by eden Hudson
I tuned her out. We needed to make an exit. Discreetly. As if we hadn’t even noticed the guy.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the waitress finally getting off her lumpy ass to bring over our plates.
“I said to-go,” I told her.
The waitress stopped walking and blinked. “You didn’t—”
“Jeez, lady, I know it’s three in the morning, but you’d think since we’re the only customers in this place, you would be able to remember. Three orders of biscuits and gravy to go.”
The waitress clearly wanted to keep arguing, but a loudly cleared throat from the kitchen shut her up. She turned around and headed back toward the kitchen.
Carina leaned across the table toward me. “Van Zandt, what—”
The guy at the window was pretending to read the menu card now, but I could feel him eavesdropping. I mirrored her posture and lowered my voice until only she could hear me.
“Come on, Carina, you said it yourself—you’re tired of this town and you want to get away before it kills you. Well, sister, nobody’s stopping you. What are you going to do while you wait for the Guild to decide they need the Bloodslinger? Go back to your wet country house and drink coffee? Take a sensual bubble bath with the personal massager you named after me? Go back to Nick’s little eight by ten cell and watch holos together?” Her expression didn’t even twitch a nanometer when I said his name. “Is that all your life is, waiting on them? What about passion? What about saying screw the collateral damage? Invite Nickie-boy if you have to, but don’t feed me excuses when we both know you’re dying to come with me. Let’s go already!”
She closed her eyes and rubbed them, then squeezed the bridge of her nose.
Coming out of a VR game is strange. Time is even harder than usual to grasp. You’ve been removed from the world for however long you’ve been playing—which can be weeks or years in-game, and days or hours in real life—so it’s almost as if you just woke up, but you haven’t actually slept. If you’ve been in VR for more than a day, your mind and body are exhausted. I’d almost gone into a coma after a few multiday Tsunami Tsity marathons, and I’d been eleven then, with a body better suited to recovering from all-nighters. Carina may have been speaking metaphorically when she said she was tired—she had just lived through a fictional character’s life and death—but whether she knew it or not, she was also physically tired. Her defenses were weakened, her fiancé was missing and not answering any of her messages, and her dream lover was begging her to toss responsibility to the currents and run away with him.
“Fine.” I grabbed my ventilator and stood up. “Have it your way. See if I ever try to do anything nice for you again.”
I turned toward the kitchen to collect my two-thirds of our takeout.
Carina’s fingers locked around my wrist like a shackle.
Manic paperinas flitted around inside my gut, but I kept from smiling and raised my eyebrows doubtfully at her.
“I’ll go,” she said.
“What about all of your important duties?” I sneered. “Wouldn’t be very responsible of the mighty Bloodslinger to go running off. What if somebody decides they need you?”
Carina frowned, then said, “Get me out of this place.”
***
I didn’t watch over my shoulder as we left, but I could feel the guy at the window waiting for me to step outside so he could note my new vehicle of choice. Unfortunately for that goon, he was dealing with the best thief in history, not some second-rate breaker trash. I led Carina out into the acid sleet and up the block, took a left down a covered alley, then came out in front of a closed salvage shop, where I’d parked the Culebra. The streetlight overhead flickered as I triggered the remote unlock.
We hopped into the car.
“Where’s your crotchrocket?” Carina asked as she slammed the passenger side door behind her.
“I don’t like to take it out during the winter.” I leaned over the steering wheel, pushing back my jacket sleeve and pressing my wristpiece screen to the ignition. The Culebra’s ferrous block roared to life. “The acid sleet plus the mineral mix they use on the roads this time of year is murder on a paint job—even with a state-of-the-art protectant topcoat like the ’Shan has.”
Additionally, my beloved custom-built Mangshan VII-Series had been sideswiped by some goon in a cargo carrier while I was in the throes of a PCM fit. I’d almost been crushed under forty tons of metal, and the ’Shan was still being patched up by Crotalinae-certified mechanics. I wasn’t riding it again until I’d found the cure for the plague. Zooming around on a crotchrocket with nothing between me and the asphalt while I was in danger of having a PCM fit could get me killed, or worse, horribly disfigured.
The Culebra was my compromise. The dragonfly iridescent luxury vehicle was just as rare and lavish as the ’Shan, with optional radiant heat in its buttery leather seats, and a street-illegal ferrous block engine that would mean jail time for anybody without my formidable escape skills if an Enforcer ever looked under the hood. At twenty feet long—including the tail fins—and a solid three tons of good old-fashioned Emdoni steel, the Culebra could survive a head-on collision with a rockcrete wall. If I had a PCM fit while driving that ghetto cruise ship, I wasn’t in any danger of dying. And since that public investigator of Iceni’s had pegged the ’Shan as mine, taking the Culebra turned out to be a happy bonus.
I buckled my safety belt, then nodded at the takeout boxes Carina was holding. “I don’t usually let people eat in the Culebra because I don’t usually let people ride in the Culebra, but since it would be a crime to let those get any colder, we should go ahead and dig in.”
“I’m honored,” she said.
“How many times do I have to tell you that I’ll handle the sarcasm around here?” I took my food and one of the disposable sets of flatware she was holding. The heavenly smell of sausage gravy and yeasty biscuits hit me full in the face when I opened my box. My stomach roared.
“But we’re not driving while we eat?” Carina asked, eyeing my seatbelt. “I thought you were in a hurry to get on the road.”
“I am, but not in a crash-a-priceless-Culebra-because-of-distracted-driving kind of hurry,” I said. “Or a dribble-gravy-onto-my-favorite-tourist-shirt kind of hurry. There’s time to eat before we burn tires.”
“Would that be your real favorite tourist shirt, or just the tourist shirt you want me to think is your favorite?” she asked.
Having just shoveled a bite into my mouth, I couldn’t cackle at the Miyo reference without being disgusting and rude. I tipped my head back, squeezed my eyes shut, and grinned to let her know I’d caught it.
Carina set her box in the seat between us and unbuckled herself. “Well, if there’s time to eat here, then there’s time to get some seasoning.”
I swallowed fast.
“Nope.” I slapped the door locks. They all shut at once with a round of chunks. “You’re not defiling any good food in this vehicle. Red pepper flakes are where I draw the line.”
Carina smiled, pulled her lock open manually, and got out. I let her go. It might confuse the PI in the diner if she reappeared, or just force him to sit back down to keep up the illusion that he really was there to drink that chicory sludge they called coffee.
While Carina was gone, I scarfed my food. It wasn’t the attention these heavy bites of culinary genius deserved, but we did need to get out of Taern as fast as possible.
I was on my last bite when Carina climbed back in with a handful of sacrilege. She proceeded to dust it all over her biscuits and gravy.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
I swallowed, then wiped my mouth with the disposable napkin. “Northwest.”
“Anywhere I’d know?”
“That depends.” I opened the window and tossed my takeout box onto the sidewalk for the PI. I like people to know when they’ve been outwitted. “Ever heard of a little place called the Crystal Lakes?”
***
Ba
ck in the early days of the Guild, the Crystal Lakes area was uninhabited by anything but the deadliest creatures—olms, condas, and the like—and was frequently used as a way for prospective knights hoping to prove their worth via pilgrimage to one of the most dangerous areas in the burgeoning country. So frequently, in fact, that the deadly creatures had been hunted to the edge of extinction by the fourth century, then finished off altogether by mercs working for the visionaries who claimed the region and started developing it.
Nowadays, the Crystal Lakes is one of the wealthiest developments in Emden, more like a resort hideaway for the disgustingly rich than a residential community. My house was on the north end of Amethyst Lake’s western shore at Mile Marker 9, just far enough away from everyone else that I never saw another person unless they were boating past my cove, but still in close enough proximity to the lake’s dazzling array of restaurants to keep me from going hungry. The perfect location.
The drive from Taern to my lake house usually took eleven hours on the ’Shan. With the Culebra, that stretched to a little over fourteen. I was pretty sure I could make it the whole way myself—I’d had a PCM attack before I pulled the Culebra out of the garage to meet Carina, so as long as the frequency of the fits didn’t suddenly jump up, I wasn’t due to glitch out again very soon—but if I started to get sleepy, I would procure us a room.
Not long after I got us on the road, and Carina finished eating, the strain of having spent four days in virtual reality with no sleep finally caught up to her. She propped her elbow on the door and slumped over so she could rest her head on it. Within a few minutes, her arm had slipped out from under her cheek, and she was fast asleep with her head stuck at an angle that looked detrimental to the cervical spine.
As I drove, I noted what sleep looked like for Carina. Mouth slightly open, a little wetting of drool at the lower corner of her lips, deep breaths that sighed in her throat and nasal passages like a warm wind through trees, longer breaths out than in. Either she had been putting me on when we were driving through Soam on our first job together or her exhausted sleep was very different from her light sleep.
About an hour after we passed Old Castle and headed for the mountains, Carina’s wristpiece beeped. The notification didn’t wake her. It didn’t even cause a momentary disruption in her respiratory patterns. She was out cold.
Couldn’t be Nick. Just after I traded his soul jar to Re Suli, I’d set up a filter to block any messages he might try to send Carina, and the fix-it witch had promised to dispose of his wristpiece as soon as he got to Courten.
Maybe it was the Guild wanting their Bloodslinger to do some wet work.
Normally, I would never mess around on my wristpiece while driving—that’s for suicidal morons—but the Culebra was currently rolling down a perfectly straight, flat stretch of blacktop without another vehicle in sight. More importantly, my plans didn’t call for Carina to go into the office today.
First, I jerked the wheel of the Culebra to make sure she was really asleep.
Not even an eyelid flicker.
Then, I propped my knees up under the wheel while I opened my SilverPlatter infoserve app and checked Carina’s messages. The new message had come from a garbage company. It was an invoice for “recurring clearing of cardboard boxes from primary residence,” set to go on until she discontinued the service.
I grinned. Still so in love with me that she couldn’t break that tagalong curse cluttering up her refuge. It probably wouldn’t go away until she dropped Nick and admitted she wanted me.
I grabbed the wheel for a second to make a slight course correction, then went back to my SilverPlatter app. I’d had time to check the message before Carina got to it this time, but I couldn’t always count on her being asleep. Next time it might be the Guild ordering her to report for duty. Or hell, even one of Nickie-boy’s mountain-bayou trash family wondering where he was.
With a few taps, I set up a new filter to send all of Carina’s incoming messages through me first for approval. If I decided to let them go through, the SilverPlatter app would deliver them as if nothing unusual had happened. If I didn’t, I could just delete them. Simple, easy, effective.
That app really is worth its gigabytes in untraceable currency. I can’t recommend it highly enough. If the digi-black market were the kind of place that ran ads, I would give the SilverPlatter a full endorsement with my real name and everything.
***
My vision started to blur just after seven in the morning. Apparently, the last week or so had been exhausting for me too, what with all the running off to exotic locales and researching possible leads on the Garden of Time. I needed to catch some rest before I fell asleep at the wheel.
We were a few miles outside the City at the Pass, trapped in the gridlock outside the one-lane choke point that was the only road through the mountains, so I took the stop-and-go as an opportunity to let the Sharp Right Turn know that the esteemed JD Vance would be utilizing his standing reservation in their penthouse.
Carina didn’t wake up until I pulled into the Sharp Right Turn’s parking garage an hour later. She sat up, inhaling sharply and scrubbing at the corner of her mouth as she looked around.
“Huh,” she breathed.
“What?”
“Nothing.” But she was looking around like somebody who wasn’t sure where they were or how they’d gotten there.
“Still about eight hours away from the Lakes,” I told her. “But I’ve got to get some sleep, and you’re still too impaired to drive.”
Carina climbed out without arguing.
I got out and slammed my door, then stretched my arms over my head, arching my back.
She touched a nearby mountain rock pillar, then looked down the row toward the elevators at the end of the parking garage carved into the mountain.
“City at the Pass?” she guessed.
“The Sharp Right Turn specifically,” I said, locking the Culebra. “Ever slept in a five-star penthouse?”
“As long as it’s got a flat surface, I don’t care where we sleep.”
Which is the attitude she maintained until we made it up to the penthouse and she saw that it only had one bed.
“I’m not sleeping in that with you,” she said.
“No, you’re not.” I pointed at the couch. “You’re sleeping on that.”
She smirked. “Always putting other people first.”
“Lucky you that I do.” I tossed my ventilator on the bar. “Penthouse, Carina. You probably would’ve wanted to stay in some herpes crabs-infested jizz motel just to prove you don’t care about comfort.”
“I’ve grabbed naps in worse places,” she said, toeing off her boots. “Never caught herpes crabs, though.”
“That you’ll admit.” I gave my jacket a shake before hooking it over a stool at the bar. “The Bloodslinger is tough. The Bloodslinger can survive in the most brutal of conditions. My question is why the Bloodslinger would want to.”
“You never know what you might have to do.” She threw her jacket over the back of the couch. “If you’re prepared for anything, then you can do it better than anybody else.”
“Did Mommy teach you that with all her scary stories?” I asked.
Carina stretched out on the couch, groaning softly as she lay back. “Did Daddy teach you how to abduct a woman when she’s too tired to say no?”
Instead of kicking one of the barstools at her face, I went to the bed and flipped back the covers. “Let’s not forget who begged whom to get her out of Taern, sister. Betraying the Guild and running off with a nonbeliever smacks of a move learned straight from Sir Cormac. If you decide to go all noble on me and commit ritual suicide, do it in the bathtub. I don’t want to have to tiptoe around a pool of blood and shit when I wake up.”
“And so we’ve reached the part of the night where you insult my parents because you can’t insult yours.” Carina tried to stifle a jaw-popping yawn with the back of her hand. “Must be bedtime.”
�
��It’s actually morning,” I said. “Lights off.”
The penthouse’s voice sensor obeyed.
I shucked out of my clothes and slipped into the bed, wiggling my shoulders and butt until I got comfortable. Tucked deep in the mountainside without a single window, it was impossible to tell that, outside, the sun was coming up. The darkness felt as heavy and cool as a fresh blanket.
Air whooshed through the Sharp Right Turn’s ventilation and filtration system. Carina shifted on the couch. Ice dropped out of the icemaker in the minibar, and fresh water rushed in to start a new batch.
The penthouse’s sheets and mattress caressed every surface molecule of my body. Coupled with how tired I was, the luxurious accommodations and whisper of the ventilation system should’ve knocked me out immediately.
But my eyes wouldn’t shut. I could feel Carina over there, listening to me breathe. I stared into the complete darkness as if I could force my eyes to see through it.
It’s not abduction if the abductee asks you to take her. It’s not abduction if you’re not planning to torture her to death over the course of the next few weeks. It’s not abduction if she wants you so badly that she doesn’t even mention her lost fiancé to you.
If you can’t make her go with you willingly, Jubal—if you can’t make her beg you to take her—then you don’t deserve to have her.
Yeah, but look who used the throat pin on at least one of his seventy-odd victims, Lorne. Did the ol’ base impulses get out of control there for a minute? Couldn’t get that one to come willingly, so you had to resort to force?
My father’s voice didn’t have anything smart to say to that.
The twisting, popping urge to get up and sprint around the room until I was exhausted made the muscles in my calves and shoulders twitch. The pillow rubbed against the short hairs on the back of my neck and sent a shiver down my spine. I knew how to kill this kind of energy, but I couldn’t get up and leave while Carina was listening to me.
I forced myself to hold still, biting my tongue and staring into the darkness, until I could hear her soft, even breathing over the sound of the air filtration system. Black frustration boiled in my muscles and my head ached from the effort it took not to move, but I waited.
