“My God, she’s gi-normous! Well, sure—shit, Rica’s a big girl, too, it makes sense—thanks for telling us so we wouldn’t worry or anything!” Lois bawled down to the arena. “I mean, it might be considered, I dunno, important information to share, but shit, what do I know?”
“I’d say we have just deduced the plan,” Anne said.
“Oh, please, look at that girl. She could eat all of them and still have room for lunch. This fight’s over.”
In fact, it did seem like Rica’s transformation to her other form—her mother’s gift, as it were—had made a powerful impression on the other participants. The small leopard had gone from lazy circles to wary backpedaling.
Rica popped back to her two-legged form. “Oh, come on,” she said, and laughed a little. “There’s gotta be one of you who doesn’t mind having a spat.”
“It’s not just the color—though it’s striking, and I’ve never seen anybody else here with fur like that. It’s her size…she must be a head taller, at least, than all these other women. So, correspondingly, her animal form—puma? Panther? Well, it seems that—”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s all a rich mystery just waiting for you to figure out. Oooh, there goes Shakar—he either knocked our husbands out or they let him go. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall down there right now?”
“Now, I know you’re mad—oof!” She fought for breath as he hugged her hard enough to make her gasp. “Okay, okay. Yes, I’m fine. And I know I should have told you. But to be fair, there were quite a few things you left out of our engrossing dialogue. So I figure, this squares us up. Now, it’s not that I’m embarrassed or ashamed or anything, but only my mom and I could do that, and it kind of freaked Dad out, so I sort of got used to it being a private thing, and after they died, it was a really private thing, and there never seemed a good time to bring it up, and then with the baby and all—”
“Oh, Rica,” Shakar said into her hair, squeezing her like she was—well, like she was a black shiny thing that should have been a feather but wasn’t. “I’m so glad you’re safe. Both of you.”
“Yeah, well, Lois is right, you’re a dumb-ass,” she laughed, squeezing back. “I think part of the reason I didn’t tell you is because I was waiting for you to figure it out. Didn’t you tell me your mother was from my world? You’re all half-breeds, too.”
“Yes, but my good father is the king. Kings are different. They can do many things ordinary men can’t.” Shakar said it with total confidence, and Rica decided to save that one for another day.
Chapter 13
“…And to treat her honorably and gently through all my sunrounds. This I so vow,” the king added. “It is my vow.”
Dead silence. Then Gladys said, “I don’t know why I keep expecting a minister to appear out of nowhere and run this thing…now please say, man and wife.”
“Man and wife,” the king repeated obediently.
“Okay, now we’re married.”
“There, was that so friggin’ hard?” Lois asked. “Thank you.”
“Two weddings!” Gladys cried, and gave the king a loud smack right on the mouth. He looked surprised, but happy. “One right after the other…though I s’pose they were already married. Er, were they?”
“No one can say we’re not married now,” Rica said, reaching up and squeezing Shakar’s hand, which had been hovering protectively over her shoulder since she’d left the arena. “Wasn’t that part of the point?”
“It was a splendid surprise,” the king said.
“Oh, yes,” the queen added. “I thought it was impressive when you did that in your room when it was just the three of us, but to see it out on the floor like that in front of all those other girls…”
“Who got even paler.” Rica smirked. “If that’s possible.”
“Attempt to be less smug in victory,” Anne advised.
“You showed the king and queen?” Shakar asked, sounding wounded.
“Well, if you’d been there, I would have shown you, too. But you stayed away. All night long.”
“I thought…I had brought disgrace upon us. I felt you would not welcome me to your bed.”
“Well, see what happens when you stay out of the bedroom. You miss all kinds of things.”
“There wasn’t much of a fight, though,” Lois said. “So, canceling it would have been a huge breach of honor, but all of them chickening out and not fighting wasn’t?”
“There were a couple of dustups,” Rica said. “Couple of them wanted to try their chops. It was fine. Nobody got hurt. Well, I didn’t get hurt.”
“And—I’m not quite done bitching and moaning yet, Rica, sorry—and the dark travelers, the devils, the horrible evil awful things, they turned out to be grumpy brunettes with speech impediments. Meanwhile, Rica’s black—I’m not the only one who noticed, right? And her cat form is black—naturally. And everyone’s all, ooooooh, that’s so different it’s cool. I mean, what is with you people?”
“I think any culture seems different and strange when you look at it from the outside. We would have difficulty explaining our society to our husbands, don’t you think?”
“Well, at least Rica’s from the same place as Mom and me. But how can you not know who Prince William is?” she joked.
“I’ve heard of King William, of course.”
“Sure, sure, K—one more time?”
“Well, you know. The British royal family kept their titles but lost their money years and years ago, but in the history books, King William did a lot for England after his grandmother—”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.” Lois turned to Shakar. “I thought you said you went to my world. Her farm in my world.”
“I did. What is wrong?”
Lois turned back to Rica. “Your farm on Earth.”
Rica laughed. “Of course not on Earth. Nobody can afford to live on Earth anymore.”
“Uh-huh. This farm—barn animals, right?”
“Sure. You know, like krakens and bo’swill and, I dunno, some shrepen…animals you’d find on any farm, I guess.”
“On any farm in the Twilight Zone! But…you can’t be an alien, your slang…contractions…Anne says most languages don’t evolve anywhere near the same way, so the chances that you’d be an alien who could speak perfectly accented English and who—”
“I was born on the farm,” Rica said, mystified—why did Lois look so oddly at her? “Of course, I’m not from Earth, but my grandparents were. They helped build the ships…that’s why we call ourselves colonists. We explored and made new homes for ourselves.”
“So that place is not where my mother was from?” Shakar, thank goodness, was taking this a lot better than Lois was. It had never occurred to Rica…she assumed he…well, frankly, she did a stupid thing and assumed he knew things he couldn’t possibly know. So who was the dumb-ass now? “Well, it is a very nice farm and I wish to go back.”
“And now we can. We can go back and forth, like we planned.”
“Wait a minute here, let’s try to stay on track. So…Anne’s from the past…the forties. And Mom and I are from the present. But you…you’re from the future.” Lois was walking around her admiringly. “No wonder you’re so tall! Ah, but ultimately cool, as anyone whose parents were from Earth must be.” She stopped prowling around Rica, which was something of a relief. “That makes you think, though, doesn’t it? You guys all found the perfect wife…mate…and we’re all from different times and one of us is from a totally different planet. I mean, what are the chances?”
“Well, my father built this machine that can move between worlds—”
“Of course he did, of course he did, he’s some kind of supergenius from the future!”
“Um,” Rica began.
“He probably built invisibility rays and flying cars, too. Did he have a gi-normous head?”
“Not that I ever noticed. So, Shakar, in all the excitement I never got a tour of this place.” She seized his elbow and started to propel him out of
the room.
“I guess the party’s over,” Anne said, sounding amused.
“I bet he did have a gi-normous head. How can I get her to tell me?”
“All this excitement. My! It’s much more interesting here than in Cottage Grove.”
“Do not fear, Gladys. It is quiet here,” the king—her new husband—assured her. “For many sunrounds, nothing happens.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good. At my age I like a little peace and quiet.” They were in the king’s sumptuous quarters, standing beside the window and looking out into the darkening SandLands. Her home now. Odd how a girl born and bred in Minnesota could find comfort in the heat of a strange desert, under an odd sun.
“Your age, my Gladys? You are not so old.”
“After the last couple of months, I feel old,” she admitted.
“I like your smile marks,” Sekal said, putting a big hand on her face and then tracing her laugh lines. “I like that you have seen many things. You will tell me many things?”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“Will you tell me that you cherish me?”
“I don’t think we should base this marriage on lies,” she teased, but when he didn’t smile back, she said, “I do cherish you. I think you’re wonderful. I—I didn’t like my last husband. I like you a lot.”
“Your first mate, with all respect, sounds like a fool.”
“He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer,” she admitted, “but back then, beggars couldn’t be choosers. I was in trouble and he—”
“I do not wish to spend our first night as mates speaking of old mates.”
“Me either.” In a sudden fit of daring, she leaned forward and kissed him, half-waiting to be
(“Susan Sarandon is older than you and her ass is in a helluva lot better shape.”)
rebuffed. To her delight, not only did he kiss her back, but his strong arms came up and around her, cradling her. Making her feel safe. Cherished.
“Oh, Sekal,” she whispered, staring into his wise purple eyes. “You’re wonderful.”
“I am only as you see me, my queen.” He kissed her again, more urgently, and she tugged on his robes as they fell on the bed together.
“Forget it, Damon.”
“But, my Lois—”
“No. I can’t do it when I know my mom is somewhere else in the palace doing it.”
“But it is one of the queen’s duties to mate with—”
“Stop, stop!”
“But—”
“No way, Damon. Any other night but tonight.”
“Oh, Lois.”
“Sorry, pal.”
He sighed. “Will morning never come?”
She laughed. “Cry me a river, Damon.”
Rica stretched. “It serves me right, assuming you knew where you were.”
“It serves me right, then, also. But it does not matter, Rica, truly. I thought I sought my mother’s world, but as I have said, it was you I truly sought.”
“Aw.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “You keep talking like that, you’ll make me forget I’m still pissed at you.”
“And I at you, Rica. It was still a foolish risk.”
“Are you kidding? Did you see all those scrawny little white girls? And their scrawny little kitty shapes? My grandma could have taken ’em.”
“Perhaps that is so but I found the morning quite…aggravating.”
“Race you back to the farm.”
“Well, no, Rica, but soon? I confess,” he added, pulling her to him, “I miss our privacy. It was our place.”
“This can be, too. My folks could only have one world, and it sounds like your mama couldn’t run off and leave this place without a queen. But we’re luckier: we’ve got both worlds. Your home, full of family and fun and the people you love, and my home, with the animals and the work and the space. All that space…” She sighed, thinking of her home. Their home. Someday to be her baby’s home…that, and the SandLands, where he or she would be a member of the royal family. But time enough to work all that out later.
“And the lake that was made by men,” he added. “Do not forget that.”
“Forget it? Honey, I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring it up. You know, it’d be really easy to design one. Then we just gotta get it built. Then—”
He stopped her with a kiss. “Then we will do many things and you will build many things to honor your father. But as for now…” He scooped her up easily enough, though he nearly whacked her head against the door frame. “…I never did see your room.”
“It’s the second star to the left,” she sighed, enjoying the sensation of being carried. “And straight on ’til morning.”
“What?”
“It’s the doorway at the end of this hall.” She wriggled free and he nearly dropped her. She looked up at him, laughing. “Race you.”
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Fast. Powerful. Deadly. With bitchin’ highlights.
Ah, weddings—every single woman’s reminder that she’ll probably die alone, covered in cat hair and dressed in unflattering sweatpants. And as far as bad wedding experiences go, my friend Stacy’s could take the cake: (1) I’m dateless, (2) I’m a bridesmaid, and (3) Someone just attempted to whack the groom (known, no kidding, as The Boss) in the middle of the ceremony. Whoa…hang on. I might not relish reception food or doing the Electric Slide, but anyone who tries to ruin a girlfriend’s big day by bumping off her true love will have to go through me first.
So now I, assistant hairdresser Jenny Branch, am helping to hunt down a real-life bad guy, and the prime suspect is Kevin Stone, who claims to be working undercover for a group called Covert Ops Protection. Riiiight. All of this is hard to believe—my new role as spy-in-training, the fact that I’m surrounded by people with freaky superhuman powers, and most of all, the way that this unbelievably sexy villain/double agent/whatever Kevin is makes every (and I mean every) nerve ending tingle the second he comes into view…and it appears to be mutual. Living with flying bullets and constant danger is a long way from sweeping up hair at the end of the day. But if it means being around Kevin, a girl could get used to it…
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She found the minister in the men’s room. He was trying to talk the bad guy into giving up his gun. Their voices were bouncing off the tile, and Jenny had just enough time to wish she’d knocked, but then it was too late, and she was standing under bright fluorescents and thinking, This is the cleanest men’s room I’ve ever seen. Also, the third men’s room I’ve ever seen.
“Don’t you think you should have planned this better?” she asked because, honestly, it was the first thought that popped into her head.
Not: Help!
Not: Oh my God, he’s got a gun!
The bad guy grinned at her. He was dressed, to her disappointment, like most bad guys: neck to ankles in black fatigues, and fairly bristling with guns and knives and armor. His hair was cut brutally short—no more than a dark brown fuzz covered his skull. His dark eyes almost disappeared into laugh lines while he smiled at her, but she could see they were tipped at the ends, not quite almond-shaped, giving him an exotic look. It was a little like being in the men’s room with a panther. Though without a firmer frame of reference, she probably couldn’t be sure.
“I planned things just fine, sweetie,” he informed her in a North Carolina accent. Ah planned things jest fahn, sweetie. “Is he dead?”
To add the final touch of weirdness to the day, the bad guy pulled out a spork from nowhere and nibbled on the end.
A spork? But the nearest KFC wa
s—
She wrenched her thoughts back to a logical track. Sporks be damned. Time to focus. Caitlyn and Dmitri were somewhere else in the building. The Boss was probably in an ambulance by now. Stacy was a civilian. The minister probably wasn’t armed. All the urinals were empty. It was up to her.
“Hmm mmm hmm hmm,” she replied.
“What?” he said, taking a step toward her, putting the spork back into his bad-guy Bat belt.
She wrung her hands and moved closer. “Don’t hurt us, please! I’ll tell you where he is, only mmm hmm mmm.”
“Don’t be scared, honey.” Don’t be scayed, honeh. She fought the mad impulse to giggle. It was a little like talking to Foghorn Leghorn, in Kevlar. “Now what’s that?”
She threw her bouquet in his face, poor thing that it was after she’d denuded it to make the cake. He flinched back and she clawed for the pistol in the shoulder holster, ducking as he swung at her with almost no force. What was that—was he really not trying to hurt her? Moron.
(You’d better be sure, if you try for a man’s gun,)
She was sure. The Velcro tore…
(if he’s any good he’ll have one in the chamber, one in the chamber, one in the chamber)
…and she had the gun. She stuck it in his face the moment he cut his losses and backed up.
“You’d better come with me,” she said.
“Oh, dear God,” the minister said. He was in the far corner. Praying, not swearing. Funny. Half an hour ago, the guy had looked like he was in his early thirties. Now he looked ready for a retirement home. The black, of course, didn’t help.
The bad guy hadn’t lost his smile through the whole thing (weird!), and now he held his rifle out in front of him like a peace offering to a god, carefully put it down, backed up more, and raised his hands. “You got me, honey. I’ll come quietly.”
“Oh.”
He laughed. A great laugh, booming and rich. It echoed off the tiles. “You sound disappointed, honey! Were you hoping for a smackdown in the boys’ room?”
Really Unusual Bad Boys Page 15