Mad Lizard Mambo (16 page)

I’d remained the same once I’d filled out, learned how to speak and love. As old as I felt, Ryder estimated I was barely an adult now—it was hard to tell considering what Tanic’d done to me—but Malone’s struggle was a universal one, one shared among most humans I knew, and I felt it intimately.

He wanted to be… accepted. To be looked at and be regarded as a person. To
matter
to people around him. Where I’d just wanted to be human—to the point of getting a knife to saw my ear tips off and pulling my teeth. Ryder assured me it wouldn’t have worked. The scars on my body and notches in my ear were anomalies, aberrations brought about by Tanic’s flesh craft and spells.

Ryder didn’t seem to quite understand why that
hadn’t
been a reassurance.

Because His Lordship never spent any part of his life looking at himself in a mirror and wondering
why
about so many things reflected there.

I twisted about to look behind me. “Sparky, do you have something else we can take into Mercury Valley? Assuming the drover’s out for the count.”

“Smaller. Maybe a bit more defensible,” she mused. “Hard to sleep in, though.”

“We’ll have to deal with what we’ve got. Do you want to let these guys have whatever Marshall had tucked into her secrets, Ryder?” He’d let his hand fall away when I’d moved to talk to Sparky, but his warmth lingered. “’Cause we can just let it go.”

“I can’t risk that.” Ryder shook his head. “We’ll have to get there first.”

“The university would love anything we bring back.” Malone shifted again on his seat. “Um… you bring back.”

“Do you want to come?” I caught his attention with my question, and Malone jerked his gaze toward me.

“I haven’t said I was willing to take him with us,” Ryder interjected.

“Once again, Your Worshipfulness, you forget the rules of the contract.” As hard as it was to look intimidating and official while lying down on a floral couch and getting my face bathed by a dog of indeterminate origins, I gave it my best shot. “While we’re on or planning a job, I’m in charge. You have no say in things. Remember that.”

“You just say that because you like bossing me around.” He sighed. “Admit it.”

“I totally admit it, but if Malone here wants in, I say we take him. He’s the only Marshall substitute we’ve got.” Nodding at Malone, I asked. “Do you want in?”

“Yes,” he answered before I even had time to finish my question. “I swear to God, I’ll do
anything
you want me to do.”

“Just do what I tell you and don’t question me. Not like His Lordship here. Just one thing, what’s your real name?”

“Robbie,” he replied with a slight frown. “Why?”

“So I know what to scream at you before I shoot you for not doing what I tell you to do,” I replied. “Because I’m sure as hell not calling you Crickets.”

BY THE
time we hit the pass to Temecula, I’d worked out most of the kinks in my relationship with the squat behemoth Sparky saddled us with. The square, clunky beast was a bitch and a half to turn on tight corners, but like the drover, it came packed with a powerful engine, solar panels to charge its fuel cells, and best of all, a pop-up telescoping turret on the former-HETS flat roof. Sparky’d modified the M911 Heavy Equipment Transporter, a chunky eight-wheeled tow used to haul tanks, into an inelegant powerhouse with a modified armored back shell for storage and fold-down bunks. With the cab elongated to seat four, it was functional and utilitarian.

It looked like an oversized ambulance and, painted a drab gray with uneven black and brown spots, it was also butt ugly.

But it did the trick, and when a rhinoceros challenged the front end in San Marcos, the transport took the hit, shook it off, and kept going as if nothing happened.

My two passengers, however, didn’t fare as well.

Malone was still talking about it, and Ryder sported a bit of green around his cheeks.

“Did you see the size of it?” Malone squeaked from his perch on the backseat. “Thank Odin this thing’s lifted up, or we’d have bought it for sure.”

“Day’s young, Robbie,” I muttered. “Lots of time left for buying it.”

“Bit… bumpier than in the Mustang, isn’t it?” Ryder’s teeth chattered a bit when we hit a patch of crackled asphalt.

“Mustang wouldn’t be good for a run like this. It’s built for speed, not endurance. Where we’re going, there’s no roads.” I ducked my head down to peer out of the windshield. “I’d like to get us someplace we can stop for the night.”

“A campground?” Malone asked.

I shook my head, nearly in time with the truck’s rattling suspension. “Nah, there’s motor inns along the 15 stretch. I’ll bunk down in the back of Bertie—”

“Why do you feel the need to name
all
of the vehicles you drive?” Ryder grabbed at the dashboard when the road dipped. “Watch the—did you not see that—what was that?”

“Pink faerie armadillo,” I replied. “They used to be smaller. Like… cat-sized.”

The sidhe gave me a long, steady glare. “That was a
lot
larger than a cat, Kai.”

“Which is why I saw it. It’s hard to miss a six-foot-long, carnation-pink, frilly mound moving across the road, Ryder,” I countered. “Now will you let me drive?”

It was late afternoon, the golden sun slithering down the peaks a few miles from Rainbow. The grasses were heavy at the tips, bowing down with the weight of their seeded heads. The freeway broke into a stretch of old a‘a fields, the road slicing through the crumbling, ropy lava in long, sweeping curves. Piles of hammered down chunks dotted the sides of the two-lane road, debris left behind when the military rebuilt the roads following the Merge. Nothing was left of the communities along the San Marcos corridor, and only a few structures remained standing in Escondido, outliers at the edge of a city sucked down into Underhill if it survived at all. The Wild Animal Park remained mostly intact, bolstered by the sudden appearance of a freshwater lake and underground rivers breaking up to the surface.

Movement near a rise of massive house-sized boulders caught my attention, and I slowed the transport down, angling my head to see around the truck’s side-view mirror. Beige and brown slipped between the gray stones, blending into the dirt patches and slides running down the low mountains.

“If we’ve got time on the way back, I’m going to grab some antelope from the hills.” With the grasses at their greenest following the rains, the herds were easy to spot on the craggy landscape. “An eland would be nice. I can split a share between me, Sparky, and Dempsey and leave the rest of it for Jonas’s crew.”

Ryder’s face was hard to read, and judging from the snorfling going on behind me, Malone’s excitement over the rhino waned to a point where he’d drifted off into sleep. As much as I liked the way Ryder looked, the assessing glances he threw my way were unsettling.

“What?” I finally asked after a few minutes of pointed silence.

“I am reconciling my image of you. Every time I think I understand who you are, you do or say something and everything shifts.” He inclined his head toward the rear bench seat. “I would have thought of all the people you’d want to shoot, Malone would be one of them. Yet you not so politely told me we were taking him along on this trip, regardless if I wanted him to come or not. That… surprised me, and I don’t think you did it solely to annoy me.”

“No, that was just a bonus,” I admitted. “And it wasn’t like it didn’t cross my mind. Seemed like I would just be kicking a kitten, and I try to avoid doing things like that. Bad for the soul, and that’s the one thing you get to take with you when you die. When you show up in front of whichever god’s got gate duty that day, you want your soul to be as clean as you can get it. I’ve got enough blood on my hands they might not even answer the bell when I ring. I don’t need to be rubbing shit into my ledger too.”

“And once again—” Ryder chuckled. “—you shift.”

“Yeah, well, we’re going to keep shifting. I’m going to take you on a detour.” A dip in the grass to the right of us was the only sign I had for the road I’d been looking for. Slowing the transport down, I turned, easing the truck’s massive tires onto the track. “It’s going to get a little bumpy, but it’ll be worth it. Trust me.”

“Always,” he whispered. A flick of green again, the light hitting his eyes, and then Ryder turned away to stare out of the window. “I would only wish it was reciprocated.”

“I trust you.” His gaze turned back on me, sharp and cutting. I shrugged and continued, “Okay, so it’s a little shaky sometimes, but I’m working on it. Mostly.”

The drive was a steep grade down one ravine and up the next. The trail went dead a few times, and I had to slow the transport down to pick it back up again, gleaning the subtle differences on the ground by the way the light bounced off of the dirt and rocks. It was easier in the transport than in my truck, its wheels eating up the distance between the road and a spot in the hills I’d always found magical—a spot I, for some inexplicable reason, wanted to share with Ryder.

We entered a grove of thick trees, and the afternoon heat peeled off of us, the truck bathed in cool shadows as I made the final turn into a leaf-canopy-sheltered clearing. I could smell the water, clean, fresh, and sweet, but our destination lay hidden in the dense thicket. A few final bumps and the clearing emerged from between the trees, a semicircle of tiny hot-spring pools dug into mica-flecked golden rock sitting on the edge of a slender, white-capped river.

It was a pretty enough place, with the rock bed glistening from the crystalline spray frothing up from the river, but it was the tiny fleck-fish living in the hot springs that made the trip worthwhile.

They glowed.

And not the simple bioluminescence of a firefly. These minuscule flying fish swirled with colors, throwing off spritzes of flares and flurries as they hopped from one pool to the next, changing hues before they hit the water again.

It was a meteor shower caught in the shadows of sky-swallowing trees, a lace curtain of light and splashes set against the white of the river beyond. And every time I visited the springs, it took my breath away. Much like it stole away Ryder’s, judging by the awestruck look on his face.

“Oh… Kai,” he whispered, leaning forward in his seat. “This is… I have no words.”

“It’s why they call this place Rainbow. Well, now. It was called Rainbow before apparently, but after the Merge, guess the name works better now.” I turned off the transport, killing its loud rumbling engine so we could bask in the river’s melodic burble. “Literally one of my favorite places in the world. I wanted you to see it.”

“It is… glorious.” Ryder patted my thigh, a quick touch through my jeans. “Thank you. For sharing this. For… surprising me.
Thank you
.” He was quiet for a long while, not disturbing the comfortable thrum between us, then asked, “Why don’t more people come here?”

“Too difficult to get to in a normal car. Even some trucks. My old girl? No problem. It’s powerful enough and can take a beating, but it’s hardy.”

“Like a destrier,” he agreed but saw my slight frown. “It’s a horse. A very large horse.”

“I forget you guys didn’t have tech before the Merge.” It had been a surprise to discover the elfin’s sciences were practical, a society built more on the arcane than technology. “Adapted to it pretty fast, yeah?”

“Thankfully. Horses, while lovely, are a lot harder to maintain than a car. It’s been so long since we’ve lived that way. Our technology was rudimentary, much like the humans’ magic. When the Merge… shook our world, we gained a science we hadn’t had before. This world benefits both of us, elfin and humans alike. A twisting of fates fitting into one another. We gained science, and the humans found magic.” Ryder’s dimples flashed on either side of his cheeks, a smile deep enough to warm the emerald-gold facets of his eyes. “Two halves never meant to be together but now… joined.”

“Like me,” I teased.

“Maybe you were made for this world, Kai,” Ryder whispered, his hand back on my thigh. “Have you thought of that, perhaps?”

“Yeah, sometimes.” I let my fingers trace over his nails, enjoying their smooth texture. “Or maybe—just maybe, Ryder—it was made for
me
.”

THUNDER HOUNDED
our asses all the way into Temecula. I’d felt the first drops of rain hit my nose when Ryder and I stepped down from the transport to watch the hot pools’ leaping fish leave sparkling rainbow trails in the deepening dusk. The rain held off its fury during my maneuvering the truck out of the creaking forest, and Malone slept through our mad scramble back into the cab, only waking up with a porcine snort when the transport’s heavy tires grabbed at the road when we left the dirt track behind us.

Then the sky gods sliced opened their grief and wept.

“The water’s pouring down the hills,” Malone observed from the backseat. “It looks like rivers.”

“Yeah, not something we want to be in. This area gets flash floods when a storm hits too fast and too hard.” A streak of lightning cut a swath under the bank of granite-hued clouds, forking out to tickle the sky’s belly. “We’ve got one more gulch to go and then we’ll be on the Temecula flats. Water drains off the mesas and into the black rock below. Let’s hope Changa’s got some space for us or we’ll be sleeping in the truck.”

Booms shook the hills a few heartbeats after every flash, the rumbles coming fast and faster as the thunderstorm began to hit its stride. The strikes grew furious, bleaching the sky with each pass and growing stronger until the clouds were spangled with forks. Water rose up from the sides, swamping the transport’s heavy tires, but its weight kept it pressed down into the road. I hit a patch of deep water, a dip in the road filled past its curves, and the truck shimmied back and forth. Fighting the swerve, I battled the rear end, swearing as I threw my weight into turning the steering wheel to bring all eight wheels back onto the asphalt.

“Kai, watch out!” Ryder clutched the dashboard.

“I see it,” I growled, my hands clenched on the shaking steering wheel. “Hold on.”