Thorn Fall (25 page)

A soft groan escaped Temi’s lips. Even if it sounded pained, I found it encouraging. Maybe she would come around to consciousness soon.

“Do you want help?” I asked Alek. We had moved past the rubble, but Temi wasn’t exactly a tiny waif of a woman. Her six feet had to make carrying her awkward, especially when Alek had her in his arms instead of over his shoulder.

He shook his head at my offer and walked more quickly, catching up with Eleriss and matching his stride.

“Although what?” I prompted Eleriss, since he hadn’t finished his statement on his own.

“It would be unwise for us to openly confront the portal authorities.”

“When I point out how unwise something would be, it usually means I’m going to do it, anyway. Any chance, that’s what you two are thinking?”

He gave me a sad look. “No.”

“So if Jakatra locates the sword, and it’s in Green Eyes’ hands, it will be up to us to try and steal it back?”

“Yes.”

Great. This day was getting better and better.

Eleriss turned toward the main street. At first, I assumed he would cross it and head down to the creek, so he could return to the van in the same way that we had come. The idea of Alek carrying Temi down that embankment made me grimace. But Eleriss turned onto the main street as soon as we reached the corner, striding down the sidewalk, not worrying about witnesses. Granted, the only ambulance remaining was in front of the destroyed T-shirt shop, and only a few police cars were in sight, but that roadblock was probably still in place. There wasn’t any traffic driving through town.

“Uh, there’s a police barricade that way,” I said. If they saw us carrying Temi, they might force us to take her to the hospital whether the elves thought they could help her on their own or not.

“Yes.” Eleriss continued to walk briskly down the street.

Alek continued to match his stride, but he watched me, too, maybe hoping I would change my mind. Well, the worst-case scenario should be that we would be taken to the hospital.

My phone rang, and Simon’s face popped up.

“What do you mean Temi’s knocked out?” he blurted before I could get a hello out. The text I had jabbed in while talking to the elves hadn’t been that explanatory.

“She was in the building that blew up,” I said. “We’re taking her back to the campground to—”

“The
campground
? Why not the hospital? Where are you? We’re coming.”

“Heading back to the van. Eleriss says he can help Temi.”

Simon cursed, and the sound of sandals slapping against the sidewalk came over the phone.

“My friends don’t seem to have much faith in your healing skills,” I said when Eleriss looked in my direction.

“It is true I am not an expert on human physiology, but I have received training on how to respond in medical crises.”

“Eleriss says he has it under control,” I said into the phone.

By now, Simon had come into view, running up the street behind us, his phone clutched in one hand and the Dirt Viper in the other. Naomi ran after him, her pigtails bouncing with every step. We would make an interesting sight descending on that police barricade. Which should come into view any time. We had passed the last of the shops and were nearing a bend in the road.

Simon and Naomi caught up at the same time as the three police cars blocking the street came into view. Sweat streamed down both of their faces. I had no doubt that dust and grime caked me too.

Simon fell in beside Alek. “Is she all right? Are you sure we shouldn’t be going the other way?” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of West Sedona and the hospital. “Temi, do you want elves to heal you or real people?”

“Ssh,” I whispered, aware of the two policemen standing in front of the cars. They were facing the highway and talking to a couple of the motorists whose vehicles were parked alongside the road, but they would be able to hear us soon. Nobody had glanced in our direction yet, but I didn’t expect our luck to hold.

The dented and perforated blue van was visible farther down the road, but we had quite a walk still to reach it. Eleriss strode toward the side of the road, as if he would simply pass the cars without anyone noticing him.

“She’s not saying anything,” Simon said, his voice lower now, concern wrinkling his brow.

“I told you she was unconscious.”

“That’s not good.”

“She groaned earlier. Now, hush.”

Alek was following after Eleriss, and I did, too, though I kept my eyes on the police. I couldn’t believe neither of the men had glanced back at us yet. Then I remembered the time Eleriss and Jakatra had ridden their motorcycles into the Prescott campground to search the woods for sign of the first monster. The police hadn’t noticed them then, either.

“Are you able to keep them from seeing us?” I whispered, even though the question seemed stupid at that point. We had walked around the car and were heading away from the barricade now. The police officers were still talking to the motorists, evasively answering questions about what was going on.

“Yes,” Eleriss said. “Stay close.”

“How?” Simon asked, ripping his gaze from Temi’s inert form.

“For the moment, we are… as the new
jibtab
is to you.”

“
Cloaked
?” Simon gaped at him.

Eleriss tilted his head. “Clad in a loose garment that serves a similar purpose to your overcoat?”

“Uh, no.”

“Invisible,” I supplied, not in the mood to explain Star Trek spaceships to real aliens.

“Oh, yes, invisible to human eyes.” Eleriss held up a device he often carried with him, the same one Temi had identified as a portal opener. Apparently, it had a multitude of uses. “I cannot dimensionally shift us naturally, not as the
jibtab
can, but we have tools that cause the same effect.”

“Dimensionally shift?” Simon tripped over a pothole—or maybe his own feet—and tumbled to the ground.

Startled, I stopped to give him a hand. He waved me away, his palm lacerated with fresh red scratches, and popped to his feet. He glanced at Temi, as if embarrassed she might have witnessed that, but her eyes were still closed.

“You all right?” I glanced backward again, as if Simon tripping might have nullified whatever Eleriss had done, but the police were still ignoring us. Another forty meters, and we would reach the van. A good thing, because Alek’s face was flushed and glistening with sweat. As tough as he was, he had to be ready to set Temi down and give his arms a break.

“Dimensionally shifted,” Simon breathed.

“You have the look of a man who’s just experienced an epiphany,” I said, though I was more concerned about getting to the van, helping Temi, and finding out if there was any way to get the sword back.

“I’d wondered if dimensions might have something to do with… everything. Remember that Stargate episode with the monsters that inhabited a dimension parallel to our own?”

“No.”

“I’m pretty sure it was based on that old Lovecraft story. Say, Eleriss, what’s the elven pineal gland like? Similar to ours?”

“Pardon?” Eleriss asked.

I almost said the same thing, except in a less polite way. “I can usually follow along with your science fiction analogies, but you’re going to have to explain this one.”

“I was joking about the gland. Probably.” Simon squinted at Eleriss. “But there are all kinds of stories based on the idea of dimensions overlapping and there being things that happen to cause humans to see and sometimes interact with creatures from the other dimensions.”

“And get killed by those creatures?” I asked. We had reached the van, so I ran ahead to open the door, not waiting for his answer.

“Sometimes, yes.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “This must be why our weapons don’t work. Duh, why didn’t I think of that? It wouldn’t matter if we used a gun or a nuke or a pair of pliers, because the monsters aren’t
there
, not completely. I’m surprised the bullets didn’t go right through the other
jibtab
. They must be… I don’t know, like right on the
edge
of our reality.”

“How come they can hurt us if we can’t hurt them?” I asked.

Alek climbed into the van, and I pushed stuff out of the way so he could lay Temi across the seats.

“Take us to your conveyance home by the creek,” Eleriss said, slipping in after us.

“The campground?” I asked.

“Yes.”

We hadn’t paid for another night, but I guessed that didn’t matter at the moment. It would probably be deserted, and he could do… whatever elves were trained to do in medical crises. We needed to return Naomi to her grandmother too. She had been silent since catching up with the group, her eyes big and round as she listened to us speak. Information overload. I knew the feeling.

Simon had dropped down beside Temi, his lip caught between his teeth, so I swatted him on the chest.

“Give me the keys.”

He dropped them in my hand without argument. “They must have been engineered that way,” he said. “The
jibtab
. Given weapons—claws and fangs and stingers—that can somehow be effective across dimensions.” His head jerked up, his eyes locking on Eleriss. “The way the sword is, right?”

Eleriss nodded. “The sword exists in many realities at once. Many of our tools operate this way. We have long traveled between worlds and across dimensions.”

“Then how come we were able to bury the last monster under a pile of rock?” I jammed the keys into the ignition and started the van. Naomi slumped down in the passenger seat. “If it didn’t wholly exist in our dimension, then how did a pile of rocks from our reality crush it?”

“
Did
the rocks crush it?” Simon asked, still looking at Eleriss. “Or was it Temi poking it full of holes that did it in?”

Hm, that was possible. We had been too busy trying not to drown or get crushed ourselves. I had no idea what had finally killed the monster in the end.

“We were not there when it met its demise,” Eleriss said, “but it is likely its wounds from the sword were what killed it.”

So even if we managed to drop a mountain on our flying
jibtab
, there was no guarantee it would be killed. In fact, it was sounding more and more likely that it
wouldn’t
be killed.

A stream of cars had parked behind us, and I had to back up and creep forward a few times before I could maneuver the van out of its improvised parking spot, but we finally headed back up the road, away from Sedona. I watched the last of the buildings disappear in the rearview mirror, trying not to feel like we were fleeing the scene.

“Did we help anything?” I murmured. “Or simply screw things up even more? And what’s going to happen when the
jibtab
regenerates and comes back to town?” Nobody answered my mutters. I glanced in the mirror at Eleriss and raised my voice to ask, “I saw Jakatra holding a little blue box. Was that the real one? Is he taking it out of town?”

“That was the real one, yes. It was located in the back of the store where the bomb went off,” Eleriss said. “A trap not for the
jibtab
but for Artemis. I should have realized this. I did not believe… no, I should have known. Many of my people respect all forms of life, but some… consider themselves important enough to make decisions about which creatures can live and die without upsetting the balance.”

In other words, his portal authorities didn’t give a crap about humans. I couldn’t manage to be shocked. I hoped I had the opportunity to deck Green Eyes someday. Just because Eleriss and Jakatra wouldn’t cross her didn’t mean I wouldn’t.

“When can you heal Temi?” Simon asked. “She doesn’t look good. I mean she
always
looks good, but you know, not as much now.”

I would have rolled my eyes, but I knew he was fumbling his words because he was nervous and worried about her.

“I will commence when we are no longer in motion,” Eleriss said.

“We’re almost to the campground,” I said. “Unless you want me to pull over sooner? How bad is she?”

“In a non-critical condition.”

Good. A minute later, we came up to the turn off—the vehicle was still in the ditch off to the side of the driveway. I rolled us down the hill and toward our old spot. Naomi leaned forward, her face tense. I recalled that there had been a police or aid car down here earlier, though there weren’t any flashing lights around now. The campground lay eerily quiet, the soft rush of water audible from below.

Naomi’s van was still in their spot, but it wasn’t alone. A firefighter’s EMS truck had pulled up in front of it. My stomach sank. I had told Naomi the campground would be safe, that it was too far from town and that it wouldn’t be a target. I hadn’t meant to lie to the girl.

“No,” Naomi whispered, her hand finding the door handle.

I pulled to a stop so she could jump out without hurting herself. As the door opened, a man was saying, “She’s the last one. Let’s get to the ER.”

“No,” Naomi said, more loudly this time. She sprinted to the back of the truck a second before the paramedic closed the door. “Wait, is my grandmother in there? She was… we’re staying here.” She waved toward their van.

I stared as the man said something and gave her a hand up, an ache in my heart. I didn’t know whether to pull into our old camp spot or simply sit there. Either way, I felt useless. The truck pulled away, its lights flashing again.

“What now?” I whispered, twisting to look at Eleriss.

He had produced a small device and was kneeling beside Temi, and he didn’t respond.

Remembering that he had wanted the van to be stationary, I pulled into the campsite and turned it off. Simon crouched next to Temi, probably crowding Eleriss, but the elf didn’t say anything. Not knowing what else to do, I climbed out and sat on the picnic table.

My eyes ached. I didn’t know if it was because they were tired or because they wanted a good cry. Even if I hadn’t personally lost anyone close, so long as nothing happened to Temi, I keenly felt our failure. I didn’t know what we could have done better. We were just… not qualified for this job. Our attempts at playing hero seemed ludicrous now, in light of the fact that we had done absolutely nothing to help anybody. Maybe it had been ludicrous from the beginning, and maybe I’d known that all along. I’d just gotten caught up in… I didn’t know what. Simon’s enthusiasm? My own interest in the elves? The fact that Eleriss and Jakatra had shown some faith in us, or in Temi at least, in putting the sword in her hands?