Torrent

  “Safe for some time? What do you mean?”

  “It is lightly populated by humans, so will not attract the wrath of the jibtab’s master for now.”

  I digested that for a moment. It was hard to concentrate as fully as I would have liked with people shouting and setting up lighting and equipment in my peripheral vision. It was only a matter of time before someone came over and wanted to interview me. Or arrest me. I wasn’t sure which sounded less appealing.

  “Just to be clear, you’re not the jib-thing’s master?” I asked.

  Eleriss took a step back. “Me? I would not create anything to harm humans. I like humans.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  This guy was seriously weird. I was beginning to think there was some merit to Simon’s idea that our strangers were Vulcans, or nut jobs who thought they were Vulcans. Would he be affronted if I told him Prescott didn’t have a Live Action Roleplaying Group?

  “It would not be within my abilities to create a jibtab regardless,” he said. “I am not a... scientist, is that the profession?”

  “For someone who makes monsters? I don’t know—I didn’t see those classes under any of the degree paths at ASU.”

  He did that head tilt that seemed to mean he was trying to figure me out.

  “So if you didn’t make it, what are you and your buddy doing here?” I asked. “Why do you keep showing up when it kills someone?”

  He could have asked me the same question, but he didn’t. He probably knew we were clueless. “We can track it.”

  “Oh? Do you know where it is now?”

  “It ran up a dirt road over there.” Eleriss pointed in the direction that the first people had been killed.

  I knew the road. We’d hiked up it to a trail that led to a lake. It’d been a nice hike, and there was no way I’d do it again now.

  “Are you trying to kill it?” I asked.

  “That is not currently within our power.”

  “Then why follow it?”

  “We seek to find that which can destroy it. Also, we seek to protect humans from it.” Eleriss gazed toward the woods where the husband and wife had fallen. “We are failing thus far.”

  “Join the club. That which can destroy it—you want to kill it then?”

  “That is desirable, yes.”

  “Maybe my friend and I can help. We’re good at research. Simon over there has GPS apps that can find all sorts of things and lead us to them.” I decided not to mention the broken shovel haft.

  “You would be wise to leave this place. Your Alaska would be a good destination.”

  “That’s a little cold for my desert blood. Besides—”

  “Ma’am?” a man asked from the side, startling me. It was the police officer who’d been talking to Simon earlier. Simon stood by the patrol car, a sheepish expression on his face. Ugh, they must have caught him practicing his photography skills.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “We’re going to need you to come downtown to answer some questions.” The officer’s eyebrows twitched. “Again.”

  Double ugh. The left hand had been talking to the right hand. He eyed the arrow I was holding, but all he said was, “This way, please.”

  I pointed to the van. “Mind if I park this back in our spot? It’s in the way here.”

  He considered me for a moment—deciding if I was a flight risk? “Good idea. Make sure you get those headlights fixed too. You can get a citation for that.”

  A half million sarcastic comments came to mind, but he walked away before my mouth could get me into trouble. More trouble, I amended as I watched someone guide Simon into the back of the patrol car. I wondered why nobody had come up to Eleriss, wanting to question him. I was reluctant to leave in the middle of our conversation. However, when I turned back to where he’d been standing, he was gone. His Harley was gone too. How had he managed that without me hearing it start up?

  “This night is getting weirder and weirder,” I muttered.

  CHAPTER 8

  The fluorescent lights of the police station stung my eyes after the midnight darkness outside. When we walked in, I expected to be taken to a concrete room with nothing except a table, two chairs, and a one-way mirror while Simon was tossed into an identical room next door. Once there, I assumed they’d question us separately, trying to get us to contradict each other and maybe throwing in some Prisoner’s Dilemma tactics. Apparently I’d been watching too much TV. Or maybe those things only happened at big city police stations. Instead, the officer who’d driven us there ushered us to a corner of the waiting room with instructions to, “Hang tight.” He walked back outside, leaving us to our own devices with no one except a yawning young officer behind a desk to keep an eye on us.

  “Thanks for parking the van,” Simon said.

  Aware of the cops in the front seat of the car, we hadn’t spoken during the hour we’d waited in the back while the police dealt with the bodies and the chaos of the campground. Simon had been typing on his smartphone the whole time while I’d watched in mute horror as a female officer came to get the kid out of the trailer and lead him away, picking him up at one point to keep him from running into the woods to find his parents.

  I’d decided to hold off on messaging my own parents, though the whole event had made me want to hear their voices. But it’d already been late, and I hadn’t wanted to explain why I was calling from a police car. No need to worry them until I found out if we were going to be charged for something.

  “No problem,” I murmured. “I mostly wanted to put the arrow in the van, so nobody would think to stick it into an evidence room.”

  “They weren’t amused when I tried to play investigative photographer and sneak in close for a last couple of pictures.” He tapped his phone. “I finished writing up a blog post though. Tomorrow when this hits the news and people start searching for monster sightings, our website should pop up.”

  I glared at him. “I told you not to put this stuff up there.”

  “Someone’s going to cover the story anyway. Why not someone who was actually there and saw what happened?”

  “Because you want to cash in on it. That’s our professional business site, damn it.”

  “One that will make our business more money if it gets more traffic. Do you want to live on peanut butter and jelly and sleep in a van for your entire life?”

  I dropped my head into my hands. After the long and eventful day, I didn’t have energy left to argue with him over this. I hoped the authorities got to the bottom quickly, and our lives returned to normal. Though a part of me wanted to speak with Eleriss again, especially given that he’d almost been... amiable. Weird and obscure, but amiable. Maybe he’d tell me about that device in the bedside table.

  “What did you mean evidence?” Simon asked after a while.

  “Huh?”

  “You said you didn’t want your arrow thrown in an evidence locker. Was there something on it?”

  “A smudge. It might be dirt, but...” I shrugged. “I cut off the tip and stuck it into an envelope addressed to Autumn in Flagstaff.” I patted my pocket. “If we get out of here without trouble, I’ll mail it as soon as we walk by a box.”

  “Autumn... which one of your friends is that?”

  “The one who used to insult you all the time.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific than that. Not all of your friends appreciated my unique characteristics.”

  “She’s the archaeology student who graduated at the same time as I did and who works at the same firm as I... would have.”

  “Would have?” Simon asked. “Technically, you did work there, didn’t you? For a day?”

  “It was three days, thank you.”

  Though after the first day of cataloguing rocks at the cultural resource management center in Flagstaff, I’d been certain the job wouldn’t work for me. My professors had all warned me that real archaeology wasn’t anything like they showed in the movies, and I’d been prepared for days upon
days of sifting through dirt without finding anything significant, but tedious and repetitive office work in a room without windows? With no field excursions on the calendar for the rest of the year? I couldn’t handle that. But I hadn’t been able to find any other openings in the field—I’d been lucky to get that one as a kid fresh out of college—and none of the archaeologists I’d talked to had been leading the lives I’d imagined anyway. I’d called Simon and asked if he thought I’d be nuts to quit, but he’d always had that entrepreneurial streak, and he’d come up with Rust & Relics right away. I wasn’t making any more than I would have at that entry-level job—and some months it was less—but we had spent a fun summer exploring the state and scampering all over the mountainsides, hunting for old treasures. Despite the sneers of my peers, it suited me. Or at least it had until the bodies started showing up.

  “What can she do with the arrow?” Simon asked.

  “Autumn specializes in the chemical identification of organic residues that’ve been absorbed into historic materials.”

  “Uh huh, so what can she do with the arrow?”

  “She has access to a good lab; if there’s anything interesting on the tip, she should be able to tell us what it is.”

  “Ah.”

  An interior door opened, and a lieutenant clutching a coffee mug walked out. He didn’t appear much more alert than the fellow at the desk. I gathered this wasn’t the usual nightshift crew. Monster attacks probably justified summoning on-call people.

  The lieutenant thumped the other man’s desk on the way by. “Brew up another pot of your sludge, Thomas. We’re going to be a lot busier here soon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The lieutenant approached us and sat in one of the chairs. “I’m Detective Gutierrez. We’ll have coffee ready in a minute, and there’s water if you want it.”

  “I’m fine,” Simon said.

  Gutierrez had an accent, and I thought about trying my mediocre Spanish on him. He might think I was trying to butter him up. Enh, it couldn’t hurt. “Gracias. Cafés, por favor.”

  He smiled at me—that was promising. “You heard the lady, Thomas.”

  “Yeah, yeah, the sludge patrol is on it.”

  “Get that metal detector out of the evidence locker too, will you?” Gutierrez pointed at Simon. “You were the one talking to Webster over at the Sheriff’s Office this afternoon, right?”

  Simon perked up. “Yes. Did you find my Dirt Viper?”

  “Fanciest metal detector I’ve ever seen. I can see why you’d want it back. Looks like it wasn’t stolen. You misplaced it. Some of their guys were called up there. They found it leaning against a tree.”

  So, our pretty-eyed friends had been telling the truth. Though they’d still broken into our van and taken it. And why had they needed it anyway? According to Eleriss, they were tracking that creature. It wouldn’t have anything metal in it, would it?

  “I left it in my van,” Simon said, “with the doors locked.”

  “Hm,” Gutierrez murmured into his mug. He didn’t believe us, I could tell. Simon could, too, for his scowl was petulant. He had the sense not to argue though.

  “Did you question the two guys on the Harleys?” I asked. “We thought they were the ones who took the tool.” I decided not to mention that we’d since chatted with them and they were the ones who’d taken it. “And we thought they might have something to do with... the body.”

  “Our people didn’t see anyone up there when they arrived.”

  “What?” Simon lurched forward to the edge of his seat. “But they couldn’t have gotten off the mountain so quickly. Not after we— I mean, they seemed like they’d be indisposed for a while. At least until someone got there.”

  Maybe Simon wasn’t as adept at slashing tires as he thought. Or maybe those two had found a quick way to patch them. You could make glue out of pine pitch, after all.

  The gurgling of a coffee pot had started up, the aroma filling the air. I wasn’t a huge fan of black coffee, but I could make an exception if I was using it as an all-night study aid. Or, in this case, a remain-alert-so-as-not-to-incriminate-oneself-to-the-police aid.

  “We did see motorcycle tracks, as well of those of your van, but that was it,” Gutierrez said.

  “Dang,” Simon said. “There was only the one road up there. I thought...”

  Yes, and it had been a long drive. It did seem like the police or sheriffs or whoever had responded first would have been going up by the time Eleriss and Jakatra had been coming down. Even if the cops passed those two on the road without stopping them, someone should have remembered it, especially since they’d been sent to investigate the reporting of a body. But then, nobody had seemed to notice the two riders cruise into the campground that night either, nobody except for me. If we’d been alone, I might have asked Simon if Vulcans had any special abilities to remain unnoticed. Probably not if they needed to wear ear-covering caps when they came to Earth.

  The sludge officer brought over two steaming cups of coffee, one for the detective and one for me. He pointed a finger at Simon and raised his eyebrows.

  “No, thanks,” Simon said. “Not unless you’ve got a Mountain Dew back there.” He didn’t have many vices that I’d noticed, but I had seen him suck down an entire twelve-pack of soda during a long day of gaming. It beat cigarettes and alcohol, I supposed. From a few of his comments, I’d gathered that those had been rampant among his kin when he’d been growing up.

  “I’ll check.”

  When the other man had left, Gutierrez draped an arm across the back of his chair and gave us a stern look. I tried not to squirm with guilt. We hadn’t done anything wrong, after all.

  “I know chasing storms is all the rage in some parts of the country, but you kids are going to get in trouble—or get killed—chasing this storm. Or whatever the hell it is. I wish it’d skipped Prescott. We’ve had enough tragedy in this town; we don’t need this.”

  I forgot about squirming with guilt because I was too busy trying to figure out what he was talking about. Storm chasing? Huh?

  “I looked you up online and saw your website,” Gutierrez said, throwing me further by switching topics again. “And your most recent blog post.” His lips flattened as he pinned Simon with his gaze.

  I glared at Simon too. He could have waited to post that until we were out of the police station.

  “I’m sure to a couple of kids your age, this all seems like adventure, but I urge you to let it go. Focus on your business and forget the ‘monster hunt.’” Something about the way Gutierrez said the last two words—and the way Simon avoided his eyes—made me think he was quoting that blog post.

  Thomas returned with a can of Mountain Dew and a dusty but otherwise undamaged Dirt Viper. Simon leaped to his feet and threw open his arms like a man ready to hug a beloved child he hadn’t seen all year.

  Gutierrez must have decided I was the more responsible of our duo for he turned his attention to me and said, “I’m serious about my warning. If the guys in L.A. couldn’t stop this... thing, I don’t know what we’ll do besides hope it moves on quickly. I don’t want to see your bodies come into the Yavapai County Morgue.”

  L.A.? I was dying to get on my phone and start running searches, but not with him watching. “Yes, sir. I don’t want to see the morgue either.”

  By now, Simon was running some kind of diagnostics check on his metal detector while Thomas watched on in bemusement.

  “You’re free to go,” Gutierrez told me.

  “Thank you.”

  Less concerned with the welfare of the Dirt Viper, I grabbed Simon by the back of his arm and propelled him toward the door. I didn’t yet know why the police had thought we were chasing after this creature, but Gutierrez had dropped enough clues that I ought to be able to find out.

  CHAPTER 9

  I’d never had trouble getting up in the mornings—living in the desert where the sun is blazing in the window at dawn helps with that—but at 10 a.m. at the Rav
en Cafe, I was waiting for my triple-shot mocha to kick in. I didn’t know when I’d gotten to sleep, but it hadn’t been until late. After finishing at the police station, Simon and I hadn’t had any interest in returning to the campground, so we’d roamed around looking for a likely place to stay. We’d finally parked the van at Walmart next to the boondocking RVs. I’d surfed around on my phone, looking up news articles from L.A. among other things, until I’d fallen asleep with it on my pillow. The need for a faster Internet connection had brought us here.

  “I’ve got to take Zelda to the repair shop,” Simon said after he slurped up the milk in his bowl of granola. He’d informed me that a mocha wasn’t an appropriate breakfast, but I wasn’t sure his option was any healthier, given the amount of brown sugar he’d dumped on the top. “You staying here?” He waved to my open laptop.

  “Yes. We’ve got a spot by an outlet. I can go for hours.” Our pub table stood against the wall by a piano with my laptop cord snaking down to the outlet. On previous days when we’d visited the Raven, we’d had to settle for tables in non-outlet-serviced locales. Today, the cafe was quiet, with only one other person sharing the dining area, a bleary-eyed, laptop-toting kid wearing a Yavapai Community College sweatshirt. I hadn’t seen a television yet, but the dearth of people in here and on the streets suggested that the White Spar incident had hit the news. Temi’s three early-morning text messages asking where we were and demanding to know if we were all right provided further evidence for that hypothesis.

  “You can go for hours? All by yourself, eh?” Simon smirked, but it was a tired gesture. His eyes were bloodshot too. He’d probably take a nap in the waiting room while the headlights were being replaced. He never had trouble sacking out on a random chair, bench, or gum-decorated sidewalk in public.

  “I’ve warned you about my introvert tendencies,” I said. “Did you send me that picture of the thing from the hotel room yet?”