Thorn Fall

  He clasped his hands behind his back and strolled into the woods, in a different direction than the others had gone.

  “Is it just me,” Simon said, “or are his answers too vague to be helpful?”

  I sighed and sat on the picnic table. Simon had turned off the grill, but the warmth of metal lingered, noticeable beside the cool night air that had descended on the camp.

  “Its strength is flying, obviously,” I said.

  “And machine-gun thorns.” Simon perched on the table on the other side of the grill.

  “But the flying is what keeps us from hurting it. Temi got a whack at it when it came in close. That seemed to hurt it.”

  “Yeah, I wondered if it ran out of ammo there at the end. I still have no idea how big it is, but it can’t have a totally unlimited source, unless it’s magical rather than simply… inexplicable. I don’t know about you, but I keep getting the impression that we’re dealing with science rather than fantasy.”

  “It’s true that they never use a garage door opener to make a portal in RealmSaga.”

  Simon grunted. “I don’t know. The gnome tinkerers make some crazy gadgets. Anyway, let’s hypothesize that it’s possible to make this creature run out of stingers. It may be off regenerating them somewhere right now. If we could deplete its supply in a fight and then… pin it in a corner or something, so it couldn’t fly away…”

  “Oh.” I straightened up, the memories of our first encounter coming to mind. “What if we could get it into a cave? Maybe even trap it in there with us somehow?” Maybe that was why the creature hadn’t charged in to our cave that morning. I had assumed it was too big to fly through the entrance, but it could also know it would be in trouble if it couldn’t fly out of reach of Temi’s sword.

  “I was thinking more like trapping it in a garage full of soldiers with rocket launchers,” Simon said, “but I guess a cave with Temi and her sword could work.”

  I laughed shortly. “It hasn’t shown a lot of interest in popping into town to torment people, at least not yet.”

  “No, it’s like the other one. It’s going out of its way not to be seen by large numbers of people. I don’t know why. Imagine how much damage those thorns could do if it flew down to Phoenix and mowed down people in the streets. Or on a golf course.”

  “Maybe whoever is controlling it, whoever’s making these monsters, isn’t ready to go public.”

  “Great.” Simon poked at his blackened grill prize and pulled off a leg. No chance of that sucker being undercooked. “So these are just the initial, experimental monsters?”

  “I don’t know. You would think that if someone wanted to kill a lot of people, there would be more effective ways. It’s almost like these are… a message.” I held up my hand, declining an offering of the other leg. I liked my rabbit seasoned and on the less charred side. “You’re right, though. I always have more questions after those two freaks show up than I had before they came. They would make horrible professors.”

  “In the meantime, I guess we look at some maps and try to find a cave, eh?”

  “Yes, though I don’t want to go back up against that thing without either a lot of armor or that antivenom. Or both.” I doubted it was realistic to expect Autumn and her friend to come up with something like that in a day or two, but I at least wanted hear the results of her tests. More knowledge could only help us.

  “I vote for both.”

  Chapter 11

  The town library wasn’t big, but it had plenty of books on Sedona and its history, so it seemed the natural place to do research. It also had a nice sturdy roof that shouldn’t be in danger of thorn perforation. The windows were more questionable, so I had chosen a table in the middle. Temi and her monster-attracting sword weren’t with me, so I hoped such measures would prove unnecessary. I also hoped she wouldn’t be harassed by trouble, either. She had been gone with Jakatra for most of the night and was now passed out in the tent, with Alek standing guard. Actually, Alek had been teaching himself to use the propane grill when I had left. This morning’s breakfast was fish from Oak Creek. I could tell I was going to have to pony up the money for a hunting and fishing license for him. At least the nosy neighbors had taken their van off somewhere early, so nobody had called the police.

  I checked the time, hoping I had a couple more hours before Simon came to pick me up. After dropping me off, he had gone to get repair estimates for the van. It would have been amusing to hear him explain the damage, especially those stalactites in the ceiling, to the mechanics, but I hoped my time was being better used here. No less than ten books were stacked around me, as well as my laptop and a library computer with access to all the scanned records of the old Sedona newspapers and area journals. Too bad “scanned” didn’t mean searchable.

  I had a copy of the first book I had found that mentioned the vortexes, which had been written back in the ’70s and had started a lot of the mystical tourism. Most of the information had since been reproduced on the Internet, but I was trying to find the references the author had used. The book focused on the new age spirituality element; I wanted archaeological evidence that linked the vortex spots to the Sinagua. I was keeping an eye out for references to swords in pictographs too.

  “Maybe Temi and I will take a trip back out to the Cow Pies and see what happens when that sword goes into the center of those flashing lights.” I couldn’t begrudge that biker his presence at the formation, but what would have happened if we hadn’t found him for another five minutes? I hated to jump ahead of the evidence, but between the cave painting, Temi’s admission that she had traveled through a portal, and Eleriss’s implication that there was something special about the sword, I had this niggling hunch that it could open some doors.

  “Isn’t talking to yourself a sign of insanity?” Simon asked, sliding into a seat on the other side of the table. He looked for a spot to set down his satchel, didn’t find one, and settled for resting it on the floor.

  “Not any more so than midnight chats with elves around a campfire.”

  “Are we classifying my portable grill as a campfire?”

  “You certainly charred the heck out of that rabbit with it just as effectively as you could over a real fire.”

  He gave me a cheerful smile.

  “You look pleased,” I said. “Does that mean the repair estimate was lower than you expected?”

  “No, it’s sixteen hundred dollars.”

  I swore and rocked back in my chair. “Simon, I don’t think we afford to be monster hunters.”

  “It is proving to be expensive. And it’s decimating poor Zelda.”

  “Why don’t you look as daunted as I feel?”

  “Because I have a plan.” Simon winked.

  “Which is…?”

  “Crowd funding.”

  “Uhm, what?”

  Simon tugged his laptop out of his satchel. “I’ve started a crowd-funding campaign to finance our repair needs.”

  “Aren’t those sites for getting people to pitch in to help indie artists to make a record or produce a film?”

  “Some of them. This one is going to help us pay for our monster-hunting expenses.” He lifted the lid to the laptop, the browser already up and open to a webpage with one sorry-looking blue VW Vanagon front and center on it, cracked windshield and all.

  “And… why would people who don’t know us pay for this?” I asked.

  “Because they do know us.” Simon winked again. “Me, anyway. Through my blog.”

  “The monster-hunting blog?”

  “Naturally.”

  “It’s only three weeks old. How many people can possibly be reading it?”

  “We have nine hundred followers.”

  “And how many of those followers actually believe we’re hunting monsters?”

  “Judging by the comments? At least seven.”

  “Impressive,” I said.

  “They don’t have to believe to want to chip in. They’ll be excited to do it even if the
y think it’s all an elaborate farce. But seriously, who would do such a thing to such a magnificent van as part of a joke?”

  “People will do a lot of things for money…” I gave him a pointed look, one that slid past him unnoticed. “Don’t these sites require that you give your backers something in exchange for their… donation?” I kept myself from saying the word pity, but barely. The idea of paying that repair bill daunted me, but this sounded like a sketchy way to get the money. I wished Simon would put more of his web expertise into getting more people to our business site. We had more than ten thousand dollars in inventory sitting in our storage unit in Phoenix; we just had to sell it.

  “They do get something. If the campaign is successfully funded, everyone who donates will get a signed print of me, holding the sword.”

  “Wow, that is a treat.”

  “I’d offer a signed picture of Temi holding the sword, but she seems to have an aversion to press coverage.”

  “Oh, I see. When you didn’t mention her role in slaying the last monster, it was because you were respecting her privacy. Not because you were trying to make yourself look like a hero.”

  Simon nodded. “Exactly. Do you think Temi will help out with my picture? It would be even better for my followers if the sword was glowing. Maybe she could hide out of the frame, behind a bush or tree, and have her finger on the hilt.”

  “I’ll let you run that by her. By the way, I noticed you also respected my privacy by not mentioning my role.”

  “I knew you weren’t a fan of my blog. I didn’t think you’d want to be identified. After all, you’re trying to redeem yourself to the archaeology world. You wouldn’t want to be seen on some silly monster-hunting site.”

  “Yes… you’re all kinds of thoughtful, Simon.”

  “I did mention that my colleagues were instrumental in slaying the monster.”

  “Uh huh. I read the post. You called us your sidekicks.”

  He brightened and pressed a hand to his chest. “You’re following my posts? I’m touched.”

  “I bet.”

  “Can I count on you as a donor to my campaign?”

  “Please, do you honestly think people are going to give you money to fix your van?”

  “To aid in the quest for monster footage and subsequent monster slayage,” Simon corrected. “It’s right there in the first paragraph. And in the video I recorded.”

  “Slayage? I can’t believe someone actually awarded you those degrees.”

  “It’s possible my professors were passing me to ensure they didn’t see me again.”

  I gave him a wave of dismissal and went back to perusing the old newspapers on the screen. Simon seemed content to open his laptop and start working on something. I hoped it was something more pertinent to our research than updating that stupid webpage.

  For my part, I was reading articles the author of the vortex book had cited. There were a few archaeology magazines, but most came from early editions of the Sedona newspaper, interviews with old-timers, people who had come here to settle long before the tourists had arrived in droves. Most of those interviewees had since passed on, so there was no chance of talking to any of them.

  “What is this?” I murmured, opening a newspaper article from the ’30s, one of the few I had come across with photographs. Between the black-and-white nature of the photograph and the degradation that had occurred when the paper had been transferred to microfiche, it was hard to see much of it, but it was clear I was looking at pictographs.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “You’re not sharing.”

  “I’ve seen that circle before,” I whispered as he came around the table to look. “It’s not the same painting though. That’s a different rock formation, and there isn’t a village nearby. But once again, the circle—the portal, maybe—is on top of the formation. And look, there’s that same guy standing in the shadow. Kind of a Kokopelli style, almost like he’s in a position to play music, but doesn’t that look like a sword?”

  Simon’s upper lip curled as he squinted at the screen. “I can’t believe you’re getting all of that out of that faded photo. I see the circle, but enh.”

  “Maybe it says where it is.” I skimmed the tiny text of the accompanying article. “Yes, here. Some homesteader named John Haines stumbled across the painting in a cave on his own property. Northeast of town, in the Oak Creek Canyon on the way to Flagstaff.

  “Back up in the Secret Wilderness?” Simon asked.

  “Sounds like it was closer to the main highway. Well, main road. It was probably made of dirt back then.” I grabbed a notepad and scribbled down the farmer’s name. “I’ll see if I can find an address. There couldn’t have been that many people living here back then, and that’s rugged terrain. I don’t think many people were settling this area.”

  “You think the address will be the same eighty years later?”

  “I think the road name will be the same—or there’ll be a record of it changing. There was a big wildfire up there recently. It could be a lot easier than usual to find a cave right now. I wonder if it’s still on private property or if that’s in the national forest now. Heck, let me…” I pulled up the county GIS site and typed in the guy’s last name. It was always possible a descendant with the same surname still owned the land.

  Simon returned to his laptop as the search plodded along.

  “Doing anything helpful?” I asked him.

  “Am I correct in surmising that you wouldn’t consider the crowd funding helpful, even though it could greatly assist with near-term financial concerns?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then the answer is no.” He smirked at me. “Although I do plan to do some research on Jacques Vallée’s interdimensional hypothesis. Something Eleriss said last night has me thinking.”

  “One of the vague things?”

  “Indeed so.”

  My search popped up a match, and my breath caught. I told myself not to get excited, that it wasn’t that uncommon of a surname, but my eyes were riveted to the screen, anyway. “Alicia Haines, home address in Florida, is it possible that your Sedona vacation property came from a grandfather?” I was clicking as I spoke, getting the parcel number and looking it up on a map.

  “Is it legal for you to stalk people like that?” Simon asked.

  “You’re asking me about the legality of something?”

  “Yes,” he said, his dark eyes twinkling.

  Though I was fairly certain he was messing with me, I waved at the screen and said, “This is all in the public record.” By then, the results had come back. I zoomed out a couple of times, then grinned. “Oak Creek Canyon, hello.”

  “How much land is there?”

  “Less than a half an acre now, with a cabin just on the other side of the stream from the highway. It backs up to the national forest, and it’s close to the canyon wall. The rest of the land must have been purchased or donated at one time or another. Well, good. Then we don’t have to call Miss Haines to ask for permission to wander around on her property.”

  “Would you actually have done that?” Simon asked.

  “In the name of amateur archaeology, absolutely.”

  “And then gone anyway when she said no?”

  “Maybe.” I pulled up the topographical view. “The lots are rugged. It looks like you could slip between people’s properties without anyone noticing.”

  “Especially if the owners are in Florida?”

  “It could be rented to someone. Maybe we can find a trail that goes behind the properties, though…” I looked at the photograph on the library computer again. “We better take our climbing gear. If that cave were easy to access, I’m sure it would have been photographed often. It definitely would have been listed in the archeological database I checked. There’s nothing about portals for any of the catalogued paintings in the area, unless people have been making some incorrect assumptions about clan shields for a long time.” I plugged the address into my phone. “Think Zelda
is up for another expedition?”

  “Are we up for another one?”

  “Maybe we can get some nice Kevlar vests and helmets from an army surplus store.”

  “Vests? Helmets? I want Darth Vader full-body armor, complete with a self-contained breathing apparatus before I go back out there.”

  I couldn’t blame him for the sentiment. Today, with daylight streaming in the window and cars and trucks rumbling past on the nearby road, the world seemed normal. But last night… that had been a nightmare. “We’ll talk to Temi and see what she thinks, all right? Maybe Jakatra gave her some tips. And we wanted to fight in a cave, right?” I waved to the article. “This painting is in a cave.”

  “Can we roll up to it in a tank?” Simon muttered.

  “We can—” My phone bleeped, a text message from Autumn coming through.

  I’ve got some results for you. Can you talk?

  Strange question, unless she expected me to be in the middle of a police interrogation somewhere. I looked around the library for one of those ubiquitous signs that said to take phone conversations outside, but it wasn’t crowded, and we were surrounded by enough shelves that I didn’t think a conversation would bother anyone. Hadn’t Simon and I already been blathering?

  Yes, I texted back, and silenced the ringer. Autumn’s named popped up on the display a moment later.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m hoping you have some great information for me, especially about antivenoms.”

  Simon nodded firmly.

  “Not exactly,” Autumn said, and my shoulders slumped.

  “It’s something weird, isn’t it?” Simon asked.

  I waved him to silence so I could listen. “So it mystified us some,” Autumn said. “The blood sample was helpful in figuring things out. We ran it for a number of things including traces of chemicals.”

  “Chemicals?” I couldn’t imagine a vaccine for some kind of chemical poisoning.

  “The blood sample read off the charts for something that is, or is very similar to, Imidacloprid.”

  “Which is?”

  “In short, a pesticide. It’s not usually all that toxic to humans—it was specifically developed in the ’90s as a less dangerous alternative to the organophosphorus compounds being used then.”