Thorn Fall (22 page)

“I’m getting that impression. Thank you for the warning.”

“Delia?” Simon called again. “You’re going to want to see this.”

“I’m coming.”

I patted Alek on the arm, then dropped to all fours, grabbed the rope, and slipped out of the cave. Normally, going down scared me more than going up, but the rope made the descent a lot easier. Less than a minute later, my feet dropped onto the dusty earth. I was surprised Alek wasn’t following me yet, but Simon’s excited voice came from the trees, drawing me in that direction.

I hopped over a log, then nearly tripped at the sight of Simon and Naomi, thigh deep in a crater of dirt. Dust caked their hands, faces, and even their hair. The Dirt Viper leaned innocently against a nearby tree, though I was certain it was responsible for however this scene had started.

“What are you doing?” I asked, then, realizing I already knew, added, “And how did you dig all that up so quickly?”

We hadn’t even brought shovels.

“Quickly?” Simon was using his Black Sabbath T-shirt to rub dirt off something. “You were up there forever.”

“We were not.” At least I didn’t think so. I dug out my phone to check the time. Maybe I
had
been a tad absorbed.

“Yes, you were,” Simon said.

Naomi nodded.

“We thought you and Mr. Sexypants were making Greek babies,” Simon added.

“I didn’t think that,” Naomi said.

“Good, because that would have been awkward with Temi watching. What great artifact did you find there?”

“Oh, just the mother lode.” Simon winked and nodded at Naomi, who had apparently gone from suspicious spy to helpful assistant.

She bent and lifted an old wooden box out of the dirt, the hinges rusted and broken, the lid already open. She pulled out a dusty old mason jar packed full of silver coins.

“Someone’s quarter collection?” I guessed. A cool find, especially if they were old, but I wasn’t sure I would classify someone’s old coin jar as the mother lode.

“We already looked inside,” Simon said. “The most
recent
one I plucked out is from 1923. Melt value, over three and a half dollars at current silver rates, but a 1923 Standing Liberty Quarter has a numismatic value of more than that. It’s worth at least twenty bucks in poor condition, and most of these coins would rate very good to extremely fine grade. I’m betting the value of the entire jar is more than enough to pay for Zelda’s repairs.”

“And Simon said I get a cut.” Naomi bounced. “I’m the one who brought the Dirt Viper.”

A cut. If she had found the coins, she probably had a claim to the whole stash. Either that, or the Florida relative did, though technically someone in the family had sold this portion of the property to the government at some point, and this was national forest land now. Simon had a definite finders-keepers mentality when it came to prospecting, and I was sure he would balk if I suggested we hand the coins over to the government.

“The coins are only
part
of the treasure. There are a couple of other doodads you might be interested in, but
this
is the real surprise.” Simon tossed the item he had been rubbing to me.

Surprised he was throwing around something old and valuable, I lunged to catch the object. As soon as my hands wrapped around the cool, smooth item, a weird shiver went through me. Before I opened my fingers, I had a hunch we were dealing with something strange. Something alien.

And something broken. I stared at three-quarters of a disk about an inch thick, with the side sliced through as if by a blade. The slice revealed insides that reminded me vaguely of silicone putty, but with silver strands—wiring?—knotting and flowing through the medium in a strangely mesmerizing pattern. Interesting, but the outside captivated me more.

“These are the same runes that were on Eleriss and Jakatra’s communication device,” I said, “or whatever that thing was we found in their hotel room.” The elves had never deigned to explain their doodads.

“I thought so,” Simon said.

“Who are Eleriss and Jakatra?” Naomi asked. “Are those the guys who came to your campsite last night?”

I barely heard her. I was staring back and forth from the broken gadget to the wood box. “This came out of
that
?”

“Yup,” Simon said.

I rubbed the outside of the device, the strange alloy like nothing I had seen before. Like nothing on
Earth
.

“In case you’re wondering, it was the coins that set off the detector,” Simon said. “I already checked and that doesn’t show up as a metal.”

Leaves crunched behind me, Temi coming over to join us. Alek had also descended and was heading in this direction, a bemused expression on his face as he regarded the new crater in the dry red dirt.

“So, was this left here by some traveling elf in the ’20s? Or is it something Haines maybe found up in that cave at the same time as the pictographs?” I showed Temi the device.

I wasn’t sure if she would recognize the runes, since she hadn’t been up there poking around in that hotel room with Simon and me, but her lips parted in surprise. “The impression Jakatra gave me was that it’s been hundreds of years since their people came here.”

“And did you think he was telling the truth?” I wasn’t sure how far to trust those guys.

“Yes. He’s… blunt. Eleriss, I think, would be evasive if there was a reason for it.”

“Yes, we’ve seen that,” I said dryly.

“But Jakatra, if you ask him what he thinks… be prepared for an answer you might not want to hear.”

I handed her the trinket. “I know you didn’t see much of their world, but is there any chance this reminds you of anything?”

“It’s one of their portal openers, isn’t it?”

I gaped at her. “Are you sure?” I hadn’t expected her to have a clue.

“No, not at all.”

I laughed. “That’s honest.”

“That was my first thought, but it’s possible they have a lot of tools that look similar. Like our remote controls, maybe? But it reminds me of the device I saw Eleriss use to open portals. Not exactly the same, but…”

“Models would presumably change with time,” I said. “And we have no way to tell how much time.”

“Can’t walk it into someone’s lab and have them carbon-date it, eh?” Simon asked.

“Who even knows if there’s carbon
in
it? If it’s not from Earth…”

“Not from
Earth
?” Naomi’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

Temi took me aside. “Should we be discussing all of this in front of her?”

“I assumed it would all end up on Simon’s blog sooner or later anyway.”

“Hey now,” Simon said, “I only write about the monsters. I haven’t mentioned our pointy-eared friends.”

“Oh?” I asked, surprised. They were an even more interesting story than the creatures, at least in my opinion.

“People wouldn’t think I was a credible source if I started blogging about aliens.”

“A credible source for… monster information?” I arched my brows.

“Monsters that have been killing people. Nobody can deny that there are weird things going on around here. We—”

My phone rang. I winced and pulled it out, hoping the police hadn’t thought up another reason to chat with us; my cell number was listed as the company number on our business site, so it wasn’t as if they couldn’t find us, whether we had checked out of the campground or not.

But Autumn’s name flashed across the display. Surprised, since she usually favored text messages, I answered promptly. “What is it?”

“Are you in Sedona now?” Autumn blurted.

“A little ways outside of town. Why?” I waved to Simon and mouthed, “News,” already having an inkling from her tone that there was trouble.

“Something’s attacking the tourist area, Uptown Sedona. I’m watching the news right now. There are people down everywhere, and they’re talking about those stingers. Someone’s filming from a van. You better get out of there if you’re anywhere close.”

“We’ll be careful,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.”

“I said get out of there, not be careful,” Autumn growled.

“I know.” I was looking at Temi, who was standing beside me, listening, her face grave. Her hand twitched toward her sword hilt. Getting “out of there” probably wasn’t in the cards. I ended the call and summed it up for the others.

“Guess we know why it hasn’t been out here harassing us,” Simon said.

“Yes, but why?” I waved toward Temi’s scabbard. “If it’s like the other
jibtab
, it should find her sword more interesting than killing people. And attacking a heavily populated area in broad daylight, that doesn’t jive with its past actions, either.”

“Maybe something happened to push its agenda forward. Or its creator’s agenda.”

Temi shifted from foot to foot as we spoke, and in the first pause in the conversation said, “I need to go, to help if I can.”

“By running through Uptown Sedona with a glowing sword?” Simon grimaced. “The police will…” He faltered when she looked at him, and I groaned—when was he going to learn to talk directly to her? Instead, he turned toward me. “The police will lock her up instead of the monster. And what about the cave? Didn’t we decide she needs to fight it in a cave? All that part of town has is shopping malls.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Temi turned, walking back toward the van. “I’ll have to lead it away if I can.”

“She’s going to get herself killed. Or arrested.” Simon gripped my arm. “Tell her this is a bad idea.”

“I can’t,” I said, walking after her. “This is her job now, remember? What she signed up for.” The price she paid to have her leg healed. And I had promised to help her. We all had.

Simon made me drive on the way back to Sedona. I wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to lean out the window and take pictures of the carnage when we arrived, or because he wasn’t sure he would have taken the van in the right direction if he had been at the wheel. Usually, he was the first one in line to go monster hunting, but something about this setup wasn’t jiving for him. It didn’t jive for me, either. It felt like a trap. But why would the
jibtab
have set a trap for us? We were nothing to it. Aside from one quick poke, Temi hadn’t been able to reach it with her sword. That logic didn’t keep me from shifting uneasily in my seat as we neared town.

The highway, usually busy with drivers off to explore the parks or take the back route to Flagstaff, lay empty. I flicked on the radio and hit scan. If Autumn had seen this on the television news, there must be an announcement somewhere.

The entrance to our campground came up, and I thought about dropping off Naomi, but there was a car in a ditch right after the turn-in, and the lights of a police car, or maybe an ambulance, flashed somewhere behind the trees. I glanced at Temi—she was sitting in the passenger seat, the scabbard resting between her knees. Naomi might be safer with us for the moment.

A burst of static came from the radio, followed by an announcement of, “All residents of Sedona are ordered to remain inside until the gunman can be detained.”

“
Gunman
?” Simon balked.

“Highways 89A and 179 are closed. If you are approaching Sedona, you are asked to turn around at this time.”

Flashing lights came into view ahead of me, and I tuned out the rest of the report. It looked like we had come up just as a roadblock was being put into effect.

“What do you want to do?” I asked Temi.

“No A-Team crashing through barricades moves,” Simon said. “Zelda has enough wounds.”

“I thought you had a way to pay for those now.”

Simon had lugged the box and coins back to the van, even though he had nearly given himself a heart attack trying to keep up with Temi. “There’s only so much a van can handle.”

I hadn’t been thinking of plowing my way through the parked cars anyway. There wasn’t much of a shoulder, but I pulled over to the side of the road, as a couple dozen other vehicles already had. A few were turning around and heading back the other way, but more people, curious as to what was going on, were getting out to look. The police at the barricade tried to shoo them back, but that worked about as well as it ever did.

“We can follow the creek.” Temi pointed over the guardrail and down the steep slope. “It goes right into town.”

She opened the door and hopped out as soon as the van stopped. I hoped she would wait until we were past the police to pull that sword out. I looked around the van, wishing some tool of ours would jump out at me as something effective to use against the
jibtab
. I knew I would go along, but I didn’t know how I could do anything more than be in the way.

The side door opened and Alek hopped out. He jogged around the van, his sword in hand, and followed Temi down the slope toward the trees and the creek. Naomi scrambled after him, her phone in one hand and the Dirt Viper in the other. She seemed to have officially adopted that metal detector.

“God, Simon, she’s a mini-you,” I muttered, removing my seatbelt.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, then followed the others. I doubted his camera was far from his hand. “Hey, where are you going with my Dirt Viper?” he called down the slope.

I stepped over the guardrail, eyed the descent, and wondered if I might need to use my whip to keep myself from tumbling down into the water. It wasn’t exactly a
gentle
slope. But the others were already slipping and sliding for the bottom. There weren’t many trees in this spot, so I hoped the police were busy with other things and not looking in our direction.

Grass and weeds clawed at my jeans. A chunk of the earth crumbled beneath my feet, and I nearly turned my ankle. Some mighty warrior charging in to help I made.

The roar of motorcycles came from the highway above, and I paused, wondering if Jakatra and Eleriss might be coming to help. But would they? Or were the monsters our problem, now?

Alek was waiting for me at the bottom, where the ground flattened out for a couple of feet before dumping into the creek. Reminded that I had a bodyguard whether I wanted one or not, I gave him a nod and took off after Temi. She was striding through the foliage quickly enough that Simon and Naomi had to run to keep up.