"There's my little angel!" the woman cooed excitedly. "There's my little Abbie! Come on to Mother, Abbie! Come on!"
Confusion dawned on Jesse's face as he peered past the woman. He looked at Isabel and shook his head.
Isabel's heart nearly stopped. Her immediate thought was that something awful had happened to the baby. Overcoming a preternatural fear of seeing what was there, she turned and looked into the seat.
A child, surely no more than a year and a half old, sat curled up like a fetal ball at the bottom of the seat. Boxes framed her. She had blond wisps of hair and chubby cheeks. A pink bow sat atop her head, matching the frilly dress and
matching underpants. Pink tennis shoes with white laces covered her feet, looking impossibly wide and blunt.
"See?" the woman said. "That's my baby. That's my little Abbie." She smiled, then groaned as Jesse continued cutting her free of the seat restraints. "The doctors said she didn't make it, but 1 knew they were wrong. A mother always knows."
The oddity of the woman's words barely touched Isabel as she pushed her way into the backseat. "Hey," she said to the little girl. "Are you all right?"
The child glared at Isabel, folding her pudgy arms across her body.
Jesse helped the mother from the van, having to fight against her efforts to help Isabel get her little girl.
Shifting, Isabel reached for the child. Before she could reach her, though, the little girl cocked her head and snarled, baring her tiny white teeth in a feral grin. Surprised by the reaction, Isabel hesitated.
"Isabel," Jesse called.
Isabel tried twice to speak.
The child snarled and snapped. She looked at Isabel, then pointed a tiny, blunt forefinger. "You don't belong here."
Jesse peered into the shadows that filled the van. "What are you looking at?"
"The baby," Isabel whispered.
"I don't see a baby," Jesse said. "Where do you see her?" He reached forward and moved boxes, reaching through the child as if she wasn't there.
Before Isabel could reply, hesitating as she tried to frame an answer that would make sense, the little girl stood and bolted toward the front of the wrecked van. She scrambled over the boxes and seats on all fours, moving with the lithe leaps of a jackrabbit.
Drawn by the glint of malicious intent she'd seen in the child's face, Isabel followed. She scraped an elbow on a jagged piece of windshield safety glass as she clambered from the vehicle. Outside again, the glaring intensity of the sun hammered her.
"Isabel!" Jesse called frantically. He tried to get out of the van to follow her but struggled with the tight confines.
Dizzy and not comprehending the situation, Isabel watched as the little girl loped up to the stricken woman lying on the ground.
The woman reached up with her hands, unable to get to her feet because of her injuries.
"Mother!" the little girl called in sadistic delight. The child's face split into a gamine grin that looked years older and bloodthirsty.
"Abbie!" the woman whispered. Tears ran down her bloody face. "Oh god, Mommy didn't want to believe what the doctors told her. Mommy knew you were alive somewhere. I'm so sorry, my darling, that I wasn't there for you." She beckoned with her hands. "Come to Mommy, baby. Come to Mommy. Mommy swears we won't ever be apart again. Mommy will always be there for you."
The child-thing… Isabel could no longer think of the little girl in any other fashion… stood just out of the woman's reach and crossed her arms. "You killed me, Mommy."
Pain wracked the woman's features. "No, Abbie, that's not true! Oh god, that's not true!"
Jesse freed himself from the van and started for the woman. "She's hallucinating."
Isabel looked at him, knowing that for whatever reason, Jesse couldn't see or hear the child-thing. He started for the woman.
Afraid for Jesse, not knowing what the child-thing was capable of, Isabel stopped him. "Call nine-one-one again," she said. "Let them know what they're dealing with here."
Jesse hesitated.
"It would be the best," Isabel said. "I'll help her."
Grimly, Jesse nodded and took out his cell phone. He watched the woman as he spoke, concern tightening his face.
Isabel liked that about Jesse, liked the fact that he cared about someone he didn't even know. Still, she was worried what her dad was going to say when he found out both of them had been together.
"Abbie!" The woman sounded plaintive now, growing weaker from her injuries and shock.
"You killed me," the child-thing accused. "You didn't want me enough. You didn't try hard enough."
Disbelief swept through Isabel as she knelt beside the woman and tried to comfort her. "It's okay," Isabel whispered, but she never took her eyes from the belligerent child-thing. "Whatever you're seeing, whatever you're hearing, it's not real." Nothing could be that mean or spiteful.
The woman grabbed Isabel's arm in both her hands. "I didn't kill her! I swear!"
Isabel let the woman hold one of her hands while she smoothed her hair with the other.
"You killed me, Mommy," the child-thing accused. "You didn't want me. You wanted Daddy all to yourself. You were afraid you were going to lose him."
"No!" The woman sounded hysterical. "It was an accident, Abbie! The umbilical cord got wrapped around your neck! They told me it wasn't my fault! Not my fault!" She looked up at Isabel, holding on more tightly. "They told me it wasn't my fault!"
"I'm sure it wasn't," Isabel said.
The child-thing shrieked in rage. Without warning, the creature ran straight for the fallen woman.
Without thinking, intending only to deflect the child-thing so the creature couldn't harm the helpless woman, Isabel put her hand out. For a brief moment, she felt cold and hard flesh beneath her hand. Before she had time to take in anything else, the hum of a static electricity discharge crackled through the air.
A lightning bolt came from nowhere and struck the pavement nearby. The explosion rocked Isabel and knocked Jesse from his feet.
She glanced at Jesse, knowing he'd taken more of the brunt of the blast than she had. As she started to call out to him, a gray-green shape suddenly rose up from the woman.
Stunned, the lightning blast still ringing in her ears, Isabel watched as the gray-green shape grew to ten feet in height. The shape took on distinct features, becoming a stooped dragon… at least, that was as close as Isabel could come to describing the creature… with short wings, and a long snout filled with curved fangs. The scales held a shimmering silver coloration under the direct sun, but the mottled charcoal and emerald colors looked like gangrene.
The dragons eyes appeared multifaceted and actually moved back and forth in their orbits like camera lenses. A pair of antennae jutted up from the interior corner of the eyes, curving back over the dragon's head and twitching in perfect time. Unfolding forelegs that resembled those of a praying mantis and ended in serrated hooked claws, the creature swiped at her.
Isabel dodged back, unwilling to leave the unconscious woman's side. The hooked claws passed within inches of her face.
"Isabel." Jesse got to his feet again.
"Leave!" the dragon snarled at Isabel. "All of you need to leave this place or you will all die!"
Lightning flashed again, blinding in its intensity despite the brightness of day. This time, the lightning struck the van. Apparently enough gasoline had leaked from the vehicle to create a pool that ignited when the lightning seared into it. Isabel caught a brief glimmer of flames, then the van leaped into the air as the gas tank exploded.
The mass of flame-wrapped burning metal thudded back onto the ground hard enough to send a tremor through the earth. A blistering heat wave washed over Isabel, pulling at her hair and clothing. As she covered her face with her free hand, she watched the dragon dissipate, fragmenting like a computer-generated picture being torn away pixel by pixel.