Prescott had a population of forty thousand, with another sixty in the nearby towns, but it also backed up to national forest on multiple sides. Three miles out of downtown to the south or west, and you were in woods filled with all sorts of critters. Granted, we hadn’t seen anything fiercer than deer yet at the White Spar, but we hadn’t been roaming around at night either.
The image of that mauled body had popped into my head again when the first shriek came from the other side of the campground.
CHAPTER 7
Simon and I stared out the window, trying to pinpoint the source of the shriek. It came again, reminding me all too much of the cry we’d heard from the man in the tunnel, though this one belonged to a woman. The notes of terror and pain... they were the same. I hoped I was wrong, that it was unrelated. Maybe there was some domestic abuse going on in one of the trailers. Not that I’d be a fan of that, but it’d be less disturbing than another decapitation.
Flashlights appeared at the far end of the campground, the beams streaking around, moving too wildly to be effective. I caught glimpses of trees and grass in their light but not much else. A man and a boy jumped out of the big camp host trailer. The man waved the boy back inside.
“We should do something,” I whispered, feeling like a coward for huddling in the van.
“Like get out of here?” Simon pointed to the driver’s seat. His face was ashen, and I knew he was thinking of the dead man too.
“I thought you’d want to run out and take pictures.”
“You take pictures in the aftermath not in the... math. That’s how you get killed.”
One more scream came, but this one halted in the middle, cut off abruptly. The man charged into the woods. If he had a gun or anything useful for fighting a... big animal, I didn’t see it. I hooked my whip onto my belt and grabbed the bow and quiver. What I thought I was going to do out there I didn’t know, especially given how ineffective I’d been in the skirmish with the motorcycle riders. I grabbed a flashlight and slid open the van door anyway.
I’d like to say I strode confidently toward the camp host’s site, but it was a furtive I-hope-nothing-notices-me sneak with many glances toward the trees on either side of the road. A car rumbled past on the highway, its lights momentarily piercing the forest. I peered in the direction of the scream and spotted the man charging into the woods toward... my stomach twisted. That wasn’t a body, was it? It was too far away to be certain. It was probably a log.
“Yeah, tell yourself things like that,” I muttered, “and maybe that’ll make it true.”
Simon’s voice floated after me. He was standing in front of the van, talking to a 9-1-1 operator on the phone. Good idea, and probably smarter than charging into the woods. I hesitated. It shouldn’t take long for the police to get out here. Maybe I’d be better off waiting. A few car doors were slamming in other camp sites, and I heard a number of harsh whispered conversations. Other people were watching, but nobody else was running out to help.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” came the man’s voice from the woods.
“Dad?” called the boy from the camper, a quaver in his tone. “What happened to Mom?”
A loud rustling came from the man’s direction, and he didn’t respond.
I clenched my fist tighter about the bow. Someone had to do something. I jogged toward the camp host site.
A car started up behind me. People leaving? Not surprising. I wished I could see more of what was out there. The lack of electrical hookups meant nobody had anything stronger than flashlights and battery-operated camping lamps.
A heartbeat before I reached the picnic table beside the trailer, another scream erupted from the woods. It was the man this time.
“Dad!” the boy shrieked out a window two feet from my head.
I jumped, almost dropping the bow. I groped for something reassuring to say to the kid, though who was I that he would believe me? “It’ll be all right,” I tried. “Wait inside.”
The weeds rustled not twenty feet ahead of me. I nocked an arrow, lifted my bow, and drew it back to my jaw. I couldn’t fire randomly, not if the man might still be alive out there, so I waited, trying to keep my breathing calm so I could shoot when the opportunity arose. But I was no big game hunter who was used to facing down lions and rhinos on the African savannah. My hands shook so hard the arrow slipped free twice.
Bright lights flared up behind me, shining into the woods. Simon had brought the van over.
“Get in here, Del,” he ordered. “Wait for the police.”
I should have heeded him, but my eyes were riveted to the brush. Something big and dark had streaked between trees now lit by headlights. I couldn’t make out details, but I was confident it wasn’t a person. Maybe a giant bear? One that had gone rabid? If it’d stop for a moment so I could get a clear shot...
The kid was yelling again. I squinted into the woods, trying to concentrate. I took a few steps closer, toward the end of the picnic table.
“Damn it, Delia,” Simon barked. He opened the van door and jumped out beside me, a tire iron in his hand. He reached for my arm, no doubt to drag me inside. Probably not a bad idea, but...
There. A black form reared up behind a patch of bushes. It turned toward me, and I fired. It dropped down, bushes thrashing and wood snapping. I shook off Simon’s grasping hand and pulled out another arrow.
“Look out!”
This time Simon succeeded in grabbing me. He didn’t yank me toward the van but pushed me to the ground. A crack like a cannon firing sounded right behind us. Something sharp pelted the side of my face. The lighting dimmed. I ducked, confused as to what had happened until Simon spoke again.
“What the—it threw a rock?”
I stared past him and to the front of the van. One of the headlights was out, shards of clear plastic littering the asphalt. A head-sized stone lay down there too.
“We better—”
Another rock sailed out of the night. I ducked, but it wasn’t aimed at me. With disturbing accuracy, it slammed into the other headlight. Darkness smothered us. My night vision was useless after being so close to the lights. I patted around for my bow—I’d dropped it in the fall—and let Simon haul me to my feet. I didn’t need him yelling at me to convince me to race for the nearest van door. If my arrow had hit that thing, it sure hadn’t hurt it.
I kept my head down, expecting more rocks to pelt us, but another shriek sounded instead, this time from the other side of camp. Glass shattered over there.
“There’s not more than one, is there?” I threw open the door and lunged into the back of the van.
Simon was already in the driver’s seat. “I think it ran around the camp.”
“What is it?”
“I didn’t get a good look.”
Sirens wailed in the distance. The cops. Finally. I hoped they showed up with armor and automatic weapons. By now, I’d had enough of being brave and would be happy hiding in the van while the professionals took care of the problem. Rock-throwing bears were beyond my pay grade.
I came up to the front seat at the same time as a pair of police cars drove into sight, their red lights throwing flashes of illumination into the woods. Those flashes lit up the campground too. Three lots down from ours sat an SUV with the windshield and one of the windows smashed in. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside—or had been.
“Only two police cars?” I asked. “That’s it?”
“All I told the operator was that there was screaming,” Simon said. “I didn’t think the lady would take me seriously if I mentioned monsters.”
Four cops flowed out of the cars, guns in their hands. At least they were armed.
“Bear, bear!” someone yelled from the other end of the campground. “It got—oh, Jesus, it killed Stacy!”
Two of the cops raced in that direction. The remaining two looked around, probably trying to find the person who’d made the call. I didn’t want to talk to them, not after we’d already been questioned in regard t
o a murder that day—surely it would appear suspicious if we were the ones to report more trouble—but one of them headed for our van and one for the camp host’s trailer. Only that poor kid was in there. He wouldn’t be able to tell them anything cogent.
Reluctantly, I climbed out of the van, leaving my bow and arrows inside. The last thing I needed was for them to think I was the crazy idiot running around attacking people. The officer veered toward Simon—he’d stepped outside first. They spoke quietly, and Simon pointed into the woods where the first two people had... disappeared.
I stood back and shivered. The air felt about thirty degrees colder than when we’d first driven into the campground that evening. The screams had stopped, and I didn’t hear any more thrashing about in the woods. I did hear the rumble of engines approaching from the street. They sounded like motorcycles.
“Must be motorcycle police,” I muttered. There was no way our two strange Harley riders would show up here. They couldn’t possibly know about this.
Gunshots fired from the woods behind the battered SUV. Snatches of the cops’ conversation reached my ears.
“...hit it. I know I did.”
“...bullets didn’t slow it...”
More headlights turned in from the highway. I stared in disbelief. It was the pair of riders. They rolled into the campground and parked their bikes beside a dumpster. As one, they removed their helmets. They wore the same clothing as they had earlier in the day, including the dark caps.
I glanced at Simon, but the policeman had his attention. The riders scanned the camp, noting the police, then they had a quick conversation with each other. One pointed toward the south, toward the woods where the people had disappeared. One of the cops was already searching that area. The two who’d run off after the “bear” hadn’t returned.
The riders jogged across the pavement to the east, both looking in my direction as they passed. They had to recognize me, but neither seemed surprised at seeing us. The gruffer one—Jakatra, hadn’t that been his name?—glared, but that might be his normal expression. The younger one, at least I assumed he was younger since he had more innocence and curiosity about him, gave me a shrug and a wry quirk of the lips. Then they were gone, seeming to disappear as soon as they stepped off the asphalt and into the brush. If they’d been carrying weapons, I hadn’t noticed them. Maybe they didn’t need them. What if that... creature was a pet of theirs, and they’d come to leash it up and take it away until it was time to send it out to kill again?
“There’s a body over here,” came a call from the woods. “A woman. Get some backup, Steve. Whatever’s out here is dangerous.”
“It’s a bear, right?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a bear do anything like this. Better get these people out of here. And tell the backup to bring rifles. This just happened.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Simon said, but the officer who’d been talking to him wasn’t paying attention anymore. He jogged back to his car and leaned in to grab the radio handset.
I tugged on Simon’s sleeve. “Do you think we should get out of here while we can? Before they talk to the sheriff’s department and it comes out that we were around for both incidents today?”
“That’s not our fault.”
“No, but it might look suspicious to police looking to pin responsibility on someone.”
“How can we be responsible?” Simon asked. “We don’t have a clue about what’s going on. What’s suspicious is... are those the same two Harleys?”
“Yeah, our buddies in black drove in, then ran off into the woods.” I pointed in the direction they’d gone.
“Now that’s suspicious. Those are the guys who must be up to something shifty. It’s pure coincidence that we’ve been here for both of these.”
“Is it?” I wondered.
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. The woods lay out there, dark and ominous, still being bathed by the red police lights. The shade reminded me too much of blood.
“I found another body,” one of the police called.
“There’s someone injured over here,” one by the smashed car said. “Steve, get the paramedics out here too.”
The man at the radio chopped a wave.
Simon gripped my arm. “Del, what do you mean about it not being a coincidence?”
“I don’t know. Just musing. But don’t you think it’s weird that this has happened in the two places we were today? What if that creature is after us? Or wants something we have?”
“Oh, sure, it’s upset it didn’t get a chance to bid for the antique coffee grinder.”
“Hey, we’ve found some good stuff. Remember those quirky clay figurines from that Fremont pit house near the Wilcox Ranch?”
“I remember that you wanted to donate them to a museum instead of selling them,” Simon said.
“But we haven’t done that yet. They’re still in the van. Other stuff is too.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get your point, and I think you’re nuts.”
I propped my fists on my hips. “Well, thank you for so thoroughly considering it from all angles.”
“You’re welcome.” Simon waved his phone. “I’m going to see if I can get some pictures of monster footprints.”
“What you’re going to get is arrested for interfering,” I called after him.
More sirens were wailing, coming from the direction of the town. Why did I have a feeling we’d both be in jail before dawn?
Two lean, dark figures walked out of the trees on the opposite side of the camp. The riders were back. They stuck to the shadows, and the police didn’t notice them. As far as I could tell nobody had noticed them. Except for me.
I put my back to the van and checked the police cars, making sure armed men were in earshot if I shouted for help. The younger rider carried a stick. He was walking and gesturing, waving it about as he spoke with his comrade. The flashing police lights fell upon them for a moment, and I realized it wasn’t a stick, it was an arrow. My arrow. Nobody else had been running around with a bow. I’d only shot the one, and it had hit the creature. At least I’d thought it had. How had these two gotten it? What if they knew where the creature had run to and had retrieved it somehow? I chomped down on my lip, torn between wanting to jump out and interrogate them and knowing it’d be smarter to hide in the shadows and hope they didn’t notice me. They couldn’t be happy about the fire extinguisher incident, not to mention those slashed tires... Albeit they’d since replaced those tires, for there was no sign of the damage on their Harleys.
As they neared the dumpster where they’d parked, I caught a few snippets of their conversation over the clamor of approaching sirens. And it floored me. Whatever language they were speaking, it sure wasn’t English. I didn’t think it was a romance language either. True, I wasn’t hearing them well, but I’d studied enough Roman history in school that I figured I could identify something based on Vulgar Latin. It didn’t sound Slavic or Germanic either, though I was less familiar with those groups of languages. Their words had a lot of variation in tone—I thought I heard a couple that were repeated, only with different inflections. It reminded me of Mandarin, but these guys were awfully white for Chinese people. On looks alone, I would have guessed them Scandinavian, but even in those countries, they’d stand out.
I was so intent on listening to their words, that I almost missed the fact that they’d reached their motorcycles and turned to look at me. The older rider twitched his head—it wasn’t quite the side-to-side motion of a head shake, but it had the same negative gist—and hopped onto his bike. He roared away without a backward glance. One of the cops shouted at him to stop, but an ambulance and a news crew rolled into the campground, and the Harley weaved around a couple of cars and disappeared from sight. This was about to become a circus. The remaining campers who’d apparently been reluctant to leave their tents and motorhomes to talk to the police, flowed out of hiding as soon as the news van stopped.
The remaining Harley rider, Blue Eyes, walked toward me, my arrow held at his side. As he drew closer, I could see his face and hands well enough to tell that there weren’t any signs of injury from the fire extinguisher propellant. My own skin was raw and red in spots, and I hadn’t even been the target.
I shifted from foot to foot and scanned the trees for Simon, but I didn’t see him. The authorities were swamped by now too. This guy better not be trouble, because it looked like I was on my own for dealing with him.
“Hello,” he said. “I am Eleriss. What is your name?”
“Er?” I’d been tensing, ready for him to stab me with the arrow, so this frank introduction took me off guard.
He tilted his head. “Er?”
“No, I mean, it’s Delia.” Belatedly, I wondered if I should have lied.
“I located your arrow.” Eleriss held it out to me.
“Uh, thanks. Was it in the haunch of anything when you located it?”
“Haunch? Ah, no, the jibtab would not be injured by such a weapon. Perhaps you... what is the expression? Gave it a hangnail?”
In the poor lighting, it was hard to tell, but I thought a slight smudge darkened the arrow tip. Maybe I’d made the creature bleed at least. Truth be told, I was impressed I’d hit it at all given how much my hands had been shaking. Of course, that might be a smear of dirt on the arrow too.
“But you attacked it,” Eleriss said. “It will remember you now.”
“Oh, good.”
“This... conveyance-house—” he pointed at the van, “—will not protect you from its fury if you cross it again. The jibtab is very strong.”
“So moving back to New Mexico would be a good idea now?” As soon as I said it, I rejected the idea. On the off chance that something—a jibtab, whatever that was—was hunting me, I wouldn’t lead it back to my family.
Eleriss considered my question for a moment, mouthing, “New Mexico,” a couple of times. “Ah yes,” he said, “the territory adjacent to this one. Perhaps a farther destination? Your Alaska may be safe for some time.” He smiled, like a man making a joke, but I didn’t find any of this amusing.