When he finally stepped from the shadows, the redhead was staring. It immediately threw his concentration. People normally stared when he made an entrance—what perplexed him was the fact that she wasn’t staring at him, but rather at some vague place off in the distance. He turned, he looked, but not only did he see no other competitively attractive men, he didn’t see anything worth looking at whatsoever.
This woman had some nerve.
“Who are you?” the brunette asked.
At least she had the good taste to notice him. Her taste in clothes, and those glasses, were another matter. He recalled his immediate objective and unleashed a slow smile.
“I’m Thad. I saw your fire.” He took a few steps forward.
“And?” she said.
And? And what?
“And I thought you might like some company.” He glanced at the redhead. Her stare continued as he waited for the brunette to say something stammering but inviting.
She stared, agape. “You’re just . . . wandering by. Out here.” Clearly she wasn’t good at talking to men. He bestowed his attention upon her again and strolled closer.
“Of course. It doesn’t have quite the charm of my luxury suite in Vegas, but I love an evening stroll; feeling the excitement of possibilities undiscovered, watching the way the moonlight caresses the night, the way the stars reflect in the eyes of—”
“What the hell is your problem?”
Thad scowled. “Ah, problem?”
“You’ve obviously got one, right? Either you’re all the way out here at night without any sort of appropriate gear—which makes you an idiot—or you’re pretending to be something you’re not and hoping to casually ease your way into our confidence—which, frankly, also makes you an idiot.”
Thad bristled a moment before his ego kicked in. The poor thing was clearly stammering. He gave her the smoldering gaze that once launched Calvin Klein’s Neurosis line, and then made his way toward an open spot next to her on the rock. “Or maybe I’m simply lonely and in need of the company of a beautiful, charming woman such as yourself.”
And suddenly she was off the rock and on her feet. “Charming? Right. Thalia?” She glanced at the redhead.
“Thalia? Is that her name?” He smiled, sitting down anyway. “What’s yours?” Thalia, he considered. Nice. He could actually be sincere when he told her later what a lovely name it was. Faking genuine sincerity was always more productive. Now why the heck was she still zoning out like that? “Is she okay?” he asked. Maybe she was drunk. Good for her. Good for both of them, really.
“She’s fine, I’m sure.”
The reality of the situation was that Thalia was busy musing. A particularly intriguing fiction idea had surfaced in the mind of a writer in Boston as he struggled with an unrelated work of nonfiction, and she wanted to at least give it a good nudge out of the gate before he lost interest and resumed work on an e-mail to his insurance company that detailed just how the alligator had not only gotten into his kitchen, but had done so wearing his bathrobe and his neighbor’s golf bag. (While it was an interesting story, Thalia didn’t truck in that flavor of nonfiction and considered his idle ponderings about an invasion of extra-dimensional alligator people to have more camp potential anyway. More to the point, the creation of such a story might have helped Thalia win a particular bet with Calliope, the specifics of which are tangential to this tale at best and will not be further remarked upon here.)
Tracy, for her own part, just assumed zoning out might possibly be how Muses slept.
Thad decided to simply ignore the redhead for now and focus on the brunette until Thalia came down enough to admire his presence. “Of course,” he went on. “Now where were we?” He really loved saying that. It always sounded so damn smooth.
“You were being an idiot, and I was wondering what kind.” She stood there, hands on her hips, refusing to sit beside him.
“Don’t be intimidated. We’re much alike, you and I.”
“Alike, huh? And how’s that?”
She’d picked up a long stick from somewhere, though he couldn’t imagine why. If he’d known she had some sort of stick fascination, he’d have brought one into the camp with him, but most women didn’t particularly like sticks—none that he knew of anyway. Most women preferred jewelry. In fact, jewelry (though he hadn’t thought to bring any of that either) was one of his favorite ways of getting a woman to take off her clothes. Thad suddenly noticed the symmetry and wondered if the brunette might take off the amulet if he gave her some clothes. It was worth a shot, he decided, and was nearly off with his shirt before it registered that she’d said something else.
“Come again?” He smiled.
“I said what the hell are you doing?”
He folded his stylish, white Havana shirt and offered it to her. She caught it with the end of her stick and flipped it back in his face. At first he thought it was just because of the dust and sweat that clung to it—and he supposed he couldn’t blame her there. But something about her glare and the way she continued to wield the stick managed to sow in his mind a seed of the idea that, just maybe, he wasn’t actually getting through to her. It stunned him so badly that he completely missed whatever it was that she said next.
Was she insane? Or was it really the shirt? Just to be sure, he tossed the offending garment into the fire, where it smoldered and caught fire. The air filled with smoke and the scent of roasting sweat and melting buttons. It failed to appease her.
“Make even one move to burn your pants and I’ll put this stick where the sun doesn’t shine, right?” she warned. “Now I’ll ask you this one more time, and then you’re going to get the hell out of here: Who are you? Who sent you?”
This really was not going well at all. “The . . . shirt was dirty,” he explained.
“Don’t care. Answer the question.”
His mother—with a glare that still burned in his memory—had forbidden him to tell anyone what he was really up to. A glance at the redhead gave no hope of help from that quarter. Thad couldn’t conceive just how it had happened, but he’d screwed things up. The wilderness obviously sabotaged his looks, and the brunette was off her rocker. There was one avenue left to him.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to drink?” he tried.
She just stared. Thickening smoke from the burning shirt drifted between them.
“Scotch and tonic? Wine? Beer? Even a little tequila, maybe?” He gave a wide, seductive grin. “Surely you must have brought something out here? You know, that smoke really brings out the passion in your eyes when—”
“Go away.”
“But—”
“I said go away! Now!”
“Oh, come on, woman!” he exploded. “Are you gay? Sterile? Frigid? What is it?”
Before he realized it, he’d stepped through the smoke and grabbed the stick with both hands. She tried to jerk it away, failed, and he pulled her closer with it as frustration boiled over. Screw this, all this garbage of running through the damn desert chasing after men and damn stupid women who didn’t know a good thing when it walked into their lap! He didn’t need this; he was Thad Freaking Winslow! He kept hold of the stick with one hand and lunged for the amulet with the other. The brunette yelled in protest, trying to shove him away and shouting for the others. He let go of the stick entirely, instead trying to force the amulet over her head with both hands. Her knee drove up hard into his thigh, but he yanked the amulet off in terribly unimaginative fashion and spun away with a shove that sent her flying into an empty tent.
The redhead continued to zone out. Thad started to run and then paused. He turned back to steal a kiss from Thalia’s lips before giving the brunette a smiling wave and then dashing off, shirtless, into the night.
Damn, but his feet ached.
Leif woke to Tracy’s touch and the sight of her gazing down at him. The touch was a kick to the shoulder and the gaze was decidedly agitated, but at least it was something.
“Get up!
Hurry! Follow me!”
Leif didn’t bother asking why. She practically dragged him out of the tent, and why was it so smoky out there?
“Look for a shirtless jackass with an amulet!”
“A shirtless—Wait, what? Someone stole the—”
“No repeating!” She tossed him a flashlight. “With me! Run!” She gave him no chance to argue. There was hardly time to shove his feet into his shoes before he was off after her and, apparently, some guy without a shirt.
“Why’s Thalia just sitting there? Who took the amulet?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tracy shot. “Because I just know everything, right?”
“Hey! Why’s he got his shirt off?”
Leif couldn’t quite make out Tracy’s answer, but he was pretty sure it was 67% profanity.
They sped over the dust and sagebrush. Leif’s flashlight showed him only what to dodge. Just ahead, Tracy’s wasn’t doing much more, yet she set a rapid pace. After a short bout of dodging cacti and leaping rocks, he spotted what she was making for: bouncing and flickering farther ahead was the faint purple glow of what was either the amulet or the nose of Rudolph’s flamboyant cousin.
“Slow down!” he called. “Pace yourself!”
“Just keep running!”
“I’m not a sprinter!”
If Tracy gave a response, he didn’t catch it. She piled on the speed and closed some of the distance to the bouncing purple light and its presumed shirtless carrier. Leif did his best to catch up. He’d run cross-country track when he was younger, but that was never about getting anywhere in a hurry. It suddenly occurred to him that he had already lost track of how to get back to the camp.
Anyone running at top speed across rough terrain in the dark ought to know never to look back. Some might call it common sense, but Leif learned the hard way. A fraction of a second after spotting the campfire, his foot struck a rock and he tumbled into the dirt. The flashlight (also, the skin of his palms and forearms) broke his fall and gave its last in the effort. Tracy’s light continued on ahead. The amulet bounced beyond it.
It was the distant, dancing glow of dozens of pairs of little green lights that got him back on his feet so quickly.
“Tracy! Turn it off! Turn off your light!” Her response was lost in the distance between them, but her light stayed on. Either she couldn’t quite hear him or she didn’t understand. He cupped his hands to his mouth and conveyed it all with one word. “Razorwings!”
Her light stopped. It went out. It belatedly occurred to Leif that now he had no way to find her in the dark. After that it occurred to him that he had no real way to protect her from razorwings. After that it occurred to him that if he kept letting things occur to him, he’d likely be falling on his face again, and so he just plain ran and watched the swarm get closer and closer to whomever had stolen the amulet.
Shirtless bastard.
The amulet’s glow vanished with a shout presumably issued from the lungs of the bastard in question. Leif hurried on as fast as he dared in the darkness, a collection of bodily impulses: feet making for the amulet’s last location, eyes watching in the dim light for anything that might trip him up again, mind trying to figure out why he was hurrying in the general direction of a swarm of razorwings, while also realizing that he still had no idea where Tracy was. Taking cover if she was smart, he decided, which left just him to get the amulet back, save the day, and get the girl.
And that, said his heart, is why we’re running toward a swarm of razorwings! His mind wasn’t entirely convinced, pointing out his heart’s rather questionable behavior lately, but his adrenal gland swiftly tackled his mind with the help of a few lower bits of anatomy and forced it into a game of Stop-Hitting-Yourself that kept it too occupied to do much else.
The swarm dived down ahead of him. It seemed to pass into the ground and rise back up a short distance away. A ravine of some sort, he decided, unless they could teleport short distances, and damn but wouldn’t that be cool?
Leif was getting close now. The swarm swiftly turned to make another pass over the area. His mind prevailed over his other parts and finally yelled at his feet to stop before he got too close. It was indeed a sort of ravine, maybe a dry riverbed. He was still too far off to tell its depth, but close enough now to realize he had no idea what to do next besides wait for them to go away. Yet they likely wouldn’t go away. If he knew anything about razorwings, the swarm would land and play and grab the amulet from the shirtless guy before—
The swarm launched into the sky in a spastic tumble of fur and wings that held no glowing purple object whatsoever. Leif recalled that he did not, in fact, know much about razorwings.
Before he could react further, a shadowed, Tracy-shaped figure to his left dashed to the ravine and plunged in with a vindictive shout. Leif followed, stopping short on the ravine’s edge. It was indeed a dry riverbed, maybe ten feet deep at most. In the moonlight he could see Tracy struggling with Mr. Shirtless as he attempted to climb up the rough dirt slope on the other side. He was halfway up, trying to kick Tracy’s grip off his ankle.
Leif hesitated, knowing even as he did so that he needed to do something. The shirtless thief yelled something to Tracy about having had her chance to get his pants off already. He might break free and away at any moment. Leif helplessly wondered why was he just standing there like—
Oh, hey.
“He who hesitates is lost” is repeated so often that it has passed from saying to cliché. It is not a truism so much as it is simply broader and catchier than “He who hesitates sometimes spots a more fordable spot in a dry riverbed because he has taken the time to look.” (It’s also likely that those who hesitate just haven’t gotten around to putting that saying into more common use, but one cannot be certain without extensive laboratory testing.) Leif discovered the truth of the latter saying at that particular moment. As such, the dash he made across the aforementioned fordable area to the others’ place of struggle was particularly surprising to the shirtless thief.
Leif skidded to a stop in front of him, kicking dirt in his eyes in a way Leif decided he should later claim to be intentional. The thief cursed and stumbled, too late shielding his eyes with the hand that also clutched the stolen amulet. Tracy, dislodged from his ankle moments before, leaped up and caught hold of him again. Leif made a grab for the amulet and got a handful of forearm and hair instead.
The shirtless man tried to shove him away. “Don’t touch the hair!”
“Drop the amulet!” Leif shot back.
“Ow! Let go, Leifferson!”
“Leifferwhat?”
“Leif!” came Tracy’s yell from below. God, he loved her voice.
“I’m here, Tracy!” he called back. “I got it! I got the amulet!” In fact he did not, but he was hoping to confuse the thief. Leif made another grab. The thief made another shove. The editor cut the details of another brief struggle. Leif slammed to his butt in the dirt, shocked to find that the amulet was suddenly his.
“Hey, I got it!” he cried. “Er, still!”
Unhappily, there was no instantly resounding cheer from Tracy. Leif struggled to his feet and consoled himself that she would indeed show appreciation once they got away from the thief still struggling with her to get out of the ravine.
Once they got away? How were they supposed to do that? The guy was bigger and probably stronger than both of them, and a faster runner unless any ravines got in his way. That realization―along with the question of exactly how he’d gotten himself into this situation in the first place―shot through Leif’s mind in the fraction of a second between standing back up and getting pounced on by the razorwings.
Were Leif more calm about things at that moment, he’d probably have: (a) sedately registered the fact that two razorwings had alighted on his back while another balanced on his forearm (and goodness, weren’t those claws sharp?); (b) pondered the irony that he apparently did know as much as he’d previously thought about razorwings; and (c) begun serenely concocting
an appropriate response to the situation. As it was, he mostly just shrieked like a psychotic monkey on fire while dropping the amulet and throwing himself to the ground in a surprisingly well-executed stop-drop-and-roll maneuver that sent him straight into the shirtless thief and knocked them both back into the ravine at Tracy’s feet. Leif was shocked, scared, battered, and humiliated, but at least the other guy broke his fall.
Also, it got the razorwings off him.
The amulet fell to the riverbed a few yards away and surprised the heck out of him, as amid the chaos he’d already forgotten about dropping it. At least a dozen razorwings sprang after it, crashing into each other like tiny, fuzzy linemen piling on a fumble.
Leif crouched, frozen. No way was he going to dive in after it, nor could he bear to let it go. The thief scrambled away into a narrow alcove in the side of the ravine wall while Leif brainstormed ways to get the amulet back. All of them unfortunately involved things that were impractical to carry around outside of a video game―what he wouldn’t give for a simple crowbar or some manner of physics gun! As if sensing his gaze, one of the beasts leaped out from the pack and yrowled at him in challenge.
“Leif!” Tracy yelled. She yanked him back by the shoulder and practically dragged him to cover inside the thief’s alcove. Leif could only scramble in and press between her and the shirtless man before the rest of the swarm dived down from above to join the others in a wild free-for-all for possession of the amulet.
None of the three people hunkered down in the alcove dared to move. Tracy spoke up pretty quickly, though.
“I think I know what kind of idiot you are!” she hissed.
“There’s different kinds?” asked Leif.
“Hey!” the other man shot, pointing across Leif to Tracy. “This wouldn’t’ve happened if you knew what’s good for you! We could be having fun right now!”
“Who is he, anyway?” Leif demanded.
Tracy pounded the top of the thief’s hand with her fist. Leif would’ve been happier about it if she hadn’t knocked the guy’s hand down into Leif’s stomach. “What kind of vacuous women do you hang around with who just mount any man that walks out of the dark, anyway?” she shot back.
Zeus is Dead Page 20
