Bite Marks (31 page)

Despite the fact that I could hear Jack’s enthusiastic
woo-woo
in the background, I snapped, “Keep your day job. In fact, tell me you’re actually doing your day job.”

“Chill, wouldja? I’m looking through my scope like I have been since I took position.” Short pause.

“C’mon. Admit you like my hair.”

“I’d like it better if your head wasn’t so full of—” I stopped, my hand on the platform. “I felt something,” I whispered as it began to thrum. “Get ready.”

I pulled myself up and took my original position just in time to see the sky car flying toward us from the direction of the trail.

“How did we beat them here?” Cole wondered.

“Vayl must’ve figured a way to slow them down,” I replied. “Kyphas! You got that hat of yours moded out?”

“I am readier than you are!” she said.

Grimacing, I pulled Grief and prepped it to fire as we moved to the north side of the tower, Kyphas on the post office corner, me on the Crindertab’s side. Now we could make out bodies, large and small, all of them moving inside the swaying vehicle. Vayl still rode the undercarriage, the outline of his body reminding me of a huge spider waiting to pounce.

“What are they doing here?” Tabitha screamed. “They’re supposed to be at the Space Complex!” She began to chant, more gnomish that I didn’t understand and Cole didn’t have time to interpret. But I could feel something stir inside the tower. “Shut her up, Bergman!”

“I’m trying! Ow! Stop biting me!”

“Watcha doing up there, mate?”

I took a second to glance down. A couple had strolled into the street. The girl I recognized as Polly, our waitress from Crinder-tab’s. She held a baby-blue robe closed across her chest, like she didn’t trust the belt to do the job. The guy she’d brought along wore a T-shirt, boxers, black socks, and ankle boots.

“We’re practicing a scene from the movie!” I said. “You’ll have to clear the street. We can’t risk—”

“I told ya, Lymon!” Polly said excitedly. “Didn’t I say we should keep an eye on these blokes? Never know when the cameras will roll. Do you need extras?” she asked.

“Incoming!” Cole yelled.

The tower began to shake hard enough that I had to brace myself against the wall. A crack appeared about ten feet above my head and worked its way to the top.

“Bloody hell!” I heard Lymon say. “Those are amazing effects!”

“Ow! Dammit!” Bergman yelled. “Jaz! Tabitha’s going for my nads! Astral’s chasing her own tail, and my mother taught me never to hit a girl!”

Fuck!

“Let her go, Miles!” I ordered. “And get those civilians under cover! Now!” The crack widened. I realized the only original wood was the material we’d been able to touch. The rest was gnome grown. And because people never noticed what they passed every day, rarely even looked up, no one had realized.

I clicked on the safety and stowed Grief in its holster. “I’m going in!” I said. The crack was now the width of my shoulders. But even if I jumped I wouldn’t be able to get a hand on the edge.

“Do you need a lift?” I’d run to Kyphas’s side of the tower, where she stood tossing her boomerang up and down so casually you’d have thought we were about to have a distance-throwing competition.

“Yeah.”

Giving me her I-know-more-than-you-do smile, she leaned over and cupped her hands. Which was when I hopped onto her shoulders and sprang onto the roof.

“Hey!” Her protest, backlit by Cole’s chuckle, was quickly lost in the wave of sound that washed into the tower as the sky car arrived right after me.

My hands sank through a foot of plant material until they found a solid support. Knowing a two-by-four when I felt one, I grabbed hold and flipped the rest of my body around to join my hands inside the tower.

My collarbone twanged as I asked it to contort more than it had since I’d broken it weeks before. But it held, giving my legs a chance to find the stud that angled up to meet the one I held. I worked my way to the floor of the tower just in time to look over and see Kyphas land on the balls of her feet beside me.

She grinned. “I’m better than you are.”

“Go ahead,” I told her, giving her Lucille’s winning smile. “Keep thinking that.”
It’s just going to make
kicking your ass that much more satisfying in the end.

A frown marred her perfect brow as the sky car came to a rumbling halt inside the cube, its temporary door already growing closed as the passengers waited for the stairs to roll to their door. Except no grunts were running around the massive wooden hangar pushing trolleys full of suitcases or waving orange-tipped dildo lookalikes to direct everybody else where to go.

I watched the car sway above the floor’s center, its cable glinting in the lights that had begun to glow the moment the roof shut. They’d been strung like Christmas twinklers along the frame of the building proper.

The planted sections of tower had their own set of support beams that had folded back to admit the car and then returned to center. I reminded myself to give Bergman a tour if we all survived this.

“Cole! We’re going to need you here as soon as—” I whispered. I heard a pop. “What the hell?”

“Don’t worry. Just a gum-bubble breaking. I’m on my way. Where should I leave Jack?”

“There will be no dumping of my dog. You figure out how to haul his ass up here or you don’t come.”

“Weakling,” Kyphas sneered.

“Spinster.”

She tossed her boomerang in the air and glared.

Vayl dropped to the floor, rolling to soften the impact. I saw fang flash as he ran, blending into the shadows even better than those of us who were standing perfectly still.

“I believe the Space Complex is safe for now,” he said as he joined us. “But we must free Ruvin immediately. Johnson has begun to show signs of illness.”

That meant the larvae could arrive at any time!

“How are we supposed to get to him? I don’t see any stairs,” I said. Before Vayl could suggest a plan, the gnomes began to climb out the sky car’s door. Working with remarkable cooperation, holding on to one another from wrists to ankles, they formed a living ladder that reached the floor. Johnson and Tykes came next, stepping on heads and fingertips, occasionally slipping. The gnomes moaned as Tykes made his way down because his waist alone had more rolls than a school cafeteria. He fell the last five feet.

The two gnomes left in the sky car came to the door, holding a struggling Ruvin between them. It looked like they intended to drop him. Apparently larvae didn’t care if the midwife’s flesh was full of broken bones, only that it still lived.

“Go!” said Vayl just as a shirtless Cole burst through the plant roof carrying Jack next to his chest in a homemade, sleeve-fluttering sling.

Kyphas flung her boomerang toward Ruvin’s guards. She hit the one on the right so hard that his nose imploded and blood sprayed out the door as if somebody had turned on a hose full of cherry Kool-Aid. I saw him stagger backward just as I slammed into the gnome ladder. The two nearest the bottom dropped to the floor.

I sprang up, grabbing the lowest hanging guard by his fancy pants and hoping he believed in belts as much as he felt that broken ankles should be discussed but never experienced. He wriggled and kicked, but didn’t think of loosening his grip until I’d latched on to the next gnome in line.

Later Vayl confessed he was so concerned about me falling and breaking another bone that he nearly let Cole and Kyphas do the rest of the work. They did make a disturbingly fluid team. While Kyphas immobilized an Ufranite on the floor, Cole stripped off the shirt sling and let Jack run, giving himself full access to the Parker-Hale he’d packed on his back. His first shot took out the second sky car guard, but not before he’d given Ruvin a hard push.

Vayl sped forward to catch the seinji. Who was a dense little man. The impact sent them both through the tower’s floor.

I began to pick gnomes off the ladder. Already breathing heavily from the exertion of climbing, holding, hanging, and fighting, they couldn’t seem to function when I punched them in the diaphragm. One after another they dropped, falling prey either to their awkward landings, or Cole and Kyphas’s attentions.

Finally I was in.

I took a quick look around. Plush seats on either end. Poles in the middle with handholds on the sides.

Where the hell are the controls?
I felt along the smooth backrests and footkicks. Then I tore the cushions off. Under the second one I found a set of indentations in the seat, beside which had been written words in a language I didn’t understand. But above them, for the illiterate or slow-on-the-uptake, color pictures of the various destinations at which one might expect to arrive if she thumbed one of those hollows. I jammed my finger into the one next to a pristine white beach. The sky car lurched.

I looked out. Saw Kyphas grab Johnson by the collar and begin to whisper to him. He shook his head.

She bit a gaping hole in his ear. He screamed, but his hands didn’t go to the new wound. They were at his chest. Ripping his shirt open so he could watch his skin split.

“Kyphas!” I yelled. “Kill him now!”

She smiled, pretending not to hear as he fell to the floor, convulsing, blood staining his thighs and shoulders as the larvae began to emerge. A single loud shot. Cole, at least, had heard my order.

“Watch for larvae!” I called as a new section of roof began to retract and the sky car turned, performing an automatic cable change that hardly even made it sway. He nodded, saw one inching toward a downed guard and stomped. Jack had found another, taken a bite and pronounced it yummy. Holy crap, what kind of food would that mutt ever snub? While my dog ran around the room, snapping up snacks, I watched the distance between the sky car and the roof narrow. If I timed it just right I’d be able to jump back onto the tower supports. If not, I’d plummet to my death.

“Jaz!” Cole called.

I looked back. He cracked a stirring guard in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle. “What?”

“We’re missing one!”

“Gnome?”

“No! Carrier! I think Tykes went out the hole in the floor!” No big deal. Probably. I mean, Vayl had gone first with Ruvin. No doubt they had him surrounded.

“You going to be okay?” I asked, not looking back. It was almost time for my jump.

“As long as Jack doesn’t puke right away I think we’re good. Meetcha on the other side!” I slid to the edge of the sky car’s door. And jumped.

The sky car lurched just as I left it, throwing me sideways so that I hit the tower’s maintenance platform rolling. I scrabbled for a hold, my fingernails digging in so deeply that splinters flew. But I was moving too fast to stop my spin. I fell over the side, reaching for any kind of hold that could slow my momentum. My hand punched into empty air, my fingers flailed. Then my forearm hit a support beam and I locked my elbow around it, grabbing my wrist with my opposite hand to complete the circle just in time to stop my descent.

“Jesus!” I screamed as the wood dug into my joint, making me wonder briefly if my muscles and tendons were going to rip free, forcing me to go hook hunting before my next mission. They held.

I dangled there for a second, my knees banging into the tower’s supports, trying not to blubber from the pain and relief. Then I found a foothold and began a more controlled descent, wishing I had time to rub the sore spot. Or at least pout a little.

That’s it, Pete, you and I are going to—
I stopped. Pete had died. Murdered in his own office. And I would never get to mentally bitch-slap him again. I took a deep breath.

Later, I promise. I will cry for you until my lungs bleed. And after that I’ll find your killer. That’s
another promise, my friend. But for now, surely you’d want me to do this.

I hoped so. But even if my late boss would’ve preferred me to fall into a useless heap of snot bubbles I’d have kept climbing. Because that was the only way I knew to survive.

Vayl and Ruvin weren’t hanging out under the tower. Okay, then. Maybe my
sverhamin
was slamming Tykes into Crindertab’s porch-side wall while Ruvin clapped his hands in delight. Which wouldn’t last long once he heard about Tabitha.

Maybe we can get one of the Resistance gnomes to tell him.

I’d taken a couple of steps toward the restaurant when I heard the command.

“Stop where you are, Lucille.” I turned toward Wirdilling Drive. Where Tabitha stood holding a little girl in her arms. It was Alice, the barefoot wonder from Crindertab’s, looking sleepy and somewhat confused as she realized her mum was nowhere nearby. She began to struggle, but Tabitha had a firm grip. Behind her stood the last living carrier, Tykes, looking pale and nauseous. Kneeling before her—

aww no!
—Ruvin and Vayl.

“Do you see what I have done?” she exulted as I slowly walked toward her. “I have sent your leader to his knees. And all it took was the life of a little child.” Her wrist moved slightly and I saw the steak knife she held, probably stolen from a drawer of the house from which she’d nabbed the girl while her mom and Lymon were distracted.

I should’ve told Bergman to kill her when he had the chance. Not that he’d have been capable.

But then I wouldn’t have this searing guilt.

“Not much can down a man of his caliber,” Tabitha said, smirking down at Vayl. “But when I saw him talking with Laal and Pajo, I knew I’d found his vulnerability.” The rage that erupted inside my head actually surprised me. Oh, I’d felt levels of anger that would shrivel most souls. But this—it felt so big that I wouldn’t have been shocked to find it billowing behind me like a giant storm cloud. That she’d dare to try such a move on any honorable man would’ve made me want to cut her throat. But that she had taken
my
man and tried to make him grovel, as if that proud head could ever be bowed. I ground my teeth and wished that I could burn her where she stood. Yeah, despite the consequences, I might have if she hadn’t been holding a tearful toddler.

I looked at the little girl. And felt something I hadn’t in Crindertab’s, when I’d been distracted by karaoke and greasy fries. A small stirring from a tiny body that had, I’d wager, already died once in this life. I stopped by the side of the road. And smiled.