Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) (2 page)

Darryl
shouted, “Claire? Honey?”

He
moved slowly down the alley, peering into shadows, while I tried not to
breathe. Looking behind the dumpster apparently wasn't on his list of
possibilities because he moved past me and I saw the reason instinct had sent
me running. He was carrying a roll of duct tape. Somehow I didn't think he'd
stopped by to repair my leaking gutters.

Fortunately
he was a spoiled brat and lacked fortitude. Those of us who are self-supporting
know how to hang in there, which this time meant staying stuffed behind the
dumpster, silent and not puking, until boredom sent Darryl back through my yard
to his BMW.

When
I heard the engine purr, I slipped through the gate and back into my yard but I
didn't go near the house. I went to a back corner of the garden, crouched down
on damp earth between the fence and an overgrown bush, and waited.

And
kept right on waiting. No one expected me anywhere until morning. I made the
right choice because next thing I knew, the car came purring down the alley,
its headlights chasing the dark away from hidey corners.

He
drove through twice, then stopped, got out, came through my back gate and
circled the house, went up the back steps to the kitchen door, tried the knob.
Knocked. Pounded.

Keep
it up, Billy Goat Gruff, I thought. Wake up the troll under the bridge.

A
really big weird dude rented the basement apartment in my house and he worked
nights, so maybe he wasn't home. I hoped he was and hoped Darryl woke him up in
a bad mood. Far as I knew, the troll was nonviolent, but he did not look
nonviolent.

Darryl
pulled out his cellphone, punched in a number and said, “Not here. Yes,
probably. Light's on so she must be coming back. I'll swing by first thing in
the morning.”

I
spent another hour feeling the damp spread across my ass and soak its way up
through my jeans, with the only distraction the burning in my knee. By the time
I decided to move, I was almost too stiff to unfold. Then, very quietly,
cautiously, I slipped back to the alley, stayed in the shadows, made my way to
the street and headed out on a five mile hike to Roman's house.

Buses
don't run in Mudflat after evening commute.

Okay,
I made it before sunrise, much to everyone's amazement, got stuck in the middle
of the backseat of Roman's old car between a couple who were mad at each other,
and curled my damp self around my damp backpack and went to sleep.

I
wish I could sing the joys of camping but it was far worse than I had imagined.
It took us about four hours, what with a ferry ride and two bridges, to reach
the Olympic Mountains, which are centered on a peninsula and surrounded by a
narrow band of flat land and beaches and saltwater and the whole thing
stretches west to the Pacific Ocean where there's a line of windswept beaches
and a rain forest, and some people actually think of it as vacationland.
Tourists love misery.

We
didn't go that far. Quick geography lesson here: the Olympic Mountains are a
fairly spectacular cluster, high and pointy and snow-topped most of the year. A
few roads go up the edges to lookout areas. The best known is Hurricane Ridge.

The
roads do not cut through the range because it isn't as though anyone needs to
shortcut across a peninsula at the end of the world. So the center is kept wild,
though I guess naturalists prefer words like pristine, which means no paving.
Nothing that goes putt-putt or vroom-vroom is allowed to enter. It is open past
the road's end and the ranger stations on a permission basis to the sort of
folks who hike where there is no trail. The permission thing is required. I
guess the park service gets really tired of searching for lost hikers.

Around
the outer edges, on the lower slopes, there are picnic areas and camp grounds
and that's where we ended up, sleeping in stupid canvas bags on bare dirt while
the rain dripped slowly on our soggy cocoons.

The
others warmed themselves with some slightly illegal and some highly illegal
substances. The food supply ran out and the liquor was nonstop.

Sick
of the lot of them, I took advantage of the first sunny day. I peeled out of my
wet jeans and sweat shirt and switched into tee shirt, shorts, sandals, tucked
my pony tail through the back strap of my baseball cap, and shouldered my pack,
which contained very little but I didn't trust any of them to stay out of it if
I left it. I was down to my last clean tee shirt.

While
Roman and the others stretched out on the ground and on the picnic table,
snoring themselves into oblivion and sunburns, I decided to find the road and
see if I could possibly hitch a ride to somewhere, anywhere. My credit card was
good for a motel room, a hot shower and food and oh yes, please, black coffee
before I died from caffeine withdrawal.

The
one small flaw in my plan was my lack of any sense of direction. I was
absolutely sure that if I took a shortcut it would get me to the road in twenty
minutes, forty tops.

After
three hours of pushing my way through thickening undergrowth, all I'd found
were a few prickly berry bushes. I dug out my Swiss army knife, one of those
great red things that someone once gave me and I never expected to use, and
managed to cut off a small spray. The berries looked ripe but were hard and
sour. My arms and legs were crisscrossed with scratches. I tucked the knife
through the belt on my shorts and then stumbled into a shallow stream to cool
my burning feet.

A
stream had to go somewhere, right, and I was beginning to suspect I'd been
walking in circles. So I stayed in the stream and waded through the knee-deep
cool water until weariness slowed my pace to a full stop.

Every
inch of me, from my knees up, itched with sweat. I took off my hat, stuffed it
into my pack, and ducked down into the stream until its coolness soaked through
my clothes to my skin, then stood and bent over and managed to get my long hair
and sticky scalp thoroughly wet.

Let
me say here than I don't know which of us was most surprised.

CHAPTER
2

“Do
not touch your knife. Turn slowly,” a voice behind me said.

I
stiffened, my arms raised. The voice that spoke was soft, the words barely
audible, his accent nothing I recognized.

Park
ranger? What, had they already arrested Roman and crew and had come looking for
me? I did a quick think and started readying a sobbing explanation about how I
barely knew them and was shocked, absolutely shocked, to discover they had
brought along booze and drugs on what I had thought was to be a commune with
nature. That sounded right. I turned slowly as commanded, my arms above my
head.

And
then I looked up at my captor.

He
was young, still closer to boy than man, looked about college freshman age.
Beneath a thick mass of yellow hair was a knockout face, sky blue eyes, wide
mouth and square jaw, thick neck. His skin was sunburned beneath a scattering
of freckles on his shoulders.

“Who
are you, girl?” he whispered.

His
question snapped my mind back to my situation. Who was I, indeed? How long
since I had been asked that question?

“Hail,
Conan the Barbarian,” I said because although he looked nothing like the film
version, was much better looking, actually, he was dressed in a costume Arnold
would have envied. Classy outfit, killer boots, tooled leather belt. “What's
up? Is there a medieval fair going on?”

“Your
name?” he said again.

Okay,
I could play games. Let's see, what were the rules? Oh right, wicked sorcerers
used people's names to control them, therefore always give an alias.

Something
that meant astrologer or fortuneteller? Gypsy Sue? No, something more
glamorous, right? Maybe this fair had good food. I'd been to a few and run into
cold hot dogs and warm coke but never mind, I could hope.

“Stargazer,”
I said and grinned at him.

He
did not return my grin. Maybe barbarians aren't supposed to grin and this guy was
taking his role-playing way too seriously. “Come toward me slowly. Make no
sound. I will not harm you.”

Yeah,
I'd heard that one before. Still, out here in the woods with no one else in
sight, I figured I'd humor the guy. In his hand he held a heavy broadsword, the
kind used by barbarians to slay their enemies in every film I could remember
and, unfortunately, it didn't look fake. Probably the edges were dull but
still, the damn thing could leave a hell of a bruise.

He
stood above me at the edge of the stream bank, half concealed by brush. After I
waded out of the stream and climbed the bank, he reached toward me and plucked
my knife from my belt. I'd forgotten all about it, that silly Swiss pocket
knife that I had dug out of my pack to use to cut berries. Moving swiftly, he
tucked it inside his boot, then hung his sword on his own belt.

“Okay,
play time is over, fella. That knife was a gift and I want it back,” I
muttered.

He
grabbed me and turned me away from him so that he could pull my backpack off of
my shoulders. When he let go of me, I turned to face him again and watched in
silence as he reached into the pack, felt through the contents.

Big
deal, all that remained in my pack was a clean tee shirt, my comb, my
toothbrush and my billfold. He glanced at each item, looked puzzled, and then
replaced everything except the billfold. He flipped it open and pulled out my
credit card.

“I
can't believe this!” I stormed. “Muggers in a national forest!”

He
slid the card back into the billfold, dropped it back into the pack, then dug
into the bottom and came up with the last item, my cellphone.

When
he pressed his fingers into the keys, the phone lit up. His eyes went wide and
those blond eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline as he dropped
the phone into the damp ferns.

“Hey!”
I shouted and a bunch of other words I keep meaning to remove from my
vocabulary because honestly, they sound juvenile, but by the time I'd made it
through a string of them, I found the phone, picked it up, wiped it off against
my shirt front and then thought, why not 9-1-1? If he was a fruitcake, I could
use some help here. But when I pressed the keys, the roaming light faded and
goodbye battery.

Okay,
make the best of it, look at the guy and figure out the best route away.

We
were the same height. Oh, that's right. Arnold-style barbarians aren't tall, so
maybe that's why this guy picked this costume. Not tall, no, but he seemed much
larger than me because he was solid and hard-muscled and if his intentions were
unpleasant, I was going to have to count on my wits.

He
wore gold arm bands above his elbows and at his wrists, and his fingers were
covered with gold rings. Some of the gold almost looked real, although it had
to be costume jewelry considering the size of each piece.

His
woven vest was open in front and tied with laces that crisscrossed on his
chest. More of that nice yellow hair gleamed like sunshine against his bare
skin. He wore pants tucked into boots laced to his knees; kind of sexy, really.

“You
are from the land beyond the mist,” he said. “How did you come here?”

“I
flew over the top of a mountain, us stargazers have invisible wings,” I said,
“and landed in your stupid stream.”

My
wet shorts and dripping hair itched. To hide my fear, I pulled my long hair
forward over my shoulder and slowly twisted it to wring out the water.

He
frowned, caught my wrist in a firm grip, and said, “Come with me but make no
noise or they will kill you.”

Reason
enough to be silent, I decided. What kinds of games were going on here? Some
kind of paintball battle? He led me away from the stream along a path through
the woods where the trees pressed together and their leaves hid the sun.

“If
you cry out, my guards will hear you. I cannot always control them.”

He
half dragged me, pulling me along like a child, and his action cleared my mind.
He was much stronger than I, but maybe dumber? If I kept my thoughts clear,
could I outwit him? It probably depended on who his playmates were and how
close it was to dinnertime and the end of the game. My heart calmed its
pounding.

“Why
do your friends want to kill me?” I asked. “Do they score a point for every
limp body? Hey, I can do limp.”

His
eyes widened with curiosity.

“I
don't care if you live or die, but first I want to speak with you. I know from
your dark hair that you are from the outlands. Only once before have outlanders
come here and that was long ago and they are gone. You did not come that way.
Still, I do not believe you can fly.”

I
avoided his stare by looking over his shoulder, and said nothing. His act was
way too complicated and he obviously had no plan to step out of character for
me. Oh. Maybe this was a really large fair and he thought I was a participant.

“I'm
not with the fair,” I said. “If you could just take me to the nearest road, I
can thumb a ride.”

His
lower lip jutted out. “You must be hungry with nothing to eat but berries. I
will give you food if you will tell me how you came here.”

When
I didn't answer, because honestly, how had I managed to get this lost, he
shrugged and reached into a pouch strung to his belt, an honest-to-God leather
pouch, which must have been lined with plastic. Anyway I hoped so, because he
pulled out a hunk of cheese and a long brown piece of something or other.

He
held them out to me. “Here, eat this.”

The
cheese had a pungent odor, but it was food I recognized. I sniffed it, broke a
small bit off of a corner and tasted it, not believing myself because probably
the bacteria count was off the scale.

“Yes,
thanks,” I said and palmed it, figuring I'd drop it in the ferns when he looked
away.