Galefire III : Tether War

by Kenny Soward

  Elsa knelt in the dirt in front of him. “We are all tired. Tired of hiding. Tired of what we’ve become. Mostly, we’re just tired we cannot get back to what we had.”

  What they had was hardly definable, but Lonnie knew what she meant. Their little den of monsters.

  He nodded.

  Elsa knelt next to him, hand resting on the back of Lonnie’s neck, fingers toying with his hair which had grown to his shoulders. He looked into her pale green eyes, that smoldering whorchal gaze. He noticed her face for the first time in how long? Her hair, close-cropped and inky black now, giving her face an impish look. Her cheeks pale and smooth and smeared where she’d tried to hastily wipe off the blood. She was beautiful in her own horrifying way.

  Shame touched him. He hadn’t really been paying attention at all.

  “You know,” she said. “I haven’t seen you cry once since the day we put her in the river. One time. It’s like you went cold on us after Selix died, Lons.”

  He nodded. “I’ve been an asshole, huh?

  “A royal asshole.” A black fingernail jabbed him playfully in the chest and trailed down to his stomach, sending a tingle across his skin in all directions.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and felt a crack forming in the hard-stone dam of emotion that had been building up in him over the past four months. His eyes burned with hot, salty tears, and he threw his arms around her scrawny shoulders, burying his face in the crook of her neck.

  Elsa pulled out of the embrace, devouring him with a sultry gaze. Without warning, she kissed him. It wasn’t the kind of kiss he would expect from a whorchal. No, this was a shy peck, her lips surprisingly soft and pliant. Lonnie blinked once before squeezing his eyes closed, his heart skipping when she pulled away with a gentle smack.

  They searched each other for the right expression, the right permission to do this now that Selix was gone. Lonnie expected guilt to seize him at the thought of betraying her memory. But there was no guilt. No, what surged within him was the need to fill the hollow spot in his chest, to satisfy this thirst only Elsa could quench.

  Seeing the greed in his eyes, the whorchal dove in for another taste of Lonnie, and he couldn’t help but feel a split second of flight fear, the kind of fear a gazelle must feel when a lioness springs growling from the brush. Her kisses turned lusty, bloodthirsty, and she sucked on his lips and tongue like she could somehow nurse on his very soul. She’d devour him if he let her, yet in her own evil way, it was a gentle gesture, a reassuring sentiment that they were in this together and nothing could tear them apart.

  That they were, above all, loyal to one another until one of them stopped breathing.

  As they separated, her tongue flicked across his lips, lending to the sudden, pleasant rise in his jeans.

  She grabbed the back of his head and kissed his forehead. He returned the favor, allowing his lips to slide down across her blood-salty skin to the nape of her neck where he nibbled and licked and bit her.

  Jerking back, Elsa slapped him hard across his face.

  He grabbed her wrist, nearly jerking her off her knees.

  Lonnie’s strength increased of its own volition, those familiar symbols rising along his hands and arms, not from sweeping his hands together but from the pure emotion of his raging lust. That was a new development. No time to think about it now, though, because Elsa smiled at him with an evil glint in her eye.

  They fucked right there in the field, not quite in plain site but not completely hidden either. The gang left them alone to ravage and roll in the weeds of a field long left untended. Despite the dry husks of dead plants and stones scraping their skin, their blood only served to enrich and soften the soil.

  It was the perfect place to sow a seed.

  They took what they wanted from it, Lonnie fighting Elsa’s plucky dominance until the dangerous creature was left whimpering in his embrace. And when they were done, Elsa wanted to linger naked in the dirt, but Lonnie wouldn’t let her. He made her dress and then got up, dragging her up with him. She laughed, and he laughed right along with her.

  “If all it takes is a slap to get you going, this will be fun.”

  “Very funny. Come on, we’ve got shit to do.”

  They got back in the van to the quiet looks of the gang. No one said a word, not even his asshole sister. Lonnie put his arms over the wheel and sighed. After a moment, he took Bess’s phone out of his pocket and held it up, absently flipping the lid open and closed as he decided what to do. No, there was no doubt what he was going to do. He was definitely going to call her, it was just a matter of when.

  The gang hovered as Lonnie left it flipped open and hit the on switch. The screen lit up green as it tried to connect.

  Ingrid said, “I thought you said the phone didn’t work.”

  “I lied.”

  “Do it,” Crash said.

  “Just call, Lons.”

  What was he afraid of?

  Well, he didn’t know what to say to Bess, for starters. Maybe she’d start. Ask him why they’d just killed a cop, or why hadn’t he returned her calls? Or maybe something worse because they’d certainly left the world of knowing jack-shit the second they’d gone AWOL in this rolling holymobile.

  But how bad could it be, honestly?

  It was almost always worse than it could be.

  But with the moon starting to creep above the trees, Lonnie felt a nagging anxiety to make the call and get it the hell over with.

  He used his thumb to scroll through the messages and found several voicemails from Bess not long after they’d last seen one another. A couple of texts after that. Another string of voice mails, more texts, and the last two voicemails one after the other. The first was two minutes long. The last, just a few seconds.

  Not much to read into there except Bess was probably pissed.

  Better to avoid listening to the messages and just call.

  He pressed Call Back after the last voicemail and put the phone to his ear.

  It rang one time before there was a click and Bess’s voice said, “Lonnie.”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  To Lonnie’s surprise, Bess didn’t chastise or otherwise tear into him. Her tone was firm and professional. “We need to talk. Do you have a minute?” Right to the point was Bess. No asking about the wife and kids, or the job.

  “I’m listening.”

  “It has to do with what Jedi said in the tunnels of the Under River. You know, that your sister wasn’t what was causing the fade ripper stir? That she wasn’t the only evil power at work here.”

  “Yeah, I remember. He said it was the Turu Tukte.”

  “Right. Took us awhile to sort through things, but it’s safe to say the threat is much worse than we thought.”

  Lonnie’s response was flat, his tone mimicking Bess’s own, and it somehow made the growing nibble of panic in his stomach a little easier to bear. “What can we do?”

  “I’m sending you to a location.”

  “Bess, the cops—”

  “I know what happened. I can keep them off your back for a little while, but not forever. Just go directly to the location I send you, and if you have any problems let me know. And call me when you get there. I’ve got some things to deal with here in Lexington, and then I’ll meet you there. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid. Just get there.”

  And then the phone made another click in his ear to indicate Bess had disconnected.

  He put the phone in his pocked, then turned the key in the van’s ignition.

  The huge V8 engine roared to life.

  Chapter 6

  Lonnie and the gang careened down some remote highway in the Eastern Kentucky hills not far from the West Virginia line, referencing the coordinates Bess had sent. The ECC phone wasn’t for dummies, more like something a trained operative might use to find a location. It was all green lines and elevations and intersecting roads. Very hard to read, not like Google Maps. They were somew
here near Black Mountain, Kentucky, according to Ingrid’s map. But aside from that, they were most assuredly and miserably lost.

  The van was damn near on its last leg, and Lonnie had no clue what they would do if it broke down out here. They were burning engine oil at about a quart a day, and they only had two more quarts left in the back along with their guns and goods.

  Makare had been helping to navigate, so it wasn’t a big surprise they’d gotten lost. Not an accident, no. He was ninety nine percent sure she’d just sent them down the wrong road on purpose.

  It would be the last straw if she had. Looking back, Makare had been not only watching happily as the group spiraled downward, but had somehow given herself an actual place in the pecking order. Definitely above Jedi, and that was way too high for his liking.

  No, he’d be doing something about that real soon, as soon as they got to wherever the hell they were going.

  Speaking of which, he cast a dubious eye out the window at their surroundings. “What the fuck could be out here that Bess would want us to find? Nothing but hills and hillbillies.”

  “I kinda like it, Lons,” Ingrid said from the passenger seat. “It’s a peaceful sort of place. A place we could get lost in.”

  “Yeah, with nothing to do. You think it’s boring in this van? Spend a couple of months out here.”

  “We could learn to play banjos,” Elsa quipped.

  “I’d like to fish, for real,” Crash said, Lonnie catching his eye in the rearview mirror. Back in Hell, Crash’s people were air-faring people. They drove their big, oil-leaky airships through Hell’s skies where they carved out their lives. And ships had been Crash’s first line of work after they’d crossed over to Earth. “I miss the Caribbean Sea, the rolling ships and life out on the open water. Relaxing as anything.”

  Lonnie lifted an eyebrow. “I’ll bet.”

  The heat from the engine poured through the vents, competing with the rush of cooler air coming through the open window, which didn’t help things. It felt like his skin was covered in a sheen of oil, like he’d been breathing and swallowing the fumes for months. With some of the dark cloud of Selix’s passing lifted, and now that he could live in the moment, Lonnie could see exactly why the gang had been complaining so damn much.

  Life in the van sucked. Well, that would be remedied very soon. They’d leave the piece of shit on the side of the road and start walking if they had to.

  Elsa leaned forward, grabbing the back of Ingrid’s seat and peering down the road. Lonnie glanced at her, catching her eyes dilate like a cat spotting the prospect of prey. “Look. A wayward flower.”

  Lonnie focused ahead again. There, walking down the right shoulder of the road, was a young woman in farm boots and an old white farm dress. Her hair was a bright red that reflected the sunlight back at them, causing Lonnie to wince.

  Makare pulled her face out of her phone to peer down the road. “Miss 1800s. Nice outfit.”

  Lonnie pumped the brake several times, preparing the van for a stop.

  Crash gave Lonnie a look. “Why you stopping, man?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lonnie heard himself saying. He didn’t know why, exactly, but he felt drawn to this woman, like she was calling to some deeper part of his brain, some magic. It was the same feeling he used to get around Selix.

  They blew past the woman, churning her hair and dress like a blender, and Lonnie kept pumping the brake.

  “Bess told you not do anything stupid, my friend. This seems stupid.”

  “Yeah, well…” Putting his entire body behind it, Lonnie gave the brake one last push, bringing the van to a halt thirty yards in front of the girl.

  He looked back to see her jogging up, and Elsa threw open the side door, an expectant grin on her face.

  The hitcher put a hand on either side of the door but didn’t come in. “Hi, y’all.”

  “Hello there, little flower,” Elsa crooned. “Do you need a lift?”

  The girl put her face into the van where she inspected each of them with eyes as bright green as a field of moss. Her hair was plastered with sweat against her head, some tucked behind her ears, the rest was brushed back from her forehead in waves, a little tousled from the drive-by.

  Her face was apple-shaped, rounded at the top and coming to a point at her chin. She had a small mouth with slightly pouty lips. There were freckles everywhere. Bunches beneath her eyes and on her cheeks, down her neck and across the tops of her shoulders.

  She smelled like fresh cut wildflowers.

  Lonnie’s mouth went a little dry.

  She wasn’t the prettiest woman he’d ever seen in his life, yet she was somehow astounding to look at. He could hardly take his eyes off her. In fact, he had to force himself to glance down just to prove to himself that he could do it.

  “I could use a lift. You mind taking me up the road a spell?”

  “As long as you don’t mind sharing a ride with a van full of very hungry monsters,” Elsa quipped.

  The woman looked them over one more time, then shrugged. “Nope.”

  “All right, then. Get on in!” Elsa’s spoke in an over-exaggerated, hillbilly voice, made even more ridiculous by her naturally thick German accent. The whorchal gave a leering grin and motioned the girl inside.

  Jedi automatically turned and crawled in back while Crash scooted all the way to the left window. Elsa made some room, but not too much.

  Unfazed, the young woman smiled a little and then got in, slammed the door shut, then sat back in the seat.

  “Hey, y’all got air conditioning in here?”

  “No, we don’t.” Lonnie gunned the engine and the tires kicked up gravel as they got moving again.

  A mile or so up the road, the girl said, “Thanks for the ride. Hotter than a lizard’s guts out today. Funny thing is, it’ll probably be cold as hell tonight. Crazy weather we get.”

  “Oh, we know all about that.” Elsa allowed her arm to fall behind the young woman like a teenager trying to hit on her date in a movie theater. “Do you have a name?”

  The woman nodded, putting her face into the lukewarm churn of vent air to dry the sweat. “I sure do. My name’s Torri Dowe. What’s yours?”

  At the mention of her name, Lonnie felt that stirring sense of magic kick up a notch. It wasn’t a threatening thing, but like a disquieting buzz in the back of his head. That same buzz Selix had kicked up when they were on the Roebling Bridge fighting the ghoulkine.

  Was there some deep Earth magic inside this woman?

  Elsa made introductions all around, and Torri gave each and every one of them a “Hello, nice to meet ya.” Then she put her hands in her lap like a proper person and just kept on studying them.

  Glancing occasionally in the rearview mirror, Lonnie was shocked that Torri seemed completely unaware of Elsa’s growing, predatory leer. Or maybe she was aware but remained unafraid.

  Ingrid had turned sideways in the front seat and was looking back to get a better look at the newcomer. She toyed with her own black locks, just a touch longer than her sister’s cropped style, while staring enviously. “I really like your hair, Torri.”

  A smile lit the woman’s face. “Oh, thanks. I like yours, too. It’s like how they wear it in Hollywood and sometimes at the Starbucks in Pikeville. They call it a pixie cut.”

  Ingrid smiled despite herself and touched her own hair with a little more affection. “Aw, that’s sweet. At first I didn’t like it, but it is growing on me.”

  Elsa’s lips parted, and her sharp whorchal teeth extended from her gums just six inches from Torri’s cheek. All Elsa had to do was lunge forward if she wanted a bit of flesh.

  Again, Torri didn’t seem bothered at all. “You folks looking for someone?”

  “Kinda,” Lonnie said. “We just have some coordinates we have to find.”

  “Coordinates? Well shit. Why didn’t you just tell me? I know a lot about coordinates.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah. What are they?”<
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  Lonnie pulled out the phone and looked at the map on the tiny screen. He hit a couple icons to show the coordinates and read them to Torri.

  “Yeah, I know where that is. We’ve got a couple miles to go.”

  Ingrid gave an incredulous laugh.

  Lonnie chuckled and glanced in the mirror. “Wished you were here three hours ago. We’ve been lost this whole time.”

  “Oh, you were never lost,” Torri said, turning to the side to stare at Elsa’s protracted teeth, pointy and curved like a line of scythes. The whorchal was opening and closing her mouth, making teasing clicks, but Torri expressed only calm indifference.

  Lonnie barely knew this woman, but he didn’t want Elsa to hurt her. She wasn’t food, no. There was something about this Torri Dowe that made Lonnie feel like maybe they weren’t the ones in charge of the situation.

  “Elsa, knock it off.”

  Elsa ignored Lonnie, and he thought for a moment he’d have to have Crash intervene, but Torri raised her index finger and put it towards Elsa’s mouth, staring intently at the clacking maw. Elsa smiled wider, jaw stretching forward in a gesture that separated her kind from anything vaguely human.

  Lonnie expected the Torri to scream or go crawling over the back seat to land in Jedi’s lap.

  Instead, Torri put her finger inside the whorchal’s mouth.

  Lonnie shook his head and started to shout when Elsa’s jaw shut with a horrifying snap. His eyes widened, sure the woman’s finger had just been eaten, fully expecting a lot of blood and a lot of screaming, but a quick look over his shoulder showed him the hillbilly girl was unharmed. She’d been a little quicker than Elsa and had pulled her finger out of the trap in the nick of time.

  Torri wagged the unscathed digit in front of Elsa’s face.

  Relieved but angry now, Lonnie warned the whorchal. “Elsa, quit playing.”

  “Oh, come on, Lons. This one likes to play, too.”

  Elsa turned slightly in her seat and opened her jaws once again.

  Torri put her finger inside.

  Snap!

  Torri had somehow anticipated the bite and, once again, pulled her finger out of harm’s way without so much as a scratch.