Jacked Cat Jive

by Rhys Ford

  The transport slid. There wasn’t any warning, and I had no idea what was going on, but the tires gave out from underneath us, and the next thing I knew, the centipede was hydroplaning across the grasses. There were gulches and dips I’d marked to avoid, and the damned thing found every last one of them. The ride was rough as we jumped sideways and skipped across uneven terrain. Whoever was shooting at us lobbed another missile, but it went wide and slammed into a spot we might have been in if the centipede hadn’t decided to take its own detour.

  I had to give Cari this—she could teach a room full of sailors how to swear.

  “Can you hold it steady?” she yelled at me as she rolled down the window. The glass rattled in the frame, and I was more scared that she’d fall out or that the windshield would shatter over her than I was at fighting the transport. “I want to take a shot at them!”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I was working every trick in the book, but the segmented glide built into the middle of the transport made controlling it difficult, and something was wrapped around the conversion axle, because the back end wouldn’t respond at all.

  I tried to turn into the curve and then against it—anything to affect its trajectory—but nothing seemed to work. The grasses were thick here, slick with a milky fluid, and the centipede’s heavy treads plowing through the finger-width stalks should have ground us to a halt at some point, but the viscous liquid only seemed to lubricate our glide.

  We struck a boulder. I saw it coming. Hell, the thing was so big it cast a shadow broad enough and heavy enough that it was cold as we passed through it. The transport struck the enormous jut of rock with its back end first, and then the accordion fold in its middle slapped the front end around and tossed us all from our seats.

  The centipede rolled—something I thought was impossible, but there I was, going ass end up, caught in my seat belt as my head slammed into the roof. The dashboard hit my knees, and the world tilted sideways as the sky slid around the windshield. We went over two, maybe three times. After the first round, I ceased counting and concentrated more on trying to find a god or laws of physics that would stop us.

  A gulch saved our asses. The transport flipped into a steep divot, its angled bank almost too deep for gravity to tip us over another circuit. The centipede teetered on its left-side tires, torn between toppling over onto its roof or allowing its heavy weight to rock back against the wall of the gulch.

  I guess praying to physics sometimes works, because we slammed back down on the passenger’s side instead of making another go at it. Even though my brain was fuzzy from being smashed up against my skull, I was very aware that we were sitting ducks, especially with the transport slanted up and its belly exposed. My gut told me Sparky would armor the hell out of the centipede’s undercarriage, but I couldn’t leave anything to chance. Forward seemed to be a problem, but reverse responded, and we inched slowly back until the gulch leveled out and Cari wasn’t hanging from her seat belt, clutching her rifle to her chest.

  “Everyone okay?” The roar of motorcycle engines reached my ears, and I reached to undo the latch at my side and free myself from my seat. “More importantly, everyone got something to shoot with? Because we’re going to have company in a few minutes.”

  The engines grew louder. They were throaty and out of sync. Whatever our newly found friends were driving up on, they were poorly maintained. The backfires were frequent and masked the number of bikes they were riding—more than two, I figured.

  I carefully got into the main cabin. The transport was still at a slight angle, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Ryder struggled with the large central door and put his shoulder up against the crossbar to force the hinges to work. Kerrick scrambled about on the floor, gathering up the arrows he’d powered before we took a dive. I was careful where I stepped, because I didn’t want to blow a hole out of the centipede’s belly.

  We’d secured most of our equipment before the ride, but a few things were loose—mostly medical bins we’d pulled out to have ready when we picked up the woman and the kids. I stepped over a blanket and grabbed the bandolier Cari made for me and the shotgun I’d put into a tension grip mounted to the bunk support of the transport. My Glocks were still in their holsters, and my belt was heavy from the spare clip I’d threaded on that morning.

  “Sounds like they’re about two minutes out. Ryder and Kerrick, you two stay in the transport and lay down fire from the door. The centipede’s mostly bulletproof, but I don’t want you two to take any chances. If Cari and I go down, pull down the door and send out a distress call to Graham.” I grabbed Ryder’s arm and forced him to look at me. “Pay attention to this. I’m serious. Do you understand me?”

  “I don’t agree—” Ryder began to spit back at me.

  “I don’t care.” I refused to budge. “Both of you are Sidhe lords in the borderlands between SoCalGov and the Tijuana Dusk Court. Either one of you is taken hostage, you’re not going to like what happens to you after that. They’re never going to let you go home and… they’ll use the other to hurt you. If you want to spend the rest of your short life watching them peel Kerrick’s skin off of his flesh, then you leave that fucking door open if we fall. And I swear by Odin’s ravens that if our nieces end up in your grandmother’s hands because you’re not there to protect and raise them, I’m going to crawl out of the dirt hole they’ll put me in and make you wish they’d killed you.”

  “Kai, all-terrains, not bikes. Caught sight of one when it hit a rise,” Cari shouted from her position at the front of the transport. She’d hunkered down, using the wheel as cover, but she poked her head out to yell at me. “And it looks like they’re chasing something right toward us—smaller but big enough to bend the grass.”

  The grasses were too tall to clearly see through. We could hear the motors roaring through the hills, and large swaths of stalks bent down toward us only to snap back up a few seconds later. The wind turned, and the hillside became a rippling sea of beiges and greens that masked the paths of the bikes.

  “I need your promise, Ryder,” I insisted. “If you can’t give it to me, then I’ll just lock the two of you in here. I’d rather be down two guns than risk losing either of you—which is saying a hell of a lot, because I don’t like him—to the Unsidhe.”

  “And Cari?” he argued back, trying to twist his arm out of my grip. “You’re willing to sacrifice her?”

  I knew she could hear us. And as hard as it was, I had to go with what I knew she would want me to do. So my answer, as difficult as it was for me to choke out, was simple. “Yes. If she falls and I don’t, I throw her body into the back of the transport and get drunk with her family. Right after we burn her body on a pyre and give her weapons out to the people she wanted them to go to. She is a Stalker. We’re expendable. It’s the job. You don’t have that luxury. If you or Kerrick aren’t in that ivory tower growing up through Balboa’s bones, the Southern Rise Court is dead until it gets another lord. So the only thing I want to hear from you right now is ‘Yes, Kai, I will do exactly as you say if both of you die out there.’”

  “If they kill you….” His eyes shimmered and turned from emerald to a smoky, stormy green. “I’ll—”

  “You’ll work with them if they’re the ones who are breeding elfin kids like rabbits,” I finished for him. “Not only is the job bigger than my life—and you are the job—you prevent the elfin from going the way of the dodo. Promise me.”

  “I don’t want to promise that.” He leaned in until our faces were nearly touching, and I felt his breath across my lips. “You have become a part of my heart. Even as combative and argumentative as you are, it would break my heart if you weren’t there. I don’t know if I can do this without you.”

  “Then I guess you better do your job and cover my ass,” I teased and then kissed the tip of his nose for letting go. “That has to tide you over for, like… years. Watch my six, lordling, and I watch yours.”

  I was out the door before he could re
ply. It was getting too sugary inside of the transport for me to stand, and even though I hadn’t extracted a promise from him to close those doors, I knew he could see the logic behind my insistence. As stupid as it was, Ryder and Kerrick were the future of the Sidhe court that now lived in my backyard. I hadn’t wanted them there—I’d even argued against helping them—but I felt like I owed it to Duffy to continue her work in some way, and if that meant making sure the refugee Unsidhe had someplace safe to go, then I guess I had to make sure the Southern Rise Court was there for them.

  Cari did not look my way, but I wasn’t looking at her. I had no regrets for what I’d said. It was what she’d pounded into my head over the past few years, and it was about time I grew up enough to understand that she could stand shoulder to shoulder with me. And if she did fall, I would go back to the Valley of Names to see if the rocks still spelled out our names.

  And if they didn’t, I would spell them out again and return every year to make sure her mark was left.

  “Maybe that’s what I’ll do,” I muttered to myself as I wedged into the accordion bend of the centipede. “I’ll go out past the inland Valley, become a hermit, and write the names of the dead in the sands.”

  We were about twenty yards from the break in the grasses where the terrain turned into forest. The stretches of rock scattered about the landscape began to cast long shadows as the clouds peeled back from the sun. A twisted ocher-stone column, barely as wide as a young sapling, sat at the edge of the tree line as an odd natural marker of sorts, and its tip began to tremble. The motors of the ATVs were deafening, and the sound traveled through the area and drowned out practically everything else.

  The grasses parted, and a filthy young elfin woman burst out from them, dragging two very young children with her. A third—a girl kissing the edge of pubescence but with eyes as ancient as the stone that loomed behind me—emerged on her heels. Barefoot and barely clothed in rags, the children were silent, resignation and fear fighting for dominance on their young faces. I couldn’t tell anything about hair color or even the fineness of their features because of the layers of dirt and grime caked into their skin.

  I shouted and stood to catch the woman’s attention, and she veered off and ran toward the front of the transport in a desperate panicked scamper. Holding my position, I broke a little of my cover and yelled toward the centipede, “Ryder, Kerrick, tell them we’re here for them!”

  Cari came around to the front end. Surprised, the woman spun about and cradled the two small ones to her body, covering them with her arms. The young girl rushed Cari, her fists flying and her teeth peeled back in a fierce, animalistic snarl. I was yards away, but I could smell them. The stink of terror and unwashed skin stuck to the roof of my mouth when the wind carried their scent over to me.

  “Little one,” Ryder said in Sidhe as he slid out of the transport and held his gun out to the side, staying armed but as nonthreatening as possible. “Come here to me. All of you, we are here to take you home—a new home.”

  The Unsidhe woman unfolded herself long enough to look up at Ryder, her arms shaking but tight around the little children she’d pulled free from the grasses. Her skin shimmered golden in spots, smears of mica flecked over her pale flesh, but it was difficult to tell how old she was or even the color of her hair through all the muck on her body.

  The mica flecks were a clue. I knew the clan she came from—a vicious bunch who made runs into SoCal to snatch humans to work in their houses and fields. I’d run into them before while on another run to rescue human children they’d taken. They were mysterious and secretive, much like many of the Tijuana Dusk Court, but I’d seen the bones they left behind in their extinguished campfires. They were too long and too bipedal to be anything someone would hunt in the prairies or nearby forests.

  One of the tiny children she held peered out from her embrace, and its round eyes, liquid brown and pleading, were pure human. The other’s golden gaze and pointed ear tips left me without a doubt it was Sidhe. The young girl behind her shared the youngest’s features, her hair falling fully away from her face, and I got my first good look at the kid. Her aquiline nose and heart-shaped face were heartbreakingly gaunt, and a thin white scar sliced down her right cheek. The cut had been deep, and something had been poured into it to mark her permanently, or perhaps she’d had an infection her body couldn’t heal, but the wound had also taken her eye and left it an opaque white.

  “Come here.” Ryder held his hand out to them. “We are here to protect you.”

  The trembling woman lifted her head and took a halting step forward as though she wanted to believe Ryder, but the promise of safety was an illusion she’d evidently dreamed about for too long to have faith in now. But the young girl broke out of her fighting stance and ran toward the golden lordling who offered her sanctuary just as the grasses broke open again and three four-wheeled ATVs pushed through. Their Unsidhe riders laid down a spray of fire and cut through the Unsidhe woman embracing the children she’d fought so hard to free.

  Twenty-Two

  THE TIRES of the ATVs tore through the flattened grasses the transport had left in its wake and spread deep wheaten confetti bits into the fierce winds that had begun to whip through the clearing. I anchored my knee into the ground, dug in my position, and blasted a round into the nearest vehicle, hoping to pull the attention off of the kids and onto me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ryder bolt toward the fallen woman and the screaming children. Cari was on her feet, pumping expended rounds out of her shotgun and reloading as she walked, working herself into a defensive position despite the gunfire coming from the two shooters.

  At some point, the Unsidhe had bartered or purchased military-grade armor, because the two men—or at least I thought they were men—barely flinched when a shotgun blast slammed into a shoulder or chest. The heavy plating should’ve been marked with insignia, but those spots were scraped clean, leaving silvery patches on the mottled beige tactical suit. I’d seen the insectoid helmets they were wearing on shock troops that were sent into the understreets to quell riots and large disturbances, so whoever funneled equipment to their court and clans was shopping at the National Guard armory. I didn’t begrudge anybody making a quick buck, but the armor was going to make it hard to kill our attackers, and I didn’t think we had enough firepower.

  A bit of movement to the left of me made me glance toward the main door. At first I thought it was another Unsidhe coming up over the roof of the transport to attack from the other side, but the man’s fine robes clued me that it was Kerrick before I blew him off of the centipede. He’d obviously climbed out of the driver’s side and scaled the transport to give himself a higher ground to shoot from. It wasn’t a bad move, and I should’ve thought of it, but I consoled myself with the reminder that we were there to pick up a woman and kids and needed to defend the egress. I also hadn’t planned on getting into a minor skirmish with shock troops.

  Just goes to show I should always be prepared for any level of military engagement, even when doing a rescue run.

  The younger children were pinned beneath the dead woman’s body, and in her weakened state, the young girl didn’t seem able to get them free. She tugged at the woman’s arm and grabbed at one of the toddlers’ legs, trying to yank it out from under the body, but her arms quivered, unable to hold up even the slightest amount of weight. The children’s cries were becoming weaker, either drowned out by the engines, or more alarmingly, they just didn’t have the energy anymore. A few yards away, Ryder was caught in the crossfire and momentarily dove behind a large rock and then sprinted out.

  He skidded into a crouch near the fallen woman, but the young girl attacked him, her hands curled into claws as she raked at his face and hands with her broken nails. Above us, Kerrick shouted something in Sidhe, but I couldn’t understand him. I didn’t know if he was talking to Ryder or the kids, but judging by the way he drew back his bow, I imagined he was telling them to stay down. Trapped in the skirmish with the you
ng girl, Ryder was trying to subdue her when the ATVs came back around.

  Kerrick was good with his bow. He handled it with ease, and when his arrow left his weapon, it went unerringly straight. Problem was, the ATV drivers knew what they were doing. Their driving patterns were erratic. They cut across the broad clearing, and even though it made their shooting difficult, they were almost impossible to hit.

  The charged arcane arrow struck the ground, and its explosive energy left a small crater where one of the ATV’s tires had left the track when its driver gunned his engine into overdrive. Pebbles pelted the dead woman’s body.

  I moved in and put myself between Ryder and the ATVs. There was a good stretch of land to defend, and I was firmly in Kerrick’s line of fire, but Ryder needed protection, especially when the girl slashed at his face again, raking the skin on his cheek open. Blood gushed from the skittered wound, the uneven gash probably filthy from the grime on her nails. I tossed a handful of zip ties from my back pocket onto the ground next to him. I’d grabbed a few of the long stretches of lockable plastic before we’d gotten into position. I thought we might need them for the ATV drivers. I never imagined we would end up using them on one of the children we were trying to take home.

  I redrew my Glock and aimed a clear shot at the head of the nearest rider. Cari’s blasts were having no effect, and Kerrick’s arrows were few and far between because he was stymied by our presence at the end of the clearing. Until we got the young girl and the children into the centipede, he could only let loose his charges when the ATVs were farther away.

  As though to remind me that he had his hands tied, Kerrick shouted over the roar of the ATVs’ sputtering motors, “I cannot help you, Stalker, if you all do not get out of the way.”

  I ignored him and momentarily shut out the world. Dempsey had taught me how to shoot through practically every situation, but mostly out of the passenger-side window of an ancient truck. Many of the targets I’d been given when I was younger—way before I got my license—were vicious and moving, oftentimes an ainmhi dubh or a nightmare. I just had to concentrate and compensate for the fact that I wasn’t being jostled about on a cracked vinyl seat held together by strips of thick duct tape.