“I know,” Will said. “Still think we need to involve a mining concern?”
“I think we can just fill our fucking pockets and be done with it.”
Will was playing it cool—someone had to keep his shit together—but it was hard not to gawk just as much as George was. He wasn’t coming up from a blackout this time around and only about a third as terrified. The place was magnificent. He found himself stilling the urge to run around and shout. He wanted to run his hands over the glowing walls and pick up the gems in the diamond bed. This was every little kid’s dream come true.
Except for the part about the monsters.
Will put his arm out in front of George like a mother holding her kid back at a busy street corner. He thumbed the snap off his holster, dragged out Smaug, and rested the .357 against his leg. George looked at him. “What?” Will stared straight ahead. George followed his eyes. “What the fuck?”
A seven-foot tall bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin walked around the base of a large natural column, and by “walked” it kind of clunked from one side of its bottom rim to the other. It stopped in front of the diamond bed and did a little a twirl. George gawked; Will thumbed back Smaug’s hammer.
George half-turned his head toward Will but kept his bulging eyes on the sentient, economy-size bottle of his favorite gin. “Are you seeing…?”
“It’s Yïn.”
“It’s gin.”
“She’s messing with us. You.”
Will took a shaky step forward and pitched his voice into cop mode. “You can cut that shit out, now. We’re here to talk to Dampf.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Will’s blood pulsed in his ears. George swallowed a mouthful of dry spit and his throat clicked so loud it echoed. The clear liquid in the bottle colored dark. (In the low, green light, it was impossible to tell, but Will was sure it had turned to blood.) The clear glass tessellated with scale then wings and a tail burst forth. A moment later, a dragon made from the very gems in the walls stood before them.
“Holy shit,” George whispered.
Will muttered over his shoulder, “That ain’t Dampf.”
“B-but it—.”
“Dampf’s taller. This thing’s only ten feet high. Dampf’s a freakin’ four-story hotel.” He turned back to the smallish dragon. “Cut the shit, will you?”
The dragon’s eyes flashed red and split into eight half-spheres. A second later, Yïn stood before them, mandibles scissoring.
“Ohmigod,” George hissed. “Will! Will! Shoot it! Ohmigod, Will!”
Will backed up a step and put his hand out. George grabbed it in a sweaty death grip. “It’s okay, Georgie,” he soothed. “If it was gonna hurt us, it could’ve done a while back. We’re good. We’re good.”
George grabbed Will’s arm and yanked him in close. “Its mouth!”
“I know.”
His breath was coming fast and shallow. “Looks like it wants to eat us.”
“I know,” Will said, “but I’m pretty sure that’s what she does when she’s laughing.”
“She? How do you know it’s a girl? Did you turn it over?”
A voice thundered from behind, “All of her kind is female.”
George squeezed Will’s arm once very hard and let go. Will turned around and sucked in a great rush of air: towering, undeniable, dragon. “Dampf,” he said. “This is George Rhodes.” Will turned to George just as he went down like a heap of rags.
Will knelt by George and checked his breathing. He’d be all right—just passed out was all. Will stood up and said, “Does everyone you meet just faint?”
“The boy never lost consciousness.”
“The boy? Childe? Kiddo? You’ve seen him? He’s seen you?”
“Yïn saved the boy’s animal. Yïn and the boy are bonded.”
“But he hasn’t met you, yet?”
“He will if he must.”
Will squinted when the dragon spoke. Dampf’s voice was like strong wind in his mind. Smaug was getting heavy. He looked over his shoulder. Yïn hadn’t come any closer. Will holstered weapon. “Don’t you want to know why I brought George here?” At the sound of his name George stirred, a nonsense syllable slipping over his lips. “Can you change into something a little less, uh, huge?” Will asked. “Like you did with me. So, you know, he can wrap his brain around you guys in stages?”
George sat up slowly and stared at the dragon. He looked back over his shoulder and took in Yïn. The slightest shiver vibrated through his shoulder blades. “I’m okay, Will.”
Will offered George a hand and pulled him upright. “You sure, man?” But he could already tell George was more curious than afraid. “Yeah, fine,” he said and took a step toward Dampf.
“Uh,” George held out his hands, “greetings.”
Dampf lowered his head: a bow. George grinned and clapped his hands together. He turned around and waved to the giant spider across the chamber, “Howdy!” Yïn’s mandibles scissored and she dipped on her front legs. “So, ah, Will’s told me all about you. Sort of.”
Will grabbed George’s elbow. “What are you doing?”
“What? Ow. I’m just talking.” But George’s eyes were a little too white and his skin was hot.
“You’re freaking out, Rhodes.”
George jerked away from Will. “Of course I am! What am I supposed to do? At least I’m freaking out cordially. I can’t believe you brought me into this. Why the fuck couldn’t you have kept this to yourself?”
“George Rhodes,” Dampf boomed.
George spun around and stood ramrod straight.
“The Constable brings you to us because he is alone. Would you stand with him?”
George stared up at those celestial black eyes. There were eons in there. He could smell gin that wasn’t there and he wanted to urinate. He tore his gaze away from the towering insanity in front of him and looked at Will. Stupid red baseball cap, screws of black hair sticking out the sides, those cheesy goddamn Chucks. Probably had some paperback he’d read forty-five times in the back pocket of his jeans. Dumbass old six-shooting cowboy gun on his hip. Look on his face that said, “I hate this. I’m scared.” But Will would fight when the time came. Will would protect them all. Will had brought him into this because he was afraid to do it by himself. Would George stand with him?
“Can we get me a gun, too, please?”
* * *
George sat at his mother’s kitchen table—the house never actually felt like it was his even this many years after her death—and contemplated a full bottle of gin. Two hours had passed since Will dropped him off at his house. “Need some time to get my head around this,” was all George had said. Erica was at the county seat doing some research in the library, so it was just George, the gin, and the house making the odd click and creak as the afternoon heat strolled through it. The last of the cicadas ratcheted outside and every now and then he caught the far-off call of a kid shouting at summer to slow the fuck down.
The smell of juniper was very strong in the kitchen. Hell, he could practically see the air ripple over the open bottle like heat coming off pavement. If he drank that George would be raving in minutes and end up either on the floor, the street, or in Will’s holding cell. He could see himself in the glass, pale, elongated, warped—perfect reflection. He’d seen a pair of demons today. Or Gods, depending on which side of the theological isle you fell: The First Ones.
Dampf had started The Fire. Like a real God, Dampf had made Shard the way it was with a puff of his molten breath—all to keep the bad ones from coming through, the wasps. And now the one that got away was coming home.
George knew a thing or two about Pompiliads. They were fascinating insects and arguably the most brutal. They hunt other bugs and inject their eggs along with their poison. The poison paralyzes the victim (often a spider) and the wasp carries it off to its den, or burrow. Over time the egg hatches and the larval wasp eats the host from the inside out, emerging full-grown. The host is alive and p
aralyzed through most of this. George tried to imagine what it would feel like to be crammed down some dark hole and eaten from the inside out. He shuddered and reached for the bottle.
It burned his nose as his lips touched the glass. He held it for a moment and thunked it down on the table. A dollop of gin splashed cold on his wrist. He could just go, leave. He could maybe go with Erica back to New York. Things hadn’t progressed as far with them as they had with Will and Amy—at least, not physically—but she liked him. And they were good for each other. George had slowed his drinking way down and Erica seemed so much less… fractured. They could leave tomorrow. Hell, they could leave today when she got back. George could imagine himself at some job in a suit, doing suit things, or walking in Central Park with the most beautiful woman in Manhattan while Will and the others were crammed down some dark hole and eaten alive from the inside out.
George got up and walked to the front door, gin forgotten. He stood in front of the stained glass scene of St. Michael chastising Adam and Eve. They had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and so knew about the heavens and the earth, innocence lost. It was terrible to know. Summer sun glowed through the glass and fell in George’s eyes, complicating them. He opened the door and walked into the light.
Chapter 19
Erica was lost. The Subaru wagon bumped and crunched over a gravel mining road that was but one in a maze. They seemed to have been laid down with the precision of tossing a bunch of unraveled yarn onto a map. Speaking of maps, the one spread out on the passenger seat was next to useless. She’d realized that fifteen minutes after she’d turned off the main road. Erica had passed the same intersection with the big double oak four times now. Thank God it was still daylight; if she lost the sun she was royally fucked.
Technically she was still inside the Shard Township limits; at least she thought she was. She’d spent all morning and most of the afternoon with her nose buried in books and survey maps (one going as far back as 1843) trying to ascertain Shard’s exact borders. After that, she hit the tax and census records, her goal to find every last legal inhabitant and property owner in Shard. If her records were up to date (and she seriously doubted that) there were forty-five living souls in Shard—thirty-one in town and fourteen in the surrounding hills—and Erica had to convince all of them to leave. Blackstone Mineral was the largest client her firm had ever secured. She was certain that if she could clear Shard of complicating factors and then buy up the remains in Blackstone’s interest, they’d make her a partner.
What she was not certain of was her location. The map said that this little unmarked red line squiggled about a mile and a half in, crossing that little squiggly blue line. She had splashed through a wide creek some time ago—props to the all-wheel drive—and at that time had seemed to be on track, but had since zagged when she should have zigged or whatever the fuck. “Dammit!” she hissed and hit the brakes.
Erica turned off the engine and got out of the car. Today she graced the empty woods in a sharp-collared blouse with matching oversized cuffs and fitted black suit pants. She’d bought herself a pair of low pumps at the Shoes-4-Less four miles down the main strip from the county library that were at least the right color to match her outfit if hideous in their own right. (She was not about to wear George’s mother’s old tennis shoes any more than was absolutely necessary.) A pair of redwood frame reading glasses held back her glossy hair. Erica leaned against the car and closed her eyes. She listened: wind ran its hands through the canopy, tree trunks creaked and groaned, birds called, her heart beat and her breath slowed. She smelled the clean rot of old leaves on the ground and the bright green of new leaves as yet unfallen. Erica opened her eyes and that green rushed in. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s find these shit-kickers.”
Erica spread the map out on the hood of the Subaru, the engine still ticking beneath it. She traced a red fingernail along the red line she was pretty sure she was still on and figured out her problem: the map was bullshit. Half these roads weren’t even on it. Her stomach rumbled. She’d forgotten to eat lunch while she was at the library.
Erica put her hand against her tummy, trying to soothe the animal trapped in there. She wished she were sitting at George’s kitchen table, eating one of his amazing tuna melts. (She’d probably already put on three pounds since she got here, but it wasn’t like she was going to find a GNC with her favorite protein supplement.) George would putter around the kitchen cleaning up and she’d daydream or chat with him.
He was brilliant. There wasn’t much about which George didn’t have a considered opinion. The other day she’d asked him how he knew so much living in such isolation and he’d laughed and asked her in a turbo-charged accent, “Y’all never heard a’ that intraweb thingamajig?” There were also close to a thousand books in the Rhodes house—novels, non-fiction, even textbooks—and Erica had the idea that George had absorbed most of them.
The breeze shifted a bit and a whiff of barbecue tinted the air. Oh, that was just evil. She was starving. Erica had to be close to habitation. The dry stick of a woman behind the librarian’s desk had told her that she’d find a few cabins and a doublewide or two back here. She must be closer than she thought. Well, hell with the map, she’d just follow her nose. Erica walked on the down road about a quarter mile, the smell of cooking meat yanking at her complaining stomach. The wind shifted from time to time, but she was getting closer. A corner of trailer came into view as she rounded a sharp bend.
It was a village of sorts. A few cabins tacked together with sheets of plywood and tin, a couple of trailers with faded siding. Everything had a coat of road dust paint. Trees had been cleared on either side of the road and there was even a little fishing pond. A couple of rusted pick-up trucks squatted next to one of the trailers and there was another hulk that might have been a car at one time sinking into the weeds around its tireless wheels. A single wood pole stood sentinel at the road’s edge, thin black wires webbing out from it to most of the buildings. Another thicker wire ran off into the trees. They had electricity at least. The open areas were mowed and neat except for a few plastic toys that might have been donated. There was a shiny red wheelbarrow that was someone’s pride and joy—not a spot of rust on it. And a wooden horse with wheels that looked sturdy and homemade. Where the hell was everybody?
A crow cawed and Erica jumped. Jesus, she was freaking herself out. “Hello?” she called. “Is there someone here?” She had it all figured out. She’d claim lost city girl and prevail on their mercy. (Lies worked best when mixed with truth, Litigation 101.) Once she’d established rapport with the natives she’d trade them their land for a song—maybe something by Hank Williams. “Helllll-oh-oh!” What the hell? It was the middle of the day and it was obvious that at least some of these people didn’t have jobs. School was still out, so where were the kids?
Erica walked over to the doublewide with the trucks parked out front. The screen door shrieked as she pulled it open. She knocked gently on the peeling wood door, shoulders hunched. No answer. She knocked again, louder. Nothing. Erica turned around and the let the screen door slam behind her. She stared at her reflection in the windshield of the powder-blue pick-up. It was one of those old ones from the fifties or whenever. An American Corn Picker? Something like that. She put her hands on her hips and her stomach protested its emptiness again. Oh, yeah, the barbecue. The smell of sweet, cooking meat was just pervasive enough that she’d kind of forgotten about it.
Erica walked around back behind the doublewide, but there was no smoking grill. She turned west to head across the little grassy area toward the largest of the three shacks and something caught her eye. Erica turned and froze—a blaze of crimson splashed across the white siding of the trailer. There were several black dots moving around on it and Erica whispered, “Madre de Dios,” when she realized they were flies. “Hello?” The flies buzzed, drunk on protein and sugar. A large bluebottle droned past her ear on the way to the feast and snapped her out of it. Someone might be hurt.
>
She walked quickly over to the other doublewide and yanked the screen door out of her way. She rapped three times and then twisted the doorknob. The door opened easily and she stepped into the gloom of a tidy kitchen area with linoleum floors that were old and brown. She could already tell that no one was home. This place, this village was still. The handle of a good kitchen knife called to her from a rack over the sink and she grabbed it before heading back outside.
“Hello!” She shouted as she banged out into the lowering afternoon sun. Not a greeting, a warning. That was a “hello” that said try to paint my blood on the side of some redneck tornado magnet and you’ll have another thing coming. Erica didn’t do scared very well. Pissed off? Pissed off she did great. If there was anybody hurt around here she would find them and help the shit out of them.
She stomped over to the nearest shack and almost tripped over a discarded shoe. It was a man’s work boot, the kind rap artists wore (if not the brand), but this one was scuffed and well used. These were good boots; even the cheap ones were too expensive to leave just lying around. Erica prodded it with her knife. “Ah, shit.” There was a drop of blood on the toe: a bright red period at the end of someone else’s sentence.
She clomped onto the rickety porch and shoved through the screen door, “Hey! Is there someone here?” The shack was a single large room—wood stove in one corner and a sink with a believe-it-or-not portable, apartment-size dishwasher connected to a garden hose that ran through a small window. Across a green rag-rug, a couple of beds squatted in opposite corners; a child’s crayon drawings were tacked up over the smaller one. It reeked of barbecue here. The air was a little blue with fragrant smoke. They must be out back. There were having a barbecue and couldn’t hear her they were whoopin’ it up so much. That was all. (How come she couldn’t hear them a-whoopin?) Erica turned and walked out. She hooked a hard left as she hopped off the porch, her grip on the knife knuckle-white.