by Stacey Jay
“Abe, Abe, Abe,” Amity repeats, rocking on her haunches at the edge of the hole, her movements so intense I worry we might soon have one more person in the pit. “Where’s Abraham Lincoln when we need him? Why has he abandoned the people he promised to protect?” she asks, tears welling in her jaundiced eyes.
She seems sober, but she’s definitely not sane. The fairy venom coursing through her veins has already started to erode her neural pathways. For a second I think about telling her that Abraham Lincoln is dead, and that she shouldn’t take the abandonment personally, but decide that wouldn’t make her feel any better.
I bite my lip, and turn to check in with Tucker and Hitch. Tucker is leaning against the wall with arms crossed, gun still drawn, but partially hidden behind one bicep, looking cautiously optimistic about the rescue. Hitch is lingering near the rubble-blocked entrance to the safe room looking concerned.
Very, very concerned.
“What’s wrong?” I walk over to hover near his elbow.
“You see that?” He points out into the hall. Even in the dim light, I can see the green-tinged mist creeping between the rocks like an evil spirit rising from the grave.
“What is it?”
He takes a step back, guiding me away from the doorway with one outstretched arm. “While I was looking through the files, I saw something about a Fey mist.”
“Like a flu mist?”
“Right,” he says, “But instead of vaccinating . . .”
“It infects,” I finish. My fingers find his forearm and squeeze, as if I can keep him safe from the foul green air if I hold on tightly enough. “So if you breathe any of that—”
“I’ll be infected,” he says with surprising calm. “If I’m anything like the rest of my family, I’ll be dead within a few minutes.”
I whip my head around. “Hurry, Abe! Hurry! There’s—”
I almost blurt out that there’s a venom-infection biohazard floating around down here, but stop myself at the last second. Abe isn’t immune and I have no idea who else up there might be at risk. If they know what’s coming, they might run first and think about saving us never. For Tucker and me that wouldn’t be a problem and Amity’s already infected, but for Hitch . . .
The green mist surges forward, billowing close enough that I catch a whiff of fairy stink, the sickeningly sweet scent of a swarm in midfeed, when the poison is flowing from their gums.
“We can’t wait for the rope. Tucker, help me!” I pull Hitch toward the hole in the ceiling, where Amity is still rocking and shivering and muttering about Abraham Lincoln.
“What’s up?” Tucker asks. “What did you see?”
“The explosion must have released one of the bioweapons from the lab. It’s a mist that causes venom infection,” I whisper. “Anyone up there who’s not immune needs to get away from here, but we need to get Hitch up with them first.”
Tucker nods and tucks his gun into the back of his jeans. He grips Hitch’s shoulder in a way that’s almost friendly. “Come on, brother.”
“I’m not your brother.”
“And I’m not her cousin, and she’s not your mama,” Tucker says. “I think we—”
“It’s here!” I hiss, bouncing on the balls of my feet as a wisp of green curls into the room. “Come on. Move! Now!”
Tucker bends his knees and makes a basket with his hands. “Step in and jump, we’ll push you up.”
“Promise me you’ll keep her safe.” Hitch stares Tucker in the eye, making no move toward safety.
“I swear it, man,” Tucker says, worry in his voice for the first time. “Now come on. Get out of here. I got better things to do than watch you die.”
With one last look at me—a look so full I couldn’t carry it in a bucket without spilling—Hitch braces himself on Tucker’s shoulders and steps into his hands. Tucker heaves him up. I move in to help push at his feet, but Amity’s arms are already around him, pulling him through the hole. He scrambles up beside her and, with a whispered word in her ear, somehow convinces her to let him take her arm and help her stand.
He glances down, but I wave him away with a frantic flap. “Go, go! Get them out! Leave a rope up there if you can. Tucker and I will be fine.”
Hitch nods and leads Amity away. She doesn’t say a word, still too lost in despair to gloat about her nemesis being left in a pit filling with poison. A second later, I hear Hitch shout out a warning about the infection risk and my shoulders drop. He’s going to be safe. He’ll keep Abe safe.
“Now you gonna let me lift you up?” Tucker stands beside me, staring up into the dark as the voices above grow distant.
“Yeah. I’ll find a rope and come back for you,” I say. “Even though you’re a sorry excuse for a partner.”
“I was trying to disarm the bombs.” He lifts a booted foot, stirring the mist now swirling around our legs. “I stopped the timer for a few minutes, but it started back up again. I came looking for you, but you were talking to the Big Man.” His eyes flick to mine. “I’ve seen him mad plenty of times. He wasn’t going to hurt you, and I knew it’d be better for me if he didn’t know I was around.”
“He didn’t tell you to follow me?”
“No.” Tucker steps closer. His hands grip my waist. “He told me to head back to town and break things off with Barbara Beauchamp.”
“Why?”
“I told him the leader of the Slake was fucking with you. I couldn’t think of any other way to keep your people safe.” His grip tightens, and his thumbs press lightly into my stomach. I resist the urge to curl my hands around his arms. This isn’t an embrace, this is Tucker preparing to lift me up, and I don’t want to encourage him to think of it as anything else. “Big Man has ways of finding a fairy when he wants to. I knew he could take out the leader. Now, with the old guy gone, the rest of the Fey will be too busy fighting for chief to mess with you. At least for a while.”
“What about the Big Man? I thought I—”
“I didn’t tell him you can work the fairies.” He looks down again. The mist coats the floor, but it doesn’t seem to be rising. “Just said you could talk to ’em a little, mostly in the dreams the old one was sending you.”
“So I’m . . . good?” I soften toward him in spite of myself. If he’s really managed to keep Deedee and everyone I care about safe and spared me the Big Man’s wrath at the same time, I’ll owe him one. Maybe two. I’m at least going to have to work on an apology.
“The Big Man’s not afraid of you yet,” Tucker says. “As long as you stay out of trouble, I don’t think you’ll have anything to fear from him. Not unless he really decides to trust you.”
I shake my head. “But what does any of that have to do with you and Barbara?”
“The Big Man thinks I should find a new girl.” Tucker pulls me closer. “He told me I should keep a close, constant eye on this woman. Wants me to eat, sleep, and breathe with her. Even if she is my cousin.”
“He wants—” My eyebrows shoot up. “That’s why he called you my kissing cousin?”
“You did say ‘distant’ cousins. That’s legal in most states.”
“Is that why you kissed me?” My hands curl into fists against his chest. “Because the Big Man told you to seduce your way into my life?”
“What do you think, Red?” He leans so close his nose brushes mine.
My breath rushes out, memories of our one kiss warming my lips. “I don’t know what to think.”
“I think I should give you a boost,” he whispers. “I don’t like the look of this shit. Even if it won’t infect us, I don’t want a lungful.”
I swallow. “Okay. Boost me up. I’ll go find—”
“If you leave me, I’ll understand,” he says, a vulnerable note in his voice. “But I promise I’m on your side. And my reasons for that kiss were my own.”
I look up, meeting blue eyes that seem even more piercing than usual. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Tucker really cares. Maybe a lot. “Why?” I ask. Hitch
and I have a past and Cane and I might have a future, but I don’t understand why I’ve attracted Tucker’s attention. “There are a lot of women in Donaldson-ville. A lot them better-looking and most of them easier to get along with and all of them with less baggage.”
“Not women like you,” he says. “I’ve been stalking you for a while, Red.”
“That’s creepy. You get that, right?”
“Also a great way to learn a lot of truth about a person in a short amount of time,” he says. “I probably know more about you than your mama.”
“That’s not saying much.”
“I know you,” he says, refusing to joke around for once. “I like what I know, and I’d like to learn more.”
I hesitate, torn between demanding he quit talking feelings like a damned girl and lift me up already, and taking his crazy confession seriously. Because I like him, too. Maybe I’d like him even more if I knew half as much about him as he does about me.
“I’m not going to leave you here,” I say. “But you’re not learning anything about me until you give some quid pro quo.”
“I can do that.” He smiles. “You ready?”
I lift my hands to his shoulders. “Ready. How are we—”
“Bend your knees and put your feet in my hands. Then stand up straight with your muscles tight and I’ll push you through.”
“Standing? On just your hands?”
“Just like in cheerleading back in high school.”
“Do I look like I was a cheerleader back in high school?” I ask, with the requisite amount of scorn.
“Nope. But I was. I’ve got this.”
I snort. I can’t help myself. “You were a cheerleader? That is . . .”
“Manly?”
“Strange.”
“I got my hands up a lot of skirts, Red. Nothing strange about that.” He grins his panty-melting grin and bends his knees. Before I can whip up a comeback, I’m in the air.
I manage to find his hands with my feet—more like he finds my feet with his hands—and do my best to follow the rest of his directions. I tighten my muscles from head to toe and reach for the opening, but I’m still shocked when I slip smoothly through, my body rising until I’m in the new space from the waist up.
I cast a quick look around, taking in what looks like a subway tunnel without tracks stretching away in both directions. White tiles line the walls, with black tiles on the ceiling, and dim lights set into the side of the tunnel every few dozen feet. There’s no sign of Hitch or Abe or Amity, but a coil of dirty white rope sits on the floor not far away. Someone took the time to leave it, and I’m grateful. I really didn’t want to leave Tucker down there, even if I was intending to come back.
I drag one leg over the edge and then the other and reach for the rope. It smells funny—musky in the way of barns and freshly fertilized fields—but it feels strong enough. I lean over to peek at Tucker, holding it up for him to see. “They left a rope. Let me find something to loop it around so I won’t drop you.”
“Sounds good.” With his head tilted back and the green swirling around his feet, he looks like a Norse god arising from enchanted mist. He’s beautiful, I’ll give him that, but I don’t—
“Hurry, will ya?” he says. “I think this stuff is starting to burn through my jeans.”
“Right.” Now isn’t the time to admire Tucker’s man-pretty. I spin to search for a pillar or a rock sticking up from the floor, something I can wrap the rope around to brace it. But there’s nothing. The floor is gravel and the walls of the tunnel are smooth. I spot the dull remains of a campfire down the tunnel to my left, but there’s nothing there that will help.
“Red? You still up there?” Tucker sounds a trace hysterical. Just a trace, but for Tucker that’s practically a screaming, wailing, teeth-gnashing cry for help.
“I’m here. The rope’s coming down.” I loop the end of the rope around my waist and knot it, then twirl it around a couple times for good measure. I roll the extra around my hands, kick the end through the porthole and bend my knees deep, bracing myself as best I can.
A second later, Tucker grabs the other end and my feet go sliding across the ground. I scramble to get purchase while throwing my weight backward and fisting my hands with everything in me. If I let my hands relax the slightest bit, Tucker’s weight just might break my fingers.
“Crap!” My pulse leaps as my tennis shoes finally stick in a dip in the floor.
“You all right?” Tucker grunts from below.
“Yes. But hurry! You’re sofuckingheavy.”
The rope jerks as Tucker climbs faster and my knucklebones grind together hard enough to make me whimper. Sweat breaks out on my neck and chest and the small of my back and my brain sends out panicked messages about letting go of whatever I’m holding before I lose a hand while my leg muscles tremble and my biceps twitch and threaten to abandon the fight altogether.
But finally—when I think I can’t hold on for another minute—Tucker climbs through and the tension on the rope ceases. Abruptly. So abruptly that I can’t shift my weight fast enough, and my ass makes a beeline for the floor. I brace myself for a spine crunch, but something breaks my fall.
Something soft and warm. And hairy.
“Bleeeair!” The animal kicks as I roll off its back, and I barely avoid a cloven hoof to the face.
“Holy fucking—Goat!” I scramble away as the pink-eyed beast delivers another series of kicks worthy of an evil ninja, its white hair ruffling majestically as it tries to crack open my skull.
Tucker slams the porthole cover closed. “Looks like a normal goat to me.” His movement seems to startle the monster, making it prance away toward the far wall.
“What’s a goat doing down here?” I let Tucker unwind the rope from my hands, trying not to wince as he frees my fingers and gives them a squeeze.
“Probably helping people stay alive. Goats give a lot of milk. Easier to manage than cows.” He traps my hands between his and applies gentle pressure. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I pull away, not wanting him to know how much my fingers hurt. “You think people are living down here?”
“I’d guess so.” He points down the tunnel. “Looks like someone’s been camping over there for a while.”
Beyond the campfire I spotted earlier are several lean-to shelters set up against the wall. They’re made of old two-by-fours and fallen limbs gathered from the swamp, but they’re sturdy-looking. A few of them even have chimneys built into the side and decorations painted on their exteriors. Flowers and vines on one, stick-figure cartoons on the other.
Tucker heads for the minisettlement and I follow. Beyond the lean-tos is a long table with benches on either side and a makeshift stove built out of bricks and concrete. The table is clean, but the stove is covered in crusted dribbles of old food. A plastic bucket of cookware sits next to it, with a second bucket filled with compost not far away. It’s nearly full and already starting to squirm a little.
Ugh. Maggots. I glance away. Quickly.
“They’ve definitely been here for a while.” I follow Tucker around a curve in the tunnel, where a wooden fence forms a small paddock. The ground is covered with wood chips and piles of fresh-looking hay sit on either side, but there are no animals in sight. “Looks like room for more than one goat.”
“Guess they took the rest with them.” Tucker walks past the paddock, scanning the ground beyond. “Looks like they went this way.”
I hurry over. “We should follow them, find Hitch and Abe and—”
“Nope.” He turns back. “The ground rises in that direction. We’re heading that way.”
“But what about—”
“Hitch is a big boy. He can take care of himself.” Tucker starts walking back the way we’ve come. “And he made me promise to keep you safe, not save his ass.”
“I don’t care what he made you promise. I can’t leave him down here.”
Tucker stops. “He’ll be fine. He’ll
get out. And as soon as he does, he’ll be on his way back to New Orleans. I’m bettin’ the Big Man’s halfway there already.”
“You think?”
“He’ll keep his word. He’ll give Mrs. Hitch the antidote, and she’ll be back to her old tricks in no time.”
Which reminds me . . .
“She was involved in the experiments.” I watch Tucker’s reaction, wondering if his earlier comment about the FBI was meant to be about Stephanie, in particular. “Hitch found her signature on some paperwork. Did you know about that?”
“Nope, but I told you FBI agents can’t be trusted. Wouldn’t trust that boyfriend of yours, either.”
“You can’t talk about Hitch’s wife one minute and call him my boyfriend the next.”
“Why not?” Tucker asks. “I know lots of married men with girlfriends.”
“I’m not interested in getting between Hitch and Stephanie.”
“Might not be a Hitch and Stephanie. Either way, it sounds like he’s got plenty of shit to work through before you two have a conversation.”
“I don’t need to have a conversation!”
“Good, then start walking.” He cocks his head, urging me to follow. “We should make sure that Marcy woman set your other boyfriend loose the way she said she would.”
My right foot steps forward without my conscious permission. “She did. She had to.”
“And if she did, he’s probably going to do something stupid. Like come back out here looking for you. Best if we get to town and let him know you’re okay.”
I sigh and trot to catch up to him, matching his long strides. “Fine. Let me see if I’m getting a signal. I can try to call them both on the—”
“Your cell’s toast, Red. We were underwater. Remember?”
“It’ll be fine. It’s waterproof.” I pull my phone—which is indeed still functional—from my pocket.
“Waterproof.” Tucker snorts. “You paid that kind of money for a damned phone?”
“I work in the swamp. It makes sense.”
He grunts. “That’s more money than I spend on clothes in a year. Two years.”
