Thorn Fall (8 page)

“It wasn’t.” We had called up a couple of times, hoping for an answer, but only the wind whistling through the canyon had responded. “He’ll make fun of your climbing skills, but he wouldn’t mess with your head like this.”

“My skills?” The branches shivered, dropping needles as Temi climbed higher.

“Well, no, he would think
your
skills were lovely. But he’d mock mine.” I reached my whip, unfastened it, and looped it on my belt again.

The branches thinned as we climbed higher, and I started to second-guess my decision to go up. Wind batted at us, and the whole trunk swayed back and forth. The rock wall seemed farther away than it had from below too. We would have to creep out on one of those narrow branches to have a shot at jumping and reaching the top of the cliff.

“I’m going to try to get over,” Temi said. “I don’t see anything up here though.”

“No monster? No ropes?”

“Neither.”

“Damn. What kind of person steals another person’s climbing gear?”

It was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t expect an answer. But after a pause, Temi said, “An elf person, perhaps.”

“You know something I don’t?” I hadn’t seen any evidence that someone was following us, not since we left Prescott, but that didn’t mean much.

“On my last night of training, someone tried to kill me. Jakatra too. They sent animals after us, then started a forest fire.”

“Any idea why?”

Temi hesitated again before saying, “Humans aren’t welcome there.”

“You think this person—elf—is trying to finish what he started?”

“The impression I got from Jakatra… none of them was ever that straightforward with me, but he said to research the sword. That makes me think someone else might want it. Or want for me not to have it.”

“Ah.”

I prodded at a dry clump of sap on the side of the trunk, wondering why someone who had tried to kill her would simply be messing with us now. Why not shoot or do something more damaging? The elves had technology or magic that we didn’t have, so a human-slaying weapon shouldn’t be out of the picture. Maybe the
jibtab
had run the person off, and grabbing the ropes had been all he could manage. After all, the last monster hadn’t had any problem with attacking Jakatra and Eleriss. It seemed to want everybody dead equally.

“Here goes,” Temi said.

Before I could warn her to be careful, the trunk swayed violently. I had been holding it and a branch, and I gasped, turning that hold into a bear hug. My knees came around it too. Dry needles rained upon my shoulders, and a pinecone clunked me on the head.

“Thanks,” I muttered, before thinking to look for Temi.

Through the needles and branches, I glimpsed her back. She had made it and was crouching on the edge of the cliff, looking in all directions.

“Anything up there?” I called softly, needing a moment before I was ready to unwrap my limbs from their death grip on the tree.

“Nothing.”

I couldn’t tell if she was relieved or not.
I
was.

“It’s safe,” she added, looking down at me.

Meaning I was supposed to find a way to duplicate her feat of leaping prowess. Reminding myself that going up had been
my
idea, I started climbing again. I made the mistake of glancing down at one point, the hard, cactus-covered rocks and dirt nearly seventy feet below me, and I had to take a moment to catch my breath—and courage.

“Almost there,” I called, lest Temi think I was dawdling. A thin branch snapped as soon as I hung my weight on it. I caught myself on the trunk again, but decided to stop there. There was no way I would be able to jump off these branches if they were breaking under a portion of my weight. “Which branch did you crawl out on?”

“I didn’t. I went up a little higher than the cliff and jumped from the trunk.”

That sounded very logical… and very difficult to do. I grimaced but crawled higher, seeing few alternatives. At least the cliff was closer than the ledge had been. I wished I could use my whip for extra security, but I didn’t see any handy nodules sticking up out of the cliff, nor were there any trees or shrubs growing out of the rock.

“Okay, I’m coming.” Maybe if I said it, that would make it true. I took a moment to pat myself down and tuck in anything that might catch on a branch—having that whip be the instrument that sent me plummeting to my death would not be poetic at all.

Temi faced me, an arm extended, and gave me an encouraging nod. I cut a branch away so it wouldn’t impede me, then shifted my weight the best I could, trying to get both feet on the trunk. It reminded me of being on the side of the wall in a swimming pool and pushing off.

“As easy as a flip-turn,” I muttered. One, two… three.

I pushed off with my legs with all of my strength. My “wall” moved, knocked backward with my shove, and it threw off my jump. Terror filled me, as I realized I wasn’t going to get nearly the distance I had imagined. I flailed in the air, as if that could somehow propel me farther.

Something clasped my arm an instant before I landed, almost tumbling forward, thanks to my awkward momentum. Temi kept me upright, giving me a wry smile.

“You looked like you were trying to jump over a skyscraper.”

I glanced at the edge of the cliff, four or five feet away and felt sheepish. “I wanted to make sure it wasn’t close.”

“Understandable.”

After patting myself down and making sure I hadn’t lost anything—not that I would go back down to retrieve my tweezers or toothbrush if they turned up missing—I jogged over to the spot where we had originally descended. Unfortunately, the ropes weren’t twined up and hidden in a crevice anywhere. The anchors we had hammered into cracks remained, but that was it. There wasn’t enough dirt on the rock to hold footprints, if anyone had walked out there to start with. Maybe the
jibtab
had taken our ropes before it attacked. Scary to think of a monster with that kind of intelligence, but the last one hadn’t been stupid. It had been luck more than smarts that had allowed us to best it in the end.

“We should go.” The buzz hadn’t returned, but Temi’s eyes were skyward.

“Good idea.”

We jogged away from the canyon at a much faster pace than we had used that morning. I pulled out my phone to check the reception, though I would wait until we reached the trees to call Simon.

Temi pointed in that direction. Leaves moved, and my breath caught. Had we been right before? Was the creature lying in wait for us?

But the figure that burst out of the trees was running, not flying. Simon waved, his phone in his hand. I threw a thankful look heavenward. He wasn’t wearing the look of utter terror of a man who had just been shot at by deadly thorns.

A moment later, Alek jogged out of the trees farther down. We had found jeans, a couple of T-shirts, and a sweater for him, the jeans on the tight side—something Simon had pointed out while rolling his eyes—but it was hard to be picky when one had a twenty-dollar clothing budget. Simon had magnanimously paid for a package of underwear. Alek had tied his hair back, and he might have passed for a normal twenty-first century human, but he did still have his sword scabbard, complete with sword. I guess I couldn’t find that all that odd when I was running around with a whip.

“Where have you been?” Simon asked.

“Let’s get into the trees.” Temi pointed toward the forest and glanced toward the sky behind us. “Just in case.”

Alek gave her a sharp look. Had they encountered the creature too?

“We climbed down and found some stuff,” I said as we ran for the cover of the forest, my pot-filled pack clanking with each step. “But someone or
something
took our ropes while we were down in a cave.”

“Took or cut?” Simon asked.

“Took. There was some buzzing creature that attacked us too. Did you hear or see it? We didn’t get a look at it.”

“
I
didn’t,” Simon said. “But I was in the van working. Mr. Sexypants heard something though. He was the one agitating that we go look for you, and since you weren’t answering your phone…” He glowered at me.

“We didn’t have any reception in the cave. And I assume you’re referring to the hot underwear you picked out for him and not anything else.” Was he really feeling jealous of Alek right now? What, was he afraid he had competition for the woman he’d never had a chance with anyway? I hadn’t caught Temi ogling Alek, but I hadn’t been watching, either. The last I had seen, she had been giving her dreamy looks to Jakatra, though that had been before his hat had come off and the ears had come out. Not that any of this mattered now…

Alek touched his ear, pointed to the sky, and did a fair impression of the buzzing sound.

“You heard it,” I said.

He nodded.

“Did you see it?” I switched to Greek; Simon hadn’t brought his pack, so he probably didn’t have the tablet, though he
was
carrying something that looked suspiciously like a homemade grenade. Well, I had been wondering how we could strike at something in the air. When Alek didn’t answer, I touched my eye and pointed to the sky. So fun to be reduced to Charades to communicate.

Alek hesitated, then shook his head. Maybe he, like us, had seen the shadow but hadn’t glimpsed the rest of it. He held up a hand, something squeezed between his fingers. One of the thorns.

“Oh, you shouldn’t be touching it.” I grimaced. Whatever poison was on the tips, it was slow-acting. According to the news report, nobody knew exactly when the kid had received his puncture wound and how long he had been lying out there unconscious before being found, but it had taken another twelve hours for him to die after he had been delivered to the hospital. “One didn’t hit you, did it?” I looked into his eyes, willing him to understand me, and feeling more concern than I would have expected over the question. For him to have survived so much and to have been frozen for two thousand odd years only to die within his first couple of weeks in this new world… That was even less poetic than the idea of my whip getting me killed.

Alek shook his head. I fished the baggie containing the other thorn from my pack, then withdrew my tweezers and approached him.

He pointed at the tip and said, “Careful,” in English.

I dropped my tweezers and gawked at him.

Frowning, Alek looked at Simon.

“Nah, you got it right,” Simon told him. “She’s just a klutz.”

“Don’t tell him things like that.” I scowled, realizing Alek and Simon must have already had a discussion about the thorn, with the word careful coming up a number of times.

“He’s observant; he would have figured it out.”

“Ha ha.” I retrieved the tweezers, plucked the thorn from his grip, and deposited it into the baggie with the first one. “Looks like we’re going to need the use of Autumn’s lab, after all.”

“I already texted her about it.” Simon waved his phone.

“I didn’t know you had her number.”

“Funny, she said the same thing.” He held the phone up so I could read the display.

Can we use ur lab tonight? Got pokey thing with mystery poison on it.

Who the hell is this?

Simon. We had moment together in Preskitt. Smooches.

Did Delia give you my number? Tell her she’s so dead.

Is that a yes?

Where are you? I don’t want your scruffy fingers on my eq. I’ll come there.

Manziti Campground. Sedona.

Be there after work.

“Manziti?” How was that even close to Manzanita? Now Autumn would be driving around Sedona, looking for campgrounds that didn’t exist. “Do me a favor, Simon, and don’t teach Alek how to write.”

“Actually that was what the voice recognition came up with. We were already scrambling up mountainsides when I texted her.”

“Don’t teach him how to speak then, either.”

“Sorry, bro,” Simon told Alek, “careful is all you’re getting.”

I rubbed my face. “Let’s get back to the van, all right? I think we’re going to have to come up with a strategy to fight this thing before we actually face it. So long as it obliges and doesn’t jump us on the way back.”

Alek set the pace at a jog and nobody objected. We hadn’t gone shoe shopping for him yet, so he still had his Spartan sandals. They didn’t slow him down at all. With Simon running after him, his own dirty white socks and faux Birkenstocks throwing up dust as he ran, they made unlikely line leaders.

Someone’s phone bleeped. I checked mine, and I had a text on there, though it was from an hour ago, Autumn’s promise of,
You’re so dead
.

Simon slowed down, staring down at his own phone. “My laptop sent me a message. Activity on the police scanner I left set up.”

“Nothing to do with miscreants in the
Manzanita
Campground, I hope,” I said, emphasizing the word in case he ever needed to spell it, or pronounce it, again.

“No… They found two more people, a couple of guys who rented an ATV. Unconscious on the Munds Wagon Trail.”

“Oh.” My humor evaporated.

“One had a knife out, looked like he’d been in a fight. Some bruises. Nothing to explain why they’re unconscious though. They’ve been taken to the hospital.”

“How much you want to bet they find some puncture wounds on them later?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t take that bet,” Temi murmured.

“Should we go out there?” Simon asked.

He, Temi, and Alek looked at me. Oh, was I in charge again? Wonderful. “I don’t think we can help anyone at this point by going out there. Unless we cut up Temi’s sword into arrows, I don’t see how we can fight something that can fly circles around us. And I lost my bow in that cave-in anyway.”

“I have a prototype weapon that can be thrown.” Simon smiled.

“Which may or may not do anything to harm the
jibtab
.” Temi also sounded more in favor of coming up with a solid plan before going out and looking for trouble again. We should get Autumn’s analysis of the thorns first too. If some poison coated the tip, there might be an antidote.

“The only question is whether there might be more clues there that we’d miss out on if we don’t go,” I said.