Page 17

17

T o provide distractions for our exit from Cumberland, Griffith assigned guildies to sections of the C&O Canal and gained Rye Gandry’s cooperation—his Yard Rats scoured the train tracks heading south.

Jae and I lit out of the nexus in Andrew Dyer’s truck. I hunkered out of sight in the passenger side of the cab while Jae hid under a tarp tied down to the truck bed in the back.

Skip stayed to guard Teddy’s array. The danger anyone might stumble over the stones I’d set was miniscule. Unlike moon water, which could only be enervated by the full moonlight, my rocks absorbed power from the earth. I could—and had—concealed the crystals under camouflaging leaves and twigs. No glint of sunlight off a stone’s facet would draw the interest of either friend or enemy, but the odds of anyone discovering what I was up to were not zero. We couldn’t risk anybody realizing I wasn’t just hiding or suspecting, now that I’d recovered my dad’s last grimoire, I might try to finish Teddy’s work.

My familiar had moved camp to the nexus center to ensure the first layer of Teddy’s array remained undisturbed, and since Finnegan was still under the diligent care of healers, our four had narrowed to two.

Just me and my demon.

On a freaking bike pack up the Great Allegheny Passage.

To meet a dragon.

Luck was with us, at least. The Dyers were as devoted naturalists as many in the mountains. While the younger girl, Grace, couldn’t be paid to “sleep on the ground with the bugs,” the other three Dyers regularly hiked, biked, and camped on the trails. Andrew Dyer had biked with his little brother from Pittsburgh to the coast twice. Their mountain bikes and other equipment we’d need for our trek weren’t top of the line. The Dyers were poor. But to my experienced eye, the stuff we’d borrowed was more than adequate for our task.

We’d also had almost an entire day to teach Jae to ride a bike.

A demon on a bike, hand to God.

“No flying while other demons still hunt you. A demon in flight would draw too much attention and be reported anywhere on the trail,” Griffith had said during the many phone calls to organize our escape. “The roads must also be thick with the Maces’ mercs, Teddy’s killers, and hunter teams. You won’t succeed at leaving the city by car. The dragon will also perceive portaling north as a hostile act. Any dragon would attack. Biking out of Cumberland is your only viable shot, David. I don’t care how. Make this work.”

If demons had experience with bikes, that might have been the best bad option, but Jae glared at his with ripe disgust. He either couldn’t get the hang of it or didn’t want to. Given his pissy snarling, my bet was on the latter. When shifting gears on the mountain bike seemed too much, Henry dragged out his single speed street bike to simplify the effort.

I owed the kid a new bike now because, frustrated after an imbalance dumped him to the ground, Jae had flung the bike with such force that the frame bent around the trunk of a maple lining the goat path that passed for the Dyer driveway. As far as I knew, the front wheel that had torn off still soared through the air to Baltimore.

“It’s a hundred and fifty miles,” I’d said, stomach churning as my demon had stalked away to plop on the ground next to Henry.

“Seventy.” Andrew had examined the twisted ruin of the bike frame. “If Clara’s friend leaves a vehicle for you guys at the park, you only need to reach Ohiopyle.”

Our desperation had hatched a loose plan. We couldn’t risk the normal access points to the Great Allegheny Passage, but no one knew the back roads better than Andrew Dyer. He swore he could drop us off close. We’d hike through the woods less than a mile to reach the trail. Leaf peepers hadn’t descended to take in our fall colors yet, but with muggy summer temps easing, hikers and bikers crowded the Passage. We could lose ourselves among them.

If Jae applied his formidable intelligence and physical prowess to learning to ride.

My demon had refused. He’d groused that hiking boots covering his feet hobbled him for battle—he’d need to remove shoes to use his claws to fight. The clothing we’d scraped together as a disguise irritated him. “I will run.” He’d glowered at me from Henry’s side.

“Seventy miles.” I’d winced. “You think you can run that far?”

“You’ll stop somewhere around Meyersdale for the first leg. That’s only forty,” Andrew had said. “And he’s a demon. Their physiology isn’t the same as ours. If he says he can do it, we should let him.”

Anxiety hadn’t screamed through me because I’d feared he couldn’t manage the distance or a hard pace. He might arrive at the campground ravenous and physically spent, but I entertained zero fears he wouldn’t make it. A human wouldn’t. But Jae would.

What had stirred my trepidation was long stretches of the trail that were surrounded by open fields. Several tunnels punching through mountains disrupted the GAP, too. Big Savage Tunnel alone burrowed over half a mile into rock and the trail also poured into many small towns. If my demon ran instead of biking? No one would pay a lone biker any heed, but tourists would notice one accompanied by a jogger. To avoid that, my demon needed the cover of the woods to conceal him. He’d have to circle around every field, town, and tunnel.

“We’ll be separated,” I’d said. “I don’t like it.”

“Everything magical is a gamble. You know that or you wouldn’t have hidden that you’re a druid for years.” Andrew had shrugged. “Why should this be different?”

The truck jolted on the rutted path, branches scraping the sides as we moved through the forest. “Old service road. ATVs keep trees and brush from growing over it, but this hasn’t been used by anything heavier since they finished building the highway,” Andrew said. “I can get closer. Hold on.”

Cursing under his breath, Andrew fought the wheel for a few more precious minutes, buying us half a mile, perhaps a little farther, before his shoulders slumped. He shifted the truck into park. “Everybody out. Let’s unload.”

Jae had already unknotted the tarp and crawled from beneath it by the time we exited the cab. He grabbed the bike—just one bike—and heaved it from the truck bed. I reached up to take it from him, trusting my demon not at all with the contrary contraption he loathed, but I would rely on for the next two days. With an awkward grunt, I settled the tires on the ground while Jae grabbed his backpack and jumped down.

I leaned to check the bike, though I’d gone over the supplies lashed to it as well as the brakes, chain, and gears before we’d left the Dyer farm. My nerves skittered, but my pulse also hummed in anticipation of the challenge facing us. I could do this. I was an experienced trekker, and I’d traveled this trail dozens of times. The GAP was more familiar to me than my reflection in the mirror.

What I didn’t know was if the enemies searching for us would succeed.

When I glanced over, Andrew tugged the straps of the backpack nestled at Jae’s front. No lightweight frame. This wasn’t a serious hiker’s pack. Kids might carry something like this to school. While Andrew, Henry, and the girls had all homeschooled, the youngest Dyer had shrugged into this backpack whenever he’d biked around the college campus and the botanical garden. He’d loaned it to Jae for this trip to carry Teddy’s grimoire and other supplies that wouldn’t fit on my bike. Jae carried it at his front because he couldn’t fly if the bag smothered his wings, should he need them.

Our Plan B was Jae swooping to pick me up, if attacked. Fly and then portal. To Florida if we had to. Key West might be a thousand miles away, but the dragon who’d claimed the southernmost tip of the contiguous U.S. as his own was too stoned to attack us on sight.

“Ready?” Andrew asked.

I shrugged a stiff shoulder. “As I’ll ever be.”

He leaned a hip against his truck and pointed. “Trail’s over that hill. You’ll cross a shallow creek on the other side. Head north about a quarter mile. Can’t miss it.” He frowned. “Wait.” He turned to the truck bed and yanked up the lid of a toolbox. Reaching inside, he removed a blaze orange vest. He tossed it to me. “Hunting season isn’t until November, but you know how it is,” he said, then snickered. “If you get shot, I want it to be on purpose.”

Since I preferred to not be mistaken for a deer, I threaded my arms through the wide holes to pull on the vest. “What about him?” I nodded to Jae.

Andrew glanced up.

Startling blue skies met my gaze when I looked too, no clouds praise Jesus, just the wisp of a fading chemtrail.

“My guess is you’ll see demons flying low in the valley once you crest the hill. Many of them went home once news of your alliance with Menolac and the Trask mage broke, but a few are still on the chase.” Andrew waved at my orange vest. “They’re looking for two figures, not one.”

Since I couldn’t argue with that, I shut up about it. I’d just have to hope the remaining demons had scared away poachers. “Good?” I asked my demon as I tugged my ball cap onto my head.

“Issa.” He patted the backpack hugging his chest, a claw flicking at a small Pikachu plushie dangling from a zipper. “We go.”

I heaved the frame of the bike to my shoulder before pushing up with my knees. Heavy, but not too cumbersome. A street bike would’ve been lighter, but I trusted them less on the trail, which wasn’t far. I’d handle the extra weight until then. “Keep an eye on Skip?” I asked Andrew, who helped me balance the bike for easier carrying. “He isn’t as tough as he pretends.”

“Nexus can be scary after dark. One of us will camp with him while you two are gone. Ivy’s working and I need to be visible to provide a distraction so Grace will keep him company tonight.” He patted my shoulder. “You’ll owe her big. Grace hates camping, but she’s agreed to do it. He won’t be alone, no worries.”

I gulped down the emotion choking me. “Why?” I asked, and not for the first time.

“Henry said he’s important,” Andrew replied. Again.

Whatever the kid said, the Dyers did. Without hesitation. While I understood that intellectually—Henry was an oracle—the siblings’ reliance on a twelve-year-old still flummoxed me. “Well. Thanks.”

Andrew grinned. “You bet.”

I smiled in return, recalling something else the kid had said. “Try not to sex up my familiar.”

He chuckled. “You’re losing daylight.”

We headed out. Our luck stayed with us. Towering old-growth trees with thick canopies that filtered light to the forest floor composed the woods in this part of Allegany County. Wild grape vines draped from branches high above us, but shrubs and thickets were sparse. I could thread a path among the prickly plant life with little trouble and veered around a fallen, decaying elm only once before reaching the ridgeline.

The tree cover here was so dense, I couldn’t make out the horizon to note a pair of demons indeed circling until we’d started our descent into the valley.

Jae and I didn’t speak. With his constant presence in my mind and me in his, we didn’t need to. When he angled from my side to walk where thicker brush would conceal him, I didn’t wonder why, though I missed him next to me. His grudging approval when I hauled that bike up and down the hill without whining about it shouldn’t matter to me. He assumed I was strong, competent. I liked that and anticipated showing off one area of my life I need never fear I’d fall short. I loved these woods, the trails, my good clean sweat as I picked my route across the burbling creek, and the fresh air filling my lungs.

We were hunted. The eerie shadows of dark beasts hovered above me, and had we not been fleeing their threat, my demon would stand beside me to enjoy the chattering birds and squirrels skittering through the underbrush.

I felt no less free. Light. Unburdened despite the weight of the bike. I couldn’t regret the trial facing us. Tourists flooded the Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, not the route north we were taking. Why? Because the way south was downhill. We’d be going up and up and up. Seventeen hundred feet if we biked the entire Passage. That was do-able, rated a moderate ride, but my quads and glutes already burned in anticipation of the workout our escape presented.

We wouldn’t bike the whole trail north. We wouldn’t even climb half of it, though a part of me almost wished we could. Maybe someday.

I bent to slide the bike off my shoulder as soon as my feet crunched gravel, a driveway snaking to a white farmhouse surrounded by several outbuildings. No one was around save a few chickens strutting inside a fenced coop, so I pushed on. I found the Passage up a gentle Shrugging off the orange vest, I folded it into a neat square and then tucked it under a rock alongside the trail. I placed several more rocks atop the first to form a short pillar Andrew would notice to retrieve the vest later. Checking the bike one last time, just to be sure, I grabbed my water bottle from the frame for a quick drink to wet my mouth before swinging my leg over the frame. After replacing the bottle in its holder, I twisted to unfasten the strap of the helmet from the rear of the seat. Once I’d cinched that on, folding the bill of my ball cap to wedge it beneath the cord holding my tent in place, I was ready. Eager to go.

My feet hit the pedals and my legs pumped.

Normally, I’d tap a button on a fitness tracker when I began a trip or trigger an app on my phone. I’d left technology behind, though. Griffith’s phone remained with Skip, another cheap burner phone tucked into my pocket in its stead. I’d powered it down. No reason to chance anyone tracking me.

Besides, I knew where I was going and though I couldn’t see him, I sensed Jae following in the thick woods to my left. I wasn’t alone. The enemies who searched for us faded to a distant worry, something to be considered later. Now, it was just me against the trail, the burn of my muscles limbering and the increasing thud of my heart beating.

The advantage of the Allegheny Passage was its relative flatness. When you hiked the Canal, certain stretches climbed uphill and down. Sometimes, I craved a more arduous workout and would choose the overland route at Paw Paw instead of the shorter and cooler path through the tunnel. Flat was easier, but then, I’d miss the waterfalls and rocky outcroppings that made hiking over the hill rather than through it worth the effort.

Today, I enjoyed a relaxed ride. The path heading north rose, but the slope was gradual. I’d gain eight hundred feet of elevation by the time I struck camp this evening and my taxed quads would make me pay for that. But for now, the sun beat down, warm but not as muggy as August would’ve been. I spotted robins and scurrying chipmunks, the tangled coil of a sleepy blacksnake, and a herd of deer grazing on native grass. The animals blinked at me, unconcerned, when I zoomed by them.

I passed a pair of riders coming from Pittsburgh and several clusters of hikers. None of them stopped me or spoke, only offered me friendly waves when I called out my “to the right” as I pedaled by.

Considering the disaster the past days had been, abandoning Cumberland turned out to be blissfully anticlimactic. We slipped away, my demon and me, with no alarm raised. We vanished into the natural wonders marching to Pittsburgh.

With nothing to focus on except the pumping of my legs and the clean mountain air filling my lungs, I made excellent time and if my demon’s hum in my head was any measure to judge, Jae kept pace with me without trouble, which was incredible given the slow climb. After a couple hours on the trail, I pulled to a stop at a rest area, which was only a pair of benches in a clearing next to the path. Though no one was ahead of me on the trail or behind me, I swung my leg over the bike and walked it between a pair of maples skirting the benches. I didn’t halt until a glance over my shoulder showed me only greenery blocking my view of the path. I nudged the kickstand with my foot to prop the bike and stretched to keep my muscles loose while I reached into my pockets for the energy bars I’d stuffed into them at dawn.

Jae found me moments later, while I chased my snack with gulps of water from my bottle. He breathed in shallow pants. He wasn’t winded, exactly. His chest rose and fell in the controlled inhales and exhales of healthy exertion, sweat glistening on his skin. He shook his head when I offered him my water bottle, retrieving an identical bottle from a pocket in his backpack instead. He took an energy bar I passed to him, though.

“See anything?” I asked.

He shoved the bar into his mouth. Small game. Many birds. “I doubled back on our trail. No one followed us.”

If anyone had, I expected they would’ve attacked an hour ago, before we raced too far for quick reinforcements from Cumberland. “We’ve come about twenty miles, halfway to the campground I selected for tonight. You good?”

But I knew before his voice whispered Issa inside my head.

Any human running to keep pace with a bike for twenty miles would need an emergency room. Oxygen. Perhaps the service of a priest to administer last rites, but if anything taught me that demons were not like us, this was it. To my assessing eye, Jae seemed ready to finish this leg of our trek. Like me, he’d pushed his body. I saw that in the sheen of his sweat, the bulging muscles of his legs under the sweatpants I’d coaxed him into, wherever body armor he wouldn’t pack away for his run didn’t shield. He hadn’t collapsed in a panting and exhausted heap. Though my calves were tiring, I hadn’t buckled under the physical demands, either.

Leaning against a black locust tree, Jae waved to me. “You are well.” He gulped from his water bottle and then he beamed at me. “Happy?”

“I’m in my element.” As I rubbed my thighs to stay limber, I grinned. “I rarely take the north route on the Passage. No one does except day trippers, but I like a climbing route sometimes. This is nothing compared to the elevation gains I usually go for when I’m testing myself. You handling your run all right? No problem keeping up? Thick brush next to the trail can be a pain in the ass.”

Rolling his red eyes, Jae didn’t answer my question, but I felt his satisfaction at my gloating to have handled the difficulty of the trip so far. He returned his water bottle to the pocket of his pack. “We do not have such things,” he said, gesturing to my bike with a sneer. “We fight, but never on our home ground, so we run to the battle. Vast armies—running. Or we ride beasts also suited to war. Not like your…” He clicked his tongue, mimicking the clopping hooves of horses we’d passed on a farm a few miles ago.

Despite the thumping of my heart after the strenuous first couple hours of exercise, I blinked my astonishment. Jae hadn’t spoken of his world before, the realm from which he’d fled. I’d learned more about demons from Skip than I had from what Jae had shared. That was to be expected. Of all magical beings, only dragons were more enigmatic and operating from a position of vulnerability, my demon guarded his secrets. He’d chosen me, but I was a stranger to him. We didn’t know each other. Back at my childhood home, he’d tried to leave me and I hadn’t stood in his way, either. He must have sensed my eagerness to sever the connection binding us, so I was hardly a candidate worthy of confiding in.

Or rather, I hadn’t been.

Did he trust me more now?

“Horses,” I said almost by rote. “What you saw were horses. We ride them for pleasure now, but people rode them to travel and trained them to perform labor for us in the past.” I nodded to my bike. “Before humans invented machines. Do you have none of those?” I asked him, hopeful he’d answer my question, but simultaneously frightened he might.

Jae shook his head. “Only weapons for war.” He yanked at the zipped closure of the pocket containing his water bottle and jerked his chin at my bike. “I am ready.”

I frowned, not quite willing to give up. We needed to get back on the trail. The second half of today’s mileage wouldn’t progress as smoothly now that we’d both burned through so much of our physical resources. We’d slow as we tired, our pace slackening. But I didn’t want to end the nascent intimacy developing between us, either. “Do you need to hunt before we go on?”

“I raced with our armies many times to reach battle.” He patted Henry’s backpack at his front. “Enough to know a full stomach means retching.” He glanced, pointedly, toward the trail hidden behind green leaves.

Sighing, I stood and walked away from him. I reached for my bike and shoved my water bottle into its holder on the frame before grabbing the handlebars. I stabbed a frustrated foot at the kickstand.

“Wait,” Jae said.

Poised over my bike, I watched him bend to the ground. When he stood again, he held a pale gray feather tipped with darker gray at the tip.

I squinted.

A pigeon feather. With a delighted gasp, I shoved my bike against the tree to return to his side.

He waved the feather, small and fragile, in his cupped palm. “This is good?”

“Very,” I said on a pleased hum. “With no agricultural fields to forage nearby, pigeons aren’t typical on this part of the Passage.” Pigeons stuck to wherever humans were most, searching for food handouts or pilfering our trash. The birds had learned helplessness from us. They rarely ventured into the wilds, even rural breeds relying on whatever sustenance they could gather from farms, so finding this feather in a lonely stretch of nowhere was significant. Smiling, I accepted the feather he passed to me and tucked it into a groove in my bike helmet. “Technically, taking a feather from its natural environment is illegal. Feds claim the ban curtails collectors killing birds for commercial trade of their feathers, but I think it’s just another way mundanes stick it to magicals.” I shrugged. “Whatever, this one is a sign of love and peace. An omen of our success when we meet the dragon.”

My demon’s plump lips curved. “Perhaps.”

Jae had hedged, but I sensed his gratification filtering through our bond, so I laughed. “Well, let me know if you need to slow down or stop.” Steps lighter, I returned to my bike and slung my leg over the frame to straddle it. “We have plenty of hours of daylight before arriving at the campground near the Viaduct, no reason to push ourselves.”

Except for leaving our enemies far behind us, we needn’t rush. Kinda important, that.

Oddly, we didn’t hurry. As exhausted as my muscles became, I could’ve picked up my pace. The slope wasn’t steep. My abdominals ached a little near the end of the ride as we neared Meyersdale. My body predictably tired, but I could’ve attacked the trail harder. Though I couldn’t see him from the path, Jae’s presence in my head felt subdued, too. Like he could take the run at a faster sprint. If demons raced on foot to battles, he could run long after I quit.

We hadn’t only escaped the dangers in Cumberland, though. We’d also fled the endless scrabble of magical infighting and scheming. None of the hikers on the trail cared I was a druid. No one cowered in fear or stared in frank avarice at the demon loping by trees and through thickets beside me. Here, I was another biker enjoying the day.

I could be normal again. Non-magical. Just me.

I pretended we weren’t running for our lives, that my psycho grandparents hadn’t destroyed my home. If I ignored the constant vibration of Jae in my head, nothing stopped me from reclaiming who I was before disaster had discovered me inside a dryad sacred circle. For long stretches of trail, what mattered was the gratifying burn of my quads and glutes as I pedaled. My lone test was tackling the uphill slope. The only attack I needed to worry about was the bite of my wheels in loose gravel.

With gratitude, I sank into that headspace. A sliver of my mind monitored my demon. Like me, exertion wore on him. While the climb wasn’t difficult, the constant sap on our bodies built. The scenery stole my breath more than the ride, though. Good, clean sweat slicked my body as my legs pumped the bike pedals and fresh mountain air perfumed with the faint licorice scent of goldenrod filled my lungs. Birds sang, their dancing spirals of flight overhead unconcerned by a single pesky human or his demon companion. The buzz of insects harvesting bright pink touch-me-nots murmured in my ears.

The soles of my feet didn’t need to touch the ground, nor my fingers dig into cool damp earth. The wonder of nature filled me, regardless. My ride settled something deep and fundamental inside me. Despite the unrelenting catastrophe of the past days and my trepidation over what remained ahead for us, tranquility flowed through me like a drug. Jae, too. Although I couldn’t see him, my demon sensed the easing of tension within me and welcomed the blessed relief with the soothing of his own turmoil. Just this once, we both knew peace. Greeted it warmly. Shared the serenity of the trail together.

With more than a little regret, I noticed signs and landmarks of Meyersdale looming. Stone pillars displaying mile markers crept from the single digits near Cumberland up to thirty.

As agreed, my demon headed farther into the woods to circle around the town. The bond linking us thinned, but not as much as I’d feared when we’d joined the GAP near Frostburg. Short hours later, we’d barely exchanged words, but we were stronger, more solidly connected somehow. Maybe in our heads, Jae and I would always push against each other, but what we appreciated and felt in our souls during our trek through the Appalachians…In that, we were one.