“How long ago?”
“Many weeks.”
“You left me to bake in the sand for weeks?”
“You were in the infirmary for most of it.” Chiming laughter broke free of her scale-encrusted chest. “Once you had recovered enough, we brought you here, where you could wake on land rather than underwater.”
“I appreciate that.” Farhan shoved into a seated position. “Your infirmary is underwater?”
That would explain why it felt like his brain was sloshing.
“I can’t tell you all my secrets.” She joined him on the sand, pulled her knees to her chest, and braced her chin on the forearms she draped over her legs. “Unless you tell me yours first.”
Decades of ingrained service to the NSB, to his taskforce, firmed his lips.
“It’s all right.” She touched his cheek. “I was only teasing. Trust isn’t so easily earned — or given.”
“Thank you for saving me.” He accepted the waterskin and took a few careful sips. “I thought I wanted to die. I was prepared for it. I expected it to happen.”
“You were part of the battle,” she mused. “I suspected as much given the severity of your wounds. We were not involved, but we observed.”
Censure honed his voice into a blade. “You saw it going down and didn’t pitch in?”
“No one asked us to, which is, I’m afraid, the downside of devoting your life to secrecy. No one knew we existed to ask us, and since it took some watching to grasp what was happening, it was too late for us to do more than fish survivors such as yourself from the water in the hopes we could revive them.”
Farhan grunted, awarding her the point. Better to avoid the battle than fight on the wrong side.
Tatiana flexed her toes, thick with webbing, in the damp sand. “What’s your name?”
Farhan parted his lips, but nothing passed them.
“Let me guess.” She chuckled. “Amnesia?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I can’t return you to the world if you don’t so much as know your own name. Would you like to join us? You’re welcome to stay until you’ve fully recovered.”
He whipped his head toward her. “What?”
“If kindness shocks you, I’m glad you don’t remember your life.” She stood and offered him her hand. “Come with me. There’s food in the gathering hut. You must be starving. The infirmary pumps in nutrients, but let’s say no one has ever asked for their recipe.”
Admitting kindness only ever preceded punishment would have ruined the moment. “I could eat.”
“You need a name.” She kept hold of him, guiding him in her wake. “How about Asees?” She pulled on him when he dragged behind. “It means blessing.” She glanced back at him. “You are blessed to have survived, don’t you agree?”
Blessed was the most ironic name anyone could have assigned him, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her so. “Yes.”
At the gathering hut, he met more of her people and a few survivors like himself. He noticed she didn’t linger with them but remained by his side. He wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe nothing. But hers was the first kind hand to touch him in memory, and he couldn’t believe she didn’t want something in return.
“You’re suspicious.” She served him a platter filled with seafood then joined him at his table. “I respect that. After all, nothing is free.”
Relief swirled through him. “Exactly.”
Tapping a finger against her bottom lip, she said, “The price for you to remain here among us is … ”
Farhan braced himself for a kill order or equally unsavory task to perform. That’s all he was good for, all he had ever been good for, and the fact she looked at him and saw it curdled his gut.
“ … you must tend the nets twice a day to ensure no dolphins get caught in them.”
He waited for the rest. There had to be more. Mines floating in the water that would explode if he bumped them. Sharks trained like German Shepherds to attack anyone who ventured too close. Poison dart fish, killer algae, polluted water — something. There had to be a catch.
“Oh, Asees.” She stroked his hair. “There is no trick, no trap. I will teach you myself.”
The gentle caress of her soft fingertips threatened to break some undefinable thing in his chest.
“All will be well.” She pressed her lips to his cheek. “I swear it.”
Capturing her hand, he dared to remember how it felt to want. “Is there a sea king by any chance?”
Laughter filled her eyes and spilled over her lips, and he was helpless not to join in.
Maybe he had died. Maybe this was his own version of Heaven. Maybe he would wake in a hospital bed to find it was all a dream.
Whatever it was, however long it lasted, Asees was grateful for the blank slate and the kindness of beautiful strangers.
“Bou-Bou,” Rixton called. “Take a look at this.”
I left the human witness behind, bathed in the strobing light from our patrol car, to examine the massive crater left in the asphalt by an as yet to be identified charun. Elongated dirt clods filled the bottom. Eight or nine of them. Each one a perfect match for the others.
“What is that?” I leaned over the edge. “It almost looks like … ”
A furious cry rent the still night, and I jerked my head around in time to spot what appeared to be an iguana on steroids. Make that a winged iguana on steroids. I didn’t see where it came from, but it was divebombing us quicker than we could decide on a course of action and react.
“Get in the car,” I yelled at the woman. “Get back in your car.”
The witness got in, all right. She also cranked it and sped off in the direction of town.
“This is going to end up in the papers,” I grumbled. “Just you wait.”
I could picture the headline now: Wild Child Boudreau Fends Off Flying Lizard of Unusual Size.
The frantic charun landed in the middle of the road and stamped its front legs. The resulting percussive blast almost shook me off my feet.
“It’s a mini earthquake machine,” Rixton yelled. “How freaking awesome is that?”
“It would be more freaking awesome if it wasn’t trying to kill us.”
“It’s not trying to kill us,” he shouted. “It’s protecting its nest.”
The dirt clods were … eggs?
“It can’t nest in the middle of the road.” I reached for my decidedly not department-issued Taser. “I’m going to stun it. Get the net ready.”
Sprinting for the nest, guaranteeing the mother would follow, I waited until the last second then pivoted, took aim, and shot her in the chest. Electricity buzzed through her, and she dropped out of the air into a twitching heap on the pavement.
“Any day now.” I pocketed the weapon and craned my neck for my absent partner. “Rixton.”
“Incoming.” He cast a weighted net over the creature. “Got her.”
“This is not what I imagined when you proposed we start our own taskforce,” I panted. “This isn’t police work. It’s game warden work.”
We performed captures, relocations, and all manner of services to keep humans as blissfully ignorant of their charun neighbors as possible. Most of them had the sense not to get caught out, but a few kept otherworldly pets that got lost, got stolen, got free of their cages. This had to be one of those.
“Admit it.” Rixton gave her a shot of tranquilizer that sent her off to beddy-bye. “You love it.”
“You can collect the eggs.” I knelt beside the creature, lifted the net, and applied restraints, careful not to hurt its wings. “I got them last time.”
We had fished those out of the swamp, and they resembled a clot of frog eggs. The parents were attacking folks out hunting gators. Given how infamous I had made Cypress Swamp, we had to act fast before the word spread and people swarmed the area in search of more cryptids.
A small part of me wondered if I hadn’t made a mistake in deciding to settle in my hometown.
Traveling with the coterie had opened my eyes, taught me to relish the anonymity of new towns where no one looked at me and thought Swamp Thing. But out there, no one looked at me and thought that’s Edward Boudreau’s girl either.
While Rixton performed the delicate work of packing the eggs into a foam-lined cooler, I set out orange traffic cones to mark the hole so that motorists wouldn’t drive into the pit before it could be filled, on our dime. Good thing White Horse turned a hefty profit. Making incidents like this one disappear wasn’t cheap.
“Done,” Rixton called. “Let’s crate momma and get moving.”
About to do just that, I jolted when Phoebe materialized beside me.
“I made an A on my exam.” She waved the paper in front of my nose. “And I made a friend. She invited me to try out for the dance team.”
“That’s great.” I would have hugged her if she held still long enough. “Have you told your dad yet?”
“Nope.” Paper clutched to her chest, she waved to Rixton. “I spotted you on my way home and stopped to show you first.”
“We’re wrapping things up here.” I gestured toward the White Horse SUV Rixton and I had confiscated for our side jobs. “Want to grab a pizza to celebrate?”
“Can I have froyo after?” She put the screws to me. “I’ll sneak out your usual.”
The ban at Hannigan’s was still in effect, so I was forced to use my kid as a froyo double agent. “Fine.”
“Can we call Dad?”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” I shooed her. “Go wait in the SUV.”
Rixton and I finished loading the sedated charun and her eggs in the back, but he caught me by the arm before I climbed in with Phoebe. I didn’t feel any dissonance or resonance these days. The former I could live without, but the latter … I missed. More than I ever thought possible. Almost as much as I missed my inner dragon.
“What’s up?”
“You didn’t hear this from me,” he whispered to thwart Phoebe’s super hearing, “but your kid’s got a hickey on her neck.”
“What?”
He caught my chin between his thumb and finger before I could whip my head toward her.
“She’s a sophomore in high school,” he reminded me. “It happens.”
“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”
“I can’t imagine why she would keep that to herself. It’s not like her father will hunt down her sweetie and chomp him in half.”
“I … ” As much as I wanted to defend Cole, I couldn’t fudge this. “Yeah. He will.”
“Ask Sherry for tips on using makeup to conceal the evidence. Phoebe will thank you for it.”
“I’ll do that.” And when Nettie turned old enough to have boys leaving marks on his daughter, I would remind him of this moment. “Care to join us?”
“Nah.” He jingled his keys. “It sounds like this should be a family dinner.”
“You are family.” I shoved him. “Sure I can’t tempt you?”
“Uh, no.” He walked toward the driver’s side laughing. “Cole is about to find out his little girl ain’t little no more. I don’t want to be at the same table, in the same restaurant, or in the same town when that happens.”
“Chicken.”
“Bawk-bawk.”
“Grrr.”
“That was scarier when you had a dragon to back it up.”
Since Thom gave me a clean bill of health, I had been too afraid to reach for my inner dragon, terrified I would come up empty. A smidgen of hope was better than a dollop of truth. But I felt around in me, checking out the corners where Conquest used to hide, and found a kernel of potential.
The world spun around me, and my vision brightened to a vivid crimson.
“How is this possible?” Rixton craned his neck to look up, way up, at me. “I thought you were … ”
The growl I made came out reptilian and ancient, much more impressive than my first attempt.
“Don’t get your scales in a bunch.” He backed toward the SUV. “I was joking about the scary thing. You’re plenty scary. Look, I’m shaking in my boots. Terrified. I might even wet my pants.”
“Mom?”
Craning my neck, I locked onto Phoebe as she slid out of the SUV.
“Are you … ?” She linked her fingers at her navel. “Are you still you?”
Before answering, I took full stock of myself and trilled at her.
I was still me. Just me with an inner dragon who must have required those weeks of healing to recover too. What that made me — human or charun — didn’t matter. I was Luce Boudreau, and I was exactly who I was meant to be.
Acknowledgments
Thank you, Lillie, for the frequent use of your brain.
End Game (The Foundling Series) Page 25
