C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

“I could always take my shirt off,” Kelly offered.

Lara blinked rapidly at her friend. “You could what?”

“To distract them while Dafydd makes his getaway. You said we’d need a distraction.”

“Oh. Oh! I didn’t think I’d said that out loud. I was just thinking. They won’t be able to find you if you get into the trees, will they, Dafydd?”

He said “No” with utter confidence. “I’m surprised you were able to find me earlier.”

“I can see through your glamour,” Lara reminded him. “I should be able to see you when you’re not hiding behind it.”

“Okay, guys, here we go. Dafydd, lie back down, put your seat belt on, cover yourself as much as you can with your coat. I’ll tell them you’re sleeping if we get pulled over.”

Dafydd did as he was told as the road straightened, leading down into the hollow they’d glimpsed. Four vehicles, three of them emergency vehicles, were spread across the road. The fourth, a compact car bleached of color in the oncoming sunrise, was half off the road, a black, indistinguishable shape of an animal sprawled across its hood. Kelly slowed the car, then slowed further, almost coming to a stop as Lara muttered, “I said they couldn’t possibly have roadblocks up this far out.”

“Your triumph,” Kelly said sourly, “is misplaced. It doesn’t really matter if it’s technically not a roadblock when it’s effectively blocking the road. God, what’d they hit?”

“I can’t tell.” Lara leaned forward, but shook her head. It was large, at least deer-sized, but early-morning shadows and the flashing lights from the emergency vehicles made it impossible to recognize. “Ambulance, forest ranger, state trooper. Two out of three ain’t bad.”

Kelly shot her another sharp look. “I’m not handling you using idioms very well, Lara. Can you go back to being your usual literal self until we’re out of this mess?”

“Sorry,” Lara whispered, and meant it. “I feel like someone’s taken a rubber band from around my thoughts. I never would have even thought to say ‘two out of three ain’t bad’ before now.”

“Well, it’s not usually true. Crap , here comes the cop. Did it have to be the cop?” Kelly put the emergency brake on and rolled down the window as Lara put her elbows on the dashboard, supporting her chin with her hands as she looked out the windshield. She could see almost nothing, gaze unfocused while her heartbeat soared, but she hoped her fingers would help obscure her features. The ranger would have been less likely to have seen their images, but she was kneeling intently by the dead animal.

Kelly pitched her voice in a loud whisper, calling, “Hey,” to the trooper. She made a loose finger-over-the-lips hushing gesture, explaining, “My sister’s sleeping in the backseat. Is everybody okay? Are we gonna be able to get around?”

The trooper’s tense expression faded and he flipped a flashlight on to glance at the backseat without really looking. “We’ve got some people pretty badly banged up. I was able to let the last guy through, but the paramedics just got here. It might be a while.”

“Well, getting hurt people to the hospital is probably more important than getting to Mom’s house for waffles before seven. What’d they hit, a deer?” Kelly’s soft voice sounded perfectly normal: concerned, polite, a little rueful. She’d been right, Lara thought; they’d needed her. Lara would never have been able to sound as casually interested, much less come up with easy lies about the sleeper in the backseat or their destination.

Tension sprang to life in the trooper’s expression, barely visible from the corner of Lara’s eye. “Something big, anyway. Look, you three just sit tight and I’ll wave you through as soon as I can, all right? Keep your windows rolled up. I’ll knock if I need to give you any more information.”

“No problem. Thanks, Officer. I hope everybody’s all right.” Kelly rolled up the window as he walked away, then carefully put her hands on the steering wheel too low for him to see if he glanced back. Her knuckles went white in the dawning light, forearms rigid, though her face remained smooth and pleasant. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

Dafydd, muffled, said, “Please don’t. Being encased in steel is uncomfortable enough. Adding the scent of bile would be a cruelty beyond compare.”

“That was amazing,” Lara whispered. Both she and Kelly slumped in their seats, Kelly flipping her hair over one shoulder to mask her face as she looked at Lara. “Really,” Lara repeated. “I couldn’t have done that. You were perfect.”

“Yeah, but did you see his face when I asked what they hit? ‘Something big’ isn’t an answer. What’s big out here you can hit? Deer? Bears? Maybe a cougar?”

“That’s not a cougar. Cougars are tawny and that thing’s black.” Lara dared a glance toward the damaged car. “I don’t think there are any wolves out here. Maybe it’s a bear.”

“He would have said if it was a bear.”

“You think it’s something from my world.” Dafydd pulled his coat down, the rustling making both women start to turn before they flinched back, remembering the person in the back was supposed to be sleeping.

“I think we’re too far away from any nuclear sites or chemical dumping grounds for animals to mutate into something that a cop won’t identify beyond ‘something big,’” Kelly said. “So, yeah, I think maybe something else came over with you.”

“The nightwings,” Lara said abruptly. Dafydd shifted like he wanted to sit up, and she reached backward without looking, searching for his hand. His fingers, still as cool as they’d been earlier, slid through hers. She squeezed, reassured and reassuring. “But how did they find us?”

Kelly’s gaze fixed forward. “How did they find you at all? Lara, you’ve been home for weeks now. David’s been here all along. How come those things didn’t attack until this afternoon?”

“They wanted us both in the same place,” Dafydd suggested.

Kelly shook her head. “You were in the same place when she visited you in prison.”

“But we didn’t touch,” Lara said with sudden certainty. “When he came out of the courtroom today I hugged him. Maybe that was the trigger. What kind of spell calls the nightwings, Dafydd? Is it like the scrying spell Emyr was trying to cast? One that takes a lot of time and concentration? We were still holding hands when they attacked.”

“Our enemy would have been holding it in preparation,” Dafydd said thoughtfully. “Like I’d done with the worldwalking spell, Lara. It would’ve been much less dramatic if I’d had to spend a few hours concentrating to open that door, so I’d done my preparation earlier, and held it behind the final word of the spell. Our enemy wouldn’t want to risk losing our scent in the time he prepared, so he would have had it waiting.”

“Then why didn’t it attack the moment we touched?”

Dafydd shifted again. “Time isn’t the same in the Barrow-lands as it is here. From our enemy’s point of view, it could well have been instantaneous.”

Kelly’s gaze dropped to their entwined fingers. She smacked them and Lara loosened hers, first insulted, then alarmed. “Ow. But we’ve touched a lot since this afternoon, Kelly. If the nightwings were using that as a trigger, they’d have found us again by now.”

“No.” Dafydd sat up as he spoke, clearly forgetting he was meant to be sleeping. “It would have been a spell set to trigger once, like the attack when I returned to the Barrow-lands. Setting a cascade of triggers would exhaust anyone, even my father, beyond an ability to pursue anything else. No one would risk it.”

“Well, then what changed? If we’re being tracked by something from your world, what pointed it toward—” Lara broke off, staring at the staff Dafydd still held clenched across his lap. “Oh, no. I broke the glamour on that, and you’ve been clinging to it for hours.”