Between Worlds

Chapter 30

While he waited for the next act of tonight's drama to kick off, Finch went and inspected the bus door, concluded it was a total loss, and then went and sat with Shadow as he tried to make friends with the dog. It was still pretty freaked out, understandably, but Shadow said it'd at least drunk some water. They'd need to get it to a vet at some point soon. Those cuts looked nasty.

He plopped down next to Shadow on the bottom bunk, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in Shadow's neck. Shadow's laugh shook against him, and Finch felt his lips curve into a smile as some of the tension eased out of his shoulders. Fighting that thing himself would have been so much easier than all this shit, but there was no changing what had happened now.

They sat together, wound up in one another's arms, until Luther came back, shortly followed by a string of cop cars. Out here, local police were all they had for this kind of shit, but at least that meant they were used to dealing with the strange and nasty. When Finch lifted the blanket to show them the body, they didn't even flinch.

Finch sent Luther off with a small team to play tour guide to the corpse exhibition in the woods. He probably wouldn't manage to match their grim mood, but whatever. Finch needed to stick around and keep an eye on Ryan and Kimber. The last thing they needed was the cops digging too deep into that particular mess.

From the moment the first cop set foot on the bus, Ryan had his arm locked around Kimber like a vise. His eyes were sharp, tracking every movement in the cramped space. He barely said a word to the officers, but his body language and the things he left unsaid painted a whole story.

They were runaways, survivors of a foster system that had chewed them up and spat them out. Just a couple of young lovers against a cruel world. It was the obvious conclusion anyone would jump to, given their age, Ryan's claim that they were hitchhikers, the way he clung to Kimber, and that distrustful look he gave the cops.

Finch didn't know how much Ryan had told Kimber about the little roleplay they were performing together, but he had taught Kimber at least one English word. When an officer knelt down to talk to Kimber and put a hand on his shoulder, Kimber shouted "No!" so loud the poor bastard nearly fell on his ass.

The reason for that became clear when one of the cops started pushing to give them a ride to town and set them up in a hotel.

"Thanks, but if I try to get this one into a cop car, he'll kill me," Ryan said, giving Kimber's arm a pat. "These guys said we could crash here, and honestly, after that dude with the horns took down that weird monster thing, I feel pretty damn safe. Nothing's getting us here."

Finch almost lost it when Ryan called Adin 'that dude with the horns.' They were antlers, for fuck's sake, and Ryan knew it. The kid's performance was so damn convincing that Finch almost wondered if anything Ryan had told them was true, or if he'd been playing them this whole time too. But he didn't think so. This story worked because it was one they'd all seen a million times before. The shit Ryan had told Finch was way too out there to be made up.

Adin had to recount the story of the attack, and now, with a clean shirt on and a cup of tea in front of him, he did it calmly, the little alterations they'd made coming out just as smooth as the parts that were actually true.Nobody doubted him—why would they? At the end of the day, the cops cared way more about the pile of bodies and the thing responsible than any of the trivial bullshit Finch and the others were trying to cover up.

Finch's testimony wasn't needed since he hadn't actually been present for the attack and the others needed no help with their truths or their lies, so Finch headed outside to get some fresh air. They weren't allowed to clean up until everything had been thoroughly photographed and recorded, and the inside of the bus smelled pretty rank.