Going Under (25 page)

"This is very bad!" she said, her face a picture of girlish dismay, eyes huge. Rays of yellow had begun to appear in her hair, and areas which once been black in her were turning deep blue. It was the sunrise, Lila realised. She reflected the sky.

"Do what you can," Lila said. "I've done everything I know."

Teazle made a major break for it and Lila sat on him so hard she thought she was going to break something new. He snarled and snapped his jaws, starting to brew up a fury as she asserted dominance over him. At the same time she felt his body start to heat up in a new way. He was getting aroused. Trying to subdue a raging horny demon was a challenge she could live without, even when he was this badly hurt. It didn't look like the nymph had any defences so she couldn't miss a trick.

"Hurry up for hell's sake," she muttered, trying not to sound too aggravated.

Nixas gave Lila a female-to-female glance of amusement and some admiration as she, too, noticed Teazle's changes of state. "He's a real live wire." The faery had grown in size, her colour changing once again to a soft blue lit from within by inner fire. Her mouth was dark as ink, eyes closed. Her face hovered a millimetre above Teazle's skin, nostrils flared as she breathed in over his injuries. As she did so her body darkened fractionally and then she put her mouth on him in a kiss that looked like it was the precursor to a bite, and some flickering, thick liquid light spilled out of her lips and into his flesh.

He hissed and ground his teeth, body going taut with pain, but he held still and when she lifted away he shuddered with relief. His snarl changed to a kind of purr.

"That was the least of them, demon," she said with strange relish, her eyes wide and avid, her fingers probing across him for the site of another injury. "It will cost me a week of work to fix you halfway. And Medusoid poison too. I cannot rid you of more than half that tonight. You will be slowed down, even if I can put you on your feet."

"Get on with it, strumpet," Teazle growled, sliding his snout into the corner of the truckbed and pressing it there in an effort to help himself regain some conscious control.

Nixas glowed and repeated her measures over another place.

Teazle's limbs bucked. Lila felt his bones grind in her hands and under her boots as his effort forced her to tighten her hold to a ridiculous level. Once he backed off and Nixas paused she let go a little just to keep his circulation going. Teazle rammed his head against the metal side as if he was going to bash himself into oblivion. One of his wings started to work itself loose under Lila's forearm.

"Be quiet," Lila said, feeling the truck rock. "The neighbours are already bad enough. All we need is for one of them to come snooping over. They've already made it hard enough for Max to stay here, without giving them something to really get their teeth into."

"Alien sex threesome in Bay City suburban garden leaves neighbours outraged," Nixas whispered and giggled to herself.

"Just because it got you two million dollars further up the coast," Lila muttered.

"Oh I can still eat out in this town on that story," Nixas said. "Moths or no moths."

Teazle fought and to distract herself from noticing his growing erection Lila said, "What are you doing here then, if you're still good uptown in celebrity heights?"

Nixas did another section of Teazle and then said, "They like me. I don't like them. Their minds are full of filth."

"Forgive me for being a bit stupid," Lila said, not daring to move as Teazle heaved and snarled. He slammed his snout into the truck and she heard and felt the metal dent. "But if you're going to strip naked, dance and ... um ... entertain for money in the porn industry, wouldn't you expect a bit of that?"

"Oh I don't mind pure fun," Nixas said, coming up for air and glowing a lighter, paler blue. Her dark points were turning a soft rose red though her orange eyes never changed. "It's not the activity in itself. It's the intent. Those people don't know fun at all. They want to punish themselves and others. They're all mad."

Teazle had nearly got his wing free enough to move. It had razored bits of horn on its edges. Lila couldn't think of a way to grab it without losing something even more dangerous. "We'll have to stop in a second."

"I will do a general vitality," Nixas announced, looking at the wing fighting steadily free, like an emergent Satanic butterfly.

"That'll make him feel better, right?"

"Yes, that's right," Nixas smiled sweetly as if Lila was an A student.

"Get ready to run, then," Lila said grimly, not even wanting to think about it.

Nixas gave Teazle a speculative glance. "Demons are so hard to read for me," she said. "I never know if they want to eat me or f ..."

"Probably both at the same time," Lila said to discourage any thoughts Nixas might have of sticking around and finding out. She felt Teazle relax deviously and become languid and buttery as if he had fallen asleep.

"At least they're pure of heart," Nixas said with a sigh. She took a breath and went dark like a light being hidden under a blanket.

Lila heard and felt Teazle take a big, easy breath in. "Out!"

Nixas darted past her into the daylight and suddenly Lila was holding nothing but thin air. She backed out of the truck and jumped down into the driveway. Teazle was standing in human form, dressed in his perfect dark blue suit, his white hair hanging down his back as though just brushed and ready to advertise shampoo. Nixas had changed to her male form and was looking at him from behind the screen door, ready to bolt. Teazle was laughing silently but so hard he looked ready to burst a rib. Across the street Mrs. Pinkerstein's Chihuahua started yapping. Lila turned slowly and gave the woman a wave but she thought it probably didn't register since Mrs. Pinkerstein stood at the end of her own driveway, mouth ajar like a stranded fish, the Chihuahua dancing around her ankles and tangling them in its designer leash.

Teazle made a pretend pounce in Nixas's direction and he jumped and bolted indoors. In the same movement, fluid as a river, the demon turned to her, arms out wide, still laughing. "You didn't really imagine I was so far gone I'd tear the place up?"

Lila smacked at his hands but he was faster than she was and stepped out of the way. He looked relaxed when he did it, as if he hardly moved at all, but she missed him good. She shook her head in irritation as she turned and for a moment they played a little game of Wu Shu hands, Lila trying to grab his wrists and he winding out of reach. They danced along the path to the house, him backing up until his feet hit the porch steps when he stopped and made a funny fighter face at her, then dodged and pushed her so she tripped up the stairs, falling into a handstand on the top step to avoid it looking like she had been about to fall over. They both ended up laughing at the end of this bout. Teazle bent down and turned his head, hair falling across his utter white face and eyes as he tried to make himself upside down.

"This poison is making me twice as slow," he complained.

It was true. Usually he could sit her in the dust in under two seconds.

In spite of all her mechanics it was hard to hold herself on her arms. Her legs were so damn heavy. She flipped back to normal and heard a board crack under her. "So, coming in or not?"

"Not," he said decidedly. "I hear we have to go into Faery and I'll need all my body parts for that. Like I said. I'll be your dog. I have my place here from last time anyway," and he turned and sat down on the steps in a Zen position of utter calm.

Across the street Mrs. Pinkerstein was struggling with the madly excited Chihuahua. The noise wasn't deafening but it had a tinny, mad annoying sound. Teazle barked. He sounded like the daddy of all dogs and the chi instantly shut up and put its head down, tail between its legs.

"Thank the nymph for me," he told Lila as she turned.

"I will," she said. She looked out over the low hills towards the highway but there was no sound of the bike engine. Her stomach hurt with hunger. She went inside.

"Nixas is one of the greatest healers of the fey," Malachi informed her as she stood, surveying what had once been a fair model of a quaker style midsize domestic kitchen and had somehow become a huge room equipped with professional cookery gear, a cavernous extension of a larder, and an inglenook fireplace big enough to roast an ox. Around the latter was a wide tiled area full of chairs and piles of blankets upon which various faeries were resting, talking, eating, and smoking. Many of them gave her a nod and a wink, a smile, raised their mugs, or waved and hid again.

"Nixas is a player," Lila said and met Malachi's eye with a frank look of her own. "I hate players." She swept her eyes over the new magical extension, not sure about it and wondering where all their stuff had gone.

Malachi smiled his slow, laconic smile. "Oh, me too," he said and she shook her head, smiling, and punched him lightly on the shoulder because nobody but nobody was more of a player than Malachi. He pointed through the smoke and steam to a small figure of a potbellied creature sitting in the arms of a much larger faery. The small one appeared to be doing some kind of dance with a spoon in one hand and a mug in the other. The larger one darted around, moving it skilfully from place to place. At its orders five or six others moved about with pots, pans, and jars. On a table between them and the mellow fireplace with its roaring logs was set an incredible feast, only one-third of which Lila could even identify. The room smelled heavenly.

"I thought you were hungry," she said, lightheaded and feeling sick with a need for food.

"Mine's just coming," he replied and then a half-height brownie walked up with a platter on which a steak rested, blackened to a crisp on its very edges, dripping with blood and hot fat, quite raw in the middle. "Please excuse me." He took the plate and put it down on the floor, then gave a curious kind of shrug and suddenly there was no tall, cool black faery at her side but a huge pantherlike creature on all fours, darkness pooling around it as it gulped down the meat in three bites and then paused a moment to sit and lick its whiskers.

"Aww, Baggie," she said to him, getting over her surprise at his change-she'd never seen him actually do it before. "I didn't know you were really a ... anyway. That's not really a panther. Or a puma. Too much ... in fact you're a bit ..." Cat. He was some kind of cat. But weird. Not like a real one. She didn't know how to say that nicely.

He bared his incredibly white teeth at her and his orangey red eyes blinked once, twice. Then he was standing and saying, "That's better. If I had to eat any more of that honey and jellies shit we have to stick with in human form I'd be sick. Cats need meat."

"Soul food," she said.

"Hell yeah," he gently bumped her with his shoulder. "You all right?" His question meant everything. Are you all right in every way?

"Hell, no," she said, with feeling. "Where's the menu?"

ila woke up on the futon mats that passed for a bed now that ordinary beds didn't support her weight anymore. She felt exhausted but the sun was high so she had to have been out a while. Her room was empty except for her and Zal, who was awake, sitting propped up against the wall, playing on a hand console. His face was set with concentration. She heard the tinny tune and pop of a game where all the characters were cute, big-eyed furry ninjas. Zal's character was a pink fluffy squirrel in a minidress and high boots who wielded a twohanded sword bigger than her entire body.

"Eee-cha!" said the squirrel repeatedly, slaying flying monkeys left and right, leaping from tree to tree in search of nuts.

"Homesick?" Lila asked, rolling onto her back and rubbing her face with both hands. She felt so sleepy she'd like to turn over and go back to oblivion, but she'd already spent too long on rest. A halfdigested super salad with mesquite chicken and avocado salsa shifted with sluggish acidity in her gut. She tried to swallow the nasty taste in her mouth and remembered all the faery beer she'd drunk.

"Haha," Zal said, losing concentration with his squirrel and falling off a log. His face was scraped down the side with a red graze, hair matted with mud on the ends. Mud caked his clothing and had started to fall off on the bedsheets.

"You fell off."

"Your bike doesn't hold the corners that well over a hundred. Not on wet gravel anyway. Just a small tumble."

"Is the bike ... ?"

"I bought you another one," he said, tossing the console aside. "It's on order, anyway. They don't stock them for some reason."

"Where's the old one?"

"In a field halfway to Frisco. Thanks, I'm fine."

He bent down and kissed her.

He felt rough and tough in his armour, and tasted of bruising and chilli. She decided she liked it and was just deciding that maybe they could spend another hour here when there was a knock on the door. She made to answer but Zal held her down and finished his kiss.

"It's only me," said Max's voice from the other side of the door. "I'm gonna make you some breakfast. Come down when you're ready. No rush."

Zal stared into her eyes with dark focus. "There's a lot of moth dust out there," he said. "One of them followed me out into the country, tried to swipe me when I came off the bike. It only veered off because it realised I was elf."