Caden caught the movement from the corner of his eye a second before the burning rod crashed into his shoulder. Heat and pain exploded in his arm. He released Lyle on reflex and rolled to the side. With effort, he got his feet under him.
Mason snarled something unintelligible and jerked the gun into motion. Caden bolted for the doorway and ducked through the opening as the crack of the .38 reverberated through the bunker. The bullet sliced open his arm, the graze sharp enough to double him over. A messy splatter of blood soaked his sleeve. Clamping a hand over the tear, he ran unsteadily for the trees.
“You can’t hide.” Lyle’s voice bounced among the tangled nest of birch and pine. Heavy footfalls, snapping twigs, and a rustle of trampled leaves followed.
Caden ducked behind an oak, fighting to hold his breathing in check. He’d trained for situations like this. Lyle might know the TNT, even how to track an animal in the woods, but he wasn’t thinking rationally and his quarry was a skilled law-enforcement officer who’d also served in Vietnam.
Mason had shot two rounds. Four remained. Caden pressed his back to the tree and listened to his pursuer stumble around in the dark.
Several yards away, a flashlight burst to life. The narrow beam swept back and forth, cutting a path through the shadows. Lyle moved in the opposite direction.
Caden waited until he couldn’t see the bobbing flashlight any longer, then shoved from the trunk and lurched into the darkness.
Chapter 17
Ryan eyed the small clearing. There was no trace of the dead dogs he’d found over a week ago, or the silvery globs of “star shit.”
“Why here?” He turned to face Evening, who stood in the center of the exposed area. They’d left Ryan’s patrol car tucked into a weedy strip of grass off Potters Creek Road, then hiked the rest of the distance. Even with the aid of a flashlight, Ryan had blundered his way. By contrast, Evening had walked unassisted, never once floundering. He’d stepped easily, almost soundlessly, among knots of briars and matted overgrowth.
“Why not here? As you can see it is open.” Evening extended a hand to indicate the unusual baldness of the terrain. “An ideal spot to summon the winged cryptid we seek.”
The cryptid.
Ryan had never actually seen the Mothman. Up until last summer he’d considered the thing more fantasy than fact, a local legend to be told around campfires and debated over beers at the River Café. He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
“Fine. Just get busy with whatever tricks you’ve got up your sleeve.” Shifting restlessly, he angled the beam of his flashlight onto his watch. “It’s after eleven-thirty. Caden’s been missing for hours. Who knows what Lyle could have done?”
“I understand your impatience, but I require silence while I concentrate. Whatever comes of my efforts, do not interfere.”
Ryan exhaled, his only reply a curt nod. On the drive to the TNT, Evening had explained how he intended to summon the Mothman using a form of telepathy shared among his people. Ryan might have placed more confidence in the idea if Caden hadn’t told him there was little of the original “person” remaining in the Mothman. That entity had become a mutation, a thing as far removed from his original race as Ryan was from Evening.
Clenching his jaw, he narrowed his gaze on the blond-haired man.
Freaking alien.
The guy was supposed to be some kind of ultra psychic with advanced cognitive and extrasensory powers. Or so Evening had told him in his lightly accented voice. No boasting or ego stroking in the straightforward revelation, but a blunt statement of fact. If anyone had the power to breach the chaos of the creature’s mind, Evening was the best candidate. Not even his father, Cold, could claim his particular skills.
Right. Ryan puffed out his cheeks.
Evening wasn’t doing much of anything except standing with his eyes closed. His arms hung at his sides, his head tilted slightly back. Moonlight gilded his hair with a coin-bright polish, but otherwise, he appeared as a murky stain concealed by heavier darkness.
Ryan resisted the urge to look at his watch again, crushing a stronger impulse to pace. Halloween night, and he was standing in a slaughter-pen for dogs, placing his faith in a self-purported space invader—who might just as easily be whacked in the head—hoping to summon a bogeyman from folklore. If anyone had told him last spring he and his brother would be mixed up in a hotbed of unexplained hocus-pocus, he would have laughed in the idiot’s face.
“Get on with it already,” he mumbled under his breath.
Whether his words triggered the results, or the timing was coincidental, a burst of silver-blue shot upward from the ground engulfing Evening in a geyser of flickering light.
Ryan wobbled back a step. Flashes of argent and pearl twined with flames of cold sapphire, outlining Evening’s form. The snarl of trees encircling the clearing appeared to dance, grotesquely animated by a nightmarish blend of light and shadow.
Transfixed, Ryan stared.
A metallic sheen seeped over the grass, inching forward with the speed of slowly oozing blood. Evening hadn’t moved, his posture a mirror image of before. His eyes remained closed, arms limps at his sides. The only outward clues to betray his tension were the rapid tapping of a single index finger against his leg, and a noticeable tightness at the corners of his mouth.
Ryan fidgeted. Evening didn’t appear in any outward distress, yet the sense of strain rolling off the man was palpable. Hell, maybe that kind of conflict was normal for an alien, part of the everyday gig. For all Ryan knew, he could be plotting an invasion of Earth, communicating with a mothership instead of calling the Mothman.
Minutes passed, Evening’s toll in maintaining the trance growing more apparent. The eerie light flared brighter, a white sun, threatening nova. Evening’s face contorted, his expression bordering on agony. The tremor in his hand crept into his arm and traveled down his leg.
“Evening.” Ryan lurched forward, drawing up sharply when an earlier warning echoed in his head.
Do not interfere.
Shit.