Jacked Cat Jive

by Rhys Ford

  There was enough afternoon light for me to see Kerrick about ten feet down, his fingers bloodied and his arms caked with dirt. His pale face shone nearly as brightly as a star in the darkness as the sun caught on his sharp cheekbones and the glisten of sweat across his temple. He’d grabbed a jut of rock with his right hand while his left had a death grip on a sheaf of grasses still rooted at the lip of the crevasse. His weight was too much for the vegetation, and the grasses were slowly tearing, snapping, and pulling up from the ground.

  A hot wind picked up across the rolling hill and sent the grasses into a ruffling whisper. More dirt slid over the edge, creating a light shower of rocks and debris that tumbled over Kerrick’s shoulders. The fall had torn his shirt and ripped much of his right sleeve away from his arm. He was more muscular than I would’ve given him credit for, but Ryder said he’d been a commander in the military. That was decades ago, but his hidden strength would come in handy now because he was going to need every bit of it to hold on to the nearly smooth wall.

  “Don’t let go.” It seemed stupid to say that, but at least Kerrick would know we were going to get him out of there. Whenever I was hanging by my fingernails on a cliff, it made me feel a hell of a lot better knowing the people I’d been with planned on helping me out. And since Kerrick wasn’t one of my favorite people, he might have had a few doubts. “Just give me a couple of minutes.”

  The damned asshole had gone too far away from the transport, and from what little I remembered of the screen, the ground was riddled with empty spaces and deep gulches. We were way out of the green zone, but shit happens on a run, and sometimes a person’s got to learn to follow what they’re told… even if that person’s a Sidhe lord.

  “Shit, I just got the last one trained,” I muttered to myself. I scooted back a little when the ground began to crumble inward. Then a pocket opened up by my right hand and gave me a good idea on how wide the crenulation was beneath me. “Okay, we’ve got climbing gear—”

  “What do you want me to do?” A long shadow fell across me—a very Ryder-shaped shadow—and I glanced up, looking at his waist. “I can help Cari—”

  “No. Give me your belt first.” I held my hand out for the leather strap, hoping to give Kerrick a few seconds at the very least. I couldn’t see anything beyond the darkness, so I didn’t know if the cave below was a simple drop that he would survive or if he would plunge to his death and we would have no way to recover his body. “Then grab the flashlight out of the compartment in front of the passenger seat. We need to see how deep this thing is. Kerrick, can you see anything down there? Can you see the floor?”

  “Shifting is a problem.” Kerrick grunted between his words as he struggled to stay in place. “There aren’t enough holds on this rock face. I can’t get my feet wedged.”

  “Cari! Where the fuck is that gear?” I grabbed at the belt Ryder left by my side and inched closer to the clump of grasses Kerrick dangled from. I wove the leather in and out of the stalks, slowly tightened the belt, and drew them into a solid mass. Testing the belt’s integrity with a tug, I glanced back over my shoulder when Ryder returned with the flashlight held out for me to grab. “Put that down and back away. I don’t want to risk your weight on this ground. Go to the left over there and grab on to the belt. Hold it as tight as you can. We need to take some of the pressure off the root system, but if you feel it snap, you let go. I do not want both of you to die down there.”

  “Well, cousin, at least I know for sure where his loyalties lie,” Kerrick sniped bitterly from the shadows.

  “You should’ve known that before you decided to go spelunking without any equipment,” I shot back as Ryder got into place. “Save your complaining for when we get you out.”

  Cari jumped out of the transport, her arms filled with climbing gear and a coiled rope as well as a medical kit. She skidded to a stop at my feet, careful not to get too close to the crumbling edge. She set down the kit and began to uncoil the steel-and-nylon-thread rope. “What do you need me to do? I brought out the anchoring kit too.”

  “Tether one end to the transport with the mini winch while I take a look below. At the very least, clip it first. In case things go bad, I can do a loop and rappel down to grab him. He’s up against the cliff face, so at least we know there’s solid rock underneath, but we need to get anchored, and I want to see the bottom of that cavern.” I grabbed the flashlight, flicked it on, and turned the powerful beam down into the hole, careful not to catch Kerrick’s face and blind him. “Well, shit.”

  I didn’t like what I saw—or rather, what I didn’t see.

  The beam was a thick, bright, powerful concentration of light. Pity it didn’t penetrate the end of the cavern—not even the other side of the wall. Warning Kerrick to close his eyes, I flashed it over the cliff face, hoping to find a shelf or something thicker than what he was already hanging from, but it was nearly glass smooth in most places. He was damn lucky to have something to hold on to. I felt the grasses tug and almost panicked until I saw Ryder getting a firm grip on the belt, his heels wedged up against rocks embedded in the ground.

  “Here.” Cari knelt down by my feet, holding open the harness she’d attached to the rope. The other end was tethered to the transport with a mini winch anchored against its side and the climbing cable running through it, the lever locked down to hold it in place. “You sure you don’t want me to go down?”

  “No. Just help me get it going.” I sat up, shed my jacket, and tossed it aside. Then I looped my arms into the harness and tightened the straps while Cari fed the line through the back. “In case something goes wrong with that winch, you’re not going to have the strength to walk both of you up the side of the cliff. You’ve hooked the end of the cable to the transport, so if the winch does blow, we’ll at least be caught. Let me get him secured. Then, when I give the word, you and Ryder ratchet us up. You good with that, lordling?”

  “I am beginning to hear that as a term of endearment at this point,” Ryder hissed as he tightened his grip on the belt. “We’re going to have to hurry. This will not hold together once it comes out of the ground.”

  The harness was tight around my chest and cut a little into my ribs, but I didn’t have time to mess with it. A headlamp was going to have to provide me with enough light, because there wasn’t going to be anybody to hold the lantern for us. I just hoped the mini winch would be able to pull us both up.

  “I’m going to come down, Kerrick.” Peering into the chasm, I gauged where I could safely scale down the cliff and get to him if the grasses snapped. “Ryder, try to hold on as long as you can. I’m going to do a fast drop down and snag him. Once he’s secure, I’ll call out and you and Cari work that winch as quickly as you can without dislodging the cable. I’m going to try to walk up the wall, but I don’t know if that will help.”

  “Kai, I should go down—” Ryder began to protest, but I was already on my belly, inching backward toward the break.

  “Will you just do as I tell you? Just this once, don’t argue.” I glared up at him. “I gave you a job. Go do it.”

  I didn’t wait to hear him counter me. There were a lot of reasons for me to go down—the first was that I was stronger, and the second was that I didn’t trust Kerrick. His arrogance drove his every decision, endangering not only himself but now the entire team. This was my run, and I was responsible for all of their lives. I would be the one to yank him out of the gulch, just like I would be the one to tear a strip off of his ass once I got him onto solid ground.

  I hated the taste of dirt, and the grit falling into my mouth when I went down over the edge tasted of Unsidhe.

  There were times back before Dempsey when I would crawl around the underground block where my father imprisoned me, scraping at the corners of the walls until I got a teaspoon of dust on my hands. My fingernails were usually bloodied after the effort, torn from the constant digging, but the moisture made it easier to pack the dust into a damp ball.

  Stitched together by my
father’s spell, my flesh could take a much greater beating than most. No matter what Tanic did to me, my body survived it. He was clinical in his sadism, patient in his work to fully understand how flesh and bone could be shaped. I’d been created for pain, and he was more than happy to deliver it, including long, countless days without sunlight or food. I had no concept of time. My life was marked off by those tiny amounts of dirt held together by my own blood.

  I knew the taste of this dirt. All too well.

  The headlamp gave me more light than I expected, especially when I dropped below the direct sunlight that angled into the crevasse. Dusk wasn’t too far away, maybe a couple of hours, and the hills around the prairies would eat into the horizon and cast long shadows.

  If the ground were more stable and I had more time, I would’ve loved to get lost in the sunset hues of the rock formations. But instead I was focused on the now-trembling Kerrick, a few yards below me. His hand was bloodied from gripping the sharp grasses, and a long streak of red down a good length of the stalks told me he’d had a better hold of the clump farther up but was losing his grip. His shoulders shook with the effort of keeping himself steady, his muscles locked in a fierce battle of fatigue and desperation.

  I began to drop more quickly as I fed the cable out and swung closer to him, taking little hops across the scalloped orange cliff face. The mottled rock was more rippled a few feet from Kerrick’s position, and if I could get him into a clutch hold on my back, I probably could get back to the spot and use the ridges to support us on our way up.

  “Faster. I can’t hold on much longer, chimera,” Kerrick spat angrily, falling into his native tongue. “Hurry.”

  “Almost there.” I took another leap, careful not to get too close. I did another quick check of his position and crept along the cliff toward his left side. “I’m going to have to go slowly for the next few inches so I don’t knock you off of the wall. I’m going to get right up against you, but let me get locked into place. I want you to grab me with your left hand on my farthest shoulder. Work your arm through the harness strap and grab my chest before you hook your leg around my hip. You got that?”

  “Yes.” He was panting, panic pulling a wildness through his teal-and-opal eyes. Sweat and blood matted Kerrick’s hair and stuck it flat against his skull, and the scent of his suppressed terror rolled in waves off his skin. I had to give him credit for gritting his teeth and riding out his fears. His limbs were struggling with the effort of holding up his entire body weight with only a few inches of bone and skin to anchor him. “I’m losing my hold on the grass.”

  My attention flicked up, and I saw the edge of his palm touching the seed husks at the end of the stalks. I moved as quickly as I could and bit down the roll of bile that curled up my throat when I pressed against Kerrick. There could be very little room between us when he made the transfer, but something had changed in our chemistry over the last few days. Maybe it was my increased connection with Ryder or Kerrick’s challenge for the Southern Rise Court, but the harmonic longing I’d felt for him when I first met him was gone, replaced by my familiar, ingrained revulsion at another elfin touching me.

  It was good from a psychological standpoint, but pretty shitty for trying to save somebody.

  “Go slowly. And whatever you do, don’t wrap your arm around my throat.” There wasn’t anywhere for my right foot to hitch into, but my legs were long enough for my left to find purchase on one of the faint folds nearby. I cinched the cable into place, locking myself into position, and then motioned Kerrick over with a nod. “There’s a canvas loop dangling on either side of the harness. Try to get at least your left calf into the one by my hip and then move over.”

  “I’m going to let go and try to get my arm under that strap. I can’t get my hand open.” His sweat was slick across his flesh when I dropped a little below him to make it easier for him to grab on. His left hand resembled a claw, his fingers frozen in their hooked position. “It’s going to put all of my weight on the grasses.”

  “I know, but it was too risky to come down the right side. The ground there is worse.” I braced myself for his weight. “Just go slowly.”

  I angled my hips so I was easier for him to get to. Rock climbing wasn’t something I did on a day-to-day basis, but I’d done my share over the years—never on something this slick and not with as deep of a drop. Most of the time I was geared up for the sharp-glass jaggedness of glistening black lava fields, where climbing required a pair of thick gloves and one eye out for dragons who viewed dangling Stalkers as a delectable appetizer before the main course.

  His weight dragged me down, and I clenched in tightly and held my position as Kerrick slid his leg through the strap. He had just gotten his knee in when the grasses snapped, and he flailed as he strained to hook his arm through the harness. The limb was loose and unresponsive, refusing to unfold out of the bent position he’d held it in while we’d scrambled to reach him. I did the only thing I could do. I turned, slamming his knee into the cliff, rolled him over to wedge him against the wall, and left my arms free to wrap around his waist.

  Unfortunately, this left us swinging loose against the sheer rock.

  Kerrick’s breath was hot and sour with fear. He’d probably thrown up at some point, and I didn’t blame him. Ryder was shouting something above us, but I couldn’t make out anything through the pounding of my pulse in my ears. We’d jostled the ground at the edge of the crevasse enough to send a shower of rocks and dirt down on us, and the patter of stones striking the cliff reverberated in the cavernous silence. Moments later it all disappeared into the void below us. I heard nothing strike a floor or water. But then I heard a soft rumble.

  “What is that?” Kerrick got out through his panicked breathing.

  “Doesn’t matter. I need you to get into the back of the harness so we can get out of here.” I kicked at the wall and used my momentum to turn us back around but kept a firm grip on Kerrick’s right leg. “I need you on my back. I won’t be able to hold on to you and climb up at the same time.”

  His pants were torn, exposing his thigh, and I caught a glimpse of a scarring pattern running across his hip and down toward his knee—long delicate fronds spreading out of a larger keloid. It was old enough to have lost most of its pinkness, but it was deep enough to weaken Kerrick’s leg. Bruises were already beginning to form from the strain of holding up his weight, and his torn muscles were hot wherever I touched him. The shaking was back in his limbs as the adrenaline that pumped through him during the fall now left him weak as it eased away.

  He worked to get himself in place, but it was the longest three minutes of our lives.

  Then I heard the rumble again, closer this time. The sky above us was still blue, but flash storms were common in the desert. I needed to get us out of the gulch if there were rains rolling toward us, or the mud and the wet rock would make it too difficult for us to get over the edge of the crevasse.

  “Okay, I believe I’m in as far as I can get.” Kerrick looped his left arm over my chest, but his right dangled down my side, hooked through one of the secondary straps by my waist. “I can’t lift my arm above my shoulder. It’s tingling.”

  “Probably popped it out. I think it’ll be okay. We’ll get you set back into place once we’re above ground.” I tilted my head back and shouted for Ryder and Cari to pull us up. Then I eased my knees into a bending position and got my feet against the wall. Pushing against the rock, I used the tension in the rope to angle us out and took a step when the winch jerked us upward. “Just hang on.”

  The ascent was painful and slow. The rope would yank up an inch and then stall for a few seconds. Thinking the winch was stuck, I tried to climb the wall, but Kerrick’s dead weight on my back slowed me down. My thighs ached with the effort of climbing up the cliff, and the twenty feet I’d rappelled down in seconds now seemed like miles.

  “Ryder! What’s the problem?” I shouted when the cable jerked us to the right and I nearly lost my hold. “Wha
t the hell is happening?”

  This time the low growling sound rolled over us, and I felt something burning and wet strike my cheek. Kerrick sucked in a quick breath and hissed when he leaned his head back. The motion pulled us farther away from the cliff, and I could see what was now waiting for us at the edge of the crevasse.

  The cliff face smoked where the spit hit it, and the acidic saliva pocked and scored the rock. I couldn’t see it clearly, not with the sun behind it, but its outline was fairly horrific. It seemed mostly ursine in shape, but it was rough skinned, and patches of bristly fur poked out at odd places. It sniffed at the air with a long snout, and then its glowing red eyes tracked down the cliff face and found us easily. Its stench reached us a moment later—a perfume of sewage and rotted eggs carried down with another shower of pebbles and dirt dislodged by its massive claws.

  “Ainmhi dubh,” Kerrick spat. “This looks like one of your brothers has come to find us.”

  “Remind me again why I came down here to get you?” I said through gritted teeth. The cable jerked again and lurched us up a few inches. Then the foul black dog howled with an eerie rattling screech strident enough to send a shock wave of pain through my eardrums. I wrapped my hands around the cable and warned Kerrick, “I’m going to pull us up. If you can, press against the rock wall to ease some of your weight from my back. I’ll have to do this in stages. I think they put the winch on auto.”

  We went up another six inches, and the ainmhi dubh clawed at the edge of the break in the ground. The sounds of fighting reached me—Cari shouting for Ryder to get down and then the unmistakable boom of a shotgun. The ripple of sound startled a flock of small birds, and the tiny swarm swept overhead and blocked out the sun for a brief moment. The black dog above us didn’t flinch. It dug its claws into the ground as though we were rabbits down a hole it could excavate.