Earthshaker
Page 32
I reached over and touched his arm. "Who my family is, you mean." I met his gaze with all the sincerity I could muster. "And no, I'll never forget that again."
Duke took my hand and gave it a squeeze. "Remember when you first brought me to life?" he said. "I had a tough time of it, didn't I?"
"You ran away," I said. "Tried to go back to your family. Tried to join your old band."
"But I couldn't." Duke sighed and shook his head. "I'd changed too much. I had a new mission in life. Nowhere to go but forward."
I looked away, feeling a pang of old guilt for what I'd put him through. "It took you a long time to accept that."
"But eventually I did," said Duke, "and the old things just sort of drifted away. Except the ones that matter most." He rippled his fingers through the air, playing notes and chords with a flourish on invisible keys.
"But what do you do when there's so much? Billions of years' worth?" I said. "How do you know what to keep?"
"The melody," said Duke. "Like in jazz. The basic tune's a keeper. The rest is all solos, all improvisation. You make it up fresh every time, and that's what makes it swing." He chuckled. "You dig?"
I grinned. "I dig."
"Cool." Duke slid his hand smoothly through the air, then ended the gesture with a snap of his fingers. "So what's next? What about the things you said you have to take care of?"
"Actually, that's why I came in today," I said. "I'm meeting someone."
"To what end, Earth Angel?" said Duke.
"Job interview." I had a sip of coffee.
Duke raised his eyebrows. "I didn't know we were hiring."
"We aren't," I said. "I am."
"Now you've got me curious," said Duke. "Can I sit in on the interview?"
I shrugged. "Why bother? It's pretty much a done deal. She's a shoe-in."
As if on cue, the door opened to the sound of "Caravan." Turning, I saw Phaola walk in and look around the office skittishly.
"But don't tell her that," I whispered to Duke, and then I gave him a wink.
*****
Chapter 66
Phaola and I drove out to the state game lands on the other side of the county line. Parked my black Toyota Highlander hybrid by the road and walked into the woods along a familiar trail.
After a while, we emerged in a meadow on a hilltop. It was a place I'd been to not so long ago.
"So what's this all about?" Phaola rose into the air and had a bird's-eye look around. "What's this big opportunity you mentioned?"
I walked through the tall grass to the middle of the meadow. The wicker cross was still there, right where we'd left it after Aggie's funeral.
"There's a job opening." Smiling to myself, I reached into the front pocket of my bluejeans and pulled out the pearl necklace Laurel had received at her Parapets membership ceremony. Though the pearls, which had once been kaleidoscopic, weren't changing shape anymore, they still gleamed bright white in the midday sun. I draped them over the wicker cross where Aggie's clothes and jewelry had once hung.
"What kind of job? What does it pay?" Phaola sounded half-interested at best, but I knew better. Now that Parapets was in the hands of the Feds, and Groundswell had been gutted, she was at loose ends. She needed something new to do with her life. Something positive, ideally. Teetering as always on the thin line between good and evil, she needed a sign to point the way...and I intended to give it to her.
I intended to give her a sign and fill a void at the same time. "It's a very rewarding position," I said. "You won't believe the fringe bennies."
Suddenly, Phaola looked suspicious. "Hold on a minute." She circled me from a distance, frowning down at me. "This isn't a trick, is it? Some kind of payback for working for Groundswell?"
I shook my head and smiled serenely. "No trick."
"Because remember, I came through in the end, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did," I said.
"And I swear I didn't know all the bad shit they were up to," said Phaola. "Not till the end."
"There's no payback, Phaola," I said. "Some karma maybe, but only the good kind." I gestured for her to come down to me.
She still looked a little wary when she landed. "So how big is this opportunity, then?"
I closed my eyes, reaching out with my mind to touch the hilltop under my feet. Then the mountains around me, the buckled crust of the Earth girdling the breast of the continent. Dancing with animals, twitching with plant life, flexing with the never-ending pressures of the shifting underground. Filled to overflowing with all manner of interacting forces, miraculous physics, buried history...yet empty at heart. No benevolent soul to guide and guard and nurture. No portable form to walk and intercede among humankind in trying times. No Laurel. No Lady of the Alleghenies.
"How big?" I said. "The biggest."
Smiling, I walked up to Phaola and took her hands. Prepared to initiate the process if she'd let me.
This was something I could do now, since I'd taken back my power and memories. I could fill a void with a worthy soul. Adopt a new member for the family of Landkind.
Extend an invitation. Give someone a second chance and hope she took it.
"Phaola," I said as I started sending her images of the grand Alleghenies in which we stood. "What would you say if I told you there's a mountain range in need of a guiding light?"
Phaola's eyes were dazzled as I expanded her consciousness, showing her what it felt like to inhabit thousands of square miles of mountains.
Slowly, a smile flowed across her features.
*****
Chapter 67
The sun was down by the time I got to Briar's place. I parked the Highlander in the driveway, switched off the engine, checked my face in the rear-view mirror. Fluffed my bangs before I got out of the car.
Crickets and cicadas chirped and buzzed in the trees as I walked to the front porch. Their end-of-summer song was still swinging, still sweet, still just starting up. Hearing it was one of the perks of being alive.
But there were other perks, too.
I walked up the steps and reached out to ring the doorbell...then changed my mind and knocked instead. Preferring the personal touch when it came to this house and this man.
After the second knock, he called out to me. "C'mon in, Gaia." And I did as he said.
The cozy living room looked cramped these days. It was bursting at the seams with mountains of files, folders, and paperwork. Three walls were tacked with a jumble of maps, photos, memos, and news clippings. An enormous whiteboard dominated the fourth wall, every centimeter scrawled with notes in multiple colors of dry-erase marker.
Since the battle of Parapets, Briar's house had become a kind of command post. With his unique insight, he'd been appointed to an interagency task force committed to cleaning up the fallout. Plenty of Groundswell's assets had wandered off in the chaos after the battle and scattered to the four winds. It was up to the task force to round them up before they did more damage.
I was working with the task force, too, on the condition that I could stay off the radar. It was one way of keeping the Feds halfway at bay now that my profile had been raised. On the one hand, they were itching to get me in a lab and suss me out; on the other hand, they were plenty busy with the gazillion wonders they'd pulled out of Parapets, and they were desperate to keep a lid on. The good news for them was, it was easy to justify enforcing top secret status in the case of Groundswell. You couldn't get much more "terrorist" than trying to murder all of humanity.
"Okay, got it." Briar walked into the room with a phone to his ear. Most likely talking to someone from FBI, ATF, or Homeland Security. Whoever had the hot potato on the task force that night. "Got it. I'll be there." He smiled as he walked past me to the whiteboard. Scrubbed off a clear spot on the board with the side of his fist, grabbed a marker, and scribbled an address. "Thanks, bye."
And then he hung up and was all mine. But for how long, I wondered. "You said you have to be somewhere?"
"Not till tom
orrow morning." Grinning, Briar tossed the phone on the landslide of files on the couch and marched toward me.
My heart pounded as he swept me into his arms. As he gazed at me for such a long moment before kissing me.
"I'm glad you're here," he said. "I'm glad you're with me."
I took his face in my hands. I was a little nervous. "I couldn't wait to see you. I thought about you all day."
"Good." He took my hand and kissed it.
"How does it feel?" I said. "Having the whole world revolve around you?"
Briar laughed and pulled me closer. "You could be the tiniest piece of nothing, and you would still be my whole world." He kissed me again.
Clasped in those strong arms, warmed by the heat of that body and soul, I wanted him. I pressed myself tight against him, scrolled my fingers over his muscular back.
Why was I still trembling? This wasn't my first time, in all my thousands of years in human form.
But maybe it was the first time I'd felt exactly this way. This perfect. This right.
This happy.
I broke from him and took his hand. Led him through the maze of files and folders and out of the living room.
He stopped me in the hallway and spun me into his arms. Leaned me back against the wall and kissed me with a fire that stopped me from trembling. Made me grab him and push him back against the other wall.
We shed our clothes in a flurry as we scrambled into the bedroom. Crying out at the shock of first contact, the brushing of flesh against flesh. Roughness and tenderness, sweet honey in the rock.
Smiling, he pulled me down with him. I lighted on his bed like a butterfly on a leaf. Like a lioness on an antelope.
As we made love for the first time, I was woman and world all at once. Ever moving, ever turning, ever changing. Wrapped in the arms of a lover, in the rays of the sun. Heat surging in the core of my human body and the core of the planet at the same time.
Basking in starlight, astride the solar winds. Spinning in my place in the cosmic clockwork like a music box ballerina. Pulling and pulled, touching and touched, knowing and known. Radiant, transcendent, ineffable.
My awareness of every square foot of rock and soil, every living thing on my surface, every liter of water and cubic inch of air...of all the lights and forces and particles of space around me...of my lover's voice and breath and body and spirit...all of it flaring suddenly like lightning or a dream, swelling like a rhapsody in an Ellington suite, melting and blending and blurring together...rondo legato allegro accelerando crescendo crescendo altissimo
Sostenuto
Piano
Pianissimo
Adagio
Delicato.
And dissolving into the foam at the edge of the surf of my warm, salty sea...the last flake of snow from the cloud gliding over my north pole...the cry of the first songbird of misty dawn on the other side of me, where the darkness rolls away before the light and a new day begins.
And then, for the first time all day, the first time in billions of years that felt like a day, I truly believed in my hearts, my human heart and my planet's heart of molten rock, both of them beating as one, that everything but everything was going to be all right.
*****
Special Preview: Bloodliner
By Robert T. Jeschonek
Now On Sale
Jonah was drunk, pissed at the world, fresh from his mom and dad's viewing at the funeral home...and he was playing what might have been his best gig ever.
He had always been good, but he was great that night. He ripped through every song with unusual precision and ferocity. Instead of note-perfect renditions, he brought each solo alive with newfound fire and surprise. He pushed the whole band to a new level, and he could tell they loved it.
As they drove through one Jethro Tull classic after another, from "Locomotive Breath" to "Thick as a Brick," all four musicians grinned with rare and predatory intensity. It wasn't just a run-of-the-mill gig.
Too bad hardly anyone was there to see it.
The bar, a downtown Tucson dive joint called Halcyon, was tiny...and nowhere near full. Not counting the bartender, Jonah didn't see more than ten people in the room at the same time that night.
But he played for those ten people like he was playing for a full house. Like he was playing with something to prove.
Something to forget.
The audience, small as it was, definitely caught the vibe and egged on the band. It was the kind of give-and-take that Jonah thrived on, with band and audience equally focused and serious and unified.
And some were more focused than others. One, in particular, was focused hard on Jonah.
She looked twenty-something, with shoulder-length blonde hair and impossibly bright blue eyes. A tight-fitting white tank top and black leather skirt hugged the curves of her perfectly sloped and rounded body.
If she ever took her eyes off Jonah, he didn't see it happen. She watched every move he made and locked eyes with him every time he looked out at her.
She didn't seem to be with anyone. She just stood with a bottle of beer in her hand, six feet away from Jonah, dancing to every single song with supple, undulating movements.
Which, naturally, made him play with even more fire. He had a pretty good idea what might be coming next.
Sure enough, at the end of the first set, the girl made a beeline for him. With a silent, knowing smile, she wrapped his hand in her own and led him out the back door into the alley outside.
Then, she closed the door behind them and pinned him against the wall.
Jonah's heart pounded as she flexed her body against his. Her hands, where they locked his wrists to the wall, were cold, but her gaze was filled with heat.
"You were amazing in there." Her throaty voice was a purr. "I am so turned on right now."
"I know the feeling." Jonah grinned. Playing with the band had taken his mind off his troubles a little. Maybe the blonde would take his mind the rest of the way off, if only for a while.
Without another word, the girl moved in for a kiss. Jonah's heart beat even faster as he finally made the contact he'd been anticipating for so long.
But the kiss was not quite what he'd expected.
The girl's lips were freezing cold, as if she'd just eaten ice cream or gone swimming. There wasn't the slightest trace of warmth anywhere in her kiss.
Jonah pulled back. "Are you chilly?" Even as he asked the question, he couldn't imagine that she could possibly feel cold in that alley. It was a hot desert night in Tucson, probably in the nineties...plus which, heat was rolling off an air conditioning unit in the window a few yards away.
"Low blood pressure. But we can fix that." The girl moved in for another kiss. Her fingers latched onto his belt buckle.
"We need you," said the girl.
We? That was when Jonah realized something wasn't right.
He suddenly felt much hotter than he thought he should. His lower body, in fact, was quickly becoming uncomfortable, as if he were standing too close to a hot stove.
Jonah looked down...and immediately wished he hadn't.
He'd never seen anything like it. Thin streams of blood projected from the tops of his legs--a dozen streams per leg punching right through his clothing. They met in a glistening red veil that hung suspended in midair, rippling mere inches from the girl's face. As Jonah watched, new streams burst from his legs and added their crimson liquid to the veil.
"What the hell?" said Jonah. "What are you doing?"
But the girl did not answer.
Get out of here. Now.
Jonah was in for another shock when he tried to escape: his hands were stuck to the wall, and his feet were locked to the floor of the alley.
He couldn't move.
What's going on here?
Then, it got worse.
The girl opened her mouth wide, and red filaments reached toward her from the veil. The sinuous filaments twisted and writhed as they flowed between her scarlet lips and over
her jet black tongue.
Black tongue? Black tongue?!? Why didn't I notice that before?
The girl spoke without closing her mouth. The red filaments splashed against the tip of her tongue when it moved. "How delicious," she said. "I love you."
She's a vampire! Vampires are real!
"I'll blow you a kiss," she said, and then she puckered her lips and squirted a flume of blood toward Jonah's face.
The blood stopped in front of his nose and hung in midair. It curled and contorted and rotated, forming into a gleaming red shape.
A throbbing cartoon heart the size of a quarter.
Since when can vampires do this kind of crazy stuff?
The girl giggled. "Happy birthday, baby," she said. "Wait'll you see what comes next."
Jonah couldn't take his eyes off the floating cartoon heart. It changed as he watched, twisting and kneading itself into a new shape.
A skull and crossbones.
That was when Jonah finally tried to scream. He tried with all his strength to scream as loud as he could.
And when no sound emerged from his throat, he tried to scream even louder.
*****
It was as if someone had heard Jonah's silent cry. Seconds after he tried in vain to scream his head off, the sound of gunfire crackled in the alley.
Multiple impacts shook the blood-drinking girl and pitched her from her knees to the dusty floor of the alley. As she dropped, so did the veil and filaments of blood. So did the floating skull and crossbones. All of it lost shape immediately and plunged down in one big splatter on the pavement.
In the same instant, Jonah regained some of the movement in his extremities. His arms and legs still felt heavy and stiff, but at least he could finally change position.