The driver’s side of the car was where the roof should have been, and only the suspending web of the safety harness prevented him from falling into the passenger seat, which was now where the floor should have been.
In the comparative stillness of the aftermath, Tommy could hear his own panicky breathing, the hot tick of overheated engine parts, the tinkle-clink of falling bits of glass, the whistle of pressurized coolant escaping through a punctured line, and rain drumming against the wreckage.
The mini-kin, however, was silent.
Tommy didn’t delude himself that the demon had been killed in the crash. It was alive, all right, and eagerly wriggling toward him through the wreckage. At any moment, it would kick out a vent grill or climb in through the empty windshield frame, and in the confines of the demolished car, he would not be able to get away from it fast enough to save himself.
Gasoline fumes. The chill wind brought him the last thing he wanted to smell: the astringent odour of gasoline fumes so strong that he was briefly robbed of his breath.
The battery still held a charge. The possibility of shorting wires, a spark, was all too real.
Tommy wasn’t sure which fate was worse: having his eyes clawed out by the hissing mini-kin and his carotid artery chewed open—or being immolated in his dream car on the very day that he had bought it. At least James Dean had enjoyed his Porsche Spyder for nine days before he had been killed in it.
Although dizzy, Tommy found the release button for the safety harness. Holding on to the steering wheel with one hand to avoid dropping down into the passenger’s seat, he disentangled himself from the straps.
Tommy located the door handle, which seemed to work well enough. But the lock was shattered or the door was torqued, and no matter how he strained against it, the damn thing wouldn’t open.
The side window had broken out in the crash, leaving not even a fragment of glass stuck in the frame. Cold rain poured through the hole, soaking Tommy.
After pulling his legs out from under the dashboard, he squirmed around to brace his feet against the gear console between the seats. He thrust his head through the window, then his shoulders and arms, and levered himself out of the wreckage.
He rolled off the side of the tipped Corvette into matted brown grass soaked with rain, into a cold puddle, into mud.
The stink of gasoline was stronger than ever.
Pushing onto his feet, swaying unsteadily, he saw that the car had tumbled across a parcel of bare land that was the site of a future shopping centre at the highly desirable corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. In recent years, this field had been used as a Christmas-tree lot every December, sometimes as a pumpkin patch at Halloween, but had served no substantial commercial purpose. He was damn lucky that it was early November and that he had rolled the car through an empty field instead of through happily chattering families in a holiday mood.
Because the Corvette was turned on its side, he was standing next to the undercarriage. From out of the mechanical guts of the machine, the mini-kin issued a shriek of rage and need.
Tommy stumbled back from the car, splashing through another puddle, and nearly fell on his ass.
As the bone-piercing shriek trailed into a snarl and then into an industrious grumble, Tommy heard the demon pounding-straining-clawing, and metal creaked against metal. He couldn’t see into the dark undercarriage, but he sensed that the mini-kin was temporarily trapped in the tangled wreckage and struggling furiously to pry itself free.
The fibreglass body of the Corvette was a mess. His dream car was a total loss.
He was fortunate to have gotten out unscathed. In the morning, of course, he would be crippled by whiplash and a thousand smaller pains—if he lived through the night.
The deadline is dawn.
Ticktock.
Crazily, he wondered what the per-hour cost of his brief ownership had been. Seven thousand dollars. Eight thousand? He looked at his watch, trying to calculate the number of hours since he had made the purchase and been handed the keys, but then he realized that it didn’t matter. It was only money.