Marked Fur Murder (18 page)

I told him about the conversation I'd had with Firstcharger, and where she wanted to meet. “When she said ‘the Thunderbirds' place of power,' I thought she was just referring to Thunderspace. But considering the scarcity of landmarks, she must have meant that floating rock-and-tree area you found.”

Ben got to his feet, looked around, and found the closet his clothes were stored in. He walked over, shucking off his hospital gown along the way, yanked open the door, and started getting dressed.

“I'm guessing you don't want to wait,” I said with a sigh.

“Nope. Somebody killed Anna and they tried to kill me. If Teresa's behind it, I want to know now. If not, she might be able to tell us what's going on.”

“Ben, she clearly has a lot more experience than you. Thunderspace is a perfect place for an ambush. This is just not a good idea—we should wait and force her to meet in the graveyard.”

He shook his head as he pulled on his shirt. “Sorry. I know what the facts say, but there's one thing you don't have and I do.”

“Which is?”

“My instincts. And when it comes to Thunderbird business, I gotta go with them.”

I got off the bed and walked over to him. “They're saying we should trust her?”

“Hell, no. But they are saying we need to talk to her.
I
need to talk to her.”

“Instinct is a powerful force,” I said, and tried to keep the insecurity out of my voice. Instinct often led to a lot more than just talking. “If that's how you feel, we should go. But like I said—I'm coming with you.”

“Wouldn't have it any other way.” He flashed me that heartbreaking smile he did so well, and I felt something give a little crack, just behind my rib cage.

“Then let's go,” I said, and did my best to smile back.

*   *   *

We checked out of the hospital first, despite the protests of the staff, and went down to my car. If we were going to disappear in a swirling magical vortex, then I preferred we do it someplace a little more private and secure than a hospital balcony.

So we drove down to the Great Crossroads.

Whiskey spent the whole trip haranguing Ben. [This is an extremely unwise decision. Ill advised, tactically unsound, and altogether feline.]

“Feline?” Ben asked.

[It's a dog's greatest insult. You may substitute any of these words and retain the meaning: stupid, impulsive, idiotic, moronic, irrational, cat-brained, witless, unintelligent, foolish—]

“Okay, I get the idea.”

[—ignorant, dense, simpleminded, brain-dead, vapid, thick, lunkheaded, dim, vacuous, obtuse, dopy—]

“I thought Tango was the wordy one.”

[My command of the English language is utilitarian. She's the one who insists on making it jump through flaming hoops.]

Despite Whiskey's stern disapproval, Ben wouldn't change his mind. When we parked in the graveyard's small lot, Ben said, “You know, you could come with us. Or is that against the rules?”

[Not at all. But Thunderspace, as I understand it, is a realm suited to those who can fly. Dogs—even those with imaginary biplanes—do not fly well. Or at all.]

We got out of the car, and made our way into the graveyard. I picked a spot we'd used before, away from the heavy traffic of animal spirits and shielded from most eyes by the gently rolling terrain. I told Whiskey to stay alert in case we had to come back in a hurry, and he promised he would.

Then Ben raised his arms and the air began to dance around us. Even though I'd done this before, it still made all the hairs on my skin stand up. The winds whirled faster and everything outside them seemed to get farther away.

Then we were someplace else.

 

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

I hung in midair, suspended by some sort of natural law that had never been entered into the books of my reality. Below me was a vanilla ice cream landscape of wind-scooped clouds as big as countries; above me was sky the shade of blue that rainbows and musicians dream about. The sun-warmed air was the perfect temperature. It was like lying on a beach, minus the gravity. And the ocean. And the beach.

Ben was floating in the air beside me. Except
floating
wasn't really the right word; when Ben was in Thunderspace, he always gave the impression that he was hovering, the way a gull can stay virtually motionless in one spot by using the wind to generate exactly the amount of lift to keep from plummeting. Not moving in any direction but still somehow flying, body charged with the potential to swoop or soar in an instant.

Unlike me, who always felt a little like a leaf drifting on the breeze. I started to slowly rotate, as I usually did, and said, “Uh, Ben?”

“Oh. Sorry.” And just like that, I straightened out, pushed gently into alignment by a nudge from the air itself. He reached out and took my hand.

“You ready?” he asked.

“I think so—”

And then we were falling.

No, that's not right. Diving headlong is more accurate. If somebody who'd jumped out of a passing plane without a parachute were a hundred feet below us, we would have passed them like a Lamborghini blowing by a tractor.

So, being a mere passenger in said Lamborghini, I politely cleared my throat and said, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

We slowed down before stopping, which I was grateful for; if we'd come to an abrupt halt, I think my breakfast would have continued on without me.

“What's wrong?” Ben asked. He sounded genuinely confused.

“Me. Speed. Too much fast,” I gasped. “Geez for God's sake give me a little
warning
!”

He blinked. “Oh. Sorry. When I get here, I kind of forget.”

“Forget what? How to talk?”

Now he looked embarrassed. “No. I forget … it's hard to explain. It just feels so natural to me, being here. It's like all my assumptions about how things work change, without feeling like anything's changed at all. It's more like remembering than realizing.”

“Okay. Let's just take it a little slower to start, all right? You can kick in the afterburners once I'm used to it.”

We headed down again—
down
being a relative term in the absence of gravity, of course—at a more leisurely pace. This time, I did much better.

But I was a little worried now for a different reason. I thought I understood what Ben had been trying to articulate.

He'd forgotten, just for a second, what it was like to be human.

Because he wasn't, not really. He was a supernatural being, descended from a race of supernatural beings, able to travel between dimensions and control the weather. He might look like a homegrown farm boy, but there was something deeply different in his very essence, something usually hidden from the rest of the world.

But not here. Here, his true nature was free to come out.

I glanced over at him. His face was intent, his gaze steady. Like a hawk, focused on his prey. Both his arms were outstretched as if they were wings, his left hand holding mine and his right palm-down and flat, the fingers spread as wide as they could go. They reminded me of a crow's wingtip feathers in flight.

I think our speed gradually increased, but it was hard to tell. The clouds streaming past weren't much use as a guide, and Ben was doing something to the atmosphere around us to make it easier to breathe; I could see it sometimes as we shot through the mist, a bubble of still air enveloping us.

When our destination finally appeared, my first thought was of a circular, ruined castle, seen from above: the craggy rocks and angular branches suggested broken turrets and ramparts overgrown with redwoods and oaks over a hundred centuries. As we got closer, though, it resolved into more of a globe shape, and the contours of the imaginary castle broke up into a random maze of stone and timber—but the impression of something ancient and abandoned remained.

We slowed, then changed direction to glide above the treetops fifty or so feet away. “Where to now?” I asked.

“I'm not sure. But this feels familiar, somehow. I think…”

We veered off to the left. The terrain below, if you could call it that, all looked the same to me.

“Yes,” Ben muttered. “
This
way.”

I wondered exactly what was going on. Ancestral memories, coded into supernatural DNA? Guiding magic, emanating from the trees and rocks themselves? Or some kind of signal only Thunderbirds could hear?

Whatever it was, Ben seemed to know exactly where he was headed. “We're going in,” he announced, and then we were swooping into the tangle of stone and branches.

It cooled off as soon as we were through the canopy. We dove past cliffs of granite dappled with sunlight from above, through deepening shadows and rustling reefs of leaf, the air heavy with the smell of pine and moss. Other than the leaves, the air was silent; no birds sang, no insects buzzed or chirped.

As we flew deeper and deeper, I started to see a kind of path before us, an irregular passageway without rock or branch. Nothing had been cleared away, not that I could tell—it was more like a natural feature, an invisible riverbed in the air. We followed it down to the heart of the floating forest, and though it got dimmer, the light never faded completely away; when I looked upward, I could always still see a flicker of sunlight far, far above, as if every leaf between here and there were cooperating to usher a tiny bit of illumination along with us.

Magical. In every sense of the word.

We must have flown for miles. But at last Ben said, “Here,” and we touched down on the mossy surface of an immense branch.

Before us was a vast, spherical space. If you've ever been in a forest of really, really big trees, you know how it feels to stand at the foot of one of them and look up; it's like being in a living cathedral, a tiny living speck next to ancient, silent giants. This was like that, but times a thousand: immense trunks radiated like spokes in every direction, their roots gripping boulders at their bases like huge gnarled hands, the rocks forming the inner boundary of the sphere. A loose network of crooked, thinner roots joined the rocks together, but there were plenty of gaps wide enough to fly through.

It should have been dark as a tomb, this far from the sun, but I could see just fine; it was shadowy and dim, but not gloomy. And very, very still.

“Welcome to the Aerie,” a familiar voice said.

Teresa Firstcharger stepped out from behind a craggy outcropping. She stood on a boulder on the other side of the empty space, now dressed in loose denim shorts and a bright red T-shirt with a winged logo on it. Her long black hair hung free and her feet were bare.

Ben stared at her with the same kind of intensity he'd shown while flying. It was a little unnerving, so I said, “Nice place. Very … airy.”

She smiled. She had the kind of full, red lips people stab their mouths with bee venom for. “Hello, Ben. I see you brought a plus one. What, you were afraid to come on your own? Or did she insist?”

Ben didn't take the bait. “You called this place the Aerie. What is it?”

“If we're going to talk, let's not shout at each other across an empty divide. Shall we meet in the middle?” She stepped out into space as elegantly as a diva onto a red carpet, holding her arms as if offering a hug, and glided to the center of the sphere.

Ben stayed where he was. “I'm fine where I am, thanks. Great acoustics in here—wherever here is. Are you going to answer my question, or do I have to ask it again?”

I thought she might come closer, but she stayed where she was, her toes pointed downward, her arms moving slightly like she was treading water. “Oh, you know exactly where you are. This is the Aerie, the meeting place of the Thunderbirds. Where those who soar alone come to meet and talk, to share news and pass along messages. And sometimes, to discuss more important things.”

“Like the Unktehila,” I said. I was pretty sure Firstcharger would completely ignore me if I let her, but ignoring me is a skill set most people never acquire. “You said you wanted us here to tell us about them. So tell.”

“You're not the one setting the agenda here, Foxtrot,” she said. “This is a discussion between Thunderbirds, which you definitely are not. Unless you have something significant to add to the conversation, you'd be better off listening than talking.”

I smiled. My condescension shields are top-notch, too. “Oh, I have information you'll be interested in. When you're done sharing yours, I might even tell you some of it.”

We smiled at each other for a second. No teeth were bared, but we both knew they were there—though in Teresa's case, a razor-sharp beak seemed more appropriate.

“The Unktehila,” she said. “The ancient enemies of not just the Thunderbirds, but everything that lived. Like us, they were shape-changers; unlike us, they preferred the water to the air, and scales to feathers. They lived in the deep ocean, and ate just about anything that moved. But a seafood diet wasn't enough for them. They moved onto dry land, growing legs when they had to. But mostly they stuck with a serpentine form, good for moving through just about any environment. And swallowing buffalo whole.”

Ben glanced at me. “Sounds like some pretty big snakes.”

“Big and hungry,” Teresa said. “An invasive species with no natural enemies, leading to ecological disaster. They ate all the game and then moved on to eating the people. Which is when the sea serpents discovered that snakes on dry land
do
have a natural enemy: us.”

“So there was a war? We intervened on the side of humanity?”

She shrugged, an elegant gesture that seemed to ripple through her entire suspended body and was more than a little sexual. I've always hated women who defy gravity, unless they happen to be Sandra Bullock. Teresa wasn't.

“We intervened—exactly who asked us for help is a little unclear. And we were successful. We blasted them with lightning, and when they tried to hide in rivers or lakes we boiled them alive. Water makes an excellent conductor—or so I've been told.” She stared straight at Ben.