“Still plenty of them about, and it seems to be their nature to take toll-collecting and bridge-tending jobs.”
“I didn’t know that,” Telly said. “Where do we go now? I had the highway as part of my route.”
“Route to where?” Dillon said.
“Balmore.”
“To do what?”
“I keep hearing rumors around the Uberall compound of an enclave of humans hiding down there.”
“Balmore?” Emma said. “As in Baltimore?”
“You got it, sis.” He gave Ryan a quick backward glance. “Just north of DC, which isn’t the capital here – Topeka is.”
“Kansas?” Their home state – wow. Being centrally located, it made more sense than DC.
“But it’s called ‘Topka’ here – Topka, Kans.”
“You’re doing all this on a rumor?” Dillon said. His tone held a trace of scorn, which Ryan didn’t like, though he could appreciate it.
“I have to find a safe place for these two until I can find a way back.”
“So you’re just going to wander around Balmore asking if anyone knows where the humans are hiding?”
“Better than leaving them to rot as Simon’s slaves!”
Ryan felt a little embarrassed for Telly, but that was his big half-brother: great with fixing the problem right in front of him, but never one for looking at the big picture. The only reason Ryan wasn’t mad at Dillon’s remark was because he obviously cared for Emma and was worried about her.
Emma wasn’t going to let it slide, though. “You’ve got a better idea?”
Dillon said, “Maybe. Amelia told me about a family of lycans that takes in human runaways and shelters them.”
“What?” he and Emma said in unison. They seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
“Can we trust this Amelia?” Telly said.
Dillon nodded. “She doesn’t talk about herself much, but she’d been around a long time and rumor has it that she’s connected to some secret human network.”
“I heard talk of safe houses at the compound too,” Telly said. “Sort of like the Underground Railroad.”
“What’s that?” Dillon said.
“Before and during the Civil War–”
Dillon frowned. “What Civil War?”
“In the 1800s. Between the states.” Ryan told him. “And yeah… I remember Amelia mentioning a railroad… she was being kinda sly about it. Makes sense now.”
“A war between the states…” Dillon shook his head. “We didn’t have that here.”
Telly nodded, continued. “Well, during our war, they had a network of ‘safe houses’ where escaped slaves could hide on their way to freedom.”
“Wait – human slaves?” Dillon – made a face. “You mean you enslave your own kind in Humania?”
“Well, we did,” Emma said sheepishly. “I guess in some places we still do.”
“Well, that’s certainly interesting, isn’t it?”
“No argument,” Telly said. “But, please, can we get back to the important thing here: You say there are safe houses for humans run by lycans?”
“Yes. A lot of lycans disapprove of how humans are treated and want them set free.”
Emma said, “But aren’t we considered food?”
Dillon nodded. “But some lycans have sworn off meat of any kind.”
Telly laughed. “Vegan lycans. Now that I haven’t heard of.”
Ryan bit back a remark about ending a sentence with a preposition.
“They’re called ‘no-carns’. You can bet that lycans in what you call the Underground Railroad are no-carns… and members of NETH.”
“You mentioned that before,” Emma said. “Nocturnians for the Ethical Treatment of Humans, right?”
“Really?” Telly laughed again. “Okay, that’s almost too bizarre – even for this place.”
“Where can we find some?” said Ryan. “These safe houses…”
“Amelia supposedly set up the safe houses before her capture. She gave me the location of one in case I ever escaped.”
“Nearby?” Telly said.
“Near Wilmton.” He pointed south along a side road. “I’m not sure where we are… but we could try any road heading south for a start. That way.”
34
Ergel approached the darkened house cautiously. The place was listed as the address registrated to the tag he’d seen on the getaway car. He’d expected lights on but all was dark. A small, one-story cottage. The owner was the bookkeeper for the company that shipped the sangreflor candies.
Right off, that had given Ergel a bit of a pause. As a rule, these namby-pamby, human sympatheticalizers was veggie munchers and wouldn’t have no truck with nothing that involved human meat, let alone Midnight Delights. By the time them sangreflors was coated with chocolate and shipped out, well, they was filled to the brim with human blood.
Still, even a no-carn had to make a living.
But the other thing that had given Ergel the up-short was the make of the registrated car. The card had said it was a Regar, but the one that struck Ergel’s foot had been a Nevre – same manufactuator of the truck he drove for Mr. Simon.
Ergel checked the car outside the house and discovered it was the same make and model of Regar as on the registry. He bent to check the tag and–
“Here, what’s this?”
The tag was missing. Someone had stolen it and put it on the getaway car.
Obviously Ergel weren’t dealing with no dummy. But Ergel weren’t no dummy neither. He just wished he knew his next step.
He straightened and looked around. Light filtered into the sky beyond the woods to the south. What would that be? Oh, yes. The Uberall compound. Well, he wouldn’t go looking for no excaped humans there. Falzon’d eat ’em for breakfast, he would.
Ergel headed back to his quarters and arrived to find a message on his desk. The bulletin he’d put out on the ‘troll telegraph’ had born fruit, such as it were: A troll named Worley was on his way to work when he’d spotified the car and trailed it to a house in Wilmton.
Ergel grinned and raced back to the truck. He already had Bessie and his instruments of persuasion bagged up on the front seat. Time for a little fun.
35
Emma found the Blackstad family more than a little strange. Sure, it felt nice being welcomed into a real home in this terrifying world, but she couldn’t help feel that she and Ryan were some sort of trophies.
Dillon had memorized the address in Wilmton, and when they’d presented themselves at the front door, they’d been hurried inside. Mr. Blackstad had helped Telly hide the car behind the house – a cottage surrounded by evergreens.
The initial welcome had been as warm as the bowls of delicious potato-broccoli soup placed before them, but became almost feverish when Ryan let it slip that he and Emma had arrived from Humania only a few days ago.
“No!” cried Mrs. Blackstad, clapping her hands against her cheeks. She looked at Telly for confirmation, perhaps because he was the oldest. “Is this true?”
He gave Ryan a say-no-more look as he replied. “Yes, just four days here.”
Emma had noticed something when Mrs. Blackstad raised her hands. She wasn’t sure how to ask, but she just had to.
“Um, pardon me, but you palms…”
The portly woman smiled as she turned her hands over and held them up, showing her hairless palms. “We shave them – to show solidarity with persecuted humans.”
Mr. Blackstad exhibited his bare palms as well. “We sure do.”
How weird, Emma thought. Telly’s got fake fur on his palms, trying to pass for a lycan, while these two lycans are trying to look human.
While Mr. Blackstad took Telly and Dillon aside to show them on his map how to find the Balmore humans, his wife hovered over Emma and Ryan, peppering them with questions about Humania.
“Is it true that everyone has an oil-powered car?”
“Not everyone,” Ryan said. “And they’re gasol
ine powered.”
“Funny, but the air doesn’t seem any cleaner here,” Emma said.
“Imagine!” she said, clasping her hands as she stared at them. “Two humans from across the Divide, eating my soup in my kitchen. I can’t wait to tell the Kensingtons.”
“Are you sure you should be telling anyone?” Telly said as he and Dillon returned from the corner with Mr. Blackstad.
“Oh. They’re members of the local NETH chapter, just like us.”
“Still…” Telly said, then shrugged. “We should get moving.”
“Oh, no!” Mrs. Blackstad held her hands together as if in supplication. “You just got here!”
“Yeah, but–”
“I’ve got some bread ready to come out of the oven.”
“Fresh-baked bread?” Ryan said, eyes wide. He turned to Emma. “We gotta stay!” Then to Telly. “Please? Just a little while?”
Emma had to agree. The thought of hot bread fresh from the oven had sent her salivary glands into overdrive.
“Telly, we can hang a few extra minutes, can’t we?”
Mr. Blackstad rested a hand on his shoulder. “Ell’s bread is a holiday for your mouth.”
Telly shrugged and grinned. “If it’s half as good as that soup, then that’s a big yeah!”
Emma stood up from the table and rolled up her sleeves. “Let me help you.”
Mrs. Blackstad beamed. But as she turned away from her oven, she glanced down at Emma and froze.
“Is that–?”
Emma noticed that she was staring at her wrist. “What?”
“Is that a Falzon bracelet?”
Emma nodded. “Yes. His people–”
“Falzon’s claimed you?” Mr. Blackstad said, leaning forward for a better look.
Emma resisted an urge to hide her hand behind her, but what was the point? “Yes, but–”
“You’d better go,” Mrs. Blackstad said. “We’ll stand up to our neighbors and even the police, but those Uberalls…”
Mr. Blackstad shook his head. “They don’t respect nothin’ and no one.”
She bustled toward her oven. “I’ll wrap up the bread and you can take it with you, but you’d best be on your way.”
Emma tugged at her bracelet, but it wasn’t coming off.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Blackstad said, looking truly regretful and not a little frightened, “but it wouldn’t do to have them Uberalls find you here. Wouldn’t do at all.”
36
Carrying his Bessie and his bag o’ tricks, Ergel approached the small house in Wilmton. The lights were on, so he used caution. Didn’t want them spying him and running off. He didn’t see the car that had almost laid him out – another model was parked out front – but it could be hidden somewhere in the dark. He crept to the window and spyified inside.
A man and a woman stood alone in the kitchen. They appeared to have just finished washing the dinner dishes. A bit late for that, but some folks didn’t get home in time for an early dinner. Ergel was one of those, so he could apprecicate that. Plus he was hungry most of the time.
As they set freshly washed bowls on the counter, Ergel leaned this way and that, looking for signs of guests, but saw no trace of anyone else. How could that be? A troll brother said he’d tracked those miserable humanses right to this address. Could Ergel have got the address wrong?
He was about to turn away from the window and search around for the car when he noticated the stack of soup bowls: four of them.
Four…and how many humans in the car? Ergel counted on his fingers: the two Falzon leases, Dillon, and the mystery driver…
Four. Ha!
He stepped to the door and kicked it in, shouting, “Where are they?”
The woman squealed and the man looked ready to faint.
“Where? Better tell me if y’know what’s good fer yeh!”
“Wh-who are you?” the man said.
“Someone y’doesn’t wants t’mess with! Four humanses was here. You fed ’em and sent ’em on their ways. Where to?”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about!” the man said, but his trembling voice indicated otherwise.
“Is that so? Well, we’ll see about that.”
“We don’t care if Falzon sent you!” the woman cried. “You can’t do this!”
Falzon? They thought he was from Falzon? Why would they think that?
In a moment of figuring, it came to him, it did. Two things, actually. It told him these people had seen that bracelets on the two leased kids, and it also told him he could do whatever he wanted to these lily-livered, no-carn lycans, because it would all be blamed on the Uberalls.
“You can’t just barge in here like this!” the man said, reaching for the phone. “I’m calling the police!”
“I think Bessie’ll have somethin’ to say about that!”
Ergel lashed out with the whip’s business end, snapping it through the air and wrapping some of its ten lashes around the man’s wrist. A quick tug yanked his hand away from the phone. Ergel pulled him closer and grabbed his arm. He twisted it so the palm turned up.
“Ooh, will yer look at that. Youse gone and shaved yer lycan fuzz so’s youse looks like a human. I gots no respect for humanification like that, y’know. No respect at all. But youse be just the kind to be harboratin’ humans, wouldn’t yeh. So where are they?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That so? We’ll see. We’ll see right soon. What say we replace yer missin’ fuzz with somethin’ else, ay?”
Ergel put his bag o’ tricks on the table and rummaged inside with his free hand until he found what he wanted. He pulled it out and held it up for the pair to see.
“Ooh! Look what I founds!”
The man and woman stared in horror at the slim, finger-length bar of pure silver gleaming in the lamplight.
“Pretty, ain’t it.”
The man whimpered and tried to pull away, but Ergel tightened his grip.
“What is it with you lycans and silver? I rather like it, meself, I do. But I’ms the generious sort. I’ms willin’ to share.”
With that he slapped the silver bar into the lycan’s outstretched palm and forced the fingers around it. Ergel held them closed as the man screamed in agony and dropped to his knees. His wife screamed too, and their wails combined into a delicious sort of harmony.
“Ah, music to me ears!”
“Oh, tell him, Banry!” the woman cried. “Tell him!”
“No,” he said through his teeth, though tears of pain were leaking through his squeezed lids. “He’s hunting them. He’ll hurt them!”
Foul smoke was beginning to ooze from between the lycan’s fingers.
“Stop!” the woman screamed, “I’ll tell you!”
“No, Ell!”
“I’ll tell you! Just don’t hurt him anymore!”
“Tell me firstest,” Ergel said. This was too much fun to stop right away.
“Balmore!” Ell said. “They’re off to Balmore!”
Reluctantly, Ergel loosened his grip. Banry’s fingers sprang open and the silver bar dropped to the floor, leaving a smoking, blistered burn across his palm.
Ergel laughed. “Ooh, that’s gonna scar. But considerate it a favor. You won’t has to shave there no more!”
“Monster!” Ell shouted.
Ergel ignored her and kept his gaze pinned on Banry. “Better tell me everything, or next thing you know that silver’ll be in yer wife’s mouth.”
“I’ll tell you,” Banry sobbed, clutching his hand. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
37
Ryan’s fingers tightened into tense fists as he watched Telly step up to the door of the narrow row house mid-block on some back street near the Balmore Harbor. He’d stayed behind in the car with Emma and Dillon.
“I don’t like this,” Emma said.
Ryan knew what she meant. “Year. Crummy neighborhood.”
No, make that a lousy neighb
orhood. If this place occupied the same space as Baltimore back home, it sure didn’t look much like the city he’d seen on Monday Night Football. The harbor area here was a bunch of broken-down docks and slums.
“I don’t mean the neighborhood. I mean the whole area – the city. Something bad’s gonna happen here.”
“One of your ‘feelings?’”
She nodded. “Yeah. And no wisecracks.”
“Fine. My lips are sealed.”
He didn’t say it, but Emma’s “feelings” were often on the mark. He hoped she was wrong this time.
He heard Telly’s knock on the door. The sound echoed along the empty street. No one answered. Probably all asleep. Midnight had come and gone a while ago. Telly knocked again, and this time a window lit from within. The door opened. Telly said something – the password Mr. Blackstad had given them, Ryan assumed – and then he turned and waved to the car.
“Let’s go!” Ryan said and the three of them piled out.
They trotted up the steps and through the door held for them by a familiar looking old man. He quickly closed it behind them.
Ryan stared at him. “Do I know you?”
The man shrugged. “Maybe, but–”
Recognition hit. “I saw you on television.”
The old man nodded. “N-Three.” He thrust out a hand. “I’m Ambrose. Welcome to our little refugee center.”
Ryan went to shake hands but recoiled when he saw the hairy palms.
Ambrose’s mouth twisted. “Don’t worry. Just window dressing.”
Ryan shook hands and it felt very strange.
“If you’re on TV,” Ryan said, “that means you’re famous.”
Ambrose shook his head. “No, merely conspicuously miserable.”
“But-but-but…” Telly couldn’t seem to gather his thoughts. “TV?”
“I was a writer back on Earth – our Earth. It’s taking the concept of hiding in plain sight to the limit. Who’d ever expect a human to pose as a lycan newscaster?”
“When did you cross over?” Emma said.
“Shortly after Christmas in 1913, to be exact. I was dallying in Mexico when I saw this shimmering light. Never forget it – like a circle on fire in the air. I thought it was some sort of mirage and wanted to see how close I could get before it disappeared. Guess what? It didn’t disappear – but I did. I found myself in Nocturnia.”
Definitely Not Kansas (Nocturnia Book 1) Page 19