Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

  Zhu nodded. “I’ve got it.” For a second Zhu rested his hand on Tank’s arm. Then he squared his shoulders and walked faster toward the familiar house.

  “Keep your exits clear,” John suggested before he took shelter behind a large tree.

  “And if they kidnap us?” Tank asked.

  “No energy signature for a transport device here, but if they have some other tech that can snatch you, keep your head down, obey when you have to, and watch for a chance to escape.”

  Tank stared at John. “I was looking for something more along the lines of an assurance that it could never happen,” Tank said before he followed Zhu up to the Petersons’ door.

  “I like your friend,” Zhu said.

  “You like that he doesn’t have time for stupid conversation.”

  “Hell, yes.” Zhu rang the bell.

  After a short wait, Mr. Peterson answered the door, his glasses perched on the top of his head. “Zhu! Tank? What’s wrong?” He looked past them to the street. This felt so very familiar.

  “Can we come in?” Zhu asked.

  “Yes. Of course.” Mr. Peterson stepped back and allowed them into the entry. This place was home more than the small room Tank’s mother rented. The dusty artwork and stacks of books had always welcomed them back from another fight. When they got here, they were safe. And now all Tank could feel were shivers as he considered that it might all be a lie.

  “My father took Marie,” Zhu said as soon as Mr. Peterson closed the door.

  For a second, he stood with his mouth open. Then he seemed to shake himself into movement. “What? When?”

  “Earlier today at the Governors Ferry. I was supposed to be there, but my outing was canceled. Then my father called and told me Marie was there and he planned to take her in my place. We couldn’t get there fast enough to stop him.”

  Mr. Peterson moved to the bottom of the stairs. “Willa! Willa, get down here.”

  Mrs. Peterson came running. “What? What is it?” She ran her hand through her gray hair, leaving a streak of bluish green paint.

  “Zhu’s father took Marie.” Mr. Peterson’s voice trembled.

  Immediately Mrs. Peterson half sat and half collapsed onto the step. All the color vanished from her face, and she clutched her own neck as though protecting it with her knobby fingers. “No. No, he can’t. Oh, by all the gods. No.”

  Mr. Peterson rested his hand on her shoulder. “We’ll find a spell. We have to locate her, so let’s start with tracking.” She stood, her eyes watery as she clutched his arm. Tank’s gut said these people weren’t avatars. No alien could understand human pain and loss the way they did. No one could fake the soul-deep wounds Mrs. Peterson carried. He looked at Zhu and shook his head.

  A frown flickered across Zhu’s face, but the expression smoothed out as he looked at Mr. Peterson again. “My father found an amulet. It will interfere with magic, so a spell might work or might not. It might help us find Marie or send us into a trap. You can’t rely on magic to help fight Mr. Chow.” That sounded so reasonable—but no one had brought up any amulet. Tank figured it was just a ploy to get the Peterson’s to give up their demon hunting magics.

  “Where did he get it?” Mrs. Peterson asked. “Oh, goddess. What do we do?” She looked at her husband in horror.

  He stood, his expression blank as he clutched the stair rail. For the first time, Tank realized that Mr. Peterson didn’t know what to do any more than the rest of them. If they had a book and knew what spell to look up, Mr. Peterson would be all over that. But with no leads, he was as clueless as the rest of them.

  “We have to figure something out. What do we have on amulets?” Mr. Peterson asked his wife.

  Zhu stepped forward. “No. We don’t want you to get involved.”

  “But Marie!” Mrs. Peterson gasped.

  “We’ll save her,” Tank said. Mrs. Peterson pressed her lips together and definitely didn’t look convinced.

  “Clearly you need help. We have the research materials, so we just need to figure out how to neutralize this amulet.” Mr. Peterson straightened up and got a stoic look on his face. As miserable as he was, he wanted to help. It also occurred to Tank that the aliens wouldn’t know what spell the Petersons had cast or how to react unless they were listening to everything. Even if the Petersons weren’t spies, the aliens were eavesdropping.

  And if Tank had figured that out, Zhu already knew it. “We should go,” Tank said. He turned to the Petersons. “We just wanted you to know that Mr. Chow had a way to counteract magic.” And by that, Tank meant that Mr. Chow could simply choose to ignore the rules since he was running the game. Zhu had been right to make up a lie that included enough truth to protect the Petersons from their own ignorance.

  “He’s right. We should go,” Zhu said. When he turned his back, Tank opened the front door for a fast retreat.

  “Are you working with the military?” Mr. Peterson shouted after them. When Tank turned, Mr. Peterson was glaring at him.

  Zhu whirled around. “Now you care? When Tank was in the hospital after that last fight, he brought up the military, and you seemed to be all in favor of it.” The anger in Zhu’s voice surprised Tank.

  Mr. Peterson looked almost offended. “It offered him a chance at a meaningful career and a future—but Zhu, if he’s brought the military into this, you have to see the danger. They’ll experiment on you. They’ll try to get involved in the fight against demons, and they’ll ruin everything. You can’t trust them.”

  “The military?” Mrs. Peterson’s voice was painfully high. “You’re working with the military?”

  Zhu laughed. “The military would never believe in demons or the minions of hell trying to bring about Armageddon. If we even tried to talk to them about demons, they’d either laugh in our face or just pat us on the head and show us the door.” Zhu’s contempt was evident in every word. He was almost vibrating with dark emotions. “But I have found someone who has been at this longer than any of us.”

  “John’s coming,” Tank said when he spotted the man at the end of the drive. Tank really wanted to get the hell out of the house before John could make any unkind comments. The Petersons were hurting enough.

  “Who’s John?” Mr. Peterson strode forward, standing between Zhu and Tank as he stared out his door. John strode up the walk, his physical presence making Mr. Peterson step back. “Who are you?”

  “It’s clear. We should go.” John completely ignored Mr. Peterson.

  “What’s clear? What did you expect?” Mr. Peterson looked at Zhu.

  John moved to the top of the steps. It was late in the day and his makeup was starting to fade, so a faint mottling stained his face. “It’s wrong to send children to fight your battles.”

  Mr. Peterson pulled back as if he’d been bit. “What?”

  John’s smile was terrifying. “I’ve heard the stories. You sent them out, even back when they were kids.”

  Mrs. Peterson stood up. “Marie and Zhu are always going to be in the middle of this. We couldn’t stop that, but we told the others to stay out of the fight.” Mrs. Peterson looked right at Tank. And actually that was true. Tank and Roger had both been told that their all-too-average reflexes and brains made them less suited to fight the forces of evil. “We told them they could die and shouldn’t get involved.” Her voice cracked.

  John took a step forward, and Mr. Peterson retreated into the house. “The two you did send out to fight could have died too. I’m like Marie.”

  “A demon?” Mr. Peterson said, his voice breathless with fear.

  The look John gave him could have frozen a polar bear. “I don’t much care what you call me. Where I grew up, in demon territory, there were lots of us. We were slaves, but we still knew right from wrong. When I was a kid, normal humans protected me. They fought to make sure I had a chance to grow up, and some of them died for me. Don’t tell me what regular humans can’t do. Captain Brian Hoffer and Staff Sergeant Eric Holmes knew they had a duty to prote
ct the kids, and they’re both normal humans.”

  “And Tyrone Smith,” Tank said.

  John lifted an eyebrow.

  “Local drug dealer who would help us out by spotting demons and running interference,” Zhu explained. “Mr. Peterson told us to avoid him, but sometimes he was the best person to get a job done.”

  “Another normal human,” John said. “Normal humans can get shit done when they’re motivated.” He looked from Mr. to Mrs. Peterson, his expression carrying so much contempt that Tank expected the negative vibes to cause the house to spontaneously catch fire or something.

  “We were all doing our best,” Tank said. Their best stank and got Ellie killed and put Roger on the path to evil, but pathetically enough, it had been their best.

  John snorted, wrinkled his nose like he’d smelled something foul, and then turned and walked away into the night. The emotional devastation was almost more than Tank could take, and Zhu hurried after John without a word, leaving Tank the last man standing.

  “I’ll have Marie call, you know, after we get her back.” Tank couldn’t take it anymore. He turned and fled. Nothing Tank said could make these people hurt any less.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  TANK SIGHED as he stood outside the room he’d been assigned at Picatinny Arsenal. Apparently Tank had been demoted to second string, and the rooms under the courthouse were for mission-critical people. When he opened the door, he expected to find a barracks full of privates who might or might not know about Tank’s history of going AWOL.

  Instead he found Lev inside, sitting on a full-sized bed. Lev shot to his feet and dumped his laptop on the mattress. “There you are. Are you okay?”

  Looking at Lev’s open and concerned expression, a wave of guilt crashed over Tank’s head. This was the man who loved him, and Tank had risked Lev’s life. No wonder everyone was so angry. “Am I okay? I’m the one who put you in the line of fire by rushing into a fight without a weapon.” The longer Tank thought about that, the more he hated himself.

  “Hey, I’ve been doing that for years. Ask Clyde. He’ll tell you how bad my instincts are once someone starts firing.” Lev’s gentle smile carried forgiveness that Tank didn’t deserve.

  Tank changed the subject. “Did you find Marie?”

  Lev scooted forward. “The technical part is over, and Clyde has drones and teams checking all the energy signatures and locations we identified. We’re working as fast as possible. But Clyde pointed out that I’m going to be worthless if I don’t get a break, so I left Van Agteren and Deborah explaining base-thirteen programming to your friend.”

  “He’ll learn it faster than anyone you’ve ever seen.” Tank had faith in Zhu’s ability.

  “Can I ask something about him?”

  “Sure.”

  Lev hesitated before asking, “If he’s so logical, why did he steal a taxi and come racing to the ferry?”

  “What else should he have done?”

  “Call someone?”

  Tank gave a rough laugh. “With us, backup would be two old hippies and one drug dealer. Zhu didn’t know how to get ahold of Brian or Eric, and Roger and Ellie are….” Tank took a deep breath as the old pain caught him like a sharp jab in the gut.

  “So he thought he could win by himself?”

  Tank had known Zhu for a long time, and as much as Zhu had trusted Marie’s fighting ability and Ellie’s research ability, and even trusted Tank to get the job done, Zhu had never believed anyone could handle demons or predict their next move as well as he could. “My guess is that he hoped to stop Marie before Mr. Chow took her or, failing that, to trade himself. He knows Marie runs off at the mouth and pisses people off, and he believes in his own ability to outthink almost anyone. I’m guessing he gave himself better odds of escape if he were taken.

  “So from his point of view, getting himself in the middle would be logical.” Tank propped his foot on a chair and unbuckled the ankle holster before adding the knife, primary weapon, and garrote to the pile on top of the dresser.

  Lev stood and peered at the pile of weapons. “Wow. Can I assume you’ve been hanging out with John recently?”

  “You assume right. And he’s right that I have no business going unarmed. I put you in an impossible spot.”

  Lev sighed and held out his hand. Tank moved to the bed to take it. “You do know,” Lev said, “that the aliens probably have weapons that could smush us all like bugs.”

  “Smush. Is that a technical term?”

  “Yep. I learned it from Colonel Aldrich,” Lev said in a perfectly serious voice. “However, the inappropriate use of third-grade words aside, it’s true. They leave because exposing them ruins their experiment. We don’t have the ability to actually force them off the planet. All of you forget that we’re the lab mice fighting back against the guys in the lab coats.”

  Tank pulled Lev close. “Then why did you break cover to fire at Mr. Chow’s henchman?”

  “Because in the moment, I’m as illogical as the next man, and you were out there without any cover. The aliens will kill. They engineered an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever and massacred close to a hundred people. Human life means nothing to them. I couldn’t stand there and see you die.” Lev reached under Tank’s shirt and brushed his fingers across the skin above Tank’s belly button. Tank wondered if Lev’s hunger to touch came out of living with military men too long, or if he’d always been this affectionate. Either way, Tank enjoyed it. He rested his palm against the muscles of Lev’s back. For a geek he was beautifully muscled, and he generated heat like a little engine. Tank loved soaking it all up.

  “Don’t get killed,” Tank said softly. “I couldn’t lose you.”

  “You were in more danger than I was.”

  “Maybe we can both avoid death.”

  “Good plan. I knew there was a reason I was partial to you.” Lev grabbed the laptop and moved it from the bed to the nightstand before sitting on the bed.

  Tank sat next to him. “John wants me to learn as many systems as I can so that if I get captured, I have a chance to escape.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Lev intertwined his fingers with Tank’s. “Van Agteren is talented with systems in general, but he won’t study the transport and locking systems, in part to avoid getting assigned to a field team. We need more technical staff to support the military side. Does that mean you’re transferring to my unit?”

  Honestly, Tank had no idea where he was in the organizational chart anymore—reporting to John seemed a little military-adjacent rather than in the direct line of command. “Colonel Aldrich transferred me to John for training, and John threatened to quiz me on alien ship systems, so that’s a good strong maybe.”

  “One of the things I love about John is his understanding that it takes a lot of different skills to counter any alien incursion. Clyde is good, but sometimes his soldiers have a shoot-first attitude, and that just leads to broken equipment and cranky engineers. Is Clyde done with you for the day?” Leaning closer, Lev placed a kiss on the side of Tank’s neck. Tank turned his head so the next kiss landed on his lips. He kissed back, and the gentleness quickly turned into something hungry. By the time Lev pulled back with an impish smile, Tank was ready to come in his pants.

  “Clyde is done with me forever, but John told me to take a break because I was so twitchy that I was making him nervous.”

  “Is he going to leave you out of the rescue?”

  That was the million-dollar question, and Tank didn’t know the answer. Even though he couldn’t have stopped Mr. Chow, he felt like Marie’s kidnapping was partially his fault. If he understood the aliens better or had chosen a different type of attack, maybe he could have saved her.

  “Hey,” Lev said softly, “John is reasonable. He won’t leave you out unless he thinks there’s no other choice. And I’ll talk to Clyde. He probably didn’t mean for you to take him so seriously about reporting to John. He probably needed a little space. He’s a bit of a mother hen.”

/>   “He loves you,” Tank said. He didn’t point out that Clyde’s brotherly love for Lev was equal to and opposite of his hatred for Tank. After all, Tank had nearly gotten Lev killed.

  “Not the way I used to want, but I know that. Falling in love with someone straight sucks, huh?”

  Tank nodded. “Completely.” Tank would always carry the scars from his time with Roger. “We’re pathetic,” Tank said as he moved to straddle Lev’s knees. He kissed Lev, gently cradling the sides of his head before running fingers through his hair. Lev fumbled with the button on Tank’s pants, pulling it open so fast that Tank feared for his dangly bits.

  “That is definitely not pathetic. You have some impressive moves.”

  Tank pulled Lev to his feet and then slid to his knees to strip Lev, only he got all uncoordinated in the middle and Lev’s pants, underwear, and shoes tangled in one big clump around his ankles.

  Lev held out his hand, and when Tank took it, Lev pulled him up and then slid both hands around to cup Tank’s ass. He kissed Tank’s shoulder, neck, and the spot under his ear.

  “God, you’re gorgeous,” Tank said.

  “Climbing through ductwork does a body good,” Lev said with a laugh.

  When Tank grabbed that beautiful butt, Lev turned and caught Tank’s shoulders, pushing both of them toward the bed. Tank held Lev tight and let himself fall to the bed and bounce. Then Lev was saying, “Wait! Wait. I’m sliding off the bed.”

  Tank pulled back. “We’re a mess.”

  “We’re normal males who are overexcited and not thinking through the logistics. I’m an engineer. I should think about gravitational forces and balance.” Tank didn’t answer. After a second Lev said softly, “Tank?”

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” Tank shifted back. “My friend has been kidnapped by an alien, and I’m considering having sex. I think this makes me a bad person.”

  Lev scooted down to sit next to him. “Hey, I’ve been the kidnappee, so you listen to me. The first thing I wanted was to know that my friends would never give up on me. After that I wanted them to be happy. Those were my two big hopes. After those two, the wishes got downright mundane—I missed things like toothpaste and potato chips. By the time we escaped, I was having vivid fantasies about fresh vegetables. I get it. I do. But you have a right to be happy.”