It would all be okay, it would all be okay.
“Jessie? Hey, Jessie?” The Warlock snapped his fingers near my ears.
I opened my eyes. “Sorry. What?”
“Are you all right? You’re looking all red and sorta sweaty.”
“It’s just the fire. My arm. Makes me feel weird,” I half lied.
“Well, the glove’s done.” He held it out to me. “Want to try it on to see if it works?”
“Sure.” I took the leather glove from him and gingerly pulled it on over my flaming hand, my claws clacking into the thimbles. The neoprene extension on the cuff covered everything that needed covering, and the Velcro wrap made the fit just about perfect. Thin trails of smoke rose from the cuff, but there was no sign that the material itself was burning.
“Looks good,” I said.
Charlie came back into the store; she’d gone to the grocery to hunt for cigarettes, and was now carrying a couple of packs of Benson & Hedges. “We should leave soon.”
I shook my head. “Not until Cooper comes back.”
“We can’t stay here tonight; this place really isn’t defendable.” The girl looked worried.
“Another half hour won’t kill us, will it?” I asked her sharply, then turned away and closed my eyes to concentrate on contacting my familiar.
Pal, are you out there? What’s going on? We need to leave soon.
No response. I tried again: Pal, are you there?
Nothing.
He was just out of range, I told myself, trying to quell the anxiety building inside me. I chewed on my thumbnail.
“You okay?” the Warlock asked.
“I’m fine.” I smiled at him, probably completely unconvincingly considering the look he gave me right afterward. And despite my anxiety, looking at him filled my head with a hundred wet unwanted thoughts, a swarm of vermin fleeing the flooded tunnels of my id.
“I’m gonna do a little more shopping back here,” I told him and Charlie, hoping that out of sight would mean out of mind. “And yes, I’ll watch out for rats.”
I went into the T-shirt aisle first; I was wearing way too much of the World’s Best Grandma and wanted something cleaner. A black shirt bearing a cartoon of a stick man being thrown from a stick horse above the caption “I Do My Own Stunts” caught my eye. I pulled off my old shirt, used it to scrub the blood spatters off my dragonskin pants, and put on the new tee.
Finished with changing, I went down the horse-riding equipment aisle. Pal was much better able to fight at his current size, so there was no point in asking him to shrink himself down to a size that would fit in the van. I’d probably be riding him the rest of the way to the university; having my butt wedged between his vertebrae was surely not that comfortable for him. Clearly he found my libido horrifying—hell, I was finding it fairly horrifying—and if I was going to get all juiced up the moment a stiff wind blew across my nipples, well, some extra padding between my muff and his fur would help us both maintain what was left of our dignity.
None of the saddles would accommodate his alien physiology, so I took a look at the saddle pads. I found a moss-colored SMx Heavy-Duty Air Ride pad that seemed flexible enough to conform to Pal’s back and that promised breathability and shock absorption. Farther down, I found their stock of saddlebags; I picked out a glossy leather model with spacious panniers deep enough to temporarily hold a rifle stuck in catty-corner. They had several types of leather gun scabbards, but since I couldn’t use an actual saddle there wouldn’t be any good way to secure one to Pal short of probably disastrous experiments with braiding his fur. Remembering the sting of the airborne grasshopper collision, I went to their riding helmet section and picked out a visored Troxel Cheyenne covered with embroidered chocolate leather. With a little luck, the padded fabric lining would keep most of the unpleasant memories from the leather at bay.
I slung the saddlebag over my shoulder and tucked the pad under my arm and headed for the front door.
“I’m going out to the van for a little bit,” I told Charlie and the Warlock in passing.
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m going to drop all this in there for safekeeping until Pal gets back, and I’m going see if you have anything with a little more oomph than this Glock. And then I’m going to shut my eyes for a little while, because I’m tired.”
Charlie looked impatient. “We really need to—”
“Leave. I know. Gimme fifteen minutes of quiet time, okay? And then I’ll start looking for Cooper and Pal.”
I carried the tack out to the van. My fire went out halfway there. I got in the passenger side, shut the door, and climbed into the backseat. It was like an oven in there, even with the vent windows cracked. I tossed my backpack into the seat beside me, piled the tack on the floor between the seats, pulled one of the Mossberg shotguns I’d coveted out of its rack, and laid it on top of the saddle pad.
And then I sat there in the sweltering dimness, eyes closed, and focused on contacting Pal, hoping that the extra fifty yards would somehow make a difference.
Are you there? I thought. Hey, Pal, are you there?
Still nothing.
Keeping my eyes shut, I started trying to clear my head of the building panic and carnal thoughts that threatened to wreck my strained nerves. Breathed in, breathed out, slowly, rhythmically, just like my hapkido instructor taught us in concentration exercises. I pictured my mind as a smooth ocean wave rolling out to sea … and promptly imagined myself going down on the Warlock in the warm sand and foamy surf. Dammit.
There was nothing to do for it but take matters into my own hands. Hand, anyway. I unbuckled my gun belt and loosened the drawstring on my dragonskin pants so I could slip my fingers into my underwear. It was a hot mess down there, and I regretted bringing only a single change of underwear in my backpack. Buddha in a biscuit. At the rate I was going, someone might as well tattoo NO SELF-CONTROL right across my face and be done with it.
Everything was so slippery it was hard to get much satisfying friction going at first, but I leaned into it and bore down and pretty soon I was coming hard enough that I was pounding my head against the back of the seat in front of me to keep from crying out. I fell back, sweating, forehead hurting, stomach roiling again, legs sprawled. And suddenly aware that I stank of tang, and the moment I went back into the store the Warlock would know that I’d been pathetically jilling off in the van. Charlie would probably know, too. And so would everybody else I’d meet that day. Yay for good first impressions.
I found an old bandanna on the floorboards that had been recently employed as a dipstick rag and used it to wipe my hand off. Hopefully the motor oil and diesel would mask my funk. And also kill off any hepatitis I just managed to get on the rag. Crap.
There wasn’t a trash receptacle in sight. I pulled up my pants and buckled on my pistol, then stood on the seat so I could lean out of the sunroof and wedge the rag under the .50 gun; I figured in lieu of fire the heat of the sun would be the best I could do to sanitize the thing. And at least it wouldn’t be floating around on the floor of the van looking like something someone could use for emergency nose blowing.
“Jessie!” It was Pal’s voice inside my head.
Thank God, I thought back. What happened to you and Cooper?
“We’ve run into a spot of trouble, I’m afraid … we’re coming your way. Please have a machine gun ready. All of them if possible. I don’t think we can have too many guns right now.”
What? Crap.
I stuck my shotgun up on the van’s roof and boosted myself up to sit behind the .50 gun mount. And promptly realized that although I thought I could figure out the firing mechanism, I had no way to shoot the weapon without Charlie’s cat nearby.
“Charlie! Warlock!” I hopped up and down, waving my arms at the Western store. The van rocked ominously beneath me. “Get out here; I need the kitty!”
I stood on the roof of the van and scanned the highway as the Warlock and Charlie came running up.
>
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m not sure yet. Pal contacted me. He and Cooper are coming and it sounds like they might have some company.”
“Some company” turned out to be one of the biggest understatements I’d made all year, followed closely by “I think the habañero diablo might be a little spicy.” Pal came galloping down the highway with Cooper clinging to his neck for dear life. Six heavy-duty pickups were speeding close behind; the truck beds were packed with meat puppets armed with bats and axes. Some were wearing what used to be nice suits and dresses, and others were wearing sweats and pajamas. There were close to forty puppets in all as best as I could tell.
Pal ran straight toward us, playing his flying spell, unable to get airborne because he wasn’t close enough to Charlie’s cat. We didn’t have much time. I went to a crouch on the roof of the van, trying to decide whether to go with option A, start blasting with the shotgun, or option B, try to figure out how to operate the .50 machine gun. Smoke rose from the cuff of my glove as my anxiety built, and I suddenly decided to go with option C, yanking off the deerskin and holding my flaming claw high.
Pal’s spell finally took hold, and he rose fast in the air. The lead truck sped up, apparently intent on ramming the van and dashing me to the pavement.
“Get clear!” I hollered.
As soon as Pal and Cooper had flown over my head, I let loose on the trucks. The burning purple ectoplasm came out of me in a firehose jet, and for a moment all I could see was the stuff flaring into an unnatural fireball in the air before me. I hit the lead truck, and the vehicle went up in a hot burst of flames, swerving and rolling clear of us as the melting tires blew out. It was absolutely horrible what happened to the meat puppets in the bed. They were eerily silent as they burned.
But I didn’t have too much time to think about what I’d just done; the other trucks were still coming. I lit them up, too, with equally gruesome but effective results. The air was filled with the stink of brimstone, molten metal, burning tires, and charred flesh.
As I torched the third truck, I realized that my ectoplasmic jet was thinning, growing weaker. Was I running out of energy? Dammit. A few trucks of puppets would be a hell of a thing to blow my remaining power on considering we hadn’t dealt with Miko yet. And surely there would be a few Virtii waiting in the wings for the final act.
I used my fire more carefully after that. Soon it was all over but for a few puppets that had been tossed out of their trucks before they had a chance to be napalmed. They lay twitching in pools of blood, still trying to reach their weapons and get up even though their limbs and bodies were mangled. I felt intensely sick and looked away, looked down.
Charlie was standing there beside the van, staring at the carnage, muttering a prayer over and over under her breath, clutching her AK-47 in shaking hands.
I pulled on my glove, picked up my shotgun, and cleared my throat. “Charlie, do you think you could … you know. Help me put those last few down? Please?”
“Um. Yeah.” She flicked the safety off her weapon and stumbled out into the parking lot.
“You take that bunch on the right, I’ll take the ones on the left.” I slid down onto one of the tires armoring the side of the van, then hopped onto the pavement.
I figured her orange cat would leap out of the sling and run away the moment she pulled the trigger, but it continued to lounge against her chest, purring loudly. Charlie stepped through the bodies, firing single rounds into the skulls of anyone who still appeared to be moving. Her shaking aside, there was almost no hesitation in the girl’s movements; I got the feeling that she’d had to do this before.
I lifted my shotgun and set about the unpleasant task of blowing the heads off any puppets that were still moving. It was one of the most depressing, disgusting things I’d ever had to do. But at least it didn’t take very long, and afterward I walked back to join the guys.
The Warlock was tending to Cooper with his healing crystal. Based on the huge purpling knots on my boyfriend’s face and body, he had taken another club to the eye and a couple to the shoulders and forearms before Pal spirited him away to safety. Pal stood close by, giving me a look I couldn’t quite read.
“Nice job,” Cooper said, apparently without irony or sarcasm.
My cheeks flushed. “ ‘Nice job’? No. There was nothing ‘nice’ about what I just did. That was really fucking horrible. I am going to see those bodies burning in nightmares the rest of my life, and no, I don’t care that they didn’t have souls and I was doing them a favor or whatever. I do not want to have to do that again, okay? So if you go off looking for a fight, don’t bring it back to me to deal with, dammit!”
Cooper stared back at me. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
He still had a look and tone of anger I didn’t like, but I bit my tongue on another heated reply. Now was not a good time to get into an argument with him.
I turned away to retrieve my backpack and the shotgun and Pal’s tack from the van. “We’re leaving.”
chapter
eighteen
Crazed State Unhinged
The sun was sinking low on the horizon as Pal and I followed Charlie’s van down the highway to the Cuchillo State University campus. The survivors had set up a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire around a cluster of tan brick buildings in the middle of campus, walling off the Student Union, the health center, and two high-rise dormitories. The inside of the fence was buttressed with four-foot-tall sandbag walls with a rifleman keeping watch behind them every fifty yards or so.
A squad of skinny college-age boys dressed in a mix of coffee-stain desert combat fatigues, tiger-stripe airman battle uniforms, Air Force ROTC Tshirts, and grubby jeans were stationed at the sliding gate. They raised their rifles toward me and Pal, but Charlie waved at them from the driver’s window and told them to stand down. The young militiamen opened the gate for the van, and Pal flew us over the fence and landed us in the courtyard. People stared at Pal, but as with Rudy, they seemed only moderately surprised to find a giant ferrety spider monster landing in their compound. The crowd was mostly more young college-and military-age men and a few girls my age and a little younger.
And the courtyard was filled with cats: they rode in backpacks and slings and lounged on the concrete picnic tables. More cats napped on the sandbag wall or in the branches of the oak trees shading the courtyard. Something seemed oddly familiar about the cats, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I supposed that there are only so many different kinds of cats, and sooner or later one was bound to remind me of another. But all of them? It made me uneasy.
A swarthy thirty-something man in a short-sleeved Air Force uniform approached us. I saw gold oak leaves on his epaulets.
“Air support at last … fantastic.” He stuck his hand out to me as he looked Pal up and down. “I’m Major Woodrow Rodriguez, USAF, out of Fineman AFB, acting commander of military defense operations here. Got any more of these?”
He looked me square in the eye as I shook his hand, and in his gaze I saw a certain profound lack of interest in me as a woman. Guys usually either check you out a bit at first or dodge serious eye contact entirely to avoid seeming like they’re attracted to you. But as far as the major was concerned, I got the feeling I could have been a piece of talking furniture. When he saw the Warlock and my shirtless boyfriend get out of the van, though, there was a faint spark of interest in his face. Faint, but definitely there.
“More like Pal?” I replied. “No, sorry, he’s unique … but if you’re with the Air Force, why don’t you have planes and helicopters? And why is everybody here and not at the air base?”
I looked around at the whip-lean cadets and young militiamen standing guard and repairing weapons and attending to other duties in the courtyard, and I realized that if I were single, I’d be hard-pressed to find a date around here. Well, it made sense: I of all people knew the fierce tweak Miko could put on your hormones, and these boys had all survived at lea
st a year of her tampering with their minds and bodies. Any gay kid growing up in a military-minded family in a small West Texas town would learn a monk’s restraint, or he’d probably end up broken, bloody, and crucified on a barbed wire fence before he turned twenty-one. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and most important, don’t die.
The major gave a harsh, barking laugh. “Fineman AFB is little more than a smoking crater now. Miko infiltrated the minds of some of our key personnel and brainwashed them into committing coordinated acts of domestic terrorism and treason against the base and their fellow airmen. Only a few dozen of us survived the assault on the base; we scavenged some small and medium arms, but most of the vehicles and all the aircraft were destroyed. Once Miko revealed herself and her intentions, we chose to activate the ROTC cadets here at CSU and reestablish our base of operations in these core campus buildings.”
Despite his scowling demeanor, the major had truckloads of square-jawed, take-charge charisma. A man’s man, through and through. My body was reacting to the smell of his testosterone-laden sweat; it didn’t care that he was gay. It didn’t care that I was in a committed relationship. It wanted what it wanted. And what it apparently wanted was to drive me to hang myself in frustration.
Oblivious to what was happening in my pants, the major gestured toward the high-rise dorms. “This isn’t your everyday college campus. In addition to generating its own power at the physical plant, it has its own sewage treatment and water reclamation facilities. Part of Miko’s attack on Fineman involved dumping psychoactive drugs in our water tower, so from the outset we knew we needed to keep tight security on our food and drink supplies. However, since her initial attack, she seems content to wage a war of attrition through demoralization.”
Shotgun Sorceress Page 16
