Thorn Fall

  “You’re going to come up with a brilliant Hannibal plan?”

  “I was thinking more of the way their van was always crashing into buildings to save the day.”

  “Crashing? My van?”

  I sprinted back to the road and raced in the direction of the parking lot.

  Simon pounded after me, his breathing already labored. He would keep up, if only to make sure his van survived the night. “Why did I not think to grab that bike? Stupid, Simon, stupid!”

  “I’ve seen you ride… You’re better off running.”

  He was too busy panting to respond. I was soon in the same state. I might have caught my breath while we were hunkering behind the boulder, but my legs hadn’t recovered.

  I glanced back frequently, relieved every time the silver glow was in a different spot, because it meant Temi was still up and running around, still eluding that thing. But the road curved and dipped, and she disappeared from view. I tried not to feel like a coward for running and leaving her behind, but failed.

  The gate came into view in the distance.

  “Headlights,” Simon blurted from behind me.

  Out of breath, I could only flail a hand in acknowledgment. Either someone else was in the parking lot, or Alek had figured out how to turn on the lights. Simon had the keys, but he might have forgotten to lock the van. Just so long as he hadn’t forgotten to turn the headlights off. My gut clenched at the idea of arriving, only to find the battery dead.

  In a last burst of effort, Simon accelerated past me, brushing my arm as he bounded down the last few meters of the road and over the gate. Maybe he was worried he had left the lights on too.

  The van door stood open, the biker’s crumpled form lying on the carpet. Yes, there was Alek standing between the two front seats, probably trying to figure out how to start the vehicle. I couldn’t believe he had beaten us here while carrying someone, even with his headstart.

  Simon flew through the door, pushed him aside, and flung himself into the driver’s seat. Zelda roared to life, the battery unharmed. I jumped in, careful not to step on the injured man, and pulled the door shut.

  “Where to?” Simon barked.

  “Through those bushes and onto the road.” I patted Alek on the arm on my way by and dropped into the passenger seat.

  Simon gave me an incredulous look.

  “They’re not that high. We can do it. Go there, then cut up to the road over there.” Since he looked like he was going to argue, I hardened my voice to add, “We’re getting Temi.”

  “Right.” He gripped the steering wheel, knuckles almost white beneath his skin, and threw the van into gear.

  He avoided a bush, but a second one clawed us like forks on a metal bowl. With the first rut, I nearly fell out of my seat. The van rolled past the trailhead sign, nearly clipping it. We got stuck in a dip, and the vehicle roared as Simon gunned it. We lurched out, but a branch smacked the windshield so hard I thought the glass would shatter.

  By the light of the dash, Simon’s clenched jaw was visible, but he didn’t complain about the damage. He had to be worried about Temi too. We finally lumbered onto the road, only to find the ride just as rough. We could have gotten back to her faster by running… but we couldn’t offer shelter that way.

  I gripped the dashboard, leaning forward, as if I would see the glow of her sword sooner if I was closer to the windshield.

  “There,” Simon said at the same time as we rolled over a huge rock.

  I was hurled into the side door, and it took me a moment to see what he had seen, but the silver glow came into view. It moved out from behind a tree, and then Temi was on the road, sprinting straight toward us.

  “Get the door,” I barked, then, realizing Alek might not understand, I jumped out of my seat.

  We were still in motion, and I stumbled against Simon’s shoulder and then into Alek’s chest before I managed to reach the side door.

  “All of the windows are up, right?” Simon asked. “She’s… that looks like a strafing run.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Go, Temi go.”

  I flung the door open as our left tires went up on rock again. Alek’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing keeping me from falling out. “Temi,” I called. “Here.”

  A branch slapped at me, cracked on the doorframe, and left a spray of pine needles behind. The van tipped alarmingly, this time back in the other direction. I lost my balance and toppled backward, something hard jabbing my waist. Our kitchen counter. I grabbed it to keep from being thrown to the floor again.

  Alek managed to keep his position by the door. When Temi’s face popped into view, scraped and bleeding, he grabbed her arm, pulling her in even as she jumped. She tumbled to the floor, panting, the sword falling from her hand, its glow blinking out.

  Something that sounded like hail pounded the roof. The thorns.

  I lunged past Temi and Alek to fling the door shut. I collapsed against it, eyes toward the ceiling. The windows were all up, but would it be enough?

  The van lurched, and Simon threw it into reverse. A ditch ran along one side of the road, and a slope fell away on the other, so there was no place to turn around.

  Glass cracked.

  “Shit.” Simon leaned on the accelerator. A crack stretched across the windshield from one side to the other.

  “Down,” I barked, fresh fear surging through me. I had been afraid the windows wouldn’t provide enough armor. In the dark, I couldn’t tell if a thorn had broken through, or if the glass had cracked without shattering.

  It was hard to stay down with the van bucking over rocks and smashing through branches—I was thrown into the air more than once. I kept glancing at Simon, knowing he couldn’t get down, couldn’t do anything but drive and hope one of those poisoned missiles didn’t break through the glass and strike him. His eyes were round as he alternated between navigating via the rearview mirror and by staring past us and out the back window.

  Another round of thorns pummeled the roof of the van.

  We halted with a jerk that hurled me against the front of the closest seat. A rear tire had caught against a rock. Simon wrenched the wheel, cursing. We rolled over the hump, but a screech came from underneath as it scraped along the frame. I hoped the muffler didn’t fall off—or the engine.

  Glass cracked again, and Simon flinched, ducking instinctively, not that he could duck far while driving.

  “Why isn’t there anywhere to turn around?” Simon growled. “What idiot builds a road without pullouts so people can look at the view. Have a picnic. Something!” His words came out in a desperation-filled tumble.

  All I could do was sit on the floor, gripping the door and the seat in a vain hope that I wouldn’t be hurled across the van again. “I don’t know, Simon, but we’ll file a complaint with the parks department before leaving town.” My words sounded fast and desperate, too, barely escaping around a bubble of fear wedged in my throat. What were we doing out here? This was nuts.

  “It’s getting closer,” Temi whispered, her words barely audible over the grinding of the engine and the drone of the creature. Its buzz had grown audible even over all of the peripheral noise, and I could have guessed it was close even without the warning.

  “Where’s the parking lot?” Simon demanded. The ditch had leveled out, and he risked trying to turn, backing toward the uphill side of the road. The van lurched again, the rear bumper slamming into a trunk or rock—something hard. He cursed and threw us into drive.

  Another round of hail hammered the roof—how much ammo did this stupid thing have? A tink came from the back of the van, soft compared to some of the outside noises, but ominous because it had come from inside.

  I fumbled in my pocket for the flashlight, flicked it on, and shone it at the roof. Dozens of tiny metal stalactites hung down. Those thorns had nearly made it through. And in the back…

  I flinched at the hole in the ceiling. At least one thorn had made it through. Alek gave me a grim nod—he was closest to the spot,
but he didn’t look to have been hit. He was kneeling over the unconscious man, his sword in hand. I was starting to envy the guy for being knocked out.

  Silver light flared as Temi grabbed her sword again. She rose to her feet, like she thought she would jump out again.

  “There’s the parking lot,” Simon blurted.

  “It’s almost close enough to strike at,” Temi said, her eyes ceiling-ward.

  “You’re not going out there.” With my back still to the door, I was blocking the exit. I wasn’t going to move to let her escape, either.

  “We should see if there’s anyway to hurt it.” Her voice hardened. “I want to hurt it.”

  “Yeah, I’d be okay with that, too, but—” A thought came to mind, and I grabbed at my pocket again, this time going for the canister. Hell, maybe it was close enough to hit this time.

  “It’s stopped firing. Maybe it’s out of ammo,” Simon said. “We’re almost to the parking lot. Just need to get around the gate again. Ten more seconds.”

  A branch scraped at the side of the van, a long squeal making me flinch.

  “Fifteen,” Simon amended, as he spun the wheel to avoid the rest of the tree.

  Something slammed into the top of the van so hard that the entire frame shuddered and groaned.

  “That wasn’t any tree,” Simon said.

  “It’s on top of us,” Temi blurted.

  She lunged toward the door, grabbing me and pushing me to the side with surprising strength. By then, I had the canister in hand. Even as she flung the side door open and leaned out, leading with the sword, I knelt in the passenger seat. I rolled down the window—this one hadn’t cracked yet, but I was surprised Simon could see through the spiderweb across the windshield.

  The ceiling crinkled, and a high-pitched whine sounded.

  “I hit it,” Temi said. “Hit something.”

  Hoping it was too distracted to fling thorns, I stuck my arm and head out the window, the canister gripped in my hand.

  “It left.” Temi was stabbing at the air above the van but not hitting anything.

  I glimpsed movement overhead, stars blurring as something not quite invisible flew across them. It would be out of range in a second. Throwing while hanging out the window wasn’t conducive to good aim, but I thumbed the tab and hurled the canister anyway, hoping to get lucky. It soared away, but I lost track of it against the dark sky. The tires squealed, the van turning so hard I nearly fell out the window.

  A flare of orange lit up the sky as Simon’s grenade exploded. The curving outline of something appeared in the flames, but it disappeared a second later. I wasn’t rewarded with a whine of pain, or whatever that had been when Temi struck it.

  The bouncing of the van stilled, as we rolled off dirt and onto a paved road.

  “Where’s the hospital?” Simon asked.

  I pulled myself back inside and rolled up the window before digging for my phone. “I’ll look it up.”

  “It’s just the hiker who needs to be checked in, right?” Simon looked at Temi in the rearview mirror. She had closed the door and was leaning against it, her chin drooped, the sword tip resting against the floor.

  A new tendril of fear wormed its way into my gut as I realized she might have been hit out there. If the venom was as slow-acting as we thought, she could have continued to fight.

  “I don’t think it hit me,” she said.

  “You don’t think?” I asked.

  She lifted her face. It was damp with sweat—and blood. “I got stabbed with branches and cactus and scraped against rocks while I was running around out there. It got hard to differentiate after a while.”

  I slumped down in my seat. “What an utter failure of a night.”

  “The good news is that we have a lot of thorn samples now,” Simon said, waving toward the ceiling as we blazed down the residential road toward the highway.

  Somehow I couldn’t find the news heartening.

  Chapter 10

  The lights of the small emergency room lobby were blinding after our hours in the dark. I must have looked bad, because when I walked through the door first, the woman at the desk rushed toward me. When Simon walked in behind me, she paused, probably wondering if we both needed help.

  I shook my head. “My friend and I found a biker out on the Cow Pies trail. He’s unconscious and in our van.” I pointed toward the parking lot. We had left Alek out there frowning in confusion. He could have easily carried the man inside, and I felt guilty about delaying any treatment, even for a minute, but this was probably our only chance to snoop around the hospital. If the other victims had been moved out of the ER—or to a hospital in Phoenix—it would be for naught, but if they were still here…

  The woman picked up a phone. “I’ll get a gurney.”

  “Is there a bathroom?” Simon asked, crossing his legs like he was a three-year-old doing the pee-pee dance. Where he found the energy for theatrics, I couldn’t guess. I wanted to crumple in a corner and sleep for two days. Maybe I would even accept a nice IV of electrolytes if someone offered.

  The receptionist waved him toward a door, and he walked in that direction. I gave him a quick nod, shifting my position so I hid his retreat from the desk. He waited for two male nurses with a rolling gurney to go by, then slipped down the hallway toward the treatment rooms. I wouldn’t have thought my heart could find the energy to respond to a surge of adrenaline, but it beat faster, and sweat broke out across my palms. Getting caught poking through an emergency room couldn’t have quite the same repercussions as being chased by a deadly monster, but orchestrating this ruse made me nervous, nonetheless.

  “Do I have to fill out anything?” Not that I knew anything about the biker that I could put on a form… I was asking to buy time.

  “Yes.” The receptionist pulled out a clipboard. “Your name and information, please. And put where and when you found him down here, please.”

  I wrote slowly. The gurney came back inside, and I coughed as the men rolled it toward the hallway. I had no idea if Simon would find the blood sample we were looking for. If we’d had syringes in the van, we could have taken one from the biker, but it wasn’t as if either of us had any experience doing that. I had thought about cutting the tip of the guy’s finger and at least getting a dab on a bandage, but I hadn’t been sure that would be enough to do any good in a lab. Autumn would probably need to run a plethora of tests.

  “You found him an hour ago?” The receptionist had been typing some of my scribbles into the computer as I wrote them, and she frowned at the dark windows beyond the door and then at me. Yes, it had been dark for a couple of hours now.

  I nodded, trying not to look guilty. She wouldn’t start to doubt the veracity of my story, would she? And what would happen if she did? “Yeah, it was weird. My boyfriend and I were out… enjoying the quiet of the night together—” I avoided the woman’s eyes and assumed a sheepish expression, “—when we heard a groan come from the rocks. We had a heck of a time carrying the guy out.” I waved to my torn, dirty clothing, hoping that would lend verisimilitude to the story. My face had to be smeared with grime and sweat-streaked as well.

  “You shouldn’t be out on the trails at night,” the receptionist said, going back to her typing.

  Or during the day.

  “There are… coyotes,” she said.

  Coyotes, sure.

  “That’s not what got him,” I pointed out, wondering if I might get some information from the woman. Maybe she had been working when some of the other unconscious people had been brought in. Aside from the reports of the deaths, there had been precious little in the papers about them. Nothing had warned tourists to stay out of the wilderness.

  “The doctor will assess that,” the receptionist said. This time, she was the one who didn’t meet my eyes.

  I rubbed the back of my head to cover a glance down the hallway. Where was Simon? This was a much more abbreviated form than the hospital norm—apparently you weren’t expected to know
the medical histories of random strangers you brought in—and I couldn’t make it last much longer.

  “Do you think it’s whatever got the ATV tourists today?” I asked. “And the people from the other day?”

  Her lips tightened. “The doctor will assess that too.”

  “Are the ones from earlier today still here?” I probably shouldn’t irritate her with all of my questions, or do anything to stick in her mind, since the cops might be by later to fill out a report. But if the other victims had been taken down to Phoenix already, there was probably no point in Simon hunting for blood samples.

  “That’s confidential.” The receptionist took the paper from me. “That’s your phone number? We’ll call you if we have further questions.”

  Or the police would. Maybe I should have put down a fake number. But as Temi would point out, we hadn’t done anything wrong—nothing illegal anyway. We might get ourselves into more trouble if we hindered the law.

  “All right,” I said but didn’t leave the desk. Simon hadn’t been caught, had he?

  “Is there anything else?” The receptionist looked past my shoulder, toward the restrooms. Uh oh, she had noticed that Simon had been gone a while.

  “I don’t suppose you have any aspirin?” I touched the side of my head, where a knot had swollen up, courtesy of that extremely bumpy van ride. We had a first-aid kit with all of that stuff, but whatever bought time… And I actually wouldn’t mind something medicinal. With the adrenaline finally seeping out of my veins, more than my head was hurting. “I whacked myself on branches a couple of times, trying to carry that guy out.”

  She squinted suspiciously at me.

  “Want to touch it?” I pointed at the bump, trying not to feel like a toddler showing off a bruise to mommy.

  “No. Unless you’d like to check yourself in.”

  Oh sure, like I could afford an ER visit. I was already dreading the repair bill for the van. What would the mechanic who had replaced the tire think when Simon drove in with a smashed windshield and perforated roof tomorrow?

  “Just aspirin would be great,” I said.

  I thought the receptionist might shoo me away with a suggestion to visit a drug store, but she sighed and walked through a door behind the desk.