Wild Ways

by Tanya Huff

Time continued moving slowly as her ribs began to crack.

  The Troll’s eyes widened at the sound, and for the first time, it actually saw her. If she had to guess, Charlie’d say it didn’t like what it saw.

  This was Wild. It answered to no one and nothing but itself. It didn’t need music to form and direct its power; it was power. The look in its eyes said, I know you. And I’m not impressed.

  As the pain started to catch up, Charlie frowned. The Troll’s eyes weren’t slate gray. They were Gale gray.

  And Gales didn’t care if walking slag heaps were unimpressed.

  Gales knew what Wild meant. They knew it had to be contained, controlled, before it became all there was. Sure, the aunties could take Uncle Edward down, but they were tied to place. Allie had slapped the Dragon Queen home, but she couldn’t leave the city. Gales who could do little damage were free to wander as they would—in spite of what her mother thought, Paris would survive the twins—but Gales who could change the very nature of reality were shackled.

  And no one had shackled them. The certain knowledge of her own death lending clarity, Charlie knew they’d limited themselves. One day an auntie had looked out at the carnage, folded her arms, and said, That’ll be quite enough of that. But every now and then, a bit broke free. A Wild Power. Untied. Because every now and then, something too big to ignore bellied up to the bar and declared it could take all comers.

  Her frown deepened. Pain might have mixed a few too many metaphors there, but the point was, the power wasn’t in the guitar, or she’d never have been able to pick up a guitar she’d never seen before and play away the storm. The instruments focused the power. The power was in her.

  Another rib cracked.

  Charlie didn’t have breath enough to scream.

  Pain wasn’t focusing. It was distracting.

  You think love hurts? She didn’t have breath enough to snicker either. Try having your ribs crushed by a Troll.

  Her phone rang.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  “Charlotte Marie Gale!” Auntie Jane’s voice was tinny but remarkably clear considering it came from Charlie’s pocket. On an unanswered phone. “A little less smart-ass and a little more focus. I will not have you killed in such an embarrassing manner.”

  Right. Let’s not embarrass Auntie Jane . . .

  Charlie squinted the Troll’s eyes back into focus, sucked in as much air as she could, and hissed with everything she had left, “Piss off.”

  As she hit the floor, and it felt like a hot iron spike jammed up through her chest, she realized she should have told it to put her down first.

  TEN

  JACK SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE between keeping an eye on the Boggart and not giving himself away, but that still put him high enough he had to keep one eye out for planes. Although he’d never admit it to a Gale, who were in lots of ways just as narrow-minded as his family on the other side, planes were one of the reasons he wanted to stay. Beings without flight had claimed the sky. How cool was that? No one in the UnderRealm had ever tried it. Sure, his uncles would have taken them apart the first time they got off the ground, but that wasn’t the point—they hadn’t even tried.

  Humans were pretty cool.

  He was a lot less pissed off at his father than he used to be.

  The Boggart squirmed under a fence that guarded three sides of a property—a cliff and the Atlantic guarding the fourth—and headed straight for the cluster of buildings over by the edge of the cliff. There was a car by the building and a guy asleep over by the fence, but Jack couldn’t see anything that said there was a gate around. He circled, and as he came in from over the ocean, saw the Boggart squirm through a square hole in the roof of one of the buildings and disappear inside.

  Adjusting his size so as not to bring the building down, Jack landed and stuck his head in the hole. The Boggarts, all the Boggarts, not just his, had definitely gone down there. The smell was unmistakable; old damp sofa cushion mixed with ash. No, old damp sofa cushion mixed with the inside of the vacuum.

  If he was going to follow, he’d have to get smaller still. Deep breath and . . . clench.

  The breeze off the ocean blew the smoke inland as he snickered. Good thing he couldn’t change size in skin, he’d fall into the toilet. Digging his claws into the tiles, he reminded himself to repeat that observation to Charlie later.

  Deep breath and . . . clench.

  All that time he’d spent messing around with the mail delivery person was about to pay off. It wasn’t easy compressing himself into hawk size; none of his uncles could get this small, and he was bigger than all of them. But then, none of his uncles were sorcerers. Or Gales.

  It didn’t matter that he was smaller than the Boggarts now. He was finding the gate—not heading for a fight. Besides, at this size, his flame would cut like a blowtorch, and if he had to get bigger, too bad for the building.

  Finally small enough, he turned on the diagonal so his wings would fit, and dropped into the hole.

  It was fun following the shaft through the building, the Boggarts’ trail easy to follow. Too easy with a side order of maximum gross-out at one point. He’d have fried the damp pile as he passed to kill the stink, but he was afraid of cutting through the thin metal under it and Human buildings were weirdly flammable.

  There were twelve Dragon Lords, so most of the UnderRealm built in stone.

  When he reached a shaft that descended down into the earth with Boggart-scented cables running from enormous pulleys, he knew where he was. Back home, Dwarves mined the mountains near his mother’s cave. Cameron had laughed when he’d told him, but Dwarves weren’t a cliché where Jack came from and anyone who got along that well with his mother had balls out of proportion to their hei . . .

  Music? Charlie.

  He hadn’t been hurrying, but now he folded his wings close in to his body and dove, snapping them out as he emerged into a huge room carved out of the rock.

  Snapping them out further to their full width when he saw what the rock had hold of.

  Clutching the bar on elevator’s gate so hard the metal cut into his palms, Paul stared at the creature hauling Charlotte Gale into the air. Enormous arms were attached to massive shoulders that tapered down to stumpy legs. It had a head, and Paul thought he saw a face before it was blocked by the Gale woman’s body.

  It looked like living rock.

  Except rock wasn’t alive.

  “Living earth, remember?”

  Wasn’t alive.

  Wasn’t.

  “I have the skins.” Eineen’s hand closed around his arm, warm, grounding. Something in her touch pushed the terror back. “We need to get out of here.”

  He still couldn’t get his fingers to unclench, but he nodded toward the . . . the Troll. The gesture turned into a flinch as it flung the pieces of the smashed guitar aside. “We can’t.”

  “We can’t do anything.”

  “We can’t leave her.”

  “She’s a Gale. She’ll be fine.”

  Catherine Gale would have been fine. Paul wouldn’t have worried for a moment about Catherine Gale. Had he not been running for his life, he might have worried about the Troll. But the Troll wasn’t crushing Catherine Gale and Paul realized that nothing could have convinced him of the differences between the two women more than the terror he now felt for her younger relative. Even Eineen’s reassurances came in a distant second.

  “We have to do . . .”

  A horde of small furry creatures swarmed down over the elevator, swerved wide around the Troll, spotted the Goblins at the last minute, shrieked, swerved again, and disappeared down a different tunnel.

  “What the hell?”

  “Boggarts.” Eineen’s grip tightened slightly, but the calming effect had definitely lessened. “The gate is in these tunnels.”

  Paul looked at the Troll, past it to the Goblins, then turned just far enough to look at Eineen. “You think?”

  Something hit the top of the elevator, bounced,
and a single Boggart scrambled across the open area and after the rest.

  The Troll didn’t seem to notice.

  Or had noticed everything and not reacted. What the hell did Paul know about Tro . . .

  At first he thought it was bird, maybe a big golden gull—not that gulls came in gold but what did he know about b . . .

  “Dragon! Oh, my fucking God, that’s a DRAGON!”

  The tail slammed the elevator, rocking it, knocking him back. The wings, half folded, filled Canaveral. The head dipped low on a long, sinuous neck. Steel screeched as carts were crushed under enormous clawed feet or flung to crumple against the wall.

  The space filled with fire, a heartbeat of searing heat that didn’t burn, and a boy in his mid-teens with pale blond hair, crouched over Charlotte Gale’s body next to a pile of stone. He was naked, but, other than that, he looked absurdly normal. He turned. Wild, golden eyes locked on Paul’s face as he wailed, “Help me! I don’t know enough about Humans!”

  So much for normal.

  Smacked by the dragon’s tail, the cage door had buckled.

  Paul dragged at it. He’d never move it. “I can’t . . .”

  The boy’s eyes flared. The door unbuckled and snapped open so fast Paul nearly lost a finger. He stepped forward, but Eineen still had hold of his arm.

  Eineen was on her knees, face hidden behind her hair.

  “Hey!” He couldn’t get free of Eineen’s grip. Trying hurt. “Eineen!”

  She shook her head, her hair waving like kelp at low tide. “The Prince.”

  Which was when Paul connected the dots. In his own defense, this was his first dragon. The boy was the dragon. The dragon was the prince Eineen had been going to ask for help. And none of that mattered.

  “Get up.” He tucked his free hand under her other arm and hauled her up onto her feet. “We have to help him. He doesn’t know enough about Humans.”

  Something he said, or maybe because it was him saying it, got through. Eineen tossed her hair back and stared past him at the boy. At the woman on the floor.

  And then they were moving, Eineen dropping back to her knees beside the body.

  No, not the body. Blood still bubbled between parted lips. It wasn’t a body until she stopped breathing.

  “Did you do this, Highness?”

  Jack glanced over at the Selkie touching the pile of rubble that had been the Troll and shook his head. “No, Charlie did. But she’s hurt. She’s hurt bad and she won’t wake up and I don’t know what to do.” He couldn’t control the smoke that puffed out with every word. He waved it away from Charlie’s face and bit his lip until he tasted blood. He wasn’t going to cry. Crying was weakness. Weakness was death.

  A drop of water splashed onto Charlie’s arm and rolled off.

  “You have to take her home, Highness. Her people can heal her.”

  The Selkie’s voice was soft but insistent. Jack rubbed his nose on his wrist and said, “How? Home is too far away and . . .” He looked over the rubble at the empty tunnel where the Goblins had been. They’d fled when he’d arrived, but he’d seen them. “The gate is down here. Stupid! I’m so stupid! I followed the Boggart to find the gate, so of course the gate is down here. I can take her through the gate, cut through the Under Realm, and out again by Allie. Allie can fix anything.”

  “If you move her, she’ll die.”

  Jack glared up at the man standing by the Selkie. “I have to move her, or she’ll die!”

  “The blood, in her mouth . . . there’s internal damage. Broken ribs, for sure. If the ends haven’t punctured a lung yet . . .” The man’s voice trailed off and he shook his head. He looked really upset, like he cared, so Jack didn’t kill him for what he’d said. For stopping him from taking Charlie home.

  “Okay.” He touched Charlie’s hair because that wouldn’t hurt her. He just had to think about this. He was a dragon, but a dragon would eat her, and he didn’t want to do that even if he could have. He was a Gale and a Gale would take her home, but he couldn’t do that. He was a sorcerer and he could turn her into butterflies, but butterflies died so easily. He could move things without touching them. He could . . .

  He could make clothes out of nothing.

  First day he’d been here, right after he’d followed his father’s blood through from the UnderRealm, he made clothes out of parts of David’s rental car so he’d look like everyone else. David had been really, really pissed, but that didn’t matter now. Point was, he could make things out of other things.

  He could make a thing so he could move Charlie.

  There were bits of the Troll broken up under her so Jack started with those, smoothing them out and connecting them together. They weren’t Troll anymore. Whatever Charlie had done, they were only rock. Then he shoved the Selkie out of the way and brought more bits over and started to curl them up and around, just barely touching Charlie’s skin.

  “She’s not dead! You can’t . . .”

  The Selkie stopped the Human male before Jack did. That was good because Jack didn’t want to split his attention, but he totally would have fried that guy if he tried to tell him what he could or couldn’t do.

  He was especially careful around Charlie’s head, but he might have caught a bit of hair anyway.

  Then he sat back, took a deep breath and looked.

  Except for a circle over her mouth and nose, he’d totally encased her in rock. The troll had hurt her and now it would keep her safe while he got her home.

  “As long as I don’t whack her on anything, I can move her.”

  He stood, changed, and realized that if he stayed small enough to get through the tunnels to the gate, he’d be too small to carry the rock and Charlie.

  Paul had watched the rock flow and change and feared for a moment the boy—dragon—was building a coffin, but it soon became clear he was using the rock to immobilize Charlotte Gale’s injuries. Casting her in stone, as it were. He’d have laid her out were he building a coffin, not taken such care to wrap her where she lay.

  When the boy stood and became a dragon again, the problem he faced was obvious to anyone with eyes. “We can lift her into one of the carts.” If they could find a cart the Troll and then the dragon-boy hadn’t crushed. “And then we can roll her to the gate.”

  Another flash of fire and a naked teenage boy stared at him, wide-eyed. “How did you . . . ?”

  “The rock has made the . . . has made Charlotte Gale not only heavy, but bulky. You’ve got to stay small to fit through the tunnels. It’s just a matter of putting the information together and coming up with a solution. It’s what I do.”

  The dragon-boy’s smile made Paul feel as though he’d just—well, slain a dragon wasn’t the best analogy under the circumstances, but he felt like he’d finally done something important with his life. The feelings Amelia Carlson had evoked for a job well done weren’t even close.

  He stepped away to find a working cart and realized Eineen had remained on her knees, once again locked in place, staring at the dragon-boy.

  When Paul touched her shoulder, she said, “Your people do not do such things.”

  Since he had no idea what she meant, he turned his attention to the dragon-boy who shrugged, light catching the scatter of golden scales on his chest. “I’m unique.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  His teeth were almost Human when he grinned. “Sometimes.”

  “You’re . . .”

  “I’m in a hurry! Get up and help, Seal-girl!”

  She stood as if she were a puppet and he’d pulled her strings. Paul didn’t like the look of that, but since the dragon-boy then ignored her, he decided it was a problem that could be temporarily forgotten. Kind of like the whole naked issue.

  They found a high-sided cart with a dent in one side that still rolled. Unfortunately, they could only roll it about a meter before a tangle of crushed carts blocked the tracks. Paul glanced around Canaveral. This was a staging area. With any luck, a working forklift had b
een left behind when the mine had closed. Just because he hadn’t seen one . . .

  “Seal-girl!”

  “My name is Eineen, Highness,” she snapped as she pushed past Paul. Seemed she wasn’t happy about the puppet experience either.

  The dragon-boy rolled his eyes. “And mine’s Jack. Now help me push!”

  “You can’t,” Paul began, but it seemed they could. Eineen put her hands next to the dra . . . to Jack’s on a piece of buckled metal and the two of them shoved what was probably half a ton of crushed steel out of the way. Jack’s eyes flashed gold again, and forced the cart over a section of flattened track and rolled it up beside Charlotte Gale’s body.

  “Wait!” Paul swallowed as Jack turned glowing golden eyes toward him. Had to swallow again before he could continue. “You’ve immobilized her injuries, but you’ve got to be careful moving her. Her insides could shift.” Contents could shift during shipping. He shook the thought away. “If you can lift her on your own, Eineen can get into the cart and steady her as she’s lowered. We can stay in the cart with her to steady her as you roll her to the gate.” Although given Charlotte Gale’s current weight . . . “Try not to make any sudden turns.”

  “I don’t,” Eineen began.

  Paul cut her off. He understood her protest. Thought he understood anyway. She’d gotten away from this kind of hierarchy when she’d left Faerie or whatever they called it when they were home and she didn’t want to go back, but the hierarchy wasn’t the issue here. A woman’s life was. Charlotte Gale’s life. “He’ll be able to move faster with our help.”

  “Okay.” Jack nodded. “Great. Get in the . . .”

  Eineen raised a hand. “Do not make it a command.” She climbed over and into the cart, then turned, hands up. “Lift her in, Highness. Slowly.”

  The best Paul could do was stay out of the way. He watched as Jack, the dragon-boy, and the woman he loved, who just happened to be a seal part of the time, lifted and settled Charlotte Gale, wrapped in re-engineered Troll, up and into a mine cart. His job with Carlson Oil seemed to have happened in another life. Here and now, he couldn’t call to mind why he’d been so proud of it.