Soren piles into the car with his brothers once it gets too dark to see anymore, and they all slam their doors and buckle up almost simultaneously.

Evidently, Rowan had chosen to drive to the orphanage rather than fly this time around. After recently earning his Learners Permit, he'd been showing off and tearing up the town in their parent's minivan like a maniac. He'd even told Soren once that it was better than flying, but more dangerous and locked in a screaming hunk of metal, which was great considering the fact that Rowan already ran around like a flaming projectile, destroying everything in sight. 

"Ma?" Rocky weeps from the backseat where he lays sprawled, a hand draped over his eyes, "Don't look at your boy!" He shudders, his voice cracking, "All I've brought is disgrace to this family! Well, you might as well just stab me through the heart!"

"Yep," Rowan sighs, holding onto the steering wheel, "They're going to fucking love you two when you show up on their door step, begging to be let in. Soren, man? Maybe you can clap out some poetry through your ass-cheeks and Rocky can do an interpretive dance in the background, he's good at that crap."

"Danke!" Rocky sighs contently, "This is going to be the best performance of my life!"

"We still need to figure out if they still live in the area or what happened to them. That could take months," Soren points out, one arm resting on the windowsill as fresh, cool air billows in. "Besides, we don't know if they know that Rocky's an owl or not. We could be walking into a house full of humans."

"Who cares? If they're fat and creamy, imagine all the fucking stuff they have stashed in that place." Rowan sneers, "We're talking goldmine, boys."

"Rowan? Honey?" Rocky sighs, "Your kleptomania's showing again."

"Klepto-what? Dude, I already told you I'm not into guys like that!" Rowan snaps at him.

Soren rolls his eyes and just so happens to look in one of the side mirrors at the exact moment that a pair of white headlights flash on, nearly blinding him in the process. Under any other circumstances, it would have been fine, but they were on a backroad out in the middle of nowhere, and it was rare to see cars this far past Pittsfield. 

"Who the hell is that?" Rowan mutters, and he glances into his mirror when a sleek black truck roughly the size of an elephant roars into view, "This fucker's right on my ass!"

"Maybe they just want to say hello!" Rocky chirps from the backseat, and he rolls down his window and sticks his head out, "Hi random strangers in the middle of the woods!" He shouts, and he blows kisses at the snarling truck.

"Rocky!" Soren snaps at him from over his shoulder, "Head back in! Now!"

"Glitter and be gay, that's the part I play!" Rocky wails, his arms waving.

The truck slams into them from behind, and everyone screams except Rowan, who curses when the back of the minivan crunches like a tin can. Shrieking, Rocky goes flying backward into his seat and Soren hears him crash against the opposite window in an explosion of glitter.

"Fucking shit!" Rowan screams, yanking his steering wheel in the opposite direction when the truck flies right back toward them. "They're trying to run us off the goddamn road!" 

"Who's trying to run us off the road!?" Soren shouts, and he pries himself away from the door, "Rowan! What the hell did you do!?"

"Nothing!" Rowan snaps, and he jerks the steering wheel when the truck veers towards them again, the screech of tires and the roar of its engine making Soren suddenly feel as if they were fighting off a runaway train. "I didn't do anything!" Rowan protests, all fangs at this point.

"I hate to interrupt your delightful quarrel, but what in the world is this?" Rocky asks suddenly, and he slams down a black bag in the middle of the divider and rips it open, revealing what can only be described as someone's extremely expensive pair of Nikes and some basketball equipment.

"That's mine!" Rowan snaps at him, "I stopped by the gym and worked out for an hour before mom and dad asked me to go look for you two morons. Some guy left his bag on one of the benches while I was there, so I took it and figured I'd give it back to him tomorrow." 

"You what?" Soren growls and jerks the bag out of Rocky's hands, quickly reading the name scrawled on the side in a silver Sharpie. It belonged to none other than Ethan Jameson, the Sheriff's kid, who just so happened to hate their stinking guts.

The truck behind them suddenly hits the gas and comes barreling up beside them, its sleek black paint practically glowing even in the darkness. "I'm gonna kill you, Moon!" Ethan screams when his friend, Clive Walker, rolls down the window. "I'm gonna kill you, then I'm gonna bury you alive and shit on your grave! I want my stuff back--!"

Rowan slams on the gas before Ethan can finish and Soren's nearly catapulted into the back seat when they fly off the road and crash towards a cow pasture. Terrified, Soren screams like a little girl and suddenly the minivan spins out of control when it tears through a barbed wire fence. 

"Cow!" Rocky points a finger and Rowan screams and spins the car the other way.

The van goes flying through the air, like poetry, and finally comes to a crash a short distance away, landing awkwardly on all four tires before it crumples in an explosion of smoke.