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Chapter Twenty

H ow the hell had Maplehurst managed to follow them to the standing stones? Ben didn’t think he and Sidney had been doing anything in particular to cover their tracks, but still, you’d have thought they would at least have heard the other men’s footsteps.

She pulled her fingers from his and crossed her arms. “This place has nothing to do with you.”

Victor smiled. It wasn’t a very pleasant smile, and probably very different from the one he deployed at town halls and shareholders’ meetings.

“On the contrary. I think it has a great deal to do with me. You see, your mayor has given me free rein to cut in this forest as I like…in exchange for a very generous stipend.”

That weasel. Ben wondered if Sidney had been too trusting when dealing with the guy, but somehow he didn’t think so. She’d been working to get the town on board with making sure Northwest Pacific was chased from this forest once and for all, but it sounded as if she hadn’t moved fast enough.

“I don’t care what agreement you two had,” she retorted, her eyes glittering gray as cut steel in the light from the glowing plants all around them. “Whatever it was, it’s illegal, and we’ll make sure to see you in court.”

“Oh, I know you will,” Maplehurst said. He didn’t look too worried…

and the reason for that confidence became clear enough as he continued.

“You see, while the courts can be effective, they also take time. And time, I fear, is the one thing you don’t have.

” He inclined his head toward the foreman who stood on his right.

“Curt, you and Lenny make sure these two don’t interfere. ”

Maplehurst’s lackeys immediately began to march toward the spot where Ben and Sidney stood. The men’s mouths were set, and it sure looked as if they weren’t the type to care much about appeals to their better natures.

Well, they were in for a surprise.

He went on the attack, lunging for the man Maplehurst had called Curt. Just as the guy began to take a swing at him, Ben dropped to the ground and slammed his flashlight into the other man’s knee as hard as he could.

At once, Curt toppled over, groaning and swearing. Sidney, obviously heartened by the way Ben had refused to capitulate, swung her pack off her shoulders and smashed it right into the other guy — Lenny’s — jaw.

He also went down like a sack of potatoes. The two of them looked big and tough enough, but it was obvious they didn’t know much about fighting dirty. Most likely, they really were just loggers in Maplehurst’s employ, and he’d only brought them along because he didn’t have any better alternatives.

“Enough,” he said, his voice loud enough to cut across the moans of his two henchmen. “I didn’t intend for things to go this far, but if that’s what you want — ”

And he pulled a gleaming chrome pistol out from underneath his jacket.

Suddenly, Sidney went very still. She shot a frightened glance at Ben, and he gave a small shake of his head.

The circle of stones was mysterious and magical…but it wasn’t worth both of them giving up their lives to defend it.

“What do you even want with that thing?” Sidney asked. Her voice cracked a little as she asked the question, and Ben could practically hear her heart pounding from where he knelt in the luminous moss. “As far as I can tell, it’s just a bunch of rocks.”

Maplehurst smiled thinly. “You know it’s much more than that. But I admire your efforts to protect it.” He looked over at Ben. “Get up.”

Without replying, Ben scrambled to his feet. Lenny and Curt also forced themselves off the ground and limped over to their master, shooting baleful glances at their assailants the whole time.

Well, they’d been pretty easy to take down, but he still didn’t think he’d want to meet either of them in a dark alley any time soon.

“My surveyors found this glade a few months ago,” Maplehurst went on, his tone now almost conversational.

“We like to work at night, you see, so there are fewer people around to take note of what we’re doing.

Extensive testing proved that these plants and these stones have no earthly analogues.

We’re not sure where they came from, but we know they’re not from here. ”

Ben had already suspected as much. Under different circumstances, he might have been glad to have his theories corroborated.

Now, though, he could only wish that Maplehurst’s employees had discovered the clearing during a different phase of the moon, like maybe a nice gibbous or something.

If that had been the case, then they wouldn’t have seen anything out of the ordinary.

“We don’t know anything about the plants and where they came from,” Sidney replied. “Ben was just helping me search for my mother and grandmother.”

“A nice story,” Maplehurst told her. “But law enforcement officials have already combed through these woods, and your friend here isn’t a member of the police or the FBI. He’s just a washed-up archaeologist who peddles conspiracy theory videos on YouTube.”

Talk about getting it wrong. While he might have deployed a whiteboard and some red thread from time to time, Ben had never used those tools to talk about government cover-ups or fake moon landings or whatever, only to help illustrate some of the connections between the various unexplained phenomena he and other cryptozoologists had been researching.

“I don’t ask friends for their credentials when they’re offering to help,” she shot back, matching Maplehurst stare for stare.

That woman had some serious cojones.

Or maybe she was so angry that she just didn’t care anymore.

“Maybe you don’t,” the man replied. “And maybe you really are looking for your lost relatives. Between you and me, though, if they’ve been gone this long, then they’re worm food by now.”

Sidney’s hands knotted into fists at her sides, but she didn’t move. In fact, was that the slightest gleam of triumph in her eyes?

For a moment, Ben couldn’t figure out why she would look that way when Maplehurst had just said something so dismissively awful about her relatives.

But then it sank in.

Victor Maplehurst didn’t know that the circle of stones was some kind of portal.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made that remark about “worm food.” No, he probably viewed the stones and the glowing plants as prizes in and of themselves, unique specimens that somehow phased in and out of this plane, true, but nothing that could be viewed as more than the sum of their parts.

It didn’t seem too far-fetched to imagine that he planned to uproot the stones and the moss and the flowers and sell them off to those who collected the strange and unusual.

Once upon a time, Ben would have thought such a scenario far-fetched in the extreme.

His immersion in the world of cryptozoology, however, had taught him almost nothing was beyond the bounds of possibility, not when it was an open secret in the community that a certain high-flying billionaire was willing to pay a hundred million bucks for a fully intact Sasquatch carcass — so he could have it stuffed and put on display in one of his mansions, most likely.

And while he doubted Victor Maplehurst cared too much about such things, it seemed likely enough that he was just fine with adding a few million to his coffers, whatever the objects in the clearing might be able to fetch.

But if he hadn’t realized that the stone circle was something a bit more than a collection of rare and unusual rocks, he was about to find out in a hurry.

Sidney sent Ben another sideways glance, and then her gaze slid down to the pistol the man held. Not expertly — his grip was far too tight — which meant he might not be all that good at using the thing.

Would it be worth the risk to lunge for him and push him into the circle?

Even if he didn’t shoot, there was no guarantee the portal would open up and swallow him whole.

They still didn’t know for sure how the thing even worked, which meant all they might earn for their trouble was one seriously pissed-off lumber company exec with murder in his heart and a loaded pistol in his hand.

Before either of them could make the fateful decision, though, a blur of white exploded out of the center of the standing stones.

The unicorn.

It charged at Victor Maplehurst, horn held down, pointed directly at his heart.

He lifted the gun.

The bang was so loud that Ben lifted his hands to cover his ears, and Sidney winced.

No stain of red on the unicorn’s glimmering white coat, nothing to show that the shot had connected.

Thank God.

His brain didn’t have time for much more than that, though, because the unicorn rushed forward.

Connected.

Victor Maplehurst’s eyes went wide, and he let out an odd little, “Guh,” possibly the sound of the air escaping his punctured lungs. But then he collapsed on the glowing moss, dark blood beginning to flow outward from his body and dimming the shimmer of the ground cover.

Both of Sidney’s hands went to her mouth, as though she was worried that if she didn’t cover it, she’d let out a cry of dismay that would surely scare the unicorn off.

Curt and Lenny, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be worried about any of that. They both made screeching noises that sounded more as if they’d emerged from a couple of scared fifth-graders than a pair of grown men before they bolted into the woods.

The unicorn didn’t seem interested in pursuing them — probably because they no longer presented a threat. Instead, he swiveled his head back to look at Sidney.

Magically, his horn now gleamed pure silvery white, as though it hadn’t just been coated in blood and several even less pleasant substances only a moment earlier.

Then the animal took a step toward her, and another. Ben began to move in that direction as well, even as he realized there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do if the creature decided to charge.

That didn’t seem to be the animal’s intention, however. No, he lowered his head once he was within arm’s reach and stood there, patiently waiting.

With one shaking hand, she reached out and began to stroke the unicorn’s mane. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you for protecting us.”

Would Maplehurst really have pulled the trigger? Ben couldn’t say for sure, but it seemed the animal had sensed the man was a danger to them…to the forest as a whole.

The unicorn stood quietly as Sidney continued to run her hand over his mane.

Then he took a step backward and then another, moving toward the stone circle.

She followed, something about her expression almost mesmerized, as if she was so caught by the creature’s spell that she wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings.

“Sidney — ” Ben said, and she blinked, seeming to suddenly realize she was only a few steps away from the standing stones.

She gave the unicorn a stern look. “Were you trying to draw me in there?”

The horned horse shook, then stamped one hoof on the ground. Ben knew even less about unicorn-speak than he did old Irish, but something about the gesture almost seemed to say, Of course not.

“So we’re not supposed to go in the circle?”

The unicorn tapped the ground with his foot.

What was that supposed to mean, exactly? One tap for no, two for yes?

“But it is a portal,” Sidney said softly.

Two stamps.

Well, that seemed to reinforce Ben’s theory…unless, of course, he had it backward and it was one for yes, two for no.

“And my mother and grandmother went through it.”

The unicorn shook his mane again, followed by another quick staccato of two stamps of his foot.

“Then I need to go,” she said, her tone now urgent. “I need to find them.”

Almost before she was done speaking, the unicorn reared.

Ben ran to Sidney, taking her by the arm so he could pull her out of harm’s way.

Not that he’d really thought the creature had meant to hurt her, but those flailing hooves could have injured her even if that hadn’t been the animal’s intention.

“I think he’s trying to tell you that’s not such a good idea,” he said.

For a second or two, he could feel the resistance in the limb he held, the way it seemed as if she was going to yank her arm away in impatience.

But then she went still, her gaze fixed on the unicorn. “Why don’t you want me to go after them?”

In response, the unicorn looked up toward the forest canopy above and then swept his horn from one side to the other, as though to indicate all the woods that stood strong and silent around them.

Was he trying to say that they needed to stay here, that even with Victor Maplehurst gone, there were still those who would attempt to exploit and destroy this place?

Or maybe Ben was trying to read way too much into a single gesture.

Before either of them could say anything in response, the unicorn reared one more time, then turned and bolted into the stone circle.

He immediately disappeared, which seemed to be all the evidence anyone might need to prove that the arrangement of standing stones truly was a portal to a different reality.

Sidney stared at the empty space between the stones, then looked down at Maplehurst’s body. The bloody wound in his chest had disappeared, and although he still stared at the trees above with glassy, blank eyes, any evidence of the true manner of his death somehow seemed to have vanished.

Nice trick.

Her eyes met Ben’s.

“What now?” she asked simply.