Everyone was looking for the guy except me. Hundreds of years? Knife couldn’t mean that literally, could he? “That’s an exaggeration, right? I know Wyrd Blood live longer, but hundreds?”
“That might be a drop in the bucket. The stronger you are, the longer you last.” Knife pointed to Burn. “Hell, Burn’s eighty and he doesn’t look older than thirty.”
“Eighty?” I nearly screeched.
“Hey? Nice outing me, douchebag,” Burn said. “And I’m only seventy-five.”
Knife laughed, oblivious to the insult before turning to Ryker. “Do you tell her anything, or do you like to keep them young and stupid?”
“Hey!” I said, whacking Knife’s arm. “He’s not keeping me anything.”
“Sorry. That was meant for him,” Knife said.
“I thought you liked stupid, Knife? How would you ever get laid otherwise?” Ryker asked.
I put some distance between the two of them and me. I could see this might continue for a while, and I had a bigger picture to think on. I’d known I’d live longer. I’d seen Ryker barter away years like he was tossing popcorn. But if Burn was seventy-five and he wasn’t nearly as strong as Ryker, Knife, or I, how long would I live?
“That him?” Ryker asked, pointing.
We all swung in that direction as a dot appeared on the horizon.
Knife took a few steps closer and squinted. “Yeah, that’s him. Let me approach him alone. If you guys spook him, we might not find him for a year.”
We hung back as Knife took a few steps forward. The dot stopped walking.
“Switch, it’s me,” Knife yelled. “If you take off, I swear, I’ll kill you right now.”
Even without knowing the guy, I thought there might’ve been a better approach. The dot shrank, agreeing with me.
“Switch, get over here,” Knife yelled. “How long have I been saving your ass?”
The dot grew slightly larger until I could make out the man. Switch looked like he hadn’t run a comb through his hair in five years. Tangles of burnished gold curls hung around his shoulders, with an occasional twig adorning the locks. He had the kind of eyes that sloped down instead of up and wasn’t a person you’d forget seeing, or smelling, since we were unfortunate enough to be downwind. But he could get me to Cacoy, so he was my favorite man right now.
Switch stopped fifteen feet from us, out of reach of a solid lunge. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“We need a lift to Cacoy,” Knife said.
“Who needs to go?” Switch asked, looking at our group.
“Her and—him.” Knife jerked his head toward Ryker. His tone would’ve made a lemon taste smooth.
“Two? I can only do one at a time. It’s a long jump.” Switch crossed his arms and took another step back, as if expecting someone to hurt him for giving the wrong answer.
“I’ll go alone,” Ryker and I said at the same time.
I edged closer to Switch. “This is my thing. I need it more.”
Ryker matched my steps. “You don’t know where to go or who to deal with.”
“How well do you know Cacoy?” I put my hands to my hips. It certainly hadn’t sounded like a lot, unless he was holding back—again. Wouldn’t that be a surprise. Ryker keeping secrets?
He crossed his arms and angled his head down. “I can get in to the place I need to go.”
“I’m getting a bean. How much experience do I need?”
Knife stepped almost in between us. “Not that I don’t enjoy the turmoil and all, but maybe you can juice Switch? You do that, right?”
“Would it work on him?” I glanced at Switch, who had taken several more steps away.
“Hang on a second. I’m not getting juiced,” Switch said, now jogging backward.
They should’ve called this guy Twitch with the way he rattled so easy. No wonder he didn’t live within the walls of Dorley.
He wouldn’t have lasted a day in the Ruins. Nervous wrecks never fared well. If you couldn’t at least act calm, people thought you were up to something. Maybe you could get away with it once in a while, but not for long. More often than not, they thought you were going to screw them over and your guilty conscience was making you crack. The last thing you wanted to happen in the Ruins was have someone think you were plotting against them. It was the surest way to end up dead.
And if Switch left, I was going to be dead. Back to square one, trying to cross the Great Ocean on a trip that would take weeks for a bean that might not work and stone that might not be there.
Knife held out his hand. “Switch, it’s nothing bad. One of the things she can do is pump magic into other people. That’s all juicing means.”
So much for Knife’s rapport with his people. Switch took another step back, and we were getting very close to losing him. I knew the look in his eyes. The guys wouldn’t understand, but I did. I’d had that look. At some point, somehow, Switch had been thoroughly caught, used, and abused.
Knife was about to take another step forward when I put my arm out in front of him. “Stop. Give him room.”
Switch shot his attention from the guys to me, as if I were the threat.
“I can show you what juicing means on someone else. I won’t hurt you.”
He tilted his chin up and surveyed the group. “On who?”
I wasn’t going to pick Ryker, that was for sure. I didn’t want to use Knife, either. Sneak might be a hard demonstration.
“Burn.” I reached, dragging him forward. I’d juiced Burn before and knew what we’d get. “Give me your best flame.”
He rolled back his sleeve, held his hand upward, and produced a moderate-sized torch. It was impressive enough, but nothing compared to what we could do together.
I grabbed his arm and pretended I was cupping a worm. Flames shot out at least fifty feet up, so strong I could feel the burning heat on my face.
I let go and turned back to Switch. “That’s all juicing is. I lend you some of my magic.”
He didn’t say anything as the information sank in. It was another nail-biting minute before he said, “Okay. I think I can do that. What do you pay?”
“You get to keep running behind my walls at the sign of trouble,” Knife said.
Ryker reached into his pocket and tossed something at Switch.
He caught it midair and held it up. The stone glinted brighter than a thousand diamonds in the sun. I’d heard of these, but I’d never seen one. It couldn’t be, though. You didn’t toss those away so easily.
Switch was squinting as he stared, his mouth open. “Is this…”
“Dragonstone. It’s yours,” Ryker said.
Holy magic, it was one. Dragonstone was mined from the caves where dragons nested. They would heat caverns with their fire, over and over again. They weren’t that rare; they were that hard to get. You didn’t go near a dragon lair. The life expectancy of a Dragonstone miner was twenty.
Knife cleared his throat, leaning toward Ryker. “How many of those you got lying around?”
“A few,” Ryker said.
Switch pocketed the stone, smiling. “When you want to leave?”
Ryker unfolded a piece of paper and pointed to a spot. “We need to be here.”
Switch looked it over and nodded, patting the outside of his pocket, making sure his stone was safe. “I’ll try. If she’s not strong enough, we might end up in the ocean. If that happens, I’m leaving you there.”
Ryker glanced at me. I was expecting him to ask me how I felt. He didn’t. “Don’t worry about that. She’ll give you enough. We’ll be ready in five minutes. We’ve got to change.”
I looked down at my leathers and ran a hand over my cotton shirt. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean. Clean-ish? It wasn’t like I had all day to scrub my clothes.
I glanced up, and Ryker was already on his way back to the chugger. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“We need to blend.” Ryker climbed into the back, grabbed a bag, and began digging through it. �
��Mushroom Man’s having a party.”
“How do you know?”
“Word is he has a party every night.” He pulled out a piece of silver fabric and gave it to me.
“I thought we were going to sneak in?”
“A lot easier to walk in the front door. Plus, I think he’ll hand over the bean willingly. It’s the stone that will be the problem.”
“What’s this?” I asked. The fabric shimmied in front of me and sort of slinked, draping around my hand.
“A dress Dezz lent you.”
I watched as he pulled out more items from his bag that looked like a white shirt for him.
I looked down again. “You don’t think I could go with what I’m wearing?”
“If you want to broadcast that you’re a killer, then sure, that’s a great look.” He stood at the edge of the chugger and let his eyes hammer home his point.
“What about my hair, then? My hair isn’t going to blend.” I held up a hand to the locks that were somewhere in between curls and a wave. If he thought my outfit wasn’t good, he’d certainly have an issue with the mop on my head.
“What about it?”
I leaned forward an inch, wondering if he had bad vision. “It’s a mess?” I ruffled it with my fingers in case he still didn’t get it.
He shook his head. “It looks good like that.” He pointed to the part I’d mussed. “I like what you’re doing there.”
I looked like I’d rolled around on the ground for an hour, but somehow that wasn’t an issue.
Wait. Maybe I did have an out. I held the dress back to him. “I can’t wear it. I only have boots. I’ll really stick out with that thing on with boots.”
“No, you have sandals.” He dug into the bag and handed them to me. “She thought you should wear some sort of heel with that dress, but I wanted to make sure you had something more practical in case we need to run.”
Because the silver slinky dress was going to work out really well in a chase?
He tossed the sandals down to me and then another small bag. “She said you might need some of this girlie stuff to get ready.”
I looked at the scrap of fabric dangling from my fingers before trudging behind the chugger. The more I looked, the worse I felt.
“If we’re going to walk in and ask him to give us the bean, why do I have to wear this? Why do we need to blend?” I yelled loud enough that he could hear me on the other side.
“Because we’ll be able to move around the place afterward without drawing more attention.”
Magic, fuck, bugger, dammit. He was right. It made good sense, but I hated it. I stalled for another second before I pulled my clothes off in haste. I needed to get this over as fast as I could and then forget what I had on.
“You almost done?” he called.
My shirt was off and the dress was over my head. I didn’t have to worry about Dezz being taller, as the dress barely covered my thighs. That didn’t bother me as much as the way it exposed my back with the way the fabric draped to nearly my waist.
“There’s no back on this thing?”
“Won’t your hair cover it?” he asked.
It would, but then what would I do about the front? I tried splitting my hair, half hanging in the front and half in the back. It wasn’t reliable that way. It was going to come down to either my chest hanging out or my markings. My markings won.
“Bugs,” Ryker said, his patience running thin.
That man was getting as bad as me.
“I’m coming.” I slid on the sandals with long strings attached and tied them around my ankles. They might as well have given me heels for as combat-ready as I’d be.
“Bugs!” he yelled.
“I said I’m coming!” I took a step and stopped. I took another step but stalled out again right at the corner of the chugger. This was stupid. It was a dress. It was flesh. So what?
I marched out, keeping my head high and pretending I didn’t look like a fool.
“Don’t you dare say anything,” I told Ryker as I walked around the chugger.
He didn’t say a word, but he looked as if he’d never seen me naked before.
I crossed my arms and walked back toward the rest of the guys, hoping they’d act normal. They didn’t.
“Stop staring.”
They all jerked their gazes away.
I stopped in front of Switch, who was the only one not acting weird.
“You look very pretty,” he said, his eyes glued to my face. It was most unnatural, as if he were afraid to unglue them and look at the rest of me again.
“Thank you,” I replied softly, hoping no one else was paying attention.
Ryker joined us. At least he wasn’t acting weird anymore. He’d only seen thousands of naked bodies, though. I’d ask him how many, but he probably couldn’t count that high. No one could.
Switch shook out his hands and rolled his shoulders. He leaned his head back, cracking it from side to side. This went on for long enough to make me nervous but shy of calling it quits.
There would be no quitting. I needed that bean. A bumpy ride wouldn’t be the end of the world, and Ryker could swim. Hopefully I’d juice Switch enough to get us close to dry land and Ryker could haul us to shore.
Switch shook out his fingers and then extended a hand to Ryker and I. “Normally I’d hold both hands of the one person traveling to create a loop. You two will have to hold and we’ll see if we can do this.”
I took Switch’s hand and then grabbed Ryker’s to complete the loop, hoping no one noticed my sweating palms. “You want to do a little hop first? Maybe just ten feet away to see if it’ll work?”
“Can’t, not unless you want to go tomorrow. Distance isn’t the problem so much as taking off.” Switch glanced at Ryker and then turned to me, his eyes rounder than they’d just been. “This is a lot of extra weight for me.”
“So, if you get us out of here, we’ll have a good chance of making it the whole way?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, it doesn’t work the way you’re thinking. Everyone imagines it’s like flying or something. It’s not. We’re here. Then we’re there. Or we’re not there, depending on how it goes.” He wiggled his shoulders again. “But then we’ll still be there, wherever there is.”
“We’ve got it,” Ryker said. “Let’s go.
Switch raised the hand that was holding mine. “Juice me up,” he said, as if it were an everyday thing.
28
Switch was right. There was no flying or swishing. No floating, either. We were in one place and then we were in another without any clue how it happened.
We’d gone from early afternoon light to night. Two moons waning in the sky, but one a little further along than the other and surrounded by trees. The forest was dense and muggy, and the leaves were fat and big. Bugs were everywhere, buzzing around and trying to get a bite. I’d heard of places like this—the tropics, they’d called them. Recently I’d seen pictures in some of the books I’d been going through.
“How long do you need?” Switch asked. “As long as she can keep juicing me, I can do it whenever you need.”
“Two hours, exactly. Do you have the watch Burn gave you?” Ryker pulled one out of his pocket and looked at the dial.
Switch nodded, pulling his out and comparing it to Ryker’s.
“Will you be waiting here?” I asked.
He swatted a hand over a bug that landed on his arm. “No, but I’ll be on time.”
Switch ducked as a bug took aim for his face and disappeared before it could make another flyby.
Ryker pointed in the distance. “You see that light? That’s where we’re going. Once we get to the mushrooms, he’ll know we’re here. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t want him to overhear. They’ll relay that information back to him.”
“Mushrooms?”
He tilted his chin down. “Asks the girl who talks to worms.”
I shrugged but kept my mouth shut. He had a point.
“So we’re goin
g to walk in and ask him for the bean?”
“Yes. Then we blend in and rob the stone.”
“He’s going to let us waltz up and take it?”
“He’s not going to think anyone can.”
“Why?”
“Because before you, no one could.”
“How were you going to come on your own?”
“I was going to get the bean. I wouldn’t have been able to get the stone.”
He kept walking as I faltered. He was going to get the bean? Only the bean? He was going to come here and leave the stone, the thing he wanted the most?
He looked over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“I’m in sandals, remember?” I asked as I caught up to him.
We walked for a good ten minutes before we came to a road with a large path leading off it. There was a building at the end of the path that rivaled any castle I’d seen in its sprawl. That wasn’t the thing that caught my eye. Everywhere in view, there were mushrooms growing. Some seemed to tower as large as the house, and others were small and clustered.
As we walked down the path, a light dusting flowed from the undersides. Scents floated in the air, some musky, some floral. I grabbed Ryker’s hand, and he looked down. I made an exaggerated inflation of my chest. He breathed deeply in response, signaling that the air was fine. I kept breathing, but only because I had to.
Torches of gold lit the path and set the stone of the building to shimmering. Nothing about this place looked like it would exist in the world I’d known. I’d never seen a place with such obvious wealth.
There were people standing around in small clusters with fine glasses filled with sparkling liquids on the front patio, and the buzz of magic was in the air. Markings were on full display, from legs to arms. Still, my hand went to my hair, making sure it hung down my back.
No one stopped us as we strolled among them, as if they accepted us as their kind. They continued to laugh and converse, no idea we were the enemy.
There were more people inside, all dressed decadently and drinking from their glasses. Ryker’s arm moved to circle my waist as we navigated through the rooms. Servants dressed in scraps of fabric held together by strings walked around with trays of food and yet more drinks, ready to replenish.
Full Blood (Wyrd Blood Book 2) Page 18
