I came to with a mouth full of leaf mulch and blood. My left hand stung. I tried to flex it, found the knuckles caked in wet and the wrist sending up flares of pain. For a minute, all I could do was listen to the ringing in my head and count the stars behind my eyelids. When I could sit up, I did. My first thought was about the woman. My second was about the bike. My third, as the pain registered all the way down my arm, was how much trouble I’d be in if Vin had to come scrape me off the forest floor.
I spat blood and looked around. The road was silent, empty, not even a car in sight. The Harley was maybe twenty feet off, engine still ticking, heat, a thin wisp of vapor rising from where the exhaust met the wet earth. I got to my knees, then my feet, every joint complaining. My jacket was ripped open at the elbow, the shirt underneath already stained. My jeans were less lucky, shredded at the thigh, denim and flesh both. Still, nothing broken, nothing leaking that shouldn’t be.
I scanned the road. The woman was gone. Not hiding, not running, just absent, as if she’d never existed at all. I staggered over to the Harley, righted it, and checked for damage. Bars bent, paint gouged, a side mirror torn clean off. But the lights still worked, and the kill switch hadn’t popped. I thumbed the starter and prayed, and after a wet grind, the engine caught, popping smoke into the tree line.
That’s when I heard her.
A voice, thin and uncertain, somewhere in the darkness. I limped toward the sound, pushing past ferns and saplings until I saw the white shape moving just beyond the ditch. She was barefoot now, the hem of her dress shredded and black with mud. She watched me approach, eyes wide and unblinking, and for a moment I wondered if the crash had left me hallucinating.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. My voice sounded like someone else’s.
She shook her head. Her lips moved, but no sound came. Up close, she was maybe twenty, with a fine-boned face and a streak of dirt across her cheek. Her hands were clenched at her sides, and she flinched when I got too close.
I kept my distance, palms up. “Look, I’m not gonna hurt you. You came out of nowhere. Almost got both of us killed.”
She stared at the Harley, then at me, then at the woods behind her. Her gaze flicked between the three, as if she were triangulating which was the biggest threat. Finally, she found her voice. It was soft, but steady. “What... what are you?”
For some reason, that made me laugh. “Long story,” I said. “But I’ll give you the short version. I’m not the one who time-traveled out of a Renaissance fair.”
She frowned. The expression was so out of place on her, so human and small, that I almost missed the way her feet edged backward, ready to run. “Where am I?”
“County Road 57. About four miles from nothing, and a long way from anywhere good.” I squinted at her. “You running from someone?”
She hesitated, then nodded, one sharp jerk of the chin.
I scanned the road again. Still empty, but the woods had that eerie silence I didn’t like. “Look, I got questions, but right now we need to get out of the open. There are assholes out here, and they like to hunt after dark.” I offered my hand, the uninjured one.
She didn’t take it, but she followed when I led her back to the bike. I tore the last of my shirt sleeve off and wrapped it around my bleeding arm, then swung a leg over the Harley and fired her up again. “Hop on,” I said. “Unless you wanna risk the wolves.”
That got her attention. She looked at the woods, then at me, then finally climbed on, her grip tentative and light as a whisper around my waist.
I let the engine roar, and we peeled out, the headlight cutting a ribbon through the trees. As we rode, I kept checking the mirrors, expecting to see a pack of Ghouls or worse, but all I saw was the blur of moon and tree line, all I heard was her breath, quick and hot against my back.
By the time we hit the county road proper, I had more questions than blood left in my body.
I kept my mouth shut and just rode, because that was the only thing I knew how to do.
***
She clung to the Harley all the way up the slope, knees clamped so hard I felt it through the denim. I cut the engine two hundred yards past the crash site and swung off, my arm already numb from the fall. The headlight set the woods to black and white, shadows reaching for our boots. She didn’t move until I turned to look at her.
Then she slid off, skirts tangled in the foot pegs, and stumbled back onto the gravel. Her eyes were huge, silvery in the high beam, and locked not on me but on the bike, like she thought it might wake up again and swallow her whole. For a heartbeat, we just stood there, panting, watching each other. She looked more animal than woman: thin, ragged, wild. Her dress was torn to the knee, and both shins were streaked with mud. I had no idea what the hell I was seeing.
I tried to break the tension with a joke. “Most folks are happy to see a rescue vehicle,” I said.
That’s when she bolted.
It was instant—no warning, just a feral twist and gone. She disappeared into the woods, white fabric a flash in the dark, then nothing.
The woods closed up behind her. I swore, loudly, and gave chase.
I’d tracked people before. Nothing fancy, but you pick up tricks, always trust your ears, don’t rely on sight, and if you lose the trail, shut up and let the forest talk to you. Her path was easy as she broke every stick and bush in reach, panic too loud to let her hide. Still, she was fast. I crashed after her, boots slipping in the mulch, every step sending a jolt up my battered leg.
The brambles went at my arms, thorns catching on leather and skin. I ducked under a low-hanging branch and took a pinecone to the face. Kept running. The taste of blood was back, and I leaned into it, let the chase take over. Ahead, I heard her breathing. It was ragged, desperate, with a kind of urgency you only hear in prey.
She cut left at a big oak, nearly invisible in the dark. I caught the sound, adjusted, and nearly tripped on a root. She was good, but the woods were mine. I could smell her fear, the way her heart pounded, even the faint reek of sweat and crushed grass. I considered shifting, but that would have shifted her fear to outright terror.
Somewhere behind me, the Harley’s headlight winked out, leaving us both in real night.
