Interesting Times (Interesting Times #1) (16 page)

“Oh.
Okay. Well, thank you.”

“You are
welcome.” Teasdale snapped his briefcase shut. “Well then, I will be off. Good
bye, Mr. Jones, Ms. Rain.” He nodded at each of them in turn. Then he turned to
Tyler. “Mr. Jacobsen, if you ever shoot me again I will cut your face off and
wear it as a mask to frighten children on Halloween. Are we clear?”

Tyler
swallowed hard. “Clear,” he said, fingering his pistol.

“Farewell
then,” Teasdale said, moving toward the door.

“Wait!”
Oliver called after him. Teasdale stopped and looked back at Oliver curiously.
“Did he tell you why?” Oliver asked. “Why they want me dead? I mean, before you
killed him.”

“Oh,”
Teasdale said. He shrugged. “He claimed that the Matriarch had a prophetic
vision. She called you the ‘destroyer of worlds’ and foresaw that you would
murder their entire race.”

Oliver
tried not to look as startled as he felt. “I see.”

“I
wouldn’t worry about it, Mr. Jones,” Teasdale reassured him. “The Matriarch is
known to indulge in a variety of hallucinogens. Her prophecies never come to
anything.”

Oliver
took that as good news. “So it’s a mistake, then?” he asked tentatively. “They’re
not going to kill me?”

“Oh my
no, Mr. Jones,” Teasdale replied. “I meant I am sure you are not going to
exterminate them. But they will certainly kill you.” With that, Teasdale nodded
politely and went through the door, disappearing shortly down the hall.

Tyler
looked at Sally. “That went better than I expected.”

She
shrugged. “I kind of wanted to shoot him. Just to see what would happen.”

“I shot
him yesterday. It didn’t do much.”

“Maybe
you didn’t shoot him
enough
,” Sally suggested.

“What
exactly
is
he?” Oliver asked. “Do either of you know?”

“I have
no idea,” said Tyler. “Something old and powerful, that’s for certain.”

“Artemis
might know,” Sally said. “If not, I don’t know who you’d ask.”

“And I
still can’t believe his name is Hilary Teasdale,” Oliver continued. “He sounds
like the villain in a Three Stooges movie.”

“Oh
yeah?” asked Tyler. “I always saw him with the Marx Brothers.”

“Who are
the Marx Brothers?” asked Sally.

Tyler
and Oliver both turned to stare at her. “Really?” asked Tyler.

Sally
scowled at them. “Forget it.”

“How
could you possibly not know…” Oliver began.

“Forget
it,” Sally warned.

“Anyway,
we can’t stay here,” Tyler said. “If he was able to find you here, whoever else
the Kalatari have after you won’t be far behind.”

“So back
to running,” Oliver sighed. “You brought a car, I suppose?”

“Better
than that,” Tyler said. “We brought a plane.”

Chapter 17

Five
minutes later they were on the sidewalk trying to hail a taxi. They were on a
major street, or at least what passed for a major street in Portsmouth, but
they hadn’t seen a single cab go by yet. Sally looked annoyed. “It’s like
they’ve never heard of a taxi line here,” she said.

“It’s
Portsmouth,” Oliver told her. “I doubt there’s a taxi line anywhere in the
city.” It was hard to imagine any place here needing one.

“It’s
worse than San Francisco,” she complained.

“Nothing
is worse than getting a taxi in San Francisco,” Tyler said. Oliver nodded. He’d
heard people use the difficulty of getting a cab in San Francisco as an
argument for buying a car. He’d never believed things were that bad until he’d
been late for work one morning and decided to call a cab instead of taking the
train. After waiting an hour for it to arrive he’d called to cancel it, and
then called in sick to work.

Sally
went into the hotel and spoke to the front desk clerk. “They’re calling one,”
she said when she returned. “Next time we get a rental.”

“They
didn’t have a rental place at Pease,” Tyler protested.

“Then we
buy a damn car,” Sally said. 

The taxi
came at last, a sedan that was far too small to seat the three of them in the
rear. Sally sat next to the driver and they started toward the airport.

“Werewolf?”
Oliver asked suddenly.

Startled,
Tyler looked out the window. “Where?”

“No,”
Oliver said. “Do you think Mr. Teasdale is a werewolf?”

“Oh,”
Tyler said. “You scared me for a minute.”

“Sorry.”

“No,
he’s not.”

That
made sense, Oliver thought. “You’d be able to smell it if he was?”

Tyler
frowned. “I’m not sure. Maybe. It’s never really come up.”

“Are
there a lot of werewolves?” Oliver asked.

Oliver
noted the cab driver’s confused expression in the rear view mirror. He’d gotten
far too casual in talking about these things openly, he realized.  He’d have to
be more careful about that.

Sally
had noticed the driver’s look as well. “Those two are in town for a
convention,” she said to the driver. “For…people who like to dress up in animal
costumes. What that’s called.”

“Furries?”
asked Tyler.

“Yeah,”
Sally said.

“We’re
not furries!” Tyler protested.

“Yeah, you
are,” Sally said. “Especially him,” she said to the driver, nodding at Tyler.
“He’s the biggest furry I’ve ever seen. He
loves
it.”

“Oh,”
the driver said, nodding a bit uneasily. “Well, different strokes and all.”

“That’s
right,” said Sally, looking out the window. “Hey, guys, why don’t we talk about
something else for a while? Like,
anything
else?”

Oliver
had many more questions but decided they could wait until they were in private.
He found that in a way he was becoming accustomed to getting strange answers to
simple questions. He wasn’t sure there was anything more that could happen that
would truly surprise him.

That
wasn’t a good thing, was it? He frowned. Earlier he had thought perhaps he’d
suffered some kind of brain injury and was imagining all of these things. He no
longer felt that way, but then how could he explain his newfound calmness?
Shock? Was it possible that he was in shock?

Tyler’s
cell phone chirped. He answered it and listened for a moment. “Artemis,” he
said, ending the call. “She wants us in the air.”

“We’re
about to be,” Sally said. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. 
Just up.”

“Just
up?” asked Oliver. “What does that mean?”

“The
Kalatari can’t fly,” Tyler explained. “Up is about the safest place we can be.
She’ll let us know when and where to land.”

Oliver
thought about it. He had to admit, it made sense. The Kalatari weren’t going to
be able to find him if he was 40,000 feet up in the air.

“That’s
a funny name,” the cab driver mused.

“Kalatari?”
Tyler asked. Sally gave him a dark look. “Oh, that’s just the name of my…” he
struggled to find a word. “Um…furry friend…”

“No,”
the driver said. “Artemis.”

“Oh,”
Tyler said. “Yeah, I guess. It’s an old Greek name.”

“So
she’s Greek?” Oliver asked.

“For
god’s sake,” Sally sighed. “She’s not Greek. Does she look Greek to you?”

Oliver
didn’t think Greeks were typically pale-skinned and blond, but he also wasn’t
sure he actually knew any Greek people. “No,” he said. “But you never know.
People don’t expect Italians to be blond, but in Northern Italy it’s pretty
common.” Oliver had never been to Italy. He’d discovered this by watching the
Travel Channel.

Tyler
was considering it, though. “I don’t know,” he said. “Things change over time.
We don’t actually know what the Greeks looked like when…” he stopped abruptly,
glancing at the driver.  “Forget it.”

“Why
don’t one of you just ask her?” Oliver asked. Sally snorted, and Tyler just
stared at him. “What?” Oliver asked. “Why was that a crazy question?”

Neither
of them answered. “It’s a pretty name,” the cab driver mused. “Wouldn’t name my
own kid that, but it’s kind of nice.”

It
didn’t take long to reach the city limits of Portsmouth and they were quickly
out on the freeway.  Oliver wondered when he would get to the East Coast again.
This had been quite an unexpected trip; he’d like to come back and spend some
proper time out here.

Or
perhaps he was just being nostalgic, he thought. He’d been here with his
family, and he hadn’t seen any of them in a while. He’d have to do something
about that, provided he lived through the next few days.

The rest
of the trip passed in silence until they reached Pease, which was a small
general aviation airport used by tiny propeller-driven planes and small jets.
Oliver did spot a large FedEx terminal with larger planes and recalled hearing
somewhere that FedEx had the second largest fleet of airplanes in the world. He
wondered if that were really true, or where he’d heard it. Perhaps on the
Travel Channel. 

Oliver
sighed. Had he learned everything he knew from late-night television? If he did
live through this, he was definitely going to change his life. Forget taking a
cooking class; he’d take ten classes. Maybe he’d get another degree and try to
find a job he actually liked. The dull life he’d been living for so long just
wouldn’t work for him anymore. 

Tyler
directed the taxi driver to a small Learjet parked near a tiny hangar. Oliver
wondered what their group’s operating budget was like. This couldn’t have been
cheap. “Is this your plane?” he asked.

“It’s a
charter,” Sally said. “We have our own plane, but it’s in the shop.”

“Oh.
Maintenance?”

“No,”
Tyler shook his head, looking at Sally. “Someone crashed it.”

“Shut
up,” Sally grumbled. 

Tyler
gave the driver his fare and a very excessive tip. He stretched luxuriously
after the cab had driven off. “It’s a clear night,” he said, looking up at the
sky. “You guys ready to check out the stars?”

“Is it a
full moon?” Oliver asked. “We could be in some trouble if you wolf out on us up
there.”

Sally
laughed as Tyler scowled. “That’s not funny,” he said.

“You’re
all right, Oliver,” Sally admitted. “I’m glad I didn’t shoot you earlier.”

“Thanks,”
Oliver said. “I guess.”

Tyler
looked at Oliver appraisingly. “It’s funny how well you’re taking this,
Oliver,” Tyler said. 

“What?”

“All of
this,” Tyler said. “Every crazy thing that has happened to you in the last two
days. If you think about it, your whole world has been torn apart.”

“True,”
Sally said.

“It’s
not that I expected you to go catatonic,” Tyler continued, “but I don’t mind telling
you, when it was
my
life being turned upside down, I didn’t do so well.”

“Yeah,
but you were turning into a dog,” Sally grinned. “That would get to anybody.”

Tyler
looked at her for a long moment. “You know something?” he asked, and Oliver
could hear emotion in his voice. “It’s really nice to see you smile again.”

Sally
opened her mouth to say something, but shut it again abruptly. She looked away
and for the briefest of moments Oliver thought he saw her bottom lip tremble,
but then it was gone. “We should go,” she said.

“Yeah,”
Tyler nodded.

There
was a removable metal staircase laid out with steps leading up to the jet’s
open door. Oliver stepped up first. He had to admit he liked the idea of just
flying around for a while. Unless the Kalatari had access to fighter planes or
missiles, there was probably no safer place he could be.

A
sharply dressed flight attendant smiled at him as he stepped into the cabin.
“Good evening, Mr. Jones,” he said. “Right down there, please.” He motioned to
the row of seats behind him. The jet had seating capacity for perhaps ten
people, with one seat on each side of a narrow aisle. There was nobody else
visible in the plane. Oliver assumed that the pilots must already be in the
cockpit. Not a bad setup, he thought. They had brought along a flight
attendant? He wondered if they had snacks as well. Oliver had missed out on
dinner. Skipping mealtimes seemed to be becoming a habit.

“Hey,
who the hell are you?” he heard Tyler asking behind him. Oliver turned around
and saw that the flight attendant was now brandishing two pistols. One was
pointed out the door at where Tyler was presumably standing on the stairs, and
the other was pointed directly at Oliver himself. “Nobody move,” the flight
attendant said.

The
cockpit door swung open and a heavyset man in jeans emerged holding a shotgun.
He did not look like a pilot, Oliver observed. The man pointed his weapon out
the door. “Get back,” he shouted at Tyler. “Back now!”

There
was some commotion on the stairs that Oliver couldn’t see. The heavyset man
lowered his weapon and seized the door handle. He pulled the door shut with a
loud grunt. Oliver was trapped inside with them now. His friends wouldn’t be
able to do anything to help him.

“Well
done,” said a new voice from just behind Oliver. Oliver turned and was nearly
struck mute by what he saw. A man, if that was the right word, stood there,
having just emerged from the rear lavatory. He’d probably been hiding back
there, Oliver realized. The man was roughly Oliver’s height, and had roughly
the same proportions. Two arms. Two legs. One head. But the head was hairless,
with leathery, dark green skin covered by small, tightly overlapping scales. He
had yellow eyes with black, vertical pupils. The man had no nose, but a rounded
muzzle in its place with two vertical slits where nostrils might have been. As
he smiled Oliver could see that his mouth was full of small, jagged teeth.

“Take
off,” the lizard man nodded to the man with the shotgun. Oliver watched as the
heavyset man disappeared back into the cockpit, shutting the door behind him.