After a long moment in which no one seemed to breathe, the door canted slightly open.
Quinn recovered first, hefting the tire iron. “I’ll just bring this along.”
Lucia eyed it with trepidation. “I’m beginning to get wistful for a good old emoting ghost. Maybe two.”
“No, you’re not,” Quinn said, and headed inside.
Sullen heat met them at the door. No swamp cooler here. No such thing as air conditioning. It had to be well over a hundred, and there was an awful lot of ladylike glow trickling down Lucia’s back and between her breasts. Caryn’s face quickly took on a bright shade of pink, and fair-haired Quinn flushed ruddy.
How long had Robin been in this?
Sklayne met them with impatience — no explanation for his strange behavior. It wasn’t something he could do with tapping claws, and Lucia didn’t even want him to try.
Paw prints on the dusty floor showed evidence of his rapid wandering around the gear strewn in vaguely functional piles — camping gear and river gear, sleeping pads and life vests and one box of mass-produced quartz crystals. Old pallets, coiled rope, a tumble of well-used water bottles strung together. Dead flies littered the floor. A few black widow husks lingered by the baseboards.
“Active widow web,” Quinn said, pointing at the crevice where a kayak leaned up against the plywood.
Sklayne went, “Mrrp!” and burped politely.
“Maybe not,” Lucia murmured.
“In here?” Caryn asked, and ah, chueca if she wasn’t, finally, actually hanging back a little as she stood by a closed door — barely noticeable in the clutter at that. “Look at the floor,” Caryn said, and they did. And they found no tracks, because there was no dust.
“If she’s in there, she might not be alone.” Quinn frowned at the door, hefting that tire iron again as he cautiously tried the door.
It opened.
Quinn charged in, flushed face fierce, impromptu weapon raised — but not for long. “Lu!” he said. “The water!”
“Get it,” she snapped at Caryn, and rushed into the room. “Oh, poor petirrojo!”
Robin sat in this stifling little room with no ventilation and no water and no escape, tied limply to a chair... her hair sticking to her face and her skin gone pale and — Lucia put the back of her hand to that round cheek — clammy. “This isn’t good, Quinnie.”
Quinn tore at her bindings in frustration until Lucia dug deeply into her tote and came up with her road kit, extracting the clippers. “Try these,” she said, and then found a teeny bottle of water from the airplane and quickly unscrewed the lid, dribbling just a bit of it into Robin’s mouth — a fat lip there, a smear of blood there — and quickly lifted Robin’s hair to splash the rest of it along her neck, not wasting a drop.
“Robin,” Quinn said, a voice Lucia had never heard before as Robin stirred. “C’mon, honey. We’re getting you out of here.”
“Get her in the car air conditioning,” Lucia said with some urgency, carelessly tossing the empty bottle into a cardboard carton — and realizing only then that it was a heavily depleted wholesale display box for colorful textured condoms. “Aiee, Dios,” she muttered. “This room—”
And then she moved, quite suddenly, to divert Quinn’s attention from that box and its implications.
But Quinn saw. He saw it all. Lucia knew it by his suddenly stiff body, and by the way he tackled the cable tie bindings with renewed vigor.
And Caryn saw — standing in the doorway, her jaw dropped — taking in Robin’s disheveled state — the shirt with its tiny floral print torn at the neckline and stretched out at the hem, bruises on her arms. Caryn fumbled the water. “I—”
“Shut up,” Quinn said savagely, tearing away the cable ties. When he looked at Lucia, his gaze was pleading. “We don’t know.”
“We’ll find out, though,” Lucia said, numb for the moment, “and we’ll take care of it. Come, petirrojo — wake now.” She took the water from Caryn, dribbling out a few more precious drops to smear over Robin’s forehead. “We should get her to the car, Quinnie.”
Quinn didn’t seem to hear her. His hands hovered over Robin’s limp shoulders as though afraid to touch her, then settled so-gently. “We have to reach her,” he said. His jaw tightened so hard that Lucia expected to hear it crack. “She needs to know it’s us, and not them.”
“Reach her?” As she sometimes reached out to soothe raging ghosts? “I don’t do people, Quinnie.”
“None of us do people!” he snapped. “None of us! But here we are!”
“I—” Caryn said.
Lucia and Quinn whirled on her in tandem, voices a chorus. “No!”
And Lucia said tightly, “You don’t do people, chueca. You do to them.”
Caryn gasped. “That — that’s a horrible thing to say—”
But no one paid her much mind. Not even Sklayne, who had done a circuit of the exterior storage area and now appeared in the doorway, tilted and staggering, ears twitching and his distraction gone extreme again, a startlingly deep growl vibrating endlessly in his throat.
“Lu?” Quinn asked, pleading this time. He pulled Robin from the chair and into his lap.
She shook her head, more in despair than denial, blotting her cheek against her sleeve. “This is crazy, Quinn. Crazy.” But she put her hand on Robin’s knee. “Petirrojo,” she said softly —
Guilt and terror!
She gasped — and just that fast, the connection, the feelings, were gone. Truly gone.
Lucia had never been present for a transition, but she knew. Aiee, she knew.
“Lu—”
Lucia blurted it out loud. “She’s dying, Quinnie!”
“No!” He grabbed her wrist in a fierce grip, reaching out over Robin with an expression so stricken that it left Lucia without words.
“Mow,” said Sklayne, staggering from the doorway to brush against Lucia’s leg. His tail wrapped her ankle. “MOW.”
That tail had rather more grip than any cat tail should ever have. He snagged Robin’s jeans — yes, definitely a thumb on that paw, definitely his face grown a little longer, a little narrower, his ears a little bigger and tufted to boot. A reminder. But then he shook himself and looked just like a cat again. A wobbly and unhappy cat.
“We have to go,” Caryn said, nerve failing. “What if they come back?”
Lucia looked at Sklayne. “You can do this?”
He looked steadily back at her. Not a cat at all.
And he needed her. He needed that established connection. Sklayne to Lucia to Robin. “All right, yes,” she said, not quite believing herself. “We’ll try. You and me.”
She returned to Robin, picking up a clammy, limp hand, well aware of Sklayne’s tail still wrapped around her ankle. “Come to me, petirrojo.” But in truth, she spoke to herself. Trying to reach past the fear of feeling transition, and the fear of losing herself, and the fear that she had no idea what she was doing in the first place.
Sklayne made the tiniest sound of approval. Energy rolled over Lucia, coating her rather than pushing through her. Insulated from her, and still tingling enough to make her twitch — to let her know just how much life Robin needed, and just how much life Sklayne had brought to bear in this moment when he’d already been so distracted by Trevarr. By whatever happened to Trevarr. And Garrie.
Robin stirred, an uneasy sound in her throat. Lucia stopped spectating and did what she could with unfamiliar sensations, siphoning away what she could of the terror and flicking it away. Pretending Robin was a ghost. Pretending not to know how very close Robin had come to just that.
Sklayne panted beside her, neat pink tongue exposed, sparks roiling off his dark-ticked red coat. Lucia’s sense of Robin’s terror faded; the sense of transition faded. Sklayne made an odd little breathy sound.
“Talk to her,” Lucia murmured to Quinn. “I think she’ll hear you.”
“Robin,” Quinn said, an urgency coming into his voice. “Wake up, sweetheart. We
have to get you out of here. You’re okay now.”
Far from it. But if they could get her out and get her cool and get her to help...
Robin’s eyelids fluttered. “Quinn —?”
“The cat!” Caryn said. “What happened to the cat?”
No more impatience, no more haughty stance. Just a limp little Abyssinian puddled beside Lucia’s feet. “Aiee!” she said. “No, no, no!”
She picked him up, daring it. Bright green eyes showed through barely slitted lids, third eyelids exposed. His head lolled; his tail hung limp. Lucia bit back a wail. “What did you do?”
“Put him down by an outlet when you can,” Quinn said shortly, words that didn’t match his gentle manner with Robin. “Although I’m certain I’m not supposed to have noticed the way things lose power when he’s around.”
Lucia petted the slick, tiny-short hairs between Sklayne’s eyes. “Please be okay,” she whispered to him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t know.”
“Lu,” Quinn said, his voice sharp. “We’ve got to go.”
“Huh,” said a voice that could have belonged to Beavis or Butthead or both, coming from just outside the door. “I don’t think so. Did you really think we left this place completely unwatched?”
“Caryn!” Lucia snapped, instinctively holding Sklayne close. Caryn, standing by the door. Caryn, watching for them. Caryn, all caught up in what was happening and not the least caught up in what she’d agreed to do.
And she knew it. Her mouth turned hard; her shoulders straightened.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I can fix this.”
“No!” Quinn shouted.
“Aiee! No!” Lucia cried.
“Stop her,” Robin said, rasping.
But no. Of course it was too late.
Chapter 24
You Broke It, You Fix It
“Know your strengths; accept your weaknesses.”
— Rhonda Rose
“I so don’t do people...”
— Lisa McGarrity
Garrie hit the rock hard, crumpling beside it with her head roaring and Sklayne’s aghast dismay deep in the back of her thoughts, his wail for Trevarr louder than anything in her current world.
All that was as nothing next to the foot that followed, slamming into her side to lift her from the ground. She retched, pushing blindly away — and yet another roar filled her mind, filling her body with dull glowing cold and fire.
Trevarr. Aware of her peril; flinging himself with fury at the lerkhet so he could defeat it and come roaring to her aid.
But not soon enough.
The lackey jerked her up by the shirt, ripping at it — or trying to. Trevarr’s resized shirt didn’t rip so readily and Garrie flailed at him. Never had she felt so small, so ineffective, so ninety pounds sopping wet.
So vulnerable.
Why? Why this? Why now?
Because it’s what Huntingdon does best.
Twisting power from what should be pleasure, and control from what should be love.
She kicked, she squirmed, and she wrenched around to scrabble away, groping for the knife in her thigh pocket. The lackey jerked her to a stop, flipped her over, and yanked on her pants as if he could get the cargos off without unsnapping them at all.
Panic rose. The gust of ash filled her senses; a dark shadow washed through her mind. She screamed a sound of fury and fear and protest. Garrie’s mind flushed full of beating wings and thunderous noise and her body burned with rushing, foreign power. The dragon rising. The dragon, surging out of control.
Trevarr broke away from the deeply wounded lerkhet, one useless hand jammed into his belt. His eyes burned hard bright metal, his neck dappled with rising tattoos, and his features turned feral and hard. He stalked them with the sword in a low guard, angled and ready.
The lackey’s attention broke. And Garrie’s hand finally found that thigh pocket, ripping away the buttoned flap. Her fingers closed around the cool black horn handle and the knife came free from its sheath with smooth, slicing movement, trailing sharp breezes.
It sliced just as cleanly into flesh, sinking deeply into the lackey’s calf, in and out so smoothly she didn’t quite believe it had gone in at all — and neither did he, until his leg buckled, spurting blood. Rage distorted his face into thick-necked ugly as Garrie scrabbled back, clutching a knife handle gone slippery.
Ethereal whispers tainted that spilling blood. Thinned it.
I did that.
Huntington’s face darkened in fury. He glowered, gathering his sullen energies with gestures that held less drama and more haste — they overflowed his grasp, dripping heavily to the ground. A cohesively soggy ball nonetheless emerged, a thing Huntington balanced briefly in his hand before he flung it at the battered lerkhet.
The lerkhet’s stubby trunk stood straight out; its tentacles stood on end, stiff and bristly and full of sparks. If it had been sane before, it was sane no longer.
And Trevarr had no warning when it charged.
Garrie screamed in pure horror as it slammed into Trevarr from behind, wrapping tentacles around his leg with a sickening slap of flesh. Lukkas thumped to the ground from numbed fingers; Trevarr made a strangled noise from between clenched teeth. His eyes rolled back and he fell hard.
Garrie bolted past her still-cursing attacker to reach Trevarr, fingers already sticky-dry on the knife as she flung herself down at his shoulder. Trevarr’s nostrils flared with agony, his breath panting fast — and the lerkhet latched on tight.
“It’s okay,” Garrie told him nonsensically, her hand hovering and not quite able to settle, to pat his shoulder as she wanted to do. “I swear, we’ll make it okay.”
World’s biggest lie.
Huntington mocked her. “I doubt it. So far no one’s lasted more than three minutes once that thing takes hold.”
What? “No!” she said, an animal snarl of incoherency, struggling around the dragon — it floundered within her, the surge of it slapped back by her fear for Trevarr. “No!”
But the scent of wood smoke was already easing; the clapping rush of wings faded from her mind.
Garrie snatched up the knife and launched herself at the lerkhet, burying it hilt-deep in that rock-hard back. Keharian blade, Keharian keen.
The knife jammed between the lerkhet’s ribs and stuck there. Ichor surged out, burning her hand — she yanked hard, twisting to free it with a sucking sound. The lerkhet now wheezed faintly with each breath, but its tentacles still pulsed hard around Trevarr’s leg, sparking gently. Entirely undeterred.
She stared at the ineffective knife for only a moment, and then planted herself, lifting one foot to kick the lerkhet in the face as hard as she could. Once, twice — over and over, aiming for the bulbous eyes — connecting — and aiming for the snout. “Let — him — go!” Making it startle, making it flinch. “Let — him — go!”
A crude voice snarled triumph. A man’s hand grabbed her wrist, numbing it; she kept the knife only due to that sticky grip. The man’s other hand wrapped cruelly around her ribs, dragging her away. Only his halting movement identified him — the lackey with the battered balls had found his feet, and now she faced both him and the man she’d stabbed.
Huntington’s voice rose in excitement. “Yes! There’s no telling what strength I can get from this! Take her, you fool — right there, where he can see—”
Dimming eyes and fading scent and receding energies —
“Do it quickly, before he dies!”
Garrie twisted in the stabbed man’s grip, straining to see Trevarr — catching his gaze and finding what she’d always found — a resurgence of absolute intent backed by something wild and untamed. The awareness of her.
And now, the surprise when he couldn’t quite get up to do something about it. Surprise and baffled fury.
“Quickly!” Huntington snapped again.
“He won’t die!” Garrie spat at him. “And you’re going to be so very sorry when he doesn’t die!”
Huntington shouted a wordless triumph, oblivious to the groan of earth and the bluff cracking and popping. And when the lackey reached down to fumble with his zipper, he kept his face right there in hers, sneering, reveling in his power over her.
I so don’t do people...
But she saw the man’s anticipation and she met his power with her own. Knowing what she could do.
And doing it.
She gathered every possible breeze and sent it spearing at the lerkhet.
He didn’t understand at first. Not when the lerkhet spasmed, not when it gave its eager little honk. Not even quite when the tentacles snapped audibly away from Trevarr’s leg, blindly seeking.
Garrie sent another spear of energy at it, and it made up its mind.
It charged her.
Then the lackey realized it had released Trevarr. Then the lackey realized it was coming for Garrie.
And only then did he realize he was in the way.
~~~~~
“Robin!” Quinn cradled Robin’s pale, blotchy face between his hands. “You’re okay,” he said, quite seriously, as if she ever could be. “We’ll get you out of here.”
She pulled him closer. Her ruined sleeves fell back from her wrists, revealing bloody welts and abrasions from the cable ties.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said the man who pushed into the doorway, shoving Caryn back so hard she stumbled. A big man, hirsute and hefty. “You,” he said, looking at Robin. “You ready for the real thing, now?”
Robin frowned, expression vague. “I don’t... what?”
Lucia took a cautious ethereal glance at the battered woman and then had to do it again, not trusting this vision she’d only begun to develop. For Robin was carrying fatigue and concern and yes, even guilt. She’d created this situation, after all, handling things so as a group they’d become vulnerable and compromised.
Storm of Reckoning Page 27