House Immortal (5 page)

But still, even with the unusual number of heads Neds possessed, he was all one body. Organic. Natural.

This man was not natural. It did not mean he was ugly. Quite the opposite.

The stitching joined pieces that were not quite the same color as the rest of him; a little too light as if some of his skin never quite took to sunlight, and in other places a little too dark, with muscles and scar tissue bunching thick beneath. The work it took to make him, to piece him together, was amazing. As fine as anything I'd seen my dad or brother do, even though his thread was much thicker than mine.

“I understand there are only twelve of you in the world—galvanized. But I have no idea why you'd come out to my land. Did you know my father? Do you know his enemies? Your stitches are gray. Does that mean House Gray still claims you, or are you on the run?”

I reached for a cloth to clean the blood from his wound. “Were you in an accident, or put together for a purpose? There must be a point to it, to you. You must have a story.” I brushed the cloth gently along the smear of blood on his stomach.

His breathing let go and he gasped. I looked down at his face.

Into eyes red as banked coals.

It was called Mercury Fever, and like the California gold rush before it, brought hundreds to the little town, searching for a fortune in the dirt and hills. But the promise of mercury also attracted men of the sciences: mad men with mad plans.—1869

—from the journal of L.U.C.

H
e didn't blink, didn't look away from my eyes.

I'd seen crazy before. I'd seen beasts mad with pain, and I'd been the one who put them in that pain.

They looked a lot like the man lying in the bed below me.

“You are
safe
,” I said. “You are in my guest room in my home. I am just about to sew up your injury.”

For too many tumbling beats of my heart, I thought for sure he had forgotten how to understand the language. There didn't seem to be a lot of sanity left in him, just a raw, mindless anger.

I licked my lips and tried out a soft smile even while logic was telling me best thing would be to back up nice and slow and find my shotgun.

“These are scissors.” I lifted them so the sunlight could catch them in gold. “I'm just going to put them over—”

The floorboards creaked.

His hands shot out viper-fast, wrapped around my wrists, and yanked me down against him as he shoved back with his heels and pushed both of us off the bed.

I'm a strong girl, but along with speed, that man had monstrous brute force. He was on his feet and I was too, as he manhandled me over to the corner of the room.

“Whoa, hold on,” I said. “Simmer it down. We're all friends here. We're all friends.”

He planted his back against the wall, seeking a defensive position. My back was against him and the heat of his blood soaked through my overalls and cotton shirt, trickling down toward my belt.

He'd yanked the scissors out of my hand with that grab and roll he'd just done off the bed. He held them hidden, tucked by his thigh, while his other arm hung over my shoulder and across my chest, keeping me still.

I could hurt him. He was in his stocking feet and I had on steel-toed boots, not to mention I knew how to throw a wicked elbow. I wasn't afraid to aim for the parts of him that would hurt the most—including his wound.

“You came here to me,” I said. “I'm trying to tend your injury. Which would be a lot easier if you'd get back into bed.”

“Told you he was trouble,” Left Ned said in a cold, cold voice. He stood in the doorway, a wooden bucket of water in one hand, an old Glock 20 in the other. The gun was aimed our way.

“I've got this under control,” I said. “He's just spooked is all. Might better unspook without that gun pointed at him.”

Neds had once told me they controlled opposite sides of the body, so Left Ned was primarily right-handed, and Right Ned was left-handed. That meant Left Ned had his finger on the trigger.

Didn't seem likely we'd get out of this without him putting more holes in the stranger.

“Tilly,” Right Ned said, “you can't see his face.” He
nodded slightly. “I'm pretty sure you don't have this under control.”

“Do not,” the man said in a voice so low, it was almost a growl, “come closer, or you will swim in your own blood, shortlife.”

Both the Neds' eyebrows went up.

All right. Maybe I didn't have my thumb quite as tight on the situation as I'd like, but language like that was not allowed in my house.

“Easy,” I said. “No one needs to swim in anything. You don't want to hurt us. We don't want to hurt you.” That might have sounded more convincing if one of us weren't pointing a gun at his head. “And I'd appreciate it if you stowed your bigotry.”

He said something in a language I didn't understand. Russian, maybe? I was passable with French and Spanish, but Quinten had always handled Russian. Still, it didn't sound like a bygones-be-bygones sort of speech.

“What's his name?” I asked Right Ned. “Did you find anything in his pockets? An identification card of some sort?”

“No. There isn't even a label on his jacket.”

“You're gonna let her go, big man,” Left Ned said. “Or I'll blow you full of so many holes, you'll be recycled for spare parts.”

Death threats. Sure, that'd make him relax.

“Ned Harris,” I said. “I'll have none of that kind of talk in front of our guest.”

“The stitch is crazy,” Left Ned said. “And there isn't any mending you can do to fix crazy. He should be taken down before he hurts someone, Matilda Case.”

At the sound of my name, the man behind me jerked. I expected the scissors to fly from his hand toward Neds, but instead his arm around my shoulder loosened and he released me.

“Case?” he said as if he'd just remembered where he was. He inhaled, his breath hard and wet—who knew what kind of damage rolling off the bed had done to his
existing wounds—and his posture straightened. The scissors fell to the floor with a
clunk
.

Suddenly I wasn't standing against him at all.

“Step to the side, Tilly,” Left Ned said, the gun still trained up and to my right a bit, aimed at what I supposed was the man's head.

Right Ned nodded slightly, a silent plea for me to clear away for the shot.

Instead, I turned and faced the man.

He slumped against the wall, both hands at his side, his stomach dripping with blood and showing far too much of his insides. His color had gone chalk gray, with green shaded in the hollows of his cheeks and around his lips. Eyes that just a moment before had burned sharp were now as dull as cold ash.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Please. Forgive my manners. Your hospitality has been . . . has been more than kind . . .”

“You got that right,” Left Ned said. “Now we've run all out of hospitable.”

The slosh of the water bucket hitting the floor startled me. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Right Ned with another gun in his hand.

It occurred to me that my hired hand was packing an awful lot of heat around the farm. I had a brief moment to wonder if Neds had even more artillery stashed in his overalls before Right Ned squeezed the trigger.

Instinct made me duck. Good thing too. That gun was aimed straight away at me, as much as at the man.

The projectile dart hit the big man square in the chest. He frowned, looked at the yellow feather sticking out of his skin, then slid down the wall, out cold.

“I cannot believe you just— Put the guns down!” I said.

“It's a tranquilizer,” Right Ned said.

“Now. Down. Both of them,” I said. “We do not shoot our guests. Honestly, I don't know what's gotten into those heads of yours.”

“Sense,” Left Ned said. “He was holding you hostage. You understand that, Matilda? How dangerous a thing he is? How powerful?
Galvanized.
” He spit.

“What in the—? Since when do you have an opinion on the galvanized? Do you know him? Know something about him I don't know? Because now would be a good time to share.”

Grandma peeked around the corner of the door. “There you are, dear. Is it time to go? The men are outside,” she said. “Men in cars.”

Left Ned swore soft enough Grandma wouldn't hear him, but I threw him a mind-your-manners look anyway.

“What kind of cars, Grandma?” I walked over to lead her out of the room, and noticed the blood on my hands.

“White, dear.”

“White?” Right Ned said, surprised.

“Did you call them?” I asked.

“You know I wouldn't. But White's Medical, and he's hurt. We could hand him over.”

So House White must have been tracking the unconscious guy.

“Is he House White?” I asked, wishing I'd kept up with this sort of House information. “Running from House Gray?” Yes, I was the communication hub for House Brown. We tracked where the Houses were taking over land, drone paths, and resource dumps. We also handled seed exchanges; goods bartered; and even kept a books, recipe, and repair exchange. None of those things involved keeping track of the galvanized.

“I don't think so,” Right Ned said. “I think he's House Gray.”

I ran through what I knew of House Gray's and White's current standing. Didn't think they were at odds any more than usual. Maybe they were working together to reclaim him? Or maybe House Gray had loaned his services to House White?

I was beginning to think Neds were wrong. This man wasn't trouble. He was a lot of trouble.

“I'll go see what they want,” I said. “Neds, get him in bed. Hide the guns and everything else, in case they search. Do not kill him. Understand? That man is not to be killed. If they want him and get surly about it, they'll get him alive.”

“We should hand him over now,” Left Ned said.

“No.”

I had no love in me for House White. I remember too well what my dad had said about them, how they had turned against their own scientists to sell the youth and other regeneration techniques only to the rich. How Kiana White, head of that House, had used medical advancements as bargaining chips to increase her own wealth, while common citizens were denied medical treatments. There was rumor she had even used medical advancements as biological weapons to secure her place in the House rankings.

In my memories, I still heard Dad waking in the night, screaming from the nightmares of his time among them and the things they had made him do.

Right Ned reached over and took the gun from his right hand. “Understood,” he said. Left Ned cussed, but didn't fight him about it.

“Grandma,” I said. “You can come along with me, all right?”

“It's time, isn't it? Finally time to go?”

I dipped my hands in the water bucket Neds had brought in. “Not far. Just the living room.” I took her gently by the elbow.

“I thought we had somewhere to be,” she said.

“We do. The living room. All you need to do is knit.”

“Aren't you smart?” she said.

“I like to think so.”

“What about the sheep, dear? We'll need the sheep.”

“Did you leave them in the kitchen?”

“Did I leave who where?”

Okay, that wasn't going to work.

I guided her over to the once-proud, now-thread-worn couch.

“You get comfortable right here,” I said. “I'll get you the sheep.”

I lifted the edge of the curtain and peeked out. Grandma was almost right about our visitors. There were two cars—both white—and a box van, also white but armored up with plate metal and reinforced glass that looked strong enough to keep the lid on a fission bomb. The wheels were heavy enough to get them through what passed for roads out here, and likely easily switched out for the smoother, more modernized highways.

There was a driver in each car, both men, and one woman driver in the van. The van had a male passenger too.

The sheep would have to wait. House White would be on my porch and through my door any minute.

Not going to happen.

I pulled a sweater off the hook by the door and tugged my sleeves down as low as they would go, then untied my hair so it would fall to hide my stitches.

It had been a long time since I'd faced a city dweller. I just hoped all the blockers we had in place held.

I opened the door and strode outside.

Too late, I realized I'd forgotten my gloves. Stupid. If they were smart—and since they were flying Medical, I figured they weren't dumb—they'd notice the stitches along my thumbs and palms.

I quickly shoved my hands into the pocket of my overalls, and swore there'd be no reason to take them out again as long as I was in their presence.

I strolled out to the edge of the porch and stood at the top of the stair.

Two women stepped out of the passenger's sides of the cars.

“Are you the property owner?” The first woman asked. Her voice was strong but it was not kind.

She was tall and thin as a stem, her black curly hair
forced back into smooth waves. Dressed in a white jacket and slacks, she gave me the overall impression of someone who enjoyed announcing terminal prognosis to patients.

The vehicles were fully equipped with scanners, probes, and recording devices, new enough to not only catch every move I made, but also to sift through the house for signs of life and pull up our vital signs and House registry.

I didn't know what other sorts of detecting devices the people might have on them.

Quinten had built blockers for just these sorts of technological advancements and updated them every time he came home. I'd been scrupulous in keeping them maintained. Neds had pitched in too; he was handy with tech. Upgrading had been one of the first things he'd done, taking several trips into the city to get the newest and best improvements for us.

If she scanned the house for life, it should read three people: just me, Neds, and Grandma, unless I set it to read otherwise.

Grandma and I both read human, even though that was stretching the truth on my account. But Neds threw weird vital readings from being the sort of man he was, so anything a little out of sorts could be blamed on him.

“I'm not the property owner,” I said. “I just help out here.” I lied like it was my second nature, which I supposed it was. I couldn't just go hide up in the barn when trouble came walking, like I had when I was a child. And stabbing intruders in the eye worked only for the dumber sort of creatures that roamed my property.

Now that I was an adult, I did my hiding in plain sight and tried to keep the stabbing to a minimum.

“Old Grandmother Case owns the place,” I said.

“You work for her?” The second woman asked.

She was stern lady's opposite. Short and generously rounded at the hip and bust, her white came in a
knee-length dress, stockings, shoes, and the jacket of their official uniform. Her hair was also white and cut so it cupped just beneath her ears.

All together it made her look cute and harmless. Except for the gun on her hip.