Dragon Fall
Page 5

She assured me that medical help would be sent immediately, as well as police, and asked if I wanted to remain on the line. I told her no and clicked off, although I remained clutching the phone as if it were a lifeline to sanity. I wiped my face (and nose, I’m ashamed to say) on my jacket sleeve, wishing like hell that I could restart the day.
Flashing lights in the distance got me moving again. Way across the pasture that was being used for the fair, I could see an ambulance and a couple of police cars, zooming across the long, flat valley floor. I made my way back toward the place where Terrin fell, intent on waving the ambulance over so they could cart him away.
He wasn’t there.
I spun around wildly, my heart in my throat, my eyes huge in an attempt to find where Terrin’s corpse had fallen. “He was here,” I said aloud, jogging down the line of cars before stopping and running in the other direction. “I know he was here. Right here. Oh my God, the murderer came back for him!”
That’s how the police found me—running up and down the line of cars, babbling to myself. I clutched at the nearest cop and dragged him over to the spot where the ground was still stained with Terrin’s blood. “There! He was right there! And now he’s gone!”
The policeman and his buddy examined the ground. The ambulance pulled up, lights flashing silently as the medics hurried over.
“Did you see anyone move the body?” one of the cops asked.
“No! It has to be the murderer. He probably de-poofed and hacked poor Terrin to bits and went off with Terrin chunks stuffed into a bag!”
Both cops and the two medics stared at me. “De-poofed?” one of the cops finally asked.
“He turned into black smoke after he struck down Terrin,” I said, wringing my hands. Why weren’t they searching the parking lot for signs of the murderer? “Surely there must be a blood trail you could follow!”
The second policeman took out a notebook. “Would you describe the deceased?”
“Before he was hacked to pieces, I assume?” I took a deep breath and tried to marshal my madly running brain. “He was about an inch taller than me, midthirties, slight build, brown hair and eyes, square chin, gold-rimmed glasses. His hair was starting to recede, but not really far back, just a bit. Um…” I tried to remember what he was wearing, but the vision that rose before my eyes was one of blood and an almost amputated arm. “He had on a pale blue checked shirt, blue sports coat, jeans, and black shoes.”
The cop was writing down the description. “Did he have any tattoos or scars? Was he wearing any jewelry that stood out?”
“No, none of those.” I suddenly remembered the ring that I’d been holding when Terrin was murdered. My hand went to my pants pocket, where I’d evidently absently stuffed it. At least that was safe—although now it was too late to give it back to him. “He looked like exactly what he was—a nice guy.”
“Something like that gentleman?” the first cop asked, nodding over my shoulder.
I turned to look and felt the world come to a grinding halt. At least my world did, for standing next to the nearest booth, deep in conversation with the blond man who’d hauled off the unconscious woman, was… Terrin.
I took a step toward him, wondering if the world had suddenly gone insane. He didn’t look the least bit like he was favoring his arm—the one that had almost been severed—let alone like he’d been attacked at all.
“That’s… that’s him,” I heard myself saying.
“Him? That man there is the victim?” the cop asked.
I took another step toward Terrin. “Yes, that’s him. Only… he’s not dead now. He was dead. He had no pulse, and his arm was almost off, but now he’s… not.”
Terrin looked over at that moment and saw me. He smiled and lifted his hand in greeting until he saw the cops and ambulance behind me. His smile faded as my legs suddenly recovered from the shock and marched me toward him.
“You’re alive,” I told him, well aware that the cops and ambulance dudes were right behind me.
“Yes, I am.” He looked slightly confused. “Should I not be?”
“You were killed. Just a few minutes ago. By that tall, thin man with the sword.” I poked him on the shoulder that had been severed. It felt solid as all get-out.
Terrin blinked at me for a moment, then shot a smile over my shoulder. “Good evening, Officers. Is there some problem?”
“This lady claims that you were assaulted earlier. Gravely assaulted.”
“He was!” I protested. “He was dead.”
“Clearly not,” the first cop said, giving me an odd look.
“I know what I saw.” I turned to the blond man to whom Terrin had been speaking. “You were there, too. You saw what happened. Tell them that the sword guy killed Terrin and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.”
Blondie pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head and said something in German. One of the cops asked him a question in the same language, and Blondie answered in Swedish. “I saw no one dead. One of my colleagues was feeling unwell, and I escorted her back to her trailer. That is all.”
“You’re lying!” I admit that I was close to shouting at this point, but I was righteously enraged. I pointed at both Blondie and Terrin. “They’re both lying. I saw what I saw.”
Cop number two consulted his notebook, while cop number one stopped the ambulance guys from leaving. “You said that you saw this gentleman here get struck down, his arm almost severed completely from his body, and his body lying in a pool of blood. You also state that his attacker disappeared into a cloud of black smoke.”
The emphasis was impossible to miss. Nonetheless, I ignored it. I marched over to the spot where Terrin had fallen and gestured to the stain on the grass. “Look. Right there. See that? It’s blood. His blood, from where he was killed.”
“I’m not dead, Aoife,” Terrin said gently. He peered over my shoulder at the ground. “That looks as if someone spilled some fruit punch.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” I told the cop, who was now muttering in an undertone to his partner. “I don’t know if this Terrin is a duplicate or something, but I didn’t hallucinate the killing. I saw him get killed. That blond guy there saw it, too, despite what he says. Obviously they’re trying to cover something up, but it’s not going to work, do you hear me? I know what I saw!”