Page 4 of Alan

“What is happening here?” I tested a couple of websites and was able to access them. I shouldn’t have been able to do that, out in the middle of the woods. The phone’s clock told me I’d been hiking for three hours, so I had to be pretty far from the road and civilization in general.

The only reason I could see for being able to connect was the presence of a Wi-Fi network somewhere close by. And a cell tower.

The strangeness of this alone was enough to keep me moving. I continued north, as the compass told me to do, holding the phone out in front of me and checking from time to time if the signal weakened. Meanwhile, all sorts of questions fought for attention in my head.

Where was I, really?

I never got the time to figure that out.

Nobody could ever accuse me of being the outdoorsy type. I had to buy a decent set of hiking boots just for the sake of searching for Keira. My skin was so pale, I could pass for a ghost. The most light I ever got was the light from my computer screen.

But even I knew what it meant when a twig snapped in an otherwise quiet place.

My head snapped around in the direction the sound came from. Total reflex, done without thinking first. If I had thought first, I might have run. Not that it would have made much difference.

Four women entered the little clearing I had just walked into. The leader was tall, beautiful, with caramel skin and black hair. Her light green eyes competed for attention with her hair and nobody needed to be that gorgeous.

She carried herself with grace—they all did, like trained dancers. Only they looked like no dancers I had ever seen. There was anger all about them. Anger and strength. Fierceness.

They reminded me of Kiera, in a way.

All four wore black dresses, full-length, simple, tight at the top and a little more flowy in the skirt. No jewelry, no makeup, but covering their bare shoulders and chests were intricate tattoos I couldn’t make sense of from a distance.

The leader’s full lips parted to show white teeth bared in a snarl. “Who are you?”

I gulped as the four of them slowly surrounded me, all of the women sort of floating through the leaves covering the ground. But no, that was impossible. I had to be imagining things.

What I didn’t imagine was the tension in the air. I wouldn’t have been surprised if my purple hair stood on end. Just the way they looked at me, like I was trespassing on their land. It couldn’t be theirs, could it? How could it belong to anybody?

“I—I’m just a hiker,” I whispered, wishing I could back away and keep backing away until I reached the road again. But they wouldn’t let me do it—they were closing in on me all the time.

“Just a hiker? Hikers do not simply appear here, child.”

Child? The girl looked like she was my age. Where did she get off?

Another, this one with almost white-blonde curls and skin as pale as mine, held up a hand. “We have seen them before, remember. People have taken up this hiking business as a sport, it seems.”

“Oh, yes.” The leader nodded. “I tend to lose track of what falls in and out of popularity.”

Where the hell were these women living? Under a rock? They sounded like they lived outside the world.

“This does not explain what she is doing here,” said the redhead whose vine tattoos covered her throat. For somebody so beautiful, she looked pretty ugly when she glared at me. “I do not believe she is only hiking.”

“I agree,” spoke the fourth, a freckled little thing with big, luminous eyes I had a hard time looking away from.

“Why not?” I asked, prying my attention from those eyes and looking around. “What’s wrong with being here? What did I do wrong?”

“It is a bit too much of a coincidence.” The leader nodded, and just like that the other three lunged for me.

They didn’t know how fast I was. One of the skills I had picked up over the years, spending so much time in foster and group homes with bullies twice my size. I had learned to be quick, or else be somebody’s punching bag.

“There is no point in running!” one of them called out. Right. Like I was going to listen to her. Like she would tell me if there was a point in running away from them.

I made it to a spot where one tree had started to fall but was caught by a second tree. They formed a triangle with the ground. I was just about to run under and past it when, just like that, out of nowhere, the blonde appeared in front of me.

One second there was nothing but trees and more trees. The next, a solid-bodied human being who stood there with her hands on her hips.

I stopped short to keep from slamming into her—so short, I scrambled backward and landed on my butt. I didn’t feel the pain from hitting the ground since a person had literally appeared in front of my eyes when she hadn’t been there not a second before that.

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