Special Passage (The Coursodon Dimension Book 4)

by M. L. Ryan

  To my horror, I realized what disgusted me about Sebastian was kind of erotic coming from Alex. Not only did I have to come to terms with the fact that there was a bit of bad boy in my beloved, but that when it came to men, I had a definite double standard. I was, after all my preaching, as bad as Sebastard, an acknowledgement I was loath to accept.

  I never had the chance to share my epiphany with Alex. From the paddock, impatient bleating reminded me the goats needed their second milking, and full mammaries didn’t care if I were having an existential crisis. Living this way did have its plusses, I mused as I went to relieve their suffering. There was hardly enough time in the day for what had to get done, much less wasting it contemplating the complexities of gender hypocrisy. My festering enmity towards Agnes was another matter. There was always time to let those feelings intensify.

  I spent the evening ignoring Agnes, and she reciprocated. She didn’t stay in the barn that night. Instead, she chose to bed down under a lean-to she constructed behind Gera’s house. Her absence was a gift, and not having her mere feet away allowed me to sleep soundly.

  That night, I dreamt Ulut interrupted my goat milking. Not able to decipher his frantic barks and howls, he finally sunk his teeth into my sleeve and pulled me toward Gera’s well.

  “Are you thirsty?” I inquired, still not certain why he was so insistent. He lowered his furry head and eyed me with disdain. Clearly, I misinterpreted his meaning.

  Impatient with my witlessness, he placed his front paws on the rock walls of the well and resumed his clamorous baying. Peering into the dark depths, I could see nothing, but I heard a small, plaintive wail from below. “Agnes?”

  “Yes, help me!”

  “How did you fall in there?”

  “It doesn’t matter, just get me out!” she pleaded.

  The small bucket used for water seemed inadequate for the task, but I threw it down anyway, hoping I’d have enough strength to turn the rickety crank.

  “This is your idea of help?” she shouted.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” I yelled back, resisting the urge to add, “bitch,” to the statement.

  Instantly, the scene shifted, as dreams often do, and it was I treading water in the bottom of the pit and Agnes’ blonde head, backlit by the sun at the top.

  A low, chilling laugh cascaded down. “Not so cocky now, are you?”

  I was never cocky in the first place, I grumbled to myself. Bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and an empty bag of goat liver-flavored potato chips floated on the surface of the water, and I pushed them away to grab the bucket. “Just pull me up, okay?”

  “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”

  “Look, I know we’ve had our differences, but please get me out of here. Once I’m out, you can go on hating me.”

  Something shiny glinted in the sunlight, and I felt the bucket quiver. “I’ve been waiting for this opportunity since I first met you,” she jeered, sawing at the line with one of Gera’s kitchen knives.

  “Stop, don’t,” I cried, but the now-severed rope smacked me unceremoniously in the face. I watched it skid down my chest and float like a dead snake next to me. “I said ‘please,’” I reminded her.

  Ulut was up there, I reasoned, he’d brought me in the first place. He’d let Alex know where I was. And get that duplicitous ho. However, I hadn’t heard any barking since I mysteriously ended up in the depths.

  Another head peeked over the well’s edge. My vision was blurring, and I couldn’t make out the features, but I could tell it wasn’t Ulut.

  “Sorry,” the faceless man lamented. “I’ll give your regards to my boss.”

  Enraged, I somehow managed to fling one of the PBRs toward him. The bottle missed, but he glowered and wagged a disapproving finger at me.

  “Now, now,” he admonished, “unless it is roasted, boiled, or fried, I won’t like it.”

  With that odd statement, he and Agnes waved and disappeared from view. Before the murky water overtook me, I could hear them singing as they walked away, a surprisingly catchy and harmonized version of one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs.

  I awoke to gentle prodding and Alex’s soft voice. “Carisa, are you alright?”

  Still foggy from deep sleep, I had a hard time forming words. Eventually, spurred on by the concern in Alex’s face, I managed a muffled, “Uh-huh.”

  He pressed me into his chest, whispering into my hair. “Bad dream?”

  “Why, was I yelling or something?” I had a tendency to babble when having nightmares, and hoped I hadn’t said anything weird or embarrassing.

  “Mostly thrashing,” he answered, “but just before I woke you, you kept repeating something that sounded like, ‘tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.’ What does that mean?”

  I noticed everyone else seemed unperturbed by my outburst. Even Sebastian lay on his side, inhaling and exhaling the rhythmic breaths of deep slumber. Content I hadn’t disturbed my barn mates, I settled into Alex’s torso and quietly described my dream.

  “Well, compared to your usual nightmares, that one was pretty tame,” he noted when I finished.

  Its inner meaning was obvious. However, beyond the mental ruminations of enmity toward Agnes, something about the anonymous man bothered me. I recalled reading unrecognizable people in dreams usually represented the dreamer, but in this case, that interpretation made no sense at all. The more I tried to puzzle it out, the more confused I became; even the usually tension-alleviating egg roll between my fingers didn’t help. With Alex enfolded protectively against my back, I eventually drifted back to sleep, and my last thoughts were of the unidentified man and a raucous saxophone solo.

  I awoke the next morning feeling oddly refreshed. The nightmare still made no sense, but I decided to focus instead on staying clear of Agnes. She was around, but kept her distance, and somehow that made me feel like I’d won the battle. While I knew that notion was probably small-minded and juvenile, I didn’t care. A person couldn’t be mature all the time.

  Once I completed my morning dairy obligations, I handed off the full pail to Z and moved on to my next assignment. Much of the farm animals’ excrement became fertilizer, but supply exceeded demand, with the excess piled in a heap. If not turned regularly, however, the surplus could spontaneously combust.

  I didn’t mind shoveling shit per se, but it was difficult to keep the hem of my long skirt out of the muck. Originally, the no-trousers rule seemed like just another way to subjugate women in this backward world. As we never saw any Dekankarans other than Gera, at first, I sometimes wore the jeans I came in, local customs and Ulut’s decree be damned. However, it didn’t take long to realize long, billowing skirts with only a shift underneath were surprisingly practical if the outhouse wasn’t available or when Alex and I only had time for a quickie. For poo pitching, I devised a method of pulling the back of the skirt through my legs and tucking the end into my waist. I’d seen something similar once in a documentary about wine making where actors playing eighteenth-century, French vineyard workers trussed up their dresses to stomp grapes. I had no idea if that was a realistic depiction of wine pressing back in the day—after all, it was on the History Channel—but it kept my skirt clean and aside from making my thighs look humungous and crotch saggy, it was a reasonable solution.

  The day was warm, and I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I finished the turning. There was something very satisfying about preventing a conflagration of epic proportions—at least in terms of the potential odor of burning dung. I decided to rinse my legs before releasing my skirtaloons and found Ulut already retrieving water from the well.

  He offered the bucket he’d just cranked up, I suspected more for self-preservation than politeness. Based on his wrinkled nose, I probably stunk.

  “You want soap to go along with that?” he queried, retreating a few steps backward.

  “Sure, you got some?”

  He didn’t, but he was more than happy to go find some. When he returned, I laugh
ed as I playfully grabbed the brownish chunk.

  “You know, I wasn’t this skittish when I first encountered you, stench dog,” I joked, massaging tiny sliver onto my already rinsed calves. “And you smelled like you rolled in a dead animal buried in a pile of shit.”

  “Oddly, I don’t remember the odor at all, just the hunger. I don’t think I can ever begin to thank you for helping me, Hailey. If not for you, I’d still be in animal form.”

  “Not to mention stinking like a sewage treatment plant.”

  He laughed, hauling up another bucket of water to remove the suds. “That too.”

  “Well,” I said, inspecting my legs, “that’s as good as they’re going to get. Oh, to have a real shower and a….”

  Ulut raised his hand to quiet me. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

  I glanced around. “What?”

  He moved his head from side to side, slowly, as if trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. “I think someone’s out there.”

  My stomach lurched as I recalled the encounter at the stream. “Maybe it’s just one of the Jyryxahal,” I said wishfully, not really wanting to face the alternative.

  “Perhaps, but I can’t tell when I am in this form.”

  Almost before the last word left his lips, he morphed into a dog, wriggled out of his now oversized clothes, and bolted into the brush beyond the house. The trees and bushes weren’t very tall, but they were quite dense, and I lost sight of him almost immediately. I guess Ulut is today’s beast in shining armor, I decided, then heard cacophonous barking and a scuffle from the thicket. Noting the similarities between the current situation and my dream, I eased over to the well and cautiously inspected its depths. Of course, there was no one inside, but I had to check.

  Drawn by the clamber, Alex, Sebastian, and W sprinted from the barn. Agnes appeared from the other side of the yard, gun held theatrically skyward in both hands like she was about to kick in a drug dealer’s front door.

  “What the hell is going on?” Alex shouted as he skidded to a halt, placing his body protectively between the direction of the snarling and me.

  I explained Ulut’s sudden transformation—as well as the suspicion that precipitated it—and Sebastian took off to aid the Dekankaran. Seconds later, Sebastian cursed in Courso, there were more sounds of a scuffle, and then all was silent.

  “Sebastian, are you alright?” Alex shouted, pushing me even farther behind him.

  The thicket of mesquite and creosote parted and Sebastian appeared, dragging a rather unhappy man by the scruff of his neck. “Of course I am,” he replied. “Why would you believe otherwise?”

  Alex’s stiff posture relaxed at the sound of his mentor’s customary arrogance. “And who might this be?” His voice was velvety, but laced with menace.

  “That is the million-dollar question,” Ulut stated as he emerged from the brush, naked.

  Agnes made a small noise, something between a gasp and an appreciative growl. We might have despised each other and had almost nothing in common, but on this point, we agreed. Ulut looked damn good in the buff.

  Sebastian narrowed his grey eyes at the deputy. “Unless that pistol is an extension of your soul, madam, you can holster the weapon now.”

  Roused from her man-flesh-induced haze, she blinked, regarding the gun still held aloft. As she shoved it into her waistband, she stared wistfully at Ulut’s strapping form. “Seeing that never gets old, does it?” she mused, her voice dreamy.

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself, but I answered nonetheless. “Nope, not really.”

  His physique was a pleasure to look at, even when I had my own hottie to ogle. Tossing Ulut’s discarded clothes to him, I bemoaned the inequities of magical transformation: even though I shifted into a much-smaller animal, my clothing almost never survived unscathed while his remained in one piece when he went from man to dog.

  As Ulut buttoned his pants, we turned our attention to the figure still struggling in Sebastian’s powerful grasp. The man’s head was slumped down so I couldn’t get a good look at him, but from what I could see, he was lean and fit, dressed in what appeared to be hiking gear. His clothing, while dirty, was too modern to be Dekankaran, but lacked the simple elegance expected from Courso gear. They didn’t look like something you’d buy at Dick’s Sporting Goods, either. Alex snarled something in Courso, grabbed Hiker Guy’s straight, blond hair, and yanked his head up. He seemed familiar, but the specifics eluded me.

  Alex and Sebastian alternated asking questions for a bit, receiving clipped responses from the now-more-passive detainee. Eventually, Alex shoved the man to the ground and stomped back to where Agnes and I stood.

  “Carisa, this is the person I sensed at the stream.”

  Some part of me was prepared for that information. After all, how many people could there be lurking around spying on us? Still, seeing Tom in the flesh gave me the willies. “Is he from Coursodon?” Based on the language choice, I was certain of the answer, but I wanted confirmation.

  “That he is, my dear,” Sebastian explained, rubbing his hands together in gleeful anticipation. “Now let us discover how and why.”

  19

  Like a predator sizing up his prey, Sebastian circled around the man. “Do you speak human English?” The innocuous question belied his foreboding appearance, but Alex had once told me when it came to getting information from a reluctant subject, no one surpassed his mentor.

  Tom, back straight even as he sat in the dirt, nodded, never taking his eyes off the Xyzok looming above him.

  “Good. What is your name?

  “You can call me, ‘Prytx’, he stated smoothly.

  Sebastian cocked one brow and smirked. The response confirmed my impression: Prytx probably wasn’t his real name, and this wasn’t his first time being interrogated. “How did you get here, Prytx?”

  “The same way you all did, off that mountain in the storm.”

  Ulut scowled. “I knew you smelled familiar.” He turned to Alex and explained, “I thought I scented someone nearby, right before we transported. With all that’s happened since, I kind of forgot about it.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you growled.” At the time, I chalked up his unusual behavior on Babo to the prickly sensation that preceded the lightning strike, but never thought to ask.

  “How long had you been following us?” Sebastian continued. He seemed perfectly calm, but I knew he raged inside knowing someone was there undetected.

  Prytx paused, as if calculating the time. “Months,” he said, finally.

  How could anyone trail two highly trained Xyzok without discovery? I wondered.

  Alex apparently had the same thought, because he crossed his arms, and the little vein in his temple throbbed.

  “Months,” he repeated, but so quietly, only I heard it. His mounting tension wafted over to me, and I dropped my hand into my pocket and rolled the egg in my palm. Since the episode at the stream, I’d kept the anxiety-busting stone on me at all times.

  “How were you able to accomplish that?” Alex snarled, not bothering to disguise his anger.

  “Well, Your Majesty,” Prytx began, “one of the reasons I was given this assignment is my skill concealing myself. I can stay invisible with my magical signature well-cloaked for days at a time.”

  There was no hint of cynicism in the way he addressed Alex, which perplexed me, as he had been stalking us. Nonetheless, we now understood how no one realized he was lurking around. Even as strong as they were, Alex and Sebastian could only remain invisible for a few hours. This dude had a gift.

  “Is that so?” Sebastian remarked, keeping his tone neutral. “And who, pray tell, gave you this commission?”

  Prytx gaze darted from Alex to Sebastian, weighing his answer. “If I tell you, will you promise I shall not be persecuted?”

  “Doesn’t he mean, ‘prosecuted,’” I whispered to Alex.

  “Probably not,” he responded with an ominous tone.

  A smug grin l
it up Sebastian’s previously indifferent expression. “If you tell me, I might not kill you. I cannot promise to leave you unharmed.”

  Our captive swallowed nervously. “Look, I’m just following orders. You can’t kill me, I’m one of you.”

  “You are certainly not Xyzok, or we would know you,” Sebastian observed. “I am perfectly within my rights to do whatever is necessary to obtain the information we require.”

  Prytx’s eyes grew wide. “You are not,” he stammered. “The Coursodon Protocols clearly state prisoners can’t be tortured.”

  “Yes, that is true,” Sebastian acknowledged, casually flicking a bit of dirt from his shirt. “However, we are not currently in Courso, are we?”

  If Prytx seemed uncertain before, Sebastian’s apparent disregard for interdimensional treaties clearly flustered him as sweat dripped from his hairline to his neck. Shoulders slumping and with a heavy sigh, he said, “I am a member of the Syzbasti.”

  “And who might they be?”

  “An elite group comprised of Alenquai ex-military personnel.”

  Sebastian frowned. “I am not aware of any paramilitary regiments assembled under the Royal Guard, are you, Alexander?”

  “Certainly not, it is both unethical and illegal. The Queen would never assemble such a group.”

  “I never said your mother knows anything about this,” Prytx admitted sheepishly.

  Alex’s eyes tightened into slits. “Then who does?”

  Prytx’s pained expression revealed a continued reluctance to spill more secrets, but he had clearly given up the fight. He glanced warily at Sebastian, who again smiled with malevolence.

  “The Glyzimutitch Zolmere,” Prytx said, sagging further.

  Not surprisingly, neither Alex nor Sebastian took this bit of news well. Hell, I was shocked, and I had always had my doubts about the law-making wing of the Alenquai government. Alex’s mother may have been queen, but she served mainly as a figurehead, while the GZ ran things. Much like many politicos in the US, some of the members seemed to have their own interests, rather than the greater good, as their top priority. Still, sending someone to spy on the royal family seemed extreme, even for them. I wondered if this was what Kyzal warned us about.