Etched in Bone

CHAPTER 22

Thaisday, Messis 23

Jimmy spent the morning selecting the things he would need, always aware that the best chance he had of succeeding was today at the start of the midday break. The cops and the Others wouldn’t expect him to make a move so soon after those men screwed up the theft of a few pounds of meat. They wouldn’t be ready for anyone to do something bold.

There were places around the bus depot and train station where a person could rent a car for a few days, but even the places that rented junkers wanted things like an address and payment made through a bank card or a cash deposit that covered the full cost of the time the car would be used. A nice car would be better—less chance of breaking down considering how far he was driving—but a junker wouldn’t be reported stolen if it was an hour late being returned.

Not finding the right balance of reliable and nondescript, Jimmy took a taxi up to the university area, not wanting to waste time waiting for the next bus. The bookstore near the campus had maps of all the regions. He bought maps for the Northeast, High Northeast, and Southeast—the three regions within reach if you were flexible about where you crossed a regional border. There were bound to be operators of small boats plying their various trades along the coastline, hauling in fish and dropping off a passenger or two on the other side of an arbitrary line.

A backup plan in case he decided heading for Shikago wasn’t his best move.

The salesperson mentioned a couple of times that the maps weren’t totally accurate anymore—some places that were listed didn’t exist now or were no longer under human control. Could be hard to find gas if you left the toll road with its rest stops that were kept supplied with fuel. And you needed to figure out where to stop once the daylight began to fade. Couldn’t risk driving on any road after dark, especially the ones running through the wild country, and hotels and motels that were built conveniently close to the toll road tended to fill up fast.

Jimmy smiled at the girl and thanked her for her help, doing what CJ would have done. He explained that the maps were a hobby—he just liked studying places—but he did have business on Great Island and didn’t want to hire a taxi for a day. Did she have any suggestions?

He expected her to haul out a phone book and direct him to the rental places he already knew about. Instead, she pointed to the store’s large vestibule, where a bulletin board was conveniently located next to the pay phone. University students sometimes rented out their cars for a day to help with the costs of owning a car. Usually they rented to other students, but he seemed like a nice guy and a day trip to Great Island at this time of year wouldn’t put wear and tear on a car. He could check out the cars that were available today.

He thanked her again and went out to look at the notices tacked to the bulletin board. He found a few cars that sounded like they would be suitable—new enough that he wouldn’t need to worry about breaking down in the wild country but not so new that they would attract the attention of cops.

The first two numbers he called didn’t pan out. The cars were already rented for the day. But the third car was still available and the guy who owned it lived a few blocks from the bookstore.

Jimmy walked to the address he’d been given, and within minutes he’d handed a hundred dollars to a scruffy-looking young man, had confirmed that the registration and insurance card were in the glove box, and promised to replace whatever fuel he used before returning the car that evening.

He drove carefully, partly to reassure the fool who had just handed over a vehicle to a complete stranger and partly to avoid being pulled over for something stupid. Spotting a coffee shop, he parked and went in to study the maps.

He wanted to stay in the Northeast Region for the first stage of this new venture, so he needed to head south or east. Only one road out of Lakeside headed south besides the toll road, but that one road branched out like fingers spreading from a hand. The “thumb” continued south, following Lake Etu until it angled west toward Shikago. The “fingers” branched out, some heading toward the Southeast Region while the rest headed east toward the Finger Lakes. He could make it look like he was heading to Shikago—a destination CJ would expect him to choose—then take one of those branches heading toward the Finger Lakes, changing direction whenever two routes intersected in some town, always heading east, toward the coast. He would put enough distance between himself and Lakeside that CJ wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking. And since he wasn’t using a car from a rental place, the cops couldn’t track him that way.

Jimmy folded up the maps, finished his coffee, and left the coffee shop smiling. Once he had the asset away from Lakeside, he would know which roads to use to elude the cops and the freaks.

He drove back to the neighborhood around the Courtyard. Time to put the last part of his plan into motion.

“Playdate?”

Setting aside the book order he was trying to fill for one of the terra indigene settlements, Simon glanced at Vlad, who shrugged. Then he focused on Eve Denby, who had combined ordinary words in a way that made no sense. “Humans designate a time for puppies to play?”

No wonder humans were all a bit peculiar. Puppies played. A lot. That’s how they learned much of what they needed to know about the world. They played with puppies their own age. They played with juveniles. They played with adults. They played with sticks and pinecones and just about anything they could pick up that interested them.

“Robert and Sam want to play a board game,” Eve said. “A game played on a board.” Using two fingers, she traced a square on the counter.

“We know about board games,” Simon grumbled. Okay, so the terra indigene might not play the game according to the rules printed on the box or in a way humans would understand, but they had some of those games shelved in their various social rooms.

“Well, this game has small pieces that could be lost if the boys play it in the Courtyard,” Eve said. “I don’t want some youngster spotting a game piece in the grass, thinking it was edible, and choking on it. The boys will be playing on the porch, have already been told there will be dire penalties if they take so much as a step off the porch without supervision.” She placed her hands on the counter and leaned toward Simon. “And if they don’t stop pestering me about this so that I don’t have an hour’s peace to get some work done, I am going to get cranky and bite somebody.”

Her eyes held a feral quality that made him think it wasn’t the puppies who would get bitten.

Simon breathed in her scent and thought she might be in season. That would explain the snappishness, especially if she was one of those females who gave the “come here, come here, come here” signals one moment, then wanted to bite off her mate’s face the next.

Should he warn Pete Denby? Then again, the man had been mated to Eve enough years to recognize the warning signs.

“Sam . . .” He stopped. Let Sam go out among the humans alone? “Sam has never been out of the Courtyard. My sister was pregnant when she arrived in Lakeside. He’s never . . .”

Sympathy in Eve’s eyes now and in her smile. “It’s hard, isn’t it, letting them take those first steps away from you? It’s been just as hard for me letting Robert cross the street and play inside the Courtyard with Sam and the other young Wolves.”

Considering the results of mixing human and Wolf curiosity, innocence, and boy boldness, he couldn’t say the terra indigene adults had kept Robert and Sam out of trouble; they’d just put a stop to things before trouble became dangerous.

Of course, after dealing with a boy who had learned why you don’t tease a skunk—a smelly but useful lesson—Eve might not share a Wolf’s scale of “okay to dangerous” when it came to learning experiences.

“I’ll escort them across the street,” Eve said. “You can watch from the window right here. If they disobey and I don’t get to them first, feel free to come over and bite them. Better yet, send Nathan. I’m not sure Robert believes you’ll bite him, but he is sure that Nathan will.”

“I can bite as well as Nathan.”

“The logic is that a friend’s uncle can scold you—and be ignored—but a cop can arrest you?” Vlad asked, looking amused.

“Exactly,” Eve replied. “You don’t mess with the Wolf police.”

Laughing, Vlad went into the back to pull more stock for the out-of-town orders.

“Wait,” Simon said. “How can Robert pester you? He’s in school in the mornings.”

“Ruth needed a mental health day, so the kids don’t have school.”

“Ruthie is sick?”

Eve patted his hand. “When a woman takes a mental health day, she needs alone time, and a wise man lets her have it.”

Okay. Not sick. Calm unless riled, then watch the teeth. He understood that. But it made him wonder about something else. “Does a human female get as testy when a male asks about a mental health day as she does when he asks if it’s that time of the month?”

Eve showed her teeth. Might be a smile. Probably not.

“Okay,” Simon said. “They can play on the porch at your house.”

Eve patted his hand again. “I’ll feed them lunch if they haven’t lost interest in the game by then and returned to the Courtyard to play.”

Simon stood at the door of Howling Good Reads and watched while Eve walked Robert and Sam down the sidewalk on the other side of Crowfield Avenue. He watched Sam stop and wave to him before Eve and the pups went up the walkway to the Denbys’ porch.

“Worried?” Vlad asked, coming out of the back of the store.

“Meg saw danger.” She didn’t see anything that indicated any of the pups were in danger, but that was no reason to be careless.

“I know,” Vlad said. “That’s why I asked Leetha to keep an eye on the children. You could ask Jake Crowgard to go over.”

“He’d steal pieces of the game.”

“Probably.”

Leetha wasn’t Vlad or Nyx, but she did answer to Grandfather Erebus. If there was any trouble at the apartments across the street, she would sound the alarm.

Meg wrinkled her nose at the picture of bison on the front of the postcard, then smiled when she turned it over. It wasn’t addressed to her, but she figured every individual who had handled the card on its journey here had read the message that Jana Paniccia had sent to Jenni Crowgard.

She left the postcard on the sorting table next to her purse, along with a letter from Jana addressed to Merri Lee, which she put on the stack of mail going to HGR. She’d deliver the card to Jenni at Sparkles and Junk when she went out for lunch. Which would be a choice of bison burgers, bison meat loaf, or roast bison sandwiches.

She sighed. She’d been an idiot to turn down Simon’s offer to drive up to Ferryman’s Landing and buy some meat for her. But she hadn’t wanted special treatment—and regretted that decision when Merri Lee and Ruth told her they wouldn’t have turned down the offer; that because he was a Wolf, bringing her choice cuts of her preferred meat was probably Simon’s equivalent of giving her flowers and chocolate. Put that way, it sounded like she was turning down a suitor instead of passing up a pot roast.

Which left her with a choice of bison, bison, or bison for lunch. Yum.

She walked up to the counter in the front room, drew back the slide bolt on top of the go-through, and headed for the door, saying, “Time to close up for the midday break.”

She spotted Greg O’Sullivan walking across the delivery area at the same moment he spotted her. Changing course, he opened the door of the Liaison’s Office and stepped inside.

Skippy leaped to his feet and growled menacingly. Nathan looked at the ceiling, as if pretending to take no notice of the juvenile Wolf’s behavior. O’Sullivan froze by the door.

There was no reason to threaten the ITF agent. He rented a room above the office. He’d been given work space in the consulate. But he’d been gone for a few days, so it was possible that Skippy didn’t remember him.

“That’s an impressive-sounding growl,” Meg said. “Very watch Wolf. Agent O’Sullivan, don’t you think that’s an impressive-sounding growl?”

“I certainly do,” O’Sullivan replied.

Nathan looked at the two humans and grunted.

Okay, they were slathering praise with strokes so broad most juveniles would feel insulted at being treated like puppies, but Skippy was Skippy.

“But we know Agent O’Sullivan, and we don’t growl at people we know,” Meg said.

Nathan stared at Meg and growled.

“Unless they are doing something bad,” she amended.

“A growl is just a warning,” O’Sullivan said. “No harm in warning someone that there are consequences to doing something bad.”

O’Sullivan and Nathan looked at each other and moved their heads in tiny nods of agreement. Meg rolled her eyes at this display of law enforcement solidarity.

Skippy flopped down on his Wolf bed, clearly pleased to have performed his watch Wolf duties.

“I’m working alone at the consulate right now, so I was heading over to the Stag and Hare to pick up a sandwich. Would you like me to pick up one for you?”

“I don’t know what kind of food they have there.” But it was a safe bet that they wouldn’t be serving bison.

“It’s basic pub grub,” O’Sullivan said. “The food at Meat-n-Greens is better, if somewhat more creative, but the Stag and Hare gets its supplies from human sources. With the loss of the meat in the butcher shop, it didn’t seem fair to buy a sandwich here when I can go across the street.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll get some money.”

“We can settle up after. Any kind of meat you don’t like?”

Nathan snorted. Meg ignored him. O’Sullivan smiled.

“I’m fine with any of the ordinary meats people eat,” Meg said.

“I’ll choose a couple of things and you can take your pick.”

“Thank you.” Meg scowled at Nathan. “Why don’t you and Skippy go out for your break now?”

O’Sullivan had pushed the door open. Now he stopped and looked at her. “Like I said, there is no one at the consulate right now. If your friends are going out, you should lock the door until I get back.”

“Arroo,” Nathan agreed as he stepped off the Wolf bed and stretched.

Skippy made no move to leave. He just watched Meg with bright-eyed eagerness.

She looked at O’Sullivan, then nodded when he held up three fingers to show he understood he would be buying a sandwich for Skippy. The ITF agent went out the front door, holding it for Nathan. The Wolf looked toward Main Street, then turned sharply and trotted up the access way. She watched O’Sullivan look toward the intersection of Main Street and Crowfield Avenue. She watched him gauge the traffic and dash across the street to the Stag and Hare instead of going up to the crosswalk.

“Roo?”

Meg blinked. Focused on Skippy.

She looked at her right arm. Her left hand hid the evenly spaced scars on her upper arm. Her hand clenched around the arm so hard the muscles hurt.

And the spot on her tongue began to prickle.

She turned the simple lock on the front door. She would get her keys and lock it properly when Agent O’Sullivan returned. Maybe she would ask him to escort her to Howling Good Reads or the Market Square.

Then again, maybe he was the reason she was starting to feel prophecy prickle and burn under her skin. Maybe something was going to happen to him.

She pressed her hand against the pocket of her jeans and felt the shape of the folding razor. Something was going to happen, was happening now. She had the uneasy feeling that even if she made a cut, it was already too late to give a warning.

“Simon! Vlad!” Merri Lee shouted. “Something is going on across the street.”

Dumping a handful of books back on the cart, Simon rushed to the front of HGR with Vlad right behind him. Merri Lee stood on the sidewalk, mobile phone pressed to one ear, shouting, “You kids! Clarence! Knock it off!”

Simon wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Four human pups were on the grass between the Denbys’ den and the apartment building. That Clarence seemed to be taunting the Frances while Lizzy and Sarah stood nearby, looking like young prey who didn’t know if they should run or huddle together to defend themselves against a predator. Was this a different kind of play the Others hadn’t seen before?

Sam and Robert were still on the porch, obeying Eve’s orders, but they were on their feet, watching that Clarence and the girls. Leetha moved toward the girls but seemed uncertain about whether to act.

“Leetha says this is typical play between that Clarence and the Frances,” Vlad said.

“That isn’t play,” Merri Lee snapped, rounding on Vlad. “That is wrong. Damn it, Eve, pick up.”

Not play. Wrong.

The light was green, so traffic moved in both directions on Crowfield Avenue, cars bunched together and going too fast for him to safely dash between them. It would be like leaping into a bison stampede, with much the same result for anything that wasn’t just as big. He’d wait until the light turned red and the cars stopped moving before going over and showing his teeth. Besides, there was no real urgency to cross the street since Leetha was already there and that Clarence wasn’t doing anything except yelling things that upset the female puppies.

Except something about this reminded him of the mock battle Montgomery and that Cyrus had last week.

Simon called, feeling uneasy.

Nathan stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the customer parking lot.

Still watching the ruckus across the street, Simon started moving toward the intersection. It was daylight, not the time Meg saw in the prophecy dream, but he still wanted to stand at the corner where he could see the entrance to the delivery area—and see anyone heading for the Liaison’s Office.

“Girls!” Leetha shouted. “Over here.”

Perhaps because she was more familiar with the Sanguinati who lived in her building, Lizzy was the first to obey, dragging Grr Bear by one arm. The Frances, dodging a swipe of the Clarence’s hand, raced after Lizzy. But Sarah had been standing closest to the sidewalk and was now farthest away from protection—and was the most innocent fawn among the three girls. In her effort to escape, she ran too close to the predator, and that Clarence grabbed her. He locked one arm around her, bending her at the waist, and pulled her shorts and underpants down, shouting, “Show ’em your bald pussy, bitch!”

In that moment, annoying behavior turned into a real threat.

Vlad turned to smoke and raced over the cars, startling some drivers into hitting the brakes.

Robert screamed, “Sarah!” and leaped off the porch to defend his sister, with Sam right there with him.

Changing direction, Simon grabbed Merri Lee to keep her from leaping between a car that had stopped and the one behind it that didn’t stop in time, adding the crunch of metal to the shouts and snarls of a fight—and the sound of horns honking and tires squealing on Main Street. Despite Merri Lee’s swearing at him and digging her short nails into his arms as he hauled her away from the curb, he noticed how Sam and Robert moved as a team to harass the somewhat larger predator. That Clarence flung Sarah to the ground and turned his attention to the other young males.

“Gonna stick you, Wolf,” that Clarence shouted, pulling a small knife from his pocket. “Gonna stick you good.”

Sam didn’t respond. The puppy pack had been learning this lesson as play: harry a larger predator away from weaker members of the pack while avoiding teeth or claws that could injure or kill. Snap and retreat, snap and retreat. Work as a pack to push, push, push the predator away from the den.

Vlad shifted to human as soon as he reached the other side of the street. He scooped up Sarah and rushed to the spot where the other girls stood. Then he and Leetha turned toward the boys to break up the fight. Realizing the Sanguinati would deal with the trouble, Merri Lee stopped fighting Simon.

Then the Sandee came out of the apartment building. She screamed as she ran toward the boys and raised something thin and pointed as if she intended to drive it into Sam’s back.

Leetha grabbed the Sandee and scraped her fangs over the skin between neck and shoulder. Then Leetha stumbled away, screaming in pain. Distracted, Robert didn’t react fast enough when that Clarence jabbed at him. He went down, leaving Sam facing that Clarence.

Releasing Merri Lee, Simon ran to the space in front of the crunched cars and prepared to leap into the other lane of traffic. The damn light hadn’t changed yet and the drivers on that side had sped up, trying to flee. Then two ponies galloped out of the customer parking lot and a small tornado made of snow slammed into some of the cars, knocking them sideways and turning them into a barricade that stopped all hope of fleeing. Within moments, the tornado expanded, burying several car lengths of the street under a furious snowfall.

With all the traffic stopped, Nathan bolted across the street and headed straight for the Sandee. He didn’t try to bite. Leetha was still on the ground, wounded somehow, and Vlad was guarding the girls and calling to Sam. No, Nathan hit the Sandee from behind. She flipped over his back and landed on her belly. Nathan spun and jumped on her back, his nails digging into her bare skin as she screamed and bucked.

Simon leaped into the whiteout to reach the other side of the street, bumping into trapped cars and pushing through snow already up to his thighs. He heard Merri Lee shouting, “There’s a snow tornado blocking Crowfield Avenue. You’ll have to come another way.”

Sirens. Smart human. Blocked from getting across herself, she had called the police pack.

he shouted as soon as he stumbled into the sunshine and heat of a morning in late Messis.

Sam leaped out of reach of that Clarence’s knife. Simon would have dealt with the enemy, but that was the moment Eve Denby rounded the back of the house and came running to protect her young. Not sure what she intended to do with the big wrench in her hand, Simon rushed to block her before she crushed someone’s head. As he wrestled with Eve, Marie Hawkgard dove and hit that Clarence in the back, driving the boy to his hands and knees. Her talons left deep furrows in his shoulders as she launched herself toward the porch railing of the apartment above Lieutenant Montgomery’s.

Then it was over. Panting, Simon released Eve Denby and looked around. All this in the time it had taken for a traffic light to change. He didn’t see any police cars, but Debany, Kowalski, and Hilborn were suddenly there, cuffing the Sandee and assessing who else needed to be arrested while Lieutenant Montgomery called for ambulances for Robert, that Clarence, and any wounded humans who were in the crunched cars. Tornado and Avalanche trotted back to the Pony Barn, leaving cars half buried in snow and a traffic mess that would take hours for the police to sort out.

Vlad carried Leetha up to the Sanguinati’s apartment and summoned their bodywalker. Merri Lee and Miss Twyla hurried across the street and took the girls and Eve into the Denbys’ home. Montgomery followed them but returned a minute later.

Sam stayed near Simon. The pup looked a little stunned, but he wasn’t hurt.

More sirens. Probably the ambulances.

Montgomery approached, looking closely at Sam. “Are you all right?”

Sam nodded. “Robert’s hurt.”

“They’ll take him to Lakeside Hospital. Looks like he’ll need some stitches, but I think he’ll be fine. I called Pete Denby. He was doing some work downtown today.” Montgomery looked sad. “Simon, I—”

Three gunshots in quick succession.

No, Simon thought as he and the police turned toward the sound. Then he ran to the delivery area in front of the Liaison’s Office.

Monty pointed at Debany and Hilborn, who was now a probationary member of the team. Hilborn hesitated, but Debany nodded and turned back to deal with the trouble at the Denbys’ residence while Monty and Kowalski ran after Simon.

Nathan overtook them, turning into the delivery area just ahead of Simon.

Greg O’Sullivan knelt on the ground next to Skippy, who was whimpering and trying to get up.

“He’s hurt,” O’Sullivan said. “Leg might be broken. Maybe some ribs. Looks like he also took a hard blow to the head.”

“Nathan, check on Meg,” Simon growled as he knelt and put a hand on Skippy to stop the juvenile Wolf’s struggles. “She’s not out here with Skippy, so she might be hurt.”

“She might be in the Market Square,” Monty said, hoping for a benign reason for Meg’s absence. He shuddered when Nathan made one of those disturbing partial shifts, looking neither human nor Wolf, in order to open the office door. The moment he was inside he shifted back to Wolf, leaped over the counter, and went into the sorting room.

O’Sullivan stared at the door, frowning. “That door should be locked. When I spoke to Meg a couple of minutes ago, I told her to lock the door while I picked up sandwiches at the Stag and Hare.”

“We heard shots,” Monty said.

“That was me.” O’Sullivan stared at the door while he wagged a thumb in the direction of the blue mailbox positioned outside the consulate. “I’ll arrest myself later for shooting government property, but I wanted to get your attention and I didn’t know who might get hit if I shot in the air.”

Blair arrived in a BOW, driving down the access way too fast to stop if someone had been heading up.

Inside the Liaison’s Office, Nathan leaped back over the counter, sniffed around the front of the office—and howled.

Monty didn’t need Simon’s and Blair’s reactions to know it was a battle cry.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?” O’Sullivan said flatly, getting to his feet and stepping back from the injured Wolf.

Simon rushed into the Liaison’s Office, vaulted over the counter, and disappeared. He returned in less than a minute, his amber eyes turned red with rage.

Blair stayed outside guarding Skippy and watching all the humans as if they had just transformed into enemies.

“Maybe this was a crime of opportunity, but I don’t think so.” O’Sullivan scanned the area. “I do not think so.” He focused on Monty. “Where is Cyrus Montgomery at this moment?”

No. Jimmy couldn’t be that selfish, that stupid. What O’Sullivan was implying . . . Gods above and below. Would the city be torn apart because of Jimmy?

A crime of opportunity? He thought about the ruckus at the apartment and felt sick that they might have fallen for a distraction a second time. “Let’s be sure,” he began as Simon slammed out of the office.

“We’re sure,” Simon snarled. “That Cyrus’s scent is in the office—and Meg is gone.”