Live and Let Fly

by Karina Fabian

  She gave everyone an extra scapular. "Put this on Heather when you find her. It'll protect her and help us find her if we get separated again."

  I and Charlie started putting things into our pockets, but Rakness pushed his back.

  Grace started, "Stan, just because you aren't a practicing Catholic doesn't mean—"

  "I know," he said. "It's not that I don’t think they'll help. I won't need them. I'm going on with Skyhopper. I will be in Spokane having dinner with Clarisse."

  Ever heard a "deafening silence?" We shared one of those for a minute.

  "Say that again?" I said in my most dangerous tone, the kind of tone that made stronger humans backpedaling and stumbling to explain their words and had lesser humans either fainting or doing embarrassing things they'd have to wash out of their pants later.

  Rak must have been tone deaf. He leaned toward Grace and me and threw Charlie an apologetic look. "We have the utmost confidence in you. You've saved the world, right? But one thing you need to understand: rescuing Rhoda is only half the mission. Person or persons in the McThing complex are involved in potential acts of terrorism against the United States and possibly both our worlds. We need to find out their plans. Get Rhoda out if you can but find any information you can on their scheme. Computer records, pictures of equipment, even overheard conversations."

  "Monologues?" I quipped, and Rak pointed at me and made a clicking sound.

  Charlie stood and slapped his hand out of the way. "Her name's Heather, and what do you mean, 'get Rhoda if you can'? And you're not bloody coming?"

  Rak spread his hands helplessly. "It's out of my jurisdiction. Calloway's been working on the warrants. He just needs the location. I'll phone it to him as soon as we're out of area, in case they have monitoring devices. That should give you a couple of hours to find her and the information and get to safety. Or, if you get into trouble, for the cavalry to come."

  "Coward!"

  Rak started out of his seat, but the lap belt held him back. He relaxed slowly, taking a long, heavy breath. His voice grew cold, though his eyes flamed. "Look, Faerie, I don't claim to know how things are done in your universe, but if I go with you, all the bad guys walk as soon as the lawyer finds out. If you want these guys to go down, you go in there as an independent rescue mission. I'll be your cover story. You used Reporter Randy as an excuse and acted on tips from Grace's magic."

  "What about BILE?"

  "We don’t talk about BILE. People don’t need to know the government has BILE and neither do the villains. Got that?"

  Charlie's jaw worked for a moment. "Heather's rescue comes first." He looked at me, then Grace.

  Grace studied the magical items on the table. She spoke softly in Gaelic. "Charlie. Your granddad told you about the Great War. If we can stop another before it starts, we need to make it a priority."

  I watched as every muscle in his body tensed against the urge to throttle someone.

  "Take it easy," I said to them both in Gaelic. "We can multi-task. Besides, did you think we were dumb enough to show up without a few tricks up our sleeves? Charlie, remember what I told you." I switched to English. "Grace, why don't you get yourself ready? Charlie, can you check the galley? Now is not a good time for me to operate on an empty stomach. Oh, and find Grace a six pack of Ping Extra and a shaker of salt."

  Grace nodded. "Good idea. Let's go to the galley first. I'll go with you."

  "Salt shaker?" Rak asked when they'd left.

  "Sorry. Not your jurisdiction." Yeah, I know. Petty, but I was not a happy dragon. Before he could protest more than the dirty look he was giving me, I asked, "What have you got on Aiken McThing?"

  He spun the computer back to himself and started calling up sites. He obviously didn't want me to see the screen or his hands, so I made a point of settling back on my cushioned spot with my head resting on folded arms. Didn't stop listening, though. Did you know that each key on a keyboard has a slightly unique sound? I knew, and I memorized everything he typed. I fought back a snicker at his password.

  Since St. George's curse and my subsequent drafting into the service of the Church, I'm not allowed to collect treasure. But no one ever said anything about information. What can I say?

  I'm a modern dragon in a computer world.

  He called up McThing's dossier and handed the computer to me. I settled it on the bench, so I could read from where I sat. The overall summary didn't tell me more than I already knew.

  McThing had been a brilliant engineer with degrees in mechanical and computer engineering and quantum physics. ("The physics degree was just for fun," he told one interviewer). He'd begun a brilliant career with occasional flights of fancy, usually inspired by science fiction shows. He claimed to have created a three-dimensional fax years before the first commercially viable ones came out, but "the materials hadn't caught up to the technology, and the patent work is such a bore; then it slipped my mind, and you know..." Despite his love for sci-fi, he had a pathological fear of magic. He'd led book burnings; wrote extensively on what he called the "crimes against rational thought by the fantasy genre." (I snorted at that one.) The opening of the Gap had pushed him over the edge when the first Magical—a pixie named Rog—crossed over and became the first victim of a drive-by video shooting. McThing turned on the TV, saw Rog's little winged self magically beating the snot out of the GNN reporter who had been following him, and flipped out.

  He went on a drinking binge and was arrested at Limerick Nuclear Facility in Pennsylvania for attacking the gate with a broken beer bottle while screaming that they had to shut down the facility before the pixies invaded. He got thirty years at the Hapivu Psychiatric Hospital's criminally insane wing, where he was treated with a combination of drugs and endless episodes of The Trickie Pixies, one of the first “Faerie-based” cartoons and probably the most embarrassing for the pix species. Three years later, he was declared "cured" and released. He went to work for his uncle, the toymaker famous for designing the tiny useless dreck found in kid meals, and took over the business when he died, expanding into animatronics.

  I was flicking though the other information he'd called up when Grace returned. Rak looked at her and gave a hoot. "Whoa! SWAT Sister!"

  Grace had traded her habit for militaristic pants and shirt of mottled blacks, blues and grays. A Kevlar hood replaced her wimple as a head covering, the mask part pulled down under her chin. Various pockets held her tools and a few other surprises we'd picked up on the way to the airport. A slight shimmer in the fabrics only I could see attested to the magic woven in the fibers. If she stood still enough, she could stand against any surface and be essentially invisible.

  I heard Rak unbuckle his seatbelt. He said, "You look like a Ninja. Not a side I'd expected to see from a nun."

  "A habit is hardly practical for this kind of rescue operation," Grace commented serenely.

  She set her bag down beneath her seat. "It's very clean in there," she told me with a wink.

  "Are you as tough as you look?" Rak cried as he leapt toward her.

  I smacked him back into his seat with my tail. "I'm the muscle. She's the magic."

  "Who's the brains?" he muttered as he rubbed his shoulder.

  "Someone mention me?" Charlie quipped as he walked in. Apparently, the walk to the galley—and probably a snack—did him some good. Charlie might be in his mid-twenties, but his stomach thought he was still a growing boy. I was pleased to see him carrying several trays. He set them on the table and sat next to Grace.

  Unlike standard airlines, LagosLines serves real food on its airships. Charlie gave Grace a chicken cordon bleu with steamed vegetables; for himself, fish and chips; for Rak, a ham-and cheese sandwich and Fritos. The last platter held a couple of raw T-bones, thawed. These he tossed to me one at a time. "Tough Guy" Rakness blanched and pushed his tray aside.

  He reached into the overhead compartment and pulled out the heavy black briefcase that held his camera equipment. There wasn't enough room on the narrow
table for it and the food, so he set it on the seat beside him. He turned it over, pressed a different latch and opened it to reveal an interesting variety of small electronics. While we ate, he passed them out.

  The thumb drives, he explained, had a virus that invades the computer system, downloads copies of all files (including those deleted but not wiped), and removes itself. The narrow pens were document scanners. Sunglasses? Shades by day, infrared by night, with a teeny little camera. He started to hand a pair to me, glanced at my long, narrow snout, and stuffed them back into the case.

  "Won't this stuff tell folks we're BILE?" I asked.

  Rak snapped the case shut. "Everything I just gave you, you can buy online at your favorite PI spyware store."

  Great. Shanghaied by the government, sent on our own to do a dangerous rescue in unfamiliar territory, with limited magics, and we don't even get any BILE tech toys. Someone was going to pay.

  Chapter Seven: Seven Habits of Highly Defective Henchmen

  "Someone's going to pay for this," Charlie grumbled as he wiped the dirt off the seat of his jeans and examined the tear in the knee.

  We'd landed badly. What'd you expect when a twelve-foot dragon is carrying nearly half his weight in passengers? Nix had gotten us as low to the ground as he could without violating any regulations (much) or arousing attention, but sixteen thousand feet is still a long flight when you have one human on your back and another in your claws. Not to mention, I was flying on muscle power alone. In the end, I'd dropped Charlie just before doing a graceful face plant against the side of the butte. I flexed my shoulders and tried to ignore whatever I'd sprained.

  Better to save our healing magic for a real emergency.

  "Could've borrowed Rak's parachute."

  Charlie snorted, "I'd rather fall off a horse—or get dropped by a dragon."

  "Boys!" Grace hissed.

  I started to protest that no one was around to hear us, or I'd have heard them first. One look at her face shut me up. We may have saved the universes a time or two...or ten...but the only other times she'd ever operated so far from the Gap was when she chased down Coyote after he broke parole and when she'd chaperoned the Magical Mensans in Florida, both light duty. She was probably having visions of someone plunging a sword into us in a mockery of a blessing.

  Poor Operisiel must be working overtime.

  I didn't bother to ask if she was okay, which would make her lie, or reassure her that everything would work out, which might make me lie. "Our guests all right?" I asked instead.

  She hefted the large carryall off my back and opened it. I heard some grumbling, and "I want better accommodations!"

  "Want to fly home?" I asked.

  The half dozen pixies in American GI wear flew out. Faerie pixies in their natural form have the approximate dimensions of Mundane dolls—you know, the ones you Mundanes complain destroy the self-image of women even as you buy them for your girls? Anyway, a pixie tribe with entrepreneurial leanings decided to move to Los Lagos and start a lucrative business, first selling outrageous doll fashions to their own kind across the Gap; then designing their own line of pixiewear both for pixies and all those humans whose moral outrage can’t withstand the whining of a child wanting a pretty toy. Although patterned after the doll—excuse me, action figure—their BDUs were made from real material bought cheap by human employees at military surplus stores and garage sales in Fountain, Colorado. They didn't need combat boots, but their footgear made a good approximation. In all, they looked like a winged version of the toy—except for Matina, who apparently decided to dress out of the Waco Disco Queen collection. The swords and knives, for all their size, were real.

  "No," replied Terce, the leader, "but I expect us to ride First Class on the way home."

  I started to protest, but Grace looked like she'd have an apoplexy if we spent much time there arguing. Charlie didn't seem too pleased to stay in one spot, himself. Besides, we owed them after changing the plan. "Deal," I growled.

  Grace pulled off her backpack, took out a bottle of Ping cola, and opened it gently, wincing at the hiss that seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet night. She poured a little onto the ground, set the rest on the rock along with a half-finished Sudoku puzzle (with errors). Beside the rock, she poured out a little salt, hummed a spell, and drew an arrow into it.

  We headed off in the direction it pointed.

  After alerting Nix to our need for a sudden and mysterious egress, we'd abandoned a

  "clueless" Reporter Randy Stapleton and headed to the cargo area. There, we'd picked up the pixies, who had been hiding out in our luggage, and made our plans: After Operisiel led us to the entrance, and we got in, we would split up—Grace and the pixies to find the information and me and Charlie to find Heather. Getting Charlie and Grace to agree to that had taken some doing. I'd assured them that between the tracking spell and my nose, we could find her just as easily as Operisiel, and Grace was the most suited of us to handle Mundane computer equipment.

  Nonetheless, as we hiked silently toward the hidden employee back entrance, she tossed Charlie concerned looks.

  "What a stupid place to put an entrance." Charlie huffed as we rounded two boulders and came to a dirt-colored door in the butte.

  "It's not an entrance; it's an egress," I said, looking over the soundproof, roughly painted, and most importantly, handle-less exterior.

  Grace pinched the bridge of her nose and suppressed a sigh. Angels didn't always understand about doors, either.

  Charlie looked at me then his watch. Rak figured we had two, two-and-a-half hours before the Feds crashed the place. Not enough time to circle the mountain and find a new entrance. I didn't think I could carry the two of them again at once, either. I pulled out my St.

  Zita medallion and got ready to expend some magic.

  A scraping interrupted me. The door!

  Humans and pixies scampered around the boulders, but I was too big, and without using magic, my flapping to get off the ground would draw attention. I yanked off my vest, tossed it to Grace. I took a station beside the door, sitting like Isis' cat, tail curled up behind me at waist height, and froze.

  The door cracked open, and a stopper was put in the threshold. It opened fully, and two men stepped out, cigarettes in hands.

  "Whoa! Shit!" One of them yelled when he walked past me. He jumped back, bumping into his portly partner. I heard Charlie behind the boulder move forward then freeze; halted, no doubt, by Grace. Fortunately, in the scuffle, Tweedles Dee and Dum didn't hear him. Me, I didn't move. Regular McT-A Special, that was me.

  They straightened themselves out and peered at me closely. They looked like your standard rent-a-cops, blue uniform and black trousers, Taser and halogen flashlight hanging off a utility belt that even a comic book superhero would consider a fashion faux-pas, big badge on the left pocket with McThing Security/Safe and Happy! on the rockers. Over the other pocket, a light blue leather nametag said, "Hi! I'm" and their names: Bob and Joe. Underneath the names were branded stars. Joe was on his second row: either he'd worked there awhile or he was a serious brown-noser.

  "That scared the hell out of me!" Bob said.

  "Watch your language," Joe the Starman said.

  "Gimme a break, Joe; we're on break," he replied, chortling at his own words.

  Not hired for their wit, these two. A mosquito on the night shift alighted on my nose. I wished they'd stop looking at me and light their stupid cigarettes.

  "You know what Mr. McThing says: ‘The habits you keep on break—’”

  "'Are the good habits you'll always take.’ Yeah."

  Oh, the dazzling banter. The mosquito crawled into my nostril. I really needed to breathe.

  When Bob waved a cigarette-holding hand in front of me, I took my chance. I tilted my head—

  making them jump—and in my best Friendly Computer voice learned from years of listening to Mundane telephone systems, I said, "This is a designated smoking area," puffed out two precise bursts of s
moke, and returned my head back to the original position. I blinked twice and waited.

  Their laughter rebounded off the boulders and echoed across the valley, probably scaring rabbits and coyotes.

  "This is classic!" Brilliant Bob exclaimed, finally lighting up his coffin nail. He tossed the match over his shoulder. With my peripheral vision, I saw Joe pick it up. Yep. Brown-noser.

  I twisted my head toward him. "Thank you for not littering."

  Bob glanced at the still-bent over Joe, then at me, and laughed again. "Shi—oot! This is some sophisticated equipment. What the...heck...is it doing out here?"

  "You know those guys in R & D. Probably needed to do a test run and decided it'd make a good joke."

  "Mind if I smoke?" I asked in my carefully modulated voice and let out some puffs.

  "Still," Joe mused. He must have been preparing for a deep thought, because he pulled out his lighter, lit up, and took a few drags before continuing. "Still, there can't be much of a market for it. I mean, I don't know about you, but I get treated like a gosh-darned pariah when I smoke…outdoors as well as in."

  "Billy Beaver's building a Fantasyland in Europe," Bob suggested. "Maybe it's for there."

  "¿ Puedo fumar?" I asked and blew some puffs.

  "There, see? Europeans ain't so snotty about a good smoke. You know, now that I'm thinking of it, my brother saw one of these in Florida. Swore it was real!" Bob barked a laugh.

  "Wait 'till I tell him! Told him he was an idiot…dragons, and elves, and mermaids."

  " Mag ich rauchen?" I blew out two puffs.

  They got bored with me, so while I methodically blinked, puffed, asked to smoke, and thanked people for not littering in a variety of languages, they discussed the relative intelligence and attractiveness of Bob's relatives. Fine with me. I didn't want them to see what I was doing with my tail.

  I'd finished with my task by the time they'd had their last drag. Bob crushed his cigarette under his heel and after a dirty look from Joe, picked up the stub. As he bent over, I said, "Thank you for not littering."