Thorn Fall (28 page)

“It’s awful.” Temi raked her nails down her sleeves, clawing at whatever creepie-crawlies she felt running up her skin.

I didn’t know if it was my imagination, some phantom sympathy, but I was starting to sense something too. Less the crackling feeling of electricity that they had described and more of a feeling of dread that seemed imposed upon me from some external source.

“You convince Marcus not to come up?” Simon whispered.

“He hasn’t answered my last question.”

“So that’s a no?” He scowled back at me.

“Sorry, I tried to dissuade him.” I pointed at a turnoff ahead. “You might want to park. I think that’s the closest lot to the rock.”

Someone’s high beams flashed through the back of the van window. What, were we going too slowly? I checked behind us and scowled. A whole row of headlights stretched into the darkness behind us. Where had all of those cars come from? Someone had to be filming this, putting the message out on the news or on the social media sites. And the entire town was flocking to see it. Hadn’t this afternoon taught them to stay inside?

Alek shook his head at me, his face grimmer than ever.

Simon grunted as he turned into the parking lot. “We’ll be lucky to find a spot.”

Cars already jammed the parking area for the trailhead, and Simon had to slow down to keep from hitting people who were standing in the middle of the pavement, staring at the lights. He soon lost his patience and blasted his horn.

“Peace, man,” someone with long blond dreads called as we drove past. “Relax. The time of enlightenment has finally come.”

“Enlightenment, right.” I doubted the Sinagua had drawn snakes all around the portal because they had been feeling enlightened. I leaned forward, searching the dark rock face, not for enlightenment, but for signs of a glowing silver sword.

“Think we’ll get towed if I park in an unmarked space?” Simon asked. “Or on top of a bunch of stupid hippies blocking the way?”

“Probably not, as long as Temi buys you another Red Rock Pass.”

Simon gave me a flat look.

I choked back a laugh, afraid it would have a hysterical edge. Simon parked on the sidewalk leading up to the outhouse. Good enough.

“Everyone wearing their sexy Kevlar clothes?” I asked as we climbed out of the van. “Temi, don’t forget your helmet.” I had mine strapped to my backpack. There was no way I would wear it in public—as if the whip wasn’t hard enough to explain—but I didn’t want to be caught scrambling around on rocks if the
jibtab
showed up. I hoped it was still busy regenerating its thorns, but who knew?

Temi grabbed her helmet out of the van and tied it to her pack, giving it a distasteful sniff—some of them had been a tad sweaty smelling when we got them. “I suppose leaving the helmets behind would ensure the creature shows up.”

“If taking the helmets means they won’t show up,” Simon said, “I’m all for that.”

“Me too,” I said.

Alek donned his helmet without comment. He didn’t have a backpack to drag around, so he couldn’t tie it to anything except his sword belt, but he probably didn’t think anything odd of wearing a helmet anyway. He probably would have preferred a nice Thracian helmet with a plume and cheek guards. Actually, the cheek guards wouldn’t be a bad idea if something hurled three-inch spikes at us.

“Any chance you can sense where the sword is?” I asked Temi once we had all our gear. I glanced at Alek, as well.

“Are we sure it’s here?” Simon asked. “What if that elf ambled up to the rock and that alone caused a portal to open? Didn’t we decide elf blood lets one feel the energy of the vortexes?”

“They feel vibrations in their body,” I said. “I don’t think their bodies open portals.” A couple walking past in the parking lot gave me a weird look. I gave them a snarky hang-loose sign and said, “Just feeling the enlightenment. Don’t mind me.”

“Maybe we should get away from all these people,” Simon muttered, though he was snapping pictures, both of the parking lot and of the dark blob atop the rock.

“Afraid someone will think we’re nuts because of our conversations?”

“No, afraid all these people, not to mention the sword, might draw the
jibtab
back.”

“Ah, that’s a valid concern. Temi?” I prompted again, though I didn’t know what I truly expected. That because she had trained with the sword and slept with it under her sleeping bag, she would be able to track it down out here?

Alek pointed to the dark scrubby ground between Bell Rock and the formation next to it, Courthouse Rock, if memory served. Temi nodded. The area was on the opposite side of Bell Rock from the road and the parking lot. “Yes, that’s what I think too.”

Good. If we were going to have to climb up there to inspect that blob, then I didn’t want to do it on the side of the rock face that had everyone watching it. The air smelled of pot and… ribs? “Did someone light a
barbecue
?” I asked, stunned. Didn’t anyone else feel that sense of dread that was curdling my stomach?

Another group of people walking past us paused to stare. All right, I hadn’t been saying anything weird about portals or aliens that time. What was up? Did they just think it was annoying that Zelda was blocking the way to the outhouse?

“That looks like Artemis Sidaris,” one whispered.

“The tennis player?”

“Yeah.”

“…live out here?”

Ah. So it wasn’t about me or Zelda after all.

The group didn’t stop, and the conversation faded from my hearing, though I caught the word “disgraced” and gave Temi a wary look. Maybe she hadn’t heard. But no, she was wearing that melancholic expression that came over her whenever she talked about her old life, which wasn’t very often.

“Let us begin the hunt,” Alek said in Greek, then added, “Pig hunt,” in English and pointed toward the darkness beyond the parking lot.

“Pig hunt?” Simon asked as we dodged a reedy older couple with colored beads and twine in their long braids of gray hair.

“He’s a little fuzzy on which words are Greek and which words are English right now. For some reason, pig has stuck with him.”

Or maybe he considered the elves on par with wild swine to be conquered with spears and arrows. Either way, he would be the one most likely to find someone out in the woods at night.

He veered onto a trail, and we all trotted toward the rock formation. With their longer legs, Temi and Alek took the lead. Fortunately, it wasn’t tough to follow them. The flashing lights provided enough illumination to distinguish the trees and prickly pear cactus from the trail, alternately brightening and dimming like the floor in some Phoenix nightclub; all we needed was the techno music.

At first, there were quite a few people with flashlights walking up the trail, but we passed them, then turned onto a side path, one that angled toward that dark area Alek had noted. Soft grunts came from the side of the formation, someone trying to climb up to get close to the blob. Closer by, retching sounds came out of the brush. I didn’t know if someone was puking because the portal was making them feel queasy or because they’d had too many ribs and too much pot.

“Does anyone else have a bad feeling about this?” Simon whispered.

“About the situation as a whole? Or about… Can you feel this sense of dread building in your gut? Like you’re sure someone is about to die and you don’t know why everyone else doesn’t feel that way too?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Simon said. “I may not have special blood, but I don’t get why these people are being so festive. It feels… weird out here. Like Halloween.”

“Maybe they’re seeing what they want to see rather than what’s there.”

Simon jerked forward and cursed.

“What?” I grabbed his arm, thinking he might have experienced something alarming.

“I almost impaled myself on one of those rock cairns.”

“The ones marking the trail?”

“That one almost marked my twig and berries.”

I sighed and fished out my flashlight.

Temi and Alek weren’t waiting to let him recover, or maybe they hadn’t heard about the danger to his appendages. I hauled him along, trying to catch up. Fortunately, they had to slow down, because the ground grew rough, especially once we started climbing near the base of the formation.

“Should we stop and make a plan?” I called softly.

Alek had his sword, I had my whip, and Simon had whatever grenades he had stuffed into his backpack, but Temi wasn’t armed. And
none
of us had a weapon that would be useful if the
jibtab
showed up.

Alek looked back at me, pointed at his eyes and the brush ahead, then trotted off into the darkness. Temi came back to join us.

“Apparently Alek’s plan is to scout ahead,” I said.

“I don’t have a plan,” Temi said. “I just want to finish this as quickly as possible so we can get out of here. Or close that portal. Something.” She gripped her stomach. “I may puke.” Thanks to the flashing lights, the sweat glistening on her skin was visible.

Whatever discomfort I was feeling, she must be feeling it ten times more.

“We’ll keep walking,” I said. “Alek can find us. I’m watching for silvery glows. Anyone seen anything?”

“Not yet.” Temi dashed sweat out of her eyes. “But I do feel… the tug of something. The sword perhaps. It’s stronger here than it was in the parking lot.”

“Look,” Simon breathed, pointing toward the top of the rock. We had come around to the side of the formation and weren’t looking at the blob straight on anymore. It seemed strange to think of some dimensional hole as being flat, but it must be like a disk hovering up there. From this angle, it was easier to see if anything went in or came out. In this case, something was coming out. Thin black tendrils. They were hard to pick up against the night sky, but they had a misty element that hazed the stars behind them. “What is that?” Simon asked.

“Snakes,” I murmured.

He frowned at me, his face carrying a sheen of sweat too.

“That’s how the Sinagua represented it anyway,” I finished.

Temi had moved away from us, moved away from the
trail
.

“Uh, are you sure you want to go out there?” I trotted after her, though I wasn’t sure about leaving the trail—would Alek be able to find us again in the dark?

She didn’t answer.

“Great,” Simon muttered, picking a route after me. “Even worse things than rock cairns to impale yourself on out here.”

My foot snagged on the uneven ground. No doubt. We were rising, climbing the lumpy contours around the base of the formation, on the opposite side of it from the road, though I could see the headlights from the parking lot behind us as we clambered higher.

“Maybe we should go straight up to the top,” Simon said. “If the sword is the reason that portal is open, doesn’t that mean the sword must be close?”

“That’s true. We weren’t that far from those lights at the other formation, and we didn’t have any portals open up. The sword might have to be right under the center of the vortex for anything major to happen. But…” I paused to study the top of the formation again, thinking we might glimpse more now that we were closer. “I still don’t see any silver glows. Unless the lights are drowning it out.”

“Or someone threw a towel over it.”

“Oh. Right.” Not to mention that it could simply be in its scabbard. I had no idea what the portal-sword rules were, but maybe it could command a vortex to open just fine without being out and glowing. And for that matter, Temi had learned how to quiet the blade’s illumination with some mental command; the green-eyed elf might be familiar with the weapon and know how to do that too. “Temi?” I called softly. “Do you want to go to the top and…”

She had disappeared.

“Did you see which way she went?” I asked.

“That way?” Simon pointed along the curves of the striated rock ahead of us. “Or maybe that way.” He pointed ahead but downward, into the trees hugging the bottom of the formation.

I sighed. “Do we try to follow her or go check the top?”

“You’re asking me? Aren’t you in charge of this outfit?” Simon had his camera out again, snapping pictures of the portal with the black tendrils oozing out of it.

“You say that now, but your blog entries will talk about how you were the mastermind and we were your sidekicks. If you mention us at all.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Let’s check the top first,” I said out of some vain hope that we might simply sneak up on the elf and steal the sword. Also, if we were climbing the side of the rock, Temi and Alek would see us and find us more easily than we could find them in the scrub brush below. So long as they wanted to find us. I hoped the sword wasn’t calling to them both, compelling them toward some ill fate.

We stumbled onto a trail meandering upward in switchbacks and followed it for a while. I hadn’t thought to bring my rope and climbing gear, so we would have to go up the easiest route. The fact that flashlights bobbed ahead of us on the trail made me wonder if there was any point to this climb. There might be a dance party—or barbecue—going on at the top by the time we reached it.

The sick feeling increased as we climbed higher, walking in places and scrambling up craggy slopes in others, and I wondered how dangerous the air was that we were inhaling. What if we were doing permanent damage to our health? The Sinagua hadn’t died overnight, but something had certainly convinced them to leave this area en masse.

The wail of a siren came from the highway. The news crews would be next, if they weren’t already setting up in the parking lot.

“Hang on.” Simon staggered over to a tough shrub growing out of a crack in the rock. He bent over and threw up.

“Guess I’m not the only one feeling sick,” I said. “Maybe—”

Screams and cries of, “Watch out!” and “No, don’t!” erupted above us, at the top of the rock.

We definitely weren’t going to be the first ones up there. I climbed faster, not waiting for Simon. I wanted to know what was going on at the top. Had someone tried to go through the portal? Would those people stop and leave if I told them… something? I had no idea what I would say. That some bad mojo was entering our world?