Pack
Page 3
I peered through the hole in my jeans. No trace of the bite. Nothing. Smooth, unmarked flesh.
What the hell?
Oscar buried his nose in my hair. The ecstasy of licking continued, and when I started shoving his nose away so I could run my hands over him he thought it was a game and rolled onto his back, his fluffy belly exposed and his ribs whole under his skin. Not even tender, given by how he begged for a good scratching all over.
That wasn’t a dream. I scrubbed at the crust on my face while Oscar wriggled, trying to induce me to keep up the petting. The stuff on my top lip would not budge.
If it wasn’t a dream, then what was it? I looked at the kid, he looked at me, and my nose twitched.
Those eyes, the iris and lids swallowing the whites. His shoulders bulking out as he lowered himself, fine fur racing over his narrow, blood- and mud-spotted chest as his bones crackled.
The air left me again. Not human.
But he wasn’t Other either, was he? He’d driven them off, and bathed in the fire. Saved Oscar.
Was he Other? Or had the world been weirder than anyone guessed even before the lights in the sky and the claws in the dark?
Did it matter?
“God,” I whispered, and put my head down between my knees. Nausea roared through me, but at least I didn’t throw up.
Whatever he was, the kid was mine now. And by the prickling all over my arms and legs, fur poking through skin with a wild-sweet pain, I began to get an idea of what had actually happened.
I couldn’t afford to go crazy-hallucinating, and I couldn’t afford to go batshit trying to deny what my own eyes were telling me. If I could teach Huck to talk, I could maybe ask a couple questions, and figure all this out.
Which would be nice, but it didn’t change the basic fact I’d woken up with while my hometown rocked with screams and wailing and crunch-slurping all around me one cold winter night.
Survive first. Figure out the rest of it later.
By the time sunset came we were miles away and moving at a steady clip on the deserted freeway. I was guessing that the lights in the sky would be coming a lot further south tonight. There was a campground an hour or so away, or we could just keep moving.
Oscar sat next to me on the truck’s bench seat, as usual, tongue lolling. The kid had his face pressed against the wind coming through his half-open window, and snuffled deeply every so often. I didn’t blame him; the smells were concentrated, hitting the brain like a mainlined drug, and I had to keep my window up and my hand cupped over my mouth to filter out some of the distraction.
The ridge of scar on my top lip, as if I’d had a harelip, too, was sensitive. The tear healed quickly, but I was guessing something happened to the shape of the mouth when the…fur…came. Other things shifted around too, but I didn’t have time to experiment now.
The plan was simple, once I really started thinking. Head south where it was warm and the sun was out all day, and use the desert to test the limits of this new body, find out exactly how strong and fast I was. How strong and fast the kid was.
Maybe we’d find survivors, maybe not. Maybe there were more like us out there. Huck had to come from somewhere, right?
If there were other people who could fur up, stand in fires, and drive off the Others, well. The Great Fuckery from the Stars was going to get a surprise.
I began to laugh, my breath a confused medley of scents. Oscar just grinned his doggy grin, and the cone of headlamp shine in front of us flashed gold with sunset’s last gasp. Thistles and grass forcing up through the cracks flattened under our tires, and we drove on into the night.
BOOKS BY LILITH SAINTCROW
Bannon and Clare
The Iron Wyrm Affair
The Red Plague Affair
The Ripper Affair
Dante Valentine Novels
Working for the Devil
Dead Man Rising
Devil’s Right Hand
Saint City Sinners
To Hell and Back
Dante Valentine (omnibus)
Jill Kismet Novels
Night Shift
Hunter’s Prayer
Redemption Alley
Flesh Circus
Heaven’s Spite
Angel Town
A Romance of Arquitaine Novels
The Hedgewitch Queen
The Bandit King
As Lili St. Crow
The Strange Angels series
Strange Angels
Betrayals
Jealousy
Defiance
Reckoning
Meet the Author
Lilith Saintcrow 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. Find out more at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.
Photo Credit: Daron Gildow
If you enjoyed
PACK,
look out for
THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR
BANNON AND CLAIRE: BOOK ONE
by Lilith Saintcrow
Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn’t help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon’s Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen.
In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs.
The game is afoot…
Prelude
A Promise of Diversion
When the young dark-haired woman stepped into his parlour, Archibald Clare was only mildly intrigued. Her companion was of more immediate interest, a tall man in a close-fitting velvet jacket, moving with a grace that bespoke some experience with physical mayhem. The way he carried himself, lightly and easily, with a clean economy of movement – not to mention the way his eyes roved in controlled arcs – all but shouted danger. He was hatless, too, and wore curious boots.
The chain of deduction led Clare in an extraordinary direction, and he cast another glance at the woman to verify it.
Yes. Of no more than middle height, and slight, she was in very dark green. Fine cloth, a trifle antiquated, though the sleeves were close as fashion now dictated, and her bonnet perched just so on brown curls, its brim small enough that it would not interfere with her side vision. However, her skirts were divided, her boots serviceable instead of decorative – though of just as fine a quality as the man’s – and her jewellery was eccentric, to say the least. Emerald drops worth a fortune at her ears, and the necklace was an amber cabochon large enough to be a baleful eye. Two rings on gloved hands, one with a dull unprecious black stone and the other a star sapphire a royal family might have envied.
The man had a lean face to match the rest of him, strange yellow eyes, and tidy dark hair still dewed with crystal droplets from the light rain falling over Londinium tonight. The moisture, however, did not cling to her. One more piece of evidence, and Clare did not much like where it led.
He set the viola and its bow down, nudging aside a stack of paper with careful precision, and waited for the opening gambit. As he had suspected, she spoke.
“Good evening, sir. You are Dr Archibald Clare. Distinguished author of The Art and Science of Observation.” She paused. Aristocratic nose, firm mouth, very decided for such a childlike face. “Bachelor. And very-recently-unregistered mentath.”
“Sorceress.” Clare steepled his fingers under his very long, very sensitive nose. Her toilette favoured musk, of course, for a brunette. Still, the scent was not common, and it held an edge of something acrid that should have been troublesome instead of strangely pleasing. “And a Shiel
d. I would invite you to sit, but I hardly think you will.”
A slight smile; her chin lifted. She did not give her name, as if she expected him to suspect it. Her curls, if they were not natural, were very close. There was a slight bit of untidiness to them – some recent exertion, perhaps? “Since there is no seat available, sir, I am to take that as one of your deductions?”
Even the hassock had a pile of papers and books stacked terrifyingly high. He had been researching, of course. The intersections between musical scale and the behaviour of certain tiny animals. It was the intervals, perhaps. Each note held its own space. He was seeking to determine which set of spaces would make the insects (and later, other things) possibly—
Clare waved one pale, long-fingered hand. Emotion was threatening, prickling at his throat. With a certain rational annoyance he labelled it as fear, and dismissed it. There was very little chance she meant him harm. The man was a larger question, but if she meant him no harm, the man certainly did not. “If you like. Speak quickly, I am occupied.”
She cast one eloquent glance over the room. If not for the efforts of the landlady, Mrs Ginn, dirty dishes would have been stacked on every horizontal surface. As it was, his quarters were cluttered with a full set of alembics and burners, glass jars of various substances, shallow dishes for knocking his pipe clean. The tabac smoke blunted the damned sensitivity in his nose just enough, and he wished for his pipe. The acridity in her scent was becoming more marked, and very definitely not unpleasant.
The room’s disorder even threatened the grate, the mantel above it groaning under a weight of books and handwritten journals stacked every which way.
The sorceress, finishing her unhurried investigation, next examined him from tip to toe. He was in his dressing gown, and his pipe had long since grown cold. His feet were in the rubbed-bare slippers, and if it had not been past the hour of reasonable entertaining he might have been vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of a lady seeing him in such disrepair. Red-eyed, his hair mussed, and unshaven, he was in no condition to receive company.
He was, in fact, the picture of a mentath about to implode from boredom. If she knew some of the circumstances behind his recent ill luck, she would guess he was closer to imploding and fusing his faculties into unworkable porridge than was advisable, comfortable… or even sane.
Yet if she knew the circumstances behind his ill luck, would she look so calm? He did not know nearly enough yet. Frustration tickled behind his eyes, the sensation of pounding and seething inside the cup of his skull easing a fraction as he considered the possibilities of her arrival.
Her gloved hand rose, and she held up a card. It was dun-coloured, and before she tossed it – a passionless, accurate flick of her fingers that snapped it through intervening space neat as you please, as if she dealt faro – he had already deduced and verified its provenance.
He plucked it out of the air. “I am called to the service of the Crown. You are to hold my leash. It is, of course, urgent. Does it have to do with an art professor?” For it had been some time since he had crossed wits with Dr Vance, and that would distract him most handily. The man was a deuced wonderful adversary.
His sally was only worth a raised eyebrow. She must have practised that look in the mirror; her features were strangely childlike, and the effect of the very adult expression was… odd. “No. It is urgent, and Mikal will stand guard while you… dress. I shall be in the hansom outside. You have ten minutes, sir.”
With that, she turned on her heel. Her skirts made a low, sweet sound, and the man was already holding the door. She glanced up, those wide dark eyes flashing once, and a ghost of a smile touched her soft mouth.
Interesting. Clare added that to the chain of deduction. He only hoped this problem would last more than a night and provide him further relief. If the young Queen or one of the ministers had sent a summons card, it promised to be very diverting indeed.
It was a delight to have something unknown, but within guessing reach. He sniffed the card. A faint trace of musk, but no violet-water. Not the Queen personally, then. He had not thought it likely – why would Her Majesty trouble herself with him? It was a faint joy to find he was correct.
His faculties were, evidently, not porridge yet.
The ink was correct as well, just the faintest bitter astringent note as he inhaled deeply. The crest on the front was absolutely genuine, and the handwriting on the back was firm and masculine, not to mention familiar. Why, it’s Cedric.
In other words, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Grayson. The Prime Minister was new and inexperienced, since the Queen had banished her lady mother’s creatures from her Cabinet, and Grayson had survived with, no doubt, some measure of cunning or because someone thought him incompetent enough to do no harm. Having been at Yton with the man, Clare was inclined to lean towards the former.
And dear old Cedric had exerted his influence so Clare was merely unregistered and not facing imprisonment, a mercy that had teeth. Even more interesting.
Miss Emma Bannon is our representative. Please use haste, and discretion.
Emma Bannon. Clare had never heard the name before, but then a sorceress would not wish her name bruited about overmuch. Just as a mentath, registered or no, would not. So he made a special note of it, adding everything about the woman to the mental drawer that bore her name. She would not take a carved nameplate. No, Miss Bannon’s plate would be yellowed parchment, with dragonsblood ink tracing out the letters of her name in a clear, feminine hand.
The man’s drawer was featureless blank metal, burnished to a high gloss. He waited by the open door. Cleared his throat, a low rumble. Meant to hurry Clare along, no doubt.
Clare opened one eye, just a sliver. “There are nine and a quarter minutes left. Do not make unnecessary noise, sir.”
The man – a sorceress’s Shield, meant to guard against physical danger while the sorceress dealt with more arcane perils – remained silent, but his mouth firmed. He did not look amused.
Mikal. His colour was too dark and his features too aquiline to be properly Britannic. Perhaps Tinkerfolk? Or even from the Indus?
For the moment, he decided, the man’s drawer could remain metal. He did not know enough about him. It would have to do. One thing was certain: if the sorceress had left one of her Shields with him, she was standing guard against some more than mundane threat outside. Which meant the problem he was about to address was most likely fiendishly complex, extraordinarily important, and worth more than a day or two of his busy brain’s feverish working.
Thank God. The relief was palpable.
Clare shot to his feet and began packing.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Welcome
Title Page
Pack
Books by Lilith Saintcrow
Meet the Author
Bonus Material
About Orbit Short Fiction
Orbit Newsletter
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Lilith Saintcrow
Excerpt
from The Iron Wyrm Affair copyright © 2012 by Lilith Saintcrow
Cover design by Wendy Chan
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First eBook edition: September 2014
ISBN: 978-0-316-33953-7
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