Page 8 of Ghoul Huntress (Maelstrom Duology #2)

8

Cyn took one last look along the hull of Big Mo—all that black gleaming skin, luscious gold lettering, and the golden circuitry embellishments that gleamed as if alive or designed by a fashion guru. The bastardium walls had been carefully towed outward, opening enough to make their exit a simple affair. Only a few edge pieces of the bastardium had crumbled into blue dust. If Mo couldn’t steer through that large gap, they were really in trouble.

“All aboard,” she said quietly, surveying the pitiful wreckage left from treating the wounded and remembering her goodbye to Maura. Stained bandages, empty IV fluid bags, syringes, and discarded belongings littered the floor.

“I’ll see you above,” Maura had said. “They know you’re coming.”

They being the War Quarter beasters.

Using the best estimates, they might arrive simultaneously—Big Mo and Maura’s party. Those taking the normal path via stairs and ramps had left half a day ago.

Don’t split up was a recent rule, but it was inevitably being violated at every turn. There were too few Worshippers. Soon, they’d be a part of a larger group and could plan for the future war against the Ghoul Lords with more confidence.

She hoped.

How many of the enemy were up Top?

They didn’t know, possessed not even a vague approximation.

Cyn swung up into the vehicle and hauled shut the door.

“I could’ve done that,” said Big Mo.

She eyed the ceiling. “It takes power for you to do it. Me, I get power from food. You’re harder to refuel.”

“Sunlight is everywhere.”

“And how easy is it to get that down here?”

“Easy, when the cable was still connected.”

“Hmmm.” She headed for the cockpit. On the outside, the front shield had been lowered and the glass she was used to seeing now appeared black. Vargr was standing, leaning over the seat they’d locked to the floor behind the pilot’s seat. He was fixing a piece of paper to the wall. Rutger was already in the co-driver seat and gave her a thumbs up.

“We are going outside now,” Mo muttered. “I will recharge and am currently at full power level. Sunlight is easy to get.”

“Not really, Mo. We’re going to get shot at out there.” She tilted her head to see past Vargr to what he taped to Mo’s metal wall. “A nude woman?”

“A pin-up girl,” he explained, tapping it, one eyebrow raised at her in criticism. “And she’s clothed.”

“Fuck, really?” She squinted. “Only the nipples and maybe her clit, by the vaguest of flimsy cloths that really should not be sticking where it is.”

“Still counts as clothes. This! Nudes and stuff…” He raised his arms to indicate other newly added decorations. “It’s part of the décor for an adventure into the unknown by a ragtag group of heroes.”

“Heroes?” She snorted.

A pair of stuffed dice swung from a ceiling point. More nude-ish images of women were stuck to the opposite wall. Some were manga and hentai, some life portraits. On the dashboard two bobble-heads vied for space: a little man with bright yellow hair and a blue suit, and a red spiderweb-suited superhero.

Half-sheathed in a case, a black machine-gun with smiley decals was strapped to the back of her seat. At least it had small fastenings to stop it sliding out accidentally. They were going upside-down soon.

As she turned full circle, Cyn spotted a sign on the door into the next compartment. It must have been souvenired on the trip here to Big Daddy. Las Vegas or Bust , was scribed in red on a battered white bullet-hole-punctured background.

“Ugh. Just ugh. Your décor suits a rough post-apocalyptic strip club, V.” She slipped past him and into the driver’s seat, reaching for the seatbelt as her butt hit seat leather.

This was an efficient, cross-shaped seatbelt system and clearly made for travelling on rough terrain. Whether the three of them would slide out from under these belts and faceplant on the inside of the glass windshield was yet to be confirmed.

Wait, they were going up, this time, not down.

Hmmm.

Only now did she see that the easiest way to dispose of this craft would be to drop a car on them from the Top. There would be some cars left up there, rusting. She prayed the GL were as stupid as she suspected.

“Strap in, Cyn, and I will attempt to drive out and up the side of the scraper.”

“Attempt, Mo?” Rutger twisted then angled his head up—they were all prone to looking above, as if Mo was up there. “I thought you knew you could do this?”

“Statistically speaking, I can.”

“Fuck,” Vargr muttered then she heard the snicks as he connected clips. “Done. I need more fuckin’ straps on this. Why are we doing this again?”

“A question I have asked myself.” She leaned back, felt the first lurch, then heard distant hums and clicks and grinding sounds as Big Mo advanced. The glass before her brightened and became a viewscreen showing what they moved through—a front view. Mo would have cameras all over his body. “You’re both coming just to keep me company? I’m here in case Mo needs help.”

“All true,” Rutger nodded, voice rumbling, his horns sparking new motes. Some of those tumbled down the rounded edges of the upholstery behind his shoulders. If those ever ceased, she’d be unhappy—they lent a fairyland aspect to her beaster.

Little Mo scuttled forward and stopped beneath the dashboard. He clamped claws onto something there, hanging on. His Cyn-stalker program was still in effect.

“I am unsure what help you could be, Miss Cyn,” said Big Mo.

“Those?” She gestured at the two steering wheels. “And…” She vaguely waved her hand. “Buttons?”

“Mostly for show—judging by the programming I find within. I’d have to be dead inside for the steering to transfer to those. And that is not comforting. Also, please do not touch any buttons.”

“Oh the temptation,” she said very quietly, aiming not to be heard.

“I heard that.”

Fuck, Big Mo had good mics.

She settled in to watch as Mo steered bumpily past or over broken walls, clambered over rubble, and moved down a deserted roadway. Much of this terrain wasn’t meant to take a vehicle, but they were headed for the edge, and Mo was taking whatever route was easiest. She’d seen the predicted route, and it’d go close to where the missile strike had destroyed the quarter.

An exceptionally rugged bump made Rutger curse. “Your shock absorbers bad, Mo?”

“All is good, Rutger. I have the steering calibrated, but the terrain is not consistent, and sometimes the surface I stand on collapses when it should not.”

That was about as disconcerting as anything could be in this world. She prayed the bits he chose to hang onto for the climb were more predictable. “Mo, are you able to talk without it distracting you?”

“Of course, Cyn. The quantum structure means I could do a hundred tasks and not suffer inefficiency.”

“Okay then.” She propped her brown boots with the black cat emblems on the folded-over tops on the console beside the wheel, admiring the boots before looking at the dash.

No buttons were beneath her heels. She suspected any buttons would not function unless Mo let them. Should she ask what she wanted to? It was now or never.

“Big Mo, now that you are a part of this vehicle’s system… Do you have access to more memories?”

“I do.”

A wall toppled in front of them, creating a cloud of white dust that billowed away, to reveal an apartment. Through a doorway ahead, she glimpsed the outside and the moon-silvered outer wall of an opposite quarter. They’d found the edge.

Soon, Mo would climb out and turn to walk upward. Soon, his theory that he was bullet and bolt proof would be tested. If he fell, she would be crushed, bludgeoned, maybe cut, but she would survive. As for Rutger and Vargr…

She glanced at Rutger, twisted to look at Vargr, and saw the mute and grim acceptance of where they’d chosen to be. They too would survive, because she would make them. The assholes would never have let her do this alone.

That was a scary thought, because what if one day she needed to go alone, or else see them killed if they joined her?

“Cyn?” Mo’s voice boomed out. “What do you want to ask?”

She swallowed. “The obvious. I asked it once before. Who am I? Do you have records about me inside you?” What am I , had already been answered: she was part demon, part human.

“Let me check.”

That answer made her stomach sink, made anger rise. Mo knew. It would be near instantaneous sorting through data. He knew, but by some deviousness he managed to delay answering.

“Do not lie to me, Mo.”

“I don’t know if I can, Miss Cyn. What I do know is that my programming, my original programming, compels me to protect you.”

“Ahh. I see. I think.”

A creak told her Vargr had leaned forward. He tapped her shoulder. “What does it mean?”

She whispered her reply. “That you released your belt to lean forward and when Mo goes through this last wall...” The wide window before them smashed and glass fell. They were poised on the edge. The vehicle swayed. “You will fall backward all the way to that door.”

“Smart-ass girl. Tell me.”

She sighed. “He knows what and who I am or was but fears he will harm me if he says.” She raised her voice. “Am I right, Mo?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Mo tell her, She’s a big girl!” The belt snaps clicked as Vargr reattached things.

“I will. I have decided that either choice may result in hurt, therefore I have to accept the command. I have only a few references to a woman called Cyn in my data. I don’t have your last name, as these are merely memos.”

“I wasn’t in the armed forces then…” It seemed as if a soldier would be well documented. “Or a security guard? A jedi? I was kinda hoping for the last one.”

“No. Not a jedi. You were in the employ of Dr. Nietz as a dog walker, Cyn. He had two Siberian Huskies you walked on Thursdays when he played golf.”

Well, that was not what she’d expected. Not terrible though, just mediocre?

“Fuck. Really? It’s not that awful?” Just a let-down.

“There was no golf in the days approaching our apocalypse so I don’t know why you were with the doctor, or nearby, or indeed how Maura would have known you.”

“I probably walked her pooches too,” she murmured.

“Warning. Do not undo your seat belts. Going up!” In that second, Big Mo walked out into space, then somehow grabbed hold of the building, and climbed with the crunch-thunk of heavy metal footfalls into an up-down orientated position. “Up, up, up.”

They took the first clumsy upward steps, the scraper slid and shuddered past beneath them on the screen.

Bits of broken window clinked and fluttered past. Aluminum, steel, concrete, whatever it was that Mo fractured with his grip and steps, the external speakers had been turned on and relayed the noises. A bird hooted, and its fleeting shadow was reflected in the glass of an apartment window just above. Mo managed not to break it, until he took another step. Everything crashed down about them. More flowering, fluttering glass.

For a second, before it broke, she’d seen the angled reflection of the opposite building, and a sliver of sky above it. The Top seemed to be a maximum of twenty or thirty stories higher on that quarter.

Novel and perhaps dangerous. “Mo, we should keep an eye on the opposite quarter. If there are ghoul guards up there, they will be well in range of us.

“Affirmative, Cyn. It appears to be deserted.”

It made her wonder why.

Except she was too busy also wondering why Mo had thought knowing she was a dog walker would harm her.

“Why does me being a dog walker have the potential to hurt me, Mo?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Was he looping through the possibilities again?

Rutger sent her an inquiring glance. His face was pale, but he reached across and took her hand.

“Afraid?” she asked.

“No. Seasick. You?”

She shook her head. Funny, but she wasn’t that afraid of climbing to the sky on a vehicle only recently a mothballed lump, or afraid of falling.

That lack of fear was the demon in her. It flared up whenever she was in dire situations, made her smile inside. Made her feel as if she had pointy sharp teeth and the ability to fry anything that stood in her way, including buildings. It made her wonder who she would be in the future. A lack of fear might not be something to be proud of.

She allowed her fingers, the ones Rutger did not hold, to fire up for a few seconds before extinguishing them. They left dancing shadows on her retinas, and she stared forward, feeling Rutger adjust his hold on her hand.

“Mo?” she prompted. “Your answer?”

“I was deciding whether telling you what you asked would also mean I’d harm you. I cannot tell the outcome, no matter how many million times I pose this question, and so… here. Today, in these circumstances, you need to be a hero. A dog walker is not generally regarded as a hero. Whether this will perplex you enough that it alters your reactions is impossible for me to predict. You knowing what I just stated, may in fact emphasize this reaction, or it may simply make you say fuck it , as you often do.”

Well now. She rolled Mo’s info around, batted it back and forth.

“So a dog walker is not predictably a hero? Yeah, I say fuck it. I will shake my fist at the heavens with dog leashes clutched in my burning hand. I will strangle a Ghoul Lord with them and listen to their lamentations and their weeping as I burn them to ashes. Assuming they can do all the lamentation stuff.” She pursed her mouth, nodded. “Got that, Mo?”

“Got it.”

Someone laughed, and she looked to Rutger, who shrugged and thumbed backward. That’d been Vargr then. “Hey, V! What’s so funny?”

“You! That was a perfect Cyn answer. Lamen-fucking-tations? You calling me V now?”

“I guess? Your name has way too many syllables.”

“I see. And lamentation doesn’t? I’ll accept that, though I reserve the right to call you my bitch now and then, and to fuck your ass.”

Jeez, her mind had veered away from the dire things happening around them and shot straight between her legs.

She raised her arm above her head then popped up her thumb. “Totally.” She drew a deep, long, somewhat aroused breath, and snuggled deeper into the seat, watching as the night sky bumped and wavered. Slow as a giant metal centipede on valium, Mo crawled onward, upward.

A brilliant blue bolt lit up the sky. It barreled down toward them, splashed across the screen in liquid energy then dribbled away. Several more bolts hit and did no perceptible damage.

“We are undamaged,” Mo declared.

“Phew,” Rutger muttered.

She wriggled her boots on the dashboard, getting herself in the right position for this long climb.

What did it matter who she had been? This was who she was now.