by DM Fike
I shivered. “Whew! That was close. Let’s get out of here, ok?”
But no sooner had I taken a few steps than the glass doors next to me suddenly shot open. I gathered all my fire pith to my palms, expecting flames to explode toward us. Instead of fire, though, a pale middle-aged man stumbled out of the smoke in a bathrobe. Covered with a fine layer of soot, he had an awful gash on his forehead that dripped blood down to his chin. His bloodshot, unfocused eyes only added to his zombie aura.
A startled cry escaped my throat.
The cat had the opposite reaction. He jumped out of my grasp and dashed over to the man, intertwining himself around his legs affectionately.
The cat jolted the man out of his stupor. He finally registered my presence, a flash of terror replacing the dull glaze. He took a half step back into the house and screamed, “Don’t hurt me!”
Swallowing my heebie-jeebies at his horror movie appearance, I held out my hands to calm him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The man acted as if I’d threatened him with a knife. He cowered with his hands to protect his face. “Please don’t kill me! I’ll give in to your demands!”
I didn’t answer as something heavy crashed inside the house, causing my ears to ring. The house groaned as if in protest. The balcony beneath our feet shifted ever so slightly.
We couldn’t stand around and have a leisurely conversation. We had to leave. Now.
I left the sobbing man to search the area below for a way to jump down safely. I could probably drop with the cat okay, but I doubted the undead walker would survive the impact. Fortunately, a mulch pile lay not too far below us, stacked six feet high. I gathered earth pith and added more mulch from the lawn to the top of the pile, giving it extra cushion. I then pulled another chair to the railing as a second stool.
Satisfied with my work, I turned back to the zombie. “Is there anyone else in the house?”
He gaped at me. “What?”
I resisted shaking him, but my voice rose a few notches. “Is there anyone else inside? Your wife? Another pet?
He shrank a little at my tone. “No.”
“Then let’s go!”
He whimpered as I grabbed him by the arm and led him toward the balcony’s edge. He was surprisingly compliant in his panic, following me despite his many protests to the contrary. Even when I pulled him upward to stand on the chair, he did so without resistance.
“Jump!” I ordered, pointing down to my makeshift mulch cushion.
Tears streaked down his face, mixing with blood. “I’ll do anything. I swear! Just leave me alone!”
The house shook again. I didn’t have time for this. I gathered my air pith and sent him over the railing with a blast. I leaned over the railing as he fell, sending air blasts beneath him to slow his descent. My pithways recoiled in agony as I blew past my limit, but I refused to stop. The man screamed the entire descent, but he floated down more like a balloon than a rock and hit the mulch with barely a bounce.
I scooped the kitty back up in my arms. “I wish I had only saved you,” I told him, then leaped over the side myself.
Right as my boots hit the ground, bits of both balconies creaked to warn of their loss of structural integrity. I pulled us away from the building toward the street as smoke and fire burst out of the doors. I’d just gotten the man to sit on the curb when an explosion rocked the house and that entire side of the house collapsed.
“Glad that wasn’t close,” I groaned, wiping black gunk from my face.
But I didn’t have time to rest as a wall of sirens surged toward us. Two cop vehicles wound their way up the street in our direction.
I couldn’t be connected to this fiery mess. “The police are coming,” I told the man, placing his grateful cat into his lap. “Stay here.”
I barely made it back into forest cover before the first black SUV arrived. It screeched to a halt not far from the zombie. I didn’t dawdle around long enough for anyone to spot me. I fled the scene.
CHAPTER 10
I CRUMPLED INTO a ball on the other side of the wisp channel, on the verge of hyperventilating. The enormity of what had happened finally caught up to me. The cat, zombie man, and I could all have burnt to a crisp.
I hated rescue missions.
A buzzing jolted me out of my stupor. The cell phone in my hoodie pouch rang. I answered it with trembling fingers.
“Hello?”
Vincent didn’t mince words on pleasantries. “Please tell me I didn’t see you running back into the woods off Shoreline Drive?”
I didn’t have the energy to lie. “That was your SUV?”
Vincent gave a muffled curse. Then he took a deep breath and commanded, “Go back to the apartment, Ina, and stay there.”
My shoulders tightened. “Hey, don’t get mad at me. I saved a cat’s life. Oh, and some dude too.”
Vincent growled into the phone. “Don’t pretend Lee Foster doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Lee Foster?” That name sounded familiar, but my muddled brain couldn’t place it.
“I knew shepherds were involved in all this.” His loud voice sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him. “It’s probably another secret you’re hiding from me.”
“What are you talking about?”
A flurry of sirens sounded on his end. “Do me a favor and chill back at the apartment. Don’t run off, don’t play hero, just do it. Now!”
Then he hung up on me.
I stared blankly at the phone. I cut off Vincent all the time. He never did the same to me.
That name. I opened the phone’s browser and did a quick web search. The results that came back would have knocked me over if I hadn’t already been sitting down.
Lee Foster, CEO of Wonderland Resorts. Several websites displayed his profile picture, so there was no mistaking the zombie from the house fire.
An earthquake had buried the Mt. Hood Wonderland resort. A sneaker wave had drowned the CFO. And now a house fire had almost killed the CEO.
“Dammit.” I got to my feet, which instantly made me feel light-headed. I couldn’t think with my pithways aching all over. I wished I had access to a hot spring, but I’d have to settle on a long, hot bath. I had no idea what was going on with Wonderland and the shepherds, but after everything that had gone down, I owed Vincent. I’d stay put for a change and wait for him to come back from work.
* * *
Four o’clock came and went. Then five, six, and seven. You can only pass so much time cooped up in an empty apartment before you lose your mind. No amount of bathing, napping, and channel surfing would calm me. I sent Vincent a couple of text messages asking when he’d return but never got an answer.
More than anything, I wanted to locate Vincent and untangle this awful mess. He probably thought I’d gone to Lee Foster’s house as part of some secret shepherd mission. Earlier this year, I might have gotten angry at his assumption, but now I knew I deserved it. I’d kept too many secrets from too many people. The only chance I had to win back his trust was to explain the whole ridiculous mess and pray he’d believe me.
As Vincent’s microwave clock approached eight, though, I about lost my nerve. Not knowing anything drove me up a wall. I almost left out of sheer nervous jitters when footsteps sounded outside on the walkway. I cued up everything I’d planned on saying to him about Foster’s fire, prepared to battle to the bitter end for truth.
Vincent opened the door with slow resignation, which only changed to surprise when he caught me sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the futon.
“You’re here?” he asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.
I nodded curtly, not sure how to reply without sounding defensive. He was the one who wouldn’t answer my stupid texts.
“Oh,” he said.
I waited for him to continue. He didn’t. Instead, he slowly dragged his dirty body inside along with a laptop and a bag of fast food.
I expected him to justify his silence, given how angry h
e’d been on the phone. But when he offered me the laptop with a dejected look on his face, I didn’t know what to do.
“What’s this?”
“An apology. I never should have doubted you.”
I recoiled in suspicion. “Why?”
“Just open it.” When I still didn’t take the laptop, he plunked it down on the dining table. He clicked around a bit and then swung the screen to face me. “I need a shower. That should give you time to get up to speed.”
As he shuffled down the hallway, I yelled after him. “Aren’t you curious how I ended up at Foster’s?”
“I’m sure it’s a good story,” he called back, then shut the bathroom door. The sound of a shower filled the apartment.
He didn’t want me to explain myself? The world had gone completely crazy. I slid into a chair at the table and adjusted the laptop screen to my height, dreading what would break Vincent so completely.
A still image popped out at me. It was Rafe walking up the driveway to Lee Foster’s beach house, timestamped a half hour before I arrived. I’d forgotten how off-a-magazine-cover handsome he was with his wispy blond hair and finely-toned abs, visible underneath a taut athletic shirt. He must have realized he would be caught on film because he directed his striking blue eyes directly at the camera.
Right at me.
A gasp escaped my throat. I slammed the screen shut.
Even without him smirking at me, I stifled the urge to vomit. I’d seen him fall to his death on Mt. Hood. He couldn’t have survived that. Tabitha had given her life so he wouldn’t terrorize anyone else ever again. He couldn’t just come back to life like a little cockroach.
And yet, his reappearance fit with the facts perfectly. Before he died, he’d been on a mission to destroy the Wonderland resort on Mt. Hood. He also had a history of murdering people he felt threatened Nasci. It made sense he would kill the top executives who’d made the decision to start the project in the first place.
My mind spun so much that I didn’t even hear Vincent take a seat next to me. I jumped when he said quietly, “It wasn’t your shepherd friends.”
As my heart rate dropped, I answered. “But they must know he’s back, otherwise they wouldn’t guard those crevasses.” I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. “They’re protecting the lava from him.”
“I had the same thought.” Vincent reached over and snagged the laptop back. He clicked around a spreadsheet of seismologic data he’d created. “I cross referenced the recent earthquakes with anything connected to Wonderland Resorts. They seem to coincide, all happening within twenty-four hours of the destruction of the Mt. Hood resort, Borden’s drowning, and now Foster’s accident.” He slumped a little over the table. “It can’t be coincidence.”
I dug my nails into my palms as the implications of Rafe’s reappearance sent me reeling. “Tabitha failed. She must not have sealed the lava dome fully before Rafe fell into Darby’s crater on Mt. Hood. Now he’s absorbing magma directly from Nasci again. No wonder he can level whole construction sites with earthquakes and firebomb a mansion. He’s got incredible power on his hands.”
Vincent laid his hand on mine to stop me from drawing blood. “And you knew nothing about this when you found the fire at Foster’s?”
I shook my head, telling him the whole story. He accepted everything at face value, a huge relief. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to give any of my previous speeches.
“It makes sense,” Vincent said. “Borden had been in town visiting Foster at his Heceta Beach home. Rafe must have been waiting for his opportunity to murder both of them.”
“So, what now?” I stood. “How do we catch Rafe?”
Vincent pointed to the fading light outside the window. “We’re not finding him tonight. Rafe’s a fugitive from law enforcement, remember? There’s already a warrant out for him on an arson that predates all this stuff. The image from Foster’s security system is enough for the state police to put out an APB. I asked the night patrol to call me if they hear anything about him.”
Vincent’s mention of the camera suddenly made me nervous. “And what about me? Are the police looking for me?”
Vincent flashed me a wry smile. “You, my friend, have the devil’s luck. The fire melted the camera and most of its backup storage. We were lucky to even retrieve that one still shot. No one knows you were even there except Foster, and given his strange depiction of you appearing out of nowhere like ‘a devil,’ the detective in charge thinks you’re a figment of Foster’s PTSD.”
Well, that was a relief at least. “Will an officer protect Foster at the hospital?”
Vincent snorted. “Not if Foster can help it. He’s fighting to get discharged immediately and return home to Eugene. He doesn’t feel safe in Florence.”
I remembered the wild glaze in Foster’s eyes. “He knows Rafe wants him dead.”
Vincent nodded. “He’s obviously not telling us everything. It’s hard to say if Rafe confronted him directly or not, but Foster’s head wound may have been an assault. Without Foster’s cooperation, though, it’s hard to move forward.”
“Well, there has to be something we can do.”
“We can eat.” Vincent gestured to the now lukewarm food bag in front of us. “And get some rest. I have a hunch we’re going to need it.”
CHAPTER 11
“HAGGARD!”
Tabitha stood at the edge of a molten precipice, hands on her hips, the glow from the lava casting odd shadows over her face. She appeared even more menacing than when she’d been alive.
“Why did I even sacrifice myself?” she spat at me.
I held up my hands in defeat. “I’m sorry. I had no idea Rafe was alive.”
“Don’t just stand there.” She straightened, and in doing so, somehow grew giant-sized. “Do something about it.”
Then a huge spray of lava burst behind her like some awful tidal wave hitting the shore. It enveloped her, and when it sizzled back below, she had vanished.
My heart twisted, but I waited for the dream to end. To wake up.
But for some reason, it didn’t. And worse, I felt someone watching me. I glanced around the barren landscape, all jagged black rocks and lava pits, spewing out bubbles at random intervals.
“Tabitha?” I called uncertainly.
A disembodied voice drifted up over the steam. It was so faint, I couldn’t make out the words at first.
Jump in.
The monotone whisper repeated itself over and over, a broken sound bite set to infinite repeat.
An invisible force pushed me forward, right toward the ledge where Tabitha had stood. I tried to fight against it, but you can’t hurt something you can’t touch. I drew earth sigils to bind me to the ground, but my boots prevented skin contact. The force pushed me so fast I didn’t have time to take them off. Digging in my heels didn’t slow me either, despite my leverage.
Jump in. Jump in. Jump in.
I found myself teetering over a wide lake of roiling magma. Screaming, I arched my torso backward as much as possible, but it made no difference. The ground beneath my feet vanished, and I fell down, down, down toward the depths.
“Ina!”
Vincent’s voice broke through the fog, and my real eyes opened. I flung myself upward, the top of my head bashing into Vincent’s face. We yelped in unison.
Ache along my hairline receding, I shivered on Vincent’s futon, covered in a light sweat. He sat on the floor beside me, fully dressed in his black officer uniform, rubbing his chin.
I tried to make sense of the dream. I’d never grown used to the nightmares, but having one take off in such a strange, vivid direction really creeped me out. I’d felt completely awake and aware of my surroundings, from the macabre voice to the sensation of falling to the realization that I would die.
I inhaled and exhaled deep breaths to calm my frazzled nerves. “Sorry,” I managed. “Nightmare.”
Vincent grunted in response, an acknowledgement of my apology but not yet r
eady to accept it.
I glanced over at the microwave. 7:30 in the morning. “Maybe I wouldn’t maim you if you didn’t wake me up so stupid early.”
Vincent pulled himself up to his feet. “Lee Foster is dead.”
He might as well have slapped me across the face. “But I thought he was recovering in the hospital yesterday.”
“He was. I got a call from my buddy on patrol. Seems Foster convinced the hospital to discharge him, but he died outside town on his way home. Apparently, there were unusually high winds on Highway 126 that knocked down a power pole and struck his BMW, killing him instantly.”
My hand came to my mouth. “Rafe.”
Vincent nodded grimly. “The OSP are labeling it an accident, but yeah, sure sounds like it.” He grabbed his ranger hat, keys, and wallet off the counter.
“Are you going to check out the accident?” I asked as he approached the front door.
“Yeah.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Look,” he said as I threw my hoodie over my borrowed T-shirt. “I know you want to come, but I can’t take you. This is official police business. It’s not like I have visitor badges for this kind of thing.”
I crammed my feet into my boots. “You don’t have to bring me right up to the accident. Drop me off nearby. I can watch from a distance.”
“What if someone sees you?”
I tied the laces as fast as I could. “I could pretend to jog or something.”
Vincent rolled his eyes. “In the middle of a highway? Wearing hiking boots?”
“Fine, a hike then.” I sprang to my feet. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
Vincent opened the door but kept his back to the dawning sky. “You should stay here, Ina. You’re safer here.”
An ear-shattering caw interrupted further argument. That one sharp call set off a cacophony of raven screeches that probably woke up half the block.
Vincent and I both warily stepped outside and peered over the second story railing. Ravens blanketed the entire parking lot, a dot matrix printout of black overlaid over cars, painted lines, and bare concrete. Their heads all swiveled in our direction, and once they caught sight of me, they grew louder, an angry mob obviously finding their target.