Bunyips and Billabongs

by Amy Hopkins

  She twisted her body, trying to get into a sitting position. Instead, she sprawled on her face. Panic squeezed her chest, pushing her heart up to her throat.

  Get it together, girl, Penny told herself. She shook her head, but that only made the muzzy feeling worse. Still, the drugs must be wearing off if she was awake.

  Penny took a few slow, deep breaths. "Stay calm. Check your surroundings. Make a plan." The sound of her voice cleared her head a little, and she looked around the tiny room she was being held captive in.

  Wherever she was, it was neither the luxurious opulence of the resort nor one of the crumbling old buildings on the property. She kicked her bare foot at the smooth floor, and as she had anticipated, found it hollow. The tiny building was new but cheaply made, and everything Penny could see supported her hunch that she was imprisoned in a fairly new portable building.

  Unfortunately, it was empty. Instead of a handle, the door was held shut by a rather large deadbolt. There was a single window, but heavy metal bars crossed the opening on the inside. Even if she could break the glass, she wouldn't be able to get through the bars. The bare cell held no sharp edges, no protrusions, nothing she could use to help loosen her restraints.

  "Guess I'll have to do it on my own, then."

  Penny worked at the ropes until her fingernails stung and her skin felt tacky with blood. They didn't budge, but she refused to give up, continuing to claw at her restraints until she heard the rattle of the key in the door. She scurried back into a corner, awkwardly hiding her hands against the wall to obscure the evidence of her failed attempts to escape.

  Two men stepped inside, shutting the door behind them. One, she recognized. His features were an echo of Sam's, but harder and crueler.

  "Geoffrey Nevins." She stated it as fact.

  Nevins didn't seem surprised that she knew him. He smiled at her and beckoned to his friend. "You know who I am, but I don't give a fuck who you are. I don't give a fuck about you at all, except that you've got something I want." He leaned over her, and Penny had to swallow hard to keep the bile in her stomach. "I’m going to ask you some questions. If you answer them, we’ll leave. If you don't, I'll leave. Harvey won't. He'll stay until you answer the questions."

  Penny spat in his direction. “Who says I’m going to answer anything for you, dipshit?"

  Nevins shrugged casually. "I'd rather not have to dispose of your body tonight, but it is what it is. Now, tell me about this magic snake of yours."

  Penny refused to answer, then grunted as a hard boot connected with her midsection. She could tell he had held back. She could still breathe, after all.

  Nevins asked again, his tone bored. "Tell me about the snake."

  "Fuck you." Penny yelped as the boot connected again, this time closer to her kidneys.

  "Tell me about the snake." There was a hardness in Nevins’s eyes that made Penny's skin crawl.

  "What do you want to know?" I need to buy time. Penny knew Boots was never far away from her, not when she needed her. Surely, Boots would be leading Penny's friends to her rescue right this moment.

  "What is she?" Nevins asked.

  Well, that question was easy. Penny had no doubt he knew what Boots was, or he wouldn't have bothered to kidnap her. "She's a Rainbow Serpent. I found her a couple of years back. Is that what you want to know?"

  "Does it do what you say?" he pressed.

  Have to tread carefully here. "Sometimes," Penny admitted. "But not always. I trained her to stay and to follow me. Sometimes she listens when I say no, and other times, I have to smack her on the nose." Penny knew she would probably get fangs implanted at her nose if Boots could hear her talking this way. She didn't want this brute to know how intelligent her friend was, though.

  "Where is she?" Nevins growled the question, and Penny knew that was what he really wanted to know.

  Penny shrugged. "I don't even know where I am. How the hell am I supposed to know where my pet snake is?"

  Two kicks this time, and Penny was left gasping for breath.

  "Where is she?"

  Penny stayed silent. Another kick, one that made her retch on the floor. She curled into a ball, or tried to, anyway. She braced for the next kick, then flinched at a crash from outside.

  “The fuck was that?” The goon looked at his boss. “You want me to keep going here?”

  Nevins hesitated. He looked down at Penny, who stared up at him with murder in her eyes. “No, go check it out. We’ll come back to this one later. Maybe we’ll try something a little more creative on our next attempt.”

  The goon left. Nevins hesitated at the door and looked back. "You think you're tough, and you might be. Either way, you won't last until morning. You think about that while I'm gone, hey?"

  The door slammed shut and the lock clicked. Only then did Penny begin to shake.

  Her breath came in shallow gulps, each gasp sending a slice of pain to her ribs. She tried to breathe quietly, straining to hear what was going on outside, but apart from some muffled curses and a vague clatter, she couldn't make anything out. Except—was that thunder? It was, she realized, and rain as well.

  I'm stuck on the floor playing weather girl. Is this what my life has come to? As if in response to her unspoken thoughts, someone giggled. It was high-pitched but masculine and sounded out of place among the tough smugglers who loitered outside. The laugh came again, as loud and as clear as though the person were standing right next to her.

  Penny yanked her head up to look around. The room was empty, but the shadow of a bird flapping past the window made Penny start, her wrists jerking once more against her bonds.

  They vanished.

  Penny's wrists and ankles came free with a jerk and she grunted, coming to her feet with a bolt of anxiety. The ropes hadn't just broken, they were gone.

  "What the fuck?" She briefly considered the possibility that they were magic bonds, designed to release their prisoner if a certain word was spoken or if other conditions were met. She quickly discarded that idea. She knew Nevins did not intend to let her go, not even if she told him what he wanted to know.

  Her rush of adrenaline quickly faded when she realized she still couldn't go anywhere. She sat back down on the floor, tucked her knees against her chest, and waited.

  Her captors didn't return. Penny's brief glimpse outside had revealed a dark sky, and some kind of compound lit with blinding spotlights. If not for the window and its mottled glass, Penny would be sitting in darkness. The glass.

  She stood and pushed the window. When that didn't work, she punched it, gently at first to see if it would give, then harder. She was vaguely aware of the patter of raindrops on the roof of her prison cell but ignored it as she pounded on the glass. If nothing else, this storm might buy me some time. Her attempts were clumsy, her hands swollen and numb. "Fuck it."

  Penny stripped off her shirt, glad she was wearing a crop top underneath, and wrapped it around her elbow. One solid jab left a star-shaped crack in the window. Another one turned the crack into a spiderweb. Her third attempt almost dislocated her joint, but she punched a hole in the safety glass. Penny picked away the tiny glistening cubes. With some effort and a few sliced fingers, she managed to make a hole a little bigger than her fist. That didn’t mean she could escape. The bars were no wider than her arm. It wasn't escape that Penny was after, though.

  She poked two fingers through the hole after squeezing a little blood from her torn fingernails and a deep scratch. She felt a raindrop hit her hand, then another. Patience, she told herself. After a few minutes, she could feel the rain dribbling off the end of her fingertips.

  "Come on, Boots,” she whispered fervently. “I know you've got water magic, babe. This is as close to a blood sacrifice as I've got for you. Boots, come and find me."

  A smooth, slender thread wriggled up Penny’s fingers. She almost jerked her hand back in fright but was glad she had quelled the urge when Boots’ head poked through the hole in the window.

  Hssss.<
br />
  Penny kissed the top of Boots’ head. “Yes, I know. I was hit with a sleeping dart and trussed up like a Sunday roast. Can you get me out of here?”

  The serpent withdrew from the window, and Penny heard a splash as Boots flopped onto the ground. It felt like an age before Boots returned, the clink of keys dragging through the mud behind her. Boots lifted herself up to the window. Penny couldn’t see how the serpent had managed to reach the tiny hole, but she was content to write it off as part of the magic her friend possessed.

  Penny’s elation at her unorthodox rescue was short-lived. Though Boots had returned with a fat keyring full of keys, none of them fit the deadbolt on her door. Key after key, Penny tried them, slipping each one around on the ring to try the next. She ran through the whole ring twice before hurling the whole bunch of them at the wall in frustration.

  As the jangling metal thumped against the wall, the door popped open. Penny started, scrambling back in case one of her captors barreled in.

  No one did.

  “What the hell?” Penny peeked out the door, seeing no one. She looked down at a sniggering Boots. “Was that magic?”

  Boots nodded.

  “Was it you?”

  This time, Boots shook her head. The serpent, clearly bored with the line of questioning, slipped out the open door. Penny grabbed the keys and quickly followed, stepping out into the rain and scurrying toward a clump of trees, one arm wrapped around her bruised ribs for support.

  Where the hell are we? Penny didn’t give that much further thought. They were in Australia, in the rainforest, no less. It was Boots’ natural environment, and the serpent likely knew everything about it. Her friend would lead them home, she was sure. “Let’s get the bunyip and go.”

  Penny jogged past a cluster of trees, then stopped to crouch behind a port-a-loo. “Dear God, that smells awful. Why are blokes so disgusting?” She eyed a truck at the very edge of the spotlit area, then sorted through the keys until she found one with the same logo printed on the electronic head. “What do you think, Boots? Walk home, or hitch a ride?” The rain intensified. “Ride it is. I’m not risking my life in this downpour. With my luck, we’ll be swept away in a flash flood.”

  She’d driven a rig like that once under controlled conditions in one of Mack’s classes at the Academy. It had taken Penny two goes to start it. She would have to hope she could get this monster going before she got caught.

  She stepped out from behind the toilet, then darted back as two men passed.

  “The bunyip’s loaded up, and they’re ready to ship out at first light,” the first said. “The other one’s staying here, though. Nevins wants to broker him personally.”

  “They’ve got the werewolf tied up, right?” the second man said. “Otherwise, I’m heading out with the man-eater.”

  Penny’s heart plummeted to her feet. Red. It dropped even further when she recognized the second speaker’s voice. It was Peter. Sam will be gutted when he finds out.

  “It’s not a full moon, you knob. He can’t do squat for another four weeks.”

  Penny waited until they were gone, then headed back to her temporary jail cell. This time, she noticed two more buildings beside it, tiny prefab constructions designed to be transported in one piece.

  “Where’s Red?” Penny whispered.

  Boots took off, sliding over the wet ground like it was her personal waterslide. Penny hurried to catch up, cringing as cold mud squelched between her bare toes. Halfway to the third building, Penny slipped, landing on her ass in a deep puddle. She cursed and scrambled back to her feet, then over to the shadows between the structures.

  She watched for a moment, then, seeing no one, ducked around the corner to free Red.

  Key after key refused to fit. She cursed her bad luck. “Dammit! Again? What is it with this place.”

  Behind her, someone giggled. Penny spun but saw no one, or at least, no humans. A crow flapped down to the ground, stared at Penny, and proceeded to take a shit on the wet dirt.

  The incongruity struck Penny, dislodging something at the very edge of her mind. She shook it away as she tried the next key. It didn’t fit. She gripped the last key.

  The crow wouldn’t leave her mind. Not the crow, the poop. It hit her in a rush, her brain zapping along a trail of connections.

  The out-of-place giggling. Poop-coffee. Bacchus’s comment about a deity in the area. Corey and Cora with their raven-black hair. Not raven-black. The crow continued to stare at her.

  “Wow, what a shame,” Penny said aloud, hoping it wouldn’t catch the attention of any nearby humans. “If only I could get Red out. Together, we’d cause so much chaos. Oh, well. If this last key doesn’t work—” She plunged it into the lock and turned it. She glanced back in time to see the crow launch into the air and flap away. Heart racing, Penny sent up a quick prayer to the heavens. “Thank you, trickster god. Whichever one you are.”

  Penny pushed open the door and stepped into the makeshift building. Red lay curled up in the corner, the washed-out light slicing through the door highlighting his split lip and black eye. The scent of burning flesh permeated the room.

  Penny rushed forward. "Red! What have they done to you?"

  Red held out his wrists. A pair of engraved silver manacles cuffed them together, the skin around them raw and blistered. "I think they might know I'm a werewolf."

  "Gee, what gave you that idea?" Penny helped him to his feet. "Why did they beat you? Did they think you'd give up Boots?"

  "Boots? No, they were trying to make me turn." Red shook his head. "Dumb bastards don't know the first thing about werewolves."

  "They figured out you're allergic to silver." Penny quickly examined her keys, but couldn't find anything that looked like it would fit in his cuffs. "Do you think you can put up with that until we get back to the resort?"

  "Oh, I wouldn't be so quick to assume you're going anywhere." A shadow filled the doorway, and Penny looked up to see Nevins. He had a gun pointed at her. "I don't know how in the hell you escaped, but I promise we won't let it happen again."

  Boots darted out from between Penny's legs, angrily hissing at the poacher.

  He laughed. "Wonderful. I guess I don't need to keep you around anymore. Unless, of course, you can tell us how to force the change on your big friend here."

  Penny spat at him. She didn't bother telling him the obvious—there was no way to force a change on a werewolf. Not the sort Red was, anyway. He would only shift when the moon was full and visible. Penny shifted her posture the tiniest bit, ready to throw herself forward if he so much as flinched. It probably would help, and at least she should die fighting. "Boots, run!"

  Boots reared up, then sank her teeth into a fleshy leg. To Penny's horror, she didn't bite Nevins.

  Red let out a holler of pain. He snarled, panted, and growled through gritted teeth, "Duck."

  Penny threw herself to the ground. Red leapt, his body contorting as it flew through the air, the manacles tumbling to the ground with a clink. The werewolf planted his sharp claws into Nevins’s chest and sent him tumbling out the door. Red ducked his head, jaws open, and pressed his teeth to his captor’s throat gently enough to avoid bloodshed but not by much.

  Penny sprang to her feet. She grabbed the gun that had skidded into a corner and pointed it at Sam’s brother. "Well, what do you know? Turns out, there is a way to force a change on a reluctant werewolf."

  Penny reached one hand behind her back. Boots slapped her tail on it, the reptilian version of a high-five.

  "Please!" Nevins begged. "Please, don't let him kill me."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Penny gratefully accepted the mug of hot chocolate Sam passed her. "And that was when the feds turned up. Poor Red. He shifted back into a human fifteen minutes later. The entire AFP team got to see his bare ass, as pale as the moon. It's just lucky it was overcast. I think the reflection would have blinded us all."

  Sam chuckled. "And my brother?"

  "Th
ey found the bunyip in the truck. That's twenty-five years, at least. By the time you add kidnapping, assault, and the attempted poaching of a human werewolf? You won't be seeing him around here for a while." Penny sipped the warm drink, then reached for a cookie.

  Red had retired to his room, icing his bruises and nursing his damaged ego. Amelia, of course, was with him. Crenel had walked out a few minutes ago to take a phone call, and Cisco had followed him at Penny's insistence. She wasn't about to be left in the dark on this one. That left her and Sam alone, chatting quietly about the events that had transpired the night before.

  The restaurant doors swung open and Crenel walked back in, tucking his phone into his pocket. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a moment's privacy around here?" he demanded, shooting a glare over his shoulder at the trailing Cisco.

  "Yup." Cisco winked at the agent. “Damn near impossible.”

  "What did they say?" Penny asked.

  "Nevins’ men folded pretty quickly. Turns out, Peter has been working for him from the beginning. Nevins sent him here to apply for the job, along with a couple of other guys who didn't get in. Apparently, Peter developed a conscience over that space of time, and now he wants to confess everything." Crenel scowled. "For a plea bargain, of course. But he's already given us the name of the storage facility that the kidnapped Mythers are being held in. Apparently, none of them have been sold yet. They were waiting to get the bunyip, then planning to smuggle them to Japan to broker the deal over there."

  "All of them?" Sam's shoulders slumped in relief. "Thank you, Agent. Thank all of you."

  "There’s just one last missing piece of the puzzle." Penny turned to Sam. "Did you know you had a trickster god hanging around?"

  Sam burst out laughing. "Who, the Crow? Yeah, we named the refuge after him! I originally wanted to call it the ‘The Lying Crow,’ but the investors didn’t like that. The guy—or girl, as it sometimes shows up—is a total pain in the ass. It’s been harassing guests here for months. In fact, I heard a rumor that the Crow impersonated one of our staff members and told you our coffee is sourced from owl shit."