Thorn Fall by Lindsay Buroker

expected over the question. For him to have survived so much and to have been frozen for two thousand odd years only to die within his first couple of weeks in this new world… That was even less poetic than the idea of my whip getting me killed.
    Alek shook his head. I fished the baggie containing the other thorn from my pack, then withdrew my tweezers and approached him.
    He pointed at the tip and said, “Careful,” in English.
    I dropped my tweezers and gawked at him.
    Frowning, Alek looked at Simon.
    “Nah, you got it right,” Simon told him. “She’s just a klutz.”
    “Don’t tell him things like that.” I scowled, realizing Alek and Simon must have already had a discussion about the thorn, with the word careful coming up a number of times.
    “He’s observant; he would have figured it out.”
    “Ha ha.” I retrieved the tweezers, plucked the thorn from his grip, and deposited it into the baggie with the first one. “Looks like we’re going to need the use of Autumn’s lab, after all.”
    “I already texted her about it.” Simon waved his phone.
    “I didn’t know you had her number.”
    “Funny, she said the same thing.” He held the phone up so I could read the display.
    Can we use ur lab tonight? Got pokey thing with mystery poison on it.
    Who the hell is this?
    Simon. We had moment together in Preskitt. Smooches.
    Did Delia give you my number? Tell her she’s so dead.
    Is that a yes?
    Where are you? I don’t want your scruffy fingers on my eq. I’ll come there.
    Manziti Campground. Sedona.
    Be there after work.
    “Manziti?” How was that even close to Manzanita? Now Autumn would be driving around Sedona, looking for campgrounds that didn’t exist. “Do me a favor, Simon, and don’t teach Alek how to write.”
    “Actually that was what the voice recognition came up with. We were already scrambling up mountainsides when I texted her.”
    “Don’t teach him how to speak then, either.”
    “Sorry, bro,” Simon told Alek, “careful is all you’re getting.”
    I rubbed my face. “Let’s get back to the van, all right? I think we’re going to have to come up with a strategy to fight this thing before we actually face it. So long as it obliges and doesn’t jump us on the way back.”
    Alek set the pace at a jog and nobody objected. We hadn’t gone shoe shopping for him yet, so he still had his Spartan sandals. They didn’t slow him down at all. With Simon running after him, his own dirty white socks and faux Birkenstocks throwing up dust as he ran, they made unlikely line leaders.
    Someone’s phone bleeped. I checked mine, and I had a text on there, though it was from an hour ago, Autumn’s promise of, You’re so dead .
    Simon slowed down, staring down at his own phone. “My laptop sent me a message. Activity on the police scanner I left set up.”
    “Nothing to do with miscreants in the Manzanita Campground, I hope,” I said, emphasizing the word in case he ever needed to spell it, or pronounce it, again.
    “No… They found two more people, a couple of guys who rented an ATV. Unconscious on the Munds Wagon Trail.”
    “Oh.” My humor evaporated.
    “One had a knife out, looked like he’d been in a fight. Some bruises. Nothing to explain why they’re unconscious though. They’ve been taken to the hospital.”
    “How much you want to bet they find some puncture wounds on them later?” I asked.
    “I wouldn’t take that bet,” Temi murmured.
    “Should we go out there?” Simon asked.
    He, Temi, and Alek looked at me. Oh, was I in charge again? Wonderful. “I don’t think we can help anyone at this point by going out there. Unless we cut up Temi’s sword into arrows, I don’t see how we can fight something that can fly circles around us. And I lost my bow in that cave-in anyway.”
    “I have a prototype weapon that can be thrown.” Simon smiled.
    “Which may or may not do anything to harm the jibtab .” Temi also sounded more in favor of coming up with a solid