by Chant, Zoe
In the town, banks of lights flickered on, glowing steadily. All these years later, and electricity still seemed like magic, at least when seen from above.
His heightened senses swept the area, and he sensed where she was. He had to fight the instinct to follow that link.
HOME, said the basilisk. Three times in one day—that was downright chatty!
Not home until she says so, Rigo thought back.
As usual, silence was his answer.
He veered away and dove down to fly along the shore, sweeping his gaze back and forth as he sought any more zombified victims.
He didn’t find any, but he did see what he suspected were pairs of Joey’s shifter rangers prowling the streets. Seeing that they were on the job, Rigo turned out over the sea, flying high over the waters beginning to reflect starlight as he fought to clear his mind.
An island flashed below, clusters of lights at either end, then faded behind him. When he began to tire, he banked for the flight back. Later on he turned in, wrestling through a long night with broken sleep.
He gave it up when he sensed impending dawn.
Tonight, he thought. He’d see her again. He just had to kill the endless hours between now and then.
He decided to take another flight, this time not to scan for zombies—Joey’s teams seemed to be on top of that—but to seek other mythic shifters. Specifically any red dragon slithering through the skies. He was aware that he was spoiling for a fight with Long Cang . . . but sadly, the renegade red dragon did not cooperate. He was nowhere to be found.
Rigo returned, and whiled away the day as best as he could as the clock crawled from hour to hour.
When it was time to go, Rigo drove back into town, but parked at the end of the street, where he could see the door to the bakery. He waited in the darkness as people began to appear. He recognized Bird with tall Mikhail the silver dragon, then a string of strangers, then a knot of people among whom he glimpsed Jen’s blonde head, accompanied by Nikos. So the entire posse was turning out in force. Oh yeah. This was apparently a regular thing.
Rigo watched them go inside. One or two stragglers appeared. Then nothing.
He was about to give up when a lone car pulled up, and a small, slight, straight-backed figure he’d know anywhere got out with Doris and Joey, and went into the bakery.
Godiva was here.
Rigo made himself count to fifty in English and Spanish, so he wouldn’t enter right on her heels and look as if he’d been tailing her, but he didn’t want to wait so long he might miss her reading. So he rushed the last few numbers, then left his car, his heart pounding.
At last, at last . . . He reminded himself of the disastrous meeting the morning before, and tried to squash down the hope blooming inside him.
Take a breath, he scolded himself as he let himself into the bakery. The front was empty, the display cases bare. Light shone beneath a door at the back. A man’s voice reached him.
“ . . . the girl-assassin cozied her luscious breasts against Stryker’s rock-hard abs. Then she pressed her face into his manly chest hair and moaned, “Oh, Weelhelm, Weelhelm, if you weel give mee just wan naight of pleezhoor, I can face the firing squad smiling for not keeling you . . .”
Rigo backed up a step, looking around the darkened shop in horror. Was he in for a night of that?
But Godiva was in there.
He forced himself to recover that step. To get his chance at last to see her, arrive at some understanding, he would face any torture.
From the sound of it, he was in for the third degree.
“Stryker crushed her mouth with brutal strength, and she moaned in surrender. He would give her the tongue-lashing of her life before unlimbering his fourteen-inch . . .”
This time it was his basilisk that gave a soundless blurp of disgust.
Rigo stiffened his knees, sending a thought at the usually-silent basilisk, My mate is in there. Think of it this way. This is no worse than cleaning up after a sick horse.
He pushed the door open. A circle of faces turned his way, then Joey smiled and gestured toward an empty seat next to him.
The reader, a paunchy man wearing a fedora, sent Rigo a sour look. Rigo crossed the room as quietly as he could, as the man harrumphed loudly and rattled his pages.
Rigo murmured, “Sorry for the interruption,” and took the seat Joey indicated.
The reader harrumphed again, then resumed reading.
Rigo forced his attention on the words, though he could feel Godiva’s presence on the other side of the room. He tried a smile her way, to be met with a nuclear-powered laser glare.
Well, he hadn’t expected this to be easy.
Chapter 5
GODIVA
The unctuous skunk had dared to show up here!
Jen and Nikos, sitting across from Godiva, had to be innocent of any conspiracy. Godiva knew that Nikos had had something or other to do somewhere else until that afternoon, and Jen had gone with him. Godiva sidled scowls at the other two of the Gang of Four, who sat at either side of her, their spouses on their other sides. All four were politely listening to Bill Champlain’s preposterous claptrap.
Which turncoat had blabbed about the writers’ group to The Enemy?
Godiva’s gaze traveled past Doris and stopped at Joey Hu. AHAH! Of course he was the traitor. Kindly, well-meaning Joey, who wanted everybody to get along. Ordinarily Godiva was all for people getting along, but that meant they had to be people first, not slimy, slithering serpents masquerading as men.
Joey sat there looking the very picture of innocence. All right, you, Godiva thought at him. Just you wait. Next book, you’re going to be the villain, and after your nefarious deeds you will croak by an especially spectacular and messy method.
Godiva sighed, mentally running through possible plot twists and motivations for murder most foul, but none of them were truly Joey. No one would buy a murder mystery in which the villain niced the victims to death. Okay, so Joey wouldn’t be a villain, but she would get him somehow, she promised herself.
And at least while thinking about it she’d been successful in missing most of Bill’s story . . . until Bill shattered her ruminations by raising his voice.
“ . . . it’s the POTUS, Wilhelm! He wants to talk to YOU!”
Stryker assessed the deployment of the Secret Service men with a second’s glance. He could probably take out half, more if he didn’t have to dodge bullets from the snipers on the roof.
“Tell him I run alone,” Stryker grated.
On second thought, if he didn’t deal with this international crisis about to turn into all-out war, who would? He was the only one who had tangled with all the major players and survived to tell the tale.
Besides, as a good American, he owed it to his country . . .
Godiva sneaked a peek at Rigo to see his reaction, catching a grimace of total disbelief. And when Stryker in the next sentence turned to the adoring ex-assassin with the watermelon boobs, Godiva chuckled evilly as Rigo’s jaw dropped slightly, the wide eyes of disbelief quickly smoothing into polite endurance.
Heh, heh, for the first time in her life Godiva relished every word of Bill’s ludicrous drivel, mentally aiming it all at that pestiferous blister Rigo El Caballero. Take that!
Then it hit her that Rigo was taking it, but unlike Bill’s buddy Steven over there, he clearly was not enjoying it any more than she. How dare he have any taste? Outright villains didn’t have taste. That was part of their villainy!
For the first time since the nasty discovery of Rigo in the bakery, Godiva wondered if Rigo had read any of her own books. That gave her a weird feeling, as if he’d been peering through her windows. Then she rallied when she recollected that the villains of the first, oh, five or six of her books were all variations of Rigo, bwa ha ha, every one of them sleazy assclowns who got their exercise practicing seduction and abandonment the way anyone else practiced yoga. She wondered if he’d recognized himself in any of them.
&n
bsp; Bill reached the last page of his chapter, his voice rising to a screechy caricature of a woman whining.
“ . . . his fat slob of an ex-wife Cindy shrieked at the judge, ‘What do you mean you’re throwing my lawsuit out?’
The judge gave her a stern look. “Suing an American hero will not happen in MY courtroom. One more word and I’ll have you jailed and fined for contempt of court . . .’”
Godiva shut out the rest, wincing inwardly as her thoughts arrowed to Wendy, who knew that her ex Bill was part of the writers’ group. But Godiva still hadn’t gotten the courage to tell Wendy that Bill had stuck this awful distortion of her into his novel, naming the ridiculous character ‘Cindy’.
Time enough to prepare Wendy if she ever got the courage to come to the writers’ group, Godiva promised herself. That would be armed and prepared. Otherwise, it was just pointlessly cruel.
She let out a sigh of relief when Bill laid the last page in his expensive briefcase as if it was made of gold, and harrumphed through the applause. Godiva sidled a peek Rigo’s way, as he gave several very light, very polite claps.
Under cover of that brief spate of applause, Doris leaned over to Godiva. She pointed with her chin in Rigo’s direction. “Gotta say . . .”
“Don’t you dare,” Godiva said between shut teeth.
“Right right right,” Doris whispered hastily. “If you feel he’s scum, then he’s scum.”
“Seems to have good taste, judging by his reaction to Bill’s pages,” Bird murmured on the other side, caught Godiva’s glare, then added hastily, “Which makes his treachery all the worse.”
Godiva sat back, satisfied that her support was not going over to The Enemy, seduced by his blasted good looks.
Then Linette, currently serving as moderator, turned her way. “Godiva, do you have pages for us today?”
Godiva did. Or rather, she had. She loved reading aloud, loved the comments good and bad, and of course especially relished when a comment she’d meant to be funny caused a chuckle, or when a plot turn she had maniacally plotted out caused a gasp.
But with that . . . that . . . scurvy abomination sitting over there staring at her, she was not going to read. She couldn’t help it if he’d read her books, which after all were available in public libraries as well as all discerning bookstores. But! Somehow the idea of him hearing her newly-written words felt like she would be offering him an X-ray of her soul. She was not going to let that mustard-gulleted poltroon climb into her soul, no way!
“Sorry, Linette. Skip me this week. Not ready,” Godiva stated, eyeing the ceiling.
“Then that leaves us some extra time,” Cassandra cut in quickly, jangling her bracelets as she dug into her designer handbag. “So I can read all twenty-six verses of a poem that resulted from a dream I had last week. Let me describe the dream first, so you’ll understand the symbols . . .”
Godiva let Cassandra’s piping voice slide into the background. Cassandra being one of those precious poets so sure of their own genius that all they paid any attention to was praise, Godiva didn’t feel guilty as she turned her mind to the bruise on her spirit sitting over there. Why was he even here?
She longed to know where Alejandro was—how he was doing—but hated to put herself in a position of begging Rigo for news of him. Especially if he refused to say. After all, there had to be some reason why she had never heard from Alejo again, after those few post cards.
What if . . . no, she was not going to let herself fall down the what-if rabbit hole again. She had cured herself of that particular form of nightmare years ago. It had taken hard work, especially after every unsuccessful return from visiting the post office box in Illinois. She was done with that form of self-torture. She had promised herself she would ask, and she would ask. No expectations before. Or after.
She was so deep in her mental wrestle that Cassandra’s long poem slipped by without Godiva having to hear a word of it. She was startled out of her reverie by applause, which she hastily joined.
Then Linette took her totally by surprise as she turned to Rigo, saying, “All visitors are welcome to read as well. Do you have anything for us?”
Godiva tried not to glare. Did Linette even know what toxic ooze had slimed into this meeting? Godiva gloated inwardly when she noticed that Linette’s tone was cordial, but it was the kind of cordial without any warmth. Oh yes, Linette recognized him, if only as the target of Godiva’s well-deserved hot coffee toss of the morning previous.
Godiva was further heartened when she saw Doris, Bird, and Jen all aiming glowers at Rigo. Well, Bird didn’t quite glower, but her round, wistful doe eyes turned away, a sure sign she wished she was back in her splendid house on the cliff, cozying up to her handsome hubs, who sat there looking as stern as a silver-haired statue of some lofty Chinese avatar.
“Well, now, I’m not much of a writer,” Rigo drawled, his Texas accent faint but still recognizable in his soft, husky voice.
No, his rat-infested excuse for a voice! Godiva tightened her spine, rejecting the sneaking tendrils of attraction with every atom of her body. Nobody betrayed her twice.
“Nor even a storyteller,” Rigo went on. “Never was. But my grandfather, a Maya from the land south of the Rio Grande, was a storyteller. He used to tell us young’uns stories about Rabbit and Coyote and Snake and all the rest of the characters of Mayan folk tales. If he embroidered them a little, well, that was part of the folk tradition.”
He looked around. Godiva shifted her gaze to the opposite wall, and she studied a curl-edged poster from an Agatha Christie play as if it contained the secret to turning lead into gold. She was not going to gratify him by letting him think she was listening . . .
And she listened as he began in that slow smooth-as-whiskey voice.
This took place, like all folk tales, a long time ago. Fact is, Rabbit lived in a far off village with Coyote, Snake, Jaguar, and others, all predators, and all mean. But these predators all knew that Rabbit was faster than they were, and besides, the local village needed a speedy messenger as well as tough gunslingers in order to survive.
He paused, and Godiva sensed he was looking her way. She studied the rest of the group. Some looked interested in the folk tale, Bill stared at his fancy boots, and Cassandra played with her clattering bracelets.
Rigo raised his voice slightly over the noise.
Rabbit was content. He got enough to eat, and had a place out under the sky to sleep, and if the rest of the town’s citizens weren’t quite what you’d call his friends, at least they let him be. He thought his life was complete until he saw Hummingbird.
Godiva felt another glance from him, a lancing warmth that spread behind her ribs. She tightened her arms over her chest, and glared down at the glittery teal polish on her toes peeking out of her sandals.
Rigo went on.
Between one moment and the next, as soon as he laid eyes on Hummingbird, Rabbit’s heart swelled to twice its size. Twice? Ten times! Rabbit had no idea what had happened to him. He hopped around banging into walls, and missing his meals. The other animals laughed at him and called him a drunken bum, and a hornswoggled fool, but he didn’t hear one word in fifty because all the real estate between his fuzzy ears, right down to his rascally heart, was taken up entirely with the miracle of Hummingbird.
“What’s so special about Hummingbird?” Coyote whined. “She’s too small.”
“She’s perfect,” Rabbit said.
“You can’t even see her proper,” Snake hissed. “She moves too fast.”
“You can see the rainbow sheen in her wings. You can see her grace when she touches a flower. You can hear the hum of her flight, like the hymn of summer.”
The other animals laughed at Rabbit, because he had changed so much. Instead of tricking them, he was clumsy. Instead of outrunning them, he was awkward. And because he was scruffy, rascally Rabbit, nobody believed the quick and beautiful Hummingbird would ever look at the likes of him.
Rigo paused again. E
very cell in Godiva had charged with electricity at the sound of his voice, as slow as that faraway river that she hadn’t seen since she was eighteen. She glowered down at her feet in their sandals. Hmm. She’d just gotten a pedicure two days ago, but what about next time? Maybe it was time to rotate back to hot pink?
The voice, slow as honey and smoky as hundred-year-old whiskey, went on.
But a miracle happened, and Hummingbird did look his way. Rabbit began to run again, and to groom his ears and tail, and to do everything he could to please Hummingbird.
Bill half-smothered a sigh, his legs spraddled out aggressively. Godiva caught herself feeling a zap of irritation, and told herself that Rigo deserved worse, ha ha! Was he trying to butter her up with that Hummingbird stuff? She suspected he meant her. No, she knew it.
But Rabbit, being Rabbit, couldn’t completely change his nature. Nor could he make himself smarter than he was. And so, one day, when he encountered a magic mirror, and looked into it expecting to see a fine, new Rabbit, and saw instead a hideous monster, he ran and hid. And when he had the courage to come out again, it was to find that Hummingbird had flown. And ever after Rabbit was alone, for he could never get Hummingbird back out of his heart and head.
Rigo paused, then when he spoke again his voice lightened. Godiva fought the instinct to look his way, to catch his expression as he went on:
Those old stories, at least the way my grandfather told them, always had a moral to them. I expect the moral here was that Rabbit, that sorry, sodden, stupid creature, who thought himself so clever, proved to be more stupid than all the other animals put together. Not for looking into that magic mirror, but for running and hiding after, instead of asking Hummingbird what she thought.
He sat back as the group clapped, some politely, others with more enthusiasm. Godiva tightened her arms across her chest, determined not to clap—to show any sign that she’d even listened.
