*
“How dare she cancel my card thingy! Who does she think she is?” Vicky growled in frustration once they were inside of Tyson’s car.
Which wasn’t his old Nissan Leaf, but a brand-new Tesla Model S. If Tyson was going to be taking trips all around the western United States trying to save King Henry from himself, then Tyson needed a car with a bit more range. He’d managed to get the Leaf to Los Angeles, but only due to the fact he was one of the few people in the world who could charge his electric car with just his thumb.
New or old, the trip to the car hadn’t been quite as quick as Vicky had expected, if only because she hadn’t realized they were the ones who needed to pick up her pair of suitcases, which wouldn’t be brought out to them by ushers or servants or whoever it was that usually waited on her. This is how King Henry feels when I take middle class life for granted, doesn’t he?
Feeling like King Henry. Not an often happenstance, for example: Tyson couldn’t ever imagine King Henry feeling this awkward with a woman, just because she was near him. Maybe Valentine when he still thought she might set him on fire with the whole Isabel-as-Valentine fiasco at the Asylum, but that’s cleared up now.
A thought entered his head . . . what if this wasn’t Vicky with him now? What if it was Isabel?
Tyson eyed her nervously.
Next to him, Vicky took a moment to figure out her seatbelt. She’d thrown her oversized purse in the backseat and her luggage was in the trunk, but one hand was filled with a coffee cup and the other something gooey with lots of cinnamon sprinkled on top of it. She held both like they might explode at any moment.
Yup, it was Vicky all right.
Tyson gingerly reached over to point at the cup-holder in an effort to politely help her out.
Vicky studied it for a moment before realizing its function. “This is my first time in the passenger seat,” she apologized. “Or having a drink or food in a car . . . Father always used to say: if it doesn’t sit on a plate then it is not proper food, Victoria! We even ate ice cream in bowls.”
“Never?”
“I know! The first time I had an ice cream cone at the Asylum I almost orgasmed!”
“Uh . . .”
She smirked mischievously at him. “Am I doing a decent King Henry expression?”
“Perhaps too good,” he reluctantly admitted. “But I was talking about you never being in a car like this more than the ice cream.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk about my ice cream orgasm?”
“. . . very sure.”
Vicky rolled her eyes at how nervous he was being. “Fine then . . . yes, it’s the first time I’ve sat in the passenger seat of a car. Not that cars were ever a Welf transportation device of choice, or that I left the Mansion much as a child, but when we did it was always Father and Mother in the front. Then since I’ve graduated it’s always been drivers, with me in the back, sometimes with Brother accompanying me. This is the first time I’ve taken a trip with a . . . friend.”
“Oh,” Tyson said. First she kisses me, then she’s joking about body parts, now she’s calling me a friend of all things, and . . . why do I have to be such a geek? Why can’t I just play it cool? Or just . . .
He started the car and pulled it out of the parking spot.
Vicky took a bite of her pastry, studying him as she chewed. “Is it your car?”
“I just bought it.”
“I like it.”
“Thank you.”
“Tyson . . .”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember Las Vegas?”
He almost crashed into a lamppost. “I do.”
Vicky smiled at the reaction, even more mischievous than before. “Not that part of Las Vegas. Do you remember after? When we would lie in bed and talk with each other? Sharing our feelings and our hopes? Talking about our families and our friends and just about everything important to us?”
“I do,” Tyson said seriously, “I’ll always remember it.”
Vicky’s lips twitched playfully. “Then why are you so uptight right now?”
Tyson tried to categorize his feelings and his hopes . . . quite a few of them had Vicky in them. “When you have a dream the first time, you’re just caught up in experiencing it. When you have the same dream again . . . you’re worried about it ending before you’re ready, or that it will take a different turn, or . . . that having the dream again, this time will be the last time.”
“Oh,” it was Vicky’s turn to say.
Why did I say that?!? he screamed at himself. Who says that during a second fling?!? Now I’m just going to have an awkward weekend with a girl I’ve had sex with before, all while trying to keep her safe, trying to keep her from doing something Old Mancy with a simple piece of technology or running across the street and getting herself ran over or . . .
He should have just channeled his inner King Henry.
I’m just trying to decide what to do with you tonight, Vick. Vegas was just a warm up act, now we’re getting good at it! Sex! Yeah! OoooOOOH AaaahhhHH!
“Tyson?”
“Yes?” he said hopefully.
“That’s the sweetest thing a boy has ever said to me.”
“Surely there—”
“Not really. I have flings; I do . . . precisely because I am Victoria von Welf. Mother gets mad about it, but she’s never gotten worried before. She knows I’m just . . . being her free-spirited friendly daughter that . . . well, she might sniff over my choices or make a comment, but never like this . . . never so far that she would cancel a card thingy.”
“What does that—”
“To use your very sweet metaphor: I’ve never dreamt that dream a second time,” she admitted, suddenly shy. “So . . . please don’t be scared of your feelings with me . . . because I’m having the same feelings and, I really think if we both worry it will just become a nightmare, don’t you?”
No prob, baby, we’ll just have some casual, consequence-free grunting and humping; you’ll go on your way walking sideways, with a grin on your face. What’s there to be scared about? I get checked at the clinic every other month! Hey, did you know Slush cures herpes? A friend told me . . . yeah, a friend.
“I keep wondering how King Henry would handle this situation,” Tyson also admitted.
Vicky started giggling to herself. “The backseat would probably be involved.”
“You think he would actually bother to stop the car?” Tyson joked.
Vicky giggled a bit more, frowning slightly. “That’s a good point . . . although the mechanics of it would be difficult, wouldn’t it?”
Tyson found an on-ramp to the highway, heading west on the 180. Soon enough, he would have to turn off onto the 41, heading north out of Fresno and up into the Sierra Nevada Foothills. He hadn’t known the exact location of the Coyote Nation compound before Vicky told him last week—not that it was a complete secret, just not widely spread around—but apparently it was up past Millerton Lake on almost a thousand acres of isolated, arid, rocky foothills land. The perfect land to breed coyotes and Coyotes both.
Vicky finished her pastry in silence, watching the cars next to them and the city slowly moving around them. Fresno just before spring wasn’t pretty to see. It was very worn out and worn down. Strange to think that in just a few weeks all the trees would be green, grasses and wild flowers would sprout in every field, and bees and birds would start returning one by one. Spring was always Tyson’s favorite time of the year, even if he had to fight off allergies.
“So this is Fresno,” Vicky tried again now that the ice was somewhat broken between them. “This is where you and King Henry grew up.”
“Partly,” he explained. “King Henry grew up in Visalia, which is a little south and much smaller, but mostly the same.”
“A great many cars and even more streets. And motels . . . why are there so many motels? They don’t look like places you would want to spend the night at . . .”
“Quite a f
ew people are still heading to work at this hour,” Tyson said, ignoring what you would possibly want to do in so many seedy motels in that particular part of town. “You came in very early on the plane.”
“That’s what happens when you sneak out at 3AM when everyone is asleep, even the Constructs. It was still snowing at the Mansion when I left.”
Tyson tried to think up something interesting to say while maneuvering through the loops of the freeways to switch from west to north, but came up blank. “It never snows here.”
Vicky sighed again, a crooked expression on her face. “We’re talking about the weather, what’s happened to us?”
He relaxed a little more. “I’m glad you asked me to do this, Vicky.”
“I couldn’t go alone. I would have been locked in my room if I tried to visit a Were Nation alone, and you’re already here . . . and I do like you quite a bit, so I suppose you’ll do,” she teased.
“I could still trade places with King Henry,” he teased back, “you could ride on the back of his motorcycle.”
Vicky shook her head vigorously, eyes wide at the very idea. “I almost expected him to be in the backseat tagging along for the ride. How is he? We never did get to talk much after Vegas, did we? Not like we planned . . . just to set this up and now here we are, and . . . here we are.”
“Are you screaming ‘why am I babbling?’ in your head right now?” he teased her some more.
She reached across the car and smacked him on the shoulder. “How is King Henry?” she repeated. “After what happened . . . there’s a part of me that knows what world we live in as mancers, but I’ve never felt it more than after what happened in that cage. Even hunting after Isabel in the crowd couldn’t make me look away.”
“He’s busy rebuilding the artifacts he lost and designing a new slew of experiments. He’s very focused, perhaps too focused, obsessed even. I think he doesn’t want to be caught off-guard again. He keeps making comments about being on the offensive, though I’m not sure what he’s planning yet. He’s not drinking, not chasing women, he’s just . . . working.”
“It’s too bad about him and Valentine really, they were always so sweet together at the Asylum,” Vicky commented. “She makes him want to be better in a way even I can’t bring out by cheering him up . . . but I suppose Miss Dale had her reasons for breaking them up.”
“You . . . you don’t actually believe that conspiracy theory King Henry came up with, do you?”
“She’s a Dale, they meddle in everything, even love lives. Look at your own relationship with King Henry; do you think you would be business partners if she hadn’t pushed the two of you together?”
“Well . . . I mean . . . okay, but—”
“Or King Henry’s story about how he met the vampire, if we believe him.”
Tyson gulped. “She’s very real . . . very, very real.”
“Oh, that’s right . . . you met her.”
“She kind of beat me up.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Vicky!”
She smiled out the window as they passed a large shopping mall. “Fine, but my point has been made about Dales I think. Good or ill, they always meddle. Especially if they pick a person as a favorite, and King Henry and Valentine both apply.”
“Fine, you win . . . maybe Miss Dale did have a part in it. Either way, I’m just glad the breakup is over and done with. You didn’t even see the worst of it. He threw shit at me.”
“Like . . . poo . . . from his butt?”
“Yes! Although . . . I’m not sure where he got it from . . .”
Silence until Vicky recovered, “So he’s doing better?”
“Dedicated to being the best Artificer in history,” Tyson summarized.
“I’d like to see his workshop when we come back this way after the portrait is done.”
“That shouldn’t be any problem.”
“Unless you’d like to stop by now?” Vicky hedged.
“Oh, he’s not there. He’s heading up to the school to consult with Plutarch. It’s about building a golem casing for the anima concentration that keeps following him around, before you ask. No, I don’t think he’s crazy about that one . . . but only because I’ve seen it make words in the table.”
Vicky studied him like he was the crazy one.
“What?”
“Next time you have a tidbit that juicy, you might want to lead with it, Tyson,” she pointed out.
“Before the poo throwing?”
“Next time don’t even bring up the poo throwing,” Vicky advised.
“There won’t be a next time if I have anything to say about it,” Tyson stated firmly.
Vicky only shrugged.
She doesn’t think . . .
They can’t get back together again, right?
Please?
Mancy . . . Miss Dale . . . whoever . . . keep them apart! One poo throwing is enough for any man to live through!
*
Fresno is a mass of flat, spread out city, but it wasn’t oppressive and inescapable like some urban regions. When you left Fresno it quickly became open country. People said California was just a desert, they were very wrong about it. Los Angeles was a desert, made real only by man’s ingenuity and perhaps even his pride, but not Fresno. Fresno was grassland, surrounded by foothills, with some of the most fertile soil on the planet just waiting to be plowed for agriculture.
Yes, the two rivers that ran through the area were dammed, and perhaps that was a tiny bit of man’s pride showing itself again, but with land holding so much possibility it would have been a crime to abandon it all. What once flowed strong enough to carry riverboats was little more than a creek in the middle of an ancient riverbed. Now that water was pumped and irrigated and became food for millions.
Not that I know anything about farming . . .
A few of his clients were actually farmers on the west side of the valley. Comparing the little stretch of farmland Tyson and Vicky raced through to some west side farms was like comparing a minnow to a whale. This was just what could be grown, where it could be grown, before you hit the foothills that led to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
“No offense to your home,” Vicky told him, “but I like this scenery quite better.”
“Won’t be the first time Fresno was offended by an outsider.”
“An outsider, am I?”
“Stuck up Yankee blue blood laughing at the simple farmers growing all the food on your dinner table,” Tyson decided.
“Can you go back to being nervous, please?”
Tyson gave her a long look. “No.”
“I don’t even think of myself as being from Connecticut. Blue blood . . . I think our blood is so pure it’s more purple actually. But as to my state . . . I’ve never felt it. I’ve never really seen much of it to tell the truth, just the Mansion and the grounds. If we traveled, it was to an airport for some other mancer destination hidden away from the rest of the world. It’s odd being out like this . . . seeing farms and cows and . . . wouldn’t it be fun to travel across the whole country?”
“Today you only get a little over an hour of it,” Tyson pointed out.
Vicky pouted as she absently played with the fringe of her scarf. “Is this the same road that goes to the Institution?”
“No. This heads by Friant Dam and then up to Yosemite, to get to the Asylum you have to travel up California, to Sacramento, then north east into the mountains. King Henry’s drive will be much longer than ours.”
“Is he taking his motorcycle? King Henry on a motorcycle . . . I’d like to see that one. Do his feet reach the pedals or does he have some type of extension to help?”
“I think he rented a normal car. Too many artifacts and design documents he wants to run by Plutarch or the like.” Or he just wants to be able to crash into road signs without actually paying for it, given the way he drives.
“The Guild won’t like him making a golem,” Vicky stated. “Guild Master Massey has apparentl
y been furious about what happened with Conan Sapa as it is.”
“How do you—”
“I’m a Welf,” she cut him short with a placating roll of her eyes. “We hear everything from all the Old Mancy families. The Masseys are very Old Family, Ninth Generation in fact. So they spoke to the Blooms who spoke to the Waldens who spoke to us . . . all powerful mancers and every one of them gossips like a Single at the Asylum!”
“Well, King Henry cares less about what the Guild thinks than he even used to, especially since he saw that electric ring on your brother’s finger.”
“But really,” Vicky went back in the conversation as she got distracted by another orchard grove, “wouldn’t it be fun to travel the whole country? I could stuff the car with spectro-frames and then paint the scenery of the trip along the way. Might even be a nice idea for a gallery exhibit.”
“Less dangerous than painting the King of the Coyotes, I suppose,” Tyson couldn’t help but point out.
“We’ll be perfectly fine,” Vicky said. “We have a truce, we are guests, and we are friends.”
“I also have twenty minutes of electro-anima pooled up just in case we need it.”
Vicky squinted at him, seeming to seize an impulse. “Tyson . . .”
He risked glancing over at her, saw the sparkle in her blue eyes and got a little brave. “Be careful, that’s a girlfriend kind of tone, not a fling kind of tone.”
She was undeterred. “You and King Henry have both mastered all the higher Mancy methods that they won’t teach us until we’re older, yes?”
“Mastered is a strong word and King Henry is much better at all of them.”
“But you know how it’s done?”
“I . . . yes, I can extend a pool and split a pool and even hold back a pool if I want to feel like a needle is being jammed in my neck.”
“I don’t suppose you could teach a person how to do it, could you?” Vicky hedged. “A person who is as much Seventeenth Generation as her brother but no one will bother to explain anything to her because she’s just a girl?”
King Henry and the Three Little Trips (The King Henry Tapes) Page 3
