She scaled the shifting heap to the top egg, the thing teetering to one side as the gravel skittered out from beneath. Maeve didn't wait for it to topple. She leapt at the metal beams in the ceiling, eyes closed, arms outstretched.
Not her best idea. She slammed against the girder, face first. She managed to wrap her arms around the beam and hung there a moment, nose throbbing, legs dangling.
"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned. She swung her legs back and kicked them up toward the beam, hoping she could inch her way along the girder, toward the hole. Two swings and she got it.
She hung there, upside down, until the sting in her nose finally turned to a bruised kind of numb. She pinched her thighs together and twisted her way on top of the girder, until she was finally lying with her chest and cheek flattened against the top of it. After a few moments, she pushed herself up to sitting, then standing, easing her head through the hole left by the fallen egg.
Moonlight spilled over her, although she wasn't out in the open. She was in an upside-down funnel, the light streaming thinly through the hole over her head and it was now or never. The hole wasn't big enough to climb through. Not yet. She had to dig.
Maeve wavered on the girder as she dug. She sunk her hands into the soil and dug like a hound digging a hole from the South Pole to the North. The soil began to cave in, sliding down over her body in a gravel shower.
The gravel gave way to dirt. Her arms ached and when she breathed in, the soil got in her nose, but in her panic, she dug harder. She felt the thick, rough knobs of twisting vines. Tree roots.
Maeve grabbed hold and climbed off the girder, pulling herself up through the soil all around her, onto one of the roots. The dirt fell away, down through the hole from where she'd come. She climbed the roots like a macabre jungle gym, following the evening light overhead to guide her way. The light grew larger as she climbed, until Maeve saw another opening. She used the very last of her energy to pull herself out, onto actual ground, like some bizarre mountain birth. Her entire body was gritty, her hair was slick, and she was inside a tiny, dark, circular room that smelled like a stump.
A cat...a guinea pig?...a rat...something with tiny ears peeked at her before darting out of a misshapen...opening.
Wiping her eyes was a miserable task with grimy fingers. Her eyeballs stung, but she kept wiping away the mud, flinging the muck from her fingers, sending the mud splattering against the curved walls. She was desperate to get her eyes all the way open, to know where she was—to know that she wasn't hopping around blindly in front of the valets on East King Street.
When she was finally able to get her eyes open, she was in deep, milky shadows. Dense and dark, the walls were bowed out and textured with long streaks, as if someone had run their manicured nails down them. It smelled like damp Earth, but that could be the dirt packed in her nose from the climb.
Maeve turned a tight circle, even though she could've spread her arms and circled without touching the walls. Directly behind her was the slash in the wall that let out the animal and let in the comforting, milky light of a moonlit night. She drank in the air. The wall felt like an odd vinyl texture against her back. It was silent outside. She peered through the oddly shaped opening.
She expected the midnight street in front of the Archive. She expected cement sidewalks that ran to the curbs, buildings that towered, lazy streetlights blinking on an empty street. It took her several blinks to align what she was looking at to what she thought should be there.
There was nothing but a flat meadow at first. Her eyes traveled over the ground and found a tangle of tall trees standing opposite from the opening she looked through. She blinked again. Where the hell was she? Where the hell was her car?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
August 10, 2095 / Hot Season Six
Diem pulled back on the guide rein, bring Forge down to the ground. Forge spread her mammoth wings and did something Diem had never seen before. She pounded down on the landing so hard that the rein shook free. Diem tightened his knees on the dragon a second too late. The dragon pitched him off her back. Diem fell hard into ashorbbrush.
Forge lumbered across the dragon grounds to the same hollow spindling where Diem kept her rein hidden. Hampigs also liked to hide in there. Maybe watching over the new hoarde had increased her appetite even more than what Diem had expected. With a fireless snort, Forge dove down and shoved her nose against the opening of the spindling.
"You threw me for a hampig?" Diem shouted after his dragon as he dropped back in theshorbto catch his breath.
***
Maeve heard an explosion. She felt the blast of it shake the ground under her feet. She gripped the walls around her only seconds before an enormous, wet snout pushed against the opening at her feet, startling her backward. Her shoulders rammed the rounded wall behind her and she curled her shoulders against the surface, as if she could disappear. The end of the nose was the size of a huge soufflé dish and was attached to something as long as an alligator's snout as it crushed against the opening again. The flap of a tremendous nostril pushed through the slit in the tree, the nose sucking in breath and chuffing it out like an unfiltered shop vac.
Her heart blew into her throat. It was a dinosaur.
Flattened into the curve of the wall, there was nowhere for Maeve to retreat. The rabbit hole she'd popped up through had caved in beneath her. As she stood, being sniffed, she realized there was no way out. She was going to be eaten by a dinosaur in a town that no longer existed. Her mind spun.
And then, the animal gave up. With one last snort, it retreated, but Maeve remained frozen, her back sweating down the wall. After several moments, she took a careful step toward the gap leading outside—
Her foot touched the dirt and the dinosaur ran into the wall, sending a shudder through the entire, upright tunnel. The circular wall shook all around Maeve and she shrieked. The enormous thing collided with the exterior again and the whole tunnel jumped an inch off the ground, sending a flash of moonlight shooting over her boots. Maeve screamed. The dinosaur slammed against the outside one more time and with an ear-splitting crack, the entire tunnel tipped. Moonlight spilled in from her feet. The edge of the opening bashed against her. Maeve fell backward against the wall as the thing dropped horizontally on the ground. Her feet stuck out the bottom, the vines twisted below her like messy cornrows.
Holy shit. Those really were roots and the mammoth tunnel was a tree.
Cocking up her head, she peered down over her feet to the outside. Whatever was out there would probably suck her out of the tree trunk like a pimento from an olive. She tried to draw up her legs, away from the opening, but something wrapped around her ankle. She howled as she was dragged from the trunk.
Her back hit the ground hard. Gasping, Maeve stared up at the dinosaur high above her. She could make out a long, looping neck, an elongated arrow of a head, a body as big as a building. She opened her mouth and choked on her scream. She was about to die. She hoped she'd be dead of a heart attack before the dinosaur snapped her bones in its jaws.
A fresh scream flooded her, her terror shrilling through the dark.
The beast tipped back its head and answered with an angry stream of flames that shot high into the sky. It's skin glinted a deep, dirty violet in the flash of light. Maeve couldn't even scramble backward. Her body wouldn't work.
A whistle, a really close whistle, cut through the night. It wasn't a whistle used to call a dog, or a seven dwarf kind of sound; it wasn't a train whistle or the whistle from girder-hanging construction workers—no. This whistle was a melody. The dinosaur peeled back from its stance over Maeve, flashing back like an eel in the water. The serene, melodic tune cut through Maeve's adrenaline, dragging her gaze down from the dinosaur looming over her head to the man that she hadn't noticed before, standing at her feet. He released the ankle of her boot from his palm.
"What House did you come from?" he demanded. "Tell me, before I kill you!"
***
Diem saw the tremble that tore through the woman at his feet. But only one. She turned her wide, gray eyes on him without answer. The delicate swipe of her lips remained closed, even when he fastened his gaze on them. Her obstinance was oddly impressive.
It's not like she could mistake him. The Rha's of each House were well known. He reached down and grabbed her by the wrist, yanking her onto her odd shoes, but she cursed so loudly, he let go. Off balance, she dropped on her rear, snarling another curse at him.
Women didn't curse at a Rha. No one cursed out loud. Such a word could bring death to an entire House if a Plutian overheard it.
"Who are you?" Diem demanded again. She was no one he had seen before, which was nearly impossible, unless she came from Hold House. The Houses held rotating parties with one another, with the distinct purpose of bragging and mating. Available woman were definitely made known to the Rhas. Especially one like this. Her beauty guaranteed that a Rha would pay her House’s cost to acquire her as his Link. But this woman was a mystery to him and made even more so by her actions. She rubbed her wrists instead of answering, glaring up at him.
Glaring.
At him.
As if he had no right to touch her in any way he wished.
"You want I should feed you to my dragon?" he said. To make his point, he hoisted her to her feet again. Her rueful glare burned into him, but what stopped him were three distinct peculiarities.
The first was that she began to curse at him in archaic. Few of the archaic curses were ever used now, since the overseers had been nicknamed with the derogatory terms. To use them for anything else was dangerous, since insulting a Plutian was punishable by death. And if the Plutians ever deciphered the archaic slang, who knows what would happen. As a Rha, it was Diem's responsibility to deal with any human who could put Fly House in jeopardy, even with something so simple as a word.
Second, which was most perplexing, was how the woman was dressed. She had boots like he'd never seen before, black ones that reached to her knees, with shiny buckles stacked up the shins of them. As if buckles cost nothing at all. Odder yet, the buckles were not whittled from spindlings and had a shine to them, as if they'd been fashioned from some unique dragon's plates. Diem had never seen a material like them.
Diem's final point of interest was the woman's curves and the ink upon it. Tattoos were unusual on a woman and the animal on the back of her shoulder was not one Diem was familiar with. He held her by the arm, his gaze raking over her, until she brought up her free hand to bash him in the face. He caught the offending hand before she struck him and pushed her to the ground. He pinned her on her back, holding her arms at her sides with his legs, controlling her movement the same way he controlled dragons—boxing her in so she knew he was the one in control. He couldn't help but note the further similarity between the woman and his dragons by the way she struggled so viciously, spitting and bucking to dislodge him. Diem clamped down and let her exhaust herself beneath him.
When she finally lie still, panting, Diem let his own legs relax slightly, feeling her body between them. She was generous in good places.
Her jewelry confused him too. A ring in her lip. Another in her eyebrow. An open circle through the middle of her nostrils. He'd never seen a woman adorned like she was, but when he tried to touch the ring at her lip, she snapped her jaws and tried to bite his finger.
Furthermore, the fact that she was fighting him, instead of trying to convince him to mate with her and take her as a Link, was baffling. She was still glaring at him. Her breathing had steadied, so he kept his body ready for another outburst.
"Who are you?" he said.
"None of your business. Who the hell are you?" she returned. By Ahanas, she must be wrong in the head. Maybe he had never met her because she'd been locked away for her insanity. It was the only explanation, although a weak one.
Gorne, the main food supply, had been developed by the Plutians to perfectly suit all the nutritional needs of the human body. Since most maladies were rooted in nutritional deficiencies, the Plutians engineered the gorne to keep their work force strong and healthy and ailment-free. It could instantly seal cuts, heal burns, even close the wound of a dragon bite and heal the skin. It prevented birth defects.
Being that this woman was around Diem's age, she would not have been born with mental abnormality. The gorne would've prevented it or corrected it, unless her current imbalance resulted from some psychological tragedy. While the gorne was extremely efficient at healing the human body efficiently, psychological events took longer.
But nutritional explanations still didn't explain why she didn't recognize a Rha or how she'd managed, in her state, to gain admission to Fly House's lot. Or how she managed to stumble across him at his private dragon grounds without Forge detecting her earlier.
"I am Rha Diem," he said, searching her face for recognition. There was none.
Instead, she frowned. "Whoopty ding. I'm Maeve Aypotu. Now get off me, you stupid gorilla."
Diem didn't move a muscle. Instead, he stared down at her, trying to understand half the words she just said to him. Whoopty ding? Maeve Aypotu? Gorilla? Her tone told him that it was obviously some sort of insult, but it sounded like some type of archaic that he'd never heard before.
"Your name!" he growled.
"I just told you, idiot! Maeve Aypotu!"
"Tell me your name!" he roared.
"Maeve Aypotu!" she roared back.
"That's not a name! Tell me the name of your House?"
"It's MY name! And what are you talking about—name of my house? It's House of none-of-your-damn-business. That's the name of my house! Now get off me, Dick Head!"
He clamped his hand over her mouth as he brought his face down closer to hers. "Stop with your curses! I will punish you if you don't! Do you want to die when the overseer hears you?"
Her gray eyes stared at him over the edge of his hand. When she didn't struggle, he released his hand. It was a mistake.
"I CAN SCREAM SO LOUD, EVERYONE WILL HEAR ME, YOU FUCK!" she shouted in his face.
That was enough. Blatant disregard was one thing, but she was also a woman.
Shouting.
In his face.
She could get them both killed if Phuck happened to be in ear shot.
He stood, hauling her up beside him, keeping her in his tight grip. She kicked at him with her boots until he'd had enough and swung her up, over his shoulder. When she continued to fight him, he delivered a hard slap to her rear, as was customary when dealing with a hysterical woman, but this one did not take the warning.
Instead, she tried to drive the hard toes of her boots into his gut. Or lower. The first blow nearly sent them both to the ground, but he caught her legs and held her tight. He considered a good drop on her head, but from what she'd displayed so far, he thought that it might've already happened to her. Instead, he hauled her across the meadow, picking the guide rein out of theshorbbrush, on the way to his shack.
***
Maeve pounded at him, but it did little good. She threw out her arms when he reached the door of a tiny house, holding onto the doorframe. She was not getting hauled into some rape shack.
He slapped her rear again, harder this time, so the prickle of it lingered on her skin. Maeve wasn't humiliated. She was going to kick his ass the first chance she got. She pummeled his back, hoping to land a blow to his kidneys, but his organs seemed corded in muscled armor. Her arms already felt like rubber, still ruined from what it took to climb up to the surface, and now, this douchebag was dragging her around like a caveman. Still, Maeve clung to the door, shrieking at him in bursts of energy.
He didn't waste the energy on shouting like she did. He gave her a minute, and then, one good tug and Maeve's fingers lost their grip on the frame. He yanked her inside and slammed the door, letting a plank fall down over it like a medieval dead bolt. The plank looked heavy enough that it could take her a day's rest to be able to heave it up on her own.
But instea
d of going more wildcat, as the man slid her down onto her feet, Maeve's body froze, just like her mind. Her brain kept spitting two thoughts at her:
rape shack
stuck inside
rape shack
stuck inside...
Her head finally came loose on her neck, swiveling to gaze around the small room. Dingy. Dirt floor. Weird shutters made of branches, drawn closed over the openings. A counter made from an uneven slat. A rough, cloth curtain hiding shelves beneath. Buckets beside it. A pump protruding from the wall.
No table.
No toilet.
No couch.
Just a lumpy, stuffed nest of a bed on the floor.
Maeve's brain snapped back with the sting of a misfired rubber band. The man followed her gaze to the bed. He reacted at the same time she did, catching the toe of the boot that she meant to plow into his crotch. He pushed her backward with her own foot and she fell hard on the makeshift bed. She braced to sink through it and slam against the floor, but it was like falling on a marshmallow. The bed was incredibly soft, but firm enough to stop her from sinking. Before she could push herself off, the man was on her, pinning her again, like he had on the ground outside.
"Last time I ask. Where did you come from?"
If she could get her hands free, she'd dig out his eyes, just for making her feel weak. She pulled her limbs, but he gripped her tighter, squeezing her between his powerful thighs. The weight of him, spread over the length of her body, began to unhinge her. But for Maeve, unhinging didn't send her into some slobbering feminine hysteria. Instead, it made her downright feral.
"From hell, how's that, you fuckwad!" She bucked and flailed her legs and tried to spit on him, but it only fell back on her own cheek. He remained stoic as she struggled. She wasn't getting anywhere—again. When she lay panting—again—the man leaned over her and placed his hand softly on the lower part of neck. His thumb rubbed lazily against the hollow between her collarbones. She'd bite him if she could. She'd rip off his tongue and spit it across the room if he tried to kiss her.
The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Page 15