Thorn Fall (17 page)

I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or horrified to think that there was an elven version of TSA out there. I imagined some guy standing next to one of their portals, demanding that their coffee and toothpaste be tossed into the garbage can due to the security threat.

“I have already been called before the organization to discuss the purpose of my visits here, because the
meselkua
is detected whenever we travel,” Eleriss said.

“The what?” Simon asked.

“Portal opener,” Temi said dryly. “I’ve seen it.” She held her hand out and pressed her thumb as if she were operating a garage door opener. Well, that would be a fun tool to acquire, but I doubted these two were going to accidentally leave one here. Nor did I have the gumption to entertain pickpocketing.

“Yes,” Eleriss said. “In the past, I have had special permission to travel here for scientific purposes, but the frequency of my recent trips has been noted.”

“Yet here we are again,” Jakatra murmured.

Simon’s nose scrunched up. “Scientific purposes?”

I probably wore a similar expression. All those stories of cow mutilations and humans being experimented on by aliens jumped into my head.

“Observation and tallying only,” Eleriss said. “As your people do when they travel into the wilderness to observe apes. For most of my people, this world is not considered significant. They are unaware of chocolate.”

“Apes?” I mouthed at the same time as Temi mouthed, “Chocolate?”

Jakatra’s expression always bordered on disgusted, but he shot Eleriss a long-suffering look at the food mention. I had yet to figure out what their relationship was exactly, but at that moment, older brother and younger brother seemed to fit.

“My pointing is this,” Eleriss said, though he paused to look at Jakatra. “Pointing? Point. Yes, point. It is this: it is unlikely that this person from our world wants the sword for himself or herself. This person likely wants to make sure you do not have it.”

Jakatra gave a curt nod. No argument there.

“Because he doesn’t want us to succeed at stopping the
jibtab
?” I asked.

Eleriss hesitated before saying, “Possibly. But…” He made a hand gesture that didn’t match up to anything we had. “If your apes in the wild acquired a… particularly pointy stick to help them in combat against other simians, would your observers do anything about it? Or even care?”

“I can’t tell you how flattering it is that you keep comparing us to apes,” I said.

Temi snorted softly. “Now you get an idea of how my week went.”

“Oh, I had that idea before you ever left.”

Eleriss tilted his head. “You are seeing my point, yes?”

“Yes, yes, your people are way too sophisticated and powerful to care what we measly humans are doing on our world. So it’s weird that someone is here trying to steal our particularly pointy stick.” Had I been nudging Simon so he wouldn’t offend the elves? Hm, maybe I should keep the sarcasm out of my voice then.

“We are not powerful, simply different,” Eleriss said. “And in recent centuries, we have adopted more isolationist policies. We rarely interfere with other cultures.”

I decided not to comment on the fact that he had denied power but not sophistication.

“Since it is partially because of my actions that one of our people is following you,” Eleriss said, “we have come to search for him or her. To confront the person and—this is my desire—to prevent him or her from hindering you while you deal with the
jibtab
.”

I wasn’t feeling all that grateful to them—maybe I was just tired and cranky—but I made myself say, “Thank you.”

“About the new
jibtab
,” Temi said, meeting Jakatra’s eyes. “It flies.”

“Yes,” Jakatra said.

“We didn’t practice on any flying animals.”

“There is much we lacked the time to practice on.”

Temi kept looking at him expectantly, as if he was sure to dispense some useful advice. I hadn’t heard any from him yet, so I couldn’t quite imagine the scenario.

“You wish to train more now?” Jakatra asked.

Temi hesitated. She hadn’t recovered yet from the
last
training, had she? Not to mention tonight’s terrors. But her eyes narrowed at the… was that
challenge
in Jakatra’s eyes? I wasn’t sure. He was even harder to read than Alek.

“Do they know its after midnight?” Simon muttered to me.

“No idea,” I said.

“I’ll take more training,” Temi said after she and Jakatra had stared at each other for a moment.
Both
of them were wearing those challenging expressions now. Huh.

Jakatra pointed toward the woods and walked into the trees. Apparently that passed for an invitation in his world.

Temi clenched her jaw and strode after him. Alek, still standing in the shadows, met my eyes again. I gave him a nod, not quite sure what he was asking, but wanting him to know I hadn’t forgotten him. He waited a moment, then slipped into the brush after them. Oops, I hadn’t meant to send him to spy. But maybe he wanted to observe the training. Or maybe he wanted to watch out for Temi. That protector mentality was definitely part of his personality. Also, he couldn’t have followed the whole conversation so might not know what the elves were up to here. Or maybe he knew what they had said but didn’t trust them to be telling the truth.

Eleriss gazed thoughtfully into the woods, even after his buddy was out of sight, then his arms rippled in what was probably the equivalent of a shrug. “I will begin to search for the person from my world.”

“Wait,” Simon said before Eleriss could disappear into the trees as well. “You said your people have tools that could deal with the
jibtab
. We have powerful weapons on Earth too. I need to know if anything could work. The rest of us need a way to fight these monsters, and I’m trying to figure out what that might be.”

I glanced toward the bushes, hoping there wasn’t anyone with pigtails listening. Eleriss would probably know if there were. But I did see that the window in the van over there was cracked open. This would be a crazy conversation to have to explain.

“Apparently my homemade grenades aren’t all that effective, but there must be something,” Simon went on. “We have nuclear weapons. Humans are good at destruction.”

“Yes,” Eleriss said. Sadly? “We have observed this.”

“We don’t need any judgment here,” Simon said. “Just to know if there’s anything else that could hurt the monsters. Higher quality grenades? Lasers? Rockets?”

I pictured him tramping up the trail with a rocket launcher balanced over his shoulder. That would be fun to explain to a park ranger.

“Our tools that are capable of harming the
jibtab
, they are simply different,” Eleriss said. “In the way the
jibtab
is different.” He nodded to us. “I must go. Our time here may be limited.”

“But—” I had a dozen more questions. I wanted to know about the slavery that Alek had spoken of—why had it happened and was it still happening? I wanted to know if he could bring any other humans to his world, such as one who would love to experience another culture and learn another language and find out how the elves’ visits to Earth might have affected humanity through the centuries. I wanted to know—

“Do you have any tips for fighting this
jibtab
?” Simon asked before I could come up with my own parting question. His was admittedly more pertinent. Just because Jakatra and Temi were doing some training didn’t mean she would come back with the answer. Besides, Simon must long to help as much as I did, if not more.

“I am not the warrior Jakatra is,” Eleriss said, “but you must nullify its strength in such a way that allows you to use your own strength.”

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.”

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?”