Arthr trailed a short distance behind, feeling horrifically out of place. Wasn’t it a felony of some kind to imitate an FBI agent? Well, technically he wasn’t doing anything of the sort, but he still felt wrong. When they passed through a small office he felt eyes upon him. He pulled his jacket a little tighter and dutifully followed while the small guy led them to a private office in the corner.
“George’s in here.” The man knocked thrice and turned the knob, easing it open. He stepped away from the opening and gestured inside. “If you need anything else, I’ll be out here.”
“That will be acceptable,” Annika said with a smile. She nodded a signal to Arthr and sidled into the office. Though he was at first unsure whether he should follow, staying with Annika would ensure he received the fewest questions about her alleged affiliation. Fewer chances to mess everything up, he thought bitterly.
The room was small, crowded on three sides by filing cabinets and other assorted fixtures. The narrow desk in the middle was covered in stationery and trinkets. Pens lay uncapped amid the disheveled and unfinished reports. On the side closest to them sat a man in a desk chair. He was round and plump, with thick arms and legs. In his shaking, mitten-like hands he clutched a mug of coffee. As they entered, the man turned about. His bulging eyes passed them over once, but though his lips shuddered, he said nothing.
Annika settled the office door shut behind them and drew her wallet again. “My name is Agent Elizabeth Bordon, FBI,” she said, flashing her badge. “I’m here investigating an incident that occurred this morning at this bus terminal. I’ve been informed that you were the driver of the bus involved in the incident in question.”
The man’s mouth drifted open. The clinking of the spoon in his coffee disturbed the fragile quiet. “Oh God, you believe me!” He made a move to stand. “Thank you so much—”
“Please stay seated,” Annika ordered. Arthr wondered if she’d pulled this FBI ruse before; she certainly seemed confident in it. With an authoritative presence, she walked around the desk and lowered herself into the opposing chair. “Now, can you tell me exactly what happened?”
Arthr, still standing near the door, listened as the man explained, in quite an unsteady and fantastic tone, how a passenger had informed him of two girls with a pet hiding in a duffel bag, and how the bag exploded into a nightmarish beast when he confronted them. Arthr had thought the first man’s use of the word chupacabra a mistake, but the fact that the driver kept using it disproved that notion.
“And you are certain they ran all the way to the tree line?” Annika said once the man had finished.
He looked down at his coffee. “I’m not certain. I didn’t get off the bus until they were gone, but everyone outside said they disappeared into the trees. Some of them filmed it on their phones and shit, but I don’t have any—”
Annika abruptly stood up. “Let’s see. If they disappeared between the buildings, then that means they were heading west. What’s on the other side of those trees?”
He blinked up at her. “I don’t know. I’m not from around here.”
“Great.” She walked back to the office door and pushed it partly ajar. “Excuse me, Mr. Laster. Is there a map of the area here?”
The man said something that Arthr couldn’t make out, and a few moments later he brought a large roll of push-pin-eaten paper to the door.
“Thank you kindly,” Annika said with a smile. The door again eased shut, and she strolled back to the desk. She unfurled the map across its surface, knocking over a cup of pencils. Arthr could only identify varying shapes of green separated by dotted lines from where he stood, but Annika seemed to be studying it intently. She hummed. “So this here is a state wilderness park, huh?”
The man at the desk looked confused by the question, but he followed her gaze to the map and began to nod. “Seems like it, yes.”
She rapped her fingernails against the surface of her fake badge. Arthr just fidgeted, unsure what he could do to help.
“Deer Crag,” Annika muttered. “Westington. Rose Gulch. Alright, got it. Thank you very much for your cooperation.” She turned about and marched toward the door. Her arm snaked out and grabbed Arthr by the wrist. “Let’s go.” Stunned by her haste, he could only allow himself to be pulled out the office and past the few workers in the larger area. “Thank you for assisting me, Mr. Laster,” she called. “If I have any further questions, either my supervisor or myself will call directly. There should be no need for a follow-up visit.”
Standing at the water cooler, Mr. Laster was too confused by the way they stormed past him to say much, and Arthr found the startled look on his face distracting. However, there was nothing else for them there. Annika didn’t let go of his wrist until she flung open the employee-only door and they emerged into the shade again.
Arthr threw his forearm up to cover his eyes. The concrete beyond their island of shade blinded him, and for a moment his eyelids swam with oily blotches of color. He stared at the soothing darkness at his feet and blinked rapidly. The quiet fear from before resumed gnawing upon his certainty. What had they just gotten away with?
Annika, meanwhile, reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Her thumb glided across the number pad, dialing a code. For a few moments, she navigated through various menus that Arthr couldn’t read, until at last she lifted the device to her ear and blew out a tired breath.
“Who’re you calling?” Arthr asked. It was one of many questions he had.
She raised a finger to silence him. For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Then, Annika’s face twisted into a pained expression. Tears sparkled in her eyes and she gave a sharp sob. “Hello?” she said in a feeble whimper. “Is this Deer Crag?” A pause, and then a sigh slipped between her lips. “Oh, thank God. Please, you have to help me. I, I came here on a day-trip with my two little sisters, and we were hiking through the river trail nearest Carland, and—I don’t know how it happened, but we got separated, and now I don’t know where they are.” Her chest heaved, tears streaming down her cheeks. She began to nod. “Uh-huh. At about seven this morning. I’ve been looking all over, but—I’m afraid they’re probably scared and hungry and . . . Yes, Ranger, sir. Sarah’s seventeen. She’s five foot three, brown hair and brown eyes. Melody just turned eleven, blond hair and blue eyes, shorter than Sarah.”
For a few further moments, she kept making helpless grunts of confirmation. Then, she sighed. “Oh, God bless you! I’d appreciate that so much. And, and please, could you have someone call me back if they find them? Please? I’m so worried and I just . . . Oh, thank you, sir. Yes, of course.” She then recited a phone number, and another quivering sigh escaped her lungs. “Of course. Yes. Elizabeth. Thank you, sir. Yes. Okay. I will.” With a final sob, she hung up. Then, just as suddenly as it had come upon her, the emotional explosion faded to nothing.
“What happened?” Arthr asked, still confused by the display.
Annika calmly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “The rangers are going to be on the lookout for them. More importantly, he said he’d contact the police in the neighboring towns.”
“How can you just cry like that?”
“Easily. Emotions are a toolbox, and tears happen to work really well on men.”
He nodded. “I, uhh, sorta noticed.” He gave her the manliest smile he could muster. “I don’t want to see you cry again, Annika.”
“Oh, Christ. Just hurry up and follow me,” she said, starting toward the parking lot. “We’re doubling down on Westington.”
Embarrassed at his flop of a boast, Arthr followed. “What makes you so sure they’ll end up in Westington?” His attempt at sounding stern and serious was undermined by the blazing heat in his cheeks. “I mean, instead of one of those other places you mentioned.”
“That town is closer to here than any of the others, assuming they’re cutting through Deer Crag. If Little Miss Muffet and Blondie were running from here in a panic because of Cinnamon getting loose, then they w
on’t be eager to come back this way. The natural form of the land makes Westington the destination of least resistance. And if they’re heading to Manix, they still have a timetable to adhere to, so close is going to beat out safe.”
Only partially understanding the woman’s thought process, Arthr found himself wondering again just what it was Spinneretta intended to do if she made it to Manix in the first place. If the cult really was back, then that was logically the last place any of them should want to be. On the other hand, he knew he could never hope to understand just what it was his sisters were going through. And worse, the darkest part of his mind was quick to propose that, unlike them, he would never know what it was like to be needed by someone.
Spinneretta never thought she was afraid of heights. She’d climbed the trees around their home in Grantwood plenty of times growing up without ever thinking about falling. Then again, none of those trees had approached seventy feet in height. She was now sixty feet up a gigantic fir, hanging from an overhead branch by four of her appendages. The scent of Christmas filled her spiracles, and the taste of sap was stark on the tips of her legs as they dug into the bark.
She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the tickling needles in her face. Almost there. Just a little farther. She gritted her teeth and heaved with her spider legs. As she vaulted up onto the branch, her hands and posterior legs went to the trunk to support herself and catch her balance. The whole tree swayed in the wind, and a glance toward the ground cured her of her desire to see how high she was.
“Are you okay?” Kara called from the ground. Her voice seemed so distant that Spinneretta had to resist the urge to look down again.
“I’m fine,” she yelled back, voice wavering. Luckily, the tops of the neighboring firs did a good job of hiding the ground from her sight. As long as she didn’t look straight down, she could see nothing but branches and needles below her. The walls of her stomach felt like they were melting.
Her stubby branch was narrow, barely able to hold both her feet. When she craned her head upwards and found no position more suitable, she took a deep breath and began easing herself to a standing position. Her left set of legs wrapped about the trunk desperately, and her right appendages spread to the side for balance.
The sea of trees stretched for what must have been miles ahead, where the rolling hills stole the horizon away. There were more rocky peaks further beyond, their strata painted in beautiful hues of orange and gray and white and blue. The lack of trees where the creek wound through the forest stood out like a gigantic, all-consuming serpent. No sign of civilization yet, but she hadn’t planned on relying on her eyes to search.
She sucked another breath in through her mouth and spread all of her chitin appendages out. Her footing was steady now. With one hand on the trunk, she knew her balance would hold. Her eyes fell shut. Spider legs tingling, she allowed her sense of smell to take over. Her body began to heat up as she invited the Instinct into her bloodstream.
The scent of the wilderness bloomed all around her. The smell of pine needles, fresh and vital, nearly overwhelmed her. She could have counted the pine cones in a half-mile radius were she so inclined. It all came to her in a maelstrom of clarity. The aromas of wildflowers growing amid the lonely weeds. The mulchy musk of damp earth covered in composting leaves and needles. The hint of algae growing along the rocks of the stream. From the top of the tree, all the smells unfolded into a map that stretched for miles in all directions. She could make out squirrels, deer, bears, and . . .
She wrinkled her nose. Fire. The distinct scent of burning wood—Douglas fir, far to the south. And another—hickory—to the north, closer. She ignored those scents, digging further beneath them toward the receding horizon. Five miles. Ten miles. She caught a whiff of something perhaps fifteen miles away. It was so diluted that it could have been her imagination, but she chose to believe it was real. Exhaust. She spent a few more moments studying the lay of the land from her perch, and then a gust of wind broke her concentration and sent her spider legs back to the tree trunk out of panic.
“Did you find anything?” Kara shouted up.
Spinneretta let out a shaky breath. Satisfied with her reconnaissance, she released the Instinct back whence it came. She wrapped her spider legs about the trunk of the great tree, dug the tips in, and began to rappel down. Down was so much easier than up. When she sank below the canopy again, and the sun was no more than a cold suggestion of light, she released her hold on the tree and dropped to the ground. Her spider legs splayed automatically to absorb the impact, though her joints still rattled from the force.
Kara greeted her with a warm smile. “Well?”
It took a few breaths to calm herself from the rush of adrenaline that gravity brought. All she could smell now was the damp earth and the veil of pine needles. She reached down and picked Mark’s jacket up from the neat pile she’d folded it into and slipped it back on. “I smelled gasoline exhaust. That way. Means we’re not too far from another town, or at least a road.”
“How far away is it?”
Still short of breath, she wiped her forehead with her sleeve and oriented herself to the west. “Hard to say. My guess is fifteen or twenty miles.”
“Wow, I didn’t know you could smell that far.”
“Me neither. But the air is really clear here, so I guess that has something to do with it. Probably height, too.” Something warm pressed against her legs, and she looked down to find Cinnamon crackling up at her. “And I smelled something else, too.”
“What?”
“Fires. Two of them, north and south of us. I think they’re campfires.”
Kara hoisted her backpack to one shoulder. “Campfires? What does that mean?”
“It means that this is probably a park of some kind. We need to be careful not to run into any hikers or anything.”
“Well, we could take turns using the Hunting to make sure nobody gets close to us.”
Spinneretta passed a nervous glance at their surroundings. “Maybe that’s a good idea. And we wouldn’t want a bear sneaking up on us, either.”
Kara squealed. “Aah! But bears are so cute!”
“Anyway, we need to keep heading west. And I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
“Same!”
Spinneretta exhaled and briefly let herself enjoy the coolness creeping along her skin from the shade. Then, she again began to call forth the Instinct’s influence; they’d need to track prey somehow, after all. When that primal force once again saturated her blood and her skin burned with preternatural heat, she set her eyes on the gaps in the forest ahead. Just like before, the smell of life was all around them. She slipped the jacket off and tied the sleeves about her waist. “Let’s go. Those deer aren’t going to hunt themselves.”
Chapter 18
Bonfires in the Mojave
Like almost every structure not forged of corrugated metal in the town of Manix, the gas station’s red facade was worn and scarred, sandblasted raw by desert winds. The beaten exterior and cracked windows gave it an air of abandon which the Yes, We’re Open sign seemed to contradict with a reckless devotion. Through the wire mesh windows, Amanda saw that it was, indeed, staffed. She took a deep breath to calm her restless stomach and looked over her shoulder at Chelsea and Kyle. “Well, let’s see if they can tell us anything.”
The door chimed at her as she led the way inside. Behind the counter, a middle-aged woman with a deep, pitted face glanced up from wiping the display case of lotto tickets. “Mornin’,” the woman said.
Amanda wove through the narrow aisles of snacks and stationery toward the checkout, taking in the stained color of the fixtures. The blue speckled floor was clean, but aged and faded in geometric blocks. It was a style that couldn’t have been popular anytime in the last forty years, at least.
“Don’t recognize your faces,” the cashier said. “Guys on your way to Vegas?”
Amanda felt a nervous tickle deep in her throat. “No.” She glanced
at her comrades, who didn’t seem to have anything in the way of help to offer. On my own, huh? “We, uhh . . . This is going to sound weird, but we’re here looking for a group of people.” The woman peered at her, and the welcome vanished from the wrinkles in her face. Her lips stretched thin, and her back straightened. Amanda forced herself to finish the thought, though the woman’s posture suggested she already knew. “Can you tell me anything about the Order of the Yellow Dawn?”
The cashier stared at Amanda for a long moment, her eyes like a pair of vivisection pins. The air was suddenly damp, chilly. The distant strains of the radio’s butt-rock anthem punctuated the silence. At last, the woman turned back to the display case and resumed her wiping. “Afraid I’ve never heard of them.”
Feeling the ice in her words, Amanda for a single moment considered giving up and leaving without another word. But before she could even think about retreating, Kyle stepped up just behind her with a small grunt. “It’s perfectly clear from that reaction that you know who they are,” he said.
The woman gave him a blank stare. “Look, if you’re searching for those robed weirdos, then just keep on driving.”
“Oh, crap,” Chelsea muttered. “It’s true.”
Kyle pushed Amanda gently out of the way as he sidled up to the counter. “Searching is a strong word right now, ma’am. We just want information.”
“Information?” The woman shook her head. “Those freaks are trouble, and Manix hasn’t been the same since they showed up. The greater their numbers grow, the more soul our town loses. How’s that for information?”
Kyle cocked his head to one side and leaned over the counter, knuckles planted upon the glass. “Where can we find them?”
She drew a thin breath through flared nostrils. “What, you wanna join up? Get lost. Things are bad enough without that kind of faith-tourism.”
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 24
