Sunshowers - Part Six
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
So many absurd things have happened in such a short span of time that my head is spinning. Ralph taking out a cop car with a rifle doesn’t even feel like that much of a step beyond everything else that’s already gone down tonight.
Minimum chaos, indeed.
At least the stealth return to the hotel is going smoothly. We waited for the cloud cover to blot out the starlight before we darted back across the road, then stole back into the trees. Now we’re silently weaving our way back towards the picnic tables.
Ralph is leading us. He’s being careful to make no noise, but he’s walking easily and confidently with the stolen/borrowed rifle, making no effort to hide it.
As soon as we step out of the trees, a lean hunter with a large furry dog comes over to meet us, having caught a glimpse of Ralph’s pale gold hair in the moonlight.
“Forest seems clear to me, and to Amber, here,” he says, scratching the dog’s ears. “If anyone else is still out there hunting, we couldn’t find ‘em.”
“Thanks again for checking.” Ralph holds out the rifle to the hunter, leaving as much space as possible between himself and the dog. “This yours, by the way? It was on one of the picnic tables. Didn’t want it to get rained on.”
“Oh, yeah. Appreciate that, thanks.” The hunter takes it back, relieved to see it didn’t get too wet. “Anyways, I’m gonna get out of here before the rain really starts to come down. Suggest you folks do the same.”
Ralph gives him a nod, then sets off swiftly. Leading us towards the car, which Noah left by the side of the road when he came to rescue me.
“Hey.” Ralph catches Aiden’s eye, lowering his voice so that Nolan can’t hear him from the rear of the group. “You sensing the Witch anywhere around here?”
“She must have been close earlier,” I whisper, trotting to catch up with Aiden and Ralph. “She’s the one who sent Grimm after me.”
“Grimm did what?” Kasey sputters, her dark eyes blazing with sudden outrage.
“What?” Aiden looks down at me, his blue eyes going wide with alarm. “Are you fucking serious, Jamie? The Witch sent him after you? But I don’t sense her, she’s not here!”
“That’s what I’m saying. I think she was, but she left. I don’t know why, though… maybe there were too many people around.”
“We’ll talk about why later. When we’ve got fewer ears listening.” Ralph shoots us a warning look, inclining his head very slightly in Nolan’s direction. “For now… if the Witch left the area, and the last of the hunters are going home, then let’s-”
“What are you guys talking about?” Nolan asks, trotting a little to catch up with us.
“How we’re all gonna go along for the ride back to the ranger’s station.” Ralph pulls open the passenger’s side door of his car, moves Nolan’s backpack into the backseat, and gestures for everyone to get in. “If this group can’t help but get into trouble, let’s at least make sure we do it together.”
We all slip out of the rain and into the car. I twist around in the backseat to steal a look at the hotel before we go. The last two hunters are headed for their truck, and a different squad car is pulling up behind Hanely and Grimm’s to pick them up, although the two of them are still busy being chewed out by Wendy.
I can’t hear anything from here, but she appears to be delivering a lengthy monologue about her opinions of them and their behavior, one so frightening that the dogs going by with the hunters shiver and press closer to the legs of their owners. Hanely and Grimm - both powerfully-built men - are cowering beneath the onslaught, looking like two naughty children suffering through a sharp scolding from their mother.
Nolan has turned around in his seat, too. He’s watching the scene before him with disbelieving eyes, but there’s a distinctive sparkle to them that tells me he’s grinning behind the hand he’s got pressed over his mouth.
“Taste of their own medicine, huh?” Noah snickers, turning around to watch for a second before he pulls us out onto the road.
Nolan sits back in his seat and hugs his backpack to himself. Nibbling on his lip like he doesn’t even know what to do with that smile.
~~~~
The rain is falling in soft, fluttering gusts, but it’s already starting to soften the road. Thankfully Noah is at the wheel, neatly weaving us around potholes, gliding the car along on the mud like it’s not an obstacle at all, just an easy way to go faster.
“Is our historian upset with us for bein’ involved in the breaking of some historical furnitures?” Noah asks me. “And plates?”
“Mmm… no.” Kasey, who’s sitting on top of the car for the ride, sticks her head and shoulders through the roof, her inky hair spilling down to hang around her face. “I don’t really care when it’s M. N. Morden’s stuff. He seems like a man whose things should have been broken.”
I repeat that for the rest of the group. Nolan, who’s been sitting in a silent daze, not really paying attention, suddenly looks up.
“He was,” he answers heatedly. “He definitely was. Don’t feel bad about anything of his getting broken.”
We all glance at Nolan, then try to avoid exchanging baffled looks with each other.
“Yeah, I was wondering,” I begin tentatively, “About the scandals that meant he had to leave his university and move out to this coast-?”
“It was because he faked the data for all of his most well-known work. Which makes sense, because he was a phrenologist-” Nolan stops and nods grimly when Kasey and I both cringe in horror. “Which isn’t even a real science at all. Of course he couldn’t get proof of anything, it was all bullshit.”
“Yikes,” Ralph murmurs.
“I dunno, what’s so bad about being a psychologist?” Noah shoots a baffled look at Ralph, scratching his forehead through his beanie. “Them’s just the ones who make sure your head is screwed on right, no?”
“No, not - I’ll explain later.”
“Point is, don’t feel bad,” Nolan says bitterly, picking at one of the books on his lap. “Noah was right, that hotel should be flattened.”
There’s a brief silence, during which everyone stares at Nolan curiously. But he looks like he might burst into tears if we press him on anything he just said, so no one does.
“Well, Hanely and Grimm sure put a dent in the hotel today,” Ralph murmurs, rolling down the window so he can light a cigarette. “Even if they didn’t quite flatten it.”
Nolan’s expression brightens again immediately.
“Didn’t they?” He lets out a dazed laugh, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it. Holy gosh.”
“Hey, Nolan, can I ask you something?” Noah’s grey eyes briefly flit up from the road to catch Nolan’s in the rearview. “Why don’t you curse? You got religion, or something? I’m not hating, I’m just wondering.”
“Respectable, refined men don’t swear,” Nolan says, in the miserable monotone of someone repeating a lesson they’ve had drilled into their head a million times over. Then it seems to abruptly dawn on him what he said, and he sits up in alarm, his green eyes widening. “I mean - that’s not to say anything about any of you guys! No offense meant, honestly-”
“Or taken, dude,” Noah cuts in, suppressing a laugh. “Pretty sure most of us in this car don’t care all too much about that.”
Nolan pauses in confusion. “About what?”
“Being respectable, or whatever,” Noah answers. “Who really cares about that, so long as you’re having a good time?”
Nolan stares at Noah like he just opened the door to a new world of awe-striking possibilities.
Ralph sees that expression and twists his mouth to the side, suppressing a laugh. I can tell that Aiden is trying to do the same thing, but I’m staring at Nolan curiously, thinking. Refinement, respectability… who was talking to us about that stuff before, treating it like it was the most important thing in the world?
Wasn’t it Wendy?
Oh… oh.
Noah is syncing his phone up to the car’s bluetooth. “So if you’re not personally offended by cursing, I take it you won’t be upset if I put on some Baby Keem?”
“Who?” Nolan asks, then changes his mind and hurriedly waves a forget-it hand at Noah. “No, I don’t mind! Sounds great! Go ahead!”
Noah lets music roll through the car, relaxing back into his seat. Ralph settles back too, slowly, thoughtfully working on his cigarette, gazing out through the window. Kasey disappears onto the roof again, and I snuggle back into Aiden’s arms, lapsing into thoughtful silence for the rest of the drive.
Nolan mostly keeps quiet, too. Listening to the music, pressing his fingers over his mouth every time a curse word comes up. Occasionally stealing a furtive glance at me and Aiden, I’m not sure why. He seems generally dazed to find himself where he is, having the night he’s having.
As we approach the ranger’s station he leans over to whisper to me.
“Were you serious, I really don’t need to pay for you guys to help me?”
“Yes, man. Honestly. I promise. There’s no need for you to sell your things.”
“Oh. Okay.” Nolan smiles nervously, hugging the backpack and the armful of books to his chest. “Cool, then I guess I just… have back more of my stuff, now.”
He pauses, looking dazed again, then breathes out a quiet laugh.
“This has turned into a weirdly good day,” he murmurs.
Ralph turns down the music and turns to face Nolan, speaking from the shadows.
“Hey, Ranger. We’re almost there, so get your stuff ready. We’re gonna walk you from the road to the outpost, and I’d prefer to move fast.”
“Oh, really?” Nolan sounds infinitely relieved. “Are you sure? Even with the rain-?”
“Yes,” Ralph says firmly. “No one on the team should be going places alone.”
Nolan shoots Ralph a startled, grateful look, then gathers his books back into his arms.
We take the walk to the outpost quickly and quietly. Nolan leads the way, with Aiden and Ralph on either side of him, their flashlights aimed at the trees.
Even with us surrounding him, even with the two beams of yellow light to cut through the rainy darkness, Nolan is plainly terrified again as soon as we set foot in the darkness of the forest. He’s shivering the whole way there, his green eyes roving ceaselessly over the trees, the color gone from his face.
He looks desperately relieved when we lay eyes on the ranger’s outpost.
It does make a cozy, reassuring sight. Warm golden light pours out from every window, illuminating the colorful, messy window boxes and their overflow of flowers. A thread of smoke is slowly winding up from the chimney, accounting for the soft dance of firelight on the inside walls.
Tucker is inside, standing at the window, worriedly nibbling his thumbnail. Gazing out at the forest path on the other side of the building. The way Nolan would have come from, if he’d walked back.
Nolan catches sight of him through the rain and pauses, his green eyes filling with warmth. He gives a little start as Ralph gently nudges him forward.
“Go on,” he says firmly. “Do not leave this outpost again tonight, you hear me?”
Nolan glances at the dark forest with a shudder. “No, I won’t. I promise.”
Ralph gives him a nod, and the rest of us call out soft goodbyes as we turn to head back into the forest. Nolan stops in surprise, then smiles a little, picking at the books in his arms. He gives us a shy wave before he disappears around the side of the building.
I start to follow Aiden, then do a double-take, gazing over my shoulder. Through the windows of the outpost, I just saw Tucker suddenly take his raincoat from the hook and pull it on. He’s not in his uniform, instead wearing a white t-shirt and some jeans, but he bends down and tugs on his ranger’s hiking boots, then wrenches open the front door and steps out into the rain.
I pause where I am in alarm, but Tucker stops in the doorway and spins around in surprise as Nolan steps into the main office, having come in through the side door. Tucker puts a hand to his chest in relief, then shuts the door and hurries over to Nolan, worriedly asking him something.
Nolan gives him a bashful, guilty look as he starts to explain, gesturing to the books in his arms, but it’s clear that Tucker isn’t listening. He looks too overwhelmed with relief to see Nolan home and unhurt.
He effortlessly takes the heavy backpack that was weighing down Nolan’s slender form and sets it aside, then peers anxiously into Nolan’s face, asking him something again.
Nolan gives him a reassuring nod, and Tucker lets out another heavy exhale of pure relief. He turns away, gently pushing Nolan at the dining table, and puts a kettle on the stove.
Nolan sits down and sets his books on the table. I can’t see his expression from here, but the signs of all the fear of the forest are already melting away. His shoulders have relaxed, and he’s stopped trembling, although… he still looks a little nervous. He folds his elbows on the table and rests a hand on the back of his neck, watching Tucker.
“Hey,” Aiden whispers, tugging on my hand. “C’mon. We don’t want to get split up by accident.”
I steal one more searching glance at the forest ranger’s station. Tucker is taking off his raincoat, and I believe Nolan when he says he won’t go anywhere.
With a breath of relief of my own, I turn back to join the team.
~~~~
“What are you doing?” I laugh softly.
Aiden gathered me up into his muscular arms as soon as I got myself strapped in, as if I need a second seatbelt.
“Keeping you as close as I seem to need to, in order to keep you from getting yourself into trouble.” He lifts his exasperated blue eyes to the rest of the group. “Why were you guys having a discussion earlier about whether or not Jamie is brave? Could’ve just asked me. I would’ve told you that he is, and it’s fucking nervewracking. Painful, even.”
“How was I supposed to know the Witch was gonna send Grimm after me?” I protest indignantly.
“I’m just glad that’s all we saw of her. She’s the only chaos that we didn’t really have to face tonight, and we don’t need any more-” Ralph breaks off and hastily catches hold of the dash as Noah sweeps the car around a deep ditch in the road. “Maybe slow down, Noosh? Just this one time?”
“Yeah, so here’s the thing,” Noah says, quickly twisting the wheel in the other direction. “The mud is making it pretty hard to do that. Your car isn’t designed for offroading, Ralph, and we’re headed downhill. You don’t really want to start pumping the brakes in the mud, and you don’t want to stop moving, either. If I start fighting the momentum we’ve got it’s not gonna be pretty.”
“Um…” I catch hold of Aiden’s arm as the car sweeps tightly around another ditch in the road and continues on without slowing down. “Have you got it, dude?”
“Trust in the process, Keane.” Noah knocks the windshield wipers to a faster setting as the rain begins to spill down harder. “Sometimes it’s best to take the obstacle course quickly. Before the whole thing can melt apart completely, yeah? In this case.”
I do trust Noah, and he’s got a point about the road. I sit back in Aiden’s arms, holding onto his knee so I don’t go flying as Noah lets the car glide swiftly down a little slope. At least we have good starlight to see by, now that the storm clouds are breaking up into smaller ones.
“I don’t even mind it,” Noah adds brightly. “This is pretty fun. We’d actually be going faster, were it up to me.”
“Alright, as I was saying,” Ralph goes on, pressing his fingertips to his temple, “If we can avoid a Witch sighting tonight, all the better.”
“I agree,” I put in, with a shudder. “I feel like she must be terrifying, if she had the effect she did on Nolan and Aiden.”
“Yes, which is part of why we really don’t want to face her at night, in the dark,” Ralph murmurs. “Besides, I think we’re maxed out on chaos for toni-”
He cuts himself off as Aiden suddenly sits up, his blue eyes blinking hard. White-blue magic is flowing and sparkling in them, and I know he didn’t summon it there. His senses are picking something up. Something close enough to us that his magic is reacting to it.
Ralph opens his mouth to ask a question, then stops in confusion when I look up sharply.
Kasey just poked her head through the roof of the car, her dark eyes wide with fear.
“You guys - I saw - I saw something!”
“Kasey saw something,” I repeat numbly.
“What?” Ralph’s sage eyes widen in bewildered alarm as Kasey disappears to take another look. “The speed we’re going, and she saw something?”
“Should I stop?” Noah asks.
“No, don’t!” Kasey drops into the backseat of the car beside me, breathing shallowly. She peers through the window, then twists to face me, pointing urgently at something. “Look!”
I lean over to look through the window, gazing out at the dark trees sweeping past us. Aiden leans over, too, and Ralph does the same thing through the front passenger’s window once I mirror Kasey’s pointing finger with my own. For a few seconds all of us stare in blank confusion, not sure what Kasey means.
I think we all see it at the same time.
There’s something - someone - some figure in the forest, just off to the side of the mud track. Some dark, towering, shapeless figure, a tall and skinny void that eats up the starlight like a black hole.
It has two huge, ghastly, hollow eyes like bottomless pits. They shine with a dark purple glow that blurs and flickers and twitches erratically, like an endlessly glitching screen.
Those eyes are locked on us, even though the creature is sprinting through the trees, easily matching the speed of our car. Despite how swiftly it’s running - and it’s going at an inhuman, impossible speed - it never turns its face forward. It never breaks its empty, shining gaze away from us.
It looks so unearthly, so unbelievably wrong that Kasey lets out a little scream when her eyes find it again. I’m sitting frozen, my fingers clutching tight to the car door. I hear Aiden draw in a sharp breath behind me, and Ralph sits back, letting a sharp breath out.
“What is it?” Noah asks, struggling to keep his eyes on the road. “What the fuck is over there, what are you guys seeing?”
“Noah,” Ralph breathes, without breaking his gaze away. “Speed up, get us out of here!”
“What? Are you sure-?”
“Yes!”
Noah lets our downhill momentum sweep the car up completely. I gasp as we soar directly over a ditch in the road, briefly gaining a little air. But I don’t see it happen, only feel the strange weightlessness in the pit of my stomach. My eyes are still riveted on the ones watching us from the forest. Eyes so empty and cold that they burn into me and make my teeth chatter, an invisible icy weight crushing my chest.
I remember those eyes, now. I’ve seen them before. The memory comes rushing back to me in full force. Sprinting down the hill in the forest, lifting my gaze as she turned hers on me, the last thing I saw before that bolt of dark purple magic hit me…
The Witch.
“She’s right there!” Kasey gasps, automatically trying to grab my hand. “Holy shit, she’s right there!”
“Noah,” Ralph breathes, “How - how fast are we going?”
Noah checks the speedometer. “Thirty-five!”
We all stare in disbelief at the Witch, who’s still easily keeping pace with us - getting closer, actually. Her bottomless, terrifying eyes are still locked on us - on Noah, I realize, because he’s the one driving -
The click of two seatbelts being unstrapped catches my attention. I let out a startled gasp as Aiden catches me by my waist and drags me across his lap. He moves me safely behind him, then goes right through Kasey, so that he’s the one next to the window.
He puts it down. A blast of fierce wind sweeps through the inside of the car, knocking his snapback off of his head and into the trunk.
I watch with my hands over my mouth as Aiden braces his hands on the window and leans out into the howling wind. The rain batters him and the wind tears wildly through his chestnut hair, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even seem to notice. His blue gaze, already sparkling with magic, locks with the void eyes of the Witch.
A too-long, crooked, stick-thin arm unfolds from somewhere in the formless shape of the Witch. Without slowing down at all, she spreads her stick-like fingers. A purple glow appears around her fingertips, building and gathering.
At the same time, Aiden flings one hand out, and the Witch hurls what looks like a comet of dark purple magic at us.
A burst of radiant Heliomancer light explodes from Aiden’s fingers, spinning out to snap into shape as a massive, solid golden shield over the side of the car. It’s as thin as an eggshell, almost transparent, but it absorbs the blast from the Witch. The impact sets off an explosion of glittering light, like handfuls and handfuls of sparklers going off at once. The sparks scatter behind us in a brilliant trail, and the air around us sizzles and snaps, electric with magic.
“Holy fuck!” Ralph shouts from the front seat.
The Witch lets out an angry hissing sound that reaches us even over the roar of the rainy wind.
I tear my rapt eyes away to glance forward, just in time to see that Noah is about to take us around a very fast turn. I seize a fistful of Aiden’s henley and throw my whole body back, wrenching him into the car before the momentum of the turn can send him flying out.
I get him in time, but it breaks his concentration. The golden wall of light flickers, then blows away on the wind like scattered shreds of shining paper.
“What in the fuck is happening right now?” Noah shouts, as Aiden and I both sit up, gasping for breath.
“Kasey!” Ralph twists to look for her in the backseat, forgetting he can’t see her. “You’re the only one her powers don’t work on! Anything you can do?”
Kasey thinks for a second, then leaps up into a crouch on the backseat, taking a deep breath.
“What are you-?” I begin, then break off in disbelief as she vanishes and reappears on the road beside the car, running alongside the Witch.
Then all of a sudden she’s not running. She’s disappeared into a streak of blazing silver and white light, moving so fast my eyes can barely follow her. She starts to zig and zag back and forth around the Witch, who finally breaks her soul-crushing gaze away from the car to watch in confusion.
Ralph seizes Noah’s shoulder. “Noah, get us out of here! Now, while she’s distracted!”
“You think I don’t want to go faster, dude? I’m trying not to get us stuck in the mud, I can’t just step on it when the road is-”
Noah breaks off with a sharp, jagged gasp as a flash of golden magic rushes past him from the backseat and slams into the mud road before us. Aiden’s blue eyes flare with shining, glittering magic as he focuses.
The slippery mud of the road instantaneously bakes into a solid, hard track. The water evaporates so quickly that it turns to steam hovering over the road, and the falling rain that touches the dirt instantly turns to steam, too.
“Try that!” Aiden shouts.
Noah breaks into a disbelieving grin, reaching down to change gears. “This is more like it, baby, let’s go!”
The engine of Ralph’s car roars, and suddenly we’re flying down the road, the wheels leaving trails in the mist behind us.
“Kasey!” I call out frantically, losing sight of her as she and the Witch fall behind.
She rematerializes in the backseat, panting for breath. I let out a gasp of relief, then automatically try to hug her. She tries to hug me, too, and once we’ve recovered from falling right through each other we twist around to stare out through the back of Ralph’s car.
The Witch has stopped in the dead center of the road behind us. She’s raised one crooked, bone-thin hand. With her eerie, jerky movements, she’s slowly winding back, purple magic gathering around her fingers.
“She’s about to cast something!” I blurt out, swimming upstream against the flood of panic crashing through me. “We have to-”
“I’m about to do something insane!” Noah interrupts, with an audible grin in his voice. “Everybody hold on!”
“What-?” I begin, then break off with a gasp as gravity briefly loses its grasp on me.
Aiden’s rain-wet arms close around me, but I barely even notice. My stunned eyes are watching the bolt of dark purple magic that just hurtled past us, barely missing the car as Noah spins it out to the side.
I have the distinct, fleeting impression of spinning in a circle.
And then I’ve landed on Aiden, and the car is moving forward again. Noah took the car for a lightning-quick, tight 180 spin, broken off halfway through so he could make it to the hairpin turn onto the paved road. He does it so fast that the car all but leaps onto the blacktop, briefly soaring through the air. For a split second, I have the strange sense of being suspended weightlessly in the air.
We all take a hard bounce on the landing. The car strikes sparks off of the pavement, and then - steadies out, sailing smoothly down the straight, well-paved road.
“Oh que oui!” Noah laughs wildly, slamming the side of his fist on the wheel. “Fuck yeah, man, I’ve always wanted to try that one out! Shit, what a night this has been!”
He lets out a cheer of pure delight, then dissolves completely into giddy, breathless laughter. The rest of us sit there panting in disbelief, struggling to get our breaths back.
“What’s the situation, Aiden?” Noah asks, around his laughter. “How’d we fare?”
As one, all eyes go to Aiden. He closes his eyes to listen, then lets out a heavy breath.
“We got away,” he rumbles, his deep voice full of relief. “She’s gone. For now.”
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