Dave sighed and shifted his feet again. There was plenty of room in the vast blue velvet back seat of the Caddy, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was wearing someone else’s clothes. It was almost like he could sense the people that this car had only recently belonged to, like they were sitting in his lap. He almost wanted to believe the car was haunted and full of ghosts, except he should be able to see that and he couldn’t. The car was just… well used.

  But everything had a spark of life and a spirit in it. There were spirits of rock and roll and… stuff. He frowned at the cushy seats wondering if the Cadillac had a spirit.

  He looked out the windows to try to distract himself. Twisting around, he gazed back at the city of Springfield… and froze. Then squinted. Then shaded his eyes from the glare of the bright daylight so he could get a good look. What he saw behind them made him feel so queasy he wasn’t sure he could hold down the pancakes.

  “Uh… guys…?” Dave’s voice was tense, his hand grabbing the back rest so hard that his knuckles went white.

  Scott was doing his best to look cool in the passenger seat with the window open. The wind ruffled his hair and he was wearing cheap new sunglasses. It was pretty clear that he thought he looked like Tom Cruise. “No, son, we’re not there yet,” he mocked Dave without looking back.

  “Guys… there’s a hundred foot tall blue man behind us.”

  “What?” Charis almost swerved as she turned in her seat to get a look. Everyone else did too.

  “OH SHIT!” Dusty yelled, suddenly more excited than Dave had ever seen him. He almost hit Miradon with his skateboard as he jumped to his knees to look out the back window.

  “A hundred foot tall blue man with a really big sword, beside the freeway, behind us. And another one back in the city… no… two, three… five…” Dave swallowed in a throat that was suddenly very dry and turned forward to look at Charis in the rear view mirror. “Make that eight giants coming our way.”

  “Holy Shit!” Scott hollered, actually hanging his head out of the open side window and looking back.

  “I take it that’s bad.”

  “Yah,” Dusty laughed without any mirth, “that’s bad.”

  Charis kept her eyes on the road, sparing only a glance as she speed-dialed her phone. She put it to her ear and held the wheel with the other hand. “Grace? Grace?! Yah. Put me through to Vlad.” She waited an eternally long moment before she heard the Director’s soft voice. She didn’t wait for him to ask her anything, shouting, “Vlad? We’ve got Katarai! Eight! Eight! Do you hear me? Count them, eight Katarai… in Springfield!! There should not BE Katarai in Springfield, Vlad! Tell me what the hell is going on??”

  “Drive faster!” Scott yelled, as if that would help.

  “What?!! I can’t hold!” Charis shrieked then shot the phone a murderous glare a moment before she threw it at Scott. “I’m on hold! Deal with it!”

  He put the phone to his ear, eyes locked on their otherworldly pursuers with a fear in his eyes that Scott usually did not have.

  “Have they seen us?” Charis demanded, her heart beating uncomfortably fast. She swerved between a truck and an SUV, trying to push 90.

  “Uh, I don’t think so, but there’s a cop car about six or eight cars back. Maybe you shouldn’t speed.”

  “Shit. Shit, shit, shit shit,” she cursed as she slowed, joining a line of anonymous commuter cars and trying to blend in. She hadn’t thought about looking anonymous when she’d picked out the vast, boxy brown Cadillac.

  “I’m trying to cover us,” Dusty has his hands on the roof. “Hopefully they won’t see four Morians and a guy with a giant enormous glowing powerful super-Mantle.”

  “Oh, right,” Ebenezer said darkly.

  “What the hell kind of Mantle do you have, anyway?” Charis yelled at David, too afraid not to sound mad. “Why the hell is every single bad guy on the West Coast after you including the fucking Legion?”

  Scott looked at the phone with disgust. “Still on hold. That’s it. I say we pull over, shove Dave out, and drive away.”

  One of the giants about a half mile behind them suddenly pointed toward their car and let out a bull-like bellow.

  “Ohhhhhh shit.” Dave sank in his seat, trying to hide. “It saw us. Or maybe it just saw me. It’s running. Guys, the big muscle man is chasing us. Um. Me. It’s coming our way. Fast.”

  “They’ve spotted us,” Scott repeated unnecessarily into the phone. “Yah? Yah? This is Scott,” he said tensely. “Sir, you really have to do something right now, and I mean NOW… we’re on I-5 north just leaving Springfield and we have several Katarai about a half a mile behind us. Can you trace this cell phone?” He listened for a moment, then spoke to Charis. “They say the charrik is almost to us. Just don’t panic!” Scott yelled, near panic. “Don’t panic!”

  Charis bit her lip as she tried to blend into traffic, then cursed. “Screw this!!”

  Nursing the very last of her elogic power from her exhausted spirit, she fed it through the steering wheel and felt the energy bleed out into the car, infusing it with remarkable agility and speed.

  Swerving out of the line of commuters she hit the gas. The tires squealed, and all of her passengers gasped and grabbed anything they could as the car swerved wildly back and forth through traffic as Charis dodged like she was driving a race car, suddenly going over twice as fast as anyone else on the road. She ignored their howls of fear, completely focused on the power and the control that her gift gave her over the laws of physics. Through the floorboard of the car she could feel the ground shaking with every enormous footfall as the giant behind them swiftly gained.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “How can normal people not see this!” Dave yelled, grabbing the panic strap handle above the window to keep from flying into Dusty. “How! How! You’d have to be brain dead to not notice half a dozen pissed off blue thirty foot giants that are almost stepping on their cars!”

  “You’d be surprised what people blame on road rage!” Charis screamed as she swerved, trying not to be stepped on. Big blue feet were coming down all around them.

  “Oh my God, it just stepped on that truck!”

  An accident happened suddenly about a thousand feet behind them.

  “Remember,” Miradon said, slammed against the wall, “most people cannot see dimensional beings. To them, the giants are invisible.”

  “Invisible giants?” Dave shouted. “But they’re fucking giants!”

  Scott was yelling at the phone, stressed. “We need an extraction now! I told you, we’re on I-5… what was the last exit?”

  “HOW SHOULD I KNOW WHAT THE LAST EXIT WAS!” Charis screamed.

  “I think we were busy watching the evil giants chasing us, Scott!” Dave mocked, so scared he sounded stoic.

  The car screamed, sliding diagonally between four lanes of traffic, going nearly 150.

  Miradon grabbed the brim of his top hat as his head was thrown up into the ceiling and the hat was hammered down over his brow. “Woo-hoo!”

  “TARGET!” the Giant boomed.

  Everyone screamed.

  “STOP IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR.” The voice was so loud it made the car vibrate like an empty soda can on top of a drum head.

  Everyone kept screaming.

  David squeezed his eyes shut, his face bloodless with terror. “God, I didn’t mean it, I really didn’t mean to call you whatever names I’ve called you in my life. I’ll repent. I’ll be a good guy. I swear, you just get me out of this, and I’ll go to confession, I’ll give to charity. I’ll never hit on another girl again…”

  Suddenly of the right side window Dave caught a glimpse of a silvery saucer shape that swooped down out of the sky toward them, then paced them along the freeway. It was a classical UFO. He stared, rubbed his eyes, stared again. “Oh, my God,” he muttered. He should have known things could still get weirder.

  “SURRENDER THE MANTLE,” the Giant boomed.

  Charis cut between two other cars so closely that she lost the driver’s side mirror in an explosion of sparks and almost caused another accident. She howled, “OVER MY DEAD BODY YOU BIG BLUE FUCKTARD!”

  “Ohhhh shit, I swear I’ll convert, I’ll hand out gospel tracts, I’ll go to church and bake casseroles… God, SHIT! Watch out! God damn it, Charis!” Dave howled and threw his arms over his head, seeing the inevitable accident starting to happen right before his eyes.

  There was no way they could get around the diesel truck in front of them in time. Unbelievably, impossibly, the Cadillac actually lifted up off of the ground into the air and flew right over the top of the semi like a Dukes of Hazard episode.

  Everyone in the car screamed, “AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  Except for Dusty, who pointed through the window at the UFO calmly and said, “Hey, guys, look, the charrik.”

  They landed right in front of a car which swerved, trying to avoid hitting them, and caused another accident right behind them.

  The silver saucer was right beside them, easily keeping pace. Scott started waving the cell phone at it and screaming “OVER HERE!!”

  “A UFO.” Dave had a glazed expression, face going blank. “A UFO is going to save us. God, I love UFO’s! I take back every mean thing I ever said about them!”

  Charis glanced to the right, saw the charrik, and suddenly cut through four lanes of traffic at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour. She plunged down an off-ramp toward the UFO, feeling the car lift up on two wheels as she squealed around the corner and through a red light. The back end of the car broke free and fish-tailed, sending them into a full 360 degree spin (everyone screamed again), but with a grunt and a nudge of elogic power she got it under control and floored the car down the city street at suicidal speeds.

  “SURRENDER THE MANTLE, OR YOU WILL DIE.”

  “EAT MY EXHAUST, DICKLESS WONDER!” Charis shrieked at the top of her lungs, her vision blurry with her exhaustion. She couldn’t keep this up much longer or she’d pass out…

  “Hail Mary mother of God, sweet baby Jesus and his Dad and brothers and little sisters, and saints, and pearly gates, and the Grail, and Excalibur, and every other holy thing…” Dave babbled, eyes squeezed shut.

  With a supreme effort of elogic power, using the very last remnant of strength that she had left, Charis caused the car to leap a second time, flying up into the sky.

  The UFO swooped down and…

  …white light surrounded them, and suddenly they felt the car slow and come to a stop mid-air. They felt like they were floating. Moments later everything went dark.

  “Oh my God,” Charis whispered, feeling the universe spin around her. “I think I’m going to pass out. Or throw up. Or both.” She threw up.

  They came to rest in a darkish place surrounded by what looked like huge dark tinted windows… either that, or the UFO was transparent and they could see through its lower half. They seemed to be inside it.

  The car was suddenly at rest, creaking and moaning as it settled in mechanical exhaustion. Nobody moved. They were all in shock.

  Dave sat panting with both fists gripping the panic strap for his life, his eyes bulging and his hair damp with sweat. He was white as a sheet. It smelled like puked-up pancakes in the car and Charis was groaning.

  Scott was the first to act. He jumped out of the car, though the interior of the UFO was almost too small to allow the doors to open. Outside the windows it looked like the vehicle was doing some crazy flying, though they didn’t feel the G-force at all.

  “What do we have?” Scott demanded of a man sitting in a throne like seat made of the same featureless white stuff as the UFO itself. The man looked human-ish, but had blue skin and pointy ears and long blue hair down to the floor. He wore a long white robe.

  An… angel? Maybe?

  “The Katarai have called in backup,” the blue guy said with a strange calmness and even stranger accent. “Air force. We have enemy charriks incoming. Everyone, get out of the car, I’m going to have to dump the weight.”

  “Everyone, get out of the car and hang onto something! Hurry! Hurry!” Scott yelled, grabbing a city bus style bar near the wall.

  Dave’s hand wouldn’t let go of the strap, even when Miradon peeled at his fingers. The old Professor began to talk him down in a calm, reassuring voice. “Come on, lad, let go. It’s all right now…”

  It was too much. Dave felt the world slowly spinning. He couldn’t make sense of anything he was seeing or hearing, able only to make a whimpering “nahhh… naahh…” sound.

  Miradon sighed, giving up on gentleness. He grabbed the car’s handle strap and, with a grunt and a surge of superhuman strength, broke it off and dragged Dave out with the strap still in his fist. Not a moment too soon; the second Miradon stepped back, the car fell through the floor and was gone.

  “NAAHHH!” Dave yelled, gripping the strap ever tighter.

  “HANG ON!” Charis shouted, voice breaking, and grabbed a bar.

  Miradon slammed David against the wall with his body, grabbing hold of bars on either side of him. Using unusual strength had changed him; Dave noticed that Miradon’s hands had become furry bear-like claws.

  “NAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Dave shrieked, staring at the claws.

  Down below in a quiet Oregon suburb, little Johnny was playing with his toy trucks in the back yard. He heard a strange shrill whistling sound and looked up, just in time to see a brown 1980’s Cadillac fall out of the sky and splash into the swimming pool.

  The child gaped at the car in astonishment as it sank, then bobbed temporarily back to the surface, then leapt to his feet and ran inside screaming, “Mooooommeeee!”

  As soon as the boy was inside, four angry looking black UFO’s flashed past overhead covered in blinking colored lights, chasing something and shooting bolts of white light like bullets.