"Yeah." She pointed to the ground. "It"s immaculate.
I haven"t seen a single piece of litter on the ground. The film crew must have come back and cleaned up after . . ."
She trailed off, because Colt was very clearly fighting to suppress a smile. "There was never a film crew shooting a movie here, was there?"
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"Sure there was." He scratched the back of his head and squinted thoughtfully. "I think it was about fifteen years ago that they came through. I would have been three."
She stopped walking. "You bulls.h.i.tted the headmistress?"
"Since I make very compelling arguments, and authority figures for whatever reason"-he snickered-"love me, I figured you five would appreciate a nature hike over whatever vile punishment the headmistress was concoct-ing for you. Would you rather be scrubbing the cafeteria floor with a toothbrush and your own spit right now?
Because I can give the headmistress a call if you want."
He rummaged through his pockets for his cell phone. "I have her on speed dial."
Ash shoved him into the stream. "No one"s complain-ing, a.s.shole. My saliva thanks you. I guess I"m just suspicious as to why you went to all this trouble for five high school troublemakers like us. Seems to me that a state college boy like yourself should be disgusted by the thought of even fraternizing with a group of hyper, naive-albeit extremely good-looking-minors. It"s almost one p.m.-aren"t you late for a keg stand?"
"This may be impossible for you to believe," Colt said in a hushed voice, "but as recently as last year, I was a hyper, naive-albeit extremely good-looking-minor myself."
"And now you"re a persistent, outdoorsy, unshaven man-boy who cavorts with clones of your former self?"
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Colt plucked a round stone out of the water. "I prefer boy-man, but the rest of the sentence sounded fairly accurate." With a flick of the wrist he let loose the stone, which decided that instead of skipping downstream, it would sink upon contact.
"Okay, first of all, you need to choose a flatter stone.
And second . . ." She placed a hand on his elbow. "You need to not throw like a total wuss."
He turned on her fast, his eyes gleaming like the edge of a sword. "And you need to stop second-guessing my interest in you."
Neither the trickle of the stream nor Ade"s booming laughter ahead could fill the silence that followed. The tops of the canyon seemed to extend toward the sky, and for the first time in six months, Ashline felt the upper hand slipping away from her, and fast. "Can you blame me?" she asked.
"Yes," he said matter-of-factly, and crossed his arms.
"I can."
d.a.m.n. He was s.e.xy even when he was being stub-born. "Call it . . . a defense mechanism. You ever see one of those National Geographic shows with the antelopes on the savanna and the lions waiting in the bushes? Ever wonder how the antelopes just know to run like h.e.l.l is on their hooves when they see the lion coming out of the gra.s.s?"
"Am I the lion or the antelope in this situation?
Because I"d like to think I"m more of a cheetah than-"
She cupped her hand over his mouth to silence him.
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"Girls have the same instincts. They know that when a good-looking older guy-who goes to State and is probably knee-deep in college freshman, soph.o.m.ores, and sev-enth-year seniors waiting to feel him up in the shadows of some off campus party-acts like he"s smitten with a cra.s.s, overly sarcastic high school soph.o.m.ore, something is amiss."
Colt leaned forward. "Wood nymphs."
What the h.e.l.l? "Did you just say . . . ," she started, but then she realized that, yes, she had in fact heard him correctly. "You ate some of the sandwiches from the back of the truck, didn"t you?"
He shook his head, and the corners of his lips curled up mischievously. "I"m knee-deep in college girls when I"m at school, and beautiful half-naked wood nymphs when I"m out here."
Ash held up a finger. "This is the part where you make a case for why your being interested in me makes you sane."
"I like you because of the crazy glimmer in your eye when you hit a tennis ball, and because you look d.a.m.n good in an orange jumpsuit?"
"Try harder," Ash said. "And this time maybe don"t say it in the form of a question."
He stepped forward, and his hand slipped into hers as if it had been there the whole time. "Ash, this is the truth as I know it," he said seriously. "A boy grows up restless in a home too small to contain him. So he runs away and 196 spends his youth traveling everywhere that a pa.s.sport and a backpack will allow, until the dirt from the four corners of the world is caked beneath his fingernails. Until he forgets what home smells like. Until he"s seen so much of this world that he takes a job as far away from it as he can. Somehow, one night, at a bar filled with retirees and old fisherman, in a town that might as well be off the map, he sees a girl sitting at the bar. Even though she"s only twisting idly in her bar stool ordering a drink, that"s all it takes for him to recognize that she might be the fire he"s been looking for. In that moment he realizes that he could spend the rest of his life doing all the things he ever wanted to do in all the places he ever wanted to see, but if he doesn"t ask her for her name, this is the moment that, forty years from now, he"ll still remember as the moment when he blew it."
Ash realized she"d been holding her breath the entire time he"d been talking, and let it out slowly. "I"m . . .
going to a.s.sume the boy in the story was you?"
Colt smiled. "So now that you"ve listened to my long-winded, dramatic, probably creepy but completely sincere speech . . ." He paused, then enunciated his next words deliberately: "Will you, Ashline Wilde, let me take you on a date, a real one that doesn"t involve orange jumpers and isn"t a detention sentence?"
Ash was suddenly aware of how clammy her hand was in his, and had to actively stop herself from staring at his lips. It was time to concede defeat. "Tuesday night. But,"
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she added before he could get too excited, "your date better be as well-planned as your speech was convincing, or I"m afraid it will be back to slumming it with the wood nymphs for you."
"You put a lot of pressure on a man," he said, and leaned forward. Despite all of his suavity, his tongue still unconsciously wetted his lips, which parted with antic.i.p.ation.
Ash leaned forward . . . and slugged him playfully on the shoulder. "I"ve got faith that you"ll step up to the plate. Welcome to the major leagues, big boy." And then she turned and walked away toward her four comrades, before she couldn"t stop herself from pouncing on him and pinning him to the riverbank.
She was the lioness now.
Lily came up with the brilliant idea for chicken fights, because, she argued, when else were they ever going to have the opportunity to do chicken-fighting in a fern canyon? So Ashline obligingly climbed onto Ade"s shoulders, and Lily saddled up on Rolfe. While they jousted, Raja comically tried to convince Colt that she had more than enough muscle in her legs to support his frame. Colt wouldn"t cave.
Finally Ade, who was panting heavily and whose voice sounded mighty strained, invited Colt to a log race, which Ashline took to mean that her weight was beginning to crush down on him.
The canyon was a graveyard for fallen redwoods.
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Some of the old logs, casualties of erosion and time, leaned up against the fern-covered walls, while others rested on the canyon floor. The boys and Lily organized a relay race along the logs. Raja and Ashline lingered back and watched; it wasn"t unlike observing toddlers interacting in a sandbox and wondering what crazy scenarios they were envisioning as they played.
"You know he"s completely taken with you, don"t you," Raja said-not a question. "Ever since the bar, he"s tried to find subtle ways to ask Ashline-related questions.
Colt has the subtlety of a car alarm."
Ash snickered. "He"s blunt, all right. You"re sure . . .
that"s okay with you?"
"What-me and Colt?" Raja giggled. "You know how I met him? I was doing a practice ten-k run through the woods, and I lost my trail. Ended up stopping dead in the middle of a clearing. Suddenly I hear some guy behind me say, "Need a compa.s.s?" And there Colt is, leaning up against a tree. Don"t get me wrong-he"s hot as h.e.l.l, and in another life I would have liked to wear him like a mink coat. But when your first thought about someone is wondering whether they"re some sort of handsome woodland serial killer, it"s hard to build an attraction."
Ashline smiled and looked up at Colt. He had hopped from one log to another and was balancing precariously.
"He does have a habit of sneaking up behind people."
"Didn"t stop me from wanting to go praying mantis on you when, after just five minutes at the bar, he was all 199 over you like the soccer team on freshman orientation.
But I"m over it. Besides," Raja added, "I"m finding that my interest is gravitating elsewhere." Her eyes blatantly tracked up to Rolfe, who had broken off a branch from the fallen log and challenged Ade to a fencing match.
So Rolfe really had slithered under a c.h.i.n.k in her armor.
"Be careful," Ash warned her. "You don"t want to step on anyone"s toes."
Sure enough, Lily was watching the two boys fight with the sort of glowing, unreserved interest that could only be expected from someone who didn"t know she was being observed.
"Who, Flower Power?" Raja asked. "She may have staked first claim, but she needs to s.h.i.t or get off the pot.
If she thinks the whole pa.s.sive watch-and-wait thing is going to hook a man, then she should quit love now and stick with botany."
Lily chose that moment to look over at the two other girls. Ash hoped for her sake that her abilities didn"t include superhuman hearing, or Raja"s biting tirade was going to leave a slap mark. "You know," Ash said, "seventy-two hours ago, you wouldn"t have given Rolfe the time of day."
"There"s no shortage of cute boys in the world," Raja said unapologetically. "G.o.ds, on the other hand . . ."
Ash deadpanned. "You . . . want to jump Rolfe"s s.h.i.t because he"s actually a Norse G.o.d?"
"No," Raja replied quickly. "I want to jump his s.h.i.t 200 because he"s handsome, funny, and he"s actually a Norse G.o.d."
"Well, I think I"m going to give humans one more shot."
"Good," Raja said, tearing her eyes away from Rolfe.
"Because he clearly thinks you"re a G.o.ddess."
Ash smirked. "If only he knew."
On cue Colt gazed down at her and smiled.
And then his smile fell and he was grabbing at his neck.
He had time only to pull the dart out of his throat and hold it in front of his face before the light behind his eyes snapped out like a bulb shattering in a dark closet.
He dropped backward off the log and landed flat on his back in the streambed.
As the cold washed over her, Ash started to run to his side, but a sharp voice echoed through the canyon from behind her. "Do not move."
Ash stopped dead.
A man in his late fifties stood before them in full camouflage, the same forest green as the canyon ferns. His head was closely shaved on top, and his face was creased and leathery from time spent in a faraway desert.
Ashline"s attention, however, was fixed on the rifle cradled in his arms.
"Don"t worry about him." The older man nodded toward Colt"s unmoving body. "He"ll wake up in a day or two."
"You must be friends with the creeps who tried to 201 kidnap a blind girl the other night," Ade said. "Birds of a feather, I guess."
"Langhorn and Willis? Good friends, yes. In fact, they"re here to greet you as well, and I know Langhorn really wanted to thank one of you for the nose job you gave him. Boys?"
Behind them, all too late, Ashline heard the footsteps of the incoming soldiers. Twelve camouflaged mercenaries, with rifles to match, spread out across the canyon, blocking their point of exit. Sure enough, Ash spotted among them the familiar, recently broken nose of the man she had clubbed with the walking stick nights earlier. He smiled at her with contempt. His fingers wrapped tightly around the barrel of his rifle.
"The name"s Wolfe," the mercenary said to them with the pleasant air of someone introducing himself at a tea party. "Pleased to meet y"all."
"What do you want?" Raja asked him. "Has the gov-ernment come to collect some science projects?"
"Government? No." Wolfe snorted. "A private investor. Fascinated with the science of myth, or some hocus-pocus like that." He shrugged and squinted up at the overcast sky, as if the weather were of more interest to him than the potentially dangerous students he and his men had surrounded. "Personally, I"m not an academic; I don"t really give a d.a.m.n about science or myth. Money, however, speaks to me. And half a million a head for the five of you speaks loudly."
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"h.e.l.l," Rolfe said from the back of the pack. "Your investor could have just paid me half a million to turn myself in."
"That"s the idea," Wolfe said. "Number one thing you learn in the military is to keep things clean. Sometimes that means giving up a little to get a lot. So I"ll offer you one of two deals. Deal number one: You can walk out of this canyon with us and we"ll take a short trip up to the airfield at Crescent City, where my charter plane is waiting to take us to Miami. Ranger Rick over there wakes up tomorrow with a whopping headache. In return for your cooperation, I"ll put ten thousand dollars in an account for each of you to access when she"s done doing whatever it is she wanted you for in the first place."
Lily laughed darkly; Ashline gave her points for bravery.
"You want to pay us two percent of the bounty that some psycho investor in Florida is paying you to kidnap us? Two percent? My monthly allowance is higher than that." Lily dropped to her knees and mock pleaded with him. "At least offer to pay for my college education, please."
Wolfe snapped up his rifle so quickly that it could have been an extension of his arm. His hands were steady as he glared down the sights, which he had trained directly between Lily"s eyes. "Option two: I unload a few tranquilizer darts at your head and see if the venom is as potent on you as it is on humans. And if that ain"t the case, then we start using bullets and find out later how much you"re worth dead."
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Rolfe stepped forward, his face as serious as Ashline had ever seen it. "Ten thousand dollars sounds nice, but I like my internal organs the way they"re arranged now."
Raja slipped up beside Ashline, who was glancing nervously between Wolfe and the unconscious Colt. "If it"s true that your powers really haven"t blossomed," she whispered so only Ash could hear, "then when the s.h.i.t hits the fan, you better make a run for the mouth of the canyon."
"But Colt-"
"He"s worth nothing to them."
"What"s it going to be?" Wolfe asked, his face still pressed to the side of his rifle. "Come quietly or come very quietly?"
Ade smiled. "I was never very good at quiet." His hands shot outward, and thunder boomed through the canyon. As Wolfe went to pull the trigger, the s.p.a.ce in front of him distorted and he sailed up into the air. His tranquilizer dart shot helplessly into the sky. Wolfe came crashing down onto the hard stone trail thirty feet ahead of them, and lay unmoving.
A chorus of shouts echoed from the soldiers behind them, but Ade spun and held out his hands again. The next wave of thunder deflected away the incoming barrage of tranquilizer darts, and several of the men toppled to the earth in the wave"s wake.
Before they could recover, Rolfe had closed his eyes.
From out of the sky several winged creatures woven from 204 strands of light swooped down on the soldiers with blazing talons bared. Immersed in chaos, they fired rounds off into the air at the swarming light creatures. Some of the soldiers had abandoned their tranquilizer rifles in favor of their sidearms, and the bullets began to fly.