by Tanya Huff
Jack spun one of the counter stools. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Uh-huh. Then it was probably another big lizard they were all fucking dragon about.”
The Courts might be hiding one of his uncles to get back at him. He didn’t have the skill to break through that kind of casting. Spinning the stool in the other direction, he muttered, “Great.”
“Probably not. You want something to eat? They said you guys are always hungry. Of course there’s no guarantee they meant you’re hungry for pie, is there?” Her smile turned speculative. After four years around Gale girls, Jack knew speculative. “So, how dangerous would it be to fuck you? Go out in a blaze of glory or just . . .” Her voice dropped to a heated purr. “. . . blaze of glory, no out?”
Great. A bored Nymph. The vinyl on the stool began to melt. Jack snatched his hand away before it stuck to his fingers. “No idea.”
Her eyes widened. They were the same brilliant green as Joe’s, but nothing about her said Leprechaun. “No shit? You haven’t cashed in your V-card? What, are the Gales saving you for something special?”
“No. Not that I know of,” he amended after a moment’s consideration. “It’s complicated.”
Her face slid into stronger angles, the curve of her breasts diminishing as her body adapted to her belief. “You’re gay?”
“Not Facebook complicated, real world complicated.”
“And?”
Jack had no idea why he was still a part of this conversation. “She’s older.”
“So? You’re a dragon.”
“And a Gale. Complicated.”
“Well, when you get tired of complications, macking on the elderly, and pies that tell you how to wipe your ass, come back.” Visibly female again, Alice tucked her hair behind her ear, exposing the tattoo on her neck. A new leaf had budded since Jack had seen it last. “I’m not complicated at all.”
Somehow, he doubted that.
Figuring anything was better than being roped into adjusting the Calgary real estate market in advance of the expected influx of Gales, Charlie’d left Auntie Mary at the farmhouse and dropped in to see her mother, remembering too late that the news of her and Jack had spread.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry! You must be so unhappy! The world is so unfair!”
“Mom . . .” Charlie was a little taller, but her mother had arms of steel. “. . . can’t breathe . . .”
“Have you looked at your list, sweetheart? I mean, really looked at it? There must be someone on there who can help.”
Squirming her way to freedom, Charlie backed out of arm’s reach. “It doesn’t work like that, Mom.”
“What about Allie?”
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Almost Said It” slid smoothly into Tommy Alto’s “In Love.” Charlie let it play. It gave her something to listen to other than her mother. “Allie and I are fine.”
“If your father was alive . . .”
“He’d be out in the garage working on the car. Or someone’s car. Is that pecan pie I smell?” she added quickly, moving further into the kitchen. “It feels like years since I’ve had your pecan pie.”
“That’s because you’re never home. And now, with this unfortunate, heartbreaking Jack situation, you’re not likely to ever settle down, are you? Are you sure it’s not camaraderie you feel? You’re Wild. He’s Wild.”
“I’m sure, Mom.”
“So unfair. I admire how you’re handling it, sweetie. So brave.”
“Thanks. Now, if it comes to it . . .” When it comes to it, Charlie amended quietly, getting down two of the old chipped stoneware plates. “. . . are you relocating to Calgary or Australia?”
Fortunately, the potential end of the world took precedence over the heartbreak of her love life. Three hours going through her old room, deciding what to keep and what to donate to the Darsden East Volunteer Firefighters Christmas Jumble Sale was a small price to pay.
When finally she got back to Calgary with a backpack full of old band T-shirts, a ukulele, and six partial packages of phosphor bronze medium strings, she crossed to where Allie was wiping Edward’s . . . no, Evan’s face and let her head drop onto her shoulder. “Can your mother adopt me?”
“No, because that would be wrong.”
She felt a kiss on her hair then a shrug to dislodge her. “Is Jack back yet?”
“No. He checked in a couple of hours ago—no luck—and decided to widen his search parameters.”
Charlie tossed her backpack against the wall and accepted the offered toddler. “I thought he was going to play wounded bird and let his uncle come to him?”
“I guess he wants to be sure he’s flopping where they’ll notice.”
Settling on the sofa with a noncommittal grunt, to cover the I’ll go check on him that nearly made it out, Charlie nudged Graham until he turned Edward toward her and she could bounce the boys’ fists off each other. “Wonder Twin powers activate!”
“Twin!”
“Dog!”
“You know one of the Wonder Twins was a girl, right?”
“Hey.” The nudge became a poke. “Don’t burden your sons with gender expectations.”
Graham answered with his version of a noncommittal grunt, stretched his free arm along the top of the sofa until he could cup the back of her neck, his grip warm and comforting, then turned his attention back to the television.
If Graham was home and not busy with the babies or Allie or—in the early years—Jack, he watched the evening news, flipping between Global and CTV. The first time she’d been there when he’d settled, remote in hand, Charlie’d asked why and he’d said he liked to know what was going on in the world. When she asked why a second time, he’d sighed and reminded her that he published a newspaper. Since he published a tabloid that got less than no respect from the journalistic community—a remarkably successful tabloid even though apparently no one read newspapers anymore—Charlie didn’t consider that to be much of an explanation.
She played with the boys through the local news—money released for repairs to St. Patrick’s Island bridge, a small heater fire in Renfrew—wondered if the Brownies would be affected by a new restaurant opening in the Saddledome, and suddenly realized that Lisa LaFlammen, the CTV evening news anchor, had just said there was a Siren in the river in Winnipeg.
“Was she kidding?” Allie asked, leaning over the back of the sofa and absently stopping Edward from flinging himself past her to the floor.
“She thinks she was,” Charlie said trying to parse out the meaning in a voice that had been broken down to ones and zeros and rebuilt again on their forty-two-inch flat-screen TV. “But she wasn’t.”
“She believes there’s a Siren or there is a Siren?”
“Two men have drowned,” Graham pointed out. “Does it matter . . .”
His voice trailed off as the three of them watched first a shaky pixilated recording of shadowed riders and flaming hoofprints crossing Salisbury Plain, pale dogs with red ears baying at their sides, then a blurry cell phone picture of a three-tailed fox in Tokyo, and finally three creatures identified as chupacabra chasing tourists along a beach at a resort in Mexico where the recording cut out seconds after the screaming started.
“That’s not right,” Allie muttered.
“What’s not?”
Charlie tore her eyes away from LaFlamme trying to fit five deaths and a disappearance into a weird news segment without much success. She hadn’t noticed that Jack had come home until he’d spoken. “There’s some strange shit going down.”
“Shit down,” Evan repeated solemnly.
“Charlie . . .”
“Sorry.” She slid over so Jack could sit on the sofa and bit off considerably more profanity when four pudgy knees dug painfully into her thighs as both Evan and Edward crawled over her lap to their more interesting cousin. “Did
you find your uncle?”
“No. The only dragon track I could find was mine.”
“Could he have changed and taken a cab out of the city?”
Jack turned Evan upside down. “He’d still be a dragon. Something’s been hiding him since he came through.”
“He’s not the only thing that came through.” Graham thumbed the mute off and they listened to a hysterical witness try to explain what she’d seen on the beach to a reporter who was only slightly less freaked out.
“Eviscerated, Mama!”
“Seriously?” Charlie peered at Edward, taking his turn upside down. “And yet I still get Cha Cha?”
“Cha Cha!”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“We’ve always had the occasional Siren,” Allie said thoughtfully, “but they’re usually careful not to be seen.”
Graham nodded. “And chupacabra are all about the backcountry. They steer clear of people. They don’t chase them down a crowded beach.”
“I bet it’s the asteroid.” Allie straightened, arms folded. “It’s influencing their behavior.”
“How?”
“It’s unnatural.”
“They’re unnatural,” Graham pointed out. “Or preternatural, at least.”
“Pot kettle,” Charlie muttered as she stood. “Salisbury, Tokyo, and conspicuous consumption on the beach are on their own, but I’m heading to Winnipeg. I’ve got friends there and singing in the middle of the river is something they’re likely to check out.”
Jack dropped the boys on the cushion she’d just vacated and stood as well. “At full size I can make Winnipeg in a little more than three hours, maybe you should go to Mexico.”
“Drop me in Mexico.” Graham set his sons on the floor, where they wrapped themselves around his ankles. “I’ve taken out chupacabras before. You go deal with Salisbury.”
Allie came around the sofa to grab his arm. “You haven’t shot anything in four years.”
“But I don’t miss, remember.”
Thirteen years as a sorcerer’s assassin would be tough to shake even with the seventh son of a seventh son thing adjusting his aim, Charlie allowed. “What am I supposed to do in Salisbury? Yell bad dog and sing a rousing chorus of ‘The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends’?”
“Would a show tune work?” Jack asked her.
“Probably not. Look . . .” Mouth open to remind them that she had friends in Winnipeg and that they couldn’t go around saving the world, the world had to learn to save itself, she took a moment to do what she’d suggested and actually look at Jack and Graham, suddenly understanding their reaction. They couldn’t stop the asteroid, but they could stop this. Stop the Siren. Stop the chupacabras. She glanced at Allie who sighed and nodded, having clearly come to the same conclusion. “All right, fine. Jack, you can leave when you’re ready. Graham, you go get your penis substitute . . .”
“It really isn’t,” Allie muttered.
“Penis!” Edward added.
Charlie snickered through Allie’s eye roll and finished with, “I’ll meet you at the condo.” Allie wouldn’t allow Graham’s weapons in the same building as the boys and had added charms to the hidden safe across town in the condo—just in case. In case of what, exactly, Charlie wasn’t entirely sure. “I won’t be long, but I’ve got some shopping to do before I head across the pond.”
* * *
Charlie dropped Graham off at a golf course about three kilometers south of Puerto Juarez.
“It’s the closest uninhabited area near the attacks.” He swung his weapon case around into what Charlie assumed was a ready position and grinned. In spite of the total lack of euphemism in that description—on a good day she could’ve got serious mileage out of weapon in a ready position—he seemed happy. “Experience suggests this is where they’ll have gone to ground.”
“You going to be okay on your own?” “Johnny’s Got a Gun” played not softly but quietly in the background.
“I did this for a long time, Charlie, it’s good to be . . . useful.”
And they both emphatically did not look up at a thousand and one points of light strewn across a black-velvet sky. Although, given the emphasis, they might as well have.
* * *
Seven thirty-seven leaving Calgary, eight forty-five leaving Puerto Juarez; Charlie stepped out of the Wood onto Salisbury Plain at two forty-five in the morning, the sound of the horns still ringing in her ears. Stonehenge loomed on her left, closer than she’d intended, but given the amount of pull the site exerted, she wasn’t surprised. She had no more idea of what the stone circle had originally been used for than the BBC did, but with all the possibilities layered onto it over the years the original purpose no longer mattered from a metaphysical perspective. It just was.
She Sang a quick lullaby at the cluster of people silhouetted against the night on the other side of the fence, cell phones ready for the return of the Hunt, and added a charm to ease bruising—a couple of them had hit the ground hard enough to bounce. The moon was down—or maybe it hadn’t come up yet—and the stars were hidden behind a layer of cloud. It felt like it might rain, but, given that it was England, she’d been expecting that. A night-sight charm sketched onto her eyelids let her walk away from the stone circle without crushing flora or fauna underfoot. If she was going to register on the Hunt’s radar as more than part of the background metaphysics, she needed to put a bit of distance in.
“Not real radar,” she told a toad, who shot her an extremely dirty look as she passed. “Although that would be kind of cool. Like a fish finder for people. Cool in the abstract,” she amended after a moment.
She’d been walking for around forty-five minutes when she heard the hounds in the distance, baying as they caught a scent. Her scent? She stopped walking and cocked her head. One minute. Two minutes. Three. Oh, yeah. Definitely coming closer. They didn’t know what she was, but they knew she didn’t belong here. Her roots were an ocean and half of a very large continent away.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask they lead the Hunt over the Army training range and set off a few unexploded mortars,” she muttered, pulling the bag of dog treats out of a side pocket on her gig bag and opening it. The thing about the dogs that ran with the Hunt, they were dogs. Charlie had grown up with dogs.
In twenty minutes, they were close enough to see. In twenty-two, close enough to count. There were nine in the pack, large hounds with pale bodies and red ears.
Charlie planted her feet and relaxed her shoulders as the dogs swirled around her, uncertain of what to do about prey that wouldn’t run. She hummed up a little power. Pulled out a treat. “All right, you lot, sit!”
Nine doggy butts hit the chalk.
“Good dogs!”
By the time the Hunt galloped up, all nine were sprawled on the dirt, chewing on barbeque pizzles and Charlie was waiting, fingers resting lightly on the strings of her guitar. She wasn’t particularly worried. There was nothing like leaving flaming hoofprints in the sod to say Hello there, I’m young and full of myself. Look at me. Look at me!
“Why even bother to stand against us, Gale girl?” The hair toss was pure Beyoncé; only tall, dark, and silver-haired wasn’t performing. “The world is ending. Why not enjoy the final days?”
“Why not, indeed. Except you don’t get to enjoy them at the expense of others.” If she didn’t get to break the rules, they didn’t get to break the rules.
The smile gifted to her defined patronizing. “The Gales do not interfere with the Fey.”
“Yeah, see, do not doesn’t mean cannot or, for that matter, won’t.” This was the Wild Hunt, albeit junior edition, so Charlie took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and Sang a piece of music so tame, so green and pleasant, so English, it was the antithesis of Wild.
By the time she started the second verse of “The White Cliffs of Do
ver,” the riders had called their dogs and were racing for the gate, bluebirds in hot pursuit.
Charlie followed at her own pace, still Singing. And when she tossed in some early Beatles and a quick run through “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am,” to keep herself from going nuts, it made no difference to the speed at which the riders were retreating. The burning hoofprints stopped at the edge of one of the more modern chalk carvings.
“Well . . .” She ground out the last smoldering print with the toe of her boot. It looked like they’d used the carving to anchor the gate. “. . . that’s convenient.”
Closing the gate meant changing the carving, but it only took a slight and barely visible adjustment to lock “Land of Hope and Gory” to the site. If any variation of the Hunt tried to get back through, they’d find a full brass section locking them out.
Then she climbed to the top of the slope, slipped into the Wood between two junipers, thought about heading for Tokyo, decided the kitsune wouldn’t appreciate her sticking her nose into what didn’t concern her, and finally stepped out between two honey locusts in downtown Vancouver. A quick run across Granville Street later and she was heading down the stairs into The Cellar in a desperate attempt to get the damned bluebirds out of her head.
She should’ve gone with Blake.
Still high enough he could be seen only as moving darkness against the stars, Jack realized that the lit areas of the Forks were, if not teeming, then well populated with people trying to spot the naked woman in the river. The naked woman in the river who’d already lured two men to their death.
Humans were weird.
In the UnderRealm, people either avoided Sirens or used them as weapons against enemies who were unaware of their locations. In the MidRealm, armed with cell phone cameras and the mistaken belief that a few thousand hits on YouTube meant immortality, danger was relentlessly recorded.
If the asteroid did hit, if they couldn’t stop it, Jack knew thousands of people would record right up until the flesh burned off their bones.
He gritted his teeth and circled until he managed to replace the image of Charlie burning with Charlie lying out on the roof, then, wings aching, he looked for a place to land.