first mission abandoned for the moment. He doesn’t really know what he can do to help it, especially because he doesn’t think that it will fit in his backseat, but Lola would roll over in her grave if he didn’t try. He approaches it slowly, one hand out and the other on the gun in his waistband, just in case. He doesn’t want to hurt it, but he isn’t quite stupid enough to think that it won’t try to hurt him.
“Hey,” he says in a whisper, trying to gauge whether or not the thing is awake. “Hey.”
