by Rhys Ford
“Let me get you pass codes for the storage slots. You can take the south side under the trees. I’ll put his toy into the one beside you.” She handed me an old metal key set, the jangle distracting the puppies from their teat chasing. “Tank’s full. Go on and take care of yourself while I go negotiate a storage fee. I’ll send him ’round back when I’m done thinning his wallet.”
Mesquite and pine trees spread cool shade over the south block of the storage units. Sparky reserved them for Stalkers and friends, anyone she felt deserved to come back to a vehicle cooler than an inferno. I’d known Dempsey was falling out of her good graces when she put him into the west end during one of our last runs together, changing him over to the south only when she saw me getting out of the truck.
I’d only just turned off the truck’s engine when Ryder’s coupe pulled into the unit next to me. I heard the roll of the door and the lock clang shut as I began taking down the tarp on the trailer. He walked out of the waning sun and under the overhang.
Once again he’d dressed human, but the cut of his black silk shirt and pressed slacks was at odds with the surroundings. Most of the Landing’s customers’ wardrobes ran to wife-beaters and dungarees that were new when someone invented denim. I’d dressed up for him by wearing a T-shirt without holes. I couldn’t make the same claim for my jeans, but I didn’t want to set high expectations.
Ryder joined me, crossing his arms over his chest when I pulled back the covering and unveiled our transportation through Pendle. His eyebrows disappeared under the brush of hair falling over his forehead. “What in the Morrígan’s name is that?”
“That,” I snarled, “is my baby. Watch your mouth when you talk about him or you’re walking through Pendle.”
He could insult Newt, who could defend himself, but Oketsu was off limits. I’d found the Mustang in an underground garage during a skip through old Downtown, and he was the only thing I was sure I loved, other than Newt and Dalia.
Back then, Jonas had hit me up for some help in chasing down an alligator grown too big for the city to ignore. We’d slogged through gutters and caught sight of its tail as it slithered through a drainage vent. We threw a quick jan-ken-po at a T in the sewer, and I’d lost the pick, throwing scissors to Jonas’s rock. Being a bastard, Jonas pointed me down a tight open crawlspace as he went walking off, head tall, into the cavernous central hub.
He’d lucked out in finding the gator chewing through the rotting corpse of a homeless person it’d dragged down earlier. I emerged far away from the reptilian giant versus Stalker battle to the death and nearly on top of a battered zucchini green blacktop muscle car. He got the kill, and I fell in love hard and pulled every string I could, called in every favor or marker owed to me to get the battered Mustang out of the buried parking garage.
Most of my run money for the next few years went into the car, and when he rolled out of the spray booth, glistening and painted the deep red color of a black dog’s eyes, I knew every drop of blood I’d shed to bring him to life was worth it.
The car gleamed. Even in the dank, shadowed confines of a gods-forsaken desert, he just… gleamed.
“This, your lordship, is a 1969 Ford Mustang Grande Coupe,” I said, hopping up onto the car trailer’s bed to flip down the glides. “His name’s Oketsu, and he’ll be taking us through the flatlands.”
I popped open the hood and sprayed a bit of cleaner into the carburetor, readjusting the air filter when I was done. Sliding into the front seat, I inhaled the scent of leather and metal before pumping the accelerator once, then turned the ignition.
The roar made my heart flutter, the engine’s growl reaching into my pants and cupping me tighter than anyone I’d paid for. I leaned back into the headrest, closing my eyes to immerse myself in the feel of the motor rocking the car’s body, waiting for the kickback to settle the engine block into a steady rhythm. Oketsu bumped down, drowning out Ryder’s shouts when I gunned the accelerator.
I eased the Mustang down the ramps, feeling the trailer give slightly under the weight shift. Staring at Ryder through the glass, I pointed to the side and leaned out the window. “Get out of the way, you fricking idiot. Do you want to get run over?”
I left Oketsu in idle, getting out and closing the bay door behind me. Ryder chewed on his upper lip, a frustrated curl to his mouth. “What?” I asked.
“I’m assuming that is a combustion gasoline engine. And since this one has a car around it, it is vastly illegal.” He ran his fingers through his hair, tufting out the sides. It settled back down against the collar of his shirt, but a piece stuck up at his temple, softening the rigid perfection of his sidhe features. “I could point out the illegal nature of such an engine, but since I’m aware you already know that, my question is, do you also have your own personal oil rig and refinery? As far as I know, gasoline production is restricted to government use only.”
“Yeah, Sparky’s a petrochemical engineer.” I locked the door down, using the pass code Sparky had given me. “Actually, I think she’s got a few degrees in a bunch of other things, but I never really caught it all. What I do know is that she’s got a high-octane fuel blend cooked up that Oketsu loves. No knocking. Not a rattle. So, unless you’ve got any other objections in that tight ass of yours, how about if we get into the car, get some of Sparky’s juice, and go fetch that pregnant woman you’re so concerned about.”
He got in, taking two tries to close the heavy steel door. His knees bumped the front dash panel, and after a moment of repressed frustration, I took pity on him and leaned over, hooking my fingers into the latch.
“Push back with your legs.” I looked up at him. My cheek brushed his thigh, and I swallowed, hoping he didn’t see the flush I felt rising in my face. “It’s not electronic. He’s an old-school car. You have to use your weight to move the chair.”
Ryder nodded, silent, as he used his shoulders to rock the seat back. He slid out from under me, increasing the distance between us, and lowered his legs, stretching them out under the dash. “Thanks.”
I sat up, adjusting the rearview mirror to give me time to get my heartbeat under control. The next couple of days would be murder, but the bounty I’d gotten from the black dogs would only pay the bills for so long, and I’d need to plump up my account. The sun dipped, hiding behind a ridge, and the shadows lengthened around us, the perfect time to head into Pendle.
“You ready?” I asked, doing one last check on the shotguns I’d put into the seat racks behind us.
“Yes, most definitely,” he replied, holding onto the armrest as I whipped Oketsu around the unit. “So, one question before we start this wild adventure.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you really think I have a tight ass?”
“HOW LONG have you been a Stalker?”
We’d just passed Avery Point, stopping long enough to grab some water out of the cooler in the backseat. Night had a full grip on the hour, turning the mountains to dark crags against a deep black sky. Far from ambient light, the stars came out in force, glittering and rich. The moon ducked back and forth as we drove, hidden behind dunes and broken landscape.
Pendle really showed what the Merge did to the terrain. Desert highlands were stitched together with rolling black lava hills, and the land was spotted with rusted geared elfin towers leaning on broken foundations, time crushed and forgotten. The structures were old before the Merge and now stood decaying in Pendle’s extreme weather. Exploration of the area was nearly impossible, the rough stone hills hiding crevices and chasms under bleached tufts of grass. People stupid enough to wander around ended up either dying from a fall into a lava tube or had their innards sucked out like spray cheese by a hungry dragon.
The area stank of sulfur and decay; half-eaten cows and antelope from the outer hills rotted under the hot California sun. Even in the cool night air, the stink of rotting meat carried. Above the lava fields, mating dragons fed in the sky, swooping quickly to snatch their prey and continuing without missing a b
eat. Tossing their food into the air, they bit off what they could, letting the rest of the animal plummet to splatter on the ground below.
It made for an interesting road trip. I’d already swerved to avoid a water buffalo front and a couple of zebra halves, one head and one hindquarter, jagged from being sheared by dragon teeth.
“What did you say?” I took my attention briefly off the road to look at the sidhe lord. We were following the broken remains of an old freeway, connected only by stretches of dirt and cinder roads. When not on the asphalt, I slowed the Mustang down, keeping the dust to a minimum. The car’s engine balked at being kept to a low roar, but off the freeway, dragons slept closer to the road, and waking one in the middle of the night was on my list of things I wanted to live through.
“I asked how long you’ve been a Stalker,” Ryder repeated. He shifted in the seat, turning slightly to hook his leg up. I’d spent the past few miles trying to tell my body to ignore him. I even rolled down the window for a bit to drown out the green tea and vanilla scent of his skin, until the overpowering odor of dead cattle overtook us.
“Legally and on my own, about ten years.” The road bumped and rolled, and I held the Mustang to its track. “But I ran jobs with Dempsey long before that.”
“Is Dempsey the human who trained you?” He laughed when I glanced at him with narrowed eyes. “I asked around about you. It struck me as curious that a disaffected sidhe would take this job. Then I found out a human brought you into the business.”
“Was this before or after you stalked me in the city?”
“After.” He turned to grab another water bottle from the cooler then cracked it open for me. “It took a while for my person to find out anything about you, and even that was thin. I still don’t know what House or Clan you belong to. Or what Court you came from.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I said. “Just myself.”
“Yet you give a cut of your earnings to the human….”
“His name’s Dempsey.” Another eland in the road, mostly intestines, and I slowed, trying to find a clean way around it. “Not that hard to pronounce.”
“Why did you take this job if the sidhe are so distasteful to you?”
I’d been waiting for him to ask that question, and despite being in the middle of eland shit and guts, I answered as truthfully as I could. “I don’t know. Maybe because I was forced to or I’d lose my license?”
We made it past the dead animal with a minimum of skidding of Oketsu’s back tires. I’d have to hose out the undercarriage when we hit Anaheim, or the stink would stay until it burned off. He sat quietly as I maneuvered, watching the sky for any winged beasts.
“At least you’re honest about it,” he said finally. “I can respect that.”
“Not like I was given much of a choice. They’ll yank my license if I don’t. Thanks for that, by the way.” We found another stretch of freeway, and I gunned the Mustang, the blacktop eating up the noise of the engine. Oketsu flew down the straightaway, hugging the curve when we shot past the old border station where they separated San Diego from the rest of the old state. “Besides, the pay’s good. I can always use the money.”
“So you’re doing this for money?”
“Why else would I be doing this?” I asked, watching the road unfurl over the hills. “Because I wanted to be stuck in my car with you for hours, then go knocking on the door of an old sidhe court to rescue a knocked-up chick who can’t tell her parents to go screw themselves? Yeah, sounds like a fun night. On Sunday, I’ve got an appointment to have my toenails pulled out by a myopic three-year-old.”
“You make yourself sound like a whore.”
“If you’d said that last week, I might have punched you in the face.” I thought about what I’d told Orin Bennett the night before. In hindsight, I should have argued the payment for his information, but considering some of the other choices I’d made over the past few years, it was par for the course. “Whore or mercenary. That’s how life is.”
“Life is about more than surviving,” Ryder said, his arm drifting too close to my fingers on the shifter.
“Maybe yours is,” I replied, moving my hand to the steering wheel. “For the rest of us living down here, it’s about getting food, sleeping, and other nasty, dirty things.”
I saw the lump in the road before Ryder shouted at me to watch out. Jerking the steering wheel, we skidded, catching the dragon’s tail membrane. The flap caught at one of Oketsu’s tires, spinning us around. The world flashed by, framed windows of jumbled hills and road.
Pulling at the wheel, I leaned into the spin, catching the rear momentum before we went any farther. Shreds of wet film lay across the road, mangled pieces of dragon tail trailing behind the Mustang. We were facing the wrong direction, ass end away from the dragon. I cranked the wheel, accelerating the car into a tight circle.
“What the Hells are you doing?” Ryder screamed, grabbing at the doorframe. “You’re going straight for the damned dragon!”
“In a few seconds, that dragon’s going to be on our ass.” I leaned over and clicked Ryder’s seat belt together with one hand. “Hold on and shut up.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE ELFIN think dragons were born from blood magic festering too long over a fire. It bubbled and hardened, creating a red-shelled egg that grew too big and too hot for the cast iron pot that held it. The pot cracked, spilling the egg into the fire, where it warmed in the flames. Hatred, spite, and envy fed the elfin blood encapsulated in the shell, and when the embryonic foulness grew too large for the egg holding it in, it hatched, and the first dragon was born.
Legends are very pretty but rarely touch on the important facts of life. Things like whether a 1969 red Mustang powered by a 351 Windsor can outrun a seventy-foot reptilian predator.
It came at us hard, unfolding its coils and whipping up into the air. Delicate wings floated around it, gossamer-thin as they caught the wind, their spines rigid as the dragon came around. They acted as sails, a steering mechanism for an arcane creature held aloft by some bastard magic no one understood. Its tail lifted out behind it, thinner and capped by shredded frills, whipping about as it changed direction.
We were still a good distance from it, but its odor carried, a combination of pungent musk and fetid meat. Its last meal still clung to its teeth and beard, probably torn off the last carcass we passed. The wingless were carrion eaters, but it was mostly out of laziness than lack of ability. They picked at the larger dragons’ dropped meals, although I’d seen them go after smaller prey, and they never backed down from fighting something larger once they had their hackles up.
At the moment we were definitely considered smaller prey.
With the road clear, I hit the gas, careening us under its undulating belly. The Mustang’s headlights hit the surface of its body, transforming the metallic scallops from a dull gray to their full prismatic glory. I caught sight of its elongated crocodilian head, framed with battle-torn streamers. Its mouth opened, showing rows of glistening sharp teeth easily the size of my hand.
Two multipronged antlers arched behind its flattened ears, the horns a spotted dark brown against its titanium scales. Short legs pedaled through the air, a reflexive kneading in preparation for catching its prey. The talons could easily punch through Oketsu’s roof, shearing off the sheet metal and exposing us to the dragon’s mouth.
“It’s gaining,” Ryder shouted above the engine’s growl.
“No shit,” I grumbled back, pushing Oketsu harder. The car bucked and tossed, hitting the uneven road before leveling out. Its suspension took the punishment, absorbing the car’s torque as I dodged a boulder in the middle of the lane. I risked a peek in the rearview mirror and found it filled with dragon. If I kept my eyes on it long enough, I was fairly certain I could count the rigid frills surrounding its head.
It hit the boulder full on. The dragon’s momentum pushed the large rock up into the air, spinning it forward. It arced up and landed right in front of
us, crumpling a few of the concrete freeway tiles paving the area. I pulled the wheel hard to the right, hitting the gas to push the rear tires into a spin. The differential I’d installed kicked in, and we spooled, drifting as I steered. We looped around the boulder, a slow pirouette guided by the front tires.
Keeping the Mustang steady with a firm grip, I reached behind the passenger seat and grabbed one of the sawed-off shotguns with my right hand, bringing it around Ryder’s head. Using the door channel to steady my aim, I canted the gun up, partially squeezing the trigger. The dragon’s head came into the frame, and I pulled down as Ryder’s hands lifted up, spoiling the shot.
The blast took off the top half of the dragon’s right antler, spraying velvet and brittle bone over the Mustang’s hood. Crimson speckled the windshield, ambient spray from the shorn antler’s weak blood vessels. Cursing, I righted the car and lurched forward, hoping for another shot.
I lost sight of it as it flew straight up and out of my view. Muttering, I debated using the second shell on Ryder but held it back for the dragon. The sharp whistle of its frills fanning out in the air told me it was nearby, audible even over the V8’s deep scream.
“Where is it?” I held the car steady around a gap in the road, balancing my attention between the dragon and the freeway. “And what the hell was that back there?”
“Are you insane? They’re sacred, damn it!” Ryder frowned, sticking his head out of the window to look for a serpentine shape in the sky. “The sidhe… even the unsidhe… don’t kill dragons!”
“Well, hate to break it to you, but I’ve killed at least two. And I’m wearing the ink to prove it,” I said. He contorted his body to give me a horrified look. “Get over it. I’d rather it be a dead sacred dragon than me being eaten.”