Bite Marks

by Jennifer Rardin

  “As long as Jack doesn’t puke right away I think we’re good. Meetcha on the other side!”

  I slid to the edge of the sky car’s door. And jumped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The sky car lurched just as I left it, throwing me sideways so that I hit the tower’s maintenance platform rolling. I scrabbled for a hold, my fingernails digging in so deeply that splinters flew. But I was moving too fast to stop my spin. I fell over the side, reaching for any kind of hold that could slow my momentum. My hand punched into empty air, my fingers flailed. Then my forearm hit a support beam and I locked my elbow around it, grabbing my wrist with my opposite hand to complete the circle just in time to stop my descent.

  “Jesus!” I screamed as the wood dug into my joint, making me wonder briefly if my muscles and tendons were going to rip free, forcing me to go hook hunting before my next mission. They held.

  I dangled there for a second, my knees banging into the tower’s supports, trying not to blubber from the pain and relief. Then I found a foothold and began a more controlled descent, wishing I had time to rub the sore spot. Or at least pout a little.

  That’s it, Pete, you and I are going to— I stopped. Pete had died. Murdered in his own office. And I would never get to mentally bitch-slap him again. I took a deep breath.

  Later, I promise. I will cry for you until my lungs bleed. And after that I’ll find your killer. That’s another promise, my friend. But for now, surely you’d want me to do this.

  I hoped so. But even if my late boss would’ve preferred me to fall into a useless heap of snot bubbles I’d have kept climbing. Because that was the only way I knew to survive.

  Vayl and Ruvin weren’t hanging out under the tower. Okay, then. Maybe my sverhamin was slamming Tykes into Crindertab’s porch-side wall while Ruvin clapped his hands in delight. Which wouldn’t last long once he heard about Tabitha.

  Maybe we can get one of the Resistance gnomes to tell him.

  I’d taken a couple of steps toward the restaurant when I heard the command.

  “Stop where you are, Lucille.” I turned toward Wirdilling Drive. Where Tabitha stood holding a little girl in her arms. It was Alice, the barefoot wonder from Crindertab’s, looking sleepy and somewhat confused as she realized her mum was nowhere nearby. She began to struggle, but Tabitha had a firm grip. Behind her stood the last living carrier, Tykes, looking pale and nauseous. Kneeling before her—aww no!—Ruvin and Vayl.

  “Do you see what I have done?” she exulted as I slowly walked toward her. “I have sent your leader to his knees. And all it took was the life of a little child.” Her wrist moved slightly and I saw the steak knife she held, probably stolen from a drawer of the house from which she’d nabbed the girl while her mom and Lymon were distracted.

  I should’ve told Bergman to kill her when he had the chance. Not that he’d have been capable. But then I wouldn’t have this searing guilt.

  “Not much can down a man of his caliber,” Tabitha said, smirking down at Vayl. “But when I saw him talking with Laal and Pajo, I knew I’d found his vulnerability.”

  The rage that erupted inside my head actually surprised me. Oh, I’d felt levels of anger that would shrivel most souls. But this—it felt so big that I wouldn’t have been shocked to find it billowing behind me like a giant storm cloud. That she’d dare to try such a move on any honorable man would’ve made me want to cut her throat. But that she had taken my man and tried to make him grovel, as if that proud head could ever be bowed. I ground my teeth and wished that I could burn her where she stood. Yeah, despite the consequences, I might have if she hadn’t been holding a tearful toddler.

  I looked at the little girl. And felt something I hadn’t in Crindertab’s, when I’d been distracted by karaoke and greasy fries. A small stirring from a tiny body that had, I’d wager, already died once in this life. I stopped by the side of the road. And smiled.

  “You’re going to be all right,” I told little Alice. “When this is all over Cole and I will take you up to the mountains, where it’s cold and snowy. If you’re like us, which I’m sure you are, you won’t even get chilled.”

  I dropped my eyes to Vayl’s. As soon as his flashed from black to red, I knew he understood. I felt his power snap, eager to roar out of him. But there was still Ruvin to consider. The seinji knelt, blank-faced, brokenhearted, shaking his head every few seconds as wave after wave of truth crashed over him. So even if Tabitha’s hostage was a Sensitive, which would give her near immunity to Vayl’s attacks, Ruvin might not survive the blizzard my sverhamin wanted to bury his wife in. We’d have to make this one surgical.

  Tykes began to convulse. “Wha—what’s happening?” he asked.

  “You’re about to die,” I told him. “Slowly. Painfully. It’s going to be a closed-casket funeral.”

  He shook his head as Tabitha kicked Ruvin in the back. “Get up!” she said. “As soon as the larvae have begun feasting on you I’ll carry them to the Space Complex myself.”

  “How’re you going to do that?” I asked. “It’s a long walk from here and your sky car’s on its way to a clambake.”

  “I’m not just proficient at stealing babies,” Tabitha said, shaking Alice in her arms. She jerked her head backward, directing my attention to an old pickup truck so covered with dust it looked more pink than red. She’d parked it in the alley between the doctor’s office and the hardware store, so all I could see was the tailgate and the dented chrome where she’d cornered too fast and slid into the side of the building.

  Tykes screamed as the skin of his face began to bulge.

  I raised an eyebrow at Vayl. He lifted his chin. As we poised to attack, a voice behind Tabitha said, “Hello.”

  Astral came trotting around her feet to stand at mine.

  Alice squealed, “Kitty!” and reached down for her, dropping her weight so fast that Tabitha couldn’t keep her balanced. She clutched at the single leg that remained in her grasp while dropping the blade to prevent an accidental stabbing.

  Vayl whirled, grasping Tabitha’s knife hand so quickly that his movements blurred. We heard a crack. A scream. And then Vayl was on her. And not even Ufran could stop the forces he speared through her body.

  “Ruvin! Run!” I yelled, lunging for the kid just as Astral roared—like the MGM lion! Ruvin started, fell, scrabbled toward the road’s shoulder.

  Alice didn’t even squeak as I pulled her out of Tabitha’s stiffening arms, she was so busy giggling at the funny kitty. Who’d crouched in the road, her tail lashing the asphalt like she meant to spring on her prey at any moment. I didn’t know what she thought she could do to Tykes, who was flat on his back, bleeding so heavily his clothes looked more like field bandages than office attire. But she looked serious.

  I gave the kid to Ruvin. “Get her away,” I told him. “Don’t let her see. Anything.” He nodded and hustled her into the shadows.

  “Miles,” I snapped. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell Polly and Lymon their kid’s okay and we’ll bring her in a minute.”

  “Uh-oh. Polly just went to check on her—” Blood-curdling scream. Polly hadn’t been kidding about the lung capacity. She could do the victim in a slasher movie any day. “I’ll tell them.”

  “And stay away, dude. The larvae are hatching and I don’t want them to catch your scent.”

  “Jaz!” It was Cole. “What do you need?”

  “For you and Kyphas to control those Ufranites until we figure this out!” I replied.

  Vayl rose, dropping Tabitha to the road, a blank-eyed shaman-doll whose icy blue skin had finally given her nose the hue she’d always wanted. She wasn’t dead. No, not quite. We couldn’t afford to make a martyr of her. But she was going to take a while to thaw.

  “Anything?” I asked him. He had a nifty way of absconding with others’ powers. So I was hoping…

  He shook his head. “She possesses nothing innate. It is all contained within the feathers and l
eathers she wears. She simply acts as a conduit.”

  I drew Grief and walked up to Tykes. His face, stretched in a silent scream of pain, might’ve been covered in tears. But you couldn’t see them for the blood.

  “No larvae yet,” I said.

  Vayl came to stand beside me. “They do say every birth is different.”

  Tykes moaned. “Kill me. Please.”

  So easy to pull the trigger. Usually they’re begging me not to. I’d like to say it’s a little harder then. But… no. Maybe I’m like an alcoholic who knows she’s offing brain cells but doesn’t care because she can’t see them dying. Only mine are in my soul. Hey, as long as I avoid any sort of introspection for the next sixty years, I should be fine.

  “I’ll be happy to,” I told Tykes. “But first how about you tell me what the bad guys really want? How do we stop this from happening again?”

  “I don’t know, okay? My boss just told—” The sound choked off as Tykes’s neck began to bulge.

  I said, “Vayl? I don’t think this dude’s all that fat after all. I think—” The upper half of his body exploded with a sound that I’ll never forget. Skin ripping. Bones cracking. Joints popping. Blood gushing out in a larval-clogged spray.

  I closed my eyes in time, but it doesn’t do much good when your face is dripping with gore, and dozens of man-eaters the size of garden slugs are chomping their way into your brain stem.

  “Jasmine!”

  I couldn’t reply. Didn’t dare open my mouth in case one of them slid in.

  Don’t panic! Don’t panic!

  I dropped Grief and grabbed at my nose, the stings on my upper lip telling me they had my airway nearly covered. I ripped a handful away and took a deep breath. I wanted to scream. God! Cry. Stamp my feet and hyperventilate. But if I let go, even just a little bit, I’d die. Eaten alive by infant gnomes.

  I felt Vayl’s hands on me. Tearing larvae and skin. Pulling out hair along with the nasties. He yanked off my shirt and I moaned. So many of them feeding at my legs and belly. But more trying to get at my neck, my ears, and I only had two hands.

  Vayl came at me again, and then I felt warm liquid. What? Didn’t know. Didn’t care. Where it hit the larvae dropped. And it left behind a soothing tingle. I finally cleared my eyes. Yeah, my face was okay. I felt my head, my neck. All good.

  I risked a look at Vayl. He’d stepped back. Okay, so he hadn’t miraculously discovered that Crindertab’s coffee killed gnome larvae. What—I looked down. At Astral. Who was spraying me. Out of her butt. Like a tomcat.

  At her paws lay the larvae, twitching.

  “What?” croaked Tabitha.

  I kept running my fingers through my hair, over every part of my body. I didn’t feel anything. Could I really be free?

  “Bergman? Why didn’t you tell me you’d invented a larval spray for Astral to carry? It’s knocked them out!”

  Cole piped up. “I can see them through my scope,” he said. “I think they’re stoned!”

  “How did she pass the spray?” Bergman asked.

  “Ass projectile!” Cole hooted. “Took those larvae down like beer on slugs!”

  “But it’s not nearly that potent!” Bergman insisted. “Just a mist that’s supposed to neutralize her scent in case the target has dogs!”

  “What’s in it?”

  “A few chemicals I’d rather not talk about. The base is salt water.”

  Tabitha’s screech didn’t last long, but it came straight from the heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Vayl and I raised Tabitha upright. She tottered slightly, but finally stood in place, like a life-sized collectible with a steel rod shoved up her back to make sure she didn’t slouch to one side and ruin her pretty costume. At her feet lay Tykes’s remains, his torso a mass of blood and pulp, made even more obscene by the perfect intactness of both his legs, encased in tightly creased gray trousers lightly spattered with red. They reminded me of the wooden figures old towns set up to commemorate historic events. Except they usually keep their mannequins out of the streets.

  I leaned in, holding the tails of the shirt Vayl had lent me back so they wouldn’t touch her and somehow become contaminated. “How come you’re so ticked about the salt water, shammy?”

  She was so angry her hair shook as she said, “That’s what the nursemaids cocoon the larvae in, you interfering piece of shit!”

  “Tut-tut. We can’t have the leader of a major religious movement like yours swearing in public, now, can we?” I asked.

  Vayl said, “So are you saying the salt water triggered the larvae into beginning their next developmental phase?”

  Tabitha sneered at me. “You like your lovers dumb, don’t you?”

  No thought. Just a windup followed by one hellacious slap that snapped her head sideways. I said, “He’s too much of a gentleman to seek revenge for what you tried to do to him before. But I was raised by a woman who’s now doing time—in hell. I suggest you remember that before you insult him again.”

  Cole hissed, “Heads up! The Ufranites are coming!”

  “Cassandra brought our reinforcements?” I asked.

  “If you count the whole warren.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I’m watching them through my scope. Cassandra’s riding on a cushioned stool in the middle of the crowd. I’m not sure what that means, but considering all the adoring looks she’s getting, we may have to buy her a tiara for Christmas.”

  Vayl adjusted Tabitha’s stance so her back was fully turned to the oncoming crowd. They came quietly, their approach made all the more threatening by the total absence of background murmur that let us know they’d come with an agenda.

  He waited until they could overhear our conversation. Then he said loudly, “Go ahead, Lucille. I will allow you to execute Tabitha since her larvae nearly killed you just now.”

  I retrieved Grief. Made sure the shaman watched me chamber a round before I said, “You got any last words? Or are you okay with going down in history as the cult leader who was willing to sacrifice her flock’s children so Ufran could run around in his boxers all day?”

  Tabitha laughed. “You believed that nonsense? You’re as much a patsy as the rest of those bow-legged cretins.”

  I said, “You mean you didn’t want to kill off the kiddies?”

  “Of course! That was the point! When Ufran spoke to me, he told me what I needed to do in order to have my own child. He said that I should sacrifice the gnomes’ children, an entire hatching. And he told me how. The longer the plan evolved the more beautiful it became. First it was just Australia’s bunch that would tear into Canberra Deep Space Complex’s connections. Then I convinced the Ufranites in Madrid and California to join in. But the closer the time came, the more jittery they got. Only my partnership with the werewolves, and their generous donations to each church involved, have kept our plans on track.”

  “What about your people? Don’t you think some of them will want your head on a platter when they learn how you’ve betrayed them?”

  “Why would they? I’ve earned them enough money to buy new sun generators for the entire colony. They’ll be able to grow crops without worry for the next twenty years.”

  “And all it took was the death of everyone’s larvae.” Okay, they weren’t all dead. But I was going for dramatic effect, okay?

  “Who cares? I am the shaman! And now I’ll have a child of my own.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She’d recovered enough by now to nod. Even her skin had pinked up. “Ufran promised me!”

  “That’s just it. He didn’t.”

  She laughed. And stopped when she saw neither of us were joining in.

  I went on, “The guy you saw was a Domytr named King Brude. He was just posing as a god to get you to do his dirty work.”

  Denial in those darting eyes. The lips, however, trembled slightly as she said, “I don’t believe you.”

  “He has a tattoo on his stomach shaped like a s
cythe. There’s one on his left shoulder that reminds me of a sea turtle and a lawn chair doing the horizontal mambo.”

  “H-how did you know?”

  “Like I said, Tabitha, you don’t talk to gods.”

  “But I do,” said Cassandra. The Ufranites had lowered her to the ground. She stood among them, wearing a heavy, shapeless robe and a green woven hat that added at least eight inches to her height. Still she managed to look like a beauty queen. How fair is that?

  Vayl spun Tabitha around, and when she saw Cassandra standing safe among all her followers I heard her gag.

  “As I was leaving the shaman’s quarters, I laid my hand on the traditional headdress. And Ufran came to me,” Cassandra said softly. The light in her eyes was new. Otherworldly. “He had tried to speak to me before, but I have not acted as an oracle in so long that I missed his message the first time.”

  “How could that be?” snapped Tabitha. “He always spoke loud and clear to me.”

  “You were talking to Lucifer’s bounty hunter,” I told her.

  Cassandra nodded. “Ufran speaks in a gentle, quiet voice. Because he is not a god who would want his people to sacrifice their young for any reason.”

  “Yeah!” came the roar from the crowd.

  “Nor does he want them entering life having cannibalized another creature. Dead flesh works just as effectively for them and is much more humane.” Cassandra threw a package of hamburger into the street. The nearest larvae wriggled slowly toward it. As soon as they encountered plastic they burrowed right through and into the meat.

  “I would beware of who I agree to partner with as well,” Vayl said. “The Valencian Weres may talk respectfully, but their loyalties lie completely with their Sol and his pack.”

  Loud murmurs of agreement from the Ufranites. But underneath, a new sound. One so faint I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been standing almost on top of it. I looked down. Tykes’s trousers had ripped at the seams. Because his legs had doubled in size.

  “Vayl! Cassandra! Run!” I blew outta there so fast I’d reached Tabitha’s getaway truck and jumped into the bed before I heard the fleshy splat of exploding tissue. Even from my vantage point I could see blood and larvae fly into the air.