Storm of Reckoning

by Doranna Durgin

  No little wonder, really — she’d been up half the night spying and hiking, no matter that she’d come in and out the short length of Vultee Arch Trail. After a moment, she rose and pointed a few specific places to Quinn’s attention.

  Garrie murmured an aside she knew Trevarr would hear. “This isn’t even one of the main vortex sites — though supposedly there are little ones everywhere. Normally, anyway.”

  “But not now.”

  “Either Robin is right and something’s going on, or the whole vortex thing has been an astonishingly successful hoax.”

  Below them, Quinn crouched to pick up a piece of trash; disdain washed over his face about the same time Garrie recognized the limp, worn object.

  Well, at least the group had protected themselves in their wild frenzy.

  Lucia, too, reacted — not with the pretty flush that Garrie had expected, but with distress that gave her big dark almond eyes that worried-puppy look.

  Huh.

  Garrie sat cross-legged, glancing to Trevarr — looking for the ever-subtle signs of his reaction. To the place, to the situation.

  He hadn’t come any closer. He looked, if anything, wary. Something of the same expression he took on in an airplane, and yet not quite.

  More certain.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” she said.

  He shook his head. Sunlight glinted hard off his hair, black and darkest seal brown and the occasional glint of braid, the wayward shorter sections in front falling away from the rest of it, the sides scraped back and fastened; sunlight glinted off sunglasses. “Not in the least,” he said, as bluntly honest as he was often obscure. He gestured at the drop, at the largesse of the sky. “It calls to me.”

  Garrie snorted an incredulous laugh. “Calls to you? You mean the way some people have that impulse to see if just maybe they can fly?”

  He hunkered down, all loose-limbed and easy; she’d seen him this way in the San Jose night, too, with cross-dimensional fires blooming overhead in the darkness. A habitual posture. A waiting posture. Perfectly balanced and ready to move, startlingly graceful. “Some part of me,” he said, “knows it.”

  ::Wise Trevarr.:: Sklayne’s voice floated out like an echo in the canyon, from everywhere and anywhere.

  A hint of wood smoke rose on the air, faded. Not wood smoke at all, of course. Just... Trevarr. Whatever part of his heritage slumbered within.

  A part that knew it could fly.

  He had never quite looked more otherworldly than he did at that moment. A man who didn’t belong here at all.

  “Can you go back?” she asked suddenly. “Back to your big secret cave lair? Back home at all? Because Sklayne—”

  “Sklayne.” He said it flatly, an accusation as much as anything.

  Sklayne’s response was a mere whisper on the faint breeze, trickling in with the sunshine. ::Not my fault!::

  Garrie had learned something of Trevarr, so she waited. She found her awareness of him and let it hum, ostensibly watching Quinn and Robin, and noticing Lucia’s growing frown.

  Trevarr said, finally, “My lair. So your Rhonda Rose called it.” Rhonda Rose, traveling spirit... mentor extraordinaire. “The lair, I think, could be safe. A place or two like it.”

  Garrie’s chin gave a startling and unexpected little quiver as the impact of his words hit her. “I’m right. You can’t truly go home.”

  His expression didn’t change a whit. “That isn’t what I said.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  It wasn’t safe for him to go home. That’s what he’d said.

  “Do you think they’ll get over it?” she asked. The words came out as a whisper, strained through a suddenly tight throat.

  Maybe he would have answered. Maybe not. With the moment stretching out tight between them —

  Maybe, if she hadn’t stiffened, struck offside by a cold ethereal breeze.

  It was an angry, haunting breeze; it made Lucia gasp, audible even from below. Garrie instantly went into ethereal mode — checking for threats, checking for presence.

  “We have company,” Trevarr observed.

  “Can you feel it?” She looked at him with only half her attention. The other looked off into the ethereal landscape to find not just the one ghost — it was a primary trailing his own ghostie gang. It seemed as though a veil had dimmed the sunlight around them.

  “I cannot. I have learned to see it in you.”

  Garrie shook off the intrusion and put up light shields. “This one’s pretty fresh, but I can’t tell if he died around here or if he’s just homed in on me.” She checked the old dry stream bed below, a tumble of rock and scrub growth and areas beaten down by hiker feet. Robin spoke urgently to Lucia, frustrated with whatever Lucia had just told her, and Lucia shook her head, her mouth tight. Quinn, utterly focused and equally oblivious, continued searching the area in his own way.

  Lucia glanced up at Garrie, thrust herself to her feet, and headed back down toward the main trail.

  Robin looked up at Garrie, too. Her expression wasn’t nearly as inviting.

  Trevarr stood in one fluid motion, holding out his hand. “What will they find without you?”

  Garrie stood, brushed the dust off her shorts, and took a drink, and tossed the bottle to Trevarr, who plucked it out of the air. She said, “Lu knows there are unhappy ghosts bumping around — she probably just said as much. Quinn’ll pick up as much physical sign from last night as anyone can.” But neither had the wherewithal to untangle the ethereal threads woven around this place. Even Garrie needed time to work uninterrupted, not to mention unrejected.

  She scrambled up the stepped rock at the end of the bridge, heading for the spur trail and then back to the arch along the bottom of the canyon, hoping to meet Lucia on the way.

  She didn’t; Lucia’s retreat had been too swift. No doubt she already waited in the broad dry wash of the main trail, sipping water in the shade and looking regal, a mystery to those who might pass by.

  Or better yet, discouraging anyone who might come this way.

  Soon enough, Garrie found herself surrounded by canyon walls, looking up at the arch. She trailed her fingers along the plaque for the Vultees, briefly checking the breezes; the ghost not only lingered, but had gathered strength and more cronies. A fresh ghost, all right — still struggling to focus, so full of resentment and fury that he manifested microbursts of ethereal wind, stirring the dry grasses of this area.

  For dry they were. In spite of this decently wet year. In spite of the stream trickling down through the center of the wash, easily navigated. Crispy dry, even singed, in this area where there were no other normal signs of life.

  ::No lizards,:: Sklayne informed her. ::No crunchy beetles.::

  Robin’s mysterious band of ne’er-do-wells were making their mark here, all right.

  “Hey, Garrie,” Quinn greeted her. “See anything from up there?”

  The pattern of intensified withering, for sure. But here, in the middle of it, the dryness had even more impact, so it wasn’t anything he hadn’t already discovered. “Not much.”

  He hesitated — a double-take kind of look, bright eyes narrowing as he worked up to a question. Trevarr came up behind her, already in the shade and already settling into silent.

  Robin said, “Luce thought she felt something.”

  Garrie stiffened, struck anew by the startling hot and wild flare of energy — a living impulse, rearing up to spew not fire but temper and blinding light.

  Wanting action. Wanting it now.

  “Lucia,” she said, teetering on temper and caring little for Robin’s surprise. “Her name is Lucia. And she didn’t think she felt anything. She did feel it.”

  Quinn took a step toward her, request on his features. “Garrie—”

  Garrie gave him a hard eye. She was standing in the hot sun, battered both by ghosts and internal flares, and as upset on Lucia’s behalf as she was on her own. Breezes buffeted the area, angry and mournful. Betra
yal. Sudden death. Disbelief. Revenge. “Gonna go,” she said. “Things are too stirred up around here.”

  Quinn gestured frustration. “Look, I can maybe sort out what’s going on here — maybe. But I can’t do anything about it.”

  Robin made a sound of annoyance. “We just need to put our heads together. Fewer interruptions.” She glared not only at Garrie, but at Trevarr — who took no apparent notice. He was a man distracted, a man wary... looking from arch to bluff and across the wash to the top of the cliffs there, as if he thought he’d find... what?

  Sklayne? Garrie asked. What’s up?

  ::Leaving,:: Sklayne told her, sounding as annoyed as any of them. ::Lucia will pet my whiskers. Much better than this.::

  Garrie couldn’t argue with that.

  Robin stood beneath the arch, hands on hips. “Quinn and I will be down when we’ve seen what we can. We have to figure out how to counter these idiots.”

  “Sure.” And have fun with that. “Might be best when it’s less crowded, though.”

  “You know,” Robin said, flashing a scowl, “I’m tired. I was up half the night, hiding, hoping not to be seen... and then desperately wishing I couldn’t see them. So no, I don’t want to come back. I want to finish this.” She hesitated, and went for it, still hanging on to that scowl. “I get that Lucia thinks there’s a ghost lurking. I get that you think she’s right—”

  As if either of them were blindly guessing. Garrie’s temper fluttered around inside her like a wild thing, beating to get out.

  Robin didn’t notice. She was sharp, intelligent, and educated, but she was clearly not a woman who interacted with the ethereal. She stood in the middle of a spirit-driven ethereal microburst, her expression vaguely uneasy but the words still coming. “I don’t think last night was about ghosts, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Sometimes it does,” Garrie observed, but Robin wasn’t listening. And while Garrie wouldn’t abandon spirits in need, she also knew to choose her moment.

  Not this one.

  The primary spirit seemed to sense the departure of the one person who could truly interact with it. Its energies whipped into a frenzy, stirring not just the ethereal but the corporal world, rustling brittle grasses and fluttering wilted leaves fluttered. Even Robin looking warily around as Quinn closed his eyes for a wince.

  And Garrie walked away.

  Chapter 10

  Vultee Arch

  “Learn to recognize the correct monsters.”

  — Rhonda Rose

  “I know what I am.”

  — Lisa McGarrity

  “¿Qué huele?”

  — Lucia Reyes

  Sklayne stomped away from the stone bridge on noisy paws enlarged slightly just for that purpose.

  Too much sharing. Feelings everywhere.

  Not prone to sharing, Trevarr. Until now.

  With the Garrie.

  The brush of a hand, the glance of brown eyes, the thrill of a faint ethereal breeze.

  Too much sharing. Not just Trevarr, but from the Garrie and from the other people and from the disgruntled spirits bearing down on them all.

  It triggered Sklayne’s longing for a place where people knew when to share and exactly how to share. Home. With its strong scents and thick dark fog and lurking dangers, a place they would now see only in risky stolen moments.

  It was Sklayne’s own fault that he was so far from his own kind. He’d been too bold, too pushy. He’d made choices and he’d forfeited his life among the skklar, bonded to Trevarr before he could so much as hsss-spttt. All because he’d sensed the conflicts lurking within the being in his clearing, and he’d wanted to know more.

  Now he knew more than any of his own kind ever had.

  A lonely thing, knowing. Lonely enough so it seemed entirely worthwhile to follow the Lucia person, remembering to withdraw the extra claws — so convenient! — and the extra eye.

  Lucia person would not deal well with the extra eye. Or even the giant feet.

  He made his paws small and neat again as he approached the Lucia person. She perched on a rock beside the trail, dabbing her eyes and searching for some small remaining dry spot on her paper cloth to do it with.

  Sklayne twitched with impulse. One easy poof! to his natural state and that paper cloth would be clean and dry for her. Easily done, for a creature that consumed any and all. And so Trevarr’s clothes started each day fresh and his nightly camp-spots stayed free of infestations.

  No fleas for Trevarr.

  A sudden purr startled Sklayne’s throat. He liked fleas. They tickled going down.

  The Lucia person looked down at him. “There you are!” she said. “I was afraid the hike was too much for you. Trevarr seems to think you can do anything.”

  ::Can,:: Sklayne told her, even if she couldn’t hear it. No cleaning of things for the Lucia person, then. Too late if she’d already seen him.

  She folded her long legs, so graceful, and shifted down to the hard gritty ground that really wasn’t meant for people-sitting. Her long hair swung freely from the gathering point high at the back of her head.

  Sklayne lifted a paw toward it, another impulse. Shiny.

  “Yeah,” she said, as if they’d been in conversation. “It hasn’t really been the day I expected it to be.” She lay her fingers beneath his paw and gently stroked the top with her thumb.

  Sklayne maybe fell a little bit in love.

  No! Fiercefiercefierce Sklayne!

  But there he was, already pushing his head against her hand.

  “I wanted to like her,” the Lucia person said, scratching behind first one ear, then the other. O gentle fingers. “I wanted her to like me.” Sadness drifted across her features, all eloquent eyes and smooth skin. “I wanted Quinn to stand up for Garrie. For me. For what we all are together.”

  ::Stupid Robin person,:: Sklayne said. ::I will eat the thread from the seat of her pants.::

  But the Lucia person didn’t hear, and so she didn’t leap at this fine suggestion, leaving Sklayne without anyone to enable him in those things for which he’d get in trouble anyway. And besides, she had such gentle fingers, such a fine touch. The ruffle of the fur beneath his chin, the little dance of her fingers between his ears. And all the while, the dark, heavy energies that had followed her from the clearing faded and cleared, drifting away from her.

  She sniffled again; she sat straighter.

  “I’m fine,” she said, as if convincing herself. “I’m better. I just couldn’t stand for her to see me like this. Not when she doesn’t believe.” Her voice gained assurance. “She’s so sure of what she thinks she’s seen, there isn’t any sight left for what is. Can you believe she didn’t even get a ping of the nastiness up there?”

  Sklayne had pinged, all right, finding only cast-offs and ethereal refuse, all corrupted beyond use. Finding near-empty husks in land formations that should have been bulging with rich life.

  And of course, the new ghost. Rising to the Garrie’s presence, pulling together its young, fresh, power... as of yet untouched by whatever process sucked the life from this place. Nothing of true danger to the Robin person or the Quinn person, but something to watch.

  The Lucia person ruffled her fingers down Sklayne’s back; his spine rose to meet them and his tail flipped into the air. He plotted how he might obtain some of her chewy mascara without getting blamed for it. Yes, this was a good moment. Plotting. Being touched. Being Sklayne.

  Until a deep, subsonic shiver whispered through the trees.

  “Oh,” the Lucia person said, startling, and Sklayne found himself suddenly five feet from her hand, alert to the sky. To the rocks, to the looming canyon walls. To anywhere.

  ::Treyyyy,:: he said, a warning.

  I feel it. Where?

  ::Can’t find source. Only a poke, then gone.:: A tentative first probe from Kehar, by those not truly familiar with the searching eye of the khorliskha.

  Because they’d have had to have found someone new to
look for Trevarr. Not one of the established hunters.

  Because the other hunters all knew Trevarr.

  And that meant they all knew better.

  ~~~~~

  Garrie walked away from the bridge with purpose, Trevarr as close to her side as the trail allowed.

  Closer than she expected, actually.

  Unbidden, unfamiliar ethereal turbulence closed in around her — the taste of dark fog and spice, of wild power and seething anger. Searching. Resentful. She sent Trevarr a wary look. “What’s going on?”

  His lingering startlement was no reassurance, nor the wariness that followed.

  “That wasn’t us,” she persisted. “That wasn’t from here. That was—”

  A whirling dervish of hot, lashing power snapped through her like a whip, wrenching out a gasp. She stumbled on the uneven footing and caught herself, annoyance warring with alarm. “Trevarr—”

  Trevarr’s mouth hardened, and the rest of his expression along with it. “It was not of my doing.”

  But such energies didn’t belong here, no more than Trevarr did. No more than the wild surges of impulse and temper within Garrie herself. She shook herself with a little shiver, glancing back to where Quinn exchanged words with Robin, gesturing with some emphasis. “Whatever that was, the ghosts probably won’t like it.”

  They already didn’t like it. Turbulent and furious local breezes kicked up another notch, spiraling tightly into ghost overload. Ghost fury. Ghost temper tantrum.

  Garrie turned on her heel, charging back toward the arch with the water bottles lurching at each hip and Trevarr easily reversing course to keep up with her, no matter that he didn’t know why. “Quinn!” she shouted. “Quinn! Incoming!”

  Ghosts. Tantrums. Effluvia.

  Never good. Always just so messy.

  She came to a stop just outside the clearing of crisp, dead grasses, hard ethereal shields in place and still feeling the buffet of spiritual temper. “Quinn! Get out of there — !”

  Not that he wasn’t trying — he’d grabbed Robin’s hand and now their arms stretched between them as she resisted the tug, not understanding it.