Mad Lizard Mambo (8 page)

Despite Sparky’s assessment of their intelligence, the dogs stayed clear of the drover, mostly watching from the relative safe comfort of the tree line. The drover came to a stop in front of us, and its roof creaked slowly upward, popping up in segments, metal panels snapping into place one by one until the drover sported a small tower. I was unsure about what it was until the interior lights flared on and the windows cleared, turning transparent. There were bunks in the top structure, or at least wide platforms with padding. The rest of the interior was murkier, but I recognized a panel of instrumentation on the side, probably radar or sonar to check ground stability.

What I didn’t see were weapons.

“So that’s where we’d sleep?” Ryder asked. “On top of the tank thing?”

“Kind of dangerous if we were in Pendleton, but most inland draconian species are smaller. They don’t attack vehicles, so we’d be safe.”

“I don’t like your use of the word
most
.”

“Unlike you, I don’t like to lie.”

“Once!” Ryder protested, setting the puppy down. “And it was necessary. I didn’t know how you’d feel about a human woman carrying elfin babies.”

“Blah, blah, blah.” I made a flapping motion with my hands. “Just remember, everything you do is banked. You only grow what you sow. Now let’s go take a look at this thing. Maybe it’ll be big enough to hold that ego of yours.”

Sparky rolled down the windows, and I climbed up onto the passenger side step to get a better look. Ryder edged in next to me, crowding me against the doorframe through the open window. Slapping the dashboard, she asked, “Whatcha think? This do it for you?”

“What I’m seeing here is you’ve got no weapons, Sparky. This thing’s big enough to hold at least one Gatling gun, but there’s no hard point to mount it on.” I peered into the drover’s back cabin.

“So you get weapons. That kind of thing is something personal. Say I go and mount a semi but you want something bigger? Take a long time to dismount, change a bracket, and then load something else up in its place.” Sparky’s mouth twisted into a wide smirk. “And don’t tell me boys don’t like to choose their toys. I’ve seen you in a gun shop, Kai. Worse than a virgin in a one-price-all-night whorehouse.”

She wasn’t wrong. I did like to choose my own guns, but rolling out of the gate with nothing was unsettling. I must have had an odd look on my face because Ryder nudged his shoulder into mine.

“If we have to wait a day or two to get what you want on this thing, it will be okay. I trust you, Kai. Whatever you think we need, we’ll get.” His eyes were too bright, too skilled at peeling back my defenses for me to stare into them for very long, and I looked away, pretending to examine the cabin again.

It was nerve-racking to have someone place their life in my hands, especially Ryder, who spent his entire life giving orders to people so
they
could order someone else around. He was getting to me, the green tea and vanilla scent of his skin and the way the sun caught on the metallic gold strands of his hair. For me it wasn’t simply the genetically driven imperative to want him. He was
definitely
getting to me.

This trip was going to suck.

I turned my attention back to Sparky. “So no guns at all?”

“Nothing offensive. Frame and body are solid, nearly impenetrable and sealed airtight.
And
there’s an exterior shock grid built into the body. Downside of that is, you’ll have to wait to recharge after using it. Probably takes about an hour of full sun, longer if cloudy. Don’t think that’s something you have to worry about where you’re going, but you never know, what with the storms that move through that area.” Sparky leaned back in the captain’s chair, gesturing behind her. “Benches fold up for storage. Instrument panel is compact, and there’s a recycling water plant and a separate generator.

“You’ll have to do your business outside, but it’ll be good for you to stretch your legs. It’s got a full link communications setup and….” She flicked a switch by the steering wheel, filling the drover with a jangle of guitars and drums. “Built-in stereo system. You can hear whatever you’re playing anywhere in the thing. Even up top.”

“Great. So defense is going to have to be hand held. How much?” I stopped Ryder from playing with the instrument panel, grabbing his fingers before he opened up a link to Pele-knew-where. “Don’t touch anything. Not until you’ve paid for it.”

“What does it matter the cost if it’s the only thing suitable?” Ryder hissed at me.

“Because it’s….” I stumbled over the thought of paying full price. “It’s what we do. Just… roll with it.”

“Silly custom, but of course. By all means, haggle away like an egg merchant.” He pressed a button and the stereo cut off. I wasn’t sure his wide grin was because the button deactivated something or because he’d pressed it to piss me off. “Wait, you
are
an egg merchant. Never mind, carry on.”

Sparky started off high. I expected that from her, but the ground beneath me was slippery. I didn’t know exactly how much something like the drover cost, and she had me over a barrel, especially since His Lordship practically offered up the keys to the kingdom right in front of her. There wasn’t much room to wiggle in, but I gave it my best shot.

I’d gotten her down nearly forty percent from her asking price when Ryder leaned over and whispered something in my ear. I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, so I turned to face him, no easy feat when standing on a slender platform meant solely to be a foothold for someone to get into the steel beast Sparky was trying to sell me.

“Want to repeat that?”

He did, and what he said didn’t get any less stupid. I’d definitely heard him right.

Disgusted, I asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Let’s cut to the chase of this thing. She has what we need, and I want to get on our way.” He gave her a smile charming enough to pull the panties off a nun. “Besides, I’m not interested in cheating Ms. Sparky.”

“Crap. Fine. But if you’re going to be throwing away money, toss some my way too.”

“I already have, and still we’ve not moved out of the county,” Ryder drawled. “You still need to get weapons for this vehicle. The longer we bicker over its price, the longer I am going to be standing here, pressed up against you. And while that is nice for me—”

“Shut up,” I muttered. “
Dick
.”

“So what’s it going to be, Kai?” Sparky toyed with the piping on the seat. “You going to take her? Or am I going to have to back this thing up and put her away?”

“Fine, we’ll do your last offer, but….” I sighed when Ryder nudged me in the ribs. “Throw in the white puppy and we’ve got a deal.”

“SO YOUR
girl Dalia’s going to be taking Newt in, then?” Jonas’s Rover slowly crawled through San Diego’s understreets. “That girl’s too good for you.”

“You’re not wrong,” I replied. “She’s too good for the cat too, but Newt doesn’t let it get in the way of his dinner and the occasional sunbeam.”

“You’re not good enough for that girl.”

“Don’t I know it,” I snorted. “I owe her more than a few life debts, and all she wants from me is fresh strawberries.”

Dalia Yamada, ER doctor and the daughter of a wealthy Irish-Nipponese family from up north, was not only my next-door neighbor and one of my best friends. She was also gorgeous and a human I’d crushed on since the day she first walked into my warehouse by mistake and I’d nearly taken her head off with an explosive round. We’d danced around one another for a while. Then after Ryder shoved his way into my life, we’d come to the understanding that I was no good for her, and she’d gone on to fall in love with my tattoo artist. To be fair, Jason was an extraordinary mechanical engineer as well, but first and foremost, he was my inker.

Since then, Dalia and I still shared a beer or two on the rooftop, and she took care of my cat when I left town, but any simmering glances and smoldering touches were now clearly off limits. I missed the flirtation. Hell, I missed her, but I was a lost cause if ever there was one. She deserved a hell of a lot better than a notch-eared Stalker who lived and died on the price of black dog pelts.

“Did you eat? Because I could eat.” Jonas, ever the caring uncle, jostled the conversation away from heartbreak and straight to heartburn. “When we get done down here, let’s get some noodles. I could eat some beef chow fun dry style from Golden Chicken Panda Dragon.”

“It’s Golden City,” I corrected. “And yeah, I could eat. Considering I’m going to be on rations and whatever we can hunt up for the next couple of weeks, chow fun sounds great.”

The streets slowly turned saffron as we moved deeper into the lower level. San Diego’s wedge-like below structure was great on the outer rim, but farther in, the city sloped and the upper level closed in, cutting off all natural light. There’d been some half-assed attempt to bring sunlight to the lower regions, but mostly that meant dinner-plate-sized UV lights mounted to the underside of the roadways making up the undercity’s ceiling.

With the dampness underground, the lights went screwy, flashing on and off when their wiring corroded, usually in the dead of night. If the bulbs were easy to get to, they were either stolen or broken. It was hard to deal drugs or whore under eight hours of artificial daylight, and fake sun bulbs went a long way in helping grow illegal crops.

I had one in my garage, because the bright white glow made it easier to see dropped screws and parts if I was working on the Mustang at night. The guy I bought it off of made no effort to tell me where he’d gotten it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask.

An earthen barrier cut into the undercity, the sidhe compound at Balboa slicing into the pie, and farther down, enormous half pipes allowed traffic to flow under the raging waters of the diverted San Diego River, its turbulent waters pounding into the sides of the cement tunnels. The river bisected Balboa, flowing out of an opening on a mesa just past the old eight freeway and down toward Tijuana. Its waters were arctic cold, fed by the snowmelt from the jutting mountains to the north of San Diego.

I’d been in those waters. The river practically froze the skin off me once, and I didn’t care to repeat that experience. Unfortunately, ice chunks carried down through the underground caverns meant Lower San Diego was constantly cold, a tomb of cement and steel carrying its frigid chill through the streets.

“So this thing you bought from Sparky doesn’t have any guns on it?” Jonas cocked his head. “That’s not like her. She usually has to be talked out of mounting a machine gun on a tricycle.”

“Yeah, it was off. But could be there’s no hard points for any real firepower. Ports are there, though. So I’m hoping to get a good deal on some heavy weapons and call it a night. We’re leaving in the morning.” I hitched my leg up, resting my foot on the Rover’s dashboard. “You sure Jimmy knows we’re coming? I don’t want to get my ass handed to me because we didn’t knock first.”

“He knows you’re coming.” Jonas’s chuckle boomed in the cab’s broad space. “I’ll take care of you, son. Have no fear. Pity you’re doing this job for him. I’d like to see you shake him off like a piece of wet shit from your shoe. Say the word and I’ll crack his head for you.”

Despite the width of the vehicle, Jonas’s wide shoulders were nearly brushing mine, and I knew from experience he could easily reach across the Rover from where he was sitting and slap the door lock down with his right hand. Practically seven feet tall and built like a minotaur, he was a good person to cover me while I bought weapons from an illegal arms dealer. He was a man I’d trust with my life, and seeing as I seemed to stick my face into a hornet’s nest every time I walked out of my front door, Jonas seemed like a good bet. He’d been one of the Stalkers who had a hand in raising me, an enormous black man with more than a few wives, a couple of husbands, and so many children I gave up trying to remember all of their names.

I’d also tried to gnaw his nuts off when Dempsey first brought me home, but he’d forgiven me that.

He turned the other cheek and became the first person to ever feed me chocolate, and if I hadn’t already been willing to follow him into the fires of hell before that happened, I sure as shit was after I’d taken my first bite. I was easily bought when I was younger, and not much has changed since then.

“I’m kind of stuck with him—Ryder, I mean,” I explained softly, nearly ducking in habit when we passed under a sheet of runoff coming from the upper level. “SoCalGov practically gift-wrapped me and handed me over. I can’t shake that damned diplomatic attachment off. Sarah at the Post said unless I had a case for
force majeure
, I was pretty much screwed.”

“I don’t even know what that is, boy,” Jonas rumbled deep in his chest. The neon lights from the tight, busy street played teal dots over his dark skin, catching the white of his grin and tinting it with an aquamarine wash. His massive hands gripped the steering wheel, and he sighed. “But I’m guessing that means there’s no way out of it for you.”

“None whatsoever.” I ignored my stomach’s growl as we passed a
char siu bao
cart. The promise of future food didn’t seem to calm it, especially when it was a handful of sweet, spicy Cantonese pork wrapped in a fluffy white dough. “Thanks for doing this with me. Seems kind of chickenshit on my part—”

“They pulled one of those skin-job boys out of the sewer a couple of days back. All of his leg bones were missing, and his ears were cut off.” Jonas interrupted me. “I’d sooner not have to come identify you from that ink you’ve got crawling on your body. If it means I walk a bit behind you with a shotgun, then I consider it a pleasure.”

“The humans-only assholes are ramping shit up, then.” I hadn’t heard about the kid they fished out of the sewer, and I’d have liked to say his death and whatever else some asshole’d done to him before he died surprised me. It didn’t. Cynical and jaded was part and parcel of being a Stalker. If I hadn’t already been well versed in what people could do to one another before Dempsey got a hold of me, I’d have learned that lesson soon enough. “Where exactly did they find the kid?”