“Yes.” Eleriss continued to walk briskly down the street.
Alek continued to match his stride, but he watched me, too, maybe hoping I would change my mind. Well, the worst-case scenario should be that we would be taken to the hospital.
My phone rang, and Simon’s face popped up.
“What do you mean Temi’s knocked out?” he blurted before I could get a hello out. The text I had jabbed in while talking to the elves hadn’t been that explanatory.
“She was in the building that blew up,” I said. “We’re taking her back to the campground to—”
“The campground? Why not the hospital? Where are you? We’re coming.”
“Heading back to the van. Eleriss says he can help Temi.”
Simon cursed, and the sound of sandals slapping against the sidewalk came over the phone.
“My friends don’t seem to have much faith in your healing skills,” I said when Eleriss looked in my direction.
“It is true I am not an expert on human physiology, but I have received training on how to respond in medical crises.”
“Eleriss says he has it under control,” I said into the phone.
By now, Simon had come into view, running up the street behind us, his phone clutched in one hand and the Dirt Viper in the other. Naomi ran after him, her pigtails bouncing with every step. We would make an interesting sight descending on that police barricade. Which should come into view any time. We had passed the last of the shops and were nearing a bend in the road.
Simon and Naomi caught up at the same time as the three police cars blocking the street came into view. Sweat streamed down both of their faces. I had no doubt that dust and grime caked me too.
Simon fell in beside Alek. “Is she all right? Are you sure we shouldn’t be going the other way?” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of West Sedona and the hospital. “Temi, do you want elves to heal you or real people?”
“Ssh,” I whispered, aware of the two policemen standing in front of the cars. They were facing the highway and talking to a couple of the motorists whose vehicles were parked alongside the road, but they would be able to hear us soon. Nobody had glanced in our direction yet, but I didn’t expect our luck to hold.
The dented and perforated blue van was visible farther down the road, but we had quite a walk still to reach it. Eleriss strode toward the side of the road, as if he would simply pass the cars without anyone noticing him.
“She’s not saying anything,” Simon said, his voice lower now, concern wrinkling his brow.
“I told you she was unconscious.”
“That’s not good.”
“She groaned earlier. Now, hush.”
Alek was following after Eleriss, and I did, too, though I kept my eyes on the police. I couldn’t believe neither of the men had glanced back at us yet. Then I remembered the time Eleriss and Jakatra had ridden their motorcycles into the Prescott campground to search the woods for sign of the first monster. The police hadn’t noticed them then, either.
“Are you able to keep them from seeing us?” I whispered, even though the question seemed stupid at that point. We had walked around the car and were heading away from the barricade now. The police officers were still talking to the motorists, evasively answering questions about what was going on.
“Yes,” Eleriss said. “Stay close.”
“How?” Simon asked, ripping his gaze from Temi’s inert form.
“For the moment, we are… as the new jibtab is to you.”
“Cloaked?” Simon gaped at him.
Eleriss tilted his head. “Clad in a loose garment that serves a similar purpose to your overcoat?”
“Uh, no.”
“Invisible,” I supplied, not in the mood to explain Star Trek spaceships to real aliens.
“Oh, yes, invisible to human eyes.” Eleriss held up a device he often carried with him, the same one Temi had identified as a portal opener. Apparently, it had a multitude of uses. “I cannot dimensionally shift us naturally, not as the jibtab can, but we have tools that cause the same effect.”
“Dimensionally shift?” Simon tripped over a pothole—or maybe his own feet—and tumbled to the ground.
Startled, I stopped to give him a hand. He waved me away, his palm lacerated with fresh red scratches, and popped to his feet. He glanced at Temi, as if embarrassed she might have witnessed that, but her eyes were still closed.
“You all right?” I glanced backward again, as if Simon tripping might have nullified whatever Eleriss had done, but the police were still ignoring us. Another forty meters, and we would reach the van. A good thing, because Alek’s face was flushed and glistening with sweat. As tough as he was, he had to be ready to set Temi down and give his arms a break.
“Dimensionally shifted,” Simon breathed.
“You have the look of a man who’s just experienced an epiphany,” I said, though I was more concerned about getting to the van, helping Temi, and finding out if there was any way to get the sword back.
“I’d wondered if dimensions might have something to do with… everything. Remember that Stargate episode with the monsters that inhabited a dimension parallel to our own?”
“No.”
“I’m pretty sure it was based on that old Lovecraft story. Say, Eleriss, what’s the elven pineal gland like? Similar to ours?”
“Pardon?” Eleriss asked.
I almost said the same thing, except in a less polite way. “I can usually follow along with your science fiction analogies, but you’re going to have to explain this one.”
“I was joking about the gland. Probably.” Simon squinted at Eleriss. “But there are all kinds of stories based on the idea of dimensions overlapping and there being things that happen to cause humans to see and sometimes interact with creatures from the other dimensions.”
“And get killed by those creatures?” I asked. We had reached the van, so I ran ahead to open the door, not waiting for his answer.
“Sometimes, yes.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “This must be why our weapons don’t work. Duh, why didn’t I think of that? It wouldn’t matter if we used a gun or a nuke or a pair of pliers, because the monsters aren’t there, not completely. I’m surprised the bullets didn’t go right through the other jibtab. They must be… I don’t know, like right on the edge of our reality.”
“How come they can hurt us if we can’t hurt them?” I asked.
Alek climbed into the van, and I pushed stuff out of the way so he could lay Temi across the seats.
“Take us to your conveyance home by the creek,” Eleriss said, slipping in after us.
“The campground?” I asked.
“Yes.”
We hadn’t paid for another night, but I guessed that didn’t matter at the moment. It would probably be deserted, and he could do… whatever elves were trained to do in medical crises. We needed to return Naomi to her grandmother too. She had been silent since catching up with the group, her eyes big and round as she listened to us speak. Information overload. I knew the feeling.
Simon had dropped down beside Temi, his lip caught between his teeth, so I swatted him on the chest.
“Give me the keys.”
He dropped them in my hand without argument. “They must have been engineered that way,” he said. “The jibtab. Given weapons—claws and fangs and stingers—that can somehow be effective across dimensions.” His head jerked up, his eyes locking on Eleriss. “The way the sword is, right?”
Eleriss nodded. “The sword exists in many realities at once. Many of our tools operate this way. We have long traveled between worlds and across dimensions.”
“Then how come we were able to bury the last monster under a pile of rock?” I jammed the keys into the ignition and started the van. Naomi slumped down in the passenger seat. “If it didn’t wholly exist in our dimension, then how did a pile of rocks from our reality crush it?”
“Did the rocks crush it?” Simon asked, still looking at Eleriss. “Or wa
s it Temi poking it full of holes that did it in?”
Hm, that was possible. We had been too busy trying not to drown or get crushed ourselves. I had no idea what had finally killed the monster in the end.
“We were not there when it met its demise,” Eleriss said, “but it is likely its wounds from the sword were what killed it.”
So even if we managed to drop a mountain on our flying jibtab, there was no guarantee it would be killed. In fact, it was sounding more and more likely that it wouldn’t be killed.
A stream of cars had parked behind us, and I had to back up and creep forward a few times before I could maneuver the van out of its improvised parking spot, but we finally headed back up the road, away from Sedona. I watched the last of the buildings disappear in the rearview mirror, trying not to feel like we were fleeing the scene.
“Did we help anything?” I murmured. “Or simply screw things up even more? And what’s going to happen when the jibtab regenerates and comes back to town?” Nobody answered my mutters. I glanced in the mirror at Eleriss and raised my voice to ask, “I saw Jakatra holding a little blue box. Was that the real one? Is he taking it out of town?”
“That was the real one, yes. It was located in the back of the store where the bomb went off,” Eleriss said. “A trap not for the jibtab but for Artemis. I should have realized this. I did not believe… no, I should have known. Many of my people respect all forms of life, but some… consider themselves important enough to make decisions about which creatures can live and die without upsetting the balance.”
In other words, his portal authorities didn’t give a crap about humans. I couldn’t manage to be shocked. I hoped I had the opportunity to deck Green Eyes someday. Just because Eleriss and Jakatra wouldn’t cross her didn’t mean I wouldn’t.
“When can you heal Temi?” Simon asked. “She doesn’t look good. I mean she always looks good, but you know, not as much now.”
I would have rolled my eyes, but I knew he was fumbling his words because he was nervous and worried about her.
“I will commence when we are no longer in motion,” Eleriss said.
“We’re almost to the campground,” I said. “Unless you want me to pull over sooner? How bad is she?”
“In a non-critical condition.”
Good. A minute later, we came up to the turn off—the vehicle was still in the ditch off to the side of the driveway. I rolled us down the hill and toward our old spot. Naomi leaned forward, her face tense. I recalled that there had been a police or aid car down here earlier, though there weren’t any flashing lights around now. The campground lay eerily quiet, the soft rush of water audible from below.
Naomi’s van was still in their spot, but it wasn’t alone. A firefighter’s EMS truck had pulled up in front of it. My stomach sank. I had told Naomi the campground would be safe, that it was too far from town and that it wouldn’t be a target. I hadn’t meant to lie to the girl.
“No,” Naomi whispered, her hand finding the door handle.
I pulled to a stop so she could jump out without hurting herself. As the door opened, a man was saying, “She’s the last one. Let’s get to the ER.”
“No,” Naomi said, more loudly this time. She sprinted to the back of the truck a second before the paramedic closed the door. “Wait, is my grandmother in there? She was… we’re staying here.” She waved toward their van.
I stared as the man said something and gave her a hand up, an ache in my heart. I didn’t know whether to pull into our old camp spot or simply sit there. Either way, I felt useless. The truck pulled away, its lights flashing again.
“What now?” I whispered, twisting to look at Eleriss.
He had produced a small device and was kneeling beside Temi, and he didn’t respond.
Remembering that he had wanted the van to be stationary, I pulled into the campsite and turned it off. Simon crouched next to Temi, probably crowding Eleriss, but the elf didn’t say anything. Not knowing what else to do, I climbed out and sat on the picnic table.
My eyes ached. I didn’t know if it was because they were tired or because they wanted a good cry. Even if I hadn’t personally lost anyone close, so long as nothing happened to Temi, I keenly felt our failure. I didn’t know what we could have done better. We were just… not qualified for this job. Our attempts at playing hero seemed ludicrous now, in light of the fact that we had done absolutely nothing to help anybody. Maybe it had been ludicrous from the beginning, and maybe I’d known that all along. I’d just gotten caught up in… I didn’t know what. Simon’s enthusiasm? My own interest in the elves? The fact that Eleriss and Jakatra had shown some faith in us, or in Temi at least, in putting the sword in her hands?
But it had been insanity from the beginning, hadn’t it? To think that some kids fresh out of college could be heroes. It wasn’t as if we had special powers. I could barely pay my bills every month. Why did I think I had a chance at slaying killer creatures that apparently weren’t even from our plane of existence? We should never have followed Jakatra and Eleriss in the beginning. We should have stayed focused on building our business. A business that all of my former peers and professors hated me over. I dropped my head into my hands. Maybe I could find some portal that would take me back in time a year and let me start all over. Take the normal, respectable job after graduation. Have a normal, respectable life. Give up adventure. Avoid strangers from other worlds.
A hand came to rest on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure whether it was Simon or Alek—I couldn’t imagine Eleriss running out to console me—but I didn’t look up. Falling apart should be done in private.
The hand fell away, but I could feel the presence of its owner beside me on the table. Alek. Simon couldn’t have been quiet for that long.
After a while, I wiped my eyes and straightened, trying to look a little less… defeated. Twilight had come while I had been moping. A light was on in the van, but I couldn’t see anyone or hear anything. Alek was indeed the one sitting beside me, his elbows propped on his knees as he watched the deepening gloom around us. Alert, as always.
“Thanks,” I said, not entirely sure what I was thanking him for. Being there. Continuing to help us.
He inclined his head toward me. “It is difficult to feel powerless. I understand this.”
“I’m sure you do.” I felt a twinge of guilt at my self-flagellation. When he had endured so much more. Next, I would be complaining that all of this monster drama was keeping me from leveling my RealmSaga character.
“Do you wish to plan the next stage of our campaign?” he asked.
I stared at him. Next stage? “Unless Jakatra shows up with Temi’s sword, I don’t see what next stage there can be. Right now, we are, as you said, powerless to do anything against the jibtab. And we’re not any closer to knowing who’s behind creating the monsters than we were when this all started.” In hindsight, maybe we should have prioritized that more. Walking in a door and shooting someone in the chest would be easier than defeating the sum of his imagination.
“There are other swords,” Alek said.
I sat up straighter. “Here on Earth? Have you seen them?”
“I have seen many glowing Dhekarzha swords. Not on Earth, but possibly they exist here also. Was this one not buried when you found it? Might there be a way to locate the energy of such a weapon if one was here?”
“I…” I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, my mind, which had been listless and enervated, suddenly churning anew. “I’d have to ask Simon. I wouldn’t have thought so a few hours ago, but maybe this dimensional thing… I don’t know. I wonder if we could come up with a way to search for unique signatures.” Maybe it was all fantasy. I had no idea if such things could be tracked or if we had the technology to do so. Even if there were no other weapons on Earth… “Eleriss did say Jakatra has a similar sword hanging on his wall back home.”
“There are many weapons in their world.” Alek didn’t sound at all daunted by the idea of sneaking over there to acquire s
ome, either. Hell, maybe he wanted a chance to stick a thorn in each of the elves’ sides after what they had done to him.
The idea of stealing from Jakatra or Eleriss made me uncomfortable—they had been helping us all along—but I wasn’t kindly inclined toward this portal authority woman at the moment. I wouldn’t mind stealing from her. Maybe they even had a bin full of portal openers and elven weapons next to their public portals, much like the garbage cans full of nail files and toothpaste at the airport security stations. If we could figure out how to get there, maybe we could help ourselves… bring back weapons for Temi and Alek to use.
“The problem is that we don’t know how to get to their world,” I said. “Unless you know a way.”
I studied Alek’s face in the fading light. He had been such a quiet member of our group the last few days, content to follow my lead, and I supposed I had forgotten that he was a trained warrior. It was probably only his unfamiliarity—utter bewilderment—with the modern world and everything around him that had kept him from asserting himself more. Not to mention the language barrier. But I ought to be thinking of him as a master sergeant out of the Marines, not some random guy I was tutoring in my spare time. And, until he figured out how to navigate this world and speak to the people here, I had him at my disposal.
“The way would be to acquire one of their portal openers,” Alek said. “Artemis and I should be able to activate the devices, though it may take work to discover how to operate them.”
“So… pickpocket from Jakatra or Eleriss?” I asked softly, aware that Eleriss was a few feet away and in the middle of helping Temi. Again, I grimaced at the idea of stealing from them or abusing the friendship—however aloof—they had shown us. “Or maybe we can find that Yesathra person.”
Alek nodded. “Pick-pocket or forcefully take. You make the mistake of thinking of the Dhekarzha as allies, but these two are a rarity, and I do not trust Angry Dhekarzha at all.”
“Jakatra?”
“He looks at me in the manner that one of my… captors once did.”