Devil's Luck

by Carolyn Crane

  “Should we try and call somebody?” she asked.

  “No reception in here. We’re fine. This happens.”

  She heard a series of metallic bangs, like a fallen girder, she thought, and then a splash somewhere below.

  They hopped a small boulder and moved deeper in. “Shouldn’t we go out the way we came?”

  “No, we’re closer to the other side. We’ll come out on one of the Tangle’s interchange roads this way.” Another banging sound—this one closer. The dim glow of daylight from far above illuminated his stormy expression. “You ever shoot a gun?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “You have any combative skills whatsoever? A hidden highcap talent you can pull out?”

  “Just for seeing the future.”

  “No thanks. Come on.” He took hold of her arm, urging her on faster. Soon they were jogging.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Our crash attracted attention. I’m thinking that’s what those sounds were. This place is two square miles, and it’s safe to say every being in this place heard that explosion.”

  “Maybe someone’s coming to help.”

  “Yeah, if we want the help of a bad samaritan.” They started up a steep slab. He gave her a boost so she could get a foothold on a bit of rebar, and she scrambled up. She lay down on top and offered her hand.

  “I got it,” he said, though he could barely catch his breath. Footsteps echoed nearby as he scrambled over.

  “I thought they got all the sleepwalking cannibals,” she whispered as they crept down a rubble pile.

  “They did. Hell, I wish it was cannibals. They were easy to fight.”

  So he’d been stranded in the Tanglelands before and went around fighting things? She got the feeling he’d still do that if she weren’t there. He’d just saunter out of there on his own terms, fighting along the way. It made her feel weird. She didn’t want to hold him back. “Maybe it’s a meeting of the Midcity women’s needlepoint club,” she joked.

  “Yeah, to needlepoint us.” He pointed at the ground. “Watch out.” Jagged glass stuck up out of the rubble like a reverse icicles.

  “Is this really bad?”

  “Only if they catch us,” he said. “Look, you have to promise me something.”

  She held her breath.

  He said, “You must not, under any circumstances, allow them to needlepoint flowers on me.”

  “Don’t be funny.” But she found herself smiling and feeling so good to be with him, even traipsing through the Tanglelands.

  He pulled her up over a ridge, and then they slid carefully down the rough face of a tilted piece of road the size of a tennis court. He seemed out of breath at the bottom.

  “Or God Bless This Kitchen,” he said solemnly. “I won’t stand for that needlepointed onto my corpse.”

  She didn’t laugh. The mention of his corpse made it not funny. She’d seen his corpse. At least she knew that he wouldn’t die here. But he could be horribly injured.

  Then came the soft echo of shoes on rubble.

  “Crap! That’s too near. They must be tracking us with a telepath.”

  “Should we run?”

  He led her across an expanse of rubble and into a crevice between a rusted-out hull of some hulking machine and a massive concrete pillar with a base as big as a house. He held her arms and looked into her eyes. “Do you hear the drone of the cars above? This is important—do you hear how it’s like music? Or like ocean waves?”

  She nodded.

  “Fill your mind with it. Focus on it. Can you do that? Make it the loudest thing in your head. That’ll camouflage us. “Telepath?”

  He nodded. “Focus on the sound, the darkness. It’s wallpaper for your mind and your soul. Even if they seem to see us, keep camouflaging with those sounds. Some of these telepaths down here, they’ve switched over to seeing with their minds, and their vision is shit.”

  She nodded and worked on becoming one with the rumble.

  He pulled her close, one arm wrapped around her belly, and a hand on the center of her chest. She liked the solid, warm feel of him behind her. “Hear how it cycles,” he breathed as they became small and invisible together.

  She focused on the rush of traffic above, a kind of pulsing hum shot through now and then with the fat rumble of a motorcycle or beater car, then thinning into a droning hum of engines.

  “Do you hear how it’s kind of beautiful?” he whispered.

  Again she nodded. He was beautiful. She lost herself deeper and deeper in the sounds, which matched, in a strange way, to the rise and fall of his chest, and the pulse in her ears. Or maybe it was them matching to the sounds.

  He leaned sideways ever so slightly and pulled out a gun—a large one.

  “Rumble, rumble, rumble,” he whispered.

  She didn’t have to be told; she felt nearly translucent to the sound that rushed through her. She could feel his breathing, and sometimes his wheezing. Was something already wrong with his heart? She swept away her worry, focused on the rumble.

  Footsteps crunching rocks—several pairs. He pulled her tighter and she slipped deeper into the sonic landscape, relaxing into him until they were part of the surroundings.

  The footsteps receded. Simon pointed upward with his gun. They waited, matched breathing—his rougher and more labored, hers light.

  Long moments passed.

  The sound of crunching footsteps grew fainter and disappeared. She craned her head up sideways to him.

  He shook his head.

  She nodded. Right. People would trick you. Even destiny would trick you.

  In her vision of Bobby Barrington getting stabbed, the hand doing the stabbing was masculine and wore a red pinkie ring—that’s all she could see of the person, because it was Bobby’s future after all, not the stabber’s future. Because of that, she’d spent her years of captivity scanning men’s hands, desperate to see that red ring, knowing that the ring-wearer could be the key to her freedom, and that she must find a way to help that person. But in the end, she’d gotten free without that ring-wearing ally killing Bobby first. She’d beaten Bobby on her own. The red ring was just a red herring.

  Destiny would never trick Simon, because he didn’t care. He defied the future completely, and in ways she’d never imagined. She wanted that, too—to live as if it simply didn’t matter—to be free of it, like that moment in the ringtoss game, or when they’d looked at each other in the car.

  Or this. The two of them pressed together, breathing in unison in a cold, dark, hard little place, his breath warm on the top of her head, engines roaring endlessly above.

  She nuzzled into him and laid her head into the nook between his neck and shoulder, losing herself in the sounds and the warmth of him. She hated that she’d seen his death. She didn’t want him to die.

  Something splashed nearby and she tensed. She shut her eyes and forced herself to relax into her river of sound.

  Lord, how many predators were out there?

  Simon still had his hand her chest, but now he spread his fingers, as if to grasp more of her. She wanted him to be all around her, and she put her hand over his, spread her fingers so they would fit in between his, so that their hands meshed together.

  Their meshed hands felt achingly alive, like wild air after a storm. She shifted and pushed back into him, and she felt the press of his cock at her butt, his fingertips at her heart. When she turned her head, she could feel his pulse racing against her cheekbone. She surrendered diffusely into his warmth, which blended with the ocean of sound. It seemed a kind of mystical intimacy to her. It was as if they’d gone beyond sex, straight through to the tender, secret places of each other.

  He shifted his hand, scissoring his fingers closed to catch hers between his. Slowly he curled his hand under hers, closed their hands together in a two-layered fist, and then he brought their enmeshed fist over her shoulder, and up, up, up to his mouth, and he pressed his lips to her knuckle, kept them there for many long
moments, eyes shut tight, as if his emotions were too much to bear.

  She looked up, and again he shook his head. This hiding. He wanted to do it right.

  After more long moments, there was a shuffle. Footsteps shuffling away.

  God, somebody had been out there. And now they were leaving. She kept the sound wallpaper going in her mind, waiting for his cue.

  After a while, he loosened his hold. “Keep it going still. We’re probably okay, but still.”

  She wondered how he knew. Had he counted the different pairs of footsteps that had come and gone? She’d heard of people doing that sort of thing.

  He’d hidden for her. If not for her, he would’ve fought. She felt guilty, and grateful, too. And so connected to him—as outlaws, as sneaks, as two forbidden notes inside the music of the Tangle.

  She’d always felt so alone before this.

  “I don’t like to be alone,” she whispered. The instant the words were off her lips, she felt her cheeks heat up. It sounded pathetic. It was just that, feeling as connected to Simon as she did now, it showed her what a lonely journey her life had been.

  Simon said, “I don’t like it, either.”

  She turned in his arms and he touched his lips to her cheek, simply pressed them there, and then the touch turned to a kiss. He kissed her nose, and then her cheekbone, making his way crookedly to her lips, where he kissed her tenderly.

  Then he shoved his gun back in his boot and kissed her some more, holding her with two hands now. He was a sweet, slow, light kisser, taking his time, relishing the warmth of their lips together, it seemed. She went up on tiptoe as they kissed, tracing her fingers along his chest, trying to feel where the dragon heads were.

  “God, Fawna.” He smoothed his hands over her jacket and pressed her gently to the pillar, which felt hard through the back of her coat. She clutched the sides of his open shirt and used it to pull him closer to her as he kissed her.

  The shirt made a kind of sling around his back, and when she pulled him even closer, she felt, again, the surprise of his shaft between her legs and she pulled him harder to get more of it.

  They still seemed to be moving through the sound, straight into each other’s lips and tongues. There was so much between them that was alive, that wasn’t hers alone. When her blood raced, she knew that his did, too. When she felt electricity in the mesh of their chests, their lips, she felt sure that he did too, because everything was plain between them, yet too special to be spoken of.

  He bit her lip and she gasped. He stopped.

  “Don’t stop.” It had been a surprise—excitement, not pain. She’d never been with a man like him. She wanted him as she’d never wanted anyone before. She wanted more, more, more of him—every surprise that was in him, and every stupid thing that was in him, too, though she was sure even the stupid things wouldn’t seem stupid if they were in Simon. She took his hand, drew it through the buttons of her dress, forcing a button to pop open. She pressed his cool palm to her breast. She wore no bra.

  “Oh,” Simon breathed, a ragged sound, sliding his fingers along her breast, kissing her ear. It sent a warm wave through her. “Hell, Fawna,” he said.

  She moved against him and he kissed her harder, stronger. She thought she might break apart into him. How had she gone so long despising him? How had she never seen the beauty and bravery in him?

  But she saw him now—she felt him, and she wanted to follow the feeling of him to its deepest possible point, to fuck him and love him in every possible way.

  She wanted it to never end. He must not die.

  She shut her eyes tight. Let it be just this! she told herself.

  But she was out of the flow now, and wanting so badly to look at how much time he had. She could check how old he was in that future, or warn him, or just see if anything would help…

  Simon pulled back, looked into her eyes, hands sliding out of her shirtdress front.

  He’d felt her drift. He straightened her collar.

  She pulled him back to her, trying to regain the connection they’d had. He went along with it, kissed her earlobe, but she was still consumed with looking, worrying, increasingly absent from their magic.

  He stilled.

  Of course Simon would feel the lie of the continuing kiss—the kind of lie that the fumbling, frantic bellboy she’d dated had never detected. It wasn’t a lie in terms of fact—she very much wanted to have sex with Simon.

  It was a lie of attention. Her attention had drifted to the future.

  He trailed his thumbs down her side and underneath her coat.

  She felt so stupid now. “Why’d you stop?” Another lie. But maybe she could put it back together.

  “Look at us,” he said. “Stuffed into a dirty hole in the Tanglelands.”

  “Who cares?”

  “I do.” He re-buttoned her dress. “This is an ugly and dangerous place.”

  “You’re all proper now?”

  “Yes,” he whispered, gaze soft. His pupils had grown large in the darkness, and the black of them matched his lashes. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  His soft attentions were on her hair now. His fingers lit onto one of the beads knotted into it—she knew which one; it was from a bracelet she’d stolen at a casino, from a sophisticated and beautiful woman—a woman she wished to emulate. So she’d stolen something of hers, the closest she could get. A primitive impulse, she supposed.

  “You’ll never get this out without cutting your hair, will you?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I like it.” She tossed her head, trying to shake off his fingers. She felt so worried for him. He would despise what she’d seen, defy it. But she couldn’t leave it. She felt so ashamed and angry and upset, and she wished she’d never looked.

  He dropped his hand to the braid that contained a silk scrap from the Japanese dress, then to the Green Bay Packers pin.

  “This means something. These all mean something,” he said.

  Earlier, Fawna had liked Simon’s attention. Now she wanted him not to see so much. “Why does everything have to mean something?” She walked more purposefully. “What does your coat mean? Your boots? What do the dragon tattoos mean?”

  “Let’s go.” He pointed out a slash of daylight. He thought they could climb down and get outside that way, to one of the roads the encircled the Tanglelands.

  So she followed him down a rubbley incline, copying his foot placement, the precise way he avoided holes and puddles. They got down to what seemed like another level, and headed up from there, toward the sliver of light.

  She didn’t want him to die. Ever.

  Then he said, “Of course they mean something.”

  The dragons, she realized.

  “A feeling, anyway,” he added.

  “They mean a feeling?”

  “Fierceness. Protection.” He helped her over a barrier. “You know. Dragon things.”

  She was going to say something about dragons breathing fire, but she remembered the fire-breathing knife-swallower. She didn’t want to infect the air with the knife-swallower’s doom. “Cool,” she said.

  And then he found her hand. The fit of their hands, the way his felt just right in hers, startled her. She was used to her hand being held forcibly. Crushed, really. Holding hands with somebody? It belonged to the past, to the Trixie doll time before she was taken, when the world was still okay.

  The emotion of that realization clogged her chest, and she suddenly wanted true things between her and Simon.

  “The G is the Packers,” she told him. “A football team.”

  “Hmm.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “I think I knew that part.”

  “I wasn’t at a lab the whole time, like a lot of people think,” she said. “Just the first five or so years.”

  He said nothing, simply listened as they walked, and she found herself telling him all about the lab and the diodes and fluids, and the brain monitors and the screams of the other kids, and how they all eventually disappeared�
��to the brain vivisection room, an open secret of the lab. She told him how Bobby Barrington’s goons appeared at the lab one night. There were blinding flashes, loud bangs, and rough hands carrying her down halls strewn with bullet-ridden bodies, and then an explosion behind them, killing everyone who was left. The guards and researchers had deserved it. The other highcap kids stuck in there hadn’t.

  Her life the next day was a million percent less awful. She learned later that Bobby had a source in there—a lab attendant who owed him and had told him about her farsight.

  They were on all fours now, crawling upward through a tunnel.

  “Rescued by Bobby Barrington,” he finally said. She detected a note of disdain. Had he heard of Bobby?

  “More a robbery than a rescue.” She was twelve at the time, and Bobby had adopted her. Fawna Barrington—she could barely say it aloud, but she told Simon. She wanted to. “Packard and I changed it the first week I was free. We went to the courthouse and changed it to Fawna Brady.”

  They emerged into a less-dim cavern. They were nearing the outer edge. She wondered if Simon guessed that Brady came from The Brady Bunch. She’d always longed for Carol Brady to be her mom, for that family to be hers. She would take Jan’s place. Brady. It was a little pathetic, but she was pretty messed up the week she arrived in Midcity.

  As they walked on toward the light she recounted her escape attempts, like the one where she bought a ticket to Orlando, but some dirty cops came and pulled her right off the plane and sent her back to Bobby. She told him about her secret bellboy lover, who, she realized later, wasn’t so secret. She told him how Bobby loved to watch people die, how he sometimes even had the killings he ordered filmed, so that he could watch them over and over. And about her growing realization of how many people Bobby owned—half the people at the Midas Tropicali, it seemed, were secretly Bobby’s.

  Her velvet prison.

  “The Packers against the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Super Bowl,” she said as they made their way up a thin incline, moving carefully from one handhold to another. “I predicted the Steelers to win in a huge way. Bobby bet big and really lorded it all over everybody. He loved to laugh in people’s faces.”