Free Torrent by Lindsay Buroker Page A

coincidence?”
    “I don’t know. Just musing. But don’t you think it’s weird that this has happened in the two places we were today? What if that creature is after
us
? Or wants something we have?”
    “Oh, sure, it’s upset it didn’t get a chance to bid for the antique coffee grinder.”
    “Hey, we’ve found some good stuff. Remember those quirky clay figurines from that Fremont pit house near the Wilcox Ranch?”
    “I remember that you wanted to donate them to a museum instead of selling them,” Simon said.
    “But we haven’t done that yet. They’re still in the van. Other stuff is too.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I get your point, and I think you’re nuts.”
    I propped my fists on my hips. “Well, thank you for so thoroughly considering it from all angles.”
    “You’re welcome.” Simon waved his phone. “I’m going to see if I can get some pictures of monster footprints.”
    “What you’re going to get is arrested for interfering,” I called after him.
    More sirens were wailing, coming from the direction of the town. Why did I have a feeling we’d both be in jail before dawn?
    Two lean, dark figures walked out of the trees on the opposite side of the camp. The riders were back. They stuck to the shadows, and the police didn’t notice them. As far as I could tell
nobody
had noticed them. Except for me.
    I put my back to the van and checked the police cars, making sure armed men were in earshot if I shouted for help. The younger rider carried a stick. He was walking and gesturing, waving it about as he spoke with his comrade. The flashing police lights fell upon them for a moment, and I realized it wasn’t a stick, it was an arrow.
My
arrow. Nobody else had been running around with a bow. I’d only shot the one, and it had hit the creature. At least I’d thought it had. How had these two gotten it? What if they knew where the creature had run to and had retrieved it somehow? I chomped down on my lip, torn between wanting to jump out and interrogate them and knowing it’d be smarter to hide in the shadows and hope they didn’t notice me. They couldn’t be happy about the fire extinguisher incident, not to mention those slashed tires… Albeit they’d since replaced those tires, for there was no sign of the damage on their Harleys.
    As they neared the dumpster where they’d parked, I caught a few snippets of their conversation over the clamor of approaching sirens. And it floored me. Whatever language they were speaking, it sure wasn’t English. I didn’t think it was a romance language either. True, I wasn’t hearing them well, but I’d studied enough Roman history in school that I figured I could identify something based on Vulgar Latin. It didn’t sound Slavic or Germanic either, though I was less familiar with those groups of languages. Their words had a lot of variation in tone—I thought I heard a couple that were repeated, only with different inflections. It reminded me of Mandarin, but these guys were awfully white for Chinese people. On looks alone, I would have guessed them Scandinavian, but even in those countries, they’d stand out.
    I was so intent on listening to their words, that I almost missed the fact that they’d reached their motorcycles and turned to look at me. The older rider twitched his head—it wasn’t quite the side-to-side motion of a head shake, but it had the same negative gist—and hopped onto his bike. He roared away without a backward glance. One of the cops shouted at him to stop, but an ambulance and a news crew rolled into the campground, and the Harley weaved around a couple of cars and disappeared from sight. This was about to become a circus. The remaining campers who’d apparently been reluctant to leave their tents and motorhomes to talk to the police, flowed out of hiding as soon as the news van stopped.
    The remaining Harley rider, Blue Eyes, walked toward me, my arrow held at his side. As he drew closer, I could see his face and hands well