The station wagon’s engine revved louder, its mangled wheels casting hunks of shredded rubber into the air. Orange sparks sprayed from the bare hubs as they cut into the gravel.
Frank stood his ground.
He struggled to recall the ancient verses he’d studied, prayers once believed capable of subduing baleful spirits and banishing them from existence. Indeed, the words all came, but in his panicky state, their order became a disjointed rambling.
Something metallic snapped between the two cars, and the wagon rolled free of the Mercedes. Electric light flashed within its broken headlights and out through the demolished front grill. The vehicle reversed from the wreck and turned to face him.
He raised the shotgun out of instinct but knew the weapon couldn’t help him now.
“Frank,” the beast’s voice hissed in his head. “How fitting you should be here tonight.”
“It’s over,” Frank shouted back. “Without the girl, you don’t have enough power to bond with Kane, and without him, your time here won’t last long. He was your link to this world, your anchor, but now that he’s dead and rotting you’re due to go back to where you came from. And this time, you won’t have a body to hold onto for five years. You’re weaker now. This time, it’s done for good!”
“Even weakened, I am a god,” the entity roared. “What concept could you have of my strengths, of my power? My kind has spilled the blood of pharaohs; we’ve watched the fall of Tenochtitlan; we scattered the bones of the Anasazi like sand.”
“And yet this world is still ours,” Frank shot back.
The station wagon’s windows exploded outward, spraying Frank with a thousand shards of shattered glass.
“NO, HUMAN! NO MORE!”
Frank staggered backward, feeling an ominous energy charge the air.
The station wagon rolled closer.
He readied his shotgun, hoping to keep the creature’s attention off the church long enough for Paul and the kids to get inside.
The monster’s voice rumbled inside his head. “You claim that I am weak Let me show you the frailty of your flesh.”
The vehicle’s hood exploded open with the sound of a metal bar thrown into a wood chipper. A river of mangle machinery spilled forth from the engine compartment. Frank leapt away. He snapped his hands to his chest when the animated scrap formed two steel pincers and seized his shotgun, snapping it in half. He retreated, patting his clothing with both hands, searching for his cell phone.
With another metallic thunderclap the station wagon’s engine crashed through the radiator and grill, still tethered to the inside by a twisted umbilical of cables, wires, and hoses. The oil pan hit the dirt hard enough for Frank to feel the impact in his bones. One of the hooked appendages cut the air under his chin, trailing a cool breeze across his throat. He tripped over his own feet when the second claw swept past his chest, coming close enough to snag his shirt and tear a hole. The mechanical monster reared up and lunged again, dragging it’s titanic bulk toward him with smoke and oil spraying from its shattered crankcase.
He shuffled backwards, seeing the forest’s tree line slip into his peripheral vision.
The jagged claws poised to strike.
“Now, Paul, now!” Frank screamed.
From behind came the pop, pop, pop of gunfire, followed by the hollow sound of the bullets punching through the station wagon’s paneling. A window shattered. Then another.
The creature laughed, expelling a grinding noise from the crevices of its reconstituted body. The torso-like accumulation of motor parts swung to gaze across the vehicle’s roof at the church. Frank used the diversion to pull his cell phone and keyed in a number.
He pressed the ‘send’ button and—
The phone exploded in his hand.
Agony lit a fire in his palm, then across his forearm and chest when his body began to register the bits of the phone’s battery now imbedded in his flesh.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Frank looked up to find the monster had rolled forward and now loomed above him. The engine’s fan sawed the air.
“Technology will not save you this time, Frank. Nor will calling on your friends. Weapons cannot harm me, and you have now s’khem to send me back. I rule this world now.”
Frank didn’t bother to tell the creature he hadn’t called for backup. Instead, he pushed to his feet and threw himself over the skeleton of a fallen tree. He collapsed on the other side and pressed himself to the moist dirt, flattening himself against the wood. He knew from his talk with Officer Hale that the local cell phone towers had been disabled, but his signal only needed to reach the receiver in his duffle bag, the one wired to a time-delay detonator and three pounds of explosives currently sitting in the station wagon’s bac—
The night lit up like a day in Hell.