Page 11 of Ghoul Huntress (Maelstrom Duology #2)

11

After all the hurried preparation, the scurrying about, the planning and the worry, Big Mo simply clomped down the side of War Quarter to the ground without a single error, shattering only a few windows and barely scarring the facade. Then he strode away across the rubble with that lurching movement she’d come to expect when he had to negotiate uneven terrain.

“Well done, Mo. Well done.” With one hand she unclasped the seat-belt buckle while licking the last of the chocolate off the fingers of the other hand. Five years old and perfectly aged liqueur choc. Next stop, the champagne.

“Thank you, Cyn.”

“Very well done indeed.” Rutger unclipped his belt and stood, stretching out the kinks. She could hear the cracks and crunches. “I’ll go see how Kiko and Vincent fared.”

“I’m coming.” Behind her, Vargr stood, and she watched her males walk down the corridor, swaying, grabbing holds when they had to as the vehicle tilted or shook, this way or that.

Mo was a ship on a rough sea.

She stuck her boots on the dash, as she liked to do. “Still figure on a day to reach the drone, Mo?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Five minutes later and V and Rutger had not returned. Were they chatting, chiseling their names on Vincent? Whatever, she had a notion.

Their previous route to find Big Daddy had skirted the periphery of the missile strike and come close to emerging into the open, but not quite. They’d been surrounded by the towering remains of collapsed scrapers.

Here was different.

This was the Below—ground level and Outside, both.

She gauged the vehicle well out of reach of any ghoul guards, for all of those were stationed miles above on the Top. The shield over Mo’s nose was retracted, and she was looking out through armored glass. A half-moon shone down onto the windshield, making patchwork shadows and light. In the far distance a silhouetted herd of some four-legged animals grazed. This was originally a game reserve so those could be anything.

Horses or perhaps zebras, from the pale markings?

Plants marched by as Mo passed them—to her it seemed as if the vegetation moved and walked, waving their branches and stalks. They sprouted from piles of rubble as if it were normal to just plain grow wherever they wanted to.

Sunlight and rain granted them that power.

It was a power the beasters had lost. Judging by what had happened to trolls who remained on Top at daybreak, those with gargoyle nanites would also turn to stone. Sunlight was their enemy.

But it was not hers. She probably didn’t even need sunscreen anymore. Cyn smiled wryly, pursed her lips. Surely a demon girl needed none of that stuff?

The view was in vivid natural color, yet it could not be the same as being out there.

She glanced around. No-one had returned and she looked down, expecting to see Little Mo below the dash, and of course he was not. Her instinct was to whistle him to heel. Like a small pet he’d begun to respond to that. Unfortunately, he’d been commanded, make that persuaded, to stay behind to help detect incoming skinsuits and stinkers.

By the time they returned it was hoped other means would have been perfected of detecting them. That would be another goal ticked from Willow’s list.

Here and now, she had no Little Mo. It was safer for him; also he was Big Mo’s back-up. If Big Mo ever went down, they’d still have Mo’s persona, or whatever it was called.

“Mo! Tell me. I saw a thing on your ceiling.” She swung the seat and pointed, sure that there were cameras on her. “One is there. Am I right in guessing you have access hatches to the roof?”

“I do.”

“Unlock that one for me, please.” She rose and dusted off her red leggings. Flecks of the chocolate Vargr had tossed her had melted into dark spots in a few places, and she was pretty attached to these new clothes.

“I am not sure that is wise, Cyn.”

“Going out the hatch? Why?” She raised her head, cocked an eyebrow. “What are the odds that anyone could shoot me from the Top?”

“Almost zero as there is a belt of cloud between us and them, and the distance is far enough that they’d need a spotter to know you were here. Taking into account the low odds of any ghoul guard possessing such a high-quality sniper rifle and?—”

“So. Why shouldn’t I go up?”

“Nanodogs and unknown beasts.”

“The unknown… That sounds tempting.” She strolled to beneath the circular metal cover. “Anything small I can kill. Anything big you’d see on your radar, correct?”

There was a sound resembling a sigh. “Yes.”

“Open it.” She made a circle with her finger. The cover began making mildly irritating squeaks, until finally it popped upward by an inch. “Ladder?”

“It seems to have been misplaced. Sorry.”

Could this AI be being difficult? Yes, yes it could, she decided. It wasn’t worth arguing with Mo, so she leaped and caught the rail running beneath the perimeter. With one hand and a grunt, she thrust the cover upward and fully open before catching the rail again. Swinging there by both hands, she peered up.

Moonlight flooded in, followed by a couple of fireflies that dipped inside then exited. Cyn tucked up her legs, did a pull-up and finagled her way out by alternately wriggling, pulling then pushing herself upward once she was mostly outside.

She hoisted herself even higher and rested her bottom on the rim, sitting with her legs dangling inside the hole.

A breeze delicately toyed with her face, rustled her hair sideways, messing with her bangs and fluttering them over her eyes.

Wind.

Moon.

The stars above prickled the sky.

She smelled something new… plants? Moisture in the air. She breathed deep. Maybe rain was coming.

This was the Outside. Her heart pitter-patted.

She blew her hair aside then pulled up her legs and squirmed around. Before her was a raised parapet—two feet high, finished with a black gloss and a gleaming, fat, golden line, of course, and with a slight inward curve.

From below, this would seem a part of the roof of Big Mo and would suggest nothing was above except smooth roof.

After some fiddling, she managed to unlatch and erect from the floor, what she’d thought might be a seat, and it was. Voila, she had not one, but two, forward-facing, red-upholstered seats from which to benignly observe the surroundings as they stomp-crunched onward.

She sat in the left-hand seat and found a switch on the armrest. Pressing it made a six-foot long gun unfold from a forward recess in the roof, like the stinger of a sinister insect. As it slowly rose, it leaned backward until the handle and firing mechanism were within her reach.

Okay. She pressed the switch again and the gun tucked itself away.

Not so benign then.

She observed the land, the silhouettes of trees, other foliage growing from the debris of humanity, some tiny herd of animals with thin whippy tails hopping about on the rocks, watching her watching them. She waved; they scattered.

Mo continued onward, stomping, creaking, squeaking.

Benign or warlike, this was nice. She breathed out and settled into the upholstery. With the soft padding giving beneath her weight and the sway of this lumbering beast-vehicle, she imagined herself a queen come home. She was an Indian maharaja or maharani riding an elephant howdah through her kingdom.

Only this was no longer the kingdom of humans. It was the unclaimed.

“Please stop playing with the buttons, Cyn.”

Cyn frowned then stuck out her tongue. “Pfft to you, Mo.”

“Guests are coming up.”

“What? Who?”

It was Vargr and Rutger. They climbed out of the hole in the roof that lay between her and the gun’s receptacle, with Vargr’s wings barely squeezing through, then they shut the cover. Vargr collapsed into the seat beside her.

“Phew!” He landed his hand on her thigh, squishing in the fabric of the leggings. “Are you hiding up here?”

“No.” She looked at him then at Rutger. “Well, maybe a little.”

Rutger trained a bleak look on them both. “And where do I sit?”

“Here.” Mo sounded tetchy. Something clicked, and slightly to the fore where Rutger stood, but short of the long gun’s recess, a second pair of red seats rose. They swiveled then locked into place facing her.

The petulance of Mo’s response made her wonder what programming would require that. Likely it had come fully formed with being Big Mo, since Little Mo had never displayed this emotional range.

“Your throne, sir.” Grinning, she elegantly unrolled her arm and hand toward the seat.

Rutger lowered himself, sank into the seat and crossed one ankle over his knee. His sigh and narrowed eyes said he was not here to look at scenery.

“To what do I owe the visit?” She looked to Vargr. “Both of you.”

Leaning away from her, Vargr tsked at her as though considering his answer, but then said nothing.

“Speak. I was enjoying the scenery but now I have you two lumps obscuring the view.”

“Things.” He flip-flopped his hand. “Are we lumps, man?”

“Nope.” Rutger looked about, clearly as impressed as she was by seeing the outside of the world for the first time in many years. If he ever had. From memory, though her memory was faulty, some people had never ventured outside the scrapers.

“Let me guess. Gifts, foot homage…” Cyn waggled her head. “You’re tax inspectors with my refund. I won the Lotto? Or slaves? You wish to be my slaves? This would be good.”

The snort from Vargr still didn’t elicit more words.

“Okay.” Rutger slowly seesawed his brows. “We are worried about you and want to know what has caused the change. Also we might do the foot homage. V?”

“V? You too? V? I do have more letters, lazy people.”

But he bent down and seized her boots, pulling her legs onto his lap. She let him, using the armrest and leaning head on hand to watch as he slid off her brown leather boots and dropped them to the floor… or was it roof? The little silver trinkets on the ankle trims glittered in the moonlight. Though she was sure her feet could not be the cleanest, due to the lack of recent showers, it being the apocalypse and all, he began to massage them.

This was devotion.

Her eyelids drifted down as pleasure subsumed thoughts. Damn. Nice. His fingers and thumbs went to all the right places.

“I think you’ve got the touch, V.”

“I do. Course I get to fuck you after.”

Her lips twitched. “ Mmm. Your queen will consider this.” Cyn snuggled lower in the puffy upholstered seat, with her arm under her head as she bent her legs to fit in the space. “Now, what are these things ?” She eyed Rutger. “Spit.”

She had some notion already, of course. You didn’t bondmate and not grow a feeling, a sort of new sensory apparatus, or whatever it was, that allowed you to be in synch with what your partners were feeling.

“You sure we should’ve shut that?” Vargr nodded at the hatch, and the tension in his fingers said maybe this anxiety was about more than her.

Oh, gargoyles. Right. This was not the inside of a building, and for them that was a big psychological change.

She leaned up a little. “Mo cleared me being here. Nothing is going to attack without us knowing. We’re safe.”

“If only it was only that,” Vargr began. “Since we’re in the middle of trying to fight off the Ghoul Lords, we figured it worth asking you about how strange you’ve been acting.” He dug his fingers into her sole again.

She groaned. “You’re distracting me.”

“Good.” He grinned.

Rutger was playing the silent card again. Though she needed time to decide what to say and what not to say.

Could she even lie to them? “You? Why are you worried? Same reason?”

“Hmmm. I used to go camping back before I had nanites. Even so, the Outside does make me nervous. And I can see you aren’t answering my question.” Rutger’s smile was strained.

“Ooo. I have leverage. My big strong man-friends are nervous of the sky.”

“Of the sky falling, of the moon dropping tinsel, of Ghoul Lords materializing. Of many things, Cyn.” Rutger sighed. “Stop throwing this back at us. What is the problem? Is it the nanites?”

Fuck. Okay then.

“I think so. Just the demon nanites, that trivial thing.” She turned onto her side with her feet on Vargr’s lap. “I worry over how demon I will become, but then again, who wouldn’t do that?”

“True.” Vargr stopped massaging. “What can we do to help?”

At least they hadn’t dug out the crux of her worry—whether to deliberately make herself go full demon. To stop fucking them and let it happen. To try out Maura’s theory. What would they do and say if she told them that?”

“Maura verified our nanites mix in with yours when we fuck…” he mused.

“Yes.”

“So…” Rutger raised a finger. “We should do it more?”

Only males would find that the answer. It was unlikely to delay the changes she had happening. After all, it hadn’t yet stopped her nanites from reproducing.

Vargr raised his head. “I vote that the best answer.” He waggled her big toe then drew his fingernail down the middle of that foot, making her hiss and squirm.

Bastard. She couldn’t help grinning. Something had altered in him too. He was less… wild. His demon nanites were lessening, Maura had said—that would be it. They’d made him deliciously aggressive. A pity, even if she was thinking of abstaining from sex.

And how did she accomplish that? Her reasons would probably make them more determined to do the opposite.

“I’m feeling distant from people,” she reflected quietly, but loud enough to be heard over Mo’s sounds… over the rising wind and the chirping of bugs that had made Mo’s forward hull their temporary home. The Outside was noisy. “The more the nanites rise in me, the less emotional I get. Except for anger. I guess.”

A terrible anger.

At that thought and word, she felt that fiery anger rise, remembering and yet simultaneously projecting into the future.

To meet her teeth in the flesh of her enemies, to grind them to ashes under the tread of her feet, to bathe in their warm blood and sear them until they were blackened meat.

Cyn blinked. Ooo, fun future there. Rein it in, evil demon brain. She swallowed.

“Some of the time I feel very alone. I’m not sure where this is going or how we will win, even though we must.”

There. She’d said too much and too little, and she blinked at them.

They really could not help her, not really, not ever. There was something coming that was hers to do and no one else’s.

After a few long seconds, Rutger bent forward and curved his hand down the side of her face, trailed his fingers over her mouth. Then he kissed her softly. “You aren’t alone. We will get through this together.” He straightened a little, still partly bent over, eyeing her. “Are you planning to be up here until we find the drone?”

The feel of his lips on hers still frissoned from where he’d touched her there, and his scent roiled through her, reaching down, between her legs. Her lips remained parted as she thought this through and tried to tamp down her natural reactions.

“Yes.” She ran her tongue over the seam of her lips, as if to taste him. “Would that bother you? I’d prefer you to stay.”

He sat back.

Vargr spoke. “We can always fuck her here. She needs fucking.”

“Yes, she does.” The way he smiled, the way the two of them batted about her fate, her fucking fate, it was quite arousing she discovered.

She couldn’t, though. Abstinence, remember?

“Fucking is not the answer to all my woes.”

“Your woes will feel lesser, surely, if we take you. I’d prefer below in the bedroom, but there is no one to see us here, apart from the zebras.”

Those problems might feel lesser, temporarily, for she knew how sex let her blot out the world, but they would not be lesser.

“Zebras?” She raised her head and tried to sit up, only to find Vargr had trapped her feet.

“Rutger, remember the slave comment?”

“I do. We need to teach our own slave some lessons.”

“Drone.” She growled at them. “Priorities. There are more things than sex in this current dark world of ours.”

“There are?”

Oh fuck. How was she going to avoid fucking when they thought it was the answer to all her problems?

Vargr slid his hand up her leg, then dragged her along the seat closer to him, until her ass was against his body. “Off with the clothes, slave.”

Oh. My. Giving in seemed the best current option. Especially when Rutger stood and grappled a large amount of her hair into his fist, then pinned her to the red seat with it.

She could have given in. She loved this sort of fight over her body but… no.

“Not this time. No.” She set her mouth, stared from one to the other. “Not this time.”

It took them a while to wind down and accept her seriousness, but they did.

After Rutger released her hair and sat back again, she slowly removed her feet from Vargr’s grasp and drew herself into a sitting position. Her heart returned to normal speed.

“I have my reasons.”

Well, she’d said no to them despite the thumping pulse of need below, and in her chest, and everywhere. This was going to be difficult. Especially with Vargr eyeing her as if she were his next snack.

“Later then.” Rutger raised his voice, “Mo! Open the hatch so we can get at the champagne.”

“As you wish.” Mo’s voice came from several directions.

“I’m not a princess, Mo. Have you been watching old movies?” The hatch snapped upward a few inches and he reached over to pull it fully open.

“It passes the time while I scan for enemies and the drone. I’ve pinpointed the drone more precisely but that is all.”

“Good. I’ll be back soon. Champagne, snacks, any other requests?”

Neither she nor Vargr had any, and Rutger slipped below.

Mo piped up, “Please take care not to consume excessive alcohol. It would seem unwise in the circumstances. You might fall off my roof or fail to notice a warning.”

“Sure.” Though she was certain from experimenting that alcohol no longer affected the beasters the same way it did humans. “We’ll drink slow. Just it seems a good time to celebrate where we are now, before we take the next big step.”

Vargr nodded. “It does, and you know what? I’m getting less antsy about being up here.”

Funny, but she felt safer here on the roof, beyond the scrapers, past the rubble of missile strikes, in this place where only the wildlife ruled. Safer than she had for ages.

When Rutger handed up the two bottles and a bag full of goodies, she decided it best to distract them and her. Besides, she was curious.

The wine was poured into goblets and they raised them and drank after making several ridiculous as well as a few serious vows.

She cupped her glass and bowed her head over it. “Tell me… tell me about who you once were.” She looked from one to the other. “I only heard a little that day at Parklands and I’d love to know who you used to be.”

The champagne was drunk slowly, and when it affected none of them much at all, more was had, then a few other bottles were discovered. The drone would not be reached until they’d travelled through a single period of daylight and entered night again, and they were preparing to descend into Mo when an island of three, thin, linked scrapers appeared to the right, against the paling sky.

“We need to get out of the dawn light,” Vargr pointed out, but even he was peering at the distant buildings.

Rutger tossed the last bottle into the sky and it arced across toward the horizon.

“What are those, Mo?” She half expected him to not hear, she was that quiet.

“That is Maelstrom Towers , owned by Dr. Nietz. His main residence is, or was, there.”

“Oh.” The possibilities that arose swamped her for a moment. “Then we shall visit there on our way back, if it won’t cut into our time too much?”

She prayed it would not. She had yet another need to know. There might be photos.

“I will need some hours to perform maintenance, so that is acceptable.”

Was that a tone of smugness in Mo’s words? Did the bot wish her to go there?

Maelstrom. The doctor had named the scraper complex after his secret company—hid it in plain sight. She touched the back of her neck where the tattoo lay.

Perhaps the man had possessed a keen sense of humor? Why else would he name his creations beasters , all the while knowing what they were truly descended from—myths and legends.