Son-of-a-bitch. Did this Hunter just insult me? “That’ll be a cold day in hell.”
“Aw, come on.” He shot me a grin, white teeth sparkling in the moonlight. “I figured a girl with hair like yours could take a joke.”
“You stupid, hunting piece of—”
The buzz of a HOA helicopter roared overhead, its search light sweeping the area around us. Jake glanced up, all humor draining from his face. “I’d love to stick around and chat…”
I didn’t stay around for him to finished his sentence. My feet dug into the pavement, and I ran four blocks to the safety of my apartment, and the embrace of a scalding hot shower.
Chapter 11
“Nobody?” I poked my head through the hole in the front door of my apartment. The living room looked exactly as I’d left it, free of reptoe-parts and giant cyclops. I unlocked the door and stepped inside. The air smelled faintly of sulfur or maybe it was rotting eggs. I took another sniff and realized the stench was coming from me.
I stripped off the nightcrawler’s dress and rushed naked down the hallway, and into the bathroom. As I stepped under the hot spray of the shower my mind flashed to the mysterious hunter, Jake McClain.
Every instinct warned the hunter was bad news. In more ways than I could imagine. And I had a pretty vivid imagination. McClain was the kind of guy that went straight to a girl’s thighs. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind. There was something about the curve of his lips, something dark, hard, and deadly.
Not that I had a death wish, but the tiny red bump inside the crook of my elbow warned I didn’t have much time left either. The plague was upon me. Its toxic bacteria slowly infected, and ultimately would destroy my cyborg-like cells.
Most plague victim’s, like my mother, died within a few months of contracting the deadly disease, but I had a few years left, years of suffering, years to watch the plague steal my friends, family, and eventually my life.
Just like my father.
I shook my head, warding off thoughts of death and disease. I had too much left to do. Stopping Quinn and destroying his mutant vaccine came first on my list.
A knock echoed on the bathroom door. The razor in my hand slipped, slicing a six-inch gash across the top of my thigh. Blood spurted from the wound staining the water swirling down the drain pink. “Ow. Fuck,” I yelped.
Nobody burst in, his fists raised and ready for battle. His eye scanned the room, and for the barest of seconds, he focused on my naked blood-slicked leg. “I see you survived the visit to dear old granddad’s.” Shaking his head, he added, “Only to succumb to the dangers of the personal razor.”
“These things are hazardous.” I wrapped a towel around my body and gestured to him with the razor. Light red droplets of blood splattered the tile near his feet. “They should put a warning label on the package.”
He tried to do an eye-roll. It came off more like a wink, but I got the point. “So what happened?” he asked.
“Same old story. Girl meets grandpa. Girl shoots ex-lover. Girl runs home like a coward.” I shrugged. “Nothing to tell, really.”
Nobody’s eye widened until it covered most of his forehead, but his voice remained a calm baritone. “Sounds fun.”
I threw the bar of soap in my hand at him. It sailed past him and out of the open door. He followed the soap from the bathroom, leaving me to dry off. Once I was dry, clean, and wrapped in a terry-cloth robe, Nobody handed me a clean pair of black cargo pants and tank top. My pink combat boots followed.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
Nobody grabbed a brush from my nightstand, handed it to me, and laughed as I tried my best to calm my wayward curls.
“How is it that you can field strip a nine-millimeter in nine seconds, but can’t manage a few curls?” He grinned at my sad attempt and then finally handed me my skullcap. I dropped the brush, smashing the cap over my hair.
“How is it that I’m still hanging out with you.” I shrugged. “You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson by now.”
“I’m endearing.” He winked, his thick lashes sweeping across his nose. If he wasn’t seven feet of moronic muscle I might’ve forgot his lame attempt at joke and told him how much our friendship really meant. But like in a marriage, sincerity ruined friendships, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Okay. Enough banter. Spill it,” he ordered. We sat on the edge of my bed, the warm spring night settling around us as cricket-mutants as big as rats chirped from the street below.
I sighed. “When I got to Resden I met with my granddad for a few minutes. He waxed on about me taking over the business, and how he regretted his part in the mutant wars.” I shook my head. “I wanted to believe him.”
“I know.” Nobody lifted my hand in his. His skin felt warm and safe. For the first time in two days I relaxed but he ruined the moment by saying, “Now jump to the good stuff.”
I rolled my eyes, a move that drove one-eyed giants crazy. “I ran into Quinn by accident. He’s working for Arthur as some sort of researcher. They’re developing this vaccine…”
“A vaccine for what?” Nobody’s fingers tightened against mine.
“To eradicate mutant genes.”
He nodded as if he’d expected my answer. “So it’s true.”
“What is?”
Dropping my hand he rose from my bed and turned his back to me. “There’s been a lot of activity on the mutant boards. Some hacker named Mutant L has been posting all sorts of warnings about a vaccine.”
“So who is she?”
“She?” His eyebrow shot toward his hairline.
“Yes, she.” Feminine satisfaction hummed inside me. “A guy wouldn’t use an initial. Only chicks do that.”
“Why?”
“It adds an air of mystery?”
Nobody shook his head, and I relented. “Look through the mutant phone book sometime. Single women living alone do it all the time,” I said. “It’s a safety thing.” Not that it worked but a false sense of security went along way when you lived behind the wall.
“It doesn’t matter.” Nobody stroked his chin. “Mutant L knows something. At first I thought he,” he paused, “or she was some random crackpot. I tried tracking the IP address and it led nowhere. That got me thinking…”
“You think Mutant L is part of the Resistance.”
“Am I crazy?” He paced around my bedroom. “There’s no Resistance, right? Hasn’t been one since Calvin died. So what’s going on?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but if there is a Resistance, we have to uncover them before the HOA finds them, or us.”
The words had barely left my mouth when a spotlight, so intense it brought tears to my eyes, filled my bedroom. The whooping of an HOA helicopter followed the light.
“Too late,” Nobody said, tossing a duffle bag filled with ‘on the run’ essentials like ammunition, knives, and bubble gum at me. Shouts from armed HOA agents, and the heat of metallic bullets chased us through the hole in our apartment floor, and into the murky sewer below.
Chapter 12
“Jesus, you stink.” Nobody waved a hand in front of his face. “What’d you land in? Gnome piss?”
My lips curled into a snarl. “Let’s talk about who you landed on, shall we?” I groaned, brushing off a Nobody’s sized boot print from my lower back, and something that smelled an awful lot like rotten meat.
Reaching for my hand, Nobody smiled and helped me to my feet. Above our heads, the sounds of agents, helicopters, and gunfire erupted. Down here in the sewer though, the only noise was the rapid pounding of our hearts.
“That was close,” I said.
He didn’t bother to answer instead he waved his hand around the sewer. “What now?”
I shrugged, contemplating our next move. Miles of underground pipe and tunnels surrounded us, each with a unique set of problems. If we went north, we risked entering the Reptoe’s territory and I wasn’t in the mood for another reptilian smack down just yet.
The same probl
ems existed south and west of our tunnel, but to a lesser degree. Fey-blood suckers, much like mosquitoes but a million times bigger, hungrier, and meaner swarmed the southern parts of the sewer, feasting on the blood of those stupid enough to drop in without a can of bug spray. I checked our duffle bag. No Fey Repellant. Shit.
I glanced to the west.
“No way in hell.” Nobody shook his head. “I’d rather risk a Fey bite.”
I winced, picturing my last encounter with the green-scaled momma-boys known as the Alligator People who lived in the western tunnels. Flushed down the drain by their human owners, they sought sympathy for their plight from whoever passed their way. Which in itself didn’t sound all that bad until you spent eight hours listening to a dude with razor teeth and abandonment issues complain about the cramped size of today’s drainage pipes.
“East,” we said at the same time.
Together we turned east and headed toward Ivan’s Lair, Liquor Emporium, and Tax Accountancy. Ivan would know all about the Resistance. Of course, he wasn’t about to tell us shit.
Not without a fight.
Growing up, every year I’d asked about the mysterious group of rebels who fought for truth, justice, and the mutated way. And every year when I posed the question Ivan turned a shade of lavender unknown to the color wheel and told me to go muck out the fairy cages.
Most of my teen years were spent cleaning out those cages, but I still wanted to know the truth about the Resistance. At the time, my desire had bordered on schoolgirl obsession, but now, the fate of mutantity depended on my fantasy group of rebel fighters. If the Resistance didn’t exist, I was alone in this fight, the last rebel, but that wasn’t going to stop me.
About an hour after fleeing from the HOA, Nobody lifted me on his shoulder, and through the steel sewer grate above our heads. I sniffed the air. The stench of moldy beer and tax shelters told me we’d found the right place. I slipped through the grate and straight into a tiny fairy fist.
The blow sent me tumbling back into the sewer. I landed hard on the wet ground. Nobody stood above me, a grin on his lopsided face. My butt ached with a new arrangement of bruises, and for a second, I dreamed of a life without fairies, sewers, or overly amused cyclops.
“That looked like it hurt.” Nobody held out his hand, and once again, pulled me from the ground.
“Really?” I shook my head, sending drips of what I prayed was water spiraling around us. “Cuz I hardly felt a thing.”
Nobody laughed and motioned to the grate. “Want me to try?”
“I’d like nothing more.”
He hefted his large frame through the grate. From overhead the tiny screech of a fairy sounded, followed by a louder, more ferocious shout. A second later, Nobody fell back through the sewer grate, his eye swollen and red.
“Fucking Fairies.” He rubbed at his eye, and I fake coughed to cover a laugh. How many times had I come home with a fat lip or damaged eye socket, all on the account of some wayward fairy? They might look small, but they sure as hell packed a punch. They must eat their mutant Wheaties, I thought.
“I’ve got an idea.” I scrambled up the side of the sewer and waited for a fairy to approach the grate. My wait didn’t last long. If anything fairies had an insatiable curiosity that made them easy targets in the mutant wild, probably why most of them sat caged in fairy-fighting rings. Evolutional adaptation, my ass.
As soon as the fairy, dressed in black leather pants and an Indian headdress peeked down the sewer grate, I snatched him, withstanding an onslaught of tiny fists and teeth. When he bit me for a third time, I shook the little devil.
“All right.” His eyes spun like pinwheels inside his head. “I give.”
“Good.” I smiled proudly, earning a look of disgust from my oldest and dearest friend. I stuck my tongue out at Nobody, and said to the fairy, “Tell your buddies no more tricks. We’re coming up and if any fairy makes a false move I’ll flatten you.”
“I read a story like this once.” Nobody scratched his head. “It did not end well.”
I gestured to the grate. “Shut up and climb.”
Chapter 13
We pushed through the sewer grate and into the fairy pen with little difficulty. The fairy room, as Ivan called it, was a large warehouse with a steel cage placed in the center. Smaller cages sat stacked around the center cage. Overall, the place resembled a tiny man’s jail complete with boxing ring.
A group of angry fairies stood around the grate, their small bodies decorated in the finest of wrestler fashion, which meant lots of latex, spandex, and leather. I held up my hand. “Take it easy. We’re just passing through.”
“That’s what they all say, but we got a contract with Ivan, and he’s nobody the likes of you want to mess with.” A red-haired fairy with pink tinted wings and a bonnet on her head stepped forward. “His enforcer is a vicious bitch, and she’ll rip you to shreds if you try and steal us.”
“I’m not that vicious.” I frowned at the offending Tinkerbelle.
Nobody raised his eyebrow, and I shrugged. Fine. I wasn’t going to win any Miss Congeniality contests, but I had good qualities too. Not that any came to mind at the moment. So in a gesture of good will, I set the leather-clad fairy down and gently shoved the rest of the fairies out of my way before I unlocked the cage door with a set of keys Ivan kept in a fairy-proof lockbox three feet from the ground.
I motioned for Nobody to step through the unlocked door. He did, followed by a rush of tiny winged wrestlers, all eager to taste freedom. With a gentle sweep kick, I knocked them back inside the cage ignoring their tiny boos.
“Bitch.” The leather-clad fairy spit a glob of goo at me. It landed on my boot, and slid to the floor.
“Why you ungrateful, little—”
Before I kicked a little fairy ass, Nobody grabbed my arm and dragged me from the warehouse. “Come on, we have more important mutants to fry,” he said.
That we did.
Together we snuck down the darkened hallway. My ears stained to identify every sound. When dealing with the HOA any meaningless creak could lead to certain death. I paused outside the main door listening for any sign of what was beyond the wood. For all I knew an army of agents waited on the other side. I clenched my fists, preparing for a bloodletting.
I motioned for Nobody to stay back and pressed the door open an inch. The bar appeared vacant, not a drunken body dweller in sight. Unusual for this time of night. “Ivan?” I slipped through the door, crouching low while scanning the shadows for anyone intent on doing us harm.
No response.
I started checking Ivan’s standard hiding spaces, the secret places he used to hide from his wife and sleep off the occasional binge. I lucked out in the crawlspace above the bar. Ivan lay sleeping in a ball of rented skin.
“Ivan.” I shook him. “Wake up.”
“Indeara?” He cracked his eyelid open, showing off grey eyes like Quinn’s, but yellowed with age and drink. “What’d you want, girl? It’s my nap time.”
“I need your help.” I lifted him up, nearly overpowered by the stench of whiskey. We climbed from the crawlspace to the main bar where Nobody waited, a icy beer in his hand. I raised an eyebrow. “Make yourself at home.”
“Ivan? Is that you? You look different.” Nobody stood and shook Ivan’s hand, the giant cyclops towering over the older man. I tilted my head to examine Ivan. He did look different, and not because he wore a new skin. Nope. Ivan had grown by two inches at least.
I put my hands on my hips. “Are you wearing lifts?” Body dwellers used various items to fit into a new skin. Foam rubber shoulder pads were just one of them. They turned an average man into a broad-shouldered superhero if large enough.
“Can’t help it.” Ivan pulled at the folds of skin at the curve of his neck. “The suit’s a rental. The wife took a pair of scissors to mine.”
Nobody smiled, so Ivan added, “While I was wearing it.”
“What for this time?” asked the giant.
“A simple misunderstanding, son.” Ivan sucked at his teeth. “That woman just gets crazier every year. She needs some grandbabies to spoil.” He emphasized his statement with a glare in my direction.
I held up my hand. “No, she needs a husband who doesn’t bet her good china on a fairy match.”
“You’re a mean one, girl.”
Nobody laughed. “If you only knew the half of it.”
“Enough.” I reached over the bar and grabbed a beer. Its coldness, not to mention alcoholic content, eased the throbbing in my backside. “Ivan, I need to find the Resistance.”
He snorted. “When are you going to give up on those childish stories? There is no Resistance. Never was one.” Gesturing to the back room, he added, “Now go clean out the fairy stalls.”
“I’m not a kid anymore.” I touched his hand. “I can protect myself. No more lies. Please.” My eyes locked on his. “When Calvin got sick, he told me and Quinn stories. Tales about the Resistance. About you and him fighting side by side.”
“Calvin lied.” Ivan pushed my hand away and rose from his barstool to pace. “He was dying, girl. The plague took his mind. Forget the Resistance. Forget everything beyond the wall. It’s easier that way.”
“Like you forgot Quinn?” Anger rushed through me. Calvin hadn’t lied, not to me. The Resistance was real. It had to be. “Some things in life aren’t that easy to forget. Resden has a vaccine—”
“I don’t wanna know, girl.” Ivan covered his borrowed ears. “I’m old and tired.”
“But—”
Nobody patted my shoulder. “Let it go.”
I took a deep breath releasing the frustration clawing up my esophagus. Ivan wasn’t going to help me, at least not consciously. I smiled, a plan forming in the back of my mind. It wasn’t a nice one either. But I needed the Resistance. The outcome outweighed the journey, or so my mutant-rock addicted friend, Tony used to say.
“Fine.” I faced Ivan. “But this isn’t over. I’ll find the Resistance and destroy Resden. You wait and see.” I didn’t add Quinn to the list, but the unspoken hung in the air between us.
The Body Dwellers Page 5