Night School: Resistance (Night School 4)

Just as she’d begun to relax, though, a black BMW swung into the lane behind them, creeping so close it almost touched the bike’s rear tyre.

She could never be certain where it came from. Just, suddenly, it was there; its powerful engine roaring. Tinted windows hid the face of the driver, making the car seem as blank and menacing as a robot.

Allie felt Sylvain’s body tense as he studied the car in the bike’s side-mirror.

‘Is it one of us?’ she shouted, her voice disappearing in the wind.

He shook his head very slightly.

Allie’s heart sank. It was one of them.

By now, she knew what to expect – he didn’t have to warn her. She tightened her arms around his waist, bracing herself.

Sylvain pulled into oncoming traffic.

Cars scattered around them like toys in a playground. Discordant horn blasts formed a chorus of rage but Sylvain ignored them, speeding straight ahead.

Behind them, the dark car’s engine roared as if enraged.

A shriek of brakes and a crash. Clinging to Sylvain, Allie twisted around to see the BMW knock a smaller car off the road into the scrub brush. Then the driver floored it and headed right towards them.

‘Sylvain!’

Hearing the urgency in her voice, he glanced back. Swearing, he swerved hard to the right, on to the narrow, unpaved, shoulder. Pebbles shot out from under their tyres like bullets as they sped along the rough dirt strip for half a mile, passing cars like they were sitting still before careering at last on to a narrow road.

Thankfully, the tree-lined lane was mostly empty. Sylvain accelerated, taking the curves at impossible speeds. Allie knew she should be afraid but she’d seen what he could do. She trusted him to keep her alive.

She kept looking over her shoulder for the black car but it didn’t reappear.

Then an imposing metal gate appeared ahead of them. Two familiar dark SUVs sat outside it like sentinels.

The gate was just starting to open. The afternoon sunshine pouring through the black metal was so white and clean it looked like the gates to heaven.

The opening didn’t seem big enough for the bike but Sylvain obviously thought differently. He headed for it.

Allie’s hands clenched against his waist; she murmured a prayer under her breath. They shot through with inches to spare, skidding sideways on the elegant, flower-lined drive. Sylvain slammed on the brakes to avoid running into the house. They stopped abruptly, and Allie jolted forward against his spine before thudding back hard on to the seat.

Sylvain turned off the engine. The sudden silence was shocking.

Swinging his legs forward, he leaped athletically from the bike and held his hand out to her. ‘The gates are still open,’ he said. ‘We’re exposed here. We have to get inside.’

She wanted to do as he said but she couldn’t seem to move. Her knees felt like rubber, her stomach churned.

Had they ever been so close to death before?

‘I’m not sure my legs will work,’ she admitted.

A pleased smile quirked up his lips and he leaned casually against a handlebar.

‘It was fast, no? I trained with a Motocross champion. My father insisted as a condition of giving me the bike.’

Allie fought an absurd desire to laugh. How could he be so relaxed when they’d just nearly died?

She swung her legs over and jumped down from the bike. They ran up the steps to the front door.

‘I’m glad he insisted,’ she said, her voice shaking just a little. ‘I like being alive.’





3





Three





The thing was, the day had started with such promise. It was so sunny the sky was like a sheet of blue glass. It was the day before Allie’s birthday, and she and Rachel had a busy schedule of sunbathing planned.

Rachel, of course, sunbathed with her chemistry textbook because Rachel did everything with her textbooks. She planned to go to Oxford and then to medical school, and nothing – not even an attack by Nathaniel that decimated the school and left them both injured – could stop her. They’d both been tutored long distance ever since they left Cimmeria Academy on a cold March night. Over the months, they’d become pretty adept at independent study.

As they sat by the pool that afternoon, Allie had attempted to do her history reading but found it hard to focus. It was only June but already it was summer hot and she kept finding reasons to drop the book.

After all, she thought, lying back on the sun lounger, do you have to study the day before your birthday? Isn’t that a bit like studying on Christmas Eve?

Overhead, a seabird wheeled in lazy circles, never flapping its wings, only soaring. Not a single cloud shadowed them.

Allie glanced over to where Rachel sat in the shade of a large umbrella, utterly immersed in her work. The scars Gabe had left on her body were hard to see now, and she was glad. Maybe eventually they’d disappear completely.