Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(92)
Author: Kim Harrison

"You want me to take them out before you get to the turnoff?" Jenks asked, his dust streaming out behind him as he easily kept up, and Trent eyed him.

"Can you?" he said, starting to breathe hard.

Jenks shrugged, and the Were they were currently passing almost fell off his bike, staring at the pixy. "Not if they’re magic users, but I can slow them down to give you a few more seconds to get on the turnoff."

Trent nodded, not speaking as they passed another Were. "Don’t endanger yourself more than what’s prudent," he wheezed. One more Were to go, and then he’d be free of them.

A burst of gold dust sifted from the pixy, lost in the cool breeze rising up from the ocean. "Check!" he said cheerfully. He hesitated a moment as if he was going to say something more, then shifted direction and was gone.

Still standing on the pedals, Trent forced himself up the hill, his legs protesting and his chest on fire. The last Were fell behind him when she halted at the top of the hill, stopping to look back down the hill and shout encouraging words to her teammates. Ellasbeth’s house/castle/monastery was visible in the ocean mist ahead of him as he rounded the curve and started down. It looked cold even from this distance, the edifice jutting out past the trees and bracken. There was ocean between him and it, the road falling down and to the right before it rose and swung high again to pass within a stone’s throw of the front gate. It was here, though, where he’d break from the race.

The wind buffeted him as he took the curving road into the shade, his hammering pulse easing. Ellasbeth’s home held his attention. It still looked like a monastery, one that had not sheltered happy monks growing vegetables and glorying God, but rather those bitterly hiding from the world. It was forbidding, so close to the sea that earth magic would not be a sure thing, and so near a fault line that ley line magic would be difficult unless having grown up among the fractured feel of the lines here. He couldn’t help but think he was rescuing his daughter, imprisoned in a castle, shut off from the world but for what her caretakers thought was appropriate.

The hum of the tires buzzed up into him, and in an instant, the heat of the sun vanished as he cruised under the shade of the trees, eclipsing his view of the monastery. At the bottom was a patch of thistle. A walking path bisected it, the left-hand way going down the cliff to the rocky beach, the right rising up into the primeval forest. Trent glanced at his GPS. This had to be it.

Downshifting and braking hard, he came to a halt.

The sound of the wind stopped, and his face warmed even as he shivered in the shade of ancient trees. He glanced back, seeing no one on the road, but the top of the hill was hidden behind a curve. Sweat broke out on him. Legs protesting, Trent swung a foot over, and hoisting his sixteen-pound racing bike onto a shoulder, he strode to the right, trying not to disturb the thistles as he found the narrow dirt path.

A faint shout brought his head up. Deep under the trees, he looked back to see a lone rider speeding down the hill; behind him, the three Weres were shouting curses and howling at him. The sun caught a haze of dust, and he smiled and faded back into the woods. One rider now, not two. He could see why Rachel relied on the pixy.

Pulse hammering, he pulled the GPS from the handlebars and tucked it under his armpit as he threw the racing bike into the bracken and out of sight of the path. His helmet was next, his spelling cap now tucked into his pocket. The fronds waved and settled to hide the gleaming black frame. The lone rider knew where he was going, but no need to advertise it. Satisfied, Trent turned and ran down the dirt-packed path. Immediately his legs cramped up, and he grit his teeth, running through it until his clumsy, awkward motion smoothed out into a mile-eating lope he could keep up for hours.

A bird called in the distance, and a woodpecker sounded. His breaths in and out eased as more familiar muscles took over. Running, he could do. The sun came and went on his shoulders, and the sound of the ocean vanished under the hushed sighing of the wind in the trees.

He almost wished he had bowed to Ellasbeth’s demand and abandoned his business dealings in the Midwest if only to claim a chunk of this peace. But then his heart hardened. Cincinnati might not be rich in wild spaces, the forests that once covered her hewn down and burned in the furnaces that had fueled her industrial revolution, the multitude of species she’d once boasted trampled into extinction under her droves of pigs and then people who flocked to the new city and a society built on human values. But for all her loud, brash exuberance, Cincinnati had welcomed his mother and father when they’d fled those who had promised to protect them. Cincinnati offered them shelter, meager, humble, but honest. And his mother, Trent remembered, had loved the fields more than the woods.

An image of his mother sitting in the sun with a horse cropping behind her rose up from his forgotten memories, shocking him. She was laughing with him, a daisy brushing her lips before touching it to his forehead fondly. Trent gasped, stumbling as his feet misplaced themselves. Recovering, he continued on with a panicked pace. He remembered his mother so rarely, and he grasped the image of her smiling at him, the sun blinding on her white dress, the grass as green as her eyes, sealing the memory away so he’d never forget it again. His mother had loved the fields, so far from the sea that she had forgotten its lure.

"Hey, Trent!"

The mental image of his mother vanished at Jenks’s voice. Stifling his annoyance, he squinted up at the pixy. "One left?" he panted as he ran. My mother was of the field, he thought, vowing to share his love of horses with Lucy. Girls loved horses. That was one thing they could share. Maybe he could do this.

"Yep," Jenks said proudly. "One rode right off the cliff swatting at a bug. That would be me. He gashed his leg open on a rock and will be lucky to make it up to the main road and the rescue car. That would be pure dumb luck. The other guy in the blue tights is still on your trail. He took one of the Were’s bikes when I crashed his. You’ve about five minutes ahead. He’s trying to bike in. Stupid ass. You were smart ditching yours. He’s banged his bahoogies twice already."

Coming to a halt to read the GPS, Trent smacked the mosquito biting his elbow and squinted at the sun-faded map. The system was flashing, having an electronic hissy because he’d gone off the race route, but that the walking trail wasn’t on record was a good thing. The stream has to be close. Tucking the GPS away, he squinted up at the cliff rising to his left.

"You going to try to lose him in the woods?" Jenks said as Trent started forward at a slower pace, hoping to catch his breath so he’d have something when push came to shove.