Wasteland King (27 page)

P
erhaps Alastair Crenn did find her. Perhaps she did not welcome his appearance; perhaps he said
I am sorry
and she replied
It is not enough
.

Of a surety, though, is his answer, the only answer possible when retreat is not an option.

Tell me what would be enough, and I will do it
.
I have no other choice.

Oh, the sidhe whisper; oh, the sidhe gossip. But on this they all agree: Robin Ragged rambles, with a hound and a child.

And wherever she goes, a hunter is not far behind.

Thanks are due to my children, who were, as usual, very patient with their distracted mother living half in another world while finishing a book. They are also due to Devi Pillai, the best editor I could have; Miriam Kriss, who told me I could do it and was, as usual, right; and Mel Sanders, who kept me sane, as she is wont to do.

A very large measure of gratitude must also go to Kelly O'Connor, who did not lose her temper with me even when I was very difficult during production.

The Folk are merry, the Folk are fell, the Folk are bonny, and it's just as well.

As always, the final thank-you goes to you, my dear Readers. Come, make yourselves comfortable, pour yourself whatever drink you desire, and let me tell you another story…

Photo credit: Daron Gildrow

L
ILITH
S
AINTCROW
was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington.

If you enjoyed

WASTELAND KING

look out for
the next novel

by Lilith Saintcrow

It could have been aliens, it could have been a trans-dimensional rift, nobody knows for sure. What's known is that there was an Event, the Rifts opened up, and everyone caught inside died.

Since the Event, though, certain people have gone into the drift… and come back, bearing priceless bits of technology that are almost magical in their advancement. When Ashe—the best Rifter of her generation—dies, the authorities offer her student, Svinga, a choice: go in and bring out the thing that killed her, or rot in jail. But Svin, of course, has other plans…

M
aki screamed, letting off a burst of fire at the stand of spindly trees and thick underbrush. Tremaine vanished into its maw, and the Rifter grabbed the back of Barko's jacket, hauling him backward again. The bald scientist went down hard, the sound of his teeth clicking together almost audible over the rifle's barks—projectile instead of plasma, because you couldn't ever tell what plasma would do in a Rift. It wasn't worth it, so the plas-switches on the Currago5K rifles had been disabled. The pin on the Surya Naga submachine the demo man carried had been tripped, too.

“He's gone!” she yelled. “Fucking forget it!”

Hicks, his knees digging into the grass, swore viciously. “
Cease fire! Cease fire, you fuckbuckle motherfucker! Hold your fire!
” Behind him, Brood had prudently hit the ground, and bullets plowed into the shrubs and shaking, spindly trees. They were plo-rounds, and anything flammable should have gone up in seconds. Certainly anything woodlike should have burst into flames.

Instead, the trees writhed and the shrubs ran like ink on an oiled plate, extending long thorn-liquid runners up the hill. Dust puffed up, the serrated grass whipping wildly, and the Rifter uncoiled over Barko in an amazing leap. She hit Maki squarely, and even though she was much smaller, the unexpected impact threw the man sideways. Bullets spattered overhead, and Brood punched Hicks on the closest thing he could reach to get his commander's attention.

That just happened to be Hicks's left buttock. Which cramped, viciously, because Brood had a helluva windup.

“
Motherfucker!
” Hicks howled, but he knew exactly
why
the sonofabitch had done it.

The thing was heading up the hill, sending out its shrub-tentacles, clawing against grass and earth. The Rifter screamed, a high hawklike cry, lost under the sound of crunching and gunfire. Maki stopped firing, and Brood was on his back, fumbling at his chest while the thing heaved itself another few feet up the slope.

It looked angry, and it was making a
sound
. A low grumbling roar, gathering strength. The trees were less trees now, and more spinelike, leaves suddenly little fleshy pods with tabs crusting their edges. The “leaves” crawled over the spines, and as the thing scrabbled closer, Hicks could swear he saw them scurrying along, nuzzling at the scars bullets had torn. Lapping at them, swarming like white blood cells gathering to form an angry pus-filled pocket.

Hicks lurched to his feet. Maki was no longer screaming. Barko was, a hoarse cry of despair. Eschkov, his backpack left behind, stumbled down the slope towards them, hands outstretched and his spectacles askew. A lonely flash jetted off one lens, and he almost ran into Hicks, his soft skinny hands closing with desperate strength on the officer's pack straps. He bagan pulling, hauling Hicks up the hill.

Brood's hand finally came away from his chest, full of the sour metal apple of a concuss-grenade. “
Clear!
” he screamed, pulling the pin, and tossed it at the thing. He rolled over and scrabbled, getting his legs inelegantly but efficiently under him, and almost ran into Hicks, who stared at the goddamn thing as the grenade bounced once, vanishing into its quivering depths.

“
Get down!
” the Rifter yelled, and kicked Senkin's feet from under him. She threw herself on top of Barko, and Hicks had a brief second to wonder why before the grenade popped and the noise exploded outward.

A gigantic warm hand cupped every inch of his back, legs, head, neck—everything. He
flew
, weightless for a moment, and the impact knocked all the sense out of him for a brief gentle second before the pain began.

Crunch.
The world spun away, came back on a greased leaf full of tearing edges. He hung between Senkin and Brood as they slid down the other side of the hill, and the Rifter was bellowing at them to
move you cocksuckers move!
She had something in her hands—one of those queer opalescent rocks, and as she ran she twisted at it, tendons standing out under pale skin. It cracked, a thin thread of darkness appearing at its heart. She had a snotrag, a faded red one, and popped the rock into it as she ran.

Then she whirled, digging her heels in, and skidded to a stop, the twin furrows plowed by her boots glaring against the matted grass. The noise behind them spiraled up into a boulder-rubbing screech.

The thing was fucking
pissed
.

It crested the rise in a humpback wave, shedding those fleshy leaf-bits, whatever wet sound they made lost in the roaring. They fell, bloodsick knobs of tissue, and when they hit the grass, small puffs of caustic smoke belched up. The Rifter raised the fist with the red snotrag and began to whirl the trapped rock inside.

The thing heaved itself fully over the rise. Brood was down on one knee, shooting at it, wasting ammo. Hicks tried to shake the noise out of his head, tried to
think
. The roar turned everything inside him to jelly, knocked his head back on the smallish stem his neck had become, and the pain came again, diamondtooth ants biting down his back and legs.

The Rifter's face was alive, bright color high on her cheeks. Her eyes weren't bulging so much as
shining
, and she whirled the makeshift sling just like the illustration of King David Hicks could remember in one of his battered childhood books. His mother would read them to him, if she wasn't too bone-tired after a long day of slinging other people's wet laundry, and she would tell him the stories behind the stories—how David even then was a king, and his bloodline would bring the Messiah when it was time for God to call his chosen people home. How King Solomon had built his palace with demons as his slaves, the great ring glinting on his finger, how the wise
rebbes
made massive men of clay and breathed life into them to protect the ghetto.

There were other stories, but all Hicks was seeing was the Goliath coming down the hill, gaining speed, and Brood was screaming as he emptied one clip, then another at it. The bullets tore into it without effect, and the Rifter let out another high, keening screech. A snap of her arm, and the white, faintly glowing rock described a high arc.

For a moment it looked like she'd miscalculated, but the impossible happened. The rock
curved
, and the dark thread along its middle peeled open, a single spark buried in its depths dilating.

The Rifter turned on her heel and launched herself at Senkin, who was holding Hicks up because Brood had gone fucking killcrazy. She hit with a
crunch
, and the Rifter yelled something he couldn't hear. His head rang, and there was a soft, ridiculous
whoosh
before the flung rock exploded.

Fallen sideways, his head bouncing against the serrated grass, Hicks stared.

The flame was blue, and it didn't act like it should. It spread like liquid, but leapt and danced, and a cloying, feverish heat blasted down the hillside as the spine-backed thing writhed, throwing even more of those tiny gobbets everywhere. One landed near Hicks's nose, and he watched it, dreamily, as the round mouth on its end, ringed with concentric rows of inward-slanting, triangular teeth, opened and closed.

Fuck of a sphincter.
The thought was very far away. Everything grayed out.

When he came back, touching down in his body like a dropped popper into a magseal catch, he was on his back and Eschkov was finishing a very capable field-splint on his left leg. Senkin had an emergency kit open, and pushed Hicks's sleeve up; he smoothed a red painpatch onto his commander's biceps. The narcotic would begin spreading immediately. Senkin's mouth moved, but the words were only a faint, fuzzy, faraway buzz.

Shock. I'm in shock.

Barko, on his other side, held up a syringe of amber liquid. He tapped it, twice, and cleared any air before bending over Hicks's arm, which had a tourniquet around it he couldn't feel. Barko's lips were moving, but maybe the man wasn't talking. It looked, instead, an awful lot like he was praying.

Hicks's head tipped back. There was Brood, at a weird angle because his field of vision was sliding, standing watch. Maki, his head wrapped in a bandage already bearing a rosette of blood leaking through, was watching the other way.

The Rifter crouched in the middle distance, her peach-fuzz stubble slicked to her scalp with grime and blood. Had she run her hands back over her head, like Barko was always doing? Her hollow cheeks were striped with weird, greasy soot. She wasn't looking at Hicks.

Instead, she was studying Brood's back, and her expression wasn't quite unguarded, but it was… thoughtful.

She knows he's Copeland's. I wonder if she'll…

It was dangerous in here. More dangerous than they had ever imagined. The thing had looked like
trees
, for fucksake. Had the Rifter left them there knowing one of the scientists would be unable to resist the temptation? Or had Tremaine just been that stupid?

One more thought came circling back before the warmth of the painpatch crept up his shoulder to his neck and made everything seem just-fucking-fine-and-dandy.

Someone else is going to die. I'm hurt bad.

It might be me.