Mad Lizard Mambo (21 page)

“That is what I am getting at,
ainle
. As lovely as you are—and yes, I find you extremely desirable—I need
who
you are as much as I need you. You balance out my flaws, my shortsightedness, my sidhe arrogance. There are things I would not begin to think of, and you do. I envision a world and move to make changes, social or political, and you show me where I have pulled the wrong thread.” Ryder sighed, leaning forward until his breath ghosted over my shoulder and cheek. “The dragon? I was… wrong to pressure the museum to take it down. It wasn’t just your pride up there—”

I snorted. “Big part of it was my pride. I fucking worked hard to get that thing in.”

“You pointed out to me how that dragon fit into the workings of the city, of the people who live off of its bones,” he continued. “I ask the humans to make compromises… I ask you to cleave to the ways of the elfin… but I don’t stop and think about how my actions will affect them. We’ve spoken of this before, but I don’t think you realize exactly how much I need your balance and insight. How much I need to you make sure I never, ever become my grandmother.”

The idea of Ryder becoming like the Sebac was both humorous and chilling. She lived there, in the depths of his eyes, in the cracks of darkness between the green and gold. There’d been times when his voice whispered with the dryness of a dragon’s cough and the slither of a spider’s leg on a cobweb strung up years ago to catch a single, precious fly. The Sebac was holed up in her Elfhaime towers, pulling on her puppets’ strings, content to manipulate the sidhe, but Ryder—stupid, guileless, and bossy Ryder—was smack dab in the middle of San Diego, and any web he spun would have much more dire consequences.

I shifted onto the bed, pulling one leg up and wincing when the plasters yanked at my skin. “And what’s in it for me?”

“I make sure you never become your father.”

His response cut me as keenly as any spell or knife ever had.

“We are two sides to a single coin, two wings to one dragon—whatever saying you want to use to describe what we are to one another. What we can
be
to one another.” His hand ghosted over my knee, sliding goose bumps and desire over my skin. “And tell me that you do not feel me in your bones, like I feel you in mine.”

“No,” I admitted softly. “I can’t, but… you’re asking a hell of a lot of me, Ryder. And I’m not going to say it’s something I want.”

“Just tell me this, then,” he murmured, sliding his fingers off of my leg. “Is that horse still dead to you?”

“Maybe not.” I took a long slug of whiskey, taking the edge off of the pain in my body and the ache in my soul. “But for right now, I’m not going to be checking its pulse.”

“That is fine,” Ryder whispered, then brushed a soft kiss over my cheek. “So long as you don’t put a bullet in its head like you did the
ainmhi dubh
, there is hope for us yet.”

“YOU CAN’T
take me off this run,” Malone protested. “The doc says I’m fine.”

Since the doctor in question was passed out and lit up with enough alcohol he would burst into flames if someone even whispered fire in his direction, I had my doubts. According to Bryan, Ed stayed sober up until dawn cracked through the storm, then fell nose down into a jar of rotgut he’d stashed in his sleeping bag. From the looks of Malone’s wounds, Ed did pretty much all he could, but I was a little bit grumpy after waking up to find Ryder sprawled over me after pushing all the pillows to the floor. I was stiff and aching, which turned to pissed off once I hooked my link to Bryan’s landline and downloaded my messages.

The first was from Sarah Marks, the de facto mother figure of every Stalker in San Diego, if a stern-faced, round woman with a cutting wit and sharp tongue could be considered maternal. She ruled the Post with an iron fist, doling out contracts and payments with an icy fortitude and snipping precision so keen she could have taught the Fates how to cut threads. I didn’t want the complications her message dropped in my lap, and my practicality warred with my contrariness, with my common sense taking a leave of absence because things were going to get a bit rough.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re Sarah’s nephew?” I stood at the end of Malone’s hospital bed, arms crossed and staring down at his skinny legs poking out from under the blankets. “And when did you have time to tell her you got bit?”

“She’s the only family I’ve got down here. My folks are up in Eugene,” he explained. “Aunt Sarah’s the one who got me the Post job, but… it wasn’t a good fit, and I wanted to go to the university—”

“You didn’t tell her I was taking you on a run until
last night
?” Even through the data stream, Sarah’d torn a good chunk of my ass off, leaving its chewed-up remains floating around my update from Dalia about Newt’s tuna orgy and hairball ejection. “She wants you back down there. Now. And considering the shape you’re in, I’m more than inclined to agree with her.”

“You can’t send me back down.” Malone slid out from under the blanket, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. Shakily getting to his feet, he grabbed my upper arm for support. I held him up, bearing his weight until he caught his balance. “I go back now, I’m never going to be anything other than Sarah Marks’s nephew or a dead professor’s assistant. No one wanted me to work for them, Kai. I wasn’t smart enough… connected enough. This run is all I’ve got.”

Draped in a paper hospital gown, Malone wasn’t much. He was a pale, scrawny scarecrow covered in clean, neat stitches and freckles. A pair of sagging white briefs left him with some dignity, but that was stolen by the desperation in his young face.

“This run’s going to kill you, Malone,” I finally said. “You know that, right?”

“I need to find my place, Kai. How am I going to do that without trying to live?” he pleaded. “Ed said I was good to go—well, before he passed out. I’ve got antibiotics, and the stitches aren’t that bad. You said it yourself, the dogs were playing with me. No real hard damage. Just some scrapes. I can do this. Just… let me go on this run.”

“The boy wants to go, Kai,” Ryder tossed in from his lurking behind me. “His wounds aren’t as bad as yours, and you’re still going.”

“I’ll heal. I’m elfin. He’s human.” I didn’t think that needed pointing out, but apparently it did. “I’ll be healed up in a couple of days. He’ll be lucky if we’re taking those stitches out by the time we get back. And what happens if he throws an infection out in the middle of nowhere? What do we do then? Jog over to New Vegas?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what we do.” Ryder smiled at me when I turned around to glare at him. “Because, while you are in charge of the run, I should at least be able to determine who goes. Robbie is coming with us. And if it gets too much, we veer off.”

“Even if that means those assholes who were trying to kill us gets there first?” I cocked my head at him. “Because you
know
that’s why they were on our asses. Someone doesn’t want us there, Ryder. Or they wanted something from the professor they didn’t get. It’s not going to be the cakewalk Pendle was.”

“If Pendle was a cakewalk, then we need to redefine your idea of dessert,” he drawled, slithering his sidhe accent around his sarcasm. “We’re armed this time… well, you are. And for what it’s worth, we can at least help defend the transport.”

“You two are as worthless as teats on a fish with a weapon.” I smirked at Ryder’s grimace. “Fine, Robbie comes along, but we’re going to need another gun, because if something happens to me, you two might as well go stake yourself out for the condors.”

“Where are you going to find another Stalker?” Ryder asked through Malone’s excited yips. “Have you changed your mind about Cari?”

“No, Cari doesn’t have the experience to go through Mercury, and she’s a
hibiki
. If we’re heading into a dead elfin Court, I don’t want to expose her to whatever ghosts are lingering there.” I put my hand up when Malone came in to hug me, stepping away from his flailing arms. “All we need is for one strong echo to grab her and we’re screwed. She’s dealt with humans, and I don’t know what a dead elfin’s imprint would do to her.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Ryder grunted slightly, but he accepted Malone’s quick embrace, grabbing Robbie’s arm when he slid on the linoleum floor. “Steady there.”

“Sorry. I need to go find my clothes,” Malone replied.

“And a toothbrush. A shower wouldn’t be a bad idea either. You reek of dog,” I pointed out. “Let’s get the truck ready so we can get on the road. We’ll pick up who we need on the way, providing he wants to go… and doesn’t shoot us for coming up his driveway.”

THE AFTERNOON
sun turned the clouds to hammered silver as dawn crept over the eastern ridges. Thin breaks in the storm gilded the sky, slender golden ribbons woven through the muted gray banks. Rivers of crumbling lava stretched out on both sides of the old freeway, black fingers digging into the soft yellow dirt, and the rain left the ground damp and filled shallow gulches to the brim. The miles were rippling card flips of reality, a span of Underhill interspersed with chunks of California, but I kept the transport rumbling forward, hoping to make it through the mountain pass before the night fell.

“Where have all the birds gone?” Malone slurred, more than a little drunk from the painkiller the doctor gave him before we’d left Changa’s. “Oh man, I can’t feel my tongue, but the rest of me is just fine.”

“Just don’t bite down on it,” Ryder advised from the front passenger seat. “How much longer until we get to someplace we can stop?”

“Soon. Over that ridge.” I worried at a small cut on my lower lip, judging the distance between the truck and the lower ridge. “Hard to believe this road used to take people only half a day to get to Old Vegas.”

“In Underhill, those mountains were days away from Elfhaime,” the sidhe lord replied. “And now they are practically within walking distance. Not that I’d walk it. But some would.”

“Yeah, it’s weird all around. I get the feeling Underhill was a hell of a lot bigger than Earth.” I really didn’t know what either world looked like before the Merge. Hells’ rice pots, I didn’t even know how old I was, and considering Tanic rolled me into adolescence before I could form thought, I could have been born post-Merge and not know it.

Which would make me barely out of my teens by elfin standards, but considering I didn’t seem to be inflicted with bad decisions and raging hormones, I doubted it.

An idea came to me, and I frowned at it. “Wait, so the way the Merge folded Underhill into Earth—”

“Or Earth into Underhill,” Ryder slid in.

“Yeah, because right now semantics is important when talking about two worlds going bump in the night.” I cut across to the next lane, avoiding a dead something in the road. It was too far gone to be much more than a bundle of bones and bleached-out fur, but death already delivered its ruthless indignity. I didn’t need to add to it. “The point is, they folded in funky, so you don’t have any idea if this is a Dawn or a Dusk Court. Or can you guess? How close were you guys living on Underhill? Nose to mouth or ass to armpit?”

“Your delicate phrasing, as always, astounds me,
ainle
,” Ryder sighed. “If the mountain range is where I think it is, then it was a highly contested region. The area was… volatile. Depending on how the land merged, it might have been either Court. From what little I saw in the pictures, it looks as if it were abandoned long before the Merge. The language on the walls was ancient, but there are some spells that use old rituals.”

“So what you’re saying is, you have no fricking clue.” I glanced at him and caught an elegant grimace. “Yeah, okay. Thanks. I love going into the unknown.”

“What does it matter?” Malone belched out behind us. “The courier said the place was all broken up. Looked like no one lived there in forever.”

“If it’s a Dusk Court, then I’m worried about black dogs,” I explained. “If it was a viable place at the Merge, then there could be rogue packs there. If it’s older and there wasn’t a Master there to sustain them, then they’d have died or thinned out.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Ryder admitted. “It definitely didn’t Merge well. The area was mostly filled in with sand, but there was enough to see it was used for fertility spell work. I know nothing about the human encampment there.”

“Scientists mostly,” Malone answered. “It was a research facility, mostly energy studies, but there were a few quantum things going on. Professor says… said… it was classified, and the military was pretty strict about the area, but after the Merge, it was abandoned.”

“So we don’t know what we’ll find there either.” My mind burned itself on the possibilities. “Well, Sparky gave me a radiation gauge, so when we get close, we’ll flip it on and see what it says. It goes red, we get out of there. I’m not growing a damned tail just to chase after maybes and ghosts.”

“Oh, did I tell you I get carsick?”

The gurgling noise Malone made behind me was alarming. So were the next words that came out of his mouth.

“Odin, I’m going to—”

I didn’t need to look to know he’d lost his guts. I heard the slosh, smelled the bitter in the air, then simply gave Ryder a disgusted look.

“Don’t say… a thing.” Ryder held his hand up. “Just pull over. I’ll clean it up.”

“Might as well wait until we reach where we’re going,” I grumbled, turning off of the freeway and onto the slip of a dirt road off the shoulder. “From the sounds of it, we’ll need a hose.”

The road’s winding curves didn’t help Malone’s sickness or my temper. Rolling down the window helped only until I caught a whiff of pigs when we passed by a sprawling farm. Then the road darkened as we entered the forest line.

A lot of people hear the world forest and think of green and sunlight. In my experience, most forests stink of shadows and decay brushed over with the bright smell of rain, moss, and a cunning patience. Forests were living things in their own right, crawling out of the space they’d begun to consume more and more around itself until its edges jousted up against something harder and more stubborn. Working farms fought to keep Nature at bay, holding off its encroachment, but the weald’s tendrils were vicious, consuming anything in its way.