Mad Lizard Mambo E-Book

Rhys Ford

• Herausgeber: DSP Publications
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 452

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The Kai Gracen Series: Book Two Kai Gracen has no intention of being anyone's pawn. A pity Fate and SoCalGov have a different opinion on the matter. Licensed Stalkers make their living hunting down monsters and dangerous criminals… and their lives are usually brief, brutal, and thankless. Despite being elfin and cursed with a nearly immortal lifespan, Kai didn't expect to be any different. Then Ryder, the High Lord of the Southern Rise Court, arrived in San Diego, and Kai's not-so-mundane life went from mild mayhem to full-throttle chaos. Now an official liaison between the growing Sidhe court and the human populace, Kai is at Ryder's beck and call for anything a High Lord might need a Stalker to do. Unfortunately for Kai, this means chasing down a flimsy rumor about an ancient lost court somewhere in the Nevada desert—a court with powerful magics that might save Ryder's—and Kai's—people from becoming a bloody memory in their merged world's violent history. The race for the elfin people's salvation opens unwelcome windows into Kai's murky past, and it could also slam the door on any future he might have with his own kind and Ryder.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GLOSSARY

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

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About the Author

By Rhys Ford

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Copyright

Mad Lizard Mambo

By Rhys Ford

The Kai Gracen Series: Book Two

Kai Gracen has no intention of being anyone’s pawn. A pity Fate and SoCalGov have a different opinion on the matter.

Licensed Stalkers make their living hunting down monsters and dangerous criminals… and their lives are usually brief, brutal, and thankless. Despite being elfin and cursed with a nearly immortal lifespan, Kai didn’t expect to be any different. Then Ryder, the High Lord of the Southern Rise Court, arrived in San Diego, and Kai’s not-so-mundane life went from mild mayhem to full-throttle chaos.

Now an official liaison between the growing Sidhe Court and the human populace, Kai is at Ryder’s beck and call for anything a High Lord might need a Stalker to do. Unfortunately for Kai, this means chasing down a flimsy rumor about an ancient lost Court somewhere in the Nevada desert—a court with powerful magics that might save Ryder’s—and Kai’s—people from becoming a bloody memory in their Merged world’s violent history.

The race for the elfin people’s salvation opens unwelcome windows into Kai’s murky past, and it could also slam the door on any future he might have with his own kind and Ryder.

To Greg Tremblay who gives voice to my verbs and nouns.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK and all books are for the Five—Tamm, Jenn, Penn and Lea—as well as my other sisters, Ree, Ren, Lisa, and Mary.

I also am ever grateful to Elizabeth North, Lynn West, Grace (my long suffering editor) and the rest of the DSP and DSPP staff who do their best to pull up my socks and wipe my face so I am presentable in public.

Also thanking the San Diego Crewe, my betas and the Guinea Pigs for their support and patience.

This book is dedicated to everyone who always wanted a dragon of their own but never really thought about how much work it would be cleaning up after it.

GLOSSARY

a‘a— rough, crumbly lava (Hawaiian)

ainle—multi-use word, can be hero, champion, angel or if used in certain context, wild cat (Gaelic)

ainmhi dubh—black dog (Gaelic)

ampulla—orig: vial, blister; slang: piece of shit, waste of a person (Spanish)

arracht—monster (Gaelic)

bao—an Asian-centric bread, usually a soft white yeasty bread (Chinese origin word)

bebé—baby (Gaelic)

beathach sgeunach—skittish beast (Gaelic)

bonito—handsome, masculine pretty (Gaelic)

chi wo de shi—slang: eat my shit, damn it (Mandarin)

chikusho—slang: damn it, fuck (Japanese)

deartháir—brother (Gaelic)

diu nei ah seng—fuck your family (Singapore slang)

fifl—idiot, fool (Old Norse)

gusano—worm (sometimes found in tequila) (Spanish)

hibiki—resonance, echo (Japanese)

hondashi—dried bonito (fish) flakes, mainly used for soup stock (Japanese)

Iesu—Jesus (Hawaiian)

Indios—indigenous Austronesian peoples living in Southern California / Mexico regions

jan-ken-po—rock, paper, and scissors (Hawaiian slang of Japanese phrase)

kimchee—pickled, spicy cabbage pickles, national dish of Korea. Also spelled kim chi or kim chee. (Korean)

kuso—crap (Japanese)

luranach—lover, intended (Gaelic)

malasadas—deep fried yeast doughnuts rolled in granulated sugar (Portuguese)

meata—gone bad, turned rotten (Gaelic)

miso—soybean paste, commonly used in soup (Japanese)

muirnín—beloved, sweetheart, darling (Gaelic)

musang—wild cat, civet, feral cat (Filipino-Tagalog)

nori—seaweed, usually pressed into sheets (Japanese)

paho‘eho‘e—ropy lava (Hawaiian)

peata—pet (Gaelic)

Pele—Goddess of lava, volcanoes, passion and general badassery. Not someone to be fucked with. (Hawaiian)

Saimin—Local Hawaiian word for noodle soup dish based on Japanese ramen, Filipino pancit and other Asian noodles. Possibly based on Japanese word ramen/sōmen or Chinese words xì and miàn.

Shoyu—soy sauce (Japanese)

siao liao—crazy, out of your mind, insane. (Singapore slang)

sidhe—fairy folk, also Seelie. Considered the “good” court of the Underhill faerie / elves. Pronounced she. (Gaelic)

sláinte—health, salute (Gaelic)

sona ba bi tsi—son of a bitch (Chamorro)

sucio—filth, dirty things (Spanish)

tik-tik—bulbous triangular taxi cab, single driver car with wide back to accommodate passengers, suspended above roadways by upper rails and trolley lines, resembles a rounder version of a 1976 Ford Pinto (Indian origin word)

unsidhe—fairy folk, also Unseelie. Considered the “evil” court of the Underhill faerie / elves. Pronounced un-she. (Gaelic)

CHAPTER ONE

“CARI!” I screamed across the lava field, hoping the wind would carry my panic. The night was silent except for the rapid, furious beating of wings behind me and the frantic heave of my chest. Even the wind held its breath, waiting to see the outcome of its evening’s entertainment.

There was no sign she heard me. She was too far away and locked up tight, sitting in the Nova’s driver seat, waiting for me to emerge out of the fields.

A step or two later, a torrent of swirling winds kicked up from the shore, sweeping over the crinkled black landscape and into tight clefts of jagged peaks at the base of the Pendle range. The juts stabbed at the air, envious of the craggy mountains looming behind them, and snagged the interest of the smaller lizards on the draconian food chain. Dotting an upper mesa like dollops of stygian meringue, they provided a safe haven of sorts for the lesser beasts, a place where battles for territory and mates were raged under a sea of stars.

The rising wind was harsh, grabbing at my shout and whisking my panicked mewling off as if it never existed. Screaming into the wind was as useless as pissing into it, except you didn’t get a mouthful of pee when you turned your head.

Considering the dragon riding my ass, I’d take the mouthful of piss any day.

Cold air spiked my lungs. I kept my breaths short, huffing through pressed-in lips. Exhaling misty puffs, I kept up my pace, keenly aware of the hot wind steaming my trail. The paho‘eho‘e lava was uneven and probably slicing the hell out of the soles of my boots, but I kept running. Stopping was definitely not an option.

Not with the waves of hot, fetid breath gushing over my neck and the whispery swoosh of massive dragon wings slapping through the air behind me.

I tightened my hold on the egg, cradling it to my chest. Off in the distance and way too far away was a small white glow, giving me an idea of where Cari waited with her brother’s souped-up Nova hatchback. With any luck she’d listened to me when I told her to keep the Nova’s big-block engine running.

If she didn’t, then I was not only screwed but probably dinner. And if the dragon was still pissed off and hungry, she’d be second helpings.

Each flap of the dragon’s wings pushed a rush of air against my back, nearly shoving me to the ground. Its cry was furious, enraged at my intrusion or possibly that I was running for my life. Most dragons didn’t take kindly to their dinner beating a hasty retreat, and this one was no exception to the rule. The force of pushed air was enough to drive me to my knees, and running with a stolen winged lizard egg didn’t make things any easier. Dodging jagged rocks, I almost lost my knee to a boulder, and my jeans, already old, ripped. My shin stung, and the air burned down to my calf.

I couldn’t lose the egg, and if I fell, the elongated oversized lizard chasing me would have a helping of elfin tartare. The orb was almost too large for me to hold on to, but its ridged, swirled patterns gave me something to grip, useful when fleeing over sharp lava rocks.

“Guns. Need… guns.” I had them. They were hanging from their holsters on my thigh and side, but none of my weapons were going to do me any good. Not with my arms full. “Fucking dragon.”

I’d spotted the abandoned nest two weeks before while making a quick run through the grasslands below Pendle and stopped only long enough to confirm the bundle of broken sticks and rocks held at least two unfertilized prismatic dragon eggs. They were glorious to behold, hematite colors and curled over with bas-relief swirls. Snatching dragon eggs was a two-person job, and I’d needed to grab an egg before they fermented black. Hard to sell something that would run a crowd out if it cracked, and no matter how hard someone tried, they always cracked. Even hollowed out and cleansed, they retained their reek. No amount of bleach could cure that.

I couldn’t let it crack. Museums or private collectors don’t pay if their treasured eggs drive visitors from a room, and I needed the paycheck.

It would be suicide to glance back. I didn’t have time to check on the dragon’s progress. So long as I didn’t feel its teeth in any part of my body, I could consider myself the winner in my odd foot-against-wing race, but I never claimed to have much common sense. It was like picking at a healing tattoo. It was wrong and probably would mar the ink, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

Sometimes it helps to listen to the little voices in my head, especially when they’re urging me not to look and to keep running. So of course I looked.

“Shit,” I muttered. I knew it was a mistake to look back, and I did it anyway, because the image of a frilly-headed lizard with tatter-ribbon wings needed to be the last thing I saw before I died. “Iesu, Kai! Idiot.”

Dragons come in all shapes and sizes. Some are bulky, wide-chested beasts with enormous wingspans, while others are long, sinewy lizards with horns and pearls in their foreheads. Brought over when the human and elfin worlds merged, they took up the top of the food chain and, thankfully for all of us bipeds, mated furiously but rarely fertilized their eggs. Unfortunately, some female dragons still took their nesting seriously, if only to protect their eggs long enough to become enormous balut. Only then did the nesting grounds empty of females, and the males swooped down to enjoy the buffet.

It was a prismatic dragon, but I knew that before I started my little adventure. They weren’t large as dragons go, barely six feet in length, and their triangular snake heads were man-sized, but they were still vicious on a good day. I’d just made this dragon’s day go to shit. It was past grumpy and into full pissed off.

Safe in the Nova, Cari honked its deep horn, helpfully assisting me in remembering how far away I was from being safe. The world spun and dipped in a crazy rainbow spectrum soup as my goggles tried to stabilize while I dodged and wove through the hill’s juts and dips. The full moon bleached away any hard shadows, turning the lava into a mirror shiny enough to reflect the stars.

I’d worn a pair of spectral goggles to protect my eyes from any gas flares and to push back the deep black shadows thrown up by the bright moon. The silvery drench was nearly daylight bright, and I could see well enough, but there was always the risk of plummeting through a lava tube and breaking my neck.

The goggles were a little heavy, and sometimes I wondered if they actually did anything, but any advantage they gave me over the terrain was welcome. One wrong step and I could be a smear on the inside of a pocket in the rock or, worse, fall into a thread of magma and broil.

With my luck, the egg would survive the fall, and Cari would only have to wait until the dragon grew bored. Then she could retrieve it.

Unless the dragon got me first, in which case, I’d wholeheartedly wish I’d met my end in a fall, because I couldn’t think of a worse death than being eaten alive. Since I’d been fed strips of my own flesh by my insane father before Fate blinked and Dempsey won me in that poker game, I figured I had pretty good ideas on what a good way to go would be.

Flying lizard food was not one of them.

The lizard’s scales sang a soft chaotic tune as she chased me. Her claws spat up chunks of sharp pumice as she fumbled and scrambled over the rocks. Prisms couldn’t get much lift, but her wings went a long way in carrying her weight forward as she gave chase. Their eggs were prized, hard cloisonné shells of rainbow stained-glass hexagons. They glistened and sparkled better than diamonds and were worth so much more to the right Stalker. The one I held in my arms was worth a fortune. Much like the two I’d left behind.

I dodged right, rewarded for my poor choice when the dragon’s front foot clawed at the air next to my head. I ducked but her talons caught on my hair, yanking me down. Rolling on my knee, I whimpered when the lava cut through my pants and skin. The rock was sharper than broken glass threads, and if I survived the female lizard, I was going to spend a bit of time picking out Pele’s hair from my leg.

Her breath ruffled over my head, gusting my black hair over my face. The strands blocked my vision for a moment, and I tossed my head to clear the goggles’ sights. A drip of something rolled over the eyepiece, and after a second, I realized it was probably blood. Sweat wasn’t opaque and didn’t smell like copper.

Hooks dug into the shoulder of my leather jacket, lengthening down into my skin, and I was jerked back, falling on my ass. The lava did its job of chewing through the seat of my pants, but the jeans held up when I rolled, landing hard on my elbow. The egg jostled in the cradle I’d made of my arms, but I was now belly up and not moving, a sure-fire invitation to be gobbled up.

A rock crest made a good blind, and I abused my already bloody knee to dive toward it. The thermal Henley I was willing to sacrifice for this run snagged on the ropy stone and held me tight like a lover for a split second. Rolling around the spire, I checked the distance to the Nova with a quick peek and suddenly wished I hadn’t.

I got a face full of prismatic lizard.

Choking on its breath, I backpedaled and hit the rock hard. Angry and blood pumped up from the chase, she screamed, her high-pitched keen bleeding into my ear. Something trilled in her tone, arcing higher, and I doubled over the egg, trying to protect it. Her scream ruffled my hair, blowing it down into my face. Opening my eyes was a bad idea, probably the worst one I’d ever had. It was just in time to see the dragon’s head swing over and clamp down on my face.

Her fangs sang when they hit, the air whistling around the hollowed-out points of her venomous teeth. They hooked over the goggles’ straps, catching on the curved metal pieces and ribbing. Hissing, she pulled back, lifting me up as she went over. Her tongue swiped at the lenses, coating them in dripping ropes of spit. I swung from her mouth, dangling by my head, and her gullet convulsed as she tried to work me free. My feet left the ground, and I yelled, holding on to the egg for dear life.

I screamed. Loudly. Anyone would, especially when staring into what looked like a long, moist, ribbed tunnel of pink meat and viscous spit. Her stomach was at the end of the moving tube, a boiling hammock of muscle and acid strong enough to strip the meat from my bones. Of course I screamed.

Gods-damned chin strap. Fricking damned chin strap. I couldn’t risk dropping the egg—not with the cash it would get me—but my arms were full of shell, and I’d need a hand loose to get the strap undone. If I could get it undone.

Pain rocketed down my spine as she whipped her head around to dislodge me. If I were human, I’d be dead. Elfin bodies are tougher, more malleable, but even my spell-brewed joints and spine were stretched to their limits when the dragon fought to shake me loose. The whine of my goggles’ electro-mechanics trying to stabilize reached a high pitch, scorching my eardrums.

My head throbbed and stung where her fangs rested against my temple. I tried going boneless, forcing my body to relax, but it was no use. The lizard had me caught in her teeth like a fleck of spinach, and no amount of tongue sucking was going to get me off.

Twisting, I tried to get loose, but she held me fast, her jaws stretched too wide and jammed open by the heavy goggles. Whirling, she turned, and the world spun. I felt the ground beneath my boots, a momentary kiss of lava under my soles when she dropped her head then turned quickly to the right, pulling me along with her. It would have been better if I’d been snagged facing straight at her. Canted off-center, I couldn’t quite kick at her chest or throat. The only good thing about hanging a little sideways was I’d be able to see the rock I was going to die on once she got me loose.

The world spun again, thready rainbows bleeding across the lenses when the goggles caught on the twirling night sky. I couldn’t take the shift in perspective, and my eyes struggled to find something to focus on. My equilibrium shot, I felt my stomach rumble and then a sour creep over my tongue. Before I could stop it, my belly emptied, and as the prismatic tossed me about, I hurled, and she caught most of it in her mouth, filling her gullet with bile.

Not my proudest moment, but I was going to take what I could get.

Surprisingly, the dragon didn’t seem to be too fond of my contribution to the bodily fluids we were exchanging, and she reeled back, snapping her head up. The prismatic choked, gagging and twitching, her throat and tongue working to clear the taste of my swill. She flicked her head, and I was tossed about, still caught on her long fangs by the oh-so-sturdy goggles strapped to my head. My shoulders ached, and in a few seconds, I’d either be dead from my spine being snapped or she’d crush my body against the rocks. I was about to drop the egg so I could try to work the snaps loose when the world turned starry white.

I didn’t see the other dragon, but I heard its enraged cries and then felt the heat of its raging fire. A rush of air from its passing body blew my hair into my face, whipping the ends into my skin. The prismatic tried to scream back a challenge, but having an elfin hooked over her lower teeth by a thick leather strap tended to muzzle any rage. Instead, a gurgling rush of noises bubbled out, and she turned to face her attacker, landing on her feet and lifting me up high enough off the ground I could see a peek of the ocean glittering in the silvery moonlight, barely visible beyond the surrounding hillocks.

The other dragon was huge, and from the little I could make out, a crimson deep enough to make me think of an ainmhi dubh’s glowing eyes. Evil lived in that red, in both the ainmhi dubh and the serpentine worm. I’d struggled to fight off an irrational fear of bright crimson against black, but in the lava fields, where death was served up daily with a side of bitter and no regrets, that glittering bright red meant certain death. The ainmhi dubh, the black dogs of the unsidhe, and the enormous crimson dragons of Pendle’s storm-laden skies were predators of the highest order, often killing purely for the sheer glee of it.

I had no expectation this particular flying red lizard was only dropping by to borrow a cup of sugar and maybe a nip of tea.

Crimson filled my vision, the metallic glint of scales penetrated even my overworked goggle lenses, and the leathery, rotten stench of dragon swaddled my senses. I could taste the thing on my tongue, the popped-tick scent of old blood, decaying flesh caught in its teeth, and the sick yellow-green aroma of its bilious breath.

The lava field was draped in the crimson’s massive shadow, its bulky form blocking out much of the moon and the stars. More screams and shapes flying outside of my peripheral vision, then a sudden jolt when the prismatic buckled under a slashing rain of crimson claws.

As much as I didn’t like dangling from the prismatic’s teeth like a tree-hugging daisy-humper’s beard bead, I sure as shit didn’t want the crimson to kill her. Mostly because where the ribbon-winged dragon went, I did too. And if the crimson took it into its tiny brain to bite her head off, I’d pretty much be a pat of herbed butter on a slab of dragon steak.

The prismatic’s head popped, crackling with the heat of the hit. Another shot splattered nitrate and potassium over her snout and burst into bright flames. Overloaded, the goggles whined, and my vision went dim, shadowy swirls blurring away as the electrodes in the lenses began to shut down, leaving me staring through a cloudy milk membrane.

Her jaw fell clear from her head, the mandible cracking away from its torn socket, and the air above my head caught on fire as an undulating shadow made another pass over us. Another flare of sparks and the prismatic splintered apart, savaged by the larger dragon attacking her. My feet skimmed an outcropping and the leather on my boots’ toes scraped nearly down to my socks.

Then I fell. Hard.

On the plus side, I was now free of the prismatic lizard’s fierce bite. On the down side, I now had nothing holding me up in the air, and I was sent tumbling down to the treacherous lava field a few feet below.

I let go of the egg. Not like I had a choice. Gravity always wins, and I needed my arms to flail about and panic.

Much like the age-old question on what would fall to the ground faster—a pound of feathers or a pound of stone—the egg and I were pretty evenly matched as far as falling went. It had a head start, being under me when I let go, but I was heavier, so catching up wasn’t a problem.

Not that I’d wanted to catch up with the egg. No, my main focus was tucking myself up into a ball and praying I wouldn’t be sliced to ribbons by the ropy lava. Fate, however, had other plans.

The egg bounced. Odd thing for an egg to do, but bounce it did. Even through the filmy sheer panes of the goggles and my obscured view from under my arms, I watched the egg bounce off of the stony field and arc up, then slam right into me.

While the egg was impervious to glass-sharp rocks, apparently a falling elfin body was its weakness, because the moment its curved shell hit my shoulder, it broke, enveloping me in its rancid, curdled yolk and stringy, rotten white. It was a cushion of sorts. The yolk was nearly as long as I was. I didn’t have time to measure, but it definitely coated me up one side and wrapped around my curled-in body.

“Fuck m—” The ground came up on me quickly, and I yelped when I hit, snagging my tongue between my front teeth. “Ouch. Shit.”

It hurt. Hells, did it hurt, and there were stretches of my skin burning up beneath the remains of my shredded jeans. I tumbled, unable to stop myself from rolling, and much like the egg, I bounced about a bit. Covered in the egg’s sulfurous remains, I couldn’t see anything, and my lungs didn’t seem to work. It took a second to register the impact, my bones rattling about under my skin and in my meat, but screaming didn’t seem to be happening.

Mostly because I had no wind, and my mouth and nose were clogged with thick, gelatinous egg.

I might have passed out. Or maybe my senses were too overwhelmed with my impromptu flight, because as I tried to blink away the rancid eggy mess clotting my lashes, Cari appeared above me. Since I was lying down, it was hard to be startled, but I gave it my best effort, pretty much reduced to a jiggling of my muscles and a creaking groan from my parched lips.

“Dios, are you dead, Kai?” Her hands were warm, probably fired up with the thin healer talent she had in her blood. They felt good. More than good. “Lie still. I need to—”

“Dragon….” I ground out. “Red.”

“It’s gone.”

Oddly enough, I could see her clearly, because her face flushed green. A multigenerational Stalker from a Mexican-German-Irish family, Cari pretty much had seen it all. Or so I’d thought. She lurched, gulping in air.

“Oh God, you smell so bad. I think you drove the dragon away. You stink that much.”

Sitting up was an exercise in counting stars and pain. I managed to stay up for about three seconds before I toppled back. Thankfully, Cari caught me. Reluctantly from the gagging noises she made in her throat, but still, she caught me.

“Ouch,” I gasped. “Okay, hurting. Definitely hurting.”

My head felt in one piece, but my body was on fire. My limbs took most of the beating, but thankfully the fall wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The prismatic’s head was low to the ground when it came off her body, saving me from ending up a grated mess of flesh on the lava.

“Man, you flew, though.” Cari rubbed her hands together. “Okay, pretty boy. Let’s see how much juice I’ve got in me, because if I know you, once I get you up onto your feet, you’re going to go back after one of those eggs.”

CHAPTER TWO

COFFEE IS a gift from the gods. It doesn’t matter which god. Just any god. Every single last one of them must have sat down and said Yes, this is the mana of life. Or at least that’s what I felt like a few hours after Cari dropped me and the egg off at the converted warehouse I called home.

My body was one long road rash from the lava, and my sidhe blood was kicking in, stretching my ravaged skin back together. There’d been a hard knot in my stomach when I had to peel my clothes off after I stumbled home, hoping none of the torn edges were caught beneath my scabbed-over wounds. I’d had that happen before, and nothing made my teeth hurt more than peeling myself open. I’d washed off as much of the pumice and egg snot as I could with the water Cari had in the Nova’s trunk, but we hadn’t come close to getting it all off, and I’d been pretty sure I’d also be picking out small shards of glassy black rock as well as denim once I got home.

Lucky for me, I hadn’t disappointed myself.

The agony of reopening my wounds was taken care of with a few shots of rotgut whiskey and a few sharp yanks to pull the embedded fabric out from under my skin. Healing faster than a human is only fun and games when I’m in the middle of a fight. Other than that, it’s a pain in the ass if I let my wounds seal up before I get my clothes off.

I’d nearly drained the bottle by the time I worked the remains of my jeans free.

There’d been a long hot shower where I stood in a puddle of blood-pinked water. Then I fell over onto my bed. I must have still reeked, because Newt, the mangled cat I’d pulled off of a dead giant salamander and taken home, decided he wasn’t going to come near me. He took one whiff of me and got that gnarly scowl face he usually only made when the cat food had tilapia in it. For a hardscrabble thug of a feline, Newt still had standards, and they sure as hell didn’t stretch to his elfin roommate smelling like overcooked sulfur.

Since I couldn’t shake the reek out of my nose, I took another long shower when I woke up, using up every ounce of vinegar and lemon juice I had in the pantry. From the look on the cat’s face when I stepped out of the bathroom, I gathered I’d only succeeded in now smelling like pickled eggs.

“Screw you, flea ball,” I muttered while making coffee. He risked contamination long enough to hook his needle claws into my ankle to demand breakfast. I left the snarky bastard to chew on a chunk of packed tuna and headed to the roof with a cup of hot black coffee.

The best thing about living in my old warehouse was the view. Well, that and the lack of neighbors. Other than the one owned by Dalia, who lived next door and spent her hours away from Medical trying to mother me, most of the others were still used for storage and the occasional art gallery. Perched on one of the low mesas at the lip of San Diego’s downtown, I had a great view of both the city and the Pacific from my rooftop.

San Diego extended out along the coast, glittering under the rising sun. When the Underhill shoved its way into Earth—or maybe even the other way around, no one’s really sure—the world violently changed. Forests emerged where cities or prairies once stood, and entire oceans emptied only to form elsewhere, reworking familiar shapes into a patchwork of jumbled terrain. Some areas, like Orange County, disappeared entirely, replaced by the sprawling forests and floating towers of Elfhaime, while others were expanded, fanning out in ripples of torn land. Pendle was a prime example of that. It’d gone from a ten-mile stretch on the old maps to nearly one hundred miles, a craggy landscape of broken roads, lava, and dragons.

Most of the big human and elfin cities fell, their skyscrapers shattered and tumbled when the elfin world merged with ours—or rather, the humans’. It was hard to remember I wasn’t human. But San Diego was my city. My home. My world. My people. I was going to live, eat, fuck, and die here. And I was good with that.

Instead of folding back into the ground, San Diego grew, building on top of its fractured bones until it stood firm on the Pacific shore. The old city’s corpse existed somewhere deep below the under level, with its scrabble of squatters, low-rent flops, and dog-eat-dog living. San Diego’s upper level was sleek and shining, but its bowels held the foulest of existences, a blue shadow to the yellow-bright of the city above. Grime and filth found its way into everything, and the constant chatter of the city’s rich could barely be heard over the rumble-mutter of the lower classes below. I lived where the two levels merged at the edge of the shoreline, having converted an old warehouse into someplace to call home, its location accessible to both levels but really not a part of either.

I couldn’t be a part of anything. I was elfin. And not even a real one.

The world I lived in alongside smooth-eared and blunt-teethed people was human all the way through, and I’d fit into the cracks and crevices as best I could. There was no escaping my race… my species, really. As much as I tried to, I couldn’t outrun my elfin features or the aging of the people around me while I remained firmly in what will be centuries of youth. Dempsey, the man who’d taught me to be a Stalker, was getting old, wearing out in front of my eyes, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“Things change, you cat-bastard,” he often growled at me. “I’m going to die before you ever get a damned hair on that pointed chin of yours. Best get used to it.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d never get hair on my chin. For all the humans liked to equate elfin with cats, we just didn’t get facial hair. Although from how Dempsey told it, I bit like a wild cat he’d found under his engine for the first few months of my freedom.

I still bite. Sometimes that’s the best way to win a fight. I wasn’t ashamed of that either. You get into a fight to win, not earn courtesy points in an etiquette book.

After years of roaming about, I called San Diego home, and I was thankful to get back to its multileveled mess. It was a complicated life at times, one made more difficult because I was elfin living among humans who had no reason to love anyone with pointed ears. After the Merge, the Wars came when the two species fought to establish dominance. Humans with their tech were no match for the elfin with magic and an uncanny knack for strategy. In the end, no one won, and now we were all living cheek-to-ass with one another, pretending the guy at the other side of the dinner table wasn’t someone we’d tried to kill a few years ago.

I just ignored the elfin. Pretended they didn’t exist. Pretended I wasn’t one of them. Acted like I hadn’t been cooked up in a crucible by an evil Wild Hunt Master with a fondness for pain and blood. I’d been doing fine with it all until Ryder decided he wanted to establish a damned Dawn Court smack dab in the middle of the city I called home.

“Damned sidhe lord.” The coffee brewed strong, and I’d added enough sugar to it to cut its bitter edge. It was late enough for the sky to have grabbed at the blues in its palette, smearing its face with a rich robins-egg blue. Lacy clouds played at the city’s back, draped over the soft rise of mountains in the east. “Thinks he owns me, he does.”

I didn’t want to think about Ryder. I hadn’t talked to the self-proclaimed San Diego sidhe lord about shit in a hell of a long time, and I hadn’t planned on starting, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he reared his golden head up. The leash he’d put on me was a long one, but SoCalGov made sure it was tied on tight. Give the Dawn Court what he asked for and I’d get to keep my Stalker license. If that didn’t make me a whore, I didn’t know what did.

“Less I see of His Lordship, the better.” I toasted the rising sun. I didn’t sound convincing. Even to myself.

We’d parted on sticky terms. There were complications between us, dips in the road we couldn’t seem to navigate. I thought he felt betrayed because I hadn’t confessed to being an abomination, even if he said he wasn’t, and I was still more than a little pissed off that he’d finagled me onto the end of a tightly held rope. Getting me permanently assigned to his court by SoCalGov’s administration was a shitty thing to do, even if it was only a way for him to keep tabs on me.

We’d survived a Pendle run and the birth of our nieces—an odd, complicated tangle neither one of us planned for. I’d made friends with his cousin, Alexa, who’d become Cari’s apprentice. She’d have been on the job with us the night before, if not for the fact a sidhe warrior was not exactly the person to be on a run to steal a dragon egg from its nest. The sidhe were particular about dragons, believing the damned things were sacred. Ryder was never going to forgive me for killing one during a Pendle run, but it was either us or the dragon. Ryder, Clan Sebac, Third in the House of Devon, High Lord of the Southern Rise Court, thought it should be the dragon.

Since, at the time, I was driving and apparently more interested in living than he was, I chose us.

There are times I regret that decision. Not so much for me but for him, because Ryder is a pain in my ass. He kept after me to join his Court, even though I’m a chimera, an unholy, arcane soup of sidhe and unsidhe. Since I was already bound to him by SoCalGov’s threat to suspend my Stalker license if I didn’t ask how high when Ryder orders me to jump, I not so politely told him to fuck off and get out of my life.

I just hadn’t expected him to actually do exactly that—get out of my life.

“I should leave you there, Ryder,” I said to the sky, as if it would somehow carry my words to His Lordship’s ears, “in that forest of yours with the pandas and the towers. Damn you for not staying where I’d put you.”

The coffee went bitter in my mouth. I was turning maudlin, probably a result of bathing in a rancid dragon egg. Off in the distance, San Diego was waking up, its lower levels kicking in for the morning rush hour. The upper level still slumbered, its streets lean of traffic, but there seemed to be movement on the sidewalks, herds of dog walkers and joggers spending their morning hours chasing their own tails. Below, tik-tiks were diving and swooping, tiny blue metal birds clipped to overhead rails while picking up fares, then sweeping off into the shadowy streets built under San Diego’s towering skyscrapers. Medical’s white towers bristled at the levels’ meeting, a dash of mercury running silver on the city’s lips where it kissed the broad shoreline.

Leaning over the short wall running around the top of the warehouse, I sipped my coffee and stared at the city. The museum wouldn’t be open for a few hours yet, and I still needed to clean the dirt and pumice off of the egg’s exterior. There would be enough time for another cup of hot brew. Then I’d be elbow deep in soapsuds and filth.

“I’ll be needing yet another bath after that job,” I muttered at San Diego’s belly. My coffee was gone, and I was debating smoking a kretek before I started the laborious egg cleaning ahead of me when I spotted movement in my driveway.

More importantly, there was a very familiar old Chevy truck in said driveway and a way-too-familiar old human sitting behind its steering wheel.

“Dempsey,” I whispered under my breath.

He looked up as if he’d heard me say his name, an impossibility since I was several floors above him and his window was up, but his rheumy eyes met mine, and a sardonic grimace curled his sun-leathered face.

The last time he’d been at the warehouse was right after I bought the place. I’d been there for years, and never once had he darkened my doorway. To find him sitting in my driveway on a crisp, crystalline morning was shocking.

But not nearly as shocking as the drawn grayness of his skin as he studied me from his truck’s cab. I held up my coffee cup and lifted my eyebrows, silently questioning him if he wanted one. A curt nod brought me up from my lean on the wall, but the truck’s door creaking open drove me downstairs.

There was only one reason Dempsey would be at my doorstep. Something bad had happened… and whatever it was, I sure as hell wasn’t going to like it.

DEMPSEY WAS silent while I got us some breakfast, and he slowly picked at the scrambled eggs and bacon burritos I’d tossed together. He’d always been one to eat, no matter if he’d just had a meal. Food was something to be consumed whenever it showed up in front of you, he used to say. Eat, because you never knew when food was going to be around again. I’d taken that lesson to heart, especially after the uncountable years where my only sustenance had been my own raw flesh being fed to me piece by piece.

Him not eating got me worried.

My worry turned to a cold gnaw of ice in my stomach when he eased himself into a folding metal chair next to me as I scrubbed the living shit out of the egg and Dempsey sighed.

“Listen close, son.”

Dempsey never called me son.

I was never his kid. Hell, I’d never been a kid. Sure, I’d been a bit smaller and shorter when he’d won me in that poker game, but I’d never ever been a child. My sick and twisted father’s magic took care of that shortly after I was born. I’d come to him a malfunctioning idiot, and he’d made me into a man.

But I’d never been his son.

“Doctors found some black spots in my guts, son.” His thick sausage fingers scrubbed over the tired in his grizzled, soulful face. “They said it’s going to kill me. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Real fucking soon.”

I’d taken knives to my stomach that hurt less than what Dempsey was telling me. I wasn’t sure what scared me more: him calling me son or the news of those dark blotches in his gut.

The water hose dropped from my hand, and I steadied myself on the egg, its curved bottom fitted into the ring of a bucket cabriolet I’d rigged to hold it while I washed it down. My knees gave, and I fumbled back for the other chair I’d brought out, my ass finding its hard edge with a heavy thump.

The warehouse’s single remaining bay-turned-garage echoed with my panicked, hissing breaths. Dempsey sat quiet and still while I fought to take control of my thoughts, swallowed up by the sudden reality of my whatever-the-fuck-he-was dying on me before I was ready for it.

It was funny how someone’s world changes in a second. Silly, stupid things turn life inside out, but everything else continues on as if nothing happened. Behind me, my Pendle-run-battered Mustang continued to sit on blocks, its partially restored body waiting for me to attach the new quarter panels I’d gotten in the day before. A bird sang out a trilling shriek from the jacaranda tree planted in the green space between my place and Dalia’s front door.

Water continued to bathe the slightly sloping driveway at my feet, curling around the tires of Dempsey’s truck, not quite reaching its battered rims, coated in a thin layer of milky brown dust he’d brought with him from Lakeside. The city continued to buzz, cars zipping along its streets, and the nearby ironworks churned and clanged its way through another bright, sunny San Diego morning.

But my own world had gone suddenly and irrevocably dark.

Dempsey seemed to grow smaller as he spoke, grumbling about Medical and the long lines of uncaring faces he’d been trotted past. It was more about complaining than actually telling me what was wrong, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around the why and what I needed to shout at him. Those words remained lodged in the back of my throat, trapped in an amber drop of fear and unknown I couldn’t shake loose. I only found my tongue when he pulled out one of his ratty hand-rolled stogies, bit off its end, then pressed a lit lucifer to its rough tip while he sucked it to a deep red glow.

Staring at the first puff of smoke curling up from his lumpy cigar, an unreasonable rage crept over my brain, and I did something I never in my right mind would have done before that moment.

“Don’t fucking put that in your mouth, asshole.” I slapped the cigar out of his hand, sending it flying into the growing pool of water forming under the egg. “Don’t you gods-be-damned….”

The insanity of what I’d just done took a little bit to creep into my consciousness, but I didn’t care. I didn’t give a shit if he beat me into the ground. I was angry. So damned angry at what he’d done to himself. What he was doing to me.

He remained so still in his chair, I began to wonder if he’d somehow died in the space between my smacking the lit skunkweed out of his hand and my brain freaking out. I don’t know what I expected. Probably his fist in my face or maybe in my stomach. Either way I was going to get my face rearranged, and I steeled myself for the first blow.

Instead, Dempsey began to laugh.

He was a big man, taller and broader than me by a long shot, and over the years, the lean tautness of his belly eased out, giving him a paunch he religiously kept up by regular applications of alcohol and fatty foods. I couldn’t remember a time when silver didn’t fleck the scruff on his face and neck, and he’d always smelled of tobacco with the faint hint of sour sweat. Dempsey raised me as he’d been raised—hard, swift, and with a slap or two to keep me in line.

Most people would say he was a sorry excuse for a father figure. They didn’t know what they were talking about.

I had—have—a father. He’d torn me apart from the inside out, shoving iron bars under my skin knowing the metal was toxic to our kind, and gleefully used his magic to peel the flesh from my bones to feed his Wild Hunt. I’d been passed around as a party favor for his friends and served as a chopping block for his enemies. I’d been bled to white, broken to the marrow, and starved before I could even speak.

Dempsey was a Pele-blessed angel compared to Tanic cuid Anbhas, and I thanked Life every day for the hand he’d been dealt to win me. I knew how to survive. Hell, I knew how to live. A Stalker’s existence was short and brutal, and Dempsey’d been one of the best. He’d made me one of the best.

His son humbled me. His laughter made me smile.

“You came to tell me you’re… dying, old man?” I asked when he stopped to take a breath.

“No, kid.” He stared me straight in the eye, sucking at his front teeth. “I came to ask you for money. You see, those damned doctors? They have a plan. But it’s an expensive one, and the way I figure it, you owe me.”

CHAPTER THREE

“WHAT THE hell do you mean you can’t take it?” I couldn’t believe my ears—my goddamned pointed ears—so I took a step forward in case I’d somehow missed what the squirrel-faced museum director squeaked out of his thin lips. Stabbing his chest with my finger, I pushed him back a step. “You’re taking the gods-be-damned egg.”

It was early in the morning. Way too early for any nonsense from a scrawny human dressed in a rumpled suit. The exhibit director was slender, frail in a way reminiscent of praying mantis males when they danced in front of a hungry female, and his pale gray eyes slid around behind his oversized round glasses.

Mostly, he squirmed and refused to look me in the face while he told me I’d risked life and limb to fulfill his damned contract and he no longer wanted the fricking egg.

I really regretted leaving my shotgun outside in the truck. Hell, I regretted not leaving me in the truck. I had a Glock on me, strapped into a shoulder holster mostly so I felt comfortable, but they didn’t make as nice of a boom as a shotgun did when blowing someone’s head clean off their neck. And I badly wanted to blow this guy’s head so far off his body it would leave a smear on the museum’s shiny marble floors.

I still stunk of egg, despite the many showers I’d given myself at home, and the whiff of sulfur followed me through the parking structure near the museum’s back entrance. The guard who’d let me into the building did jack to help me wrest the egg inside, even grumbling about sidhe bitches when I toddled by. Since the job came with a tight deadline, I wanted to slide in with the best damned egg I could get my hands on before some other asshole waltzed through the door first.

Little did I know the asshole would turn out to be the guy who’d contracted the job to begin with.

“Explain to me, dickhead. How do you cancel a contract you’ve registered with the Post? One I agreed to.” My finger made another stab, and he shuffled back a step. “You owe me. And big.”

Morrìgan, I sounded just like the man who’d raised me.

The asshole under my finger didn’t care that I’d nearly bought it in a dragon battle just a few hours ago or that Dempsey’d shown up on my doorstop with a colon full of shadows and death. The director shuffled back as if I were diseased, and his eyes flicked about, probably looking for a fat security guard to come save him. There were none in sight. He was stuck with me, pinned to the ground by his own fear and my rage.

“The money,” I growled. “Now.”

Burbling nonsensically, he crept back another step. I followed, dropping my hand but remaining close enough to keep him on edge and uncomfortable.

There really wasn’t a whole lot I could do to make him cough up the cash he owed me. Even with the SoCalGov contract in place, the museum could default, and besides lodging a complaint, I was pretty much twisting in the wind. Even if the place got banned from further contracts by the Post and all other SoCalGov agencies, freelancers would snatch up the chance to secure anything the museum asked for. We all lived and died by the wants of the rich. My getting the director and his damned museum stricken from the rolls would only drive them to another market.

And I did my best damned work for that fricking museum. I’d brought in their largest dragon skeleton, scavenged from a death match one Asian red had with a particularly vicious rival. Hell, I’d even gotten them a nightmare’s skull, a bitch and a half to scrounge—I glanced up, finally noticing the gaping empty space above me.

“What the hell?” I choked out. “Where…?”

San Diego’s Natural History Museum was world famous for its collections. Having retained much of its pre-Merge displays, the museum was located in the heart of upper-level downtown, housed in an enormous metal and concrete architectural vomit of a building most people liked to call the Ink Blot. With their move from the now sidhe-owned Balboa Park area, the museum gained space and foot traffic, catering to locals and tourists alike.

And if there was one thing San Diego was known for, it was its dragons. So San Diego’s natural history museum went full throttle on anything draconian.

Pendle was as much a part of San Diego as its lower level warrens and the roaming pandas near the old 163 highway. The former military installation was now home to countless scores of dragon types, and the museum made a lot of its money from displays of entire dragon skeletons, scales, wings, and sometimes if they were lucky, a perfectly formed but inert egg.

I’d brought in its largest dragon skeleton, and it’d hung along the long hall’s ceiling, suspended on nearly invisible wires, caught in midswoop in all its glorious fifty feet of ivory bone and fang.

A dragon that was now missing.

In fact, most of their dragon-related exhibit was stripped clean, leaving only the plaster constructs done by local artists. There were a few artifacts, some castings, and a silly footprint display of different draconian types so visitors could compare their shoe size with something that would slurp them up like an udon noodle if they actually met face-to-face.

Sure, there were other dragons—plush, grinning things set along a shop’s glass walls to coax parents into coughing up a week’s wages to keep a smile on Junior’s face. The coffee kiosks on either side of the hall were squat round interpretations of ground slithers, boasting neon spines along their roofs and sides bright enough to blind anyone who stared at them too long. There were other dribbles and drabs, illusions of the massive and teeny beasts who lived and died in the wastelands above Carlsbad, but not a single damned piece of an actual dragon.

Delicate, fragile wings made of fabric and boning framed the ceiling nearly four stories above us. The museum’s exhibits wrapped around the space, tiers of floors branching off lifts and stairs, leaving the massive hall in the middle practically empty. My dragon—the museum’s massive red—once dominated the space, its serpentine spine set into waves high enough for a child to have walked under it when it’d been on the floor. The bone fixers canted the lizard’s wings back, curving its body into an attack stance, as if it were sweeping down to snatch its prey from Pendle’s rough black hills.

Since I’d found the dead dragon in a rotting, mangled heap, I’d secretly approved of its after-death ferocity.

I’d taken great fucking pride in that dragon.

“Let’s forget about the egg for a second. Where’s the red?” I asked, pointing upward.