Right now, she was just hoping she’d have the time to continue those studies. The man was done shouting, and she could hear one set of steps leaving the room. The man who was related to Mac’Lir was sitting up slowly. Linn peeked, not fully opening her eyes.
He wasn’t looking at them as he held his stomach and got to his feet. He left the room, gun lying on the floor behind him, and Linn saw Merrick start to wriggle toward it.
“Shh! Wait!” She cautioned him.
“What?” he hissed back through clenched teeth.
“What are you going to do with it? Let me get us untied first.” Linn concentrated, imaging her rope as she felt the knots. “This might take a minute...”
“What are you doing?” He was trying to keep his voice down, but failing.
“I’ll explain later!” Linn told him with exasperation. She could feel the tingle of something happening to the rope, but she didn’t dare hurry it, as it got hotter when she tried that.
In the other room, there was a sudden tinkle of breaking glass, and voices swearing. Linn risked her hands burning, silently concentrating hard on the rope. She could feel it... dissolving. Just as it dropped away, the men came stumbling through the curtain with a truly horrible reek, coughing.
Neither of them were carrying a gun now, but she still didn’t want to challenge them. They were bigger than she was, and Merrick was still helpless. Linn lay very still and hoped that they couldn’t see her hands behind her back.
The bigger man sideswiped at the other one. “You moron! That’s tonight’s work you done wasted. And we still gotta git rid of these two.”
“All right, all right! I’m sorry... Let’s get out of here for a while. I need fresh air.” The man who had met them at the door headed for it now.
“What about them?” Big man pointed.
“I don’t know. Not now...” he was gagging as he swung the door opened. And then he screamed like a little girl, jumping backwards. He tripped over Merrick’s legs and fell awkwardly, his arms flailing.
Linn could barely see, her eyes were streaming with tears from the fumes. There was a figure in the doorway, a human shape, so it wasn’t Blackie. In the confusion, maybe it was time to escape. She shoved a hand in her pocket, fumbling for the little knife Bes had given her.
Neither of the men seemed to even see her as she belly crawled ungracefully to Merrick and sawed at his ropes.
“Don’t move! This is really sharp!” she murmured in his ear. He held obligingly still, and she only cut him a little as the rope let go.
He doubled up and she reached for his legs, then felt a terrible blow to the back. The big man had noticed her, and kicked her, hard. Linn rolled on the floor, gasping and gagging. Between the pain and the fumes, she had lost track of Merrick, and her knife.
There was a scream from the doorway, but she couldn’t see what was happening. Beside, her there was a low growl.
“Blackie!” she squeaked. Her voice was hoarse and raw.
A new voice entered her awareness, reverberating, and oozing with power. “Still.”
Everyone stopped moving. Linn gasped for air, feeling her face covered in snot and tears, a cool draft on the wetness of it. Footsteps moved closer, and she could hear the voice, firm, female, and mature, speaking softly in a language she didn’t recognize. Then it switched over to English, and Linn could follow the conversation.
“Will, Chad; what do you have to say for yourselves?” the voice commanded.
The two men spoke at once, their words tripping over one another. “Granny Clinch! Don’t curse us...”
“We’re just tryin’ to make a living...”
“We meant them no real harm...”
“Will’s a moron.”
“Chad wanted to kill them!”
Granny Clinch, Linn supposed, spoke no louder than before, but the voice commanded and rang from the walls. “Silence. You have made trouble for the family for the last time.”
Now, Linn could see through her tears as the old woman bent over her. “Can you stand?” She asked Linn.
Linn rolled onto her side, then tried to get up. She felt fur under her fingertips and latched onto it gratefully. She still couldn’t see well, and the guidance to open air was very helpful. Outside in the dark, she was guided to the tailgate of a truck, and sat on it, wiping her tears off her cheeks and trying to resist the urge to rub her eyes. There was a train rumbling past, on the embankment behind the stores she had glimpsed while they were walking around. Between that noise, and her eyes, she felt very helpless.
The train went on forever. She had mostly gotten her eyes clear, but it was still very dark in the alley. The open doorway was a rectangle of dim light, but if there were voices, she couldn’t hope to hear them. Linn wasn’t even sure she would hear a gunshot. Surely a shotgun blast would be louder than the train?
Finally, a silhouette appeared in the doorway. As she walked toward the truck, Blackie joined her, the big cat unmistakable in the backlighting. Linn looked down in confusion at the big beast lying beside her on the tailgate. A silvery-gray ruff glimmered in the light. Big eyes gleamed, and a tail thumped on the bed behind her. This was a very large wolf.
“Now, who are you?” Linn asked.
“Good question for all of you.” This could only be the woman the men had called Granny Clinch. Her hair, lit from behind, glowed like a white halo, or a dandelion puff. Linn couldn’t see her face, her expression, but the tone of voice was not happy.
Linn swallowed hard. They had stumbled into something over their heads, and this might not be the rescue it had felt like at first.
“I’m Linnea Vulkane...” She offered, quietly.
“And I’m Mary Talon Clinch. Now, get in the truck. Boys, ride in the back.” Granny Clinch didn’t even hesitate, just went around and got in, saying over her shoulder. “Close the gate, girl.”
Linn banged it up and shook it, in case it was like Grandpa Heff’s tailgate, which fell down if it wasn’t latched just right. Then she climbed into the cab while Blackie leapt into the bed of the truck to sit with the wolf. Merrick? Granny had called him boy, and Merrick wasn’t in sight.
“Where are we going?” She wasn’t entirely sure she should just trust any adult, and what had happened to the men in the abandoned store?
“My place. We’ll talk when we get there. And I know your grandfather, child. Rest your mind.”
Linn decided that the only way Granny Clinch would know who her grandfather was, was to have looked at her with Sight and interpreted Linn’s power signature. Which still didn’t mean that she was a good guy. It did mean that she was worth talking to. When she was ready, because she had fallen silent, looking at the road and paying no attention to Linn. In the light from the dashboard, Linn could see that she was old, which made sense with Granny being her identity to those grown men.
How old, on the other hand, she couldn’t possibly guess. Heff and Pele had been on Earth for thousands of years, but they chose what age they looked. Recently, a lot younger, which made Linn happy. They looked old, she had decided, when they felt tired and old. Bes had proven that by youthening when she challenged him about his white hair.
Which meant Granny Clinch could be old in human terms, or in the gods’. Linn wondered absently what the gods had called themselves before they had come to Earth. They seemed to hold themselves separate from ‘human’ but they could have babies with humans. How different could they be? If it was only the nanobots, the tiny computers which could give them so much power, then getting rid of those would make them only human.
Linn wondered if the weapon she had helped developed would ever be used, and how wide the range would be. If it were detonated near Hawaii, would it hurt her grandparents and mother? Or the coblyns? And where had the coblyns come from, anyway? That had never occurred to her before today.
Linn started making a mental list of questions to ask when she got home. The silence and the darkness got to her, and the heat being turned up,
and she nodded off into sleep before they had gone very far.
Chapter 8
Linn jolted awake when the truck turned off the smooth paved road and onto a rough one. Blinking, she rubbed her eyes and regretted that when she was reminded of the earlier damage to them by a flash of pain and a flood of tears. She sniffed, fluttering her hands a little as she resisted rubbing more.
“You okay?” Granny Clinch asked, her voice gentler now.
“My eyes... I’m okay. Just it’s making my nose run.”
Granny Clinch chuckled softly. “Napkins in the glove compartment.”
Linn gratefully mopped her face and blew her nose. “Where are we?” She looked around. It was near dawn, she guessed, as the light was starting to gleam through the trees that surrounded the road, making everything look gray.
“Just about there. You know we’re in Kentucky, right?”
Linn shook her head. “I’ve never been to Kentucky before. We just went where the token from Manannan Mac’Lir sent us.”
“So Mac’Lir has awakened?” Granny Clinch turned into a driveway. “Timing is... interesting, on that. I wonder why now?”
Linn didn’t know. She did know she was groggy, hungry, and had no idea where they were, besides at a small house in a dark forest. She was beginning to feel like they had somehow slipped into a fairy tale.
“Come in, child, and I will get breakfast into all of you. Then we need to talk.”
Linn was grateful for this respite, even if she still wasn’t sure she would be able to provide all the answers. Food and time to collect her thoughts would be good. It had been an eventful and stressful night.
“What happened to those men?” She asked, climbing out of the truck and watching Blackie and Merrick frolic. This explained a lot, right here, and how could they be having fun when she felt like she had been beaten with sticks?
“‘Bout now, the sheriff will be talking to them. I left them sitting and thinking about what they had done, while they waited for him to show up. It will be a long time before they come back around, with that meth lab they were working in all laid out for the sheriff to find like that.”
“Oh.” Linn hadn’t realized that was what they were doing. She’d seen a special on TV about it. No wonder the fumes had made her so sick. They could have killed her, or exploded and killed them all. “I’m sorry.”
Granny Clinch stopped in the hall and looked at her in surprise. “Why are you sorry?”
“Your grandsons...” Linn wasn’t sorry they were busted over the drugs; that was good. But it had to be hard to turn in family like that.
Granny sniffed and opened the door into the main house. “Take off your shoes. Will you eat biscuits and gravy?”
“I’ll eat whatever is put in front of me, Ma’am.” Linn assured her.
“You call me Granny. Plates are in there, set the table while I start gravy.” Linn headed for the cupboard indicated, deciding that unlike all the gods she had met, this one scared her. Also, she thought it would be a very bad idea indeed to call her a god.
It took surprisingly little time to make the food, although Linn was long finished with setting when the timer rang and the pan of golden-brown biscuits came out.
“Call in the boys, please.” Granny was whisking the gravy.
Linn’s stomach was telling her that it was dying. Agony, oh agony! She scooted and called out the door. “Blackie, Merrick! Breakfast!”
They appeared out of the woods, leaping over a flowerbed smoothly without ruffling a petal, the big silvery gray and black bodies moving fast and in perfect tandem. Linn felt a little envy, both for the speed of animal-shape, and their apparent decision to make friends.
“C’mon, guys.” She held open the door, and they padded down the hall ahead of her. Granny met them at the inner door, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“Change for the table, boys. Linn, give them some privacy.”
Linn, startled, went into the kitchen and Granny closed the door behind them. “Granny... Blackie doesn’t...”
The door opened, and Linn turned to look. Merrick, back to brown-haired boy form, with jeans and a t-shirt. The shirt looked like it was from some band Linn didn’t know. Behind him was Blackie. Linn felt her jaw drop.
Blackie had never, to her knowledge, shifted to human form. She wasn’t really sure he could do it. Some of the old gods had only beast forms, or at best part-human. The minotaur, centaurs, mermaids... Even though both Sekhmet and Steve could do human and beast, their children had only shifted to human under extreme duress, and then only the two who were traumatized. Pat and Moira were lovely little girls, human form with no apparent ability to shift back to their kitten form, and physically about three years old. Linn was very fond of them. Blackie and Spot had gotten much, much bigger in these two years.
Still, she had no idea that translated to ‘grown-up’ in human form. Here he was, taller than Merrick, dark haired and with a shadow of beard. Blackie was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt, with a bright painted tie to add color. He looked an awful lot like Steve, Linn concluded numbly.
“Sit, sit...” Granny was bustling around putting things on the table. The biscuits, gravy, a jug of milk and a carafe of coffee. From somewhere she had produced a pitcher of juice, and sausages on the side for the boys. She raised an eyebrow at Linn, who declined with a head shake. She didn’t diet, but she tried not to eat everything she saw, either.
Linn sat, still stunned by Blackie’s transformation. The boys shuffled into their chairs, with sidelong glances at Linn. She was waiting for Blackie to say something. What would his voice sound like? They had communicated by gesture and eye contact for so long... she met his eyes. He smiled, and tilted his head slightly. Linn felt a rush of relief. It was really him, and he was feeling as weird as she was.
Her moment over, the stomach spoke up again, and Linn obeyed Granny’s order to ‘help yourself’ with all speed. No one talked while they were eating. The boys put away a lot of food, and Linn realized that Granny’s big batch of biscuits was about right. She’d been thinking that was an awful lot of food, but it disappeared.
After they had all finished, Linn got up, feeling a little odd, but determined to help with the dishes. Strange kitchens put her off balance, but her mother had always told her to be helpful when she could. Granny Clinch showed her where the supplies were, and pointed to Merrick.
“You dry. And you, young man, I have a chore for.”
Blackie took the broom meekly. Linn wondered when the big talk was going to happen, but this felt easy and domestic in comparison. You could almost pretend, she thought as she handed a plate to Merrick, that they were a normal family, brothers and sister.
It helped, a little, to distract her from wondering what Granny really was, and what she would want. It also helped to distract her from thinking about what Mac’Lir would say when they got back. She didn’t think this was the adventure she was supposed to have. There was no success here, she hadn’t done anything.
When Granny finally beckoned them to follow her out onto the front deck of the house, overlooking a deep ravine filled with trees, brush, and flowers, Linn was glad enough to follow. All three young people went to the railing and looked over it. There were birds and butterflies everywhere, under the blue sky and sunlight. It was still morning, from the position of the sun.
“Come and sit, it’s time to talk.” Granny Clinch was already sitting at the round, glass-topped table. Linn took a chair next to her, and the boys sat across from them. “Well, now... You’re the spokeswoman, aren’t you, girl?”
Linn nodded and opened her mouth. “I’m not really sure where to start.”
Granny nodded and smiled, just a little. “It will come to you.”
Linn looked at Merrick, and Blackie. “Well, about two years ago I didn’t know I was the granddaughter of two gods, and I thought he was a perfectly ordinary kitten when I met him...”
It took a while to tell the whole story. Granny would o
ccasionally ask her questions and make her go into more detail. The boys sat and listened quietly, looking interested. Linn realized that Blackie might never have heard the whole story before. He’d been with her for part of it, sure, but when had he been ‘grown’ enough to be aware? He’d looked new-born when she first met him.
Merrick, of course, would have had no idea about all of this, nor should Granny, although as Linn got to the part of bringing all the god’s children from around the world to Sanctuary for protection, she nodded. Linn wondered if she had heard something about that operation.
Linn hesitated as she got to the weapon. It wasn’t her secret to reveal, and not something any enemy should know about. She decided it wasn’t necessary, and skipped to the part where Blackie took her on the High Path to rescue Bes. Merrick and Granny looked at him, and Linn watched with fascination as he blushed. He got up and went to lean over the railing, hiding his face.
Linn ran the whole last two years together in a tangle of sentences, feeling her throat hurting from talking for so long, and fell silent. Granny got up and went into the house. Linn stood up and went to lean on the railing, bumping shoulders with Blackie affectionately.
“Can you talk?” she asked, curious.
“Yeah,” he answered gruffly, looking intently down into the brush below them.
“Could you before?”
He looked at her sideways, then back down. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay.” Linn lapsed back into silence.
Granny came back out, and Linn turned around. The old woman was carrying a stack of plastic cups and a pitcher full of what was probably iced tea. It was. Linn appreciated it on her throat.
“What happened to the children who came to Sanctuary?” Granny asked.
“They stayed a few months, some longer than others, until the elders decided the battle on the High Plane had satisfied the Old gods, and they were cleared to go home again,” Linn answered.
The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) Page 6
