I reached the bottom rung. Felt the ground, solid beneath my feet. And grinned. Because I knew, strange as it sounded, that the wolf was Roldan, Sol of the Valencian Weres.
Which means he’s been alive a long damn time! Judging by Vayl’s clothes, that gig couldn’t have gone down any later than 1770. And I’ve never heard of a Were living longer than a hundred and fifty years. So what the hell’s gotten into him? Or should I say who?
Maybe Miles’s little buddy could tell me. I glanced at Astral, who sat quietly, whir/purring like she’d never spoken a word in her short, bizarre robolife. “Make sure you record this for the Enkyklios,” I murmured to her. “Somebody might find it helpful in the future.” I’d never have known she heard me, except she glued her attention to Tabitha and never let her eyes waver from the shaman once during our entire conversation.
I said, “Tabitha, why aren’t you with your sons?”
“I… was looking for Ruvin,” she answered. “He’s turned off his phone. And that’s not like him. I was afraid…” She trailed off, maybe seeing the doubt in my eyes. I’d believe a lot of emotions from Tabitha. Fear wasn’t one of them.
“What an interesting outfit you chose to wear for your hunt,” I told her, reaching out to rub the feathered collar of her knee-length tunic between my fingers. Beneath it she wore loose pants made from an animal she might have tanned herself they looked so primitive. The seams were sewn on the outside with a dark brown strip of leather strung every few inches with red and blue beads. Emu feathers hung from metal rings clamped into the pants at knee level.
Tabitha looked down at herself. “This is, ah, a traditional seinji pantsuit designed to hasten the conception process,” she said.
“Bullshit.”
Her eyes bugged. “I beg your pardon?”
“You know, something’s been bothering me from the start. I couldn’t put my finger on it because it seemed almost normal to me. And then I realized, that’s because I grew up with a bitch for a mother.”
Her eyes darted to mine. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No, I don’t guess you would. They never do. But, take my word for this, good moms never leave a dangerous situation ahead of their sons. During the rescue, you charged out of the warren first, with them running behind you trying to keep up. And back at the house, they should’ve run to you for comfort. Instead they came to Ruvin and us. You know why? Because they’ve figured out, at some level, that you don’t give a crap about them.”
“You are out of line—”
“But here’s where I get a little fuzzy. Why, if you’re so disinterested in Laal and Pajo, are you so eager to have another baby?”
“I don’t think they’re actually hers,” said Bergman. “Remember their bone structure? How even and symmetrical their faces were? But Tabitha and Ruvin have long foreheads and chins. I think—”
“They’re adopted, all right?” Tabitha snapped. “They’re not even…” She started to say something, stopped, began again. “I just want a child of my own flesh. What’s so wrong with that?”
“Plenty, if you’re treating the other two like crap.” I wanted to shake her. I jerked my head at Miles. He still had a good grip; maybe he’d get the message. “I don’t know why you’re getting so wound up in this DNA bullshit. It doesn’t make for a happier family, believe me. I can point you to thousands of couples who’d give everything they own to raise a child that didn’t share their biology. So what’s your problem?”
“Ilda fra priladr neld!” she growled.
Cole’s voice rose, excited, in my ear. “Jaz, she’s starting to curse you. Don’t let her finish it.”
I nodded. I could feel the stirrings of power as well.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“Echreada Ufran pilrat sritarnem, de aflor drmep sehike!” she replied, almost smug, not realizing I had a translator listening in.
I grabbed the nearest handy piece of clothing, which happened to be Miles’s baseball cap, and slapped her with it. The rudeness of my interruption clipped her curse short, shocking her into silence. But not for long.
“How dare you strike me?” she cried. “I am Ufran’s chosen, the shaman of my people!”
“Tell me about that. How does a woman without a tail or a single spot of blue on her nose rise to the highest place of honor among her people?”
“Ufran spoke to me,” she said simply. “He told me to return to the warren and take my rightful place. He said I deserved everything that had been denied me all the years my mother hid my identity and my deformity.”
“Where were you when Ufran gave you this message?” I asked.
“Ruvin and I were in Scotland adopting Laal.”
“And I suppose you traveled to Valencia, at Ufran’s bidding, soon after?”
Her jaw dropped. “How did you know?”
I shook my head. “Did you arrange your own kidnapping?”
“How else was I supposed to get Ruvin’s cooperation?”
“You’re willing to sacrifice your husband for some insane scheme that’s only going to get your people killed?”
“If that is what Ufran commands.”
“Wow. You’re a bigger dumbass than I thought.”
The whole time we’d been talking, Cole had been making strange noises in my ear. Like he was holding back a bad cough. Now he lost it. Peals of laughter rocked my eardrums. I said, “Cole! What the hell?”
“Jaz! Look at Bergman!”
I raised my eyes. For a moment my lips sealed themselves and I feared Brude had retaken my brain. Then I realized the shock had simply paralyzed me for the seconds it took to process the fact that our genius consultant, the most practical, logical person I knew, had gotten a perm. And dyed his hair blond.
“Aw, shit, Miles.”
Bergman’s shoulders slumped. “Cole gets all the girls. I thought, you know.” He grabbed one of his curls and tugged. “Maybe I could have just one.”
“But he’s never going to let any of us live this down.”
“Damn straight!” Cole hooted. “I’ve got the luv-do. Next thing you know Vayl will be stepping into the beauty shop for a little Cole-over.”
“See what I mean?”
Tabitha cleared her throat. “I like it.”
Even Astral sounded extra interested as she purred, “Hello!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
While Miles smiled shyly at his new admirers, I shoved the Braves hat back on his head. “Get a grip, dude. Literally. Keep this murdering piece of trash waiting in the street until I call for you. And whatever you do, don’t let her talk. Got it?”
He nodded.
“Astral’s got your back. Don’t hesitate to sic her on Tabitha if she gets out of line. I’m going back up.” I shook my head at the idiocy of some people.
Cole’s chuckles echoed through my head as I, once again, scaled Wirdilling’s old water tower. “I’m gonna make up a song about the Cole-do,” said my sniper, his ego ballooning so drastically I was surprised he didn’t float right off the roof. “What do you think about this one, Jack? We’ll rap it until we get some music down. Wild man, wild hair, waving in the breeze, like a whip-crack, lip-smack, gimme some squeeze.”
Despite the fact that I could hear Jack’s enthusiastic woo-woo in the background, I snapped, “Keep your day job. In fact, tell me you’re actually doing your day job.”
“Chill, wouldja? I’m looking through my scope like I have been since I took position.” Short pause. “C’mon. Admit you like my hair.”
“I’d like it better if your head wasn’t so full of—” I stopped, my hand on the platform. “I felt something,” I whispered as it began to thrum. “Get ready.”
I pulled myself up and took my original position just in time to see the sky car flying toward us from the direction of the trail.
“How did we beat them here?” Cole wondered.
“Vayl must’ve figured a way to slow them down,” I replied. “Ky
phas! You got that hat of yours moded out?”
“I am readier than you are!” she said.
Grimacing, I pulled Grief and prepped it to fire as we moved to the north side of the tower, Kyphas on the post office corner, me on the Crindertab’s side. Now we could make out bodies, large and small, all of them moving inside the swaying vehicle. Vayl still rode the undercarriage, the outline of his body reminding me of a huge spider waiting to pounce.
“What are they doing here?” Tabitha screamed. “They’re supposed to be at the Space Complex!”
She began to chant, more gnomish that I didn’t understand and Cole didn’t have time to interpret. But I could feel something stir inside the tower. “Shut her up, Bergman!”
“I’m trying! Ow! Stop biting me!”
“Watcha doing up there, mate?”
I took a second to glance down. A couple had strolled into the street. The girl I recognized as Polly, our waitress from Crinder-tab’s. She held a baby-blue robe closed across her chest, like she didn’t trust the belt to do the job. The guy she’d brought along wore a T-shirt, boxers, black socks, and ankle boots.
“We’re practicing a scene from the movie!” I said. “You’ll have to clear the street. We can’t risk—”
“I told ya, Lymon!” Polly said excitedly. “Didn’t I say we should keep an eye on these blokes? Never know when the cameras will roll. Do you need extras?” she asked.
“Incoming!” Cole yelled.
The tower began to shake hard enough that I had to brace myself against the wall. A crack appeared about ten feet above my head and worked its way to the top.
“Bloody hell!” I heard Lymon say. “Those are amazing effects!”
“Ow! Dammit!” Bergman yelled. “Jaz! Tabitha’s going for my nads! Astral’s chasing her own tail, and my mother taught me never to hit a girl!”
Fuck!
“Let her go, Miles!” I ordered. “And get those civilians under cover! Now!”
The crack widened. I realized the only original wood was the material we’d been able to touch. The rest was gnome grown. And because people never noticed what they passed every day, rarely even looked up, no one had realized.
I clicked on the safety and stowed Grief in its holster. “I’m going in!” I said. The crack was now the width of my shoulders. But even if I jumped I wouldn’t be able to get a hand on the edge.
“Do you need a lift?” I’d run to Kyphas’s side of the tower, where she stood tossing her boomerang up and down so casually you’d have thought we were about to have a distance-throwing competition.
“Yeah.”
Giving me her I-know-more-than-you-do smile, she leaned over and cupped her hands. Which was when I hopped onto her shoulders and sprang onto the roof.
“Hey!” Her protest, backlit by Cole’s chuckle, was quickly lost in the wave of sound that washed into the tower as the sky car arrived right after me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
My hands sank through a foot of plant material until they found a solid support. Knowing a two-by-four when I felt one, I grabbed hold and flipped the rest of my body around to join my hands inside the tower. My collarbone twanged as I asked it to contort more than it had since I’d broken it weeks before. But it held, giving my legs a chance to find the stud that angled up to meet the one I held. I worked my way to the floor of the tower just in time to look over and see Kyphas land on the balls of her feet beside me.
She grinned. “I’m better than you are.”
“Go ahead,” I told her, giving her Lucille’s winning smile. “Keep thinking that.” It’s just going to make kicking your ass that much more satisfying in the end.
A frown marred her perfect brow as the sky car came to a rumbling halt inside the cube, its temporary door already growing closed as the passengers waited for the stairs to roll to their door. Except no grunts were running around the massive wooden hangar pushing trolleys full of suitcases or waving orange-tipped dildo lookalikes to direct everybody else where to go.
I watched the car sway above the floor’s center, its cable glinting in the lights that had begun to glow the moment the roof shut. They’d been strung like Christmas twinklers along the frame of the building proper. The planted sections of tower had their own set of support beams that had folded back to admit the car and then returned to center. I reminded myself to give Bergman a tour if we all survived this.
“Cole! We’re going to need you here as soon as—” I whispered. I heard a pop. “What the hell?”
“Don’t worry. Just a gum-bubble breaking. I’m on my way. Where should I leave Jack?”
“There will be no dumping of my dog. You figure out how to haul his ass up here or you don’t come.”
“Weakling,” Kyphas sneered.
“Spinster.”
She tossed her boomerang in the air and glared.
Vayl dropped to the floor, rolling to soften the impact. I saw fang flash as he ran, blending into the shadows even better than those of us who were standing perfectly still.
“I believe the Space Complex is safe for now,” he said as he joined us. “But we must free Ruvin immediately. Johnson has begun to show signs of illness.”
That meant the larvae could arrive at any time!
“How are we supposed to get to him? I don’t see any stairs,” I said. Before Vayl could suggest a plan, the gnomes began to climb out the sky car’s door. Working with remarkable cooperation, holding on to one another from wrists to ankles, they formed a living ladder that reached the floor. Johnson and Tykes came next, stepping on heads and fingertips, occasionally slipping. The gnomes moaned as Tykes made his way down because his waist alone had more rolls than a school cafeteria. He fell the last five feet.
The two gnomes left in the sky car came to the door, holding a struggling Ruvin between them. It looked like they intended to drop him. Apparently larvae didn’t care if the midwife’s flesh was full of broken bones, only that it still lived.
“Go!” said Vayl just as a shirtless Cole burst through the plant roof carrying Jack next to his chest in a homemade, sleeve-fluttering sling.
Kyphas flung her boomerang toward Ruvin’s guards. She hit the one on the right so hard that his nose imploded and blood sprayed out the door as if somebody had turned on a hose full of cherry Kool-Aid. I saw him stagger backward just as I slammed into the gnome ladder. The two nearest the bottom dropped to the floor.
I sprang up, grabbing the lowest hanging guard by his fancy pants and hoping he believed in belts as much as he felt that broken ankles should be discussed but never experienced. He wriggled and kicked, but didn’t think of loosening his grip until I’d latched on to the next gnome in line.
Later Vayl confessed he was so concerned about me falling and breaking another bone that he nearly let Cole and Kyphas do the rest of the work. They did make a disturbingly fluid team. While Kyphas immobilized an Ufranite on the floor, Cole stripped off the shirt sling and let Jack run, giving himself full access to the Parker-Hale he’d packed on his back. His first shot took out the second sky car guard, but not before he’d given Ruvin a hard push.
Vayl sped forward to catch the seinji. Who was a dense little man. The impact sent them both through the tower’s floor.
I began to pick gnomes off the ladder. Already breathing heavily from the exertion of climbing, holding, hanging, and fighting, they couldn’t seem to function when I punched them in the diaphragm. One after another they dropped, falling prey either to their awkward landings, or Cole and Kyphas’s attentions. Finally I was in.
I took a quick look around. Plush seats on either end. Poles in the middle with handholds on the sides. Where the hell are the controls? I felt along the smooth backrests and footkicks. Then I tore the cushions off. Under the second one I found a set of indentations in the seat, beside which had been written words in a language I didn’t understand. But above them, for the illiterate or slow-on-the-uptake, color pictures of the various destinations at which one might expect to arr
ive if she thumbed one of those hollows. I jammed my finger into the one next to a pristine white beach. The sky car lurched.
I looked out. Saw Kyphas grab Johnson by the collar and begin to whisper to him. He shook his head. She bit a gaping hole in his ear. He screamed, but his hands didn’t go to the new wound. They were at his chest. Ripping his shirt open so he could watch his skin split.
“Kyphas!” I yelled. “Kill him now!”
She smiled, pretending not to hear as he fell to the floor, convulsing, blood staining his thighs and shoulders as the larvae began to emerge. A single loud shot. Cole, at least, had heard my order.
“Watch for larvae!” I called as a new section of roof began to retract and the sky car turned, performing an automatic cable change that hardly even made it sway. He nodded, saw one inching toward a downed guard and stomped. Jack had found another, taken a bite and pronounced it yummy. Holy crap, what kind of food would that mutt ever snub? While my dog ran around the room, snapping up snacks, I watched the distance between the sky car and the roof narrow. If I timed it just right I’d be able to jump back onto the tower supports. If not, I’d plummet to my death.
“Jaz!” Cole called.
I looked back. He cracked a stirring guard in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle. “What?”
“We’re missing one!”
“Gnome?”
“No! Carrier! I think Tykes went out the hole in the floor!”
No big deal. Probably. I mean, Vayl had gone first with Ruvin. No doubt they had him surrounded.
“You going to be okay?” I asked, not looking back. It was almost time for my jump.
Bite Marks Page 28
