Chasing the Dragon (7 page)

"I guess he deserved that." He pointedly stayed out of range as they
moved towards the exit.

"I need a bike," she said. "Do we still do that kind of thing?"

"We do," Malachi assured her, beckoning her in a different direction
and holding up his hands in a peace gesture as he saw her baulk at the
sight of an office full of administration desks. "I'll do the authorisations
for you. Let's just get the key to the garage so you can choose?"

Lila leaned on the meant-to-intimidate height of the fascia board as
Malachi made charming chitchat to the dispatcher, reached over, and stuck
the end of her finger into an empty port in the desk's overengineered surface. She wanted bikes, her Al gave her bikes it found in the database. "It's
okay," she said, "I chose. I filled out the forms. Done the protocols, programmed the onboard." She smiled at the dispatcher's wide-eyed face.
"I hope the insurance doesn't come out of my pay, it's kinda high."

Malachi half smiled and stared at her with narrowed, amused eyes.
"You're enjoying this."

Lila just kept her smile on, pushed away from the desk, and
flounced out. From somewhere the dress had gained a little bow over
her bottom, and a short train of diaphanous silk.

For the first time in months and longer Malachi found himself
laughing.

It was as they stood alone together in the semidarkness of the
garage, looking over Lila's exquisite piece of technological fancy, that
she looked up into his face across the saddle and he saw tears in her
eyes. "Will I find him?" she asked, so quietly he almost couldn't hear
her. "Can I? Is it even possible?"

He thought of the yellow peach that sat on his desk, its ripe smell
and perfect skin, the still-living succulence of it as promising and
untasted as it had been for a thousand human years. He dared not
think of the hand that had given it to him. He knew he had waited too
long. "Yes," he said.

She swallowed with effort, blinking, licking and biting her lips.
"Do you think that girl is still alive Jones, the strandloper. Do you
think she's still around?"

He composed himself, then said, "The Ghost Hunters that she was
with set out on an expedition into the Deep Void. She said she was
going to find out where the ghosts came from, and stop them seeping
into the living world. She thought they were widening the cracks. But
they're still coming and I haven't seen her since. Can't say I looked too
hard." He shared a look with her that said Jones had creeped him out
severely, frightened him. "But if we're going to find them then there's
some other people we have to persuade to get us out there."

"You know them?"

"I know of them," he corrected her. "I'll make some enquiries.
Look around." He smoothed his hand over the bike's glossy fairings.
They were much more arrowlike creations than they used to be in the
days of combustion engines, and the rider lay almost flat front on them
at full speed, encased in aerodynamic shields, a fish in air. With Lila's
skill it would top 250. "You go and enjoy yourself somewhere. Meet
me tomorrow night downtown. The Medium Bar."

Lila nodded. She leaned forward suddenly and kissed him on the
cheek, lightly and quickly. "Take care, Mal."

"You too." He tapped the bike warningly and stepped back as she got on. LEDs and arrays came up as she touched it, then subsided. He
assumed she'd internalised all that stuff. Like magic. He watched her
spin slowly forwards, saw her get used to the machine's silence, weave
it around the narrow turns of the lot and vanish up the ramp towards
the daylight.

Back in his office he started to look up names and addresses but
unaccountably found himself holding the peach in his hands, examining it minutely for any sign of bruising or rot. There wasn't any, and
he breathed out with relief, inhaling deeply afterwards. Its smell was
heady, divine. He pressed it against his lips.

Lila rode for a few hours. She took the fastest route out of the city onto
the expressway and followed it south over the curling, secretive waterways that threaded the suburbs. She crossed the first of the Five
Arches; bridges that mimicked the Andalune's giant span over the five
rivers of the dunes in which Bay City hung out, sprawling and indolent. The Five Rivers were small estuaries really, rather than sweetwater tracts. Crocodiles basked on the tidal flats just metres from
shining corporate blocks as she flew silently by, weaving in and out of
the afternoon traffic.

It was surreal to her, to move so fast and smoothly, with such quiet
emptiness where the engine's roar used to be. Now only the wind battered her ears and face with its noise and wrenched her hair in every
direction. A lot of people had bikes like hers, but they rode them in
armour and she heard the guidance systems doing a lot of the driving.
The pretty coloured bubble cars that had no drivers held an astonishing array of people and activities. She saw a couple at a table lit with
candles speeding in the fast lane, eating dinner off fine china, clinking
crystal glasses. In other pods children flung themselves at the windshields, plastering noses and lips to it, making faces. A girl sunbathed in a bikini while her mother lay in the front doing some kind of exercise class. Boys played console games, their feet sticking out of the
window, socks shimmying in the draft. Occasionally something that
looked like a sports car would shark through the lanes, driver concentrating at the wheel. Lila learned to know them by the heavier rasp of
their wide tires humming like bass notes on the asphalt. Her ride was
so much more like flying, it wasn't like biking at all.

She reached her particular bit of deserted cove after taking a hundred-mile detour and stopped at the side of the road. She was in a
national park area, not far beyond a picnicking zone but far from the
oversight of any building. The low barriers at the sides of the road told
her about the traffic so that nobody would be cruising past to see a
medium-sized woman in a frock pick up a third of a ton bike and carry
it over sand and shingles into a dense patch of scrub trees. Hiding it
was quite easy. She set its skin-theme to mimic the dry salt grass and
the green branches with their tiny leaves and laid it on its side. A few
branches were all that was needed to mask the wheels.

The shoreline was quiet as she jogged the half mile to the base of
the cliffs that rose out of the low hills with roller-coaster steepness.
They were fractured and broken, huge pieces standing clear of the
mainland. In one of these towers she'd found a cave. It was a hundred
metres up from the highest tide line and it took her a few minutes to
climb there, her fingers and feet constantly changing shape to find
grips on the sheer rock. At last she pulled herself up and over the small
lip of a window-sized opening on the seaward side and stepped down
into her room.

It hadn't started out so big, nor with furniture. That had taken a
few weeks of digging, sneaking, stealing, and struggling to achieve.
The project had saved her sanity. Now it was a sandy-coloured bolt
hole with a view, a washing-up bowl for a sink and an enormous, luxurious, over-the-top mattress that had only narrowly survived being
forcibly folded into three and stuffed through the opening. Low-energy lights glowed in sconces she'd scooped out with her fingers and gave
the place a soft look as outside night drew on. She adjusted the sheet
of metal she used to keep the weather out. The day was calm now,
overcast, but there was always a breeze off the sea.

A figure on the bed stirred as she made a noise pouring water into
her bowl to wash. She undid the fastenings on the foul dress, feeling it
loosen and undo itself rather than have her tangle with it. As it came
free it lost its scruffy look and became a heavy fall of rich purple satin.
The faery stitching that barely showed in Otopia glowed bright gold
and tawny as the magical creature behind her got closer. She hung the
fabric up on a padded hook and held her hand on it to feel the strange
sensation of it warming and shifting of its own accord as it scented
power. Now as soft as water itself it slithered over her hands and she
fumbled it in her haste to get it put aside. The pen fell out of the waist
sash and clattered on the rock floor. Two cool, powerful white hands
touched her waist from behind, then slid up and cupped her naked
breasts. She felt the hard body that went with them touch her back
and buttocks and saw her shadow appear faintly on the wall in front of
her where it hadn't been a second before.

"You were gone a long time," Teazle said conversationally, his
breath hot on the back of her neck. She felt his nose and lips brush her
skin as he put his face close behind her ear and sniffed deeply several
times.

She made to turn around, but his grip was firm as he rejected the
idea. He opened his jaws wide and she felt the sharp edges of his teeth
against her skin as he bit the top of her shoulder gently. "Don't worry,"
he said. "Nobody came. I was quite safe." One of his hands traced
down across her stomach and he slid his fingers under her panties and
between her legs. She moved to make it easier and let her head fall
back against his shoulder. He stroked her slowly. "You're so wet."

Lila swooned for a moment, her favourite, the most indulgent,
when she felt nothing but him and the intoxication of his pleasure as he touched her. She almost didn't care when he tore the panties off her
in a sudden, single act of clawed violence. The slight pain in her skin
only intensified her delight. Then his fingers were back, claws all gone.
As he caressed her breast his other hand spread her open with soft,
exploratory strokes.

"You were well named," she accused him, longing.

"You're so impatient," he said, deeply pleased. She turned to face
him, but he made no move. His unnerving, white eyes stared down at
her from his greater height, thick hanks of straight white hair hanging
forwards over his forehead and shoulders. His body was hard, taut, very
strong, and faintly luminous. She saw the spike tip of his tail twitch
back and forth at the edges of her vision, somewhere near her knees.
She started to buckle with desire and began to go down, lips already
parting, but he stopped her with a stinging slap of his tail on her hip
broadside. The air over his shoulders shimmered as if in a heat haze,
though he wasn't hot, quite the reverse.

"Did you go there again?" he asked. The music in his demon voice
was deep, full of odd notes.

She knew he meant her sister's memorial, the one that stood beside
her own and their parents'. She went there every morning, just before
she bought the awful coffee and made herself drink it in a toast to
them; gut rot for Mom and Dad, and caffeine for Max who never left
the house without mainlining Arabica. Teazle understood the last part,
but his eyes gleamed now with a predatory fire. The first part made her
weak, on his analysis, and he both disapproved of that and wouldn't
hesitate to exploit it. She had been there again, tried to cry, tried to
find something to say or think, failed again. One day she'd stop, but it
wasn't today.

"Bite me."

He took her literally, and she felt the impact of his chest on her
upper back, the hot breath and wide mouth against her neck, sharp
teeth grazing her skin. Both of them fell forward with the force. The bowl of water went spewing to the side. Her few bits of faeryware scattered or broke.

For a second his weight on her was dead with inertia. She exploded
upwards, flinging her arms to the sides, bucking him off so that he
went flying back into the mattress. On its peg the dress rustled and
slithered with a hiss. Lila set her hands on her hips and glared down
at the demon who lay, serious, calculating, mildly amused, and then
eased his shoulders back and smiled at her.

She stepped over him, one foot either side of his hips, then sat
down on him without once breaking eye contact. His challenge melted
into pleasure, and for an hour they sank into mindless physical entertainment. When it was done they lay side-by-side, arms touching.

"About that search you were doing," she said presently.

Teazle made an unhappy grunt. "Still nothing."

She wasn't surprised. "You didn't tell me you were killing your
way through half of Demonia."

His head turned to her and his eyebrows quirked. "You asked me
to look for objects of power or information concerning the Holy Three.
Anyone who has things like that isn't going to let me know. Not least
because I'll no doubt be wanting to steal them. How did you think I
was going to look for them? And before you say teleport in and out of
places secretly, let me point out that I don't know where those places
might be until I off the capo and get their inventory in my hands."

"But what ... are you taking over every family in turn and then
searching every hoard?" She was almost speechless at the craziness of
that plan. Until Mal had told her that morning she'd never have
believed he would do such a thing. Then of course, after a minute, she
realised he'd never do anything else.