“He’s been cursed.” Calvin took a closer look, braving the stench by hooking the collar of his tunic over his nose. The rider lay groaning on his back, mostly covered by his flying leathers. At his throat and face—where his skin was exposed—huge, swollen purple boils glistened in the lantern light. His hair was a shock of white fibers, glowing bright all on their own.
“Someone was chasing him?” Edsel guessed.
“Bet it was that faunamancer we saw earlier. The one on the gryphon,” Calvin said.
“It makes sense. A gryphon could follow that stench through a hurricane. And his hair would light up the night from quite a distance! They must have gotten close and cursed him before he opened the throttle and bailed,” Edsel said.
Calvin took a knee beside the rider, who raised a beckoning hand toward him. “Hey. What’s your name?” Calvin asked.
The rider only managed a gurgling noise.
Behind Calvin, Rusty cried out in alarm at something on the mimic.
“Have mercy! You guys, this is Jack Badgett!” she said.
Badgett? Why do I know that name? Calvin thought.
Avery approached Calvin, Edsel, and the man Jack Badgett. “Definitely cursed,” Avery said. “I’ve seen this before, the night John Penn recruited me. Badgett’s not going to survive.”
Badgett coughed and suppressed a whimper.
“Cohen, Lyla, go tell the McCrackens,” Edsel said. “Maybe we can help Badgett.”
“What can I get you? What do you need?” Calvin whispered, taking Badgett’s outstretched hand. The man’s body slackened, like he was relieved.
“Take . . . care. . .” he gasped. “Good machine.” With his free hand, he pointed at the mimic.
“I will,” Calvin promised.
Peter and Brian burst into the stables a second later; it seemed they’d already been on their way. They took one look at the mimic, another at Badgett, then scooped him up in a two-man carry—taking care with a pouch that was strapped to his jacket—and hurried back to the house without a word. Calvin’s blood pumped harder as Brian brushed past him, but still the McCrackens said nothing about the fight that afternoon. This business with Jack Badgett must be dead serious.
“Man, I can’t believe it. That was Jack Badgett,” Stitch muttered again, looking out the door after Peter and Brian.
“How did you know it was him?” Calvin asked. Stitch pointed to the leather saddle on the dragonling mimic. Calvin came closer and read an inscription that had been burned into the side with a branding iron.
JACK BADGETT: ACE MERYKAN.
“What does ‘Ace Merykan’ mean?” asked Avery.
“You’ve never heard the Brits say ‘Meryka’?” Rusty said, surprised. “That’s what they call the continent. The explorer who found and mapped the place was called Richard Ap Meryk, so they named it after him.”
“You mean they didn’t name it after the king and queen?” thought Calvin aloud.
“They named other places for them. Georgia, Virginia, Maryland . . .”
“Got it.” Calvin trailed off as he ran his fingers down the soft saddle. Parts of it were worn smooth from overuse. The paint had rubbed off on the sides of the fuel tank, right where Jack’s padded knees would have squeezed it countless times while turning. The controls were also well-worn, and one of the gauges had a cracked glass face on it.
Amazing. Badgett had told him to take care of it. Calvin wanted nothing else in the world than to be charged with this mimic’s care.
“The Brits only call us ‘Merykans’ when they mean it as an insult,” Stitch said.
“So?” Edsel said, sounding anxious to get in on the topic. “I think Badgett has the right idea. He wears it with pride. I will probably do it too when they give me a mimic.”
“You’ll be waiting a while. They’ll send me out on this one,” Calvin said.
“Ha! Not likely.”
“That or I’ll just take it.”
Edsel fixed him with a hard look. Stitch intervened.
“Tough doing, that. Peter took the key.”
Calvin broke eye contact with Edsel long enough to confirm this. The ignition slot was empty. Emboldened by an idea, he went to the workbench at the end of the stable and retrieved a few fine-tipped tools.
“What are you doing?” Edsel demanded. Calvin ignored him, fiddling with the ignition until the tumblers were in place, then he twisted it to the side and held it. Nothing happened.
“It’s because you. . .” Edsel began.
“Just shut up, okay? It’s not in neutral. I got it.” Calvin squeezed in the clutch and clicked the shifter pedal until it hit the soft spot between first and second gears. Then he turned the ignition switch again. It clicked several times, set off a small boom that rattled the saddle, and then coughed to life. Stitch and Rusty cheered him on, along with other recruits who had followed the commotion into the stables. Edsel clearly didn’t like that.
“Okay, we’re all very impressed, but you don’t know how to handle this thing. Move over.” Edsel put a hand on Calvin’s shoulder and leaned into him, trying to get him out of the saddle.
“Get your hand off me,” Calvin warned.
“Get off the mimic!” Edsel growled, putting his full weight into the attempt. Gripping the saddle with his knees, Calvin rammed the heel of his hand hard into Edsel’s chin and sent him sprawling into the dirt.
“You’re not an officer!” Calvin barked.
Abandoning all pretense of decency, Edsel recovered and charged at Calvin, roaring with rage. The two recruits fell over the idling mimic and hit the ground in a heap, punching and grappling with each other to the amazement and entertainment of their peers.
The fight went on for a few seconds until Peter returned with a two-gallon can of liquid odor neutralizer—for the chaser curse that
Badgett had brought with him—and the elder McCracken brother pulled them off of each other.
“Why is this mimic idling?” Peter demanded.
“He did it!” Edsel cried, thrusting a finger at Calvin. “I tried to stop him.”
“Right, you lying twit,” Rusty said.
Peter produced the key from his pocket, shoved it into the ignition and turned it off. “You and you, the brig. Now,” he said to Calvin and Edsel. He thrust the can at Stitch. “Douse the area where Badgett was, and then the rest of you get back to the dormitory. Dismissed.”
Fuming, Calvin glared at Edsel as Peter herded them to the mansion. There seemed to be no shortage of people to hate at Mount Vernon.
*
They spent the night in different cells. Amelia did not come to visit. The next day, Brian retrieved them both and ordered them to the shores of the Potomac River.
Calvin stood on the muddy bank in his bare feet, wearing only a thin pair of shorts, a tight undershirt, and a watertight oilskin pack. Inside it were his rifle (in three pieces), his frosted iron knife, and two cylinders of ammunition. Twelve rounds in all. Beside him, Edsel wore the exact same outfit and carried an identical bag with identical contents.
“Do not misunderstand the severity of this punishment,” Commodore McCracken growled. “There will be no more quarrels between cadets, and there will be absolutely no operating of mimics without proper authorization, and I’ll be strung up by my own entrails before I tolerate any of you lying to the officers!”
Calvin sensed Edsel tightening up. That single act was the only reason why Calvin wasn’t about to endure this punishment alone.
The Commodore turned to the line of recruits behind him, all in fatigues and boots. “Let this be a lesson to you as well, that you will share this fate if you break any of these rules during the time that remains you. Peter? Sound off.”
Peter stepped up as Commodore McCracken retreated to the mansion, never looking back. Calvin still ached to know what Brian had said to him about yesterday. Why hadn’t Calvin been punished for that yet? It was a pressing concern that would have to wait.
“The requirements
are simple,” Peter said. “On the opposite bank of the Potomac, near Piscataway Creek, there lies an old submersible. It floats—kind of. You will swim there, retrieve the damaged submersible and return it to the naval yard at Dogue Creek on this side of the river.”
“Why don’t we just swim back, too?” Edsel puffed out his chest a little, knowing that he was the better swimmer. Calvin rolled his eyes.
“Because you won’t be returning empty-handed. And don’t give me any more cheek. You will regret it,” Peter warned.
Edsel swallowed hard. Calvin suppressed a smirk.
Peter continued. “You will need the submersible to bring back your haul. Before you are allowed to return, you must catch and kill thirty pounds of meat. That’s thirty pounds apiece. If you come back without the meat or without the submersible, you will walk home. Are we clear?”
The words weighed on him, and Calvin understood the severity of the punishment. “Walking home” was definitely something bad. How bad, though?
Had the dismissed recruits been executed?
“What are you waiting for?” Peter chided. “Daylight’s burning.”
Stitch and Rusty flashed a thumbs-up to Calvin, who nodded discreetly in return. Then he jumped in the river.
~
CHAPTER 8
Calvin had no misgivings about his ability to swim across the river, even in such minimal clothing. While that made it easier to paddle with the bag on his back, he knew it would cause problems once he had to stomp through the woods. Though Edsel was equally handicapped, he beat Calvin to the shore by minutes, assembled his rifle and disappeared into the trees while Calvin was pulling himself up the bank.
Fingers buzzing with exhaustion—he had only slept a few hours in the brig—he took a minute to catch his breath before he headed into the brush without putting his weapon together. He would wait for his hands to dry first.
As Peter had warned, daylight burned. High noon was upon him when he saw his first target: a fat wild turkey pecking about in the brush. Taking great care to keep quiet, Calvin shrugged out of his pack and pieced the rifle together, muffling the click of its various components by tucking it against his stomach and folding himself over the weapon. Cylinder in place, he pulled back the hammer¸ lined up the sights, and shot the turkey straight through the neck at two hundred yards.
The crack of his bullet would scare off other game in the area for a while, so he retrieved the heavy bird—at least a twenty-pounder—and lugged it through the woods by its feet while searching for his next target. An hour later he found two more wild turkeys; one he shot directly in the face, scaring the other one into a frantic retreat. Calvin took two deep breaths, let them out slow, pulled the hammer again and followed the turkey in a westerly direction. Adjusting for movement, he squeezed the trigger.
A puff of red, and the turkey tripped over itself as it died. Once Calvin retrieved all three of the hefty fowls, he admired his handiwork: headshots, the three of them. None of the really hearty meat would be damaged.
“Top that, Edsel,” Calvin muttered. He gathered up the three birds—a good sixty pounds altogether!—and started back to the shore, intending to follow it north to the broken submersible. Once out in the open, the sound of gunfire close by made him fall to the ground and cover his head. Then he remembered that Edsel was still out there somewhere, wasting bullets.
Fuming, Calvin kept count of the echoing shots: six in all. Edsel had wasted a whole cylinder? Surely he wasn’t that bad of a shot.
Then came the scream.
At first he thought it was Edsel, but the sound was too high, even for him, even in a full panic. The hellish howling sound didn’t bear the mark of fear, but rather of fury, and somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered his father warning of massive woodland cats called painters that lived in the trees south of Maryland.
Calvin was running through the woods before he could give it a second thought. He left the turkeys behind, swapping cylinders in his rifle so that he had six live rounds instead of three. The howling came from straight ahead, and as he neared the sound he thought he could make out Edsel shrieking. Calvin burst through a stand of shrubbery and into a small clearing, staring up at Edsel who was cowering in a tree fifteen feet off the ground, rifle strapped to his back.
And beneath him prowled the biggest damn cat Calvin had ever laid eyes on.
Fully ten feet long from nose to tail, its body one long coil of liquid muscle under taut skin, the ferocious beast limped back and forth on three good legs, howling up at Edsel in a rage. One of its rear legs glistened, covered in blood. So Edsel had gotten a shot off at the thing, but why had he stowed his rifle? To climb? Sure, but why didn’t he use it now?
Something silver glinted in the sun, almost directly beneath the painter, and then Calvin understood: it was a spare cylinder. Edsel was out of ammo.
If Calvin thought that the painter’s injury had somehow hindered it, he was sorely wrong. The cat saw him and switched targets, bounding through the underbrush like a streak of black lighting. Calvin popped off two frantic rounds and then the cat was on him, shoving him onto his back, trying to sink its three-inch fangs into his neck. Calvin gasped and spun the rifle sideways, jamming the barrel into the cat’s wide open jaws, exerting every last ounce of strength to leverage the cat’s head away from his face.
Knifelike claws sliced into Calvin’s forearms, hooking into his soft flesh. Calvin screamed again, feeling a fresh new flame of fear and agony deep in his bowels. Was this it? Was this how he would die, shredded by a beast that outweighed him with muscle and outclassed him with sheer ferocity?
Fear triggered an onslaught of random memories that flashed through his head like a moving picture, which was interrupted when Edsel dropped to the ground and retrieved his spare cylinder. The cat thrashed and tore at Calvin, trying to get its open maw around his throat. Face contorted with savage anger, Edsel loaded the cylinder, jammed the tip of the rifle into the cat’s ear and squeezed the trigger over and over, until the cylinder clicked empty. The heavy cat went slack and collapsed atop Calvin, no longer tugging at his bleeding arms.
“Thank you,” Edsel said, panting heavily.
“Help,” Calvin wheezed under the cat’s weight. He could barely hear his own voice through the ringing in his ears.
“Oh, yeah.” Edsel dropped his rifle and crouched down, leaning into the cat’s flank. Together they shoved it aside, and Calvin carefully worked the monster’s claws out of his flesh.
“Thank you,” Edsel said again. “Damn thing came out of nowhere.” He kicked his rifle. “Now I’m out of rounds, all I got was one turkey. And this cat, I guess.”
Calvin breathed hard, trying not to give into an impending sense of shock. “Too heavy. No way can we carry it.”
“I know . . . can I borrow some rounds? Do you have any left? Not that there’ll be any more birds in these parts.”
“Forget it. You can have one of my birds.”
Edsel’s mouth popped open. “You serious?”
“I’m pretty much done out here, aren’t you?” Calvin tore his shirt into bandages and tried to wrap his forearms.
“It’s better if you let the muscles go slack, or you’ll agitate the laceration,” Edsel said, using the condescending tone that had so far grated on Calvin’s every nerve. He didn’t have it in him to get angry, though; Edsel at least knew what he was talking about, and was willing to help him tie up his wounds.
“Thanks,” Calvin said with a sigh.
“You too. You don’t like me, Adler. I get that.”
“You’re keen that way.”
Edsel actually laughed as he worked. “Fair assessment. Guess I could be easier to get along with if I tried. Sometimes I wonder if that’s how people were in George Washington’s time. Maybe they’d have beaten the mages back then if they weren’t too busy annoying each other.”
“Woulda saved us a headache, at least.” Calvin opened and closed the fingers on one hand after Edse
l tied off the bandages.
“That gonna work for you?” Edsel asked.
“It’ll do. Let’s do the other, and get out of here.”
Once finished, Edsel retrieved a smaller turkey from the brush, took up both their rifles, and followed Calvin back the direction that he’d come, and they set off in search of the submersible.
*
“And then to top it all off, the stupid thing was pedal-powered,” Calvin said.
“No engine?” Stitch asked, preparing a tobacco poultice for Calvin’s mangled forearms. Though his skin had been cut to shreds, the cat hadn’t sliced through any major muscles or tendons. Calvin would be sore, injured for a few days, but not maimed.
“Nope. And it was taking on water. Half the time, Edsel was cranking the pumps to keep us from sinking. My arms were useless so I just sat there and manned the pedals,” Calvin said.
“Must have been an old mimic,” Rusty said. “The first generation was pedal-powered, remember?” They had studied it in class.
“This thing wasn’t even a mimic. It was just a basic machine, and a lousy one at that. No shape to it at all.” Calvin sighed.
“Well, I hope you learned your lesson, whatever that was,” Stitch muttered.
Calvin looked over at Edsel’s bunk. Edsel was up at the mansion, talking to the McCrackens. “Guess we’ll see,” he said.
*
He awoke in the middle of the night with a soft hand over his mouth. A gentle whisper in his ear disarmed him; he could never draw a weapon on the voice’s owner.
“Amelia,” he breathed.
“Hi,” she murmured. “I heard you got hurt today. Come on.” She tugged the sheets off of him, exposing his boots and fatigues. She bade him follow her up to the house, and he did, exhausted though he was.
Wearing a long nightgown and boots of her own, Amelia took him by the hand and led him through a side entrance, down a corridor he hadn’t yet explored, up a winding staircase to the second floor. The door to the left was cracked open, and flickering candlelight made the shadows dance on the rug before them. Calvin followed her in, and as he looked around, he realized that she was fulfilling her promise to show him a lavatory.
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