My knees weakened, and I had to brace myself against the wall. Dust and pebbles dribbled away beneath my fingers, but I scarcely noticed. “Is she…?”
“Alive, yes,” Alek said firmly. “Injured.”
I closed my eyes, relieved even though I had no idea how bad the injuries were. As long as she was alive, there was hope.
“I did not see the sword,” Alek added, tilting his head toward the rubble behind him. The stone and wood and roof material had been pushed aside; he must have been pulling Temi out even as I had been helping with the person inside. I wanted to say the hell with the sword, but if we lost it, we lost our only chance to stop that monster. “Take her out front, please. To one of the ambulances. She’s going to need to go to the hospital. I’ll tell Simon to look for the…”
A black-clad specter appeared out of the alley behind Alek. Two of them.
Eleriss’s jacket and cap were covered with dust, as if he had been caught in the explosion too. Maybe he had. Jakatra’s face could have been carved in stone for all it showed of his thoughts. He took a step toward Alek—or maybe toward Temi—but stopped when Alek glowered in his direction. There was something in Jakatra’s hand. It took me a second to realize it was the little blue device he had shown us. The real one, I suspected, catching a whiff of the pungent odor he had promised it emitted. It had the sulphuric taint of rotting eggs. Had he found it in the rubble? Maybe it had been in this building before the explosion went off.
Jakatra barely seemed to know he was holding it. He spoke a rapid stream of words in his own tongue, his violet eyes intense as they regarded Eleriss.
Eleriss nodded, then pointed to Temi. “Please take her to your conveyance. It is likely we can heal her injuries more quickly than your people.”
Alek shook his head. I understood his mistrust, but if the elves had healed Temi’s knee when the best surgeons in the world couldn’t, I was inclined to believe they would be more help here. Besides, with all of those people that had been delivered to the hospital in the last hour, there might not even be a bed available for Temi there.
“They’re our best bet,” I told him in Greek, then switched back to English for the elves. “Alek couldn’t find the sword.”
“It is not here,” Eleriss said, his tone as flat and grim as Jakatra’s usually was. “I failed to… keep track of Yesathra. No, that’s untrue. I was occupying her, but I failed to realize she has an accomplice here on Earth.”
Jakatra pointed at Temi, then jerked his hand in the direction of the road block. Or maybe our van.
Eleriss spoke another string of words, which resulted in an angry response from Jakatra, but ultimately, Jakatra stalked off, heading in the other direction.
“Come,” Eleriss said, waving toward the road that ran behind the buildings, paralleling the main street. “We will help Artemis. He will search for the sword. It has not yet left this world, so there may still be time, although…” He was already walking, and I hurried to catch up, even as I pulled out my phone to let Simon know where we were going. After a moment of hesitation, Alek followed after us.
A soft groan escaped Temi’s lips. Even if it sounded pained, I found it encouraging. Maybe she would come around to consciousness soon.
“Do you want help?” I asked Alek. We had moved past the rubble, but Temi wasn’t exactly a tiny waif of a woman. Her six feet had to make carrying her awkward, especially when Alek had her in his arms instead of over his shoulder.
He shook his head at my offer and walked more quickly, catching up with Eleriss and matching his stride.
“Although what?” I prompted Eleriss, since he hadn’t finished his statement on his own.
“It would be unwise for us to openly confront the portal authorities.”
“When I point out how unwise something would be, it usually means I’m going to do it, anyway. Any chance, that’s what you two are thinking?”
He gave me a sad look. “No.”
“So if Jakatra locates the sword, and it’s in Green Eyes’ hands, it will be up to us to try and steal it back?”
“Yes.”
Great. This day was getting better and better.
Eleriss turned toward the main street. At first, I assumed he would cross it and head down to the creek, so he could return to the van in the same way that we had come. The idea of Alek carrying Temi down that embankment made me grimace. But Eleriss turned onto the main street as soon as we reached the corner, striding down the sidewalk, not worrying about witnesses. Granted, the only ambulance remaining was in front of the destroyed T-shirt shop, and only a few police cars were in sight, but that roadblock was probably still in place. There wasn’t any traffic driving through town.
“Uh, there’s a police barricade that way,” I said. If they saw us carrying Temi, they might force us to take her to the hospital whether the elves thought they could help her on their own or not.
“Yes.” Eleriss continued to walk briskly down the street.
Alek continued to match his stride, but he watched me, too, maybe hoping I would change my mind. Well, the worst-case scenario should be that we would be taken to the hospital.
My phone rang, and Simon’s face popped up.
“What do you mean Temi’s knocked out?” he blurted before I could get a hello out. The text I had jabbed in while talking to the elves hadn’t been that explanatory.
“She was in the building that blew up,” I said. “We’re taking her back to the campground to—”
“The campground? Why not the hospital? Where are you? We’re coming.”
“Heading back to the van. Eleriss says he can help Temi.”
Simon cursed, and the sound of sandals slapping against the sidewalk came over the phone.
“My friends don’t seem to have much faith in your healing skills,” I said when Eleriss looked in my direction.
“It is true I am not an expert on human physiology, but I have received training on how to respond in medical crises.”
“Eleriss says he has it under control,” I said into the phone.
By now, Simon had come into view, running up the street behind us, his phone clutched in one hand and the Dirt Viper in the other. Naomi ran after him, her pigtails bouncing with every step. We would make an interesting sight descending on that police barricade. Which should come into view any time. We had passed the last of the shops and were nearing a bend in the road.
Simon and Naomi caught up at the same time as the three police cars blocking the street came into view. Sweat streamed down both of their faces. I had no doubt that dust and grime caked me too.
Simon fell in beside Alek. “Is she all right? Are you sure we shouldn’t be going the other way?” He jerked a thumb back in the direction of West Sedona and the hospital. “Temi, do you want elves to heal you or real people?”
“Ssh,” I whispered, aware of the two policemen standing in front of the cars. They were facing the highway and talking to a couple of the motorists whose vehicles were parked alongside the road, but they would be able to hear us soon. Nobody had glanced in our direction yet, but I didn’t expect our luck to hold.
The dented and perforated blue van was visible farther down the road, but we had quite a walk still to reach it. Eleriss strode toward the side of the road, as if he would simply pass the cars without anyone noticing him.
“She’s not saying anything,” Simon said, his voice lower now, concern wrinkling his brow.
“I told you she was unconscious.”
“That’s not good.”
“She groaned earlier. Now, hush.”
Alek was following after Eleriss, and I did, too, though I kept my eyes on the police. I couldn’t believe neither of the men had glanced back at us yet. Then I remembered the time Eleriss and Jakatra had ridden their motorcycles into the Prescott campground to search the woods for sign of the first monster. The police hadn’t noticed them then, either.
“Are you able to keep them from seeing us?” I whispered, even though the question seemed stupid at that point. We had walked around the car and were heading away from the barricade now. The police officers were still talking to the motorists, evasively answering questions about what was going on.
“Yes,” Eleriss said. “Stay close.”
“How?” Simon asked, ripping his gaze from Temi’s inert form.
“For the moment, we are… as the new jibtab is to you.”
“Cloaked?” Simon gaped at him.
Eleriss tilted his head. “Clad in a loose garment that serves a similar purpose to your overcoat?”
“Uh, no.”
“Invisible,” I supplied, not in the mood to explain Star Trek spaceships to real aliens.
“Oh, yes, invisible to human eyes.” Eleriss held up a device he often carried with him, the same one Temi had identified as a portal opener. Apparently, it had a multitude of uses. “I cannot dimensionally shift us naturally, not as the jibtab can, but we have tools that cause the same effect.”
“Dimensionally shift?” Simon tripped over a pothole—or maybe his own feet—and tumbled to the ground.
Startled, I stopped to give him a hand. He waved me away, his palm lacerated with fresh red scratches, and popped to his feet. He glanced at Temi, as if embarrassed she might have witnessed that, but her eyes were still closed.
“You all right?” I glanced backward again, as if Simon tripping might have nullified whatever Eleriss had done, but the police were still ignoring us. Another forty meters, and we would reach the van. A good thing, because Alek’s face was flushed and glistening with sweat. As tough as he was, he had to be ready to set Temi down and give his arms a break.
“Dimensionally shifted,” Simon breathed.
“You have the look of a man who’s just experienced an epiphany,” I said, though I was more concerned about getting to the van, helping Temi, and finding out if there was any way to get the sword back.
“I’d wondered if dimensions might have something to do with… everything. Remember that Stargate episode with the monsters that inhabited a dimension parallel to our own?”
“No.”
“I’m pretty sure it was based on that old Lovecraft story. Say, Eleriss, what’s the elven pineal gland like? Similar to ours?”
“Pardon?” Eleriss asked.
I almost said the same thing, except in a less polite way. “I can usually follow along with your science fiction analogies, but you’re going to have to explain this one.”
“I was joking about the gland. Probably.” Simon squinted at Eleriss. “But there are all kinds of stories based on the idea of dimensions overlapping and there being things that happen to cause humans to see and sometimes interact with creatures from the other dimensions.”
“And get killed by those creatures?” I asked. We had reached the van, so I ran ahead to open the door, not waiting for his answer.
“Sometimes, yes.” He slapped himself on the forehead. “This must be why our weapons don’t work. Duh, why didn’t I think of that? It wouldn’t matter if we used a gun or a nuke or a pair of pliers, because the monsters aren’t there, not completely. I’m surprised the bullets didn’t go right through the other jibtab. They must be… I don’t know, like right on the edge of our reality.”
“How come they can hurt us if we can’t hurt them?” I asked.
Alek climbed into the van, and I pushed stuff out of the way so he could lay Temi across the seats.
“Take us to your conveyance home by the creek,” Eleriss said, slipping in after us.
“The campground?” I asked.
“Yes.”
We hadn’t paid for another night, but I guessed that didn’t matter at the moment. It would probably be deserted, and he could do… whatever elves were trained to do in medical crises. We needed to return Naomi to her grandmother too. She had been silent since catching up with the group, her eyes big and round as she listened to us speak. Information overload. I knew the feeling.
Simon had dropped down beside Temi, his lip caught between his teeth, so I swatted him on the chest.
“Give me the keys.”
He dropped them in my hand without argument. “They must have been engineered that way,” he said. “The jibtab. Given weapons—claws and fangs and stingers—that can somehow be effective across dimensions.” His head jerked up, his eyes locking on Eleriss. “The way the sword is, right?”
Eleriss nodded. “The sword exists in many realities at once. Many of our tools operate this way. We have long traveled between worlds and across dimensions.”
“Then how come we were able to bury the last monster under a pile of rock?” I jammed the keys into the ignition and started the van. Naomi slumped down in the passenger seat. “If it didn’t wholly exist in our dimension, then how did a pile of rocks from our reality crush it?”
“Did the rocks crush it?” Simon asked, still looking at Eleriss. “Or was it Temi poking it full of holes that did it in?”
Hm, that was possible. We had been too busy trying not to drown or get crushed ourselves. I had no idea what had finally killed the monster in the end.
“We were not there when it met its demise,” Eleriss said, “but it is likely its wounds from the sword were what killed it.”
So even if we managed to drop a mountain on our flying jibtab, there was no guarantee it would be killed. In fact, it was sounding more and more likely that it wouldn’t be killed.
A stream of cars had parked behind us, and I had to back up and creep forward a few times before I could maneuver the van out of its improvised parking spot, but we finally headed back up the road, away from Sedona. I watched the last of the buildings disappear in the rearview mirror, trying not to feel like we were fleeing the scene.
“Did we help anything?” I murmured. “Or simply screw things up even more? And what’s going to happen when the jibtab regenerates and comes back to town?” Nobody answered my mutters. I glanced in the mirror at Eleriss and raised my voice to ask, “I saw Jakatra holding a little blue box. Was that the real one? Is he taking it out of town?”
“That was the real one, yes. It was located in the back of the store where the bomb went off,” Eleriss said. “A trap not for the jibtab but for Artemis. I should have realized this. I did not believe… no, I should have known. Many of my people respect all forms of life, but some… consider themselves important enough to make decisions about which creatures can live and die without upsetting the balance.”
In other words, his portal authorities didn’t give a crap about humans. I couldn’t manage to be shocked. I hoped I had the opportunity to deck Green Eyes someday. Just because Eleriss and Jakatra wouldn’t cross her didn’t mean I wouldn’t.
“When can you heal Temi?” Simon asked. “She doesn’t look good. I mean she always looks good, but you know, not as much now.”
I would have rolled my eyes, but I knew he was fumbling his words because he was nervous and worried about her.
“I will commence when we are no longer in motion,” Eleriss said.
“We’re almost to the campground,” I said. “Unless you want me to pull over sooner? How bad is she?”
“In a non-critical condition.”
Good. A minute later, we came up to the turn off—the vehicle was still in the ditch off to the side of the driveway. I rolled us down the hill and toward our old spot. Naomi leaned forward, her face tense. I recalled that there had been a police or aid car down here earlier, though there weren’t any flashing lights around now. The campground lay eerily quiet, the soft rush of water audible from below.
Naomi’s van was still in their spot, but it wasn’t alone. A firefighter’s EMS truck had pulled up in front of it. My stomach sank. I had told Naomi the campground would be safe, that it was too far from town and that it wouldn’t be a target. I hadn’t meant to lie to the girl.
“No,” Naomi whispered, her hand finding the door handle.
I pulled to a stop so she could jump out without hurting herself. As the door opened, a man was saying, “She’s the last one. Let’s get to the ER.”
“No,” Naomi said, more loudly this time. She sprinted to the back of the truck a second before the paramedic closed the door. “Wait, is my grandmother in there? She was… we’re staying here.” She waved toward their van.
I stared as the man said something and gave her a hand up, an ache in my heart. I didn’t know whether to pull into our old camp spot or simply sit there. Either way, I felt useless. The truck pulled away, its lights flashing again.
“What now?” I whispered, twisting to look at Eleriss.
He had produced a small device and was kneeling beside Temi, and he didn’t respond.
Remembering that he had wanted the van to be stationary, I pulled into the campsite and turned it off. Simon crouched next to Temi, probably crowding Eleriss, but the elf didn’t say anything. Not knowing what else to do, I climbed out and sat on the picnic table.
My eyes ached. I didn’t know if it was because they were tired or because they wanted a good cry. Even if I hadn’t personally lost anyone close, so long as nothing happened to Temi, I keenly felt our failure. I didn’t know what we could have done better. We were just… not qualified for this job. Our attempts at playing hero seemed ludicrous now, in light of the fact that we had done absolutely nothing to help anybody. Maybe it had been ludicrous from the beginning, and maybe I’d known that all along. I’d just gotten caught up in… I didn’t know what. Simon’s enthusiasm? My own interest in the elves? The fact that Eleriss and Jakatra had shown some faith in us, or in Temi at least, in putting the sword in her hands?
But it had been insanity from the beginning, hadn’t it? To think that some kids fresh out of college could be heroes. It wasn’t as if we had special powers. I could barely pay my bills every month. Why did I think I had a chance at slaying killer creatures that apparently weren’t even from our plane of existence? We should never have followed Jakatra and Eleriss in the beginning. We should have stayed focused on building our business. A business that all of my former peers and professors hated me over. I dropped my head into my hands. Maybe I could find some portal that would take me back in time a year and let me start all over. Take the normal, respectable job after graduation. Have a normal, respectable life. Give up adventure. Avoid strangers from other worlds.
A hand came to rest on my shoulder. I wasn’t sure whether it was Simon or Alek—I couldn’t imagine Eleriss running out to console me—but I didn’t look up. Falling apart should be done in private.
The hand fell away, but I could feel the presence of its owner beside me on the table. Alek. Simon couldn’t have been quiet for that long.
After a while, I wiped my eyes and straightened, trying to look a little less… defeated. Twilight had come while I had been moping. A light was on in the van, but I couldn’t see anyone or hear anything. Alek was indeed the one sitting beside me, his elbows propped on his knees as he watched the deepening gloom around us. Alert, as always.
“Thanks,” I said, not entirely sure what I was thanking him for. Being there. Continuing to help us.
He inclined his head toward me. “It is difficult to feel powerless. I understand this.”
“I’m sure you do.” I felt a twinge of guilt at my self-flagellation. When he had endured so much more. Next, I would be complaining that all of this monster drama was keeping me from leveling my RealmSaga character.
“Do you wish to plan the next stage of our campaign?” he asked.
I stared at him. Next stage? “Unless Jakatra shows up with Temi’s sword, I don’t see what next stage there can be. Right now, we are, as you said, powerless to do anything against the jibtab. And we’re not any closer to knowing who’s behind creating the monsters than we were when this all started.” In hindsight, maybe we should have prioritized that more. Walking in a door and shooting someone in the chest would be easier than defeating the sum of his imagination.
“There are other swords,” Alek said.
I sat up straighter. “Here on Earth? Have you seen them?”
“I have seen many glowing Dhekarzha swords. Not on Earth, but possibly they exist here also. Was this one not buried when you found it? Might there be a way to locate the energy of such a weapon if one was here?”
“I…” I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, my mind, which had been listless and enervated, suddenly churning anew. “I’d have to ask Simon. I wouldn’t have thought so a few hours ago, but maybe this dimensional thing… I don’t know. I wonder if we could come up with a way to search for unique signatures.” Maybe it was all fantasy. I had no idea if such things could be tracked or if we had the technology to do so. Even if there were no other weapons on Earth… “Eleriss did say Jakatra has a similar sword hanging on his wall back home.”
“There are many weapons in their world.” Alek didn’t sound at all daunted by the idea of sneaking over there to acquire some, either. Hell, maybe he wanted a chance to stick a thorn in each of the elves’ sides after what they had done to him.
The idea of stealing from Jakatra or Eleriss made me uncomfortable—they had been helping us all along—but I wasn’t kindly inclined toward this portal authority woman at the moment. I wouldn’t mind stealing from her. Maybe they even had a bin full of portal openers and elven weapons next to their public portals, much like the garbage cans full of nail files and toothpaste at the airport security stations. If we could figure out how to get there, maybe we could help ourselves… bring back weapons for Temi and Alek to use.
“The problem is that we don’t know how to get to their world,” I said. “Unless you know a way.”
I studied Alek’s face in the fading light. He had been such a quiet member of our group the last few days, content to follow my lead, and I supposed I had forgotten that he was a trained warrior. It was probably only his unfamiliarity—utter bewilderment—with the modern world and everything around him that had kept him from asserting himself more. Not to mention the language barrier. But I ought to be thinking of him as a master sergeant out of the Marines, not some random guy I was tutoring in my spare time. And, until he figured out how to navigate this world and speak to the people here, I had him at my disposal.
“The way would be to acquire one of their portal openers,” Alek said. “Artemis and I should be able to activate the devices, though it may take work to discover how to operate them.”
“So… pickpocket from Jakatra or Eleriss?” I asked softly, aware that Eleriss was a few feet away and in the middle of helping Temi. Again, I grimaced at the idea of stealing from them or abusing the friendship—however aloof—they had shown us. “Or maybe we can find that Yesathra person.”
Alek nodded. “Pick-pocket or forcefully take. You make the mistake of thinking of the Dhekarzha as allies, but these two are a rarity, and I do not trust Angry Dhekarzha at all.”
“Jakatra?”
“He looks at me in the manner that one of my… captors once did.”
Captors. I wondered if he had meant to say owner or master or something more unpleasant.
“They are the enemy, the other,” Alek went on. “Much could be learned by interrogating one of them.”
“That could come with repercussions that we can’t foresee.”
“Oh, I foresee them well.” Alek clenched his jaw, and a muscle in his cheek ticked. “But some risks are worth taking if it protects your own people.”
“True, but Alek… do you really consider us—” I touched my chest, then waved toward the mostly empty campground, “—your people? I appreciate that you’re helping us—I appreciate it a great deal—but I keep wondering why we matter to you.”
He gazed back at me, holding my eyes. Such a direct stare might have made me uncomfortable, coming from another man, but there wasn’t a challenge in his eyes. Just… a sadness.
“Isn’t it possible that some of these people are my descendants?” he asked. “If not mine, then those of my friends, my colleagues? I understand this is not my continent, but you are here. Others from Greece must be too. And it is all… the same world, the same people. To be a warrior, a protector… that is all I’ve known.”
“That’s true. It is possible that you have descendants here.” I wondered exactly how possible it was. “You go back far enough, and we’re all related. There was this conqueror about a thousand years ago, so still fifteen hundred years after your time, Genghis Khan, and he, ah, got around. They say that one in two hundred men alive today are his direct descendants. I’m not sure how scientifically accurate that study was, but you’re from much farther back. If you got around a lot in your youth, who knows? One in three people walking around might be your descendant.”
That made him blink a few times. I’d meant it as a joke, but maybe he thought I was serious.
“I… got around only moderately and only amongst my own people,” Alek said. “Young Spartan men were supposed to be too busy training to engage in affairs with women.”
I noted that supposed and smiled. “All right, so only one in five people are your descendants.”
Zelda’s door opened, and a rectangle of light slanted across the dirt. Eleriss stepped out of the van. I leaned back, trying to get a glimpse of Temi, to see if she was awake.
“…and if you need to recuperate, you could play some RealmSaga,” came Simon’s voice from within. He was studying the ceiling of the van but clearly talking to Temi. “Want me to set up my laptop? You could even play my character, since yours is only Level Two. Just don’t go out of town or the training area. Or talk to anyone. Or agree to run any dungeons. Maybe you should play your character. I can wander around and help you level.”
“Temi’s awake,” I decided. “And probably reminiscing over the days when Simon was too nervous to talk to her.”
“Artemis is healed?” came a voice from the trees.
I flinched. Jakatra. How long had he been there? Long enough to hear about notions of theft and interrogation? No, Alek and I had been speaking in Greek. We should be safe. I hoped. Though Simon had inflicted enough episodes of Star Trek on me that I knew aliens in those stories always had universal translators.
Alek didn’t look the faintest bit guilty. Maybe he had even known Jakatra was there. He gave the elf his usual frosty glare. Jakatra frosted right back at him, though not for long before focusing on Eleriss again.
“Yes.” Eleriss rubbed the back of his shoulder and shifted his head back and forth. It was the first time I had seen either of them appear physically tired. How long had he been up, looking for us and hunting for the portal monitor? “You did not reacquire the sword.”
“No. Yesathra and her unidentified ally must have known there would be pursuit. They left quickly. It has likely already been returned to our world.”
“Returned?” Temi sat on the edge of the van’s doorway. She appeared even more worn down than Eleriss, but it was good to see her awake. “But it came from here to start with, didn’t it? I thought that’s why you thought we could use it.”
“It has been here for centuries, but it didn’t originate on this world.”
“No,” I said, “some exploring elf came to check out the portals here in Sedona, let something out he shouldn’t have, and then decided to bury the sword to make sure nobody else opened those portals.” Everyone turned curious eyes toward me. “Or he came to check out the vortexes, got jumped by some natives, and they opened the portals. Then they realized bad things were coming out of them, figured out how to close them, and buried the sword themselves. The, ah, pictographs weren’t that clear.”
“It was buried by someone with more power than humans possessed at the time,” Eleriss said, “so likely the wielder was responsible. One of our people, yes. But the six portals located in this area, they have been known by the Dhekarzha for millennia. An explorer shouldn’t have opened them unless he or she meant to deliberately do damage to the local populace.” He looked at Jakatra. He wasn’t implying that Jakatra was someone like that, was he? No, he probably wanted verification. But Jakatra merely gave his usual glare in response. “It is possible there is a record. I will look for it when we return home. If it is true that the sword also has portal manipulation capabilities, it is a rarer tool than I realized, and there may, indeed, be a recorded lineage of it.”
“It can open portals,” Simon said. “We were this close to doing exactly that.”
And who knew what might have come out if we had done it? I shuddered.
Eleriss looked toward Temi. Not trusting Simon? It was true we were only speculating at this point. We had yet to prove that the sword could open a portal.
“As we drew close to one of the supposed vortex areas, there were flashes of light,” Temi said.
“Too bad the sword was stolen before we had a chance to see.” Simon plopped down on the picnic table beside me. “It’s gone for good, right?”
“It is gone,” Jakatra agreed.
“Would your people, your portal authorities, be having as much of a hissy fit if we just had a sword that could hurt monsters?” Simon asked. “Not one that opens portals? It sounds like that’s a more common weapon from your world.”
Eleriss looked at the three of us on the picnic table. “Hissy… fit?”
“Would they chase a regular magical sword to Earth and back?” Simon asked.
“There would still be repercussions for taking one through a portal to Earth.”
“Especially to Earth,” Jakatra added.
Temi frowned at him, as if this was a callback to another conversation they’d had.
“I just want to know if there’s any way we could get another sword,” Simon said. “Or two. One for Temi and one for Alek. Because we still have a monster that’s going to be harassing Sedona again, if it isn’t already.” He looked up through the tree branches, most bare thanks to the late autumn date. The stars were starting to come out.
“Not from our world,” Eleriss said. “It’s possible others may have been lost on your world over the millennia, but I do not know where. It took much effort for us to find this one.”
“And time,” Jakatra said.
“You people can’t bring a sword through the portal, or you’ll get fined,” Simon said. “I get it. But what if we happened to follow you home, bought a sword from the magical sword shop, and then went back through the portal? Didn’t Jakatra say he had one on the wall in his house? Maybe he could just look the other way as some pesky humans slipped in and borrowed it.”
I elbowed Simon, then wished I had thought to do it earlier. If we were going to try to sneak onto their world and acquire a jibtab-slaying tool through dubious means, telling them about it beforehand probably wasn’t wise.
“Humans are not welcome on our world,” Jakatra said.
“I’m not welcome a lot of places.” Simon smiled, undaunted. “The Denny’s in Prescott, the Pita Pit and the P.F. Chang’s in Tempe, any restaurant whatsoever in Scottsdale… That doesn’t keep me from showing up there.”
“What could you have possibly stolen from the Pita Pit?” I whispered, more because I wanted to distract him from his current line of questioning than because I cared.
“I may have liberated a jug of their secret sauce when nobody was looking. At least I thought nobody was looking. Did you know the guys behind the counter there are allowed to leave their post to chase a mostly-paying customer three blocks before giving up? I wouldn’t have guessed that was permissible.”
“You do not have access to a portal, nor would we let you follow us through one,” Jakatra said.
“Knowingly.” Simon winked. He was irascible, but I had to admit that his unwillingness to give up, however incorrigibly, bolstered my spirit. And then there was Alek, who also seemed to believe we would continue on with the battle.
It might have been my imagination, but Eleriss appeared more thoughtful than obstinate at Simon’s line of reasoning. He hadn’t openly objected to anything yet anyway.
“Jakatra,” Temi said softly, “you’ve invested so much time into finding the sword and into my training… Wouldn’t that all have been for nothing if we have no way to continue the fight against the jibtab? If you have such a weapon, and it’s simply hanging in your home…”
“I cannot take it through the portal,” Jakatra said sturdily.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“I would be banished. That is not something I would suffer for a human.”
Temi accepted the response with her usual quiet stoicism, but I wondered if his words—or the harshness of his tone—stung at all. Earlier, it had seemed like they might have some kind of connection. A mentor-student relationship, if nothing else. More than I had with either of the elves anyway.
“You didn’t really answer Simon’s questions,” I said, giving up on the idea of not alerting them to our potential plans. “What if a human snuck into your world and stole your sword?”
“Wow,” Simon murmured, “that’s usually my kind of moral flexibility, not yours.”
“Maybe I should have said borrowed.” We would happily return the sword once we figured out how to stop these monsters from appearing in our world.
“Next, we’ll find salt and pepper shakers in your purse,” Simon said.
“I’m just thinking of the greater good. The sword could be used to help people here, maybe even save lives. It’s a wall decoration there.”
Jakatra turned his icy stare on me. So far, there hadn’t been much bite behind his glares, but having seen him fight, I did wonder what it would be like to have him as a true enemy. Not healthy, that was for sure.
“Even if some humans could cross into our world without being noticed and navigate their way to my home in Fellward on the Mishnarahsu River, they would have to find a portal in the first place. And we will not be letting you through.”
“No,” Eleriss agreed. “That we cannot do. Jakatra, we must go and dispose of the bait box.”
I had forgotten about that. “Wait, you still have it? If you left it here, we could place it somewhere so the jibtab could be lured into a trap.” I looked at my friends. “We had talked about getting it into a cave with low ceilings, so we could…” I stopped, feeling dumb. So we could what? Absolutely nothing without that sword.
“Is there no way you could help fight it?” Temi asked, looking at Jakatra more than Eleriss. “There are clearly some tools you’re allowed to bring to our world.” She touched her temple—I hadn’t seen what Eleriss had used on her, but it had been more than antibiotic ointment and bandages from the drug store.
“We have already risked enough,” Jakatra said. “There will be repercussions for our actions.” He gave Eleriss a significant look, then stalked into the woods where the darkness soon swallowed him.
“He is right.” Eleriss sighed softly. “We have been strongly advised to leave this place. But I will contemplate other possible solutions and contact you when I’m able.”
“Wait,” Temi said. “You healed me—before you go, can you do the same for the people who were taken to the hospital? Everyone who has been struck by the jibtab’s stingers has ended up dying.”
“Yes,” I added, wishing I had thought to ask that as well. “Naomi’s grandmother and the others. There must be dozens after today’s attack.”
Eleriss tilted his head. “You examined the blood. Have your people not discovered an antidote?”
I decided not to find it creepy that he knew we had been stealing blood samples and studying those stingers under microscopes. “Autumn said there’s not a known antidote for… that type of poison.” I found myself embarrassed to admit that the ‘poison’ was a man-made insecticide, our own weapon, in a manner of speaking, being used against us. “You’re just… not supposed to expose yourself to it to start with.”
“I will see if I may be of some use before I leave,” Eleriss said, then jogged into the trees after Jakatra.
A moment later, the sound of motorcycles roaring to life drifted down to us.
“Well,” Simon said, “we either find a way to open a portal to their world and borrow some swords, or we figure out something else. Like how to build weapons of our own that can attack things in multiple dimensions.” He scratched his jaw thoughtfully.
“I’m guessing you’d need more than benzene and polystyrene cups for that,” I said.
“Yeah. I wouldn’t know where to start. We’d need to find an expert.”
“Like the guy who’s making the monsters to start with?”
“He would probably be a good resource.”
I was about to suggest that we turn our geeky research brains toward exactly that activity—though I didn’t know how far we could get if the person engineering all of this wasn’t from Earth—but Temi stood up abruptly, her eyes widening. She turned in a full circle at the same time as she scraped at her arms, as if bugs were crawling over them.
Alek shifted. “I feel it too.”
“Feel what?” I asked.
“Nothing good, I’m betting,” Simon murmured, watching Temi’s alarmed reaction.
“I think…” Temi licked her lips. “I think someone’s opened a portal.”