The Deavys (17 page)

The dogs were paying him no attention. Thoroughly cowed, they stayed bunched up behind his ankles, trembling and whimpering, their eyes half bulged out of their heads as they stared at the former object of their curiosity.

“Shadows in the rain,” Simwan theorized aloud even as he threw Pithfwid a cautionary look. The cat ignored him, blandly innocent.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Have a nice day.” Simwan smiled as he herded his sisters away.

As soon as they were alone again in the park, Simwan gazed disapprovingly down at the cat. “That wasn't very good manners, Pithfwid. What if the Ord had seen you?”

“He didn't,” the cat replied brusquely. “And I
was
mannerly. Dogs are conceived uncouth. Anyway, it's not like I bit somebody's nose off. I just put the fear of felinity into them.”

“Look!” Rose was pointing.

They were coming up on the Conservatory Water, with the more extensive expanse of the Lake just visible through the rain off to their left. At this rate, Simwan decided, they would reach the northern portion of the park well before nightfall, with a chance to locate and enter the Crub's lair before their quarry suspected they were so close. That was assuming, of course, they encountered no delays.

Unfortunately, the first of these was waiting for them just ahead.

A group of them.

XV

A dozen shapes were visible off to the left of the Conservatory Water. Some of them, in twos and threes, huddled close together in conversation, as if proximity to one another could stave off the falling rain. A couple stood off by themselves, discussing unknown thoughts and vistas. What drew Simwan's attention and put him and the coubet instantly on alert were the two teenage girls who were playing catch. It wasn't their activity that alerted him. There was nothing overtly suggestive, much less threatening, about two girls playing catch.

It was the fact that instead of a volleyball, or a football, or a soccer ball, they were playing catch with a basketball-size sphere of ball lightning.

Now, the distinctive phenomenon known as ball lightning is not necessarily lethal, or even especially dangerous. But it is not something commonly found on a playground, not even in a city like New York. It was also not something suitable for a game of catch between two teenagers.

At least, not between two
Ord
teenagers.

“Hey, check it out,” a screechy, high-pitched voice declared ahead of them. Simwan had stopped, but it was too late to try and go around the group or to retreat without being seen. He and his sisters had been spotted.

Coalescing like a large family (or a small army), the dozen teens who had been idling in the mist started toward the Deavys. Simwan did not have to warn his sisters to be ready for trouble. At their feet, Pithfwid bristled slightly while doing his best to give the appearance of an ordinary housecat.

It was only as they drew near, emerging clearly from the mist, that Simwan saw that while the members were all more or less female, some were decidedly not girls. There was the one with the long brown tail and pointed ears, for example. And a duo of others who really were
others
: No more than five feet tall and stockily built, they had leathery skin that appeared distinctly leprous in the rain-muted, reduced afternoon light. That did not prevent them from wearing eye shadow and lipstick, or necklaces and earrings. Not all of the earrings, Simwan noted, were attached to earlobes. Then there were the leather-and-denim–clad, chain-wearing individuals who sported jewelry in even odder places. One had a set of alternating gold and silver rings encircling the very distinctive elephantine trunk that protruded from the center of her face. Another lit a cigarette by breathing on it. The gang smelled, Simwan decided, as distinctive and unpleasant as it looked, though the rain helped to mitigate the group's aroma.

The tallest member came sashaying directly toward him, halting barely an arm's length away. Though taller than Simwan, she weighed considerably less. Her body was more than slender. It was positively serpentine, an impression that was reinforced by the hypnotic side-to-side swaying of her upper torso. Ears that were almost invisible against the sides of her head—nearly disappearing beneath her shoulder-length blond hair—slitted eyes, and a flat, tiny nose completed the image of a female who was more
serpens sapiens
than high school cheerleader.

“Well, well, what have we here?” she hissed calculatingly. Dismissing Simwan with contemptuous indifference, she turned her lidless stare on the coubet marshaled next to him. “A babysitter and his three—or is it two—charges?” She ignored the cat at her feet as she indicated the gang clustered close behind her. “These are the Ictis. I'm Zamandire Gosht. Who the hell are you?” She flicked a glance skyward. “Kinda wet out for nurseys to be walking their babies. Whatsamatter? The cartoon channel off the air?”

No doubt the lanky leader of the gang was used to her appearance and attitude intimidating those she challenged. She had never previously, however, encountered any Deavys.

“All the cartoons seem to have been moved to the park,” Rose replied without missing a beat.

You could see the tension ripple through the gang members. Doubtless used to having their way, and scaring off anyone and anything that got in their path, it was clear that they were as unused to defiance as they were to sarcasm.

Zamandire slithered right up into Rose's face, having to bend low to all but butt noses with Simwan's uncowed sister. “You got a mighty big mouth for such a little twerp. If you're not real careful, someone might make you eat those words.”

“I don't like eating words,” Rose replied, unperturbed. “No nourishment, and too many of them taste bad.” She smiled deliberately. “I'm very fond of
snake
, however. Our mom usually serves it ground up and mixed with cashews and water chestnuts.”

Simwan readied himself. For an instant, it looked like Zamandire was going to jump right down Rose's throat. Then the gang leader grinned and drew back.

“What a smarmy little big-mouth you are. You look just like your sisters. Triplets, are you?”

“We're a coubet,” clarified N/Ice. “Two-and-a-half. And you're right. Each of us is just like the other.”

“So if you want to have a go-round with any one of us,” Amber finished, “you'd better be ready to round-go with all two or three of us.”

“That's very confusing.” Reaching into a pocket of her long black jeans, the gang leader withdrew what looked like a knife but was more akin to a fancy letter opener. Its black lacquer finish was covered with arcane oriental and Arabic symbols. “If you're all the same on the outside, then you should look exactly the same on the inside, right?”

Simwan started to bring up his arms, only to have Rose firmly push his hands back down. “No, big brother, you stay out of this.” Her attention returned to the muttering, hissing, growling gang members. “This is a girl fight.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Rose,” he shot back. “A fight's a fight, this isn't the Clearsight Junior High playground, and these aren't the rough-playing girls from the Wilson Memorial soccer team.”

Something pushed up against his ankles and meowed. Looking down, he saw Pithfwid play-acting at kitty-normal. Only the cat's penetrating gaze hinted at the depths within. The look was full of meaning, which Simwan reluctantly comprehended. Hesitant and a bit bemused at seeing the cat side with the coubet, he obediently stepped back.

Amber's right hand had slipped into her purse. “We don't want any trouble. We're just taking a walk in the park.”

Zamandire nodded slightly. Slightly, because her head seemed fused to, rather than mounted atop, her neck. “Only a walk, hmm? Well then, I suppose we might let you go. Just kiss my foot, turn around so I can kick you a good one, and go back the way you came.”

Rose had also dipped one hand into the purse she carried. “I don't mind kissing your foot, but we can't go back. We have to go north.”

“North?” The leader of the Ictis looked back at her gang in mock surprise. “But you can't go north. Because you're south of us, and to go north, you'd have to go through us.” She tightened her grip on the cryptically inscribed letter opener.

“You mean, like this?” Without waiting to see what mischief the letter opener might portend, N/Ice leaped forward.

Sprang would be more like it. Even Pithfwid would have been hard put to match N/Ice's pantherish leap. Still, it wasn't quite fast enough.

Exhibiting the flexibility of a wire cable, Zamandire bent her torso out of the charging girl's path. Shooting past the tall teen, N/Ice found herself entangled with a pair of hot-tempered gang girls. Not only hot-tempered, but hot to the touch. Flames sprang from their fingertips and their lips as they did their best to ensure that the audacious visitor would get singed for her impudence. Flying through the air, N/Ice did a complete flip that Mrs. Sanders, the Clearsight Junior High gymnastics teacher, would have scored at least an eight, and landed on her feet. Her landing was transparent, and so, for the moment, was she. Clutching at her, the finger-flames of her assailants went right through the sometimes there, sometimes not-there member of the coubet.

Having reached into their purses, Rose and Amber withdrew … lipsticks. Amber's boasted one of those silly, foolish names so beloved by girls from eight to eighty. Something like “December Japanese Plum Blossom.” Rose's was darker and more orangey. As to any guy, they all looked red to Simwan. But the lipsticks carried by the Deavy girls were more than mere mouth paint.

Wielding the chain that she had been wearing as a belt, one of the Ictis lunged straight at Rose, swinging the heavy metal links like a whip. Seeing her coming, Rose brought her lipstick up and thrust it forward. A stream of thick, glowing crimson (or maybe December Japanese Plum Blossom) shot forth from the tip: a fluid that in consistency and power fell somewhere between blood and napalm. The attacking gang member parried the flow with her swinging chain. The red fluid struck the metal—which promptly melted, falling to the ground as a ropy mass of hissing slag.

The gang member reacted to this in an entirely reasonable manner. Eyes wide, she halted where she was, considered the molten, rapidly solidifying remnants of her steel belt, looked up at the defiant twelve-year-old confronting her, and started to back off.

A trio of girls was closing on N/Ice. One as blocky and thickset as the polished stone from which she appeared to be chiseled (and maybe was) lumbered toward N/Ice as her companions tried to cut off any line of retreat. N/Ice appraised the three of them, took a deep breath, and ran. Not backward, not to flee, but straight ahead. Smiling nastily, the stout female figure before her extended both massive arms expectantly. As soon as N/Ice was within reach, they slammed together, grabbing.

To grab nothing but air.

N/Ice didn't go around the female creature. She didn't slide between those heavy legs, or leap over the short, flinty hairdo. Instead, she went right
into
her assailant. And didn't come out the other side.

Stunned, the chunky gang member looked down at herself. Her expression was one of utter disbelief. Her companions stared at her as if she had suddenly taken on the aspect of a really bad date. Slowly, carefully, the blocky girl began feeling herself. She did so hesitantly, as if afraid of what she might find. Then her face started to turn green. Really green: bright green like lime Jell-O. Her cheeks bulged. She began to sweat pebbles that tumbled and clinked off her face to fall noisily to the ground. Clasping both hands to her middle, her mouth opening wider than seemed possible, she suddenly and explosively threw up.

What she threw up was N/Ice. Standing on the wet ground before the now deathly queasy gang member, N/Ice shook herself, made a face, and spoke without looking at anyone in particular—least of all any of her three assailants.

“Yuck! I've spent time in some really icky places, and some really icky people—but that was just gross!” As she finished, the girl whose body she had temporarily inhabited keeled over backward, rolled onto her stomach, and continued upchucking the remaining contents of her digestive system. N/Ice watched for a minute, then turned to face the other two girls.

“At least you two look halfway human. I wonder what the other half is like?” She took a step toward the nearest of the two gawking gang members. Immediately, and wisely, they turned and ran, disappearing into the rain.

Confronted by Zamandire, Amber held her ground, waving her own lipstick before her and using it to trace defensive patterns in the air. The gang leader jumped back and forth, searching for an opening, only partially aware that the rest of her gang was having rather more trouble with the other two twelve-year-old park visitors than anticipated. Slowly, threateningly, she opened her mouth, to reveal a pair of incisors much too long and sharp to belong to any human. Reaching up with both hands, she proceeded to remove them, plucking them from the roof of her own mouth and twirling them like drumsticks in her supple fingers. An apprehensive Simwan knew immediately what they were. Ord gang-types might carry switchblades. Zamandire Gosht had access to switchfangs.

Striking as swiftly as any cobra, Zamandire leaped and stabbed with one blade. Amber jumped backward and parried with a sweep of lambent orange-red from her lipstick. Almost immediately, the gang leader threw herself forward, bringing the other blade down with as much force as she could muster. Amber quickly brought her lipstick around in front of her. Red-orange flow and glistening fang clashed and locked. Grinning, much bigger and heavier than Amber, Zamandire Gosht pressed down, using her weight to force the fang-blade closer and closer to the smaller, younger girl's throat. Grimacing, Amber struggled to push back, to hold the bigger girl off.

Despite what he had been told, Simwan started to rush forward. Something tripped him before he could advance more than a step toward the two combatants. Lying on the wet grass, he looked back in surprise. Pithfwid was standing there, wagging one paw back and forth and shaking his head.

Slightly frantic now, Simwan looked up just in time to see Amber, who had starred in her dramatics class at school and who had done a wonderful job of feigning imminent collapse, bring up a knee sharply to catch the conquering Zamandire right under the chin she had brought conveniently close. The gang leader blinked. A stupefied expression came over her face. Still holding onto both blades, she straightened unsteadily, rocking back and forth on both feet. Brushing herself off, Amber approached and, with a single deliberate motion, thrust the lipstick she was holding directly at her wobbly nemesis. A burst of red-orange shot from the end of the faux gold case to strike Zamandire directly in her open mouth.

There was a flash of red-orange light, sufficiently brilliant even in the dim, rain-swept light of afternoon to force Simwan to turn momentarily away. When he looked back, a three-foot long snake lay twisting and writhing on the grass right where the gang leader had been standing. As he and his sister stood gazing down at it, a wailing cry came from overhead. Though the Deavys did not know it, the hawk that appeared out of the rain to snatch up the snake in its claws and carry it off was something of a local celebrity. Whether it and its mate would be able to handle this particular meal was another matter. They could hear Zamandire Gosht yelling and protesting as her serpentine form was carried away into the clouds.