by R. K. Lilley
Yes, I trusted Caleb to do exactly what he said he would, but only that. Him keeping secrets left too many gray areas for my peace of mind. I wasn't playing along until the rules were very clear. He knew me well enough to get that.
Finally, he caved, but he didn't look pleased about it. Like I cared. "Christian and I were in on the raid. You know, the one that attempted to rescue you. We found some of your goodies there, and we were also nice enough to scour the desert for you, at the spot where you were taken. We recovered most of your weapons. They aren't here. I'm keeping them at another location. Would you like to go get them?" He showed me his teeth in what the twisted bastard probably thought was a smile. 33
Now that was more like it. I nodded. "Let's do it."
CHAPTER TWO
Sociopath Chameleon Alien
"I have a druid tail," I told Caleb as I pulled away from the house. Christian was parked in the back of the house, where a small alleyway was attached to the garage. I'd heard his loud race car speed away before we'd even gotten into my car.
"Of course you do," Caleb responded, his tone dry. "And if I know anything at all about Dom, your gear is covered in tracking devices, and so is this car. We'll take care of it."
I sent him a look. Caleb's plans usually worked for what he intended them to, but I couldn't exactly count on him to take Dom's reaction into account. In fact, considering their history, I could pretty much assume that pissing Dom off royally would make Caleb's day.
"Is there a reason why we have to lose them so fast tonight?" I asked. I didn't like being tracked or followed either, but I wanted the trouble I would get for going straight off the radar even less.
"Your things are at a location that I would like to keep private. The druids keep enough damned tabs on me. My biggest weapon stash in town is not their business."
Fair enough. Couldn't blame him there. Knowing Caleb, he'd have things in that stash that would get him imprisoned for eternity or worse.
Of course, that didn't mean I wouldn't be catching all sorts of hell for losing my tail later. I would be worrying about that later, though, since I very much wanted my weapons back. It wasn't even a question.
"Make a left at the next light," Caleb told me.
I did, watching the car that followed rather closely behind me. Whoever had been put on tailing duty wasn't even bothering to be subtle about it. They must not have heard much about me.
"Make a right, here," Caleb said as I drew almost even with a small side street.
I had to swerve rather crazily to make the turn, since he'd given me so little notice. "Maybe you should have driven," I told him as I evened the car out, watching the dark SUV behind us careen wildly into the turn just behind us.
"This is more entertaining," he told me dryly, and I shot him a look. His expression was deadpan, of course, but I knew that he was being very literal. Caleb did seem to find it endlessly entertaining to mess with me. And the annoyed druids behind us would certainly be icing on his cake.
"Right," he said, and I had to make another sharp turn, even going slowly.
"Right," he said again, maybe two minutes later.
"U-turn," he said, when I had nearly passed another street.
"Dick," I muttered, but I followed his instructions.
"Wouldn't you like to know," he shot back without expression.
Actually, I kind of would. I couldn't even be sure what sex the sociopath chameleon alien was, really. His preferred form was male, but that didn't mean a damn thing. I'd seen Caleb mimic me with perfect accuracy, and his sexuality, hell, that was anybody's guess. We'd known him for years, decades even, and he'd only ever showed a leaning towards the A-sexual variety. Was there a specific sexuality for people who only got a hard-on for super badass weapons?
"Not first-hand, that's for sure," I shot back. Never hurt to be perfectly clear about things like that.
He snorted, an unusual noise from his usually stoic self. I shot him a look. His little smile was as good as a shit-eating grin on somebody else. "Trust me, you're safe there. There's only one thing I want your body for."
My mind flashed back to the night before I'd done my little disappearing act. He'd been mimicking me then, wearing an obscene outfit that still made my cheeks heat in embarrassment.
"I really don't like the sound of that," I told him, my tone hard.
He gave his little shrug. "Nothing is free, Jillian. I know you know that. Don't balk at my methods. There may come a time that I'll need to mimic you perfectly. It may make all the difference between success and failure. You are a complicated woman. Complicated takes practice, even for me."
He was full of shit. I just knew it. The bit about needing practice, and the implication that he'd been mimicking me for fun. I tried to level with him. "You are not allowed to mimic me for anything...bad. Got it?"
His smile was chilling. "I can live with that. That gives me a lot of wiggle room, though, you understand?"
I sighed. "I understand that your help isn't free. Getting the best gun in the world at my back will cost me. That I understand."
"Yes," was all he said to that.
"Left," he said, a few minutes later. I didn't even know where we were anymore. The small streets in this area were barely lit, and huge concrete barriers lined the streets, small dark houses nearly hidden on the other side of those barriers.
"Pull into this parking lot," he said, and I did.
It was a small, deserted lot. The large, nondescript warehouse attached seemed disproportionately large for the lot. Caleb pulled something out of his pocket, pointing it at the building. A large panel that I hadn't even realized was a garage door slid open smoothly and quickly. I pulled in without a word. It shut directly behind us. The druids would be getting pissy in a hurry about that one.
"Take off your jeans, shoes, and your bra. Leave your phone in the car, too, of course," Caleb said brusquely, opening his door and getting out.
I did so, sighing. The repercussions were probably going to suck, but he was right. The druids would have slipped tracking devices into all of those, and taking the time to find them would only aggravate things. "You have more clothes for me, perchance?"
"Nope," he said without a hint of remorse.
Braless, shoeless, and pant-less, I followed Caleb out of a door on the opposite side of the building from where we'd entered.
Christian was there, car running, door opened.
I got to crawl into the cramped back of his super tiny sports car.
Christian hooted at me. "Looks like I missed the party. I suddenly feel overdressed."
I rolled my eyes at him.
Caleb got in quickly behind me. "Drive fast," he said brusquely, shutting his door very quietly.
Christian took off like the hounds of hell were behind us. That, or some very pissed off druids.
"I at least need pants," I complained, after we'd raced through half of the city, Christian finally driving rather sedately, for him.
"I'll have something at the house," Caleb said. "No bras, though," he added.
Beggars couldn't be choosers, and I'd be happy just for some pants. I was surprised that Caleb even had those, since he had no need for clothing that I'd ever seen. As he could mimic people, so could he mimic clothes. I'd asked him once if he ever got cold. He had simply said no, without elaborating. Typical Caleb. I was lucky to have gotten an answer at all.
Lynn had told me that she'd tried to touch his clothing once, to see if it actually felt like clothing, since it was obviously mimicked. She'd told me that I should never ever try that, and that the only thing she'd learned from the experiment was not to mess with Caleb.
I'd had plenty of casual contact with him, grabbing his arm, or having him adjust a weapons harness for me here and there, but I'd heeded her words. Leave his clothes alone. It was sort of like asking me or Lynn about our age. A touchy subject all around. No possibility of getting a useful answer, and endless potential to piss us off. Lose, lose.
> We ended up in a neighborhood much like the one we'd begun in. A smallish house on a street crowded with cookie cutter houses. It was a quiet area, the neighborhood neither particularly good or bad. Which, being Vegas, made it kind of bad. But only one meth-house on the block was not as bad is it could be. Yes, I know, I'd make a horrible Las Vegas realtor.
I didn't mention that Caleb hadn't bothered to blindfold me, or that Christian had obviously known where this place was without needing directions. Either Caleb was growing more trusting, or he was planning to ditch the house soon. I didn't ask which, since he'd never give me a straight answer for a question like that.
Christian pulled his tiny car into the carport, and we filed out silently.
No one said a word as we entered the dark house. Like the other house, this one was completely dark, and Caleb didn't turn on any lights as he led us through it. He told us to stop in the hallway, approaching a door about six feet away by himself. He typed in a code, then did a tongue scan to open the dark steel door.
Yes, a tongue scan.
Only Caleb.
He pointed a finger at me. "No one is to know about the tongue thing," he told me.
I just nodded, eyes wide in the dark. Weird sociopath chameleon alien. So there was something distinctive enough about his tongue that it could be considered identifying. I hadn't particularly wanted to know that, in fact I found it disturbing, but I still made a note of it. In the very small mimic file in my brain, it went under the tab: More weird shit I've learned about Caleb.
Caleb led us into another basement, only turning the light on when we were all inside, and the door was shut behind us.
I started to walk down the stairs ahead of him once the lights were on.
"Wait," he called, his tone casual. Still, I stopped on a dime. In the world of heinously scary, crazy booby traps, I imagined that Caleb was King. And I didn't imagine for a second that what he claimed was his biggest weapons' stash in the city didn't have a failsafe, or ten.
He led us down the stairs, his steps very calculated. I watched his feet, seeing that he seemed to be stepping out a sort of pattern on the stairs as we descended.
"Do we need to follow your steps?" I asked him, hesitating behind him.
"No. Just don't go ahead of me. The system is set up to allow me two companions."
"What happens if there's less than two?" I asked.
"Nothing."
"What happens if there's more than two?" I tried.
Christian must have already known all of these answers. Otherwise, I couldn't have imagined him not asking at least some of these questions himself.
"Boom," Caleb said.
"Boom?" I asked.
Christian snorted. "Boom is a horrible explosion noise. It's too simple. At least say Kaboom! Or make a cool noise accompanied by a gesture." Christian demonstrated enthusiastically, making his hands into a ball that grew bigger and bigger, finally throwing his arms out in the universal sign for 'explodes'.
I laughed. Caleb just gave his little shrug. "Boom gets the point across. If this house is breached, no more house."
I arched a brow at him, trying not to get mad. "Just the house?" I asked.
He gave that evil little shrug. "No more block."
I shook my head at him, my face tight. "You can't put the entire neighborhood at risk just to keep your secrets." My tone was hard.
"You can't stop me," he said, his own voice just as hard. He must have some very nasty secrets here indeed, to go to such lengths, and be so open with me about it. "Trust me, if this place is breached, this block going down is the least of our problems."
Is ignorance bliss? Hell no. But I still didn't want to know any more about this pandora's box of a house. Uncharacteristically, but not all that surprisingly, I stopped asking questions after that.
The basement was spartan, seeming almost empty, though it was a very tiny space considering the size of the house. I saw why before I could think much about it.
Caleb used his creepy tongue scan to access a panel in the smooth dark gray wall. He very deliberately angled away from us so we couldn't get a good look at his tongue while he did so. Fine by me.
An entire section of the wall just sort of lifted, and I stepped back, startled at the unexpected moving wall.
There was some kind of closet set up inside, though all I could make out was one large silver chest and a smallish black dresser. Other than that, it seemed empty.
"Your weapons' stash doesn't play well with others," Caleb told me idly, stepping into the small space.
Perhaps my mind had been shying away from it. Perhaps I was very very good at denial. Perhaps it was the dragon-trance that made my mind forgot the little things, like, oh, say a blood drinking war-axe that liked to get into my head, aggravating my already unhealthy blood-lust to a fever-pitch within a small amount of time, chanting kill, kill, kill until I fed it the blood that it craved.
Whatever it was that had made me very conveniently forgot about the pain in the ass that was Torst, Caleb's words quickly made me remember.
Right on the tail of that thought was another. If Caleb had recovered Torst for me, the damned axe would be in my head by now. But he wasn't. Did that mean that Caleb hadn't recovered the cursed thing?
That possibility was almost worse than the thought that he had. If he hadn't recovered Torst, that meant that it was either lost in the desert, which was bad, bad, bad. Or else it meant that my deranged relatives had ahold of it, which was worse, worse, worse.
Caleb relieved my mind (kind of) when he opened the silver chest.
