It Never Rhines but It Pours (21 page)

Harry was murmuring in his mother’s ear and she slowly sank down to a half crouch and quit roaring. She was amazingly hideous. Like a cross between a giant orangutan and a small hill. She was visibly calmer and started sniffing the air in great huffs.

“They said that they’re here to help us,” Harry explained, stroking her fur.

She grunted and huffed some more.

“Harry,” I said tentatively, “We didn’t mean to make your mother mad. We just didn’t know that she was a …”

“Skunk ape!” cried Floyd. Apparently ten minutes had passed since I’d commanded him and it had worn off. He leapt off the couch. “A real, live skunk ape!” He clapped his hands together and did a little happy dance.

The skunk ape turned on him with a low growl. The man was so overjoyed that he completely ignored all of the warning signs. “I have to get my camera!” he cried, still leaping around like a kid in a candy store. “This is amazing!”

I sighed. I should just let her whack him upside the head and put all of us out of our misery. But no, that wouldn’t be very friendly. Trouble was, I wasn’t feeling very friendly.

“Floyd, sit!” I commanded. He sat down abruptly in the middle of the floor. “Floyd, shut up,” I added and there was silence, blessed silence.

Harry’s mother swung back and forth on her hind legs as if nervous. I felt myself getting nervous; an eight foot gorilla can have that affect on you. She let out a guttural sound and Harry increased his soothing voice.

“Harry?” I asked, “Does your mom always look like this?” I couldn’t imagine this creature having such a normal looking son. Eww, yuck! Some man
mated
with her? Okay, bad mental image. Erase! Erase!

Harry gave me a withering look, “No, it’s the full moon. She always changes at the full moon. Sometimes she tries not to, but if she gets angry,” he gave all of us an added glare, “she changes, whether she wants to or not.”

Okay, improvement here. She was some sort of were-creature. Pravus should have reported her and facilitated her joining the were community. We were talking about Pravus though. A witch. They didn’t harbor warm, fuzzy feelings towards the other members of the USB. It was sad to think that this woman had been alone for the last ten years when she didn’t have to be. But would that make you angry enough to kill?

I watched her raise up again on her hind feet and bellow. Some of the spittle hit my arm. Mama was getting antsy again. No. I couldn’t imagine her framing anyone. Tearing Pravus limb from limb, yes. Plotting and planning and setting up a crime scene to point to him? Never. Cecily was right; this was a dead end. We still had to help them though.

“Harry, can you calm her down?” I asked quietly.

He thought for a moment. “If I take her outside to walk around, she might get calmer.”

“Calm enough to shift back to human?”

He shrugged, bony shoulders poking through his thin t-shirt. “Maybe.”

“Why don’t you try? I’ll handle Mr. Enthusiastic here,” I nodded at Floyd, still sitting on the floor.

Harry carefully led his mother through the tiny living room and out the door. She stopped and sniffed loudly a couple times almost in my face. Maybe she thought I smelt bad. The trailer tipped slightly with her weight on the porch and then righted itself as she hopped cumbersomely to the ground. Lucky for us, most of the smell went with her. Phew! Now I knew why they call them “skunk” apes.

The trailer felt much larger without the three-hundred pound monkey. I sank onto the couch and groaned. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

Sarah made a face, “
She
didn’t arrange an elaborate satanic ritual.”

“Nope,” I agreed.

“So, what do we do now?”

I glared at the back of Floyd’s head. “We deal with him, and try to get her and the boy to join the USB.” I looked questioningly at Cecily, “Maybe call in a were representative to talk to them?”

She nodded, “Makes sense. If she is humanoid most of the time, there is nothing preventing her from joining, and the were’s would be the best fit.”

“Alright. First things first.” I rubbed my eyes. It was getting late and I wanted to go to bed. But bed was a hundred miles away and we weren’t finished yet.

“Floyd, you can get up now,” I commanded.

“Did you see her!” he yelled.

“Yes,” I said dryly.

“Amazing! Simply amazing! I knew it was true! I just knew it! She looks just like those pictures, I can’t wait to bring proof of this! I’ll be famous!”

I rolled my eyes. Poor Floyd, he had no idea what was coming. “What is it exactly that you do, Floyd?” I asked.

“I’m a cryptozoologist,” he said proudly.

“A what?”

“A cryptozoologist. Cryptozoology is the study of hidden animals.”

“Hidden animals?”

“Animals that we have tales of but have not yet found proof that they exist.” He sounded so rational.

“Like Bigfoot?” Granted, we had all just seen with our own eyes that Bigfoot was real. It just seemed that normal, sane people would find this hard to believe. Not be out there looking for him, or her.

“Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil, the jackalope, creatures like that.” Once again, he sounded completely rational. Scary.

“Those are urban legends,” I protested, choosing to ignore the hole in the wall next to my head that had been made by an urban legend.

“But no less real,” he lectured. “Just because an animal is rare and elusive, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.”

Sarah snorted, “You mean, just because you can’t find something, or prove that it exists, it doesn’t mean it’s not out there.”

“Exactly!” Floyd missed her sarcasm. “Think of the giant gorilla! The okapi! The giant panda! All were mocked and thought to be imaginary animals! It took over sixty years for them to bring back proof of the pongo, the mountain gorilla! Who knows what other creatures are out there, undiscovered by man and mocked, yet lurking in our backyards!” He was getting more and more excited.

“Lurking in our backyards,” I repeated.

“Oh, laugh away!” Floyd cried bitterly. “Our science has always been mocked by those whose minds are too narrow to embrace the possibilities!”

“My mind is plenty open,” I said dryly. “But what I really want to know is this: What are you going to do when you leave here?”

“Leave here?” his eyes gleamed, “First I need to take pictures, obviously some with the boy to show the beast’s strange maternal feelings—”

I cut him off, “That
beast
, as you say,
is
the boy’s mother.”

Floyd gave me a condescending smile, “Of course that is what the boy thinks, but obviously that cannot be the case. They are clearly two different species.”

“What if she changes into a skunk ape at the full moon?” Sarah asked.

“Nonsense!” Floyd laughed. “Were-creatures are pure paranormal hype and give the true science of cryptozoology a bad name. Really! A creature changing its form? A 130-pound woman morphing into a 300-pound animal? It’s a scientific impossibility! Where would the matter go? Where would it come from? No, no. We deal in science, not in fairy tales.” This from the man who accepted the possibility of jackalopes.

I looked from Cecliy to Floyd. Hadn’t he recognized her as a vampire? Wasn’t that a paranormal creature? I opened my mouth, “What about vam—?”

Sarah shook her head sharply and made a hand motion cutting down the center of her skull. “I already fixed that,” she whispered.

Floyd went on, oblivious. “As I was saying, I’ll need photos, samples, paw prints, video. I’ll have to bring back a team of scientists to capture the beast for study.”

I frowned, “You can’t take her away! She has rights!”

“Rights,” Floyd looked puzzled. “She’s an animal. What rights does an animal have? Oh,” his face cleared in understanding, “you’re one of those tree-hugger types. Don’t worry; she will be kept perfectly safe.”

This had gone far enough. “Floyd, sit on the couch and be quiet,” I commanded wearily.

“He can’t take her!” Sarah cried, indignantly.

“I know. There’s just no point in fixing his memory until we can get him out of here,” I sighed. “Then we’ll erase everything and send him on his way.”

Harry stuck his head back in the door. “I think she’s ready to change back. Give her a few minutes.”

We all stood awkwardly, waiting. How weird to meet someone that you first met as an animal. Weirder still to turn into an animal. I wondered how much Harry’s mother understood in her skunk ape form. Could she understand English? Communicate? Or were her thoughts restricted to feelings and body language? Maybe the Voice and the risk of immortality weren’t such horrible curses after all. I didn’t think I could handle gaining a couple hundred pounds at once.

Harry slipped by us into the back bedroom and returned with a dress draped over his arm. “It’ll just be a minute,” he said and was gone again.

Poor kid. What kind of life must this be? Living out in the woods, separated from people, hiding who his mother was. I wondered if he was really happy. Maybe they preferred to be alone. Or maybe introducing them to the USB would be the best thing that could ever happen to them. I wasn’t wise enough to make that decision for them. Harry’s mother would have to be given all the facts and allowed to make her own choice.

Her choice would also be biased by the knowledge that we would have to inform the USB about her existence. And if she ever got caught on camera, running through someone’s backyard, well, I just hoped that we wouldn’t be the Guardians who got the call to come clean up the mess. Either way, tonight was going to change their lives forever.

There was the sound of a throat being cleared behind me and I turned to see a small, mousy woman standing shyly in the doorway. She was about five foot two and just as thin and scrawny as her boy. Light wispy brown hair, brown eyes, and a look of frailty as if one harsh word would send her into tears. I was surprised. This was not the woman I’d expected. To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought, but I guess, subconsciously, I’d been expecting more of a Xena Warrior Princess, not Little Miss Meek and Mild.

“Hi,” I greeted her warmly, holding out my hand. She flinched away and slid apologetically into the room.

“Hello,” she breathed in a barely audible whisper.

“I’m Piper Cavanaugh,” I introduced myself again, not sure how much she had comprehended before.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said and perched lightly on the arm of the sofa. Harry stood beside her, with one arm protectively behind her back. Now that his mom was human, he seemed more on the defensive.

“We came here to talk to you about Richard Parker,” I said, having taken a quick peek at my watch and realizing that if I wanted to get any sleep at all tonight we would have to head back soon.

A frown darkened her face, and she looked helplessly at her son. “I haven’t told anyone about what happens to me,” she protested, “and we’ve been right on time with our payments. He’s got no cause to send people after me.”

I sighed. What a charmer that Pravus was. What a guy! Good thing he wasn’t here. There were a few things I’d like to pay back to him as well. “Cecily, why don’t you explain about the USB to Mrs. Pearson here,” I suggested.

“Annabeth,” she said, with a sweet smile, “please call me Annabeth.”

Cecily did her best to explain an entire magical organization, complete with mythical beings and odd rules and regulations, to someone who had spent their entire life hiding in the swamp, thinking that they were the only abnormal person in the world. She did a good job. It took longer than I wanted it to, but in the end I think Annabeth grasped what was going on.

“So, I can join the werewolf group?” she asked.

“Not the werewolves,” I broke in. “The were group. There are more were creatures than just wolves, or apes. But they can offer you protection and training on dealing with your ability.”

“But Pravus said that if I talked with anyone about my ability that this USB group would kill me. Or lock me away for good, so I’d never see Harry again,” tears filled her eyes.

Sarah shook her head angrily. “He was lying. He’s an evil witch and you should just forget anything he ever told you. He was just using you and your son. He should have reported you and helped you get in contact with the weres years ago.”

Harry looked fierce, “If I ever see him again …”

I grinned sadly. There was no way that they were playacting. They hadn’t known about any of this. So there was no reason for them to kill two teenagers in Kissimmee in order to frame Pravus.
Now
they might try to kill him if they saw him again, but I doubted it. Annabeth seemed too gentle to get murderously angry, and Harry was too young. One day wasted. One day closer to facing the Guardians and a Sword of Justice ourselves.

Chapter Twenty-two:

Babies and Billboards

We followed Floyd down the dark road to the main street. I could see him twisting in his seat, trying to see who was behind him on the godforsaken stretch. He was also probably wondering what
he
was doing out there. Sarah had worked her magic.