Mad Lizard Mambo (25 page)

“God, it’s… oh God, they’re taking down the bison,” Malone gasped. “Oh, Odin and his crows.”

“Yeah, well, better them than us,” I muttered. Then I heard Ryder’s tumble of sidhe and sighs. “We’re clear. Nightmares, bison, and dragon are all too busy chewing on each other to give a crap about what happens to us. You don’t have to pray for us anymore, Ryder.”

“I’m not praying for us, Kai.” He turned in his chair to face me, grief staining his green eyes. “I’m praying for the dragon. That could have been us back there, dying under those monsters’ teeth. Instead, the wyrm is fighting our battles while we escape with our lives.”

He was serious. It was in his voice, a somber, rich roll of respect and pain. I could understand that. Ryder watched me, hooded eyes on my face. Giving him a small smile, I kept my eyes on the road, distancing us from the carnage behind us.

“I get it. I do,” I said. “Because without that wyrm, those nightmares would be eating elfin tartare right about now. So give it all the thanks you’ve got stored in there and some of mine too.”

“YOU CAN
see forever from here.” Awe filled Ryder’s voice to the point of breaking. “Look at the sky. Such a
big
sky.”

I glanced up. The stars were a milky spread of lights and colors pouring out of the black. A frosting of clouds lingered at the edges of the surrounding mountains, a hint of rain in the brisk air. The threat of a storm hung around us, whisperings of thin, piercing drops and light hail.

“Yep. It is. Now come help me with this so we have a place to sleep, Your Lordship.” I rattled the tie-downs to the hard-side tent I was erecting on the transport’s long, flat roof. “The kids are going to take the cab tonight. We’ll switch tomorrow.”

The turret was a bit dented from the truck’s tumble, but it still went down, sitting flush with the rear cab’s roof. There was enough room to set up the two-man tent near the end by the cab and still have a few feet to set up watch outside the cover. A cupped ridge near the foot of a steeply angled hill was a perfect resting spot for the night. We’d stopped a bit earlier than I’d have liked, but defensible camping places weren’t a dime a dozen, and with the truck backed into the clearing a few hundred yards off of the road, the tree line on either side shielded the site from most of the wind.

“You need help up there?” Cari yelled from inside the truck. “If not, I’m going to do a rubdown shower then crash.”

“Nah, go ahead. I’m going to get His Lordship to blow up the mattress.” I tightened the last tent rung to a loop on the truck’s edge, then yanked the panels into place, popping the structure up. “Ryder, if you want something to sleep on, you’d best get that mattress inflated.”

Watching Ryder set up the mattress was hilarious. One tug of the suction ring and the blow-up bed expanded out, hitting him in the chin. Chuckling, I helped him wrestle it into the tent, then zipped up the screen flaps to keep the bugs out.

Dinner was a few-hours-old memory, and my stomach growled, chewing on itself in complaint. I dug out a few packets of ramen and instant miso soup, threw everything but the saline broth packets into two heat packs with some water, then sealed it up. After handing one to Ryder, I made myself comfortable on a folded bedroll, stretching my legs out in front of me.

“What is this? What do you do with this?” Ryder settled down next to me, moving gingerly. “It looks…
odd
.”

“Why don’t you settle down a bit and rest?” I asked. “The pain’s making you a bit nuts.”

He and Malone took the brunt of the roll—Ryder because he hadn’t been strapped down properly, and the kid opened up a few of his dog bites. A slap of skin glue and the cuts were sealed, but there was no helping Ryder’s deepening bruises, other than a bit of aspirin and sympathy.

“It’s noodles. Here. Press down on the outer pack, then shake it a bit,” I instructed, breaking the heat element with a crunch, then setting the bag down as it began to puff up. “Just don’t shake too hard. Give it a few minutes and we can eat.”

“Suppose I break it?” Ryder poked at the heat square, then again, harder, when I sighed at him. “What did you put aside? What was that?”

“That’s the
shoyu
packet. It’s powdered. Useless for soup but pretty good with rice. Like
furikake
.” Leaning over, I broke the pack for him, trying not to laugh when he huffed in a breath at the heat. “Didn’t they have camping in Underhill? Or was roughing it going out with your second best horse?”

“We had transports,” Ryder grumbled back. “The current fuel cell engine is based on our designs. An elegant combination of elfin and human technologies. Before that you were running electricity and we were using steam and magic. Both very poorly, I might add.”

“Hey, there were some kick-ass electric motors back in the day,” I refuted. “Sure they cost a hell of a lot and the cars weighed a shit ton, but they were powerful.”

“Not for the average buyer, then,” Ryder scoffed back at me. “Ours were difficult to maintain at times. It’s funny how, even during a war between races, there are those who find a way to meet in the middle for the greater good.”

“Funnier you said
you
were running when talking to me about human stuff.” The packets were done heating, so I carefully vented a corner, letting the excess steam out. Wedging them between our makeshift seats, I left them to cool.

“Probably because I think of you as being human in those kinds of things.” Ryder leaned over and sniffed at the steaming packets. “I don’t even know when or where you were born—”

“I don’t know if I’d count myself as born,” I cut in. “I was shaken up in a bottle then shoved back into a sidhe for cooking.”

“Regardless of how you were conceived, you were still born,” Ryder continued. “You probably weren’t born here, do you think? Do you know?”

“I think on Underhill. Even with Tanic aging me, my mental capacities weren’t accelerated, so basically he had a floppy blubbering kid for a lot of it. Might have been there for fifty or sixty years? Maybe a bit more. Then add on the forty-something years after the Merge.” The packets were cooled off enough to eat, and I tore one open all the way, then passed it over to Ryder with a pair of metal chopsticks. “Dempsey said he figured when he got me I was about thirteen or fourteen, if he had to guess by human years. Hard for him to tell too. Not a lot of food and a hell of a lot of pain. Mostly that’s all I remember; being hungry and hurting all the time. So, add it all up, and I’d say I’m probably… what? A hundred? A little bit more?”

“With all of that, then yes, it would be hard to tell,” Ryder conceded. “Still, a good guess I think. I’m a few hundred years older than you are, but the Merge complicated things. It’s difficult now. Our calendars are different. We have to adjust how we tell time.”

“Yeah, things got all kinds of screwed up.” The ramen was a savory burst of salt and soybean paste in my mouth, and I chewed, thinking. “Hey, the whole is-this-Earth-or-is-it-Underhill question—the stars should tell us, right? I mean, are they human or elfin stars?”

“Neither and both,” Ryder answered, tilting his head back as he chewed a mouthful of ramen. “The stars are… we had the same stars. That’s the curious thing… as if we existed in the same place but… not. If anything, the skies now have more stars than before, as if space peeled back a layer of black. The moons are… the same. The planets have multiplied. Those have merged as well, adding sidhe to human and vice versa. It’s one of the conundrums puzzling all astronomers, regardless of race. Didn’t they discuss this in school?”

“Didn’t go, remember?” I fished a piece of
kamaboku
out from the broth. “Read a lot, but science wasn’t my thing. Wasn’t practical in a lot of cases.”

“Yet you can reason out thermodynamics and trajectories.” He chuckled. “While driving. And shooting at things that want to eat us.”

“That’s different. That’s… like origami. Folding the possibilities,” I explained. “I didn’t know about the stars thing. Kind of screws with the mind, doesn’t it?”

“More than one brilliant mind has said so,” Ryder replied. He sniffed at a piece of
gobo
, then nibbled tentatively at the root’s end. “This food is very interesting. I’ve had noodles before, but these are… earthier. More flavorful. We try to incorporate human foods into our meals, and Damas—our house manager—she gives sidhe cooking classes to humans at a school near the Court. Food is often the best enculturation practice.”

“Hard to hate someone when you both rave about the
carne asada
fries down by the pier.” I held a piece of fish cake out for Ryder to eat. He raised his chopsticks, but I shook my head. “Just eat it. Don’t pass things that way. It’s… bad luck. Like wearing red while on a run.”

He bit into the pink-and-white swirl, smiling at its taste. Swallowing, Ryder nodded and dug through his packet, coming up with a piece. We ate in the brisk silence for a few minutes, the sky turning around over us. The creamy curl of stars and dust spread up in a column over the mountains’ silhouette, brushing away the last bits of a pink-gold sunset to roil in a rich sea of blues and purples. There was no true black in the sky, not on the cold desert plains and salt flats. The brittle pale pools shone hematite, mirroring the universe on either side of the hard-pack road.

Malone made some murmuring comment, and Cari’s laugh rang out nearly as bright as the meteor flares arching across the sky’s back. I finished my noodles, then drained the broth, suppressing a burp. Ryder picked through his food, too engrossed in the sparkling blanket stretched over us.

“You know what I don’t get—and don’t take this wrong,” I amended quickly. “But you guys go all crazy over the dragons like they’re some precious thing, and the bastards are all over the place. You’re always acting like you’ve never seen one before. Like today—”

“We almost
died
today, and yet that is something you simply shrug off. But yes, the dragon—that wyrm—was not a kind I’ve seen before. I could scarcely count the number of dragons I saw before the Merge, and now, as plentiful as they are in the skies above Pendle, I am still awestruck by them.” Ryder’s words caught me by surprise. “That is something else that’s changed besides the landscape. Dragons were scarcer in Underhill. Here? They are everywhere, and we, the elfin, struggle to maintain a respectful distance, whereas you—”

“Make them chase an old Mustang and pancake them on the road,” I finished for him. “For you, they’re a religion, and for me, they’re a menace.”

“Don’t get me wrong. Dragons are dangerous. I just am not prepared to see them up close. Not like in Pendle.” Ryder huffed a small laugh. “And definitely not landing on one while being chased by large, furry cows.”

“Bison, those were bison. Most of them.” I scratched my nose, then pulled my jacket closed. “Maybe it just seems like there’s more of them because the world’s smaller and there’s fewer places they feel okay in. Honest? This is the first time I’ve seen a wyrm on the flats. Most of the time, lizards stick to the Underhill parts. Everything else roams, you know? Like the nightmares and medusa salamanders, and don’t get me started on the damned
ainmhi dubh.
Those are like fricking roaches.”

“My first instinct is to protect them. The dragons—not the
ainmhi dubh
—but if they encroach on settlements, then… and it pains me to say this… they need to be controlled.” He shook his head, his gold-streaked hair turned nearly silver under the moonlight. “Today, I felt as if the wyrm was a shield. It could have killed us easily but instead let us pass by. The cows were food. The nightmares were a threat. But it did not attack us. I have to see some kind of intelligence in that.”

“We were in a metal box, Ryder. Probably not the most appetizing thing on the menu.”

“Is there no room in that mind of yours for reflection?” He cocked his head, studying my face. “Some trickle of awe in your mind over the arcane?”

“I don’t hold much with religion or philosophy,” I countered gently. “Not that I spit on gods or even that lizard thing you’ve got going on, but I can’t count on anything or anyone to help me. I’m not saying don’t pray or thank a god. Just don’t expect a hand to get out of trouble. If it happens, then great. Toss some incense into the fire and leave a bowl of rice, but you’ve got to help yourself up first.”

“Not you,” Ryder tsked at me. “You don’t help yourself first. You think of others—act for others—first. Work for others’ well-being before your own. Dempsey’s illness. Jonas’s family. Malone’s pride. All of that factors into what you do. You, Kai Gracen, are a sentimental fraud.”

“Whatever.” I rolled up the empty ramen packets, then stuffed them into the meal kit alongside the used chopsticks. “Thing is, I’m not going to ask you to kill a dragon, Ryder. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t need to happen, but if ever you’re in a spot where you’ve got to choose between you and a dragon—you better not choose the damned dragon. And if that makes me a sentimental fraud, at least I’m a live sentimental fraud.”

“It’s nice, this. Talking to you. You’re learning about me. I’m learning about you.” He tilted his head back again, drinking in either the air or the stars. I couldn’t tell which. “It’s a good relationship we’re building. I am grateful for you giving me this chance, Kai. If nothing else, we can maybe be friends.”

“But you still want to jump my bones,” I teased and got a look filled with suspicion and daggers.

“Well, yes, but that went without saying. Or at least I went without saying it.” Ryder shivered as a nippy wind caught us both in the face. “Now it is said, what do we do about it?”

“Right now, nothing. You’re going to catch some sleep, and I’m going to pretend to wake you up in four hours to take over watch when I’m probably going to let you snore for about six.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, we’ll see. Probably still no bones jumping.” Shaking my head, I reminded him, “I don’t have sex with people I know, Ryder. That’s been a hard, fast rule for… forever.”