Page 2 of Guarded By the Bigfoot
“No.” I blinked. “But you’re sending me to the Veil. Last I checked, it was still a restricted area for ARC.”
“Well. Right now, it’s a priority,” he said firmly. “The outpost is fully stocked. Try not to get lost this time. And steer clear of the village. Agent Spencer is still walking around with that damn tail.”
I heard a swish as he sent the file to me.
“If you leave now, you’ll be there before dark.”
I opened my mouth to respond about unwanted appendages, but the look in his eyes stopped me cold. Whatever was happening near the Veil, it was big enough to make a vein pop on his forehead.
“I’ll leave right away, sir.”
By the time I’d grabbed my go-bag from my office and slogged to the parking lot, a storm had popped up. Rain swirled through the air, and the wind howled like a banshee with seasonal allergies.
I tossed my bag into the passenger seat of my old Jeep, which creaked its usual protest when I slid behind the wheel. The fat drops of rain splattered against the windshield like nature’s warning shots.
“Okay, girl.” I patted the dashboard. “Let’s see if we can keep ourselves out of trouble.”
The storm grew angrier as I made my way out of the city. Mystic Ridge wasn’t just a city, it was an entire region, stretching from the coastal towns to the misty peaks. Its bustling downtown core buzzed with towering skyscrapers, magical districts, and eclectic burrows where humans and creatures mingled. But outside the city limits? That’s where things got weird. And trust me, I know weird.
Lightning split the sky in unnatural colors. Purple, green, and something I’m pretty sure wasn’t on the standard color wheel. The rain hammered down so hard it sounded like angry elementals having a drum circle on my roof.
“This isn’t normal,” I muttered, squinting through sheets of rain that seemed to defy nature. “Even for Mystic Ridge, this is hitting an eleven on the weird-shit-o-meter.”
The mountain was where the Veil was thinnest, where the mysterious Guardian anchored the balance between realms. It was also where no sane person would want to be during a monsoon.
But here I was.
The higher I climbed, the worse it got. Lightning crashed closer now, leaving afterimages that looked like angry faces in the sky. The wind howled with voices that definitely weren’t in any weather forecast I’d ever heard.
“This is fine,” I said to myself, white-knuckling the steering wheel. “Everything’s fine. Just your average, run-of-the-mill, possibly apocalyptic storm. Nothing to see here.”
My weather app had given up entirely, now displaying: ¯\_(?)_/¯
Fantastic.
The road ahead twisted like a serpent, barely visible through the sheets of rain that seemed to be falling sideways, upways, and several other directions that shouldn’t exist. My wipers were having an existential crisis, squealing in protest against water that occasionally glowed.
“Come on,” I muttered, leaning forward like those extra two inches would help me see better. “Just a few more miles to the outpost. Then you can have your nervous breakdown in the safety of government-issued shelter.”
The Jeep groaned in protest as we rounded another curve, the engine straining against both gravity and what felt suspiciously like magic.
“Don’t you dare,” I warned my vehicle. “We’ve been through worse.”
And then it happened.
A bolt of lightning struck the road ahead. The crash of thunder that followed felt strange, like someone had remixed nature’s greatest hits with a demon’s playlist.
The Jeep’s electrical system went haywire. The radio cycled through stations at lightning speed, catching snippets of songs in languages I didn’t recognize, and my phone sparked and died with a sad little whimper.
“No, no, no!”
I fought with the steering wheel as the Jeep fishtailed wildly. “We do NOT have time for a dramatic crash scene!”
Time slowed.
Then the Jeep’s tires lost their battle.
The world tilted.
