The ground?
She came awake painfully and blinked, light stabbing at her eyes. So much for opening them. Something cold and wet laved her cheek, and then the dog stuffed his nose in her eye, snorting with quick harsh breaths.
“Hey there.” Ricky’s voice; the scent of his hair. She wedged a hand between Bruce’s muzzle and her cheek and tried fluttering her eyes open again, and found herself in the shade of Ricky’s face. His amber eyes widened. She stirred, and sharp rocks scraped against her back. Something bigger and harder dug into the base of her spine, but that was meant to be there — tucked into the waistband of her jeans. She couldn’t believe it was still there, since she now lay on the gravel of a dusty parking lot, and they had to have carried her from the van to here.
She looked up and found Anton looming over Ricky’s shoulder. He radiated fear and worry, but he looked at her real hard. Then he glanced almost imperceptibly at her waist and back to her eyes.
He knew. He must have been the one who moved her. She couldn’t tell whether he approved, but so long as he didn’t say anything, she didn’t care.
Her head throbbed. Her stomach grumbled. She’d never needed to pee so badly in her entire life. “Hey,” she said to Ricky, voice rough. “Where are we?”
“The Roadhouse,” said Ricky, his eyes wide and wet. Emma gave him a blank look. He blinked. “We’re still in Arizona, about fifteen miles out of Douglas.”
“Oh,” said Emma. This was the longest goddamn day she’d ever slept most of her way through. Hopefully the roadhouse would have a restroom. “I passed out?” Her mouth was dry, so dry.
“We thought you’d fallen asleep, but then we couldn’t wake you.” Ricky smoothed damp strands of hair away from her face. “Telly thought it might be a side effect —” he glanced around, bit his lip, and said the next in a whisper almost too low for her to hear. “Of what happened. In the bathroom. Too much power.” Louder then. “We didn’t know if you’d wake up.”
Emma put her arms around Ricky’s neck, determined not to think about whether there had been a chance she might not wake up. “I’m awake now,” she said. “Get me up, yeah?”
Ricky wrapped his arms around her and stood, lifting her as though she didn’t weigh 140 pounds. He was still shirtless, skin slick with sweat.
Anton was suddenly behind her as she came to her feet. He needn’t have worried; the hem of her t-shirt hung a few inches below the waistband of her jeans. He met her eyes and shoved a hand through his damp curls, disguising the slightest shake of his head. He looked tense and exhausted. His red t-shirt was damp with sweat, his jaw dark with stubble that hadn’t been there that morning. It only intensified how much older he looked than Ricky. Harder. It made Emma’s breath catch.
“She’s fine; we’re going in,” Kal announced to the waiting party. His deep voice was unnecessarily loud. The maidens went silent, all of them staring at Emma with glittering eyes, cascades of golden hair set alight by late, slanting sunshine. To Emma, Kal said, “Keep that fucking dog under wraps, woman. You don’t want him to piss me off.”
She threaded her fingers through Bruce’s fur and said nothing, but she met Kal’s fierce blood-amber gaze and refused to flinch. Refused to be afraid. Refused to let fly with the insults that crowded behind her teeth. He might be one badass sonofabitch, but he’s not a bully. He can be reasoned with. A bully wouldn’t have let her keep the dog. A bully wouldn’t have respected her having the guts to stand up to him.
They started across the parking lot and Emma looked around. It must have been almost six or seven in the evening — had to be, if they’d made it all the way past Douglas — but it was high summer, and the light was still bright and rich, the shadows long. They were in a much bigger parking lot than she’d seen all day, and it made sense, because it belonged to a sprawling roadside bar complete with a long front porch and more than twenty motorcycles angle parked outside it. The sound of heavy music and clinking glass and drunken shouts drifted out, despite the fact that the sun was still in the sky, close as it was to the horizon.
There were a few groups of bikers and rough types drinking on the porch — no women — leaning against the railing, and none of them seemed concerned with Emma, or her friends, or her captors. Creepy despite the boisterous music and the shouting; maybe the creep factor was accentuated just a bit by the swaying skeleton that hung from the far end of the porch awning.
A shredded, sun bleached shirt made the thing almost more obscene somehow, and a thatch of wispy black hair still clung to the scalp. Patches of dried skin hung like stretched cobwebs off one collarbone, clung to a few ribs; those bits of parchment skin were the only thing holding its jaw to the rest of its head. Bird droppings decorated the colorless shirt in long streaks. A couple of guys in dusty roadwork gear stood no more than six or seven feet from it, drinking beers as though it wasn’t even there.
“Jesus.” Emma looked around at the maidens, at Kal with his hulking shoulders, at the black haired man with the empty eyes whose name she couldn’t remember. “What is that,” she asked with a jerk of her head in the direction of the Roadhouse’s grisly porch decoration. “Your mascot?”
Telly cracked up. He laughed until he wheezed, a boisterous, cackling laugh that would have been infectious in any other circumstance.
“That’s enough,” said Kal, looking oddly disturbed by Telly’s laughter. “Move.” He waved the muzzle of his rifle in the direction of the bar and picked up the pace.
Stomach growling, Emma trudged after him. “Don’t suppose the Roadhouse does a cheeseburger and fries?”
Telly went off again. With wild eyes, Ricky regarded her, face ashen with exhaustion and fear. His one bare leg was smooth and perfect, but the claw marks on his back were only halfway healed, still nasty looking. Yet one corner of his mouth curved, just a little. “Sorry,” he stage whispered. “Kitchen closes at five.”
In spite of the hunger and thirst and the urgent need to pee, Emma grinned fiercely and hoarded the memory of that small half smile. If her best friend could do this, so could she.
They tramped up the wooden porch stairs, and music hit them as Kal pushed the door open. Emma caught a bar of an old Def Leppard song before the roar of noise hit her like a second wave and drowned it out.
It was huge and dim on the inside, crammed with people. How did a shitty looking roadhouse like this attract such a crowd? As the bikes out front suggested, a great number of the clientele were bikers, and surely there were truckers and others come in from the road, but the rest of the crowd looked mingled and varied; cowboys, men and women in business suits, casual looking people in jeans and nice dresses. Hell, Emma even spotted a small bunch of punk kids occupying a corner, their bright hair and dark makeup stark against white skin. If they hadn’t been so pale, they wouldn’t have been visible in the gloom.
Chairs and tables overflowed with people and drinks, and the seating filled most of the space, all the furniture heavy wood, along with a few pool tables, a brightly flashing pinball machine in one corner, and a dead jukebox in another. The lengthy bar ran along the left hand side, and the crowd there was three deep, all of them shouting and waving hands or money at the half dozen bartenders.
The far end of the room was occupied by a stage. Neon blue and purple lights rotated like crazy spotlights, and as Emma watched, one enormous red light flashed on in the center of the stage, to reveal a figure standing motionless and black like a shadow in the crimson wash. The crowd roared. The figure began to sway, the light turning from red to a hot glowing orange, illuminating more of the stage, revealing the soft features and female curves of the performer. Yep, no prize for guessing what kind of show this was.
The DJ had a thing for Def Lep; Rocket bled into Pour Some Sugar On Me and the performer began to dance in earnest, stalking the stage and doing the stripper thing. Emma was suddenly sure she’d never be able to listen to her Greatest Hits CD the same way ever again.
Of course, she had bigger things
to worry about. Like the fact that she’d just stepped into a bar with a small army of shapechangers and everyone not currently fixated on the half naked woman onstage was turning to look in her direction.
Paranoia told her their eyes were all on her; rationality told her she was imagining things, but it was too dark to tell. The music kept on pounding, the dancer kept dancing to the throbbing bass beat of it. Nobody screamed or seemed even slightly interested in the huge men with the big guns. Kal was satisfied; he waved everybody in and headed across the floor. The hot, sweaty crowd parted before him without a word, and the maidens brought up the rear.
Emma wondered for one horrible second if anybody in the bar could really, truly see them. Shapechangers couldn’t effect mass hypnosis on a group this size, could they? If they could, then that was some scary shit. Well, it was some more scary shit. Honestly, who needed any more?
The illusion of being invisible collapsed as soon as Emma waded into the crowd. The dog snarled silently at her side. Strange eyes met hers. Some of them looked openly curious, others more guarded. A tall blond biker with a barrel chest and a face full of scars looked her up and down, head turning to track her as she moved past him, brown eyes black in the dim light. There was no reason those eyes should remind her of Telly’s, but they did. Then he disappeared, swallowed up by jostling bodies as Emma moved forward, pushed by Anton behind, led by Telly and a bunch of maidens with their glittering, swishing hair bouncing as they padded in front. Telly’s own pale hair didn’t so much bounce and swish as bristle and twitch, like the ruff of some startled animal. Not happy, and it showed.
Kal led them to the end of the long bar and through a door that was almost invisible, nestled in shadows off to the side of the stage and obscured by bodies. Everyone parted to let Kal through, but none of their eyes stopped to rest on him; Emma got the impression that far from not seeing him, they were all too aware of him, and trying not to be seen in turn. It made her wonder who he was — aside from just a big scary shapechanger with red eyes and a gun.
They emerged into a short corridor that looked like it serviced the area behind the bar, but off to the right there were a few doors, and Kal shoved through the first. A maiden held the door while everyone followed Kal into the room beyond. It was a wide, spacious dressing room, with mirrors and clothing racks, but it also held road cases, mic stands, amplifiers, large coils of electrical cable. A couple of empty glass tanks and wire cages occupied the nearest right hand corner. Emma tightened her hand reflexively in Bruce’s fur; what the hell were they going to do with the dog?
The room must have flanked the stage on the other side of the wall; another door evidently led straight from the dressing room to the stage, for performers to use. The music here was muffled to a reverberating bass thud. Aside from the door to the stage, there was another exit on the far side of the room.
Emma had to forcibly restrain herself from asking Anton or Telly where they were being taken as Kal led them from the dressing room and into another hallway, this one much longer than the smaller service corridor near the bar. It didn’t seem prudent to keep asking stuff like that; not only did it make her look stupid, but it made her feel stupid, too. Besides, knowing the destination wouldn’t give her any choice in whether she went or not.
Kal didn’t lead them through any more doors, though the hallway was lined with them. The music grew more and more distant, until it became more like an earthy pulse felt through the floor than a sound; good soundproofing. The music disappeared altogether as the floor changed abruptly from worn timber to rough stone. They’d reached the end of the hallway, and one heavy stone slab formed what looked to be a door.
Emma glanced at Ricky. His face was shiny with nervous sweat, and his eyes were restless beneath the fall of his messy curls. He noticed her looking at him and gave her hand a squeeze, but it didn’t chase the fear from his face. She returned the squeeze.
Kal seemed to be waiting for something. He stood by the slab door, face impassive, blood-orange eyes roving over his captives. It was gloomy in the passageway, but Emma could feel the weight of his stare on her. She met his eyes and wished she hadn’t; they were flat and hard and his thoughts moved behind them, and she didn’t want him to be thinking about her, not with that look on his face.
It occurred to her, not for the first time, that she might die at the hands of people like Kal no matter what Anton and Telly and Ricky said about her worth or her value to them. Anton’s words of prophecy had never seemed so empty, or so very far away.
The stone slab suddenly shuddered into motion, sliding with the sound of stone on stone and the other, deeper groan of whatever mechanism powered the door. Emma was the only one who jumped. Telly took a step backwards, fitting the warm line of his body against her left side. Ricky pressed in at her right, and Anton moved closer, hands on her shoulders. As comforting as it was, she wished they wouldn’t play bodyguard. It was going to get old fast, and judging by the look on Kal’s face, he thought so too. But he said nothing. Instead he turned his attention to the opening in front of him.
The space beyond couldn’t be seen from the vantage point of the hallway, mostly because of the giant standing in the entrance. His size matched Kal’s, and so did his gun, but everything else about him was pure bodyguard, the closest thing to human Emma had seen all day. Dark hair buzzed close to his scalp, he looked almost bald, plain blue eyes and a thick handlebar mustache.
He glanced over them all and looked at Kal. “This them?”
Kal nodded. The guard looked over them again, studying Emma for a moment, then the three men who were crowded in against her, almost obscuring her from view. He didn’t look happy. Emma had a feeling they were going to try to separate her from her protectors. Anton’s hands tightened on her shoulders.
The guard jerked his chin at Telly. “What’s he doing here?”
Kal drew himself up, lifting his considerable chest. “It’s complicated.”
The guard lifted an eyebrow, his eyes on Kal for a long time. Emma got the distinct feeling something passed between them, but neither spoke.
Finally the guard moved away, revealing the first landing of a set of wide stone steps that led down into a passageway straight out of a medieval dungeon. Panic flared cold and bright in Emma’s chest; the torches that lined the walls, flickering in the draft, hardly improved the atmosphere.
Ricky’s hand tightened on hers, and a glance up at his face confirmed the anxiety there. She couldn’t tell if it was because he knew where they were going, or he didn’t. Neither Anton nor Telly gave any sign either way.
“Everybody down.” The guard motioned with the nose of his gun, laying himself flat to the wall to let the group pass. Emma wondered if they all practiced the bodyguard-speak, or if it just came naturally. Kal didn’t even reply, just started down the steps, trusting the maidens and the black haired man at the rear to keep everyone in check. Not that anyone would bother to try anything in such a confined space — perhaps with more numbers on their side, it might work, but four against ten were not odds anybody liked.
Emma shuffled along within the prison of male bodies surrounding her, but had to stop when they stepped down off the landing onto the first step. She took a couple of teetering ballerina steps to stop herself from being pushed by Anton straight on top of Telly a step below her.
“Guys,” she said. “Gimme some space. I’ll trip up if you don’t.”
Telly turned around to look at her, his silvery eyes glittering in the torchlight, then past her, at Anton. She felt Anton step back. Telly moved to her left, and held out his hand to her. There was enough room in the wide stairway to walk three abreast, but she would feel like a little girl with the two men on either side holding her hands. Besides, she needed one hand free at least. She shook her head at Telly and started down the steps again, this time with more room in front of her.
The stairs were big enough she had to take two steps on each one, but not so big the taller men had to. The maidens
hurried along on their shorter legs, and Emma almost envied them — the lurching strides she had to take were awkward, and made her steadily more dizzy. Maybe it was just the endless stone walls of the stairway, though. Something about the rough pattern of exposed rock going by without variation gave her a tug of nausea. She tried not to think about it. If she thought about it, she would remember she was claustrophobic despite the deceptive width of the stairway, and that would not be good.
In spite of how many people were clattering down the stairs, the stairway seemed to absorb the noise, the loudest sound the smack of boots. The maidens made almost no noise at all, and Ricky and Telly were both barefoot. Nobody spoke a word.
Emma had begun to wonder just how far down the stairway descended — it wasn’t steep, but they had already marched at least fifty feet of stairs already — when the steps petered out and she stumbled on flat ground. She hadn’t noticed the change because there were too many bodies in front of her, and the torchlight had been steadily dimming, the sconces spaced farther apart along the walls of the stairway. They stood on a landing almost bathed in darkness, the black pooling up ahead like a cup of ink, but at least the ground was flat.
Kal slowed down and stepped to the side of the passageway, to let the maidens go ahead of him. Emma watched him as she passed him; his eyes were black in the dim light, half his angular face black with shadow. There were glittering black beads in his dreadlocks that she hadn’t noticed until the torchlight set them shining against the matte of his hair. He was all hard angles and black on tan in the gloom, and he looked like a big, pretty totem pole, part of the stone. Well, not exactly — the gun kind of ruined the effect. She imagined she could feel his gaze on her, lingering long after she passed him, and her shoulder blades itched.
They followed the maidens into the pitch black of the end of the passageway. Emma tightened her hand on Ricky’s and resisted the urge to look over her shoulder, look for the receding light. It would only screw up her night vision, and then the shadows would be impenetrable. No doubt she was the only one with this problem; everybody else could damn well see in the dark.
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