“You spent my money, and then you told her it was because it wasn’t safe,” I lisped. “You piece of shit. You lied to her.”
Rex’s ears flattened. He dropped his forequarters to the ground. He was getting ready to offer submission by rolling on his side and showing me his belly. It’s an instinct buried deep in every Shifter, even those born in S-Town. But that wasn’t going to save him today.
I let a liquid growl trickle out of my jaws as I crept closer to him, holding his eyes, bunching my haunches to spring—
—and instead, flicked out one paw and swatted him on the side of the head. Unprepared, he flinched sideways.
I laughed.
“Jesus, Mike, don’t hurt me.”
“Are you good for anything except rolling over? When we first met, you could at least fight.”
Rex let out a despairing roar. He batted at me with a forepaw, so slowly that I didn’t even have to dodge.
“Lame, Rex. Lame, lame.”
“I don’t want to kill anyone no more.” He backed away and I followed. We circled on the path, snarling.
Lucy had stopped yelling at me. Peripheral vision found her standing with her arm around Mia. Wolves on the path behind her.
Rex’s gaze broke away. I closed in for the first grapple—
—and someone thumped into my side, knocking me away from Rex.
I spun to face my new enemy. A gray wolf danced between me and Rex.
“It was me, sir! I was the one who withdrew the money!”
Robbie.
“Don’t punish him, sir. It was me—”
I launched myself at the young wolf. He dived sideways and spun to snap at my flank. Not for nothing had Robbie earned a rep in the ripper scene. He blurred around me, biting at my flanks and sides. He was heavier than me, too, a real monster of a Canis lupus. One of my forepaws caught him a smashing blow on the head, but he shook it off. He was young, healthy, energetic, unaccustomed to restraining himself … and I had just come off two weeks of freefall, and I’d been awake for almost 24 hours at this point.
All I had going for me was experience. I felt my endurance rapidly ebbing, and knew I had to end this fast. I feinted at his side, deliberately leaving my throat open. I knew he’d lunge at it. Wolves always do. When he did, I threw all my remaining energy into a standing jump. He couldn’t check his momentum in time. I grappled him with my powerful forelegs, pinning him down, and drove my knife-like canines into the sides of his neck.
He went limp. His eyes rolled, all too human in the wolf’s head, as he crumpled to the ground. I stood over him, twisting my neck from side to side, shaking him like a blanket. The tips of my fangs had barely broken the skin, but my powerful neck muscles were capable of driving them into his neck with lethal force. I’d only have to close my jaws to sever his spine and jugular.
“Go on. I deserve it,” he choked.
Through the killing mist of anger in my mind, I heard a child crying. I released Robbie, kicked him away, let out a yowling roar.
Mia ran across the torn, bloodied ground to her father. She’d been crying. Then, Lucy?
I found my daughter perching on the branch of an upside-down tree about ten feet off the ground. When she saw me looking, she grinned and patted her hands together in silent applause.
In the undergrowth off the trail, other bright eyes watched: Alec’s wolves, drawn by the noise of fighting. In the style of their taciturn leader, they made no comment.
Pain in my flanks claimed my attention. I twisted my head around and sniffed the scratches Robbie had left in my hide. He was bleeding, too, from a deep gash on his haunch. I didn’t remember making it.
Rex padded over to Robbie, butted him with his head, and began to lick his wound, a gesture of friendship.
“So was this the plan all along?” I said.
“No,” Robbie said. “I hate this place.”
“Aw, it ain’t that bad,” Rex said in between licks.
“Grass belongs on a rugby pitch.”
“I hear ya. But you can’t deny it’s been good for Kit. He ain’t had one episode since we been here.”
“Oh boy!” I recognized the shrill voice of Kit himself. He trotted along the path with Irene, outdistancing her in his hurry to get to me. “That’s a sabertooth tiger! S. fatalis, also known as Smilodon! Wow.” He started patting and fondling me without asking. I didn’t bristle, knowing that it simply would not occur to him to ask before touching. “Smilodons have comparatively weak bites,” he informed me. “They drive their sabers into the flesh with their powerful neck muscles.”
“I know,” I said.
“Yow,” Irene said, inspecting the bite marks I had left on Robbie’s neck. She thought I had only fought Robbie. That would be fine with her, I guessed. Let someone else take the blame.
“But your coat is wrong. It’s supposed to be blotched,” Kit said. I’m not sure he actually got that the sabertooth tiger was his mom’s boss.
“There’s no consensus,” I said. “The nice thing about an extinct animal is that no one can say you got it wrong.”
“I thought you aren’t allowed to pick extinct animals.”
“This isn’t San Damiano. On Ponce de Leon, you can pick whatever animal you like.”
“I’m going to be an orca,” Lucy said, from her tree branch.
“An orca?! Absolutely not.”
“I was on the Orca team at camp. I was the best at diving.”
I gently pushed Kit away, and then stood up on my hind legs and Shifted back from the head down, without losing my footing. The watching wolves stared in awe. It looked impressive, but it used up the last of my strength. The fight with Robbie had drained me. My adrenals were already mangled from the transition back to PdL time. Now, exhaustion hit me like a railgun slug. I hid it, as you do, and stepped into my trousers.
“Question,” I said to Irene.
“What?” she said warily.
“What did the bears have that was worth half a million of my money?”
She looked around, taking in our audience. “Don’t make me tell you.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “I don’t want to lose your respect.”
“You already did,” I said.
Lucy jumped down from her tree. She collected a bottle that one of the wolves was carrying around its neck, St. Bernard style, and brought it to me. I drank. Ice-cold electrolytes and amino acids. “I have a really great new water bottle for you,” I said, acting like I had forgotten Irene was there. “I’ll give it to you later.”
“I’ll get the money back,” Irene said. “I swear it on—on my kids’ lives. Every single GC—”
“I’ll get it back myself.” The money mattered, yes, but what mattered more was that she and Rex had shattered my trust in them. “If they already spent it, I’ll make them sell their houses and their fucking cars. That’s not the problem. I want to know why you stole from me.”
Irene shook her head. There was a look of finality in her blue eyes. “I’ve already lost your trust. Let me at least keep my pride.”
She took her children by the hands and walked away. The wolves flattened their ears and growled, but let her go.
33
“It was blackmail,” I said to Dolph. “The bears have some kind of dirt on her. Maybe Rex as well. They refused to say what.” We were sitting on the riverbank in the warm, windless evening. Bugs shimmered over the water, inadequately repelled by the pungent cream Alec had given us to slather on exposed skin. The roots of the upside-down trees plunged into the water like the pipes of an organ. At their bases, where they diverged from the trunks, they formed woody tangles broad enough to sit on. Dolph had taken his biker jacket off and hung it over a root. I dragged on my cigarette, eyes smarting.
I had taken a short nap, and my brain was working better than it had earlier. I had forgiven Robbie. He didn’t know much of anything. Rex had told him to withdraw the money, and he had been unable to say no to his friend and mentor. But more importantly, R
obbie had stepped up and owned his misdeeds, whereas Irene and Rex continued to duck and weave.
Dolph took off his boots. He vaulted onto a thick root, arms outstretched, and balanced out over the water. “So Irene knew the bears had dirt on her,” he said, “and yet she still went ahead and framed Parsec for smuggling. That was pretty stupid.”
“She did it to keep me out of jail,” I said gloomily.
“She must have known he’d retaliate.”
That was inarguable. But I knew how Irene thought. “Guess she figured she would handle that when the time came. In the end, she wasn’t here, and Rex handled it … by stealing my money.”
Dolph stepped from one root to another like a dancer. It reminded me of the night I’d caught him dancing by himself on Yesanyase Skont. The memory gave me a chill. “Money isn’t everything.”
“It is if you don’t got any. I’m gonna have to move on the auction of the St. Clare.” I felt for my phone, figuring to get that started right away, then remembered there was no signal up here. “Can you spot me a couple K in the meantime? I hate to ask.”
“Fuck you, no, you can’t have my money.”
“Bastard.”
“I’ll give you ten, man. Twenty. Whatever. But we’re gonna get that half a mil back.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, staring mindlessly into the black water beneath the tree roots. My motivation was at a low ebb. It was this place. Sitting out in nature, breathing fresh air and looking at the sunset, has a way of slowing you down and taking the edge off. I dragged ruefully on my cigarette. I liked my edge, dammit.
“Well, I got good news,” Dolph said.
“Really?”
“Customs came out to our freight terminal ‘bout ten minutes after you left.”
“What? Shit!”
“They searched the ship. Looked in the cable traces, in the engineering crawlspaces, in the lockers, in the freaking water tanks. They pulled the hangar apart, too.”
“What were they looking for?”
“Didn’t say.”
“How is this good news?”
Dolph grinned. “They didn’t find anything. Like I told them, there wasn’t anything to find. They went away looking pissed as fuck.”
“Ha,” I said. “Good thing I took that glacier rak bottle.” Suddenly I stiffened. Down in the water, something blue and shiny reared up among the roots. Adrenaline tingled through me to the roots of my hair. Timmy Akhatli, reaching up from his watery grave, reaching up to drag me under … Slowly, not taking my eyes off the blue protuberance, I moved my hand towards the gun in my waistband.
The blue thing set off into the stream, making ripples like a tiny boat.
I breathed out. “Fuck, that gave me a start. Just a water snake. Hope there aren’t any of those at the swimming hole.”
“They got fences would keep those out.” Dolph balanced back to land and put his boots on.
Roused from my torpor, I stood up. “OK. The bears. Rex did tell me one thing. The mastermind of this blackmail scheme, although I’m sure he wasn’t acting alone, was Nunak.”
“That little albino mutt?”
“The same. So our first step is to find him and have a chat with him.”
“What you meant to say is, find him and kick the stuffing out of him.” Dolph winked.
We walked back towards the camp, swatting bugs. The place on the path where Robbie and I fought had already been trampled flat by lupine and human feet. Children called to each other like birds in the twilight. Firelight splashed the ground outside the great hall, as I couldn’t help thinking of it. I stifled a pang of nostalgia. “Might be easier to find the Kodiaks and kick the stuffing out of them.”
“Either way, first step is to find them. Come up to the house,” Dolph said. “Alec’s got a satellite connection.”
*
Alec’s house was spacious, with sliding doors that drew in any breath of wind. Springy moss-green floors and the smell of resin reminded me of my parents’ home on San Damiano. Alec and his wife, Laura, even had a Marian shrine in their family room. Lit candles flanked a foot-high statue of Our Lady of Inviolate Refuge, worked in the dell’ Antonio style familiar from back home.
Dolph explained to Alec what we wanted. As ever, Alec’s face displayed no reaction to speak of. “That shouldn’t be a problem.” He booted up a high-powered computer and opened a mapping program. Greater Mag-Ingat materialized in 3D atop the big, low table around which we were all sitting seiza-style. Laura turned off the lights so we could see the holo better.
Alec stood up and walked around the table to Cape Agreste, which stretched out over a hillock of hardcopy training manuals. He pointed at Ville Verde, halfway along the Cape. Callout tags rose to his finger like goldfish. “Nunak. The Kodiaks. Hokkaido. Skylights. I can’t tell you where they are, precisely, but here’s their phones.”
“At Cecilia’s,” I said. “Darn. I was hoping she wasn’t involved.”
Dolph moved around to the computer and began to play with the software, locating other people he knew. Callout tags popped up on the Strip and here and there in Shiftertown.
“Cool program,” I said to Alec. “GPS tracking?”
“Yup.”
“Guy in the police told me they regularly track everyone. I guess this is the software they use. I didn’t know it was available to the public.”
“It isn’t,” Alec said. Then he winked.
“Gotcha,” I said. “Can you track cars as well as phones?”
“Sure. And credit dots. You know something, Mike? The real reason they hate us, it’s not because we can Shift. It’s not because we’re tougher than them, with better digestive systems, better immune systems, better heat and cold resistance …”
They hate us. I’d been hearing this from Shifters all my life. I still hadn’t decided if it was true, or paranoia, or a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“It’s because they can’t chip us. Whatever they put in our bodies, it falls out when we Shift. You chip a Shifter, you’re gonna end up with an animal jumping out the window, and a pile of electronics on the floor.”
“Right,” I said. “But I still wish we could get fillings. It ain’t natural for your teeth to have to last you a hundred years.”
“You just gotta be anal about flossing,” Alec said, showing his own white, cavity-free chompers.
I laughed affably. My teeth, of course, would only have to last me another five years, if that. There was no conversation where IVK did not lie in wait for me. I walked around the table and looked down at 90th Street. A patch of darkness. No one home.
“This software is definitely something the human race would be better off without,” I said to Alec. “Do you have any copies for sale?”
“Not for sale. I’ll give you a copy for free,” Alec said. “All I ask is that you stomp those bears so hard their snouts come out of their assholes.”
I thanked him warmly. He was a good friend, and I wished I liked him better. But I just couldn’t get on board with the setup out here, for reasons that itched at the back of my brain, and came out later when we were sitting around the embers of the firepit in the great hall, drinking and talking. Wolves gnawed bones around our feet.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Alec said. “Long as you need to.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But it’s a little too … San Damiano for me.”
Alec’s upper lip wrinkled, a very wolfish expression. “Where y’all from, again?”
“The Cascadera,” I said. “North coast, near Shinakita.”
“Nice climate in that area,” Alec said. “I’m from Mazepardo.”
“Good hunting down there,” Dolph said. “Jackalopes?”
“Yeah. Big mothers. Takes a whole pack to bring them down.”
“Gets hot down there, huh.”
“Sure. More like this.” Alec sipped his drink. “So what are you going to do with Rex and Irene?”
I bristled at the question. It was my business what I did with the
m. “I’ll take Robbie with me,” I said, although Alec hadn’t asked about him. “Rex and Irene? They can do what they like. They got family in the city.”
“Heck, I might keep Rex,” Alec said. “I got to like him.”
We were talking about a grown man as if he were a chattel. But that’s the way it is on San Damiano. For every Shifter that has their shit together, there are twenty who prefer to laze around in animal form—like Rex, as a matter of fact. They only Shift back into human form when you need them to do something with their hands. Economically, they’re dead weight. The economy of San Damiano is not organized around profit, anyway, but it’s still true that a small minority of high-functioning Shifters carry everyone else. You might, if you hated Shifters, call us the slave-owning class.
I did not accept that characterization—there’s no ownership involved; in fact, the masses have a pretty sweet deal—but I didn’t like it, either. Nor did Dolph. That’s why we never went back. Alec would probably claim that he also believed in equality, but he had recreated a traditional Shifter household here in the hills outside Mag-Ingat.
“I want to stay,” Lucy said. She was lying with her head on my lap, squeezing her new water bottle like a cuddly toy. I’d been teasing the tangles out of her hair. It seemed like she hadn’t combed it for a month. “Can I, Dad? Please?”
Dodging the question, I said, “When are you gonna forget about this orca business?”
“The leaders at camp said we can be any animal we want to be. So did you, Dad.”
“Any animal as long as your dad approves of it,” I said, winking at the other men.
“Now, Mike,” Alec said. “This ain’t San Damiano.”
Dolph, lying with his nose on his paws, snuffled in amusement.
“However, we got no call for orcas up here, kiddo,” Alec said. “What we need more of is big cats. Lions, panthers, jaguars …”
Dirty Job Page 20
