by John Conroe
Nika and I stepped out as Garth pulled a Mossberg shotgun with a pistol grip from a set of clamps between the front seats. “Did you bring a weapon?” he asked Nika as he hefted the gun.
She pointed at me and Awasos. “Yes. Two.”
His eyebrows went up as he considered us, like he had forgotten who and what we were. The man had, perhaps, been out on his own too much. And I happened to know that she had a small flat handgun of Omega’s advanced design hidden about her person, but that was her secret, not mine.
“Do you usually need weapons?” I asked.
“No. Not with Cinnamon, but there are often others passing through, and even her parents could be extraordinarily dangerous if things go south.”
“Cinnamon?” Nika asked.
“Her fur. Same color as the spice,” he said, a little embarrassed.
Then a wall of noxious odor rolled over us, like bad eggs and rotten meat. “They’re here,” Garth said, a little unnecessarily.
“Wow, that’ll knock the breath out of you,” I said as I felt Grim take over my senses.
“Yeah, it’s got an impact,” Garth agreed.
My vision flooded with grays of all shades as it shifted into the infrared range. My hearing sharpened, picking up soft footfalls that Mr. Nickerson wasn’t likely to notice. When I turned my head in the direction of those steps, three massive shapes suddenly bloomed bright red, orange, and white among the trees just several dozen yards away.
“I see them,” I said. Nika turned her own eyes to where I was looking and Awasos was already looking at them. “One a bit over nine feet tall, one just shy of eight, and the smallest is all of seven.”
“You can see that?” Garth asked, his head moving around as he looked at the blackness of the forest. “Sounds like the father and mother and Cinnamon.”
The females had to be over five hundred pounds each, with the adult male knocking on eight hundred if he was an ounce.
“What next?” I asked.
“I, ah, need to introduce you, in a manner of speaking,” he said. Then he took a deep breath and uttered what sounded like something monkeys in a zoo would produce. It was low in pitch, then rose much higher, like a chattering cough. I couldn’t have copied it if I tried, although my wife would likely have been able to.
“They speak a language?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said, sounding slightly offended. “They’re not apes, or at least they are as much apes as we are.”
I had about seven thousand more questions, but they all had to wait as the smallest one suddenly darted forward, out of the vegetation and into the lights of the UTV.
Grim took over, keeping my vision locked in thermal, firing up all my other senses, lifting me onto the balls of my feet. With a serious amount of mental effort, I pushed my vision back to the normal spectrum, getting a good look at a live Bigfoot.
She—and she was definitely she, based on the fur-covered breasts—was as tall as Stacia is when she’s in wolf-woman hybrid form. But where Stacia is all long-clawed limbs and whipcord muscle, Cinnamon was much wider, bulkier, with heavy shoulders, massively muscled arms and legs. Like a weightlifter as compared to an MMA fighter. Her back was V-shaped, much as my own, but three times bigger. Her face was very simian, her brow casting a shadow over her features, except her eyes, which reflected red in the light of the UTV. Those eyes fastened on me and a split second later, she growled and leapt backward.
Instantly, the two bigger ones roared and charged forward, smashing small trees out of their path like twigs.
Grim snapped my control, vision shifting to full thermal as my awareness spread outward in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc around me. Two more giant blobs of reddish-orange and white were approaching from north and south, but they were not my immediate concern.
The massive form of Cinnamon’s father arrived first, bursting past a young maple tree and ripping the whole thing, roots and all, from the ground with one ham-sized fist. Swinging the tree up and over, he slammed the root bundle down on me. Grim raised my left arm and lined it with aura as it intercepted the makeshift club, shearing through wood, root, dirt, and even rocks with equal ease.
The male looked at his suddenly shorn bludgeon in momentary surprise before roaring again and throwing the five-foot-long remnant at me. Grim caught the eight-inch diameter treetop easily and tossed it away. Then he stepped me forward, lunging like a fencer, my right fist punching the massive creature straight in its male parts, my body Posted to the ground like a granite post.
Cinnamon’s father responded exactly the same as every male to ever get nutted. He jackknifed forward, eyes widening in pain. Then he fell back and screamed as high a scream as I’ve ever heard.
I was already turning as his mate charged me. She wasn’t that much smaller than he was, and her face was a picture of primal rage. But she was also smarter, as she stopped suddenly and whipped her right arm forward, a basketball-sized rock flying straight and true for my head.
Grim caught the speeding rock with one hand, absorbing all of its awful impact energy without visible effort. Then he opened my hand and dropped it casually in front of me.
The second pair of Sasquatches came roaring through the forest from either direction, sounding like dump trucks smashing through everything in their paths.
’Sos chose that moment, just as they arrived in our clearing, to Change, shimmering from a massive wolf into a truly gargantuan bear, four times more massive than any Sasquatch present. And he roared—so loud that I could see the hair on the one from the north get blown back as if by a hair dryer.
Standing on his hind legs, he towered almost twenty feet high, dwarfing every other living creature in the clearing. All of the Squatches fell back, putting distance between themselves and the ursine giant, except the big father, who was still on the ground.
As the roar died away and a stunned silence fell, Nika spoke calmly. “She was expecting to see a human who looked like Declan.”
“I sorta guessed that,” I said, reclaiming my vocal cords from my combat self.
“And they don’t even know how to process ’Sos at all,” she added. “They’re used to being the top predators in the woods, especially at night.”
“Again… I don’t need a mind reader to figure that one out,” I said. “Can you talk to them?” I asked Garth, looking at him for the first time since the action started. He was crouched, head lowered and arms up protectively, shotgun dropped at his feet. “Mr. Nickerson? Are you able to communicate with them?” I asked again, speaking in a calm, easy voice.
He looked from ’Sos to me, eyes wide, clearly in shock, but after a second, he blinked and slowly nodded.
“See what I mean about bringing my own weapons?” Nika asked him with a smirk.
“It’s, ah, a lot different in person,” he said to her, not moving his eyes from me.
“Right?” she agreed. “These two shock even old vampires. Television doesn’t do them the slightest justice. Do you think you can ask Cinnamon why she wanted to see Declan?”
“I don’t have a lot of vocabulary,” he said.
“That’s alright. We’ll understand them; it’s just getting them to understand us,” she said.
“You read minds?” he asked, his shock wearing off, replaced by intelligent thought. She just smiled and I could see his face flush with heat.
He turned awkwardly toward Cinnamon, who was standing against her mother, her father just now starting to regain his feet, hands clutching wounded privates. Garth reached into his back pocket and pulled out the crumpled and torn magazine picture of Declan.
“Oh, good idea,” Nika said, pulling a much cleaner and more carefully folded page from her own pocket. “I grabbed the other page,” she explained to me. “The one that shows you, Tanya, and Stacia.”
Garth took it from her outstretched hand and held it up to the family in his right hand, his left holding the Declan pic alongside it. All of the Squatches were watching either me or ’So
s, but they all glanced at the fluttering pages. The big ones immediately ignored it, eyes coming back to me and to ’Sos, whose wine-barrel head hovered over my right shoulder as he stood behind me on all fours. Cinnamon, however, focused her deep-set eyes on the torn magazine photos. After a moment, she looked at me, closely, then back at the picture, then back at me. After a long time looking directly into my eyes, she turned and moved several yards from her mother, bending down and pulling something from a clump of ferns. It was nylon, olive green. She threw it underhanded, and it landed at my feet. A hiker’s daypack or maybe… a soldier’s.
Chapter 15
As I picked it up, I noticed several things: It was filthy, covered in reddish mud and sticks; it smelled of blood; and it was foreign.
“Russian,” Nika said to my last thought. “SPLAV is a Russian company,” she said, pointing at the decal on the front.
“Did they kill its owner?” I asked, sniffing the blood. It was human.
“No, at least not this crew. She was given it by another Bigfoot, one not from around here. Big one, black fur, scarred up. The others didn’t like him but respected him.”
“How was he scarred?” I asked.
“Burn scars. Big ones on his arm, hand, and one shoulder,” Nika replied instantly.
“You can read her thoughts?” Nickerson asked.
“She remembers things with exquisite clarity,” Nika said. “Much, much clearer than humans do.”
“Queen Morrigan’s familiar is scarred like that,” I said. “Mr. Nickerson, how did you know the messages came from Fairie? How does a Russian pack have anything to do with Fairie?”
“It was just a hunch, a feeling, I suppose. I have a couple of favorite places on this property and I often pack a lunch out to one or another. Cinnamon will sometimes find me there, so I bring extra treats. One time, she was fascinated by the Keebler elves on a cookie package. I got the impression that the ears were interesting to her. And when she left the picture on the post, she also pulled an empty cookie wrapper from the garbage and left it there too.”
“And from all that, you were convinced enough to contact Declan? Seems pretty thin.”
“Mr. Nickerson has a touch of ability,” Nika said.
“I do?” he asked.
“He does?” I asked at the same time.
“Definitely. Probably helped you in your business, right? Feelings about deals, how honest someone was being?”
He stared at her, incredulous. “I’ve never told anyone about my hunches,” he said.
“And I’ll go a little further out on a limb… the crowded city bothered you, right? Everyone pressing in on you?”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I feel it too… unless I block it,” she answered with a smile.
“You can do that?” he asked, staring at her like she was a glass of water in the desert.
Yeah, yeah, fellow fledgling telepath and all that. We were off track. Nika turned and gave me a cool look but I forged on. “Was there anything else?” I asked. “We came all the way up here to get a bloody Russian backpack and an empty cookie wrapper?”
Nickerson flushed with clear embarrassment and Nika’s look went from cool to cold. “Just saying,” I said.
“There’s more, I think,” Nickerson said with an earnest expression. He turned back to the adolescent female Sasquatch who weighed twice what any of us did… other than ’Sos. “There was a feeling when I first came out here after she left the prints. Like a bright light or something.”
I opened my mouth to say WTF when Nika raised one hand, effectively hushing me as she stared intently at Cinnamon. “You’re correct. She’s thinking of a bright light.”
“Like in the sky or something?” I asked, looking up.
“No, it’s… oh. He touched her head, the scarred Sasquatch,” Nika said, both surprised and intrigued. “It would seem that they can convey thoughts if they touch. The visitor touched her head and showed her the biggest flash of light any of them had ever seen.”
“How did it know to come here? To seek out Cinnamon?” I asked.
Nika looked at me without expression, but Nickerson was looking thoughtful. “I think they… well… gossip,” he said.
“They gossip?” I asked.
“I don’t believe there are very many of them, at least compared to us. Twenty - thirty thousand on the whole planet, maybe. And they get around—like, really far.”
“They have an ability to open gateways to other places,” Nika said. It was my turn to give her a hard look, which had no effect at all. She was giving up secrets to someone we didn’t know at all.
“I knew it!” he said, turning to stare at the silent family of giants watching us with intelligent eyes.
“So,” I said with a sigh. “They gossip?”
“Like a small village. Everyone knows everyone,” he said.
“Wow,” Nika said. “That’s an excellent analogy. Don’t you think so, Chris?”
“Well, I guess it makes sense,” I said. “If distance isn’t a barrier and your numbers are low, it would track that they would… talk. So if all that is true, then Queen Morrigan’s familiar brought a bloody Russian backpack to this young Squatch with an image of a light?”
“A huge flash of light,” Nika corrected.
“Russian backpack. Flash of light,” I mused. Either we both thought of it at the same time or she, again, read my mind because understanding bloomed in her eyes at the same time I understood.
“Backpack nuke? Russian backpack nuke?” I asked. Nickerson sucked in a sharp breath. “Omega?”
“I have never accounted for every tactical weapon in the Russian arsenal. Mostly because the Russians themselves lost track of some of their weapons before I was created. It is possible. I have tracked down several weapons in the hands of arms dealers but there is no way to know how many are loose in the world.”
“If this is true, Morrigan is warning us of a nuke threat,” I said. “Mr. Nickerson, thank you, but we need to leave—now.”
Chapter 16
“Did you get his number?” I asked as we headed down Nickerson’s long driveway.
“What? Well, yes. He needs guidance—with his abilities,” Nika said.
“Hmm, guidance is it?” I asked with a smirk.
“Oh, shut up. Whatever you think you know about anything is wrong,” she said.
“You sound like Lydia. When you sound like Lydia, I know I’m on to something. Hmm, wonder what Arkady would think of your new pal?”
She was up by my right ear in a sudden blur. “Don’t,” she hissed.
“Would I?” I asked, proud that I hadn’t so much as twitched, nor had Grim.
She pulled back and turned to look forward. She already knew the answer, as she knew so much about my thoughts, inclinations, and character. More than anyone else, with the sole exception of Tanya, although in some things, Nika might know more.
“It was a scary thought. Arkady is…” She trailed off.
“Ruthless?” I supplied.
“Old-school is what I was thinking.”
“I was just picking,” I said. “I was a bit surprised.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I didn’t see him as your type,” I answered.
“What’s my type?”
I knew a dangerous question when I heard one, but I didn’t hesitate. “No idea. Just didn’t see him as someone you might be interested in, especially as I didn’t know he had any telepathic ability. Now that I know that, I could see why having that in common would be attractive.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
I sighed. “Nika, I can’t know what it is like to be you. And you know all about what it is like to be me because of your abilities, which I don’t have. So, all I can do is try to put myself in your shoes. And generally, if you come across someone who might have had similar issues growing up as you did, I personally think that anyone might find that interesting.”
“I know,”
she said. I glanced at her and found her smirking at me. “Just making sure the point was driven home. What I find attractive isn’t always what everyone else might.”
“You’re a badass, and he didn’t seem like one,” I said.
“Oh? A guy who dares to live and let live among five-hundred-pound primates that can see in the dark, outnumber him, and can rip him apart like tissue paper? And he takes the chance of helping one get out from under a tree, not knowing if she would still kill him? And ventures out into their territory—at night?”
“Point made,” I said, and it was. Framed like that, Garth Nickerson was a Billy Badass. “And I would never say anything to Arkady. I’ve heard about some of his so-called pranks. They range from dangerous to potentially catastrophic.”
“Yeah, he thought pranking Declan about guys hitting on Stacia might be fun until Lydia corrected his thinking.”
“Does he honestly understand just how dangerous Declan could be?”
“Theoretically, but Arkady has always been a warrior and judges everything through that lens. He respects you because he experiences firsthand how powerful you are when you kick his ass sparring. When he first looked at Declan, he saw a young, skinny kid that he could kill with one finger. Never mind that the kid can erase a mountain range or explode an old vampire with a thought.”
“Yeah, our Arkady lacks imagination,” I said.
“Well, I can tell you that since we started weekend target practice on space debris, his view of our witch has changed drastically. Happened the first time he watched the live feed of Declan vaporizing a Russian second-stage booster.”
As we turned onto the main road, we started to update Tanya, Lydia, Stacia, and Declan via Omega’s group chat.
“How much damage could two or three tactical nuclear weapons do?” Tanya asked thoughtfully.
“Assuming one to two kiloton yields, they could do extreme damage to a city,” Omega said. “More importantly, any city that you four were in.”