Chapter Twenty-Three: Stranger Danger

  I asked Bear to lead the way back to the entrance of the rift and she was delighted to oblige.

  No, really, delighted. I could see it in the way she held her tail, in the hint of a prance in her stride, in the confident angle of her ears, one tipped forward, one back. She wasn’t speaking directly to me, or even just making her thoughts known in the way that had been happening more and more frequently over the past couple of days, but she was cheerful and ever-so-pleased with herself.

  I’d known that Malinois were working dogs, but it had never really occurred to me that Bear needed a job. But Bear had clearly needed a job. Or at least was pleased to have one now.

  I chuckled a little at the thought as I admired her graceful saunter.

  “Something funny?” JJ asked.

  “Oh, just…” I nodded toward Bear. “Someone’s enjoying the apocalypse. Which is terrible, of course, but as her person, it’s nice to see her so happy.”

  JJ smiled. “She’s a good girl. When you, uh, did the thing and went down in the mud, we had to do a little negotiating. Riley came in on my side, or she wouldn’t have let me anywhere near ya.”

  I put a hand over my heart. I felt oddly touched. “I’m surprised. She’s territorial about the house and yard, but I wouldn’t have thought she’d try to guard me.”

  “Oh, she so did. I’m guessing the other two are maybe a little more human friendly in general? There was a lot of barking, but I felt like Riley and Zelda were telling me I needed to get my ass over there and help. Bear was shouting ‘Stranger Danger’ at the top of her lungs.”

  I laughed. That sounded like a good read. I’d bet JJ’s animal communication skill was pretty high even without the System boosting it.

  “Anyway, after I turned you over and made sure you were breathing, I backed off, but Bear kept coming over and checking me out. Not aggro, just… saying hello.”

  “Did she let you pet her?”

  “I got to scratch under her chin a little.”

  “A definite stamp of approval, then.”

  Riley was non-discriminating when it came to pets. Anyone willing to scratch that magic spot just above his tail was good by him. Zelda accepted pets while saying hello, but didn’t seek them out otherwise. Bear, though, dignified very few humans with the privilege of touching her. There was a tech at our vet’s office who could get in her face and give her kisses and apart from that… well, there was me. And now JJ.

  We reached the rift exit. From this side, it was less shimmer and more window. It looked as if it might be early morning on Earth, but all I could really see was pavement and scrub pines.

  I was about to suggest that I go through first or maybe let Bear scout it out, just in case something dangerous was waiting on the other side, but I didn’t get a chance.

  “Oh, thank the Lord,” Alma said, hurrying ahead of Bear and walking straight through.

  “Mama!” JJ barely took a second to roll his eyes before rushing after her.

  Well, okay, then.

  I checked that the dogs were with me, and the four of us followed suit.

  The road was deserted, as quiet as early morning in any sleepy small town. But there were plenty of signs that all was not as it should be.

  The dead bodies in the road were the most obvious.

  In the rifts, mana-created monsters went poof after death, leaving behind some mana-generated loot and maybe a few bloodstains. On Earth, bodies did not come with magical cleaning crews.

  The alien was actually purple—JJ hadn’t been wrong about that—but after one quick glance, I avoided looking at his body.

  The dead bird near him, though? I had to stare.

  I thought maybe it was a barred owl, but mana-crazed, like the squirrels. Barred owls aren’t the biggest members of the owl family, but this one was huge. By far the biggest owl I’d ever seen. It looked like someone had killed it by tangling up its wings in fabric, maybe a sweatshirt, and then smashing its head in.

  I called the dogs to me with a whistle, and a sharp, “Stay,” grabbing Bear’s collar for good measure. There would be no sniffing, no scavenging, and absolutely no rolling if I had my way.

  From where I stood, I couldn’t see any human bodies. Whoever had fought the owl had won. But a hell of a lot of blood trailed off into the RV park and the place itself… well, I was pretty sure if we went exploring, we’d find some dead bodies in there. RVs were really nothing but tin cans on wheels, and someone—something—had been ripping open those tin cans.

  We were not going to go exploring.

  JJ was looking around with an expression of dazed horror, but Alma’s face showed nothing but grim determination.

  “We need to get to your sister’s house. Now,” she said. Turning to me, she added, “You coming? You’re welcome to stay with us. It’ll be a squeeze, but Stacy’ll make room.”

  I shook my head, then tilted it in the direction of the breach. “I need to close the rift, and I’ll head home after that.”

  “All right, that’s… that’s good.” Alma nodded. “You take care, though, child, alright? Stay safe. Keep those dogs close.”

  “Hang on, Mama, we can’t just…” JJ’s expression cleared, as if he was taking the horror and tucking it neatly away, something to think about later. Maybe much, much later.

  “We need to move, Jerrold. I’m worried about Stacy and the kids, and I don’t wanna be here if another one of those birds comes flying by.” Alma indicated the owl, then glanced at the RV park. “Or if whatever’s in there comes wandering out.” Her grip tightened on the gun in her hand.

  “Yeah, but…” JJ sighed, and rubbed his bald head. He smiled, a little wry, looking at me and the dogs. “I’m not hitting on you, I swear, but can I get your number? Or… I guess phones aren’t working so well anymore. You saved my life, though. It feels really weird to just wave good-bye and hope, you know, that you make it. That you and the dogs survive. You live around here, right?”

  I hesitated. You know what a woman who lives alone at the end of a dirt road does not ever do? Like, ever, ever, ever? Give a man she’s just met her address. Damn right, I’d choose the bear. Bears take no for an answer and as long as they’re not defending slow-moving babies, they’d just as soon steer clear of you.

  But… I glanced down at my own Bear. She’d let JJ pet her. He’d called her ‘sweet girl’ and nudged her out of his way. It’s not that I thought Bear was a particularly good judge of character: she pretty much thought all people were dangerous and potentially evil. Oh, wait.

  But beyond that, the System was changing everything. JJ was a Level 3 Bard. I was a Level 17, soon-to-be 18, Thorn’s Edge Guardian. He might outweigh me, but even if he turned out to be someone very different than Bear and I thought him to be, he was no threat to me.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Before the pause could get too awkward, I said, “I do, yeah. A few miles away. On Rose, off Millard.”

  A flicker of something crossed JJ’s face. Surprise? Distaste? I couldn’t tell what.

  “You a Barrow, girl?” Alma demanded, breaking into our conversation.

  Ooh, I’d moved from ‘child’ to ‘girl’. What was that about? And what the heck was a Barrow? I blinked, trying to match the word to a meaning.

  And then my eyes widened and I dropped my hold on Bear’s collar, putting my hands up in front of me, fingers spread wide. “Oh, no, definitely not.”

  A Barrow wasn’t a thing, it was a person. A family. My neighbors, in fact.

  “They live at the head of the street, right at the intersection. I live at the very end. After the pavement switches to dirt, another mile and a half, at least. Yeah, no. Absolutely not.”

  I recognized the new expression on JJ’s face: relief. And I totally got it.

  The Barrows, my nearest neighbors, were… well, what could I say about them? I’d mentioned the Confederate flag on the pickup truck before. They were people who could fly a Confederate flag and an American flag at the same time and never notice the hypocrisy.

  They weren’t the kind of neighbors who had a yard filled with trash and broken-down cars with an old sofa on the porch. I’d probably have liked them better if they were, maybe even forgiven the flags. Maybe.

  Instead, they had a pristine white house, flowered curtains in the windows, never any signs of life. Next to the house was an ugly gray building, almost like one of those temporary hangars from World War II. A sign in front of it read Church of the Sacred Anointment. I was pretty sure the church was just a tax scam.

  Maybe I’m being judgmental when I say they were not good people. But I’d spoken to one of them exactly three times and that was at least twice too many. I drove by without slowing down now and picked up my mail at the post office in town.

  “Glad to hear it.” JJ’s smile held wry acknowledgment.

  “I don’t know if…” I shrugged. “Well, you take care, too, okay? I’ll watch for the rift to appear again, and come visit when it does. You got an address for me?”

  JJ told me his sister’s address and I did my best to memorize it, mentally repeating it a few times. Alma was visibly impatient, but approving. There was another awkward moment when they needed to walk away and I needed to enter the rift. None of us seemed to quite know what a reasonable good-bye required, before Alma shook her head.

  This time when she stepped forward to give me a hug, she didn’t ask permission, and I didn’t step away. She wrapped her arms around me and said in my ear, “Stay safe. Survive.” The words were fierce, an order.

  JJ hugged me, too, enveloping me in his arms. He didn’t say a word, but I knew he was giving me the same order. Making the same wish.

  It felt surprisingly nice. I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d hugged someone. Maybe… God, could it have been my dad’s memorial? Yeah, probably.

  I didn’t watch them leave, but I was a little teary as I turned to enter the rift. Not a lot. It’s not like I really knew them. I’d try to come back, and I silently recited the address a few more times, but I wasn’t going to dwell on their odds. They had just as good a chance of survival as anyone else. Maybe better than most, given Alma’s nature.

  I stopped moving. Shit.

  They could improve their odds.

  I could improve their odds.

  I turned away from the rift, and called after them before they’d gone too far down the road.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  JJ turned back to face me.

  I tilted my head toward the dead alien. I didn’t want to look at it. At him. I didn’t want to think about whether he was a kid, about whether his parents were wondering where he was.

  “You should grab the gun before you go. It might... You might need it.”

  Even from the distance, I could see JJ close his eyes and swallow hard. But he nodded, and called back. “Yeah, good idea.” He started jogging towards the dead body and I turned back to the rift.

  The dogs had, somewhat to my surprise, been completely obedient to my stay, and they were equally obedient to my whistle. Together, we stepped into the shimmer.

  I had to choose our destination, and for a fleeting moment, half a second really, the temptation to choose my RMI was overwhelming. I could go home. I could have a cup of tea, some breakfast. Feed the cat, have a break, take a nap.

  I chose the only instance left of Rift N5W12S#486.

  It was still beautiful.

  It still smelled.

  The Thorn’s Edge rift didn’t have a final boss. In order to open the gas station office, the toughest bug from each group of bugs had to die. I was really hoping that 486 was different and that killing that gargantuan slime in the area marked as the Rift Control Chamber would be enough to access the core.

  Obviously, the only way to find out would be to kill the darn thing.

  Worst case scenario… well, worst case scenario would be to run into the Dendrysians. But unless they were Rift Keepers themselves, or had a Rift Keeper handy, they wouldn’t be able to enter this specific instance of the rift. And since no other instances had shown up on my interface, I was probably safe to assume that I was still alone.

  Although that was an excellent reason to speed this process along. If the aliens started searching for their missing and entered the rift, I wouldn’t be able to close it without confronting them.

  Suddenly a gargantuan slime, guaranteed to be Level 10 or less, didn’t seem so bad.

  As it happened, it wasn’t, except for the smell. Gargantuan didn’t equal anything close to gargantuan in my book; it was just kinda big. It was, however, a pain in the ass to kill. Fire extinguisher foam, Windex, kitty litter, bleach, salt, fire, dog teeth, and my shovel were all useless against it.

  The only things that worked were Warden’s Edge’s Rebound effect and its Verdant Reprisal ability. But after its attacks bounced back on it a couple of times, the slime simply stopped attacking. Sadly for me, shit-talking a gargantuan slime does not make it mad enough to get stupid.

  After about twenty minutes of increasing frustration, I called the dogs back to me and we all backed away from Gargantua. I checked everyone over for injuries, but we’d all been warier after our earlier battle with the swamp creature and none of us were hurt.

  I scowled at the slime. Obviously, people killed slimes somehow, but I had no idea how. Magic?

  It must be.

  I opened my interface and scrolled through my traits and abilities, searching for the one that could kill a giant slime. Nothing. So I did it again. Still nothing.

  I opened the Companions pane and checked Zelda’s abilities. Then Riley’s. Then Bear’s.

  Nothing.

  I returned to my own status sheet and looked at it one last time.

  Technically, it was morning. Of a new day.

  Say I’d gone in to help JJ around 10PM. I hadn’t looked at a clock, but that felt about right. Say it had taken an hour to find him. Time to wander a little, time to create the clay slimes and battle the swamp creature, time to work on pulling him out of the swamp. It would have been before midnight that I’d used [Mana Absorption].

  And now it was probably 5AM, maybe closer to 6. Of a new day.

  So the question was, did Zelda’s [Never Say Die] ability work once every twenty-four hours? Or did it work once a day?

  I returned to my Companion pane and read the description again.

  Never Say Die (Active): Once per day, when you or someone you love is within thirty seconds of death, you reject the possibility, and restore the dying to full health.

  Once per day. It seemed pretty clear. A day started at midnight, ended the same.

  The only ability I had that might do a damn thing against our gargantuan buddy was [Mana Absorption]. But the last time I used it, I would have died if Zelda hadn’t saved me.

  Could she do it again?

  Also, and not incidentally, was it going to hurt as much as it had before? Because on the 1-10 pain scale hospitals used, it had hit somewhere around 25. I’d never experienced anything like it before, and I’d really prefer never to experience anything like it again.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The first time I’d used [Mana Absorption], on Riley’s fur, it had felt like a pleasant little buzz. And System Chelsea would not have suggested an ability that was guaranteed to kill me. High risk, high reward, she’d said. So risky, yes, but not intrinsically deadly. I just needed to be cautious, to limit the mana I absorbed and not flood myself with it.

  Zelda whimpered softly. She was watching me like a herding dog watches a sheep, unblinking, eyes locked on my every twitch.

  “Yeah, I know,” I told her. “I’m being careful, I promise.”

  I did consider just going home. I really did. Maybe I could, I don’t know, do some research on slimes. Find a local fire mage to help me out. Something.

  But every minute I stood here, wasting time, was another minute that the aliens might come looking for their children, and another minute that someone else might stumble into the rift, opening an extra instance that I would then have to clear. The longer this took, the harder it would get.

  I focused on the slime. I stared at it the same way Zelda was staring at me, my complete attention on nothing but that magical mana-created creature before me. I tried to shape in my mind the idea that I wanted only the mana of the slime, nothing else, and then gingerly, gently, I tapped [Mana Absorption].