“We tried it your way,” she said. “Clearly it was not effective. From here on out, we do things my way.”
“Fine.” With a bad-tempered shrug, Matthew faced forward in his seat.
The guy next to me, who still held a gun pointed at me, shifted in his seat, his head bobbing back and forth between watching Sonia and Matthew and me.
“Which leads back to my previous question. What the hell is going on?”
“We need your research.”
And for like the hundredth time that night, I was taken aback. I stared uncomprehendingly at Matthew. “Excuse me?”
“Your notes, Dr. Coleman. Your thunderbird notes.”
Ford had suggested it, and I’d sort of agreed with him, especially after my grandfather’s call that morning. But to have it confirmed…. “You have got to be shitting me. You shot someone for my research notes on a cryptid?”
“Cryptid?” the guy next to me asked.
“A cryptid is a mythological creature,” Matthew explained.
“Not quite. A cryptid is a creature whose existence is unsubstantiated or disputed.” I bit my tongue. Now was not the time for an impromptu biology lecture.
“What’s the difference?” The guy next to me lowered the gun a little.
“Well, honestly, the difference lies in the likelihood that the creature could have actually existed. Take thunderbirds, for example. The Thunderbird of Native American legend—Thunderbird with a capital T—with the magical powers of thunder and lightning at his command, skews more mythological. The thunderbirds my family has been researching—with a lowercase t—don’t have magical or mythological abilities. They’re likely just rare birds.”
“So mythological creature equals magical, and cryptid means no magic.”
I scowled. “Not quite—”
“Enough.” Sonia smacked her hand on the steering wheel. “I’m surrounded by idiots. Why are we having this conversation at all? We are not at school. We do not require a lesson plan. We just need to know where to find Thunderbirds.”
I was pretty sure there was a capital T when she said it. “I don’t know where to find thunderbirds. If you know enough to track me down, you know that my family has been searching for that damned bird for generations.”
“But you came here.”
“Because I got a job here.”
“You expect me to believe that you, with your reputation and skills, moved to a small school in the middle of Wyoming, for a job? You certainly had job offers from more prestigious universities. But you chose a backward college in a backward state. I don’t buy it, Dr. Coleman.”
I shivered. “You know an awful lot about me.”
“You are not the only one who knows how to research, Dr. Coleman.”
I wished I could see her face. That expressionless tactical mask made it impossible to get a read on her. I’m not sure I’d thought about how many conversational and emotional cues came from the tilt of a lip or the narrowing of eyes.
“So, tell me, Dr. Coleman. Why did you really come to Cody?”
One more thing to add to the list of ways in which she was creepy: the way she kept saying my name. Dr. Coleman. After this, I would never insist on the title again. I’d go by Mister or Professor, or even hey you if I didn’t have to listen to someone with a voice as expressionless as the tactical mask she wore call me Dr. Coleman ever again.
And, since that was creepy, I needed a distraction. And, as I didn’t have anything to lose by telling the truth, I decided to go that route. “A few months ago…,” I began.
Her shoulders straightened, and even though it didn’t seem like she looked away from the road ahead of her, it felt like her attention was really on me now.
“…I ran across some rumors of sightings. Someone on a raptor migration forum made mention of a bird they couldn’t identify. They didn’t have a photo or video, but their description was fairly close to other descriptions I’ve heard over the years. About that same time, I came across a notice for a last-minute position opening at Cody College. It seemed like fate.”
“It seemed like fate?” Matthew asked. “You moved halfway across the country on a random comment about a big-bird sighting? It could have been anything. The person could have hallucinated or didn’t know a hawk from an owl. There has to be more to it than that.”
Okay, there might have been a smidge more to it than that, but the explanation would make me sound as crazy as my great-grandfather. A combination of desperation and disappearing evidence sent me west. My grandfather had undergone his last round of chemotherapy, and seeing him so weak and ill over the following weeks ignited a burning need to validate the family’s quest. Then that forum post. The poster was clearly not an expert, nor were they being particularly sensationalist in their claims. They simply stated they saw a strange bird they’d never seen before, one with some very unique traits. Normally that would barely be a blip on my radar. But then I looked for the forum post again to verify one of the details for my grandfather, and the post was gone. Disappeared. Just like it had never been.
Disappearing evidence was a huge red flag.
I’d contacted a hacker I know—totally white hat—to see if she could trace the post. Find out who posted it and who deleted it. Tracing the poster was simple, but the cleanup had been a bit tougher. She’d finally traced the deletion to an IP address for a computer at one of the labs at Cody College in Cody, Wyoming.
Yeah, I didn’t need to get into that with these guys. But maybe they could give me information. We’d been on the road for a while, and I couldn’t see much through the tinted windows, which told me we’d gone past most of the city lights. Out of town, then? But how far? And where were they taking me?
“Why are you guys so gung ho to find a thunderbird? I mean, I’d get it if you were interested in ornithology or wildlife biology, but you don’t strike me as the academic type.”
“Do you know the history of Thunderbirds?”
“Like the capital T mythological ones? Or the rarely sighted, largely undocumented, lowercase t bird one?”
“They are not a myth.” Matthew turned in his seat. “Thunderbirds are destructive, controlling, genocidal beings that need to be destroyed.”
“All that, huh?” I’d already figured these guys were a few cards short of a full deck mentally, but now I knew they were completely off their rockers. I probably shouldn’t have taunted the crazy people with guns, but I’d been dragged through the emotional wringer several times in the last few days, and I was completely out of fucks to give. “Genocidal? Really?”
“Thunderbird and the Horned Serpent were enemies and often battled for the worship of the early people,” Matthew began, sounding as though he were reading from a text. Maybe their manifesto? “But Thunderbird—”
“So we’re definitely talking about the capital T thunderbird, then? And capital H and S horned serpent?”
Matthew glared at me. The guy next to me actually hissed his displeasure.
“Thunderbird wasn’t content to share the adoration of the people, so he set out to destroy his competition, the Horned Serpent. Instead of facing the Horned Serpent in an honorable combat, Thunderbird played dirty. One day, while the Horned Serpent was traveling on land, Thunderbird used his lightning and wind to dry up the creeks and rivers and lakes. The Horned Serpent, who was tied at the most elemental level to the freshwater, was trapped, weakened by the distance from his source of power. It was then that Thunderbird attacked, murdering the Horned Serpent. And if that wasn’t enough, he also destroyed all serpents, supernatural and mundane, across the land, as well as the Horned Serpent’s entire following.”
“Out of curiosity, which myth is this? There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Native American stories of relating to Thunderbird, the horned serpents, and the fights between them. And I’m pretty sure you got all of them wrong.”
“It’s not myth, it’s history,” the guy next to me snapped.
“And the stories changed wi
th each retelling, which is why every region and tribe has slightly different versions,” Matthew added.
It might have been me, but that answer felt a bit fishy. Like it was an excuse someone came up with to explain why their revisionist history—or would that be revisionist mythology?—didn’t match the long-accepted versions.
“Enough.” This was the third time Sonia snapped the word. I wondered if she had to referee dim-witted minions and their kidnap victims very often. “No more chitchat. Tell us where Thunderbird is, or you will die a horribly painful death.”
That sounded horribly unpleasant. Better to focus on the first half of that sentence. “You honestly think I know where Thunderbird—the Thunderbird—is? I don’t even believe that Thunderbird—the Thunderbird—exists, and you expect me to give you his coordinates, like it was a sunken pirate ship or something.”
“Why did you go to the overlook by Buffalo Bill State Park the other night? Does he live there?” She asked this like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like, of course the Thunderbird lived in a state park. Like their whole group—definitely a cult—weren’t all bonkers.
“In the park?”
The guy next to me—I really needed to come up with something to call him—nudged me with his gun again. Well, maybe a little cooperation wouldn’t hurt.
“A few months ago, a strange bird was sighted. I told you that. Well, he was sighted in the air somewhere between Buffalo Bill State Park and Yellowstone.”
Sonia tilted her head to me, then had to slam on the brakes when the SUV in front of us slowed while she was distracted. “A few months ago? When? Exactly when?”
“Late September.”
“I knew it.” She pounded the steering wheel. Then she punched Matthew’s shoulder. “I told you I saw it.”
Those fucks I didn’t have to give? Well, dread brought them back in a rush. “You were there?” My voice croaked on the words. But if she’d been there…. I licked my lips. “By any chance,” I said, carefully choosing my words so as not to offend the crazy woman wearing a tactical mask, “are you an assassin? The one hired to kill a man who’d been undercover in a weapons-trafficking ring?”
“How could you have possibly known that?” The temperature in the car plummeted with her question, as if the very coldness of her voice overwhelmed the heater.
“Um… you know. A friend of a friend. But I’m sure it was a misunderstanding.” A misunderstanding? Lame, but probably an okay placate-the-cold-blooded-killer excuse.
I decided I needed a distraction, ASAP. I looked at Matthew, who was twisted a bit in his seat so he could get a good view of both me and Sonia. “So it’s a revenge thing? I mean, what do you plan on doing if and when you find the Thunderbird?”
“If we destroy the Thunderbird as he destroyed our Horned Serpent, the gifts of the Horned Serpent will return to us, his followers.”
Okay, the guy next to me had clearly swallowed the cult’s line of BS hook, line, and serpent. But blind devotion was better than creepy assassin. “The gifts of the Horned Serpent?” Also, it was better to play along and hope to come up with some kind of escape plan.
“Back during the height of the Horned Serpent’s reign, he would bestow upon his followers gifts of invisibility, healing powers, hypnotic abilities, and shape-shifting—”
I nearly swallowed my tongue. That’s what happened when you sucked in a breath while swallowing—the tongue gets in the way. But… shape-shifting? “You, ah, you believe in that kind of thing, do you? Shape-shifting? Invisibility?” I tacked that last one on just in case they thought my keen interest in shape-shifting a bit suspicious.
Matthew nodded, looking solemn. Not at all like someone spouting crazy talk. Of course, I’d seen a teenage girl turn into an eagle and a café manager change into a coyote. Given that, who was I to argue about the likelihood of shape-shifting? For all I knew, invisibility and hypnotism were just as prevalent.
“Well. That’s… something.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“One more chance, Dr. Coleman,” Sonia said, and again, my title on her lips creeped me out. “Tell us where to find Thunderbird.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Honestly. If I’d figured out where to find thunderbirds, I’d have documented their location and written a paper by now. Believe me, you can’t want to know the information more badly than I do.” Granted, I wanted to fulfill my grandfather’s dying wish and she wanted to turn invisible, but the means to our ends were the same.
“That’s too bad,” she said, and I got the feeling she didn’t mean it. Maybe it was the complete lack of emotion in her voice?
I looked out into the passing darkness. As much as I’d hoped to see some flashing red-and-blue lights and hear some sirens—surely someone had found Ford’s hopefully tranquilized-but-not-dead body or reported my kidnapping—there was only blackness and shadows along either side of the vehicle. An SUV still led the way in front of us while a third came up the rear. We were our own little convoy of crazy.
“Where are we going?” I saw a mile marker flash by, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the area for that to pinpoint a location. It did tell me, though, that we were on one of the highways. But given the complete lack of city lights, I’d already figured we were heading out of town.
“Buffalo Bill State Park, of course.”
She seemed stuck on the idea that the Thunderbird was hanging out at the park. I racked my brain to come up with some way out of this. I mean, I was smart, right? Genius IQ and all that, and I couldn’t think of some way to escape at least seven armed men and women intent on marching me out into the wilderness chasing the mythical thunderbirds. I could try and run, but I really wasn’t that fast, and in the dark in the forest? It’d be suicide. Not to mention all the guns and military equipment. Their toolbox probably had a set of night-vision goggles at the very least.
The snow had increased, creating what I called the warp-speed effect. Sure, we were driving through frozen precipitation, but it looked like we were about the make the jump into hyperspace. Lightning flashed, brightening the sky for a moment. A second later thunder rumbled, practically shaking the SUV.
I’d read about the meteorological event called thundersnow. Essentially a thunderstorm with snow instead of rain. It didn’t happen often and usually occurred in areas where lake-effect weather happened—like around the Great Lakes. It didn’t happen in Wyoming.
Pressure built in the car, and I flexed my jaw. Matthew put a knuckle to his ear, so he felt it too. It was almost a relief. So many strange things had been happening lately, I was beginning to think maybe I was suffering some kind of delusions.
Lightning flashed again, closer this time. Thunder rumbled in an almost continuous roll. It sounded and felt a bit like a giant freight train was traveling next to us.
One second the SUV in front of us was speeding along on four tires; the next, lightning struck the ground in front of it, sending it careening into the other lane. A second later it hit a two-foot snowbank and flipped, tumbling into the ditch alongside the highway until it landed on its roof, much like an upside-down turtle.
Sonia screeched as she slammed on the brakes. The SUV fishtailed on the snow-slick asphalt, and I fell into the guy next to me. At that moment I regretted that I wasn’t wearing my seat belt. I also regretted having my hands bound, because a second later the car swerved again, and I bashed my head against the window. The SUV came to a shuddering halt.
The flashing lights I saw might have been the precursor to a concussion, but after a second I realized it was lightning bolts, a small trail of them, passing along either side of our SUV and heading for the SUV that followed us. All four of us craned our necks to follow the glowing path. Lines of white-blue energy crackled and jumped along the road; then, with a roaring crash, a giant bolt struck the hood. Electricity arced over the surface, resembling a flickering cage.
A loud whoosh-whoosh echoed over the booming thunder, and we heard an eagle-like caw. E
agle-like, assuming the eagle was as big as an SUV and vocalized at 140 decibels.
“Oh shit.”
I looked at Matthew, then followed his gaze through the windshield.
Oh shit, indeed.
The headlights spotlighted the biggest fucking bird I’d ever seen. Bigger than the Andean condor. Significantly bigger. Exponentially bigger. The wingspan alone was easily fifteen feet, maybe more. The head of the thing—bird seemed too mundane a word to describe this creature—was as big as my chest. Lightning crackled along the tips of its primary feathers, and thunder rolled with every flap of wings.
The bird opened its maw wide, releasing a soundless screech. At least it was soundless to human ears. The car vibrated around us, and I think it even rolled back a few inches despite the firm pressure Sonia had on the brake. The inaudible frequency cracked the windshield until the safety glass started to crumble in pebble-sized pieces along the dash.
“Peter. Gun. Now.”
I guessed I knew what I could call the guy next to me. Peter’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, his eyes popping. He didn’t look like he made the connection between Sonia’s orders and the weapon in his hand.
The bird/creature/monster swooped low, sharp talons extended.
“Peter!”
He blinked and fumbled with the assault rifle. He swung the barrel around until it pointed toward the front of the vehicle instead of at me. My relief at no longer facing a gunshot wound to the gut was short-lived. Peter steadied his grip and pulled the trigger. The blast of the gun boomed in the confines of the SUV, putting even more pressure on my already straining eardrums. I barely noticed, however, because the horror of the moment struck me.
Peter was shooting at the amazing bird.
The bird banked left, and since it wasn’t knocked out of the sky or splattering blood on the disintegrating windshield, the shot had missed.
Peter aimed the gun again.
“No!” I threw myself at Peter, disregarding my own safety. Maybe things would be clearer when adrenaline wasn’t pumping through my body faster than blood, but I was nearly certain the monstrous flying creature facing off against an assassin’s SUV was the very thunderbird I’d been searching for. And if that was the case, there was no way I would let some two-bit cultist kill it.
Chasing Thunderbird Page 15
