Chapter 5

Brigid knelt in the middle of a redwood grove upriver from Katya's home. It was an hour before dawn, and something about the forest had been calling her since they arrived.

She looked up at the brilliant night sky teeming with stars, framed by the tops of the coastal giants. The forest around her was silent, the night birds, small scavengers, and even the insects aware that a predator walked among them.

Brigid circled the grove, fascinated by the dense shoots of redwood that sprang from the base of the trees to form thickets taller than a human.

Growing up in Ireland, Brigid had reveled in tales of the sidhe and the fae folk her aunt loved to share. Sinéad would love these strangely human thickets and probably tell Brigid a story about an old god who became a tree and sent out children from his roots.

No wonder the Native people had tales of giant men roaming the woods. Stories of giants were fitting for a place like this.

But though Brigid came from a land with more than a little love for magic, she was always the practical one. Even after becoming a creature humans would consider supernatural, she gave little credence to myths and legends like that.

Odd for someone who could manipulate fire with her mind.

Still, walking through the forest at night, Brigid understood it. She reached in her pocket and felt for her ever-present lighter. It was in a gold case and engraved with her initials, a ridiculously extravagant gift from her mad husband. When the air was dry, Brigid could use natural static in the air to create flames. Here, however, the air was laden with the ocean mist.

She lit a flame and grabbed it with her amnis. Holding it in her palm, she lifted it as she walked through the forest. The shadows took on a life of their own, racing around her in the still-silent wood.

She smelled a thread of musk in the air, a pungent scent marker from what she guessed was a bear. She detected deer and rabbit and a feline presence that was probably a mountain lion.

More bears.

She turned when she thought one of the thicket men moved. No, just another shadow playing tricks on her.

You'd know, she reassured herself. With her senses and her training, no one would be able to sneak up on her, even in a wild place like this forest. She'd smell them before they even got close.

Like she smelled Natalie and Baojia approaching in that moment.

Brigid turned and walked back to the redwood grove to meet them.

"This place is amazing right?" Natalie was all smiles. "I used to be afraid of the forest at night, but now with my vision the way it is…" She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's my happy place. Except for the poison oak. That shit is annoying even for vampires."

Brigid frowned. "Can we get poison oak rashes? Most poisons don't affect us."

"We don't get rashes that last," Baojia said. "But it does linger in our skin for a time while the amnis works it out." He grimaced. "It's over quickly, but while it's clearing our system, it's not a pleasant feeling."

"Ever been bitten by fire ants?" Natalie asked. "It's a little like that."

Brigid didn't know what fire ants were, but she felt like the name told her all she needed to know. "Great," she said. "Good to know." She'd been bitten by a rattlesnake once and thought that had been unpleasant. Fire ants sounded a thousand times worse.

Baojia put his arm around Natalie's shoulders. "Since it's so late, I'm going to stay at Katya's with you guys; I already called the kids' nannies. You three are taking off at sunset?"

"I want to make sure we can get out to Mattole Creek tomorrow night and find camping well before sunrise," Brigid said. "Natalie said she's fine burrowing?" Brigid still wasn't too sure about that one. She preferred walls, alarms, and an ancient husband who could wake during the day. "Are you sure you're going to be comfortable enough, Nat?"

"Oh, it's fine!"

Brigid was still skeptical. She looked at Baojia.

"I know where you're coming from," he said. "But I have come to accept that there's really no safer place for her than underground if she's going to be away from vampire security. I'd rather have her bury herself than risk being discovered by a human."

Brigid nodded. "Fair enough. We also have alarms."

"I just got word from Summer's father. He's driving through the day and says he'll close by tomorrow night. Was wondering if you wanted to wait for him or go on yourself."

"I wanted to take a look at the trail as soon as possible," Brigid said. "But if they want to meet us in Mattole tomorrow night, I'd be happy to see them. I understand Summer's father is an excellent outdoorsman."

"He lives with his family in a very rural part of Appalachia," Natalie said, "so while this landscape might be different for him, I wouldn't worry about him keeping up. He's used to our kind."

Brigid nodded and looked around the dark grove. "I understand why the humans fear it, but I love it here. The fog feels very familiar."

Baojia looked up at the forest giants. "Fear is not an illogical reaction to these mountains, but neither is love."

Brigid went to sleep that morning with the sound of the search-and-rescue dispatcher playing on her vampire-safe tablet in the background. When she woke—Carwyn a warm mountain at her side—she realized their mistake.

"We need to go to Shelter Cove, not Mattole."

Carwyn lifted his head. "That doesn't retrace their steps."

"No, but it gets us closer to where they were taken." She rolled toward him and kissed his mouth quickly. "Hello."

He smiled. "Good evening to you too."

She sat up and opened the map Baojia had given her of the search area, the trail, and the marked campgrounds. "So we know from the ranger reports that Summer and Daniel left from Mattole and headed south, intending catch their shuttle at the end of the trail. The last time anyone spotted them" —her finger found the mark— "was just north of Shipman Creek, which means they were closer to Shelter Cove than Mattole. If we take that route and head north like Search and Rescue did—"

"Then we'll find where they were taken faster." He kissed the top of her head. "Good thinking."

"So we head to Shelter Cove tonight." She nodded. "I'll tell Natalie. She can communicate that to Summer's father so he meets us in the right place."

Carwyn stretched his arms up and out. "Not sure I like the idea of strange humans knowing where we're located during the day even if they are family."

"We can always burrow with Natalie if something seems off." Ugh. Burrowing.

"Oh, you'd love that wouldn't you?" He grinned. "Getting in touch with your earthly roots, darling girl?"

"Hardly."

Brigid's sire was an earth vampire. By all logic, she should feel comforted by the ground, rooted to it in an elemental sense.

She didn't. Other than the pressure of the ground against her skin—which was soothing when her fire was riled—the earth didn't bring her the same comfort the sea did. What could she say? She liked knowing she could be easily dowsed if her amnis got out of control.

"So Shelter Cove tonight," Carwyn said. "And hopefully we can head up the trail a bit before dawn."

"Or we can wait for the humans."

"Waiting for the humans may sound polite, but it's not my job to babysit them. Right now our focus needs to be finding Summer and Daniel. They've been gone thirteen days. I don't want to even think what they might be going through."

If they're alive.

Neither one of them said it, but Brigid stroked Carwyn's rough jaw and knew her mate was thinking exactly the way she was.

If they were alive. If they'd survived. If they had been taken for a reason and not a killer's insatiable thirst.

"We'll find them," she said gently. "You'll find them, old man. No matter what. I have faith."

"I know I'll find them." Carwyn frowned. "But I need for them to be alive."

"I hope…" Brigid pressed her forehead to his. "I hope, Carwyn."

"Let's get out of here," he said. "I want to be on the road."

She felt the dusk outside. "The sun just barely set. Help me pack and we'll be driving away by full dark."

Baojia waved at them in the rearview mirror as Natalie, Carwyn, and Brigid made their way out of Katya's compound that night. They turned back toward the river road and up the highway, the forest growing denser and denser the farther north and inland they headed.

The landscape transitioned from scrub brush and grasses on the coast to bushes, then cypress and hardwoods as they wound through the hills, then conifers and redwoods as the elevation rose and the forest grew dense.

With the fog shrouding the landscape at night, the silence was even deeper, as if the darkness and the mist had absorbed everything but the van's engine.

Natalie sat in front with Carwyn, giving him directions and explaining more about the history of the land they were driving through—the Native people who continued to make their home there, the Pomo and the Eel River peoples who populated the land for centuries and the Russian farmers who'd come to settle the Northern California coast to support their colonies in Alaska. There were fur traders who'd almost wiped out the adorable sea otter and the Californios who later pushed the Russians out to become the dominant power in the north until California was absorbed into the United States.

They drove through old logging towns and passed roadside Bigfoot "museums" where chainsaw sculptures made Brigid do a double take in the fog.

By the time they reached the turnoff for Shelter Cove, Brigid felt like she was in another world. The van's lights were the only illumination as the road grew narrower. Redwoods butted up to the pavement, and oaks and sycamore trees created low tunnels where fog gathered only to race past them in the headlights as they followed the twisting path back toward the coast.

"How far is it from here?" Sitting in the back, Brigid was glad that car sickness had never been a problem for her.

So far.

"Only fourteen or fifteen miles," Natalie said. "But at night it'll take about an hour or so. You have to be really careful about animals, and the road has a lot of switchbacks."

"There will be no street racing here," Carwyn muttered. "And I haven't seen a single other vehicle in over fifteen minutes. I'm guessing people don't go out at night here?"

Natalie pursed her lips. "Around here there are a lot of things that go bump in the night," she said. "I'm guessing that most humans don't want to find out what they are."

"So the plan" —Brigid tried to keep her eyes on the center of the road in front of the van— "is that we're going to find where the two kids were taken, follow them as far as we can, then if we don't have any leads, we'll head into town and ask around." Brigid tapped Natalie on the shoulder. "You said you had a sheriff's deputy you could call?"

"It's been a few years, but I imagine he'll still talk to me. I didn't piss anyone off with the story I wrote about the old-time pot growers, so I'm still welcome." Natalie shrugged. "Which is more than I can say about a lot of the stories I did. Now, the federal government might not like me that much, but I don't really care."

"Did the drug agencies try to get you to spy for them?" Brigid asked. That's a move she would have attempted if she'd been in law enforcement's place.

"Oh yeah. They tried all the threats. Obstruction of justice, hindering a federal investigation." Her face lit up. "One of them even tried to imply that he knew a federal prosecutor who would indict me on RICO charges! Because he said I was an accomplice to the drug cartels even though the cartels that were operating up here probably like me less than the feds do." She shook her head. "It was a bit crazy at times. I have to say, I understand why some law enforcement really hate those guys—and it's almost all guys. At least the big operations were mostly dudes. More women in legal operations."

"Why is that?" Carwyn asked. "The hate, I mean. They were talking about marijuana growers, right? It was legalized only a few years after all this happened."

"It wasn't that the drugs were that bad, though some of the really hardcore agents were true believers in all the marijuana scare-tactic stuff, you know?" Natalie angled herself toward Brigid. "It wasn't even the small-time hippie ‘back to the land' types. It was the big operations they hated so much. And it was also their pride. They could never really get control of the area. For all their guns and helicopters and strike forces, the mountains and the growers were never under their control."

"Humans hate that." Brigid looked at the forest around them, and she knew that no matter how closely her mate might be tied to the earth, in this place, he was still an intruder. They all were. As much as she loved the beautiful trees, she didn't feel one with nature in these hills.

Here, she was the invasive species.