AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Grant picks up the papers I'd dropped on the ground and holds them out to me. "Maybe this will help. I found these in what's left of the Stanford University library. Heard some of the creatures talking about how their leader was fascinated with quantum physics and thought maybe I'd find something useful in these papers. I didn't."
I take the documents. "How far is Stanford from here?"
"About three hundred miles."
"You walked that far?"
Grant chuckles. "No. I found an abandoned boat, and that got me most of the way. I walked the last ten miles and decided to make camp here. Still don't know where I'm going, just that I needed to get away from LA. It's truly apocalyptic down there."
"As is Fort Worth, Texas."
"London too," Willow says. She looks at me and bites her lip. "Can't we get back to Allison the way we got sent here? You know, like, poof."
She makes a hand gesture that seems like an attempt to emulate an explosion and makes a matching noise. That must not be what she meant since we were not thrown here by an explosion. But I don't understand how a detonation sound indicates "poofing."
"Unfortunately," I say, "I can't reproduce the 'poof' that brought us here."
Grant pokes at the coals in the fire with the toe of his boot, triggering tiny sparks that float into the air. "Sounds like you need a portal."
I freeze, my gaze glued to him. "Portal? I thought you didn't learn anything from those papers."
"No, I said I didn't find anything useful in them. But I learned a lot." He stands and kicks sand onto the fire, dousing most of the coals. "Knowing how to open a portal isn't the same thing as being able to do it, though. I've tried. Guess you need some kind of hoodoo inside you already for that to work."
"What makes you think Willow or I have that 'hoodoo'?"
"Look, man, I don't like to comment on other people's looks. I'm one hundred percent committed to accepting everyone the way they are, even those creatures." Grant folds his arms over his chest. "Come on, you can't deny you aren't an average guy. It's obvious from the way you look and the way you growl. You've got some Echo blood in you, right?"
Bloody hell. How did he figure that out? This man is cleverer than I'd assumed, and now he knows my secret.
"I'm not judging," Grant says. "You look human, mostly, but no mundane man I've ever seen has muscles like yours or that animalistic quality. You also seem to know an awful lot about the Echo and the creatures that come from there. Most of us have been dealing with the creatures for less than a week, but you seem awfully knowledgeable about them."
Why should I lie? If he wanted to kill me, he could've fired his only bullet at me, square between the eyes.
"Yes," I admit. "I do have Echo blood in me. I was a mundane man until the architect of the apocalypse turned me into a beast and threw me into the hell world he had created. I lived in the Echo for five years."
"Thanks for sharing."
He doesn't sound sarcastic. I think he is genuinely thanking me for telling him about myself. Grant behaves nothing like any copper I've ever met. A deputy sheriff deputy who behaves like a hippie? I can't fathom that. But nothing makes sense anymore, so I need to stop assuming I understand other people.
Grant claps his hands together. "Okay. Let's make you a portal so you can rescue the girl."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dax
I lever my body off the ground and fold my arms over my chest. "You say you know nothing about quantum physics, yet you're implying you can open a portal. Have you been toying with me?"
"No, I don't roll that way. I say what I mean and do what I say."
"Then how do you know—"
"Don'tknowanything. That word suggests certainty, and I've got none of that." Grant raises his hands in a placating gesture. "Relax. I'm not a spy for the creatures or for whoever created the apocalypse. But I have seen things."
"Such as?"
"When I was getting the hell outta Dodge—Los Angeles, I mean—I had to stop and hide in a trashed convenience store. A big bunch of those creatures had swarmed the street." Grant shoves his hands into his trouser pockets, his features pinched. "They were doing things I'd rather not describe in front of a minor."
Yes, I can imagine. The creatures I've met had no qualms about performing lewd acts out in the open.
