SAGN: Chapter Four-The Grove free porn video

Chapter Four: The Grove ==================================================== Jim and Mitch followed Detective Singh along the cracked concrete sidewalk. As they moved away from Barnes's house they could see Singh start to regain some of his equilibrium. The cul-de-sac itself was not very large, but with all of the fenced in yards of the houses lining the little street they had already decided that it would just be easier to go around to where the far end of the little patch of woodland opened up near Magnolia Street itself. That was the way Mitch gone had when he had done his initial tracking and they would be passing over the same area that Hank Phillips had disappeared so it made sense to start there. There was an empty rental house on the tip of a wedge shaped spit of land between Magnolia Street and the cul-de-sac. As they entered the empty property Singh whispered to Pantra and she rose from his shoulder and flitted over the sagging chain link fence and into the woods beyond the house. Mitch tried the gate and even though it was streaked with rust and squeeled in protest, it opened easily enough and they soon passed through the yard and into the woods just beyond. Like most of the houses in this area, there were broad belts of trees separating them in this section of Olympia. Even lower level management it seemed had rated the perk of not being squeezed so closely together, unlike those who worked on the mill floor. "Is this the way you came last time?" Singh asked Mitch. Mitch said it was and started to lead the way into the overgrown strip of woodland. "Detective Travers," Singh called. Mitch paused and turned back to him. "It would be best, I think, to follow the same path that you took the first time you ventured here. Knowing what we do now, we are still woefully ignorant of what may be beyond this fence for the moment. "Singh cautioned. Mitch nodded in acknowledgement and took a step into the ferns that had sprung up at the base of some of the trees. They were broad ferns and the size of them effectively masked what lay beyond until you moved past them. The three men moved through them and stopped on the other side of the undergrowth. "What is it?" Jim asked Mitch, since he had paused after making his way past the growth. "It's different now," Mitch said. "I can't see the path that I took when I was here the other day. It's too overgrown." Jim looked down the long strip of woodland stretching ahead of them. Viewed from the street it looked like all of the other woodlands between the houses here; just a strip of trees and the underbrush that sprung up around them. Between the trees themselves, was the brush that grew around the bases of the thick tree trunks and the ground cover littered with branches and fallen leaves. The strip of land was wide enough that, if you were in the middle of it, you would barely see the houses peeking through the leaves at you from either side. If you looked ahead as Jim was doing now, you would have the sensation of being deep in a forest rather than in the heart of a neighborhood that gentrification was rapidly changing. This might be the corner of a small city, but here in its heart the wilderness was growing thick and wild. Jim couldn't remember when he had ever seen one of these strips that had ever looked like this before. "It's wrong," Mitch repeated quietly. "It shouldn't have changed this much in just a few hours." "Do the best you can to follow the path you did before," Singh half whispered. They started making their way in the general direction of the back of Barnes's house. "It's too thick," Jim whispered. "It shouldn't be like this," he said again stepping over a clump of blackberry bushes that fanned out in front of them and blocked their path. Jim was familiar with these strips of faux wilderness. He remembered playing in them with his friends when he was growing up and he was in complete agreement; this one was not the same. Sometimes when he visited his parents he took walks in the thinner strip of woodland behind his family home. Most of the strips were like that one. Chopped up and separated from each other like a set of scattered children's blocks. The trees growing in small clumps with scrub brush clustered in spots. Near his parent's house was a blackberry patch as well that they would pick berries from when he visited. He figured, when they were making their way here, that this one would not be too different. When they turned off of the cracked pavement of the sidewalk and crossed the yard he had mentally figured that it would only take them a few minutes to reach the back of the fence line. But this was not like the other woodlots he was familiar with. Jim had once seen a surveyor's map for this part of town. He had been part of a city-wide manhunt a few years before; a cop killer that had been sniping at random patrol officers. They had quickly figured out that suspect had been using these wooded strips to move and avoid being seen to some degree. After that there had been some serious discussion in the city planning office of razing these open strips and leaving behind nothing but open fields in their places, but nothing had come of it. When the Alagosta mill had laid out the town, each part of land like this strip was originally land that was set aside for a future timber harvest. But when the lands were auctioned off, the undeveloped portion behind each lot was sold with the homes that bordered it. Now the former woodlots were mostly kept in place for the privacy of the home's owners. Regardless of why it had been done, one of the results was that, now the strips of forest gave harbor to more woodland fauna that you would expect to see here in the center of the city. Jim remembers one Thanksgiving a few years before when he had seen a fawn hesitantly step out onto the road while his car idled at a stoplight. The deer was only there for a moment, but before some sound startled it he had stared in silent appreciation of the small herbivore before it's white tail flipped up in alarm and he watched it vanish in a blur of soft brown fur dappled with pure white spots. Those strips were nothing like this one though. As they struggled through the tangled undergrowth they soon were forced to begin walking single file just to make a small degree of progress deeper into the tangled depths of the woods. Once Mitch had lost the path he had followed in the day before he fell out of the lead. Now as they made their way deeper in the thicket Detective Singh had taken the lead with Mitch in the center and Jim bringing up the rear. Pantra flitted overhead trying to spy out easier paths through the thick tangled underbrush. As they made their way through the foliage they did so immersed in a silence that seemed to warp back around them. There were streets with cars on them not more than a short distance away but even the sounds of passing vehicles didn't penetrate this green sheet of wilderness. Singh stopped and motioned for the two men following him to do the same. "Listen," he said quietly. His words were in a near whisper, but in the silence of the woods they seemed louder to Jim. They had been moving without talking for the most part already. It had not been something that they had decided on in advance, it was something that the sheer bulk of the forest strip had imposed on them as they left the pavement behind. "I don't hear anything," Mitch said after a moment. Singh nodded. "It's just as Ms. Desilva mentioned to us; no sounds of anything. No insects, no birds, nothing. A forest this thick should have some sounds from the creatures living here, but there is nothing. It's like everything that lives here is waiting for something and doesn't dare speak first." A thick knotted cluster of vines and roots rose in a hump of twisted vegetation between a pair of trees just ahead of them. "That wasn't there when I came this way before," Mitch said pointing toward it. Singh asked him if he was certain about that and Mitch gave Singh a quick review of what he had done when he had first gone this way to track the footprints they had found in Barnes's backyard. "I know it wasn't here before," he insisted. "I passed between those two trees the other day." Pantra dove down through the low hanging branches and hovered near Singh's ear. Jim couldn't hear what it was that she told him, and she flitted off after a moment and was swallowed up by the leaves. Singh looked back at the two men. "Pantra says that the forest is less dense just a little bit ahead of us. There's a thick clump of it in our path, but it clears out just after that. They began to move around the clump of vines and roots and once past it, as Pantra said it would, the brush began to fall away and by the time they had come within sight of the wooden privacy fence that girded the back yard of Barnes's house, you could not tell the difference between this woodlot and the others that Jim was more familiar with. Jim reached up to wipe the perspiration from his brow and out of habit checked his watch before dropping his wrist back to his side. From the time that they had left the sidewalk to cut into the woods, they had only traveled about two hundred meters, but crossing that distance had taken them nearly an hour to do so. Jim mentally compared their time today to how long he estimated that Mitch had been gone the day before. All things considered, he was fairly sure that it had only taken Mitch about forty minutes or so to make it to where the trail began on the other side of Barnes's privacy fence, follow it to where he said it led to and make it back to the car. He looked at the more open woodland in front of them and felt a bit of relief that they were passing into it now. As they stepped into the more open section of the woodlot, Singh paused again. He turned slowly around and gazed back into the deeper wood they had just left. He stood there and did not move, but Jim could see his eyes darting around as he fruitlessly searched for whatever it was that he was looking for. Jim was about to ask him what it was that caused this halt, when Singh blinked, exhaled slowly and motioned the two of them to follow him again. Jim felt his tension drop away a little as the underbrush fell away and the path they were following toward the back of the fence became clear again. Now that she was no longer needed to scout for an easier path for her earthbound companions, Pantra buzzed down out of the sky and perched once again on Singh's shoulder. Mitch came up alongside him as he stood there. As Jim drew even with them he heard Mitch ask him what it was that had caused him to pause back on the edge of the thicket. Jim was wondering about that as well, but Singh just shook his head no and said that thought he caught a hint of something that seemed vaguely familiar. Even though he didn't say anything more about what it could be, Jim could see that there was something that was lingering in the back of the man's thoughts as they made their way out of the underbrush. Now that they were free of the tangled vegetation the remaining forty meters that separated them from the back of the tall privacy fence didn't take long for them to cover. Halfway there, Mitch tripped over an exposed root that had snaked its way up from the earth from where it lay hidden beneath the fallen leaves. Jim quipped that perhaps Mitch should have just stayed in the thicket since open ground was giving him trouble now. Mitch scowled at him, but Jim could tell that it was more for show than anything else. He was more embarrassed that he had done something like this now that the ground cover was not so difficult to navigate than by the fall itself. The roof of Barnes's home loomed over the top of the fence. Mitch kneeled by the edge of the rough painted wood and indicated the earth at the base of it. After he had brushed away a few fallen leaves that had drifted over the earth, the other two men could see the faint lingering imprint of a naked foot still barely discernible in the dirt. Both of them could see clearly where the toes had spread out into the wet earth when, whoever it was, had passed here. The toes of the print bisected by the fence matching where the heel had impressed itself onto the earth on the other side of the wood. Mitch moved a couple of feet away and uncovered another print beneath some more leaves. "I found the next set of footprints here and they led back that way," he said pointing back toward the thicker brush they had come from. Singh looked back at the house and then down at the footprints. "Do you see anything?" Jim asked him. Singh gestured at the house just beyond the fence line. "It's as I thought," he said. "The ward is stronger on this side of the property, but there is something else here as well," he said, leaning closer to the fence itself. He reached out with his hand and let it rest on the rough wood. He held it there and let it fall downward to trace the path that led away from the bisected print. His eyes had taken on a familiar dim glow as he did so. "She came through here," he said softly, his fingers tracing a path through the leaves at the base of the fence. "She?" Jim asked. "Yes, she," said Singh. "Whoever made this trail is resonating with a strong affinity for the Amina side of the aether." Before they had been brought face to face with the kind of investigation that Singh represented, when it was just himself and Mitch trying to puzzle this thing out. Jim had pegged their unknown subject as a kid. If Singh hadn't gotten involved he supposed that he would have naturally suspected a local tomboy upon hearing that the person who left their footprints here in the wet musty earth was female. But now he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Pantra had already, by her presence, demonstrated that size was immaterial when it came to matters like this and considering how much he did not know about the world Singh knew, it only threw fuel on the growing disquiet that he felt burgeoning inside of him. Singh turned toward the wood and slowly moved alongside the trail. Near a squat oak he stopped and shifted his gaze from the tree to another place not that far away from it. "She followed this route twice," Singh said, "Once here and again when she left," Mitch looked over at Jim from where he was kneeling in the leaves. They had only found tracks leading away from the house and from what Singh had told them about how the ward had been distorted until it had extended to the fence itself there didn't seem to be any trace of how this intruder had gained entry. "You sure?" Mitch asked him. Singh gestured toward a line only he could see on the forest floor. "The older path is the one leading onto the property," He said. "Its fainter, diffused almost, but it's there. I can see its aetherial trace leading in. It's masked by the more recent trail. That's why it's harder to detect and there is something else about it..." Singh's words trailed off as he concentrated on the trail. "This path," he finally said, "The one leading out, is stronger. It's the more recent as I said, but the older one is literally underneath it," He looked up at them "I think that whoever is responsible for both of these trails gained entry to Mr. Barnes's home by traveling under the soil," He pointed back toward the house beyond the tall fence. "She must have entered that way entirely in the aetherial realm. That would account for why the earth is not disturbed in any way. And when she left, she did so in the physical realm, probably as a result of the ward weakening her; thus the footprints that Detective Travers was able to locate and follow to some extent." "But you said most things couldn't approach the house that way and from the trouble that you had just going into the house I think that Barnes would have noticed something like that," Jim said. Singh didn't answer right away. He motioned for Jim to wait a moment and leaned over to speak to Pantra. She flew into the sky with the familiar buzzing that Jim was coming to expect from her when she did that and she soon vanished into the overcast sky above. They waited for a few minutes and Jim heard her approach before they could see her. She braked sharply and hovered a moment before dropping lightly back onto Singh's shoulder and whispered to him. Singh turned back to Jim and Mitch. "I asked Pantra to look at the ward again from this side and, as I suspected she would, she saw only the deformation in the ward that accompanied this being's departure. There is no sign that the ward has been forced from the outside." "So what do you think that means?" Mitch asked. "From the lack of deformity going inward and the extreme deformity going in this direction, it may well be that when Mr. Barnes cast his ward, whatever it was that he feared so strongly was already within its borders. Hiding in the earth beneath his home." Singh looked sadly in the direction of the house. "It appears that Mr. Barnes may have trapped himself with what he was trying to protect himself from. He cast the ward and moments after it took effect found he was being overwhelmed by her. It's the only explanation I can see here that fits what it is that I see." "The deformity in the shape of the ward moving away in a single direction and the two paths weaving together. The newer one overlying the older one," Singh started to walk slowly back the way they had come. "I think that Mr. Barnes may be closer than we realize," he said urgently. "That knot of vines and roots that you said was not here the other day. Are you absolutely certain that is the case, Detective Travers?" "Absolutely, it just wasn't there," Mitch said. "We must go back and look carefully as we do so gentlemen," Singh said facing back toward the thicket. "And be extremely cautious while we do. If I'm right in what I suspect, that mass of roots and vines we encountered may well be some sort of cocoon." "A cocoon for what?" Mitch asked. "I can't be certain, but it may very well be the missing Mr. Phillips since it has appeared so rapidly after his disappearance," Singh said in a grave tone. "Pantra," he said holding up his hand for her to leap onto. She did so and looked up at him. "Go back to where we found that lump of roots and vines. Be very quiet as only you can be. See if it is a cocoon of some sort. And then see if you can locate a second one as well. Come back as quickly as you can. I don't think we will have much time." Pantra was all business now and said nothing in response. She hunched down briefly, launched herself from his hand and buzzed away, her dragonfly wings making a deeper thrumming sound as she rapidly sped out of sight. "And now gentlemen, it's our turn," Singh said. "For now we need to go back toward the cocoon and be alert. I shouldn't have to say that but I will. I can think of several creatures that use some form of cocoons and none of them, I hazard, are ones we want to encounter just yet." The tree canopy looming above them was a vibrant shade of green. A far deeper green than Jim thought he had seen in other woodlots around Olympia. As they moved into the rapidly thickening brush it seemed to him that the trees leaves emanated a vibrancy that he associated more with springtime and less with early summer. The rain had let up and whatever Singh had done to disperse it into the fine mist earlier had begun to fade. Jim felt his foot slip under a raised knot of roots that extended upward in a loop over the earth. His foot caught and was held immobile. After a sideways kick failed to dislodge his foot from it, he called to the others to wait up and bent over to free it. "I think it might have become thicker," he said, stumbling away as he freed his foot from the raised root. Singh agreed and a moment later had to stop as well to free his own foot from a similar tangle of roots. They had wrapped a little more tightly around him than they had with Jim. He grunted slightly and with a heave was able to separate them enough to free his entangled foot. Singh slowly resumed following the tangled path going deeper into the woodlot. He was just raising his foot to avoid another tangle of briars when he froze into immobility. Mitch abruptly stopped as well and started rapidly scanning the silent woods around them. "There! Do feel it Jim?" he said urgently, "It's just like I told you it was before!" Jim drew closer to him, coming up just behind his left shoulder. He could feel it. It almost felt like that moment when you hold your breath, just before you release it and draw in the next one. Although Jim couldn't explain why he should feel that way he felt it. He was holding his breath. He was holding it because something was watching him. Something dangerous. "Can you sense it?" he asked Singh quietly. In the forest silence even his hushed query sounded louder than Jim would have liked to him. He looked at the heavy mass of vegetation around them. The thick intergrown bushes that weaved together to form a living barrier barring further passage. Brambles from the blackberries that grew wild here; their thorns now grown longer and sharper curved toward them. And over it all a heaviness that lay over everything and made him feel as exposed as an ant crawling on a clean piece of paper. "No," Singh answered uneasily, "but I do feel something here. It's familiar, so familiar. I can almost recognize it, but I just can't place it," Jim scanned his eyes around this overgrown portion of the narrow woodlot. The area was dominated by a stately elm that had probably been growing since before the mill broke ground for company housing here. Singh was more sensitive to these things, but right here he could feel the weight of some unknown gaze resting heavily on them. "What is it?" Jim asked, his eyes frantically dashing, searching for something, anything that would assist him in making sense of what he was feeling... "Quiet!" Singh hissed. "Don't move. Don't even talk. There's something very close to us. It's very close and it knows we're here." The glow around the corner of his eyes flared brighter as he slowly looked around the thicket surrounding the three men. Jim saw his slow turning of his head cease as it rested on the massive elm. His eyes flashed a little brighter and went abruptly dark. His muscles in his neck and back tensed. The tendons in the back of his neck standing out with the sudden apprehension that enveloped him. He took a half step backward and then he suddenly spun on his heel in the underbrush and started sprinted back toward the house. "Run!" Singh shouted at them as he passed them. "Run and don't stop running! We've got to get away from here!" Jim dove after him, closely followed by Mitch. "What is it?" Mitch sputtered loudly as they ran. "No time now!" Singh shouted. "Just run. Get out of the wood!" Singh was in the middle of saying something else when he suddenly tumbled headfirst into the brush. Mitch and Jim paused to lift him up from where his legs had become tangled in a thick net of roots. Singh kicked at the roots furiously, but that only lashed them around him tighter. Jim and Mitch were furiously tugging at the gnarled wood and just when it seemed that they were starting to loosen, Jim felt the cold earthen touch of submerged roots rising at his own feet and winding around his ankles. Jim panicked. He let go of Singh and felt himself topple away from the shaman. Mitch had also released him to battle with a similar nest of vines that were wrapping themselves around him as tightly as a boa squeezing its prey. Jim screamed in rage and fear. His hands battered at the implacable wood as it began to wind relentlessly around him. Then a flash, bright and hot, searing the ropy wood entangling him. Another flash and he felt them sag and loosen. "Go!" a sharp trilling voice shouted. "I can't hold them off if you don't go now!" Jim looked down the roots that were binding him in place. They were scorched and smoldering. Another flash to his left and the stench of wet burning wood rose in his nostrils. He saw Pantra diving toward Singh with both her hands blazing. He shook off the remaining coils and stumbled away a few steps. Another coil of vines began to whip toward him. Pantra veered sharply away ducking under a tree branch the size of Jim's thumb that had whipped toward her with frightening, impossible speed. The vines had almost reached him again when Pantra suddenly rose upward to avoid another vicious swing by another branch whipsawing toward her. Pantra rolled over and then drove straight down and flew along the length of the vine toward Jim. Light flared and fire bloomed as she skimmed along the writhing wood. She jinked left and rose in a tight circle around them. The vines were already bursting into hot smoky flames in her wake. The smell of wet burning wood was rising around them. The sooty smoke from the flames blended with the mist and formed a choking cloud around them. Jim saw a dim figure next to him stagger to his feet. In the mist around them echoed the sharp pops and the drawn out vrumm of Pantra searing the forest with short and long bursts of flame spilling from her palms. "Go!" she trilled again. Jim reached for the man next to him. It was Singh. His foot had been lashed tightly by another low lying vine. Singh kicked at it, tugged wildly and only getting free when he succeeded pulling his foot free of his shoe. Mitch lurched out of the smoke and grasped Singh under the shoulder. They lifted him up and almost had him to his feet when they felt Mitch let go and voice a scream that was abruptly cut off into a gut wrenching gurgling sound. A long ropy root had burst from the ground beneath their feet. It had speared upward and wrapped firmly around Mitch's neck. As Mitch desperately clawed at it, Jim could see it was already dragging him downward again while more roots were rising from the earth and reaching up for him. "Break it!" he heard Singh roar. "Break it and drag him clear," Jim reached for the ropy wood to do that when he heard the thrumming of Pantra streaking toward them. "Hold it clear of him!" she trilled. Jim tried to do that, but the root wriggled in his hands, bucking away from his grip. Pantra came in hard and pulled up short, hovering as she poured flame into the writhing wood. The wood blazed immediately from the concentrated heat she was unleashing on it. Seconds crawled as the wood seared and burning sap popped and finally it parted with a whip cracking sound. Mitch gasped a ragged breath as the coils about his neck loosened. Jim reached for him to drag him upright and stagger away again. He heard Singh screaming for them to duck. Jim obeyed without thinking and felt the breeze of some heavy mass rush over his head. The constant thrumming of Pantra's wings abruptly ceased and Jim heard a heavy wet sounding thwack. The shaman roared in rage as two of them half stumbled, half dragged each other further away. Jim tumbled to his feet and saw Singh's eyes glowing white hot with fury. A tree branch moved sharply and swing at them in an effort to knock them down. The brambles felt to him like they were clawing at his feet and he struggled to kick away the ropey wooden fingers grasping at him with every step. Singh plunged his fists into the earth, the light shining from his eyes blended into a single blazing star that hid his face. Jim felt the earth beneath his feet buck and shudder behind them. The wave of earth rolled and shattered against the wall of roots and scattered them in all directions. Singh raised his fists from the earth and fixed Jim's eyes with his own. "Run!" he croaked hoarsely. Jim was nearly out of breath when the three of them broke clear of the forest edge. The last thin root tendrils breaking free of the earth nearly tripped them and the three men backed against one of the fences along the property line. As he inhaled air in great breaths he felt his heart hammering in his chest. He watched as the roots that had nearly tripped them were slowly extending from the earth and waving and flowing in their direction. "Go!" Singh croaked. "Get to the car!" About fifty meters ahead of them was a house without a back fence. The three men dashed and stumbled and skittered through the overgrown lawn of the back yard as they streaked toward the refuge of the street ahead of them. When they stumbled onto the cracked macadam of the road they finally stopped, bent over in the exhaustion of the moment, their breath coming in giant heaving choking gasps. "What the hell was that!?" Mitch sputtered hoarsely amidst his heavy breathing, the scorched end of the vine that tried to strangle him still hanging loosely around his neck. "Not now!" Singh growled and resuming his dash for the car parked in front of Barnes's house. Jim and Mitch were only few seconds behind him as he reached the car, flung the door open and sprawled across the front seat while reaching for the radio handset. "Dispatch, this is Detective Singh. Bravo three-seven-four at Magnolia Circle. Three on the scene, Firefly down. I say again Firefly down," he said breathlessly. There was a moment of silence before dispatch answered. Even from where Jim was leaning on the wet hood of the sedan he could hear the disbelief and confusion in the dispatcher's voice as he asked Singh to repeat what it was he had said. "Do you copy dispatch?" Singh demanded into the mike. "Copy, Bravo three-seven-four, Magnolia Circle. Firefly down, Units are inbound," Jim heard the tinny voice of dispatch respond, almost lost in the wailing of car alarms that reverberated around them. Mitch leaned on the open door. "What is a Bravo three-seven-four and what was that mess back there," he croaked massaging his abused throat. "Not now," Singh insisted. "We need to evacuate this neighborhood immediately. Both sides of this strip of woods. We can't leave anyone in range of it." "What about Pantra? We can't leave her back there," Mitch heaved in deep breaths as he spoke. "We can't do anything for Pantra now. I don't know how hard she was hit, but we can't go back for her now," Singh spat. Jim could hear the faint warbling of a siren approaching. "I'll explain everything once we get these people away, but this has to happen right now," Singh said even more urgently. The confused and disoriented residents of the neighborhood were already starting to stumble out of their doors when Jim and Mitch moved to intercept them. The wailing of sirens blended into the howling of the car alarms announced that the first patrol units had arrived a few minutes later. Singh greeted them on the road and directed them to join Jim and Mitch in evacuating the neighborhood before they had spoken with their on their third resident. Singh had thought quickly in the first few seconds and told them to tell the curious, apprehensive people that there was a dangerous gas leak in this neighborhood caused by the earth tremor and to that they needed to leave immediately. They could hear the sounds of more sirens drifting through the woods from the other streets bordering the strip of woodland. Most people didn't question them and were only too eager to leave without any hesitation when they heard about the potential danger. By the time the last of the civilians had been hustled away, officers in black and white's had already blockaded the roads leading into the neighborhood and a pair of trucks from Stafford E&G had arrived and set up a convincing effort over one of the manhole's in the center of the street toward the entrance to Magnolia Circle. Singh motioned them over when they had hustled the occupants of the last house out of the area. He had slipped on a pair of the rubber over boots that were in the sedan's trunk to make up for the shoe that they had left behind in their flight from the forest. "Now we wait," he said lighting a cigarette. The two detectives looked at him, waiting for him to continue. He slowly exhaled and took another drag. "When are we going back in after Pantra?" Jim asked looking back the way they had come. "We're lucky we got out of there," he said, still exhausted from their headlong retreat and his earlier pair of bouts with the ward around Barnes's house. "But we can't go back for Pantra just yet. It's too dangerous for us." "What about her?" Mitch asked. "That was a pretty hard hit she took." "Pixie's are stronger than you think. Considering what's back there she may be safer than we would be at the moment," Singh said. "What was it?" Jim asked. "I didn't see anything, but the forest going crazy. What the hell is going on back there!?" Mitch nodded in agreement and echoed the demand for an explanation. Singh took another deep drag from his cigarette and flicked the ash onto the street. "We walked into a Grove," he said quietly and Jim could see now that the department shaman's hand was trembling slightly. "What the hell is a Grove?" Mitch asked, still rattled from the experience. Singh gestured in the direction of the wood where they had started running. "That is.", he said, "Or it will be if we don't arrest its development as soon as possible. Somewhere near where we started running is a dryad. She's alone in those woods and feral beyond anything you can comprehend. Right now she is dealing with it the only way she can. She's establishing a new Grove and unless she can be drawn down, this whole area has become as dangerous as an unmarked minefield to anyone who goes near her tree." "What's a dryad?" Mitch asked, "All I saw were the trees going crazy." "A wood nymph; a powerful one too," Singh answered him, "That was her controlling everything that went after us back there. Once a dryad starts to establish a Grove, she automatically becomes the prime dryad; one of the first things they can do is influence all of the plant life in the immediate range of their tree." Singh took another drag on his cigarette. "When we were heading back there I thought I sensed something tied to the aether nearby. I wasn't entirely sure, but it was there, just tickling me at the edge of my perception. But when we started following her trail back, just as Pantra started to warn me, I sensed her moving in on us right as we got next to her tree. We must have woken her up the first time we passed through and when we headed back she went after us as soon as we were in range." "I know I'm just getting used to this idea that things like this are a bigger part of the world than I'm used to," Mitch said creakily, "But I've read about wood nymphs in mythology and what I read said that a wood nymph isn't dangerous to anything but your libido as long as you don't mess with their tree." Singh took another drag from his cigarette and crushed it out. "They aren't," He said. "But dryads are a highly socially intertwined Fae race and this one is alone. That makes her dangerous. Until she's in contact with another wood nymph she'll kill anyone who comes near her." "If any other male has gone into those woods before we did, she will go after him as she did us and she wouldn't stop until she gets what she's after. Based on the evidence that's available she is probably what happened to both your missing persons." "So you're thinking that this dryad got both of our missing guys and she killed them to get what she wants." "No, Hank Phillips is probably still alive, he only vanished last night. Cecil Barnes...he might already be gone," Singh said. And what's she after then? What does she want?" Jim asked. "She wants another nymph! I said they're highly social creatures! They have to have their own kind around!" Singh said. "If she had caught any of us, she would have lashed us down in a cocoon of vines and roots like we saw there and she would have kept us there and used us in the aether until she conceived another nymph off of one of us." "And before you think you would enjoy it, think again. Having sex with an ordinary wood nymph is more exhausting than you can possibly believe; sex with a feral nymph would be like mating with a tornado. She's an elemental force right now and all she can do is destroy! That dryad in those woods will kill any man she encounters through the sheer force of her desire until she manages to succeed in spawning another nymph." "Maybe we should send a squad of female officers in there to try to locate and retrieve Pantra then," Mitch suggested. "That would be a very bad idea," Singh said sharply. "A feral nymph like that would kill any woman near her tree on sight. She just wanted to capture us. If any of us had been female, she would have moved to kill that one first. She would instinctively view any human woman as a competitor and a threat to her establishing her Grove. The best we can do now is keep this area cordoned off until the Hamadryad gets here. When she arrives she can search for Pantra after she deals with this feral nymph." "And what's a Hamadryad?" Jim asked. "The nearest Grove reservation from here is about eighty kilometers away in Centennial State Park," Singh said. "When I reported Bravo three- seven-four to dispatch, one of the first things they did was to contact the Grove there. The Hamadryad is their representative. She's a dryad who can leave her tree behind when there is need for her to do so. She's already enroute and she already knows about Pantra." "When she gets here, we'll send her in and keep the area sealed off as long as it takes. It'll take a little while once she does get here, but with another dryad in range, this one will eventually draw down without endangering anyone else and then..." Singh's voice trailed off for a moment. "Then we will be able to do what we can to find Pantra and your missing men once she is no longer a threat." "What I want to know is how she got there in the first place," Jim said looking past the flashing lights toward the trees looming over the rooftops. Mitch nodded and joined Jim in looking in that direction. "And that's just one of the things we have to find out now," Singh said, lighting another cigarette with his shaking hands. =================================================