by Rhys Ford
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Ryder grunted slightly, but he accepted Malone’s quick embrace, grabbing Robbie’s arm when he slid on the linoleum floor. “Steady there.”
“Sorry. I need to go find my clothes,” Malone replied.
“And a toothbrush. A shower wouldn’t be a bad idea either. You reek of dog,” I pointed out. “Let’s get the truck ready so we can get on the road. We’ll pick up who we need on the way, providing he wants to go… and doesn’t shoot us for coming up his driveway.”
Fourteen
THE AFTERNOON sun turned the clouds to hammered silver as dawn crept over the eastern ridges. Thin breaks in the storm gilded the sky, slender golden ribbons woven through the muted gray banks. Rivers of crumbling lava stretched out on both sides of the old freeway, black fingers digging into the soft yellow dirt, and the rain left the ground damp and filled shallow gulches to the brim. The miles were rippling card flips of reality, a span of Underhill interspersed with chunks of California, but I kept the transport rumbling forward, hoping to make it through the mountain pass before the night fell.
“Where have all the birds gone?” Malone slurred, more than a little drunk from the painkiller the doctor gave him before we’d left Changa’s. “Oh man, I can’t feel my tongue, but the rest of me is just fine.”
“Just don’t bite down on it,” Ryder advised from the front passenger seat. “How much longer until we get to someplace we can stop?”
“Soon. Over that ridge.” I worried at a small cut on my lower lip, judging the distance between the truck and the lower ridge. “Hard to believe this road used to take people only half a day to get to Old Vegas.”
“In Underhill, those mountains were days away from Elfhaime,” the sidhe lord replied. “And now they are practically within walking distance. Not that I’d walk it. But some would.”
“Yeah, it’s weird all around. I get the feeling Underhill was a hell of a lot bigger than Earth.” I really didn’t know what either world looked like before the Merge. Hells’ rice pots, I didn’t even know how old I was, and considering Tanic rolled me into adolescence before I could form thought, I could have been born post-Merge and not know it.
Which would make me barely out of my teens by elfin standards, but considering I didn’t seem to be inflicted with bad decisions and raging hormones, I doubted it.
An idea came to me, and I frowned at it. “Wait, so the way the Merge folded Underhill into Earth—”
“Or Earth into Underhill,” Ryder slid in.
“Yeah, because right now semantics is important when talking about two worlds going bump in the night.” I cut across to the next lane, avoiding a dead something in the road. It was too far gone to be much more than a bundle of bones and bleached-out fur, but death already delivered its ruthless indignity. I didn’t need to add to it. “The point is, they folded in funky, so you don’t have any idea if this is a Dawn or a Dusk Court. Or can you guess? How close were you guys living on Underhill? Nose to mouth or ass to armpit?”
“Your delicate phrasing, as always, astounds me, ainle,” Ryder sighed. “If the mountain range is where I think it is, then it was a highly contested region. The area was… volatile. Depending on how the land merged, it might have been either Court. From what little I saw in the pictures, it looks as if it were abandoned long before the Merge. The language on the walls was ancient, but there are some spells that use old rituals.”
“So what you’re saying is, you have no fricking clue.” I glanced at him and caught an elegant grimace. “Yeah, okay. Thanks. I love going into the unknown.”
“What does it matter?” Malone belched out behind us. “The courier said the place was all broken up. Looked like no one lived there in forever.”
“If it’s a Dusk Court, then I’m worried about black dogs,” I explained. “If it was a viable place at the Merge, then there could be rogue packs there. If it’s older and there wasn’t a Master there to sustain them, then they’d have died or thinned out.”
“I couldn’t tell,” Ryder admitted. “It definitely didn’t Merge well. The area was mostly filled in with sand, but there was enough to see it was used for fertility spell work. I know nothing about the human encampment there.”
“Scientists mostly,” Malone answered. “It was a research facility, mostly energy studies, but there were a few quantum things going on. Professor says… said… it was classified, and the military was pretty strict about the area, but after the Merge, it was abandoned.”
“So we don’t know what we’ll find there either.” My mind burned itself on the possibilities. “Well, Sparky gave me a radiation gauge, so when we get close, we’ll flip it on and see what it says. It goes red, we get out of there. I’m not growing a damned tail just to chase after maybes and ghosts.”
“Oh, did I tell you I get carsick?”
The gurgling noise Malone made behind me was alarming. So were the next words that came out of his mouth.
“Odin, I’m going to—”
I didn’t need to look to know he’d lost his guts. I heard the slosh, smelled the bitter in the air, then simply gave Ryder a disgusted look.
“Don’t say… a thing.” Ryder held his hand up. “Just pull over. I’ll clean it up.”
“Might as well wait until we reach where we’re going,” I grumbled, turning off of the freeway and onto the slip of a dirt road off the shoulder. “From the sounds of it, we’ll need a hose.”
The road’s winding curves didn’t help Malone’s sickness or my temper. Rolling down the window helped only until I caught a whiff of pigs when we passed by a sprawling farm. Then the road darkened as we entered the forest line.
A lot of people hear the world forest and think of green and sunlight. In my experience, most forests stink of shadows and decay brushed over with the bright smell of rain, moss, and a cunning patience. Forests were living things in their own right, crawling out of the space they’d begun to consume more and more around itself until its edges jousted up against something harder and more stubborn. Working farms fought to keep Nature at bay, holding off its encroachment, but the weald’s tendrils were vicious, consuming anything in its way.
We were at the edge of the forest, an outcropping of looming trees and moss-riddled hapu ferns. The dirt road dipped, throwing us out around the bend, and we emerged out of the dank and into the crimson-orange fields beyond. The fields spanned a few acres, with a tall dark building sitting in the middle of them, a slow-turning wind vane mounted on its peak.
“Where are we?” Malone gurgled. “Is that… opium?”
“Those are flowers,” I corrected, then muttered under my breath at the surrounding poppy fields. “That can be turned into opium. Maybe. I don’t know. And if you’re smart, you don’t ask.”
“Stalker rules or your rules?” Ryder quipped.
“Common fricking sense rules. Don’t stick your nose into somebody else’s business. You get to keep your nose longer,” I replied. The poppies turned into scrub and canyon, and the road roughened beneath the truck’s tires. A bend in the road and we were at the edge of a thicket with a heavy metal gate blocking the way. “And we’re here. Don’t get out of the truck. Wait for—”
A blast of buckshot took out one of the transport’s side mirrors, and I swore when Malone grabbed my arm. Shaking him off, I grabbed the sawed-off shotgun I’d shoved between the two front seats, then went out the door, yelling for Ryder to keep Malone down.
“Dutch Truitt!” I rested my shotgun on the window frame of the open door, aiming toward the low bushes where I thought Dutch was hiding. “It’s Kai! Kai Gracen!”
The bushes rustled; then I got my reply. “That asshole Dempsey with you?”
“Why is it everyone you meet hates that man?” Ryder asked from his crouch between the seats. “It is nearly universal.”
“Yeah, long story. Okay, so it’s always a long story.” Raising my hands, I held the shotgun over my head and stood up. “Dempsey’s not here. Just me. And a co
uple of clients. I’m looking for a gun, Dutch. Hoping you can do a ride along.”
The bushes broke, and one of the largest dogs I’d seen gamboled out of the shadowed tree line. It ignored Dutch’s shouts for it to come back. Its wide mouth, set into a black-lipped grin, and its brace of teeth were more to hold back its long pink tongue than a threat to bite. Shaggy with a thick yellow-brindle coat, the dog was mostly leg and chest, with a long, looping tail thick enough to knock a man to his knees with a single wag.
“Whoa, puppy,” I cautioned, but the damned canine, like its owner, didn’t care one bit what I wanted. “Hey, slow down—”
The dog hit the door at a full run, slamming its massive paws against the metal hard enough to shove me into the truck and pin me in. I dropped the shotgun, my fingers numb from the hit, and my legs buckled, caught along the back of my knees by the inner frame. Unable to move, I half sat, half stood while the enormous sorghum-colored beast proceeded to lick the skin from my face.
“Maggie! Damn it, worst watchdog ever,” Dutch grumbled, working out of the bushes. “Hold on, boy. I’ll come to you.”
He hadn’t changed much. Hells, I was fairly certain he was wearing the same torn overalls and plaid shirt I’d seen him in the last time I’d passed through. Taller than me by a foot, he was wide and grizzled, his broad tanned face embellished with a shock of frizzy white hair poking out of an old black cowboy hat and a full beard, yellowed from years of cigarettes and bad coffee. He limped, his prosthetic leg whirring and groaning over the uneven ground, and while his right eyelid drooped, it did nothing to hide the crafty, skeptical gleam in his hard blue gaze.
Dutch shooed the dog as he leaned his shotgun against the truck. He yanked the door away, then folded me into a fierce, back-pounding hug. My eyes watered a bit as I caught a whiff of Dutch, a mix of bitter nicotine and old dirt, but it was a familiar scent, one I knew nearly as well as Dempsey’s or Jonas’s. I hugged him back, then felt him stiffen.
“Goddamn it, you brought one of those cat-bastards with you,” he spat into my ear, then let me go, shoving me back against the truck’s solid frame while Maggie lumbered after a glass-winged butterfly near the edge of the road. “Where’s my fricking gun?”
“Clients, Dutch,” I reminded him, rubbing at the small of my back where the door latch dug into me. “No killing the clients. Or me.”
“We don’t take—” He stabbed at my chest once with a hard finger. Then his face dropped. “Shit, I forget, you know? The war took a hell of a lot from me, and it’s hard to remember you’re one of them too.”
“War’s a shitty thing,” I murmured, grabbing Dutch’s shotgun just in case his remorse was as short-lived as his control over his temper. “And yeah, I forget sometimes too, but usually there’s someone right there to remind me. Now, you going to open the gate so we can get out of the damned road, or am I going to have to pitch you out here?”
“Might as well come in. Bring your cat-bastard client too,” Dutch mumbled, taking a good look at Ryder over my shoulder. “And while you’re in there, you should air that truck out. Smells like someone puked.”
I MADE Malone scrub the truck out while Ryder, Dutch, and I sat under his ranch house’s covered porch and drank coffee. Malone wasn’t having much luck, mostly because he was still green around the gills and smelling his own vomit made him gag. Combined with Maggie’s insistence on grabbing at the end of the hose and dragging it away with her, the truck’s interior wasn’t going to be cleaned out any time soon. I didn’t care. It was a good learning lesson for Malone on the consequences of his actions and gave Maggie something to do while we hashed out the job for Dutch.
Dutch heard us out, lit the end of a hand-rolled cigarette, then said, “You all are nuts.”
“That goes without saying.” I shook my head at Ryder, who looked like he was about to protest the slandering of our sanity. “Question is, do you want to do the job?”
Dutch tapped his fake knee, a dull rap of plastic and steel. “Forgot I got this? Don’t see so good either. Used to be I could snipe a hit from a mile out. Now it’s closer to half of that.”
“Yeah, these guys can’t hit the broad side of a barn.” I frowned at Ryder’s slap against my thigh. “It’s true. His Lordship here’s better than Malone, but I’m not going to bet on it. I need someone to help me get them back to San Diego if things go wrong and maybe cover us with fire if we need it. We’re going through Mercury Valley, Dutch, and then there’s this small problem of—”
My words were lost in a popcorn spit of hot steel and screams.
I shoved Ryder down as I reached for the shotgun I’d brought up to the porch for Dutch. The sidhe lord bitched at me, but Dutch began to shout for Maggie to hide, then hooked his finger into a knothole by our feet.
The smell of gun oil hit me, and my mouth watered.
Dutch passed me a Desert Eagle and ammo. Then I was over the porch railing, cutting through the gunfire to get to Malone. Maggie was nowhere to be seen, and the ground spat up chunks of dirt over my boots where bullets dug down, but I couldn’t risk stopping. Counting on Dutch to get Ryder inside, I couldn’t see Malone anywhere until the side door slid open and he sat cradling one of my Glocks, ducking his head every time another shot went off.
“You okay?”
He nodded. Malone was alive and sporting the same number of holes as when I’d left him to clean out the truck. A damned sight better than I’d hoped for.
“Move over,” I said, jostling in to sit on the doorframe. The truck wasn’t taking as much fire as I’d expected, but that was going to change. Whoever was shooting probably spotted me sprinting toward the transport. Elbowing Malone, I put the ammo down my back pocket. “Going to need you to do something for me, Robbie.”
“What?” Terrified, he looked up at me. I didn’t blame the kid. So far he’d been in my presence for less than a few days and had two gunfights and a black dog attack under his belt.
“There’s no magazine in that gun. I didn’t load it, so it’s not going to do you any good, so put it down.” I caught a piece of wind ruffling my face, a whisper of a bullet angled a foot away from the truck. From the porch came an answering volley, Dutch laying down a steady spread toward the bushes near an old broken-down shack on the edge of his property. “There’s armor built into the sides of this thing, so wedge yourself between the backseats and stay there. I’m going to go take care of that asshole shooting at us.”
“Shouldn’t I load it? Or you load it?” Malone held the Glock out to me.
“You shot me the last time you had a gun,” I reminded him. “So no, it stays as it is. Go get behind the damned seats.”
The Eagle was a heavy piece, throwing me a bit off balance, but as weapons went, it was a glorious, deadly gun. I liked Glocks because they were easy to toss around without worrying about it going off because someone looked at it wrong. With a safety built into the trigger, it needed a deliberate squeeze to get a round off. The Eagle made no such promises. Its safety was a flip latch, and from the looks of the gleaming monster I held in my hand, Dutch welded it permanently to off. Since the Glock’s ammo was tucked away near the driver’s seat, I was going to have to go in with the Eagle, using Dutch’s fire to give me a bit of breathing room.
With as erratic as the gunfire was, I couldn’t be sure if whoever Marshall pissed off was incompetent or, like Malone, didn’t know what the hell they were doing. Still, a bullet through the head killed, regardless, and any second, the asshole shooting at us was going to hit someone.
Dutch gave me another volley, and I headed for the tree line.
“You want a piece of me?” Dutch screamed from the porch, planting a bullet in the shack’s tin roof. It sang and rattled, covering the ground in a sprinkle of powdered rust. His shouting was a distraction, more to draw the attention of our shooter than any ego. “Want me to come out there and put one in you?”
“I’d like that,” I muttered, ducking into the tangled brush.
I hated sage, and California was ripe with it. It grew in places nothing else could grab on to and flourished in everything from sand to clay. No matter where I was, it was right there beside me, grabbing at my face and clothes, but while it was softer than it looked, it was a bitch to climb through, especially when left unchecked for a few seasons of growth.
The sagebrush around Dutch’s place looked like it’d been planted by Balboa himself and blessed by Gaia, because I’d been through death-spider webs less clingy.
“You out there, maggot?” Another shout from the porch, this time one slathered with sidhe. Ryder, probably prompted by Dutch, considering the language. I wasn’t even sure Ryder knew what a maggot was.
“Great, they’re over there bonding while I’m getting my ass shot off,” I muttered, circling the shack. I saw something move and brought the Eagle up. It was like slinging a small bag of rice up from my knee, and I steadied it in a firm grip. “Thing’s like hefting a cannon.”
The sun was dropping fast, turning the tree line into a curtain of maybes and darkness. A shot blew, aimed away from the ranch, or so I thought, but in the pines and sage, it was hard to gauge direction. The shape I’d spotted moved again, and then someone—a man—swore, followed by a very manly scream.
I broke into a run. The shape I’d seen was too big to be Maggie, but I couldn’t rule out another kind of dog. For all I knew, the pack followed us from Rainbow to Changa’s then on to Dutch’s. Or at least I hoped it was the same pack. Having three roaming in the area would be nearly too much to leave behind, and Ryder’s little trip past Old Vegas would have to wait until I collected their pelts.
“Bitch!” someone shouted. Sounds of fighting cut through the air, and I could hear Dutch yelling at me for a report.
There was another scream, and I sprang from the bushes, tearing through the sage. My legs hurt from the healing shotgun blast and ainmhi dubh’s bite. The Eagle’s weight dragged my hands down, but I couldn’t let it drop. Another twist and I stood at the shack’s rear wall, gun drawn and aimed straight at the Latino-German woman standing over a sprawled-out, bony man I’d caught a glimpse of at Sparky’s.
