Shotgun Sorceress (19 page)

“Okay, then,” I said as Cooper strapped the pistol’s holster around my hips. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

chapter
seventeen

Meat Puppetry

I
rode Pal a few yards above and behind the van. Charlie was good to her word, and kept her speed at a steady fifty-five on the highway. As soon as the first wayward grasshopper smacked me right in the forehead, though, I wished I had a helmet and a pair of goggles.

Fields gradually gave way to modern ruins: a boarded-up gas station, a gun shop with smashed-out windows and the bars behind crumpled as if they’d been rammed with a large truck, the blackened wreck of a Dairy Queen that had burned sometime before Miko squelched fire.

The walkie-talkie crackled on, Charlie’s voice tinny and faint against the wind: “The store’s coming up on the left. I’m going to pull into the lot.”

“Okay,” I replied.

The strip mall came into view; the Kmart-size Western store was wedged between a Michaels craft store and a Mexican grocery. All the front plate-glass windows had been smashed, but at least from the outside only the grocery seemed to have been looted heavily. Not surprising, since the city had been cut off from fresh supplies for a year. The parking lot was littered with abandoned cars and overturned grocery carts rusting in the sun. By the cart corral I saw the bleached, rodent-gnawed bones of a large dog and near it, scattered human remains, and shreds of clothing. Weeds had cracked through the worn blacktop all across the lot. The place smelled of caliche dust and old rot.

Pal touched down as Charlie parked the van in a clear spot a few dozen yards away from the entrance to the Western store.

“We don’t want to stay too long.” The girl opened the driver’s-side door and stepped onto the pavement, looking nervous. “There aren’t so many dog packs now, but you never know when you’ll run into Miko’s creeps. Or worse.”

“I’m guessing lycanthropes.” The Warlock got out of the passenger seat, hefting an M249 machine gun onto his shoulders. “When an isolated town like this starts to go into the darkness, it attracts bad characters from miles around. Like rats to garbage.”

“Didn’t the local Governing Circle have a defense plan?” I slid off Pal onto the pavement, holding my left hand high to keep from scorching his fur.

Charlie looked perplexed. “A Governing Circle? I never heard of anything like that, sorry.”

“The Talents out in these Western towns like to think of themselves as lords of their private domains.” Cooper heaved the sliding door shut behind him and checked the feed tube of his shotgun. “No rules, no tedious Circle meetings, nobody poking their nose into your craft. Works great until shit like this happens.”

“Whoa.” I stared at him, unable to keep a half smirk off my face. “Did I just hear you defend the
government?
”

“Governing Circles are a necessary evil.” Cooper shrugged. “I don’t have to like them any more than I have to like the taste of dragon eyeballs.”

“We should really get that glove.” Charlie adjusted the cat sling, shouldered her AK-47, and started across the lot, beckoning us to follow her.

“I’ll wait out here and keep watch for more SUVs,” Pal told me.

The front glass door to Lee’s Western Wear & Rodeo Supply was hanging brokenly on its steel hinges. Charlie pulled it aside and we followed her into the store. There were five checkout lanes and a customer service desk; all the cash registers had been forced open, the dumped-out money trays lying atop discarded checks and small change on the conveyor belts. The floor was covered with stray pennies and dust and grit that had blown in. Someone had smashed a glass case of knives, taking everything but the tiniest pocket folders. There was an impressive collection of rodent droppings and shredded cardboard and plastic beneath what used to be display racks of beef jerky and cactus candies. Most of the rest of the store looked relatively undisturbed, however.

I spotted an aisle sign for “Bull Riders’ Bazaar” toward the back of the store. It occurred to me that a bull-riding glove would be long enough to cover my burning bits and surely sturdy enough to resist being pierced by my claws.

“Hey, guys, I’m going down this way to look.” I started toward the aisle.

“I’ll come with you.” Cooper hurried to catch up to me.

The Warlock glanced up from inspecting the Damascus blade on one of the looter-spurned pocketknives. “I’m gonna stay up here looking for stuff we can use for the enchantment.”

“Watch out for rats,” Charlie said. “If they’re starving they’ll jump out at your face and try to blind you.”

“Been there, done that,” I muttered.

Cooper and I stuck to the middle of the aisles, nervously watching for sudden movement on the shelves. My fire abruptly went out when I was about fifty yards away from Charlie and her mysterious orange tabby. We passed rows of dusty leather chaps, helmets, gear bags, ropes, and vests until we came to the gloves.

“Well, at least you can actually try one of these on now.” Cooper started sorting through the boxes of left-hand bull riding gloves. “What kind do you want?”

“That Heritage Pro model up on the top shelf looks good,” I replied, looking at a black deerskin glove with a wide built-in Velcro wrist wrap.

Cooper plucked the box off the shelf and slid the glove out. As my sweaty hand touched the leather I got a faint echo of the deer’s death. I carefully slipped it onto my claw; the death-memory was gone. The glove was several times bigger than anything that would have fit on my flesh hand, but I wanted it to have some give to accommodate the claws; the built-in wrist strap would tighten it down enough to keep it from slipping off. It seemed as though the leather and padding would resist being sliced fairly well, and the neoprene cuff came up high enough to cover everything that would be on fire.

“So do you think you and the Warlock could strengthen this up a little bit?” I handed the glove back to Cooper. “I’m pretty sure it will work as is, but my claw tips are kinda sharp.”

“Yes, I noticed that.” He stretched the cuff and peered inside at the foam padding. “Why don’t we go to the craft store next door and get some thimbles to stick down in the fingers? That would make things a whole lot easier.”

“Oh. Yeah, good idea.”

But Cooper didn’t move. He chewed the corner of his mustache thoughtfully, glanced down the aisle toward the front of the store, and pulled me closer to him.

“I’m trying to decide what to do here,” he whispered. “On the one hand, I do want to help the townsfolk. I feel bad for Rudy, and Charlie seems like a nice girl. I’m curious to meet this Sara person. But on the other hand, I’m worried about my baby brothers. I’m worried that someone in the Circle might’ve sold us out, and that Riviera might go back on her word and drug the kids or lock them up. But on the
other
other hand, Mother Karen is not to be trifled with. I pity any idiot who tries to hurt a kid in her care.”

Now that he had brought it up, I was a little worried about the babies, too. I felt that Riviera had been straight with us at the meeting, but considering we’d been ambushed right after it, I couldn’t be sure about her true motivations. “I couldn’t get through to Mother Karen, so I don’t know what’s happening there.”

“We could take Charlie easily enough,” Cooper continued. “Not, you know, hurt her or anything, but put a short-term sleeping charm on her, grab that cat of hers, and have Pal fly us back to the haystack and see if we can get the portal open.”

“Um. I’d be all for that … except I talked to my father, and he said my brother Randall’s here.”

“Whoa, you’ve got a brother? I didn’t know that.”

“Me neither, until today.”

“Wow, looks like we’re drawing every king in the deck, huh?” Cooper lifted his fist for a bump.

“Yeah, go Boy Power, huh?” I dapped him gently on the knuckles. “My father says Miko captured Randall, and wants us to go rescue him.”

“Hm.” Cooper scratched his goatee. “That definitely tips the balance for staying here to see what good we can do, at least for a while.”

We went back up to the front and passed the glove off to the Warlock, who was busy chipping the red phosphorous tips off a bunch of matches and crushing them into powder on the glass customer service countertop. Charlie was taking slow drags off a Virginia Slims cigarette and staring out the window at Pal, who in turn was gazing solemnly at the empty highway. The girl held the cigarette carefully, almost reverently, and when she brought it to her lips, she had the expression of a penitent taking communion.

“Hey, we’re going next door to get some thimbles,” I told her, holding my now-flaming hand high.

She gave a start. “Oh. Okay. Watch out for—”

“Rats. Right.” I gave her a wave and followed Cooper outside.

The craft store had been looted more lightly than the Western store, and most of the damage aside from the smashed cash registers seemed to have been from a fit of vandalism: somebody had overturned most of the shelves of silk plants and flowers so the faux flora was in piles on the floor. My fire went out as we headed into the sewing section, but I wasn’t concerned because we almost immediately saw a display of steel thimbles on white cards. Cooper grabbed a handful and stuck them into his pants pockets.

And then came a raspy wheeze to our left. I turned. A gaunt, bent old lady of seventy or so was standing there, swaying on weak legs, her knobby, spotted hands gripping a battered aluminum walker. Her bare feet were dirty and rat bitten. She smelled sourly of old sweat and fermenting urine. A stained pink “World’s Best Grandma” sweatshirt hung practically to her knees. Her permed gray hair was stiff with weeks of grime, and her mouth hung open, her lips and tongue flaky and dry, her eyes clouded.

I felt as if I were looking at somebody who had died about five minutes ago, but her body hadn’t quite gotten the message yet.

Cooper glanced down at my cooling claw and swung his shotgun around, gripping it by the barrel to use it as a club. “Meat puppet. Be careful.”

“What the heck is she going to do? Doesn’t look like she could so much as spit.” Despite my words, I felt nervous that I couldn’t fire my pistol. I wasn’t sure I had the stomach to slice her up if she somehow managed to attack us. “We should just leave.”

I took a step back. The old lady took a torturous breath and groaned, her lips and tongue working to form words. She released her walker and took a wobbly step toward us.

And in the space between heartbeats, she wasn’t an old woman anymore. Short gray hair had become a thick, dark, silken cascade. She’d shot up about a foot, lost fifty years, lost her
clothes
. Her breasts were astonishing. I’d heard guys wax rhapsodic about breasts my entire life, and I’d never seen what the big deal was. The world was filled with boobies, and I grew even more jaded to them once I had a pair of my own.

But this woman’s rack was
perfect
. It was a piece of art that Michelangelo himself could never replicate. Drunken fumblings with cheerleaders aside, I’d never had a single seriously sapphic thought in my entire life, and now I wanted to kiss those breasts, bury my face in them, rub expensive lotions on them, and name them after muses.

The woman laughed, a husky, throaty sound that made every single gland in my body pop to Pavlovian attention. “My eyes are up here, Jessie.”

I blinked, swallowed, my heart pounding in my sweating chest, and took in the rest of her. She was built everywhere else, too. No weak-limbed supermodel body here; she was the very definition of fit, looked like she could take on Zeus himself. Of course, all she’d probably have to do was to show up and he’d pass out from the sudden rush of blood out of his brain to his nether regions.

When I saw her face, I had no doubt that I was looking at no mere demon. She was some kind of goddess, and when I saw her deep green eyes I knew who she was.

“What do you want with us, Miko?” I stammered.

She smiled down at me. “Why, I want
you
, little girl. And your boyfriend, too. But mostly, I want you.”

I followed her gaze to Cooper, figuring he’d be standing there dazed with an epic erection … and was surprised to see him red-faced and flaccid, his features twisted in rage, his whole body trembling with a paralytic fury.

“What’s wrong? What did you do to him?” My voice broke like a teenage boy’s.

Miko smiled again. “Oh, he’s just thinking about all the things I can do to you, all the pleasure I can bring you, and he knows that all the sex you’ve ever had or ever will have with him won’t even come close. He knows that once I’ve had you, whenever you close your eyes beneath him, you’ll be wishing I were making love to you instead. He’ll never, ever have you all to himself again, because part of you will be thinking about me.”

“That’s not true.” It was hard to speak.

“Oh, but it is.”

She reached out and ever so gently took hold of my right wrist, and her touch was an electric arc that went straight to my pinks, and I was coming, coming
hard
, and I fell to my knees with a wail and a gasp and she didn’t let me go and I was at her complete mercy in the throes of the orgasm—

—and then I was inside her head, inside her memories, reliving them in nonlinear flashes as if I were inside her body. Miko was death, through and through, and her memories were more vivid than anything I’d tasted in any flesh:

I lay in the slagged wreckage, small and weak, my infant voice wailing in pain for the mother who’d expelled me from her rotting womb and abandoned me. The metal and brick and charred bones around me
were hot with radiation, my flesh burning and healing over and over, the hunger in me far brighter than the sun trying to force its rays through the smoke-dark skies—

I walked into the bookstore, sizing up the shopkeeper and his fat old wife through the corner of my eye as I pretended to look at comics. I could take them both right there, tear them apart and devour them hot and nobody would ever know. Mother, I had gone so long without even a broken-down derelict to fill me, and the hunger made my ribs and teeth ache. But I had to wait a little longer. He could be the one. After all these years, this painfully mundane old man could be the one—