“Okay, then,” she told him, and rubbed behind his ears, gently patting his rump as it rose to meet her, tail quivering upright. She held her hand out palm up, waiting. “Do we have an understanding?”
After some thought—and a bit of extra glow in those green Abyssinian eyes—he placed his paw on her hand, all gentle warm cat pads, claws firmly withdrawn. She put her thumb over top and pressed down ever so slightly.
*But not-bonded,* he said, absorbing this fact with a twitch of fur over his shoulder blades.
“No,” she said. “Just partners. Friends.”
*Small person of much power.*
It seemed to be an observation, and she let it sit a moment without response.
*With lap,* Sklayne said, his mind-voice inscrutable.
After a beat she realized this had been a hint, and she let her knees drop, crossing her legs to make the best lap she could.
He appropriated it without hesitation. *Do not need. Merely convenient.*
“Of course,” she said. “Now. Kryokha.”
He grumbled out loud, not much of a cat noise at that. *Powerful. Two states.*
“Like the krevata.” As with certain other creatures of Kehar, the krevata had an ethereal state and a solid state. Of course, the solid state, dangerous as it had turned out to be, was also a comical thing of mismatched parts, backwards joints, and an extreme nose.
She wasn’t surprised when Sklayne snorted, a delicate feline sneeze.
“Okay, I get it. Not anything like them. But the same thing when it comes to switching states, right?”
This seemed to be the case. He gave her leg a pensive knead and went on. *Rare. Most rare. Most entirely rare.*
She got the implications of that, all right. The rarer the entity, the less experience anyone had in dealing with it. “Powerful, check. Rare, check. Solid and ethereal form, check.”
*Big.* He kneaded her leg another several times and added thoughtfully, *BIG.*
Of course, big. Because it would be too easy it if had been the size of the not-turtle she’d handled so readily.
A little too readily, maybe.
*Chorogleh,* Sklayne said, plucking at her regret, putting a name to it. *Broken. No fixing, only stopping.*
“Yeah,” she said absently. “Tell that to my friends, who suddenly think I might be the monster. You know. A turtle-killing monster.”
*Be happy enough to stop the mountain from eating more.*
Truth. They just didn’t necessarily want to know what it would take.
After that Sklayne turned quietly thoughtful, aside from an offhand remark of the kyrokha’s unique proclivity to bond across species, calling it both weakness and strength. But she didn’t think he was referring to the mountain entity.
Of the mountain entity, Sklayne knew little more than she did—that it was angry, and that it had grown far beyond what it was ever meant to be.
“Thank you,” she told him, added a little rub behind his ear.
*Not of help. Knew that.*
“Right. And now I know it, too.”
~~~~~
Garrie eventually shook herself off, shedding the gathering breezes; she carefully set Sklayne aside, addressing him in no uncertain terms. “Now. About the random gibberish. What have you done?”
*Not gibberish,* Sklayne said—and maybe that was all he would have said, before their recent Conversation of Significance about sharing. But now his tail gave a lazy flick and he added, *On Kehar.*
It took her a moment to absorb his meaning. “You mean...it’s Trevarr’s language? I would be able to understand him?”
*Have understood him.*
Because of course. Trevarr, sick and tortured, had not communicated to her across worlds in a second language.
“Holy farking—”
*Yes, yes. Impressed. Should be.*
“Impressed?” Understanding built to something of anger. “Impressed? Is that what I should be? You had no right to root around in my brain and—”
Exquisitely timed, her mouth burst into a babble of words—except this time, she understood them. “—Change things.”
His tail puffed slightly. His eyes widened. *Not change. Share. Only share.* Except then he quickly bent to lick a lifted paw, nibbling between toes. His mind voice, usually so clear, came as though through a mutter. *Still learning share. Better next time.*
Next time? She drew deep breath to tell him what would happen if there was a next time—and her phone rang.
*Good,* he said, still in that mutter.
She grabbed the cheap old flip phone from her cargo pocket, glancing at the caller I.D. “Lucia,” she said, and Sklayne made a noise into his toes. She flipped the device open and then froze as something thwacked sharply against the porch boards, making them vibrate beneath her feet.
Sklayne froze, teeth nibbling between his pads.
She turned on him. “What—”
*Not my fault. NOT.* He leaped to the top railing as another pow! landed beside the house, and in another instant, a series of impacts hit the house itself. Thwack, thwack, thwack!
Just like that, the forested yard turned into a popcorn cacophony, mini-explosions sounding off all around them and slapping into the house, the railing. Sklayne tumbled down to the porch, landing in flail of awkwardness. Garrie dove against the house, arms over her head, and then flinched as a storm of small objects hit the house nearby, bounced off, and scattered across the porch. In the background, a window shattered.
What the hell? She crawled across the boards and came face-to-face with Sklayne, who slapped a paw down on one of the still-rolling objects—his ears flat back, blood trickling from his flank, and one back leg dragging. “Let me see!”
*Quiet!* he cried, loud inside her head *Quiet!*
“You be quiet—ow!” She flinched and rolled aside, hand slapped over her arm. “Ow!”
*Popcorn stones!* he said, revealing the one he’d trapped. *Be you quiet!”
Garrie cursed, understanding, and immediately dove into her silent place—expanding the sensation of it to include not just Sklayne, but the house. She held it around them like a shield, holding her breath with it, while the explosions broke another window and peppered the house—but first did so less assertively, and then less frequently, and finally died away.
*Stones,* Sklayne repeated. *Inside out. Stay quiet.*
“Hell, yes,” she told him. “You’re bleeding.”
*Hurts. Fark. Yes.* He flipped himself around, a torus of cat flowing from one place to another in Escher-like motion, and somewhere along the way a pebble shard clinked to the porch boards and spun to a stop. *You.*
Garrie found her hand clamped over her arm and lifted it to discover a surprising amount of blood there. “Whoa,” she said. “I’m shot!” And so she was, with a torn little dimple of entry wound and a somewhat bigger exit, right through her wiry biceps. “Fark!”
“Mow,” Sklayne said, and reached for the discarded phone with an absurdly prehensile tail, nudging it her way.
On the other end of the connection, Lucia was screaming, her voice barely audible over the sharp impact of pebble shrapnel clattered against metal.
Garrie swore with swift precision and scrambled to her feet, grabbing the phone. “My keys, where are my—”
But Lucia was well into the city, and Garrie was on the other side of the canyon, and she stopped herself short, helpless.
Not for damned long. Time for Garrie View. She yanked the patio door open and charged inside, finding her barely furnished bedroom and throwing herself into the modest walk-in closet away from the windows.
It didn’t bother Sklayne that she’d slammed the door behind her. He slipped in underneath, warning her with a voice barely heard beneath the hailstorm of shrapnel and Lucia’s cries of fear. *Beware, the Garrie!*
“No kidding,” she snapped, propping herself in the closet corner—for as soon as she went aerial, she was likely to lose her silence. And her protection. And every wind
ow in this new place of hers.
*Follow me.*
She narrowed her eyes at him.
*Partners. Follow me.*
“Partners,” she said grimly. “Give me a moment. Then I’ll follow you.”
She closed her eyes and grabbed for aerial mode, leaving her body behind without her usual care. Sklayne hovered as a tremendously bright spot in her ethereal awareness, a little bit fuzzy and a little bit prickly and nowhere near inviting.
*Swallowing you,* he said, with no more warning than that before he engulfed her, closing off her perception of everything but his bright existence.
She punched out at him, protesting—panicking.
His voice rumbled around her like warm velvet. *Listen for the Lucia person.*
She made herself calm, listening for the sensation of Lucia. Trying too hard; flailing.
*Not shove. Listen!*
Listen. For the sense of her good friend, even if she hadn’t ever thought of reaching out that way. Feeling a tug of direction.
*Going now.*
It was all the warning she got before he dove forward with a roller coaster swoop. His essence went from brilliant to blinding; she had the impression of ears flattened with speed and power fizzing around him. She flailed in it, trying to stabilize her sense of self, to perceive up or down or anything but this disembodied insanity—
Sklayne’s essence tumbled and skidded, his glee—his exuberant embrace of the ride—breaking through her rising panic. Just like that, he released her, letting her spin away into a jumble of Albuquerque color in twilight—taupe stucco and desert greenery, a flash of pink and white landscaping stones and a splash that made her scramble even though her ethereal presence hardly needed to breathe.
She emerged from the pristine swimming pool to the scrupulously detailed landscaping of Lucia’s back yard, and into the din of explosive landscaping stone against the small metal pool shed in the corner of the yard.
Lucia.
Garrie dove for the shed, barreling through the walls in a way she’d never done before—never even considered doing before—to expand her silence around the shed.
*Partners,* Sklayne said, sounding smug and nowhere particularly in evidence.
Inside the imposed silence, the popcorn explosion of stones died away. The huddle of pool towel in the center of the little shed dared to stir. A flash of brown skin emerged—an ankle, then a leg, and then Lucia peeked out—her eyes red, her face flushed with tears and emotion, and her hair in an actual disarray.
Garrie had no way to explain things to her—supposing she could begin to explain in the first place. Within her silence, she added something of what she’d felt from Sklayne—a reassurance, a sensation of purring. A comfort.
“Garrie?” Lucia whispered. She rubbed a hand against her cheek, where a glancing impact had puffed up in a way that would purple deeply.
Yes, Garrie. At least Lucia knew.
Sklayne hovered within Garrie’s silence, his impatience palpable. *Must check mountain.*
Go, she told him. She could find her own way home. And if Sklayne could figure out why any of this was happening...
*Going,* he said, and flipped around himself like a swimmer in water, shooting out through a pinpoint of light where shrapnel had pierced the shed.
Lucia stood, her head brushing the low roof. Pool chemicals and salts sat in neat array on the free-standing shelves behind her, and nets, life jackets, and pool games filled the shed corners. She sniffled, carefully blotting beneath both eyes with her fingers, and then pulled her hair from its disarrayed pony tail to run expert fingers through it—rearranging it, leaving it with the perfect amount of muss.
But her arm showed the mark of another glancing blow, and her lower lip offered a sporadic little tremble, and Garrie felt like the worst kind of peeping Tom. Lucia didn’t likely guess how clearly she could be seen.
Her friend folded the giant pool towel and left it on the shelf with several others, straightening her gauzy cover-up and brushing herself off. Careful, Garrie wanted to tell her as she reached for the dented flimsiness of the shed’s sliding door. Stay safe. Because Garrie couldn’t stay here indefinitely, and she didn’t know how much warning she’d have when it came time to leave.
Or how much longer the mountain entity would pitch this massive temper tantrum.
Lucia’s phone rang. She slipped it from the pocket of her cover-up, its pink I Love Lucia case just a little bit the worse for wear. A glance at the number and she immediately thumbed to accept the call. “Quinnie! You won’t believe—”
If he heard her, he gave no sign of it, shouting over a static-filled connection. “—Careful!” he said. “We’re...attack! —Stones! —Laundr—”
Thunder cracked overhead, and Lucia jumped, fumbling the disconnected phone. Garrie worked desperately to convince herself that he’d been reassuring Lucia he was safe in the shared laundry space of his duplex. And Robin and Drew? Were they with him?
Lucia gave the phone a worried look. “Be safe, Quinnie. Please be safe.”
Another crack of thunder; the outdoor lights flickered, plunging the shed interior into momentary darkness. Lucia swiped at her phone, a few efficient motions with shaking hands, and held it to her ear. “Pick up the phone, chicalet,” she said under her breath. “Please pick up the phone.”
Garrie didn’t, of course. She tried to purr again, but Lucia’s call-waiting beep interrupted them both. Lucia answered it without looking at the number, her voice hopeful. “Quinn?”
“Sorry,” said the man on the other end of the line. “Enrique Soto. We met the other day at the Cienega trail head.” After a pause in which Lucia struggled to adjust, he said, “Rick? The park ranger?”
Lucia straightened, and once again Garrie found herself an eavesdropping interloper—but one who didn’t yet dare to leave. Not when she was providing a buffer for Lucia—so silent that the cell phone actually worked.
“Of course I remember,” Lucia said, flinching at the thunder that rode in over the end of her words.
“I heard that,” he said. “I’m at the canyon station—it’s coming down hard here.” He hesitated, but just before things got really awkward, he said, “Listen, I wanted to ask you—I mean, first of all, is your friend all right? With the migraine?”
As right as anyone could be while on an ethereal jaunt and holding onto a big cone of silence because an invading mountain entity was having a big temper tantrum.
“She’s well,” Lucia said. “Thank you for your understanding that day.”
Sklayne arrived in a bright bloom of energy, a gleefully tumbling bundle of energy. *Safe!* he announced, as if Garrie wasn’t glaring at him. *Mountain got tired.*
She eased up on the protective zone of silence, tentatively looking eastward. In another moment, she dropped the silence entirely. The mountain remained quiet.
Leaving Garrie with no excuse to remain there. Eavesdropping.
Not that she was moved to leave. She felt far too protective of her friend—and far too worried that the sharp-eyed ranger had seen past their various deceptions.
“You’re welcome,” Rick said. “I wanted you to know that we did look into your sighting. We’ve had lure stations out in that area all summer and they turned up empty this whole past week. If there was a problem bear near the trail, it was moving through.”
“Oh, good,” Lucia said stiffly, and winced at herself. Lu! Garrie wanted to rail at her. Just be yourself!
She had no doubt that’s all it would take.
Rick took a breath that Garrie could hear well enough. “The thing is, I was wondering... Well, you must know we’re still looking for the hikers. What you don’t know is that someone else went missing this afternoon. Since we’re not blaming the bear any longer, I...” He hesitated, then took the plunge. “I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else you could to tell me. About what you saw out there that day. You and your friend, I mean.”
Lucia made a non-committa
l noise, no longer looking so pleased to be talking to him.
“Because,” he said, sort of carefully now, “I wanted to assure you that I won’t take anything lightly. Whatever you think you might have seen, you can tell me. Just between you and me, if that’s the way you want it.”
“You mean,” Lucia said, smartly enough to sting, “like if I thought I saw a chupacabra? Or Bigfoot? Or some sort of spooky hiker-eating entity?”
Careful, Lu. But Garrie approved. She was putting it right out there and doing it with complete deniability.
“Entity,” Rick said. “Exactly so. Though that’s an interesting way to put it.”
Lucia’s eyes widened, but she didn’t skip a beat—lowering her voice to a warm and pseudo-confidential tone. “I watched Ghostbusters last night.”
A big drop of rain splatted on top of the shed, and another, loud on the metal roof.
“What about it?” Rick said, as if he sensed their time was growing short. Or maybe he’d just gotten his nerve up. “Can we get together, see if there’s anything you might remember? Maybe over coffee?”
The sky opened up, a pounding din overhead on that metal roof. Lucia frowned, pulling the phone from her ear—unable to hear him any longer. But she was no slouch...and she clearly wanted that coffee. By the time Garrie reached out to her anchor point so she could return to herself, Lucia had already cut the connection, pulled up Rick’s number, and sent him a one-word text. Yes.
And Garrie discovered it was possible to smile even without a body in tow.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 21
Mighty Sklayne
Sklayne wanted to ride the power lines. All the power lines.
It would take that long to absorb what had happened at the Garrie’s new dwelling. The fight they’d had. The resolution.
Partner.
*Do not need!* he announced to the world in general. Not that he’d settled where anyone might hear him, one small cat clinging fearlessly to the final Sandia Peak tram of the day, hunched in the splat and drip of the fading rain.
Reckoner Redeemed Page 17
