I shook my wrist, trying to disengage the weapon. Still scrabbling at it, the man stumbled and fell onto his back. The guy kidnapping Autumn only ran three steps before crying out, his scream so loud that everyone in Sedona must have heard it. He hurled her to the ground and sprinted for his bike. Two others were running in that direction as well. I snapped the whip at anyone who dawdled, finding the cattleman crack appropriate, though I was still scared someone was going to pull out a gun and turn this into something fists and whips couldn’t handle.
But the biker thugs were done. They staggered or ran away, and the motorcycles roared to life.
“Get in the van,” I ordered, thinking they might try to knock us over, but they drove straight for the exit. “Autumn, are you all right?” I called, running to her side. She had been hurled to the ground hard.
Autumn groaned, sat up, and spat something out of her mouth. A tooth? Damn, I hoped not. Some reward that would be for coming out to help us.
“Gross,” she said. “I have blood in my mouth.”
“Did you lose a tooth?”
“No, I bit that idiot.”
I stared at the thing she had spit out under the parking lot light. It wasn’t a tooth, but a piece of flesh. My lips curled back in repulsion. “Is that a piece of his ear?”
“It was all I could latch onto. Where did that dumbass think he was taking me?”
“You bit his ear off?” Simon asked from the door of the van. He was standing there, holding something that looked vaguely like one of those garden torches used for burning weeds. I didn’t think he’d had a chance to fire it up. Which was probably good, because the sandwich clerk was standing on the stoop outside of the shop and staring at us. Several shoppers with grocery carts had paused on the other side of the parking lot too.
“Not… all of it.” Autumn looked as disgusted as I, her face pale, her hands shaking.
Alek came over, taking her arm and helping her to her feet. Temi picked up the dented microscope case. I hoped the drop hadn’t broken anything inside.
Alek watched me roll up the whip, pointed, and said, “Good.”
“Thanks,” I said, though it was a silly tool for a fight. I had done little more than harry distracted men. “I usually don’t target anything more dangerous than plastic bottles.”
“Why were they picking on you?” Temi asked Autumn.
“Hell if I know. Maybe they thought my suitcase has a million dollars in unmarked bills in it.”
Good, she had recovered her humor. She would be all right. Knowing her, she was probably more disturbed at the idea that someone’s ear had been in her mouth rather than that someone had attacked her.
“Could they know about the samples?” Simon glanced around; a couple of people were walking in our direction. “And should we take this opportunity to exit stage left?”
“The samples.” Autumn patted her jacket pockets, then stuck her hand into them.
My stomach sank as the expression on her face darkened.
“The bag is gone,” she said.
“Maybe it fell out in the fight.” I eyed the parking lot around us, not seeing anything except broken glass and a couple of discarded food wrappers.
“Or maybe that’s what they wanted all along,” Simon said. “And once they got it…” He waved to the parking lot exit.
“Well, we needed a fresh sample, anyway, right?” I asked, trying not to feel bleak, trying not to feel like the whole world was against us. It was hard.
Chapter 7
“Turn off the headlights,” I whispered from the passenger seat as we left the highway and drove into the campground. Temi and Alek sat at the table behind us, the darkness shadowing their features. I had offered Autumn my bed, not wanting to send her off alone after the attack, but she had sneered at the idea of slumming in Zelda and had headed home. Flagstaff was less than an hour away, but I was still worried. With random attacks coming out of nowhere, I was reluctant to split up our group, even if Autumn wasn’t technically a member and had reasons to avoid us.
“You want me to blow another tire?” Simon asked.
“I want to see if anyone’s lurking at our campsite before we commit ourselves to rolling in. Given the day we’ve had, I don’t think I’m being paranoid.”
“Just tire-unfriendly?”
“The speed limit is five miles an hour. If you can blow a tire at that speed, you shouldn’t be driving.”
“Zelda was going zero miles an hour when she lost her last tire.” Simon didn’t take slights to the van kindly.
He continued to grumble under his breath, but he flicked off the lights as he rolled along the curving roads of the campground. Even with the autumn chill in the air, half of the spots were occupied for the weekend, and the lights from RVs and campfires guided us toward the rear of the facility without mishaps. A few people glanced in our direction as we drove by, but it was only 6:30 and dusk lingered in the air, so they should assume we had forgotten to turn on our lights. It was dark enough to camouflage us, I hoped, so it should be hard for observers to tell if we were in a little motorhome or a 1980s Volkswagon van that might have been painstakingly described to the police…
All right, maybe I was being paranoid.
We rounded the last bend, and Temi’s Jag came into view, highlighted by a powerful lamp on the picnic table in our neighbor’s site. And by the headlights of a police car. I groaned.
Simon turned off the main strip early, veering through an empty drive-through site.
I sank low in the seat, but not so low that I couldn’t see through the window. The officer was standing next to the grandmother, taking a few notes as she pointed toward the brush, the brush Alek had walked out of with his rabbits. The woman pointed at the Jag too. She couldn’t know about the chemicals in the trunk, could she? We had locked it, so even if she was a snoop, she couldn’t have poked her nose inside. Of course, she might have wondered if the car was stolen, since none of us appeared all that affluent at the moment.
The police officer looked in our direction. Simon turned back onto the main strip and headed toward the exit.
“They’re going to know it was us.” I peeked in the side mirror. The officer and the grandmother were watching us go. I thought I glimpsed the pigtailed teen peer out from the window of her van too. “That was suspicious.”
“It was your idea.”
“It was a suspicious idea.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t speak to them?” Temi asked. “We haven’t committed any crimes. In fact, we’ve been the victims of several crimes today.”
“Rabbit,” Alek said out of nowhere. Apparently he had mastered the barnyard animal section of the language program.
“I don’t think that’s a crime. I’m more worried about explaining all of the weapons and potential weapons we’re carrying around.”
“Monster hunting, of course,” Simon said. “I’ll point them to my website. I uploaded some pictures of the thorns today with links to the new stories of the dead tourists.”
“Of course you did.” I couldn’t imagine Simon’s blog endearing the authorities to us. The Prescott Police Department hadn’t been impressed.
Alek grunted. Belatedly, it occurred to me that his rabbit comment wasn’t “out of nowhere,” after all. He must be following the gist of the conversation. I would praise his progress later, but we had bigger issues demanding my attention. Like the fact that the officer was walking to his car. He leaned in to grab his radio handset.
I groaned again. “Is your license plate lamp on when the headlights are off?”
“I doubt it’s lit up when the lights are on,” Simon said. “Zelda’s safety requirements aren’t all up to date. You’re lucky the seatbelts work.”
It probably didn’t matter. It was a distinctive van, and Sedona was a small town with exactly two main roads that actually went somewhere. If a message went out to the police to watch for Zelda, it wouldn’t be long before someone spotted her.
??
?Where to?” Simon asked when we reached the highway.
Another campground? No, the police would probably think to check them. And we had to come back for the Jag sooner or later anyway.
“Munds Wagon Trail?” Temi asked.
I glanced back at her. “At night? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Actually, all of the unconscious punctured people have been found during the day.” Simon looked in the rearview mirror and turned onto the highway.
I didn’t stop him; if the officer decided to hop in his car, it wouldn’t take long for him to catch us. We had to get closer to town where there were at least some side streets we could turn down.
“Just because they were found during the day doesn’t mean they weren’t attacked much earlier,” I said.
“Oh sure. Those people were out there hiking at night. Besides, it attacked you during the day. This jibtab isn’t like the first one that preferred caves and night.”
All right, maybe he had a good point about the unlikelihood that those hikers and ATV-renters had taken to the trail in the dark, but… “Just because the creature has attacked everyone during the day so far doesn’t mean it won’t come out at night. It’s magical. I doubt it needs sleep.”
“Are we going with magical?” Simon asked. “I thought you were arguing for technologically advanced.”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t care, either. I was too busy staring in the side mirror, watching for lights on the highway behind us. Avoiding walking into a cop’s path was one thing, but I wasn’t going to advocate leading a high-speed chase through Sedona. Not that Zelda could outdrive a patrol car, anyway. Our road trips usually involved getting passed a lot by semi trucks going up hills. “You were the one who pointed out that Temi is carrying around a magical sword.”
“True, but we haven’t really examined the sword all that closely yet. That’d be another thing we could do if Autumn let us—me—into her lab. Slip it under the microscope.”
“You’re not cutting a cross-section out of my sword,” Temi said dryly. Interesting that she considered it hers now. She must have bonded with it during her training week.
“No, I’m sure we could find a way to examine it without slicing off a piece for a slide.” Simon turned off the highway into a residential neighborhood. “At the least, we could tell if it had some special coating that accounts for the glow.”
“Is this the way to the trail?” I asked.
Simon winked at me. “I may have looked it up earlier. It’s off Schnebly Road.”
“How far is it to the Cow Pies?”
“About three and a half miles.”
I slumped down in my seat. “You want to take a midnight, seven-mile hike through monster-infested hills?”
“Nah, there’s a dirt road that goes alongside the trail. It looks like we can drive most of the way to the rocks.”
“Even so, we’re going to have a heck of a time finding those thorns in the dark. We barely saw them when they were on the cave floor under our noses.”
“Look, we can just crash at the trailhead tonight and go out in the morning if you want. There are a hundred trails out of the subdivisions around town. The cops won’t think to check this one for us. If they’re even looking. If all Grannie gave them was rabbit poaching, I’m sure they have higher priorities. That’s probably why it took all day for a patrol car to come out to the campground.”
“All right. Yeah, you’re right.” I wasn’t sure why I was so twitchy about the idea of encountering the police right now. Maybe because the other authority figures in my life had turned against me, I couldn’t imagine a chat with the men in blue coming out well. “You’re displaying uncommon common sense tonight, Simon.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Maybe?”
“I just wanted to make sure. I haven’t had many from you, so I wasn’t sure what one would sound like.”
Temi snorted. I glanced back, surprised our silly banter had amused her.
“It reminded me of my experience with Jakatra,” she said.
“Oh?” I prompted, still wanting to hear more about how her training had gone.
But she didn’t offer anything more than a nod.
The seat rocked and jumped as we found the end of the pavement—and a locked gate blocking the road ahead.
I shot Simon a dirty look. “We can drive most of the way to the rocks, you say?”
“Uh, that was the theory. This road is supposed to go all the way to I-17. I wouldn’t have expected it to be locked.” He was eyeing the posts, probably trying to decide if the van could slip around them. It looked tight. Not to mention that the potholes and broken chunks of pavement beyond the gate didn’t look very van-friendly.
“Any mention about needing a Jeep to access the road?” I asked.
“It might have been suggested. Oh well. We can walk up it anyway. It’ll probably be easier than the trail in the dark.”
“I don’t know. The trail probably has fewer potholes.”
Simon turned into the parking lot to the left of the gate. The headlights played over dirt, prickly pear, and a few stubby trees. Several trails led off in different directions, but he picked a spot in front of the one that looked to parallel the road. Zelda was the only vehicle in the lot. In the distance, the rock formations rose, black in the night, silhouetted against a starry sky. Usually I would admire the magnificence of all those points of light, but I watched them warily now, searching for signs of monsters flying toward us.
“Is that a bathroom?” Temi pointed to a dark shack at the end of the parking lot.
“If by bathroom, you mean outhouse,” I said, “then my guess is yes.”
“Think I have to pay to use it?”
“You pay to park,” Simon said brightly, pointing to an automatic ticket dispensing station. “Bathroom use is included.”
Temi’s eyebrows twitched. “Are we going to pay?”
“Uh, I wasn’t planning on it,” Simon said. “I can’t imagine a ranger checking after dark.”
“First rabbit poaching and now parking violations. We’re definitely on a collision course with the cops.”
Temi hopped out to use the facilities, such as they were, and Simon stood up and rubbed his hands together. “Who wants to help me make ammunition for our morning walk?”
“I haven’t mixed a lot of chemicals,” I said. “Do the odds of the van blowing up go up or down if we help you?”
“I was just going to have you hold the light for me.”
“Ah, I guess I can do that.”
The van door rolled open, and Alek hopped out, his spear in hand. He had belted on his sword at some point too.
“Uh, does he not know the wait-for-morning plan?” Simon asked.
“He probably wants to scout around, check for Persians,” I said.
“So long as he doesn’t prong anyone with that spear. That’ll be harder to explain than rabbits. Rabbits that are still in my refrigerator, a refrigerator that isn’t hooked up to electricity anymore.”
I made a face. Maybe we could pull out the grill and cook them for a late dinner.
Temi returned from the outhouse and waved a slip of paper at Simon.
“Red Rock Pass,” he read. “You paid five bucks for this? Really?”
“The facilities must have exceeded her expectations,” I said.
“I’ve used worse.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the players’ clubhouse at Wimbledon is a slum.”
She gave me a dry look. “You don’t start out at Wimbledon. Some of the futures tourneys are in third-world countries.”
Simon put the pass on the dashboard. “It expires at midnight. You’ll have to get up to buy another one then, if you want us to be entirely legal.”
Temi ignored him and pulled her sword and scabbard out of the van. “I’m going to look around too.”
I frowned. “Just around the parking lot, right? Not up the trail?”
But she had already wandered
into the darkness, and she didn’t answer.
“Del?” Simon asked. “Have you noticed that we’re no longer the weirdest people we hang out with?”
I thought of the way Temi had picked a route that led us to those pictographs. Even though she denied it, I continued to wonder about that sword and what else it could do besides glow and cut things.
I fished my flashlight out of my pack. “I’m going to check on her.”
“Who’s going to hold my light?” Simon protested as I jumped out the door.
With the headlights off, it was hard to see much out there. I flicked on my flashlight and found Temi standing by the MUNDS WAGON TR sign. She was gazing up the dusty path, a thoughtful expression on her face. Though she hadn’t taken the sword out of its scabbard, it was in her hand. The faintest hint of silver seeped out around the hilt.
“We’re still waiting until morning,” I said. “Right?”
“You’ll think I’m nuts, but I feel this pull to go up the trail.”
“From the sword?” Maybe it had some divining-rod-like properties.
“I guess. It’s hard to explain.”
“Any chance this pull would like to wait until morning?”
Temi hesitated. “It probably could.”
Probably? Did that mean, yes, no problem, or did that mean that if we woke up in the middle of the night, we would find her gone? Based on the last couple of weeks, I wouldn’t classify Temi as impulsive or reckless, but she had run away from home at fourteen. And the sword added an unpredictable element, as well. Exactly how much of a pull did it have over her? Or was I seeing things that weren’t there?
Alek returned from the brush. “Empty,” he said in English.
I checked the time on my phone. Barely after seven o’clock. If we left right away, we could be back by ten. That didn’t seem so ridiculously late to be out, poking around in the woods… Except that if the monster showed up, it wouldn’t matter what time it was. It could probably navigate in the dark fine, whereas we would never see those thorns until they struck us.