The Future Falls (12 page)

“Honestly . . .”

“That'd be good.”

“. . . I don't know.” Hands in her pockets, she rubbed a guitar pick between thumb and forefinger and heard Auntie Catherine speaking to her Wild to Wild. The gulf between first circle and third was definitely wider
than any gulf between her and Jack, but Auntie Catherine had crossed it. “I think that if I noticed she was relieved when I told her why it wasn't a problem, then she had to be damn near panicked going in. She knew this wasn't something she could deal with; she's all about manipulation and you can't manipulate a falling rock. It was also the most straightforward conversation we've ever had, so I think she's realized that if she's not the only Wild Power . . .”

“And she's not.”

“. . . then she's not alone anymore.”

He folded his arms. “So why wasn't I there, if I'm Wild? I was just at the coffee shop, you could've waited for me.”

“And done what? I can't haul your ass through the Wood—you're too heavy. If we take the car, we need to know we have room to stick the dismount . . .” The car picked up a lot of momentum crossing the Wood and a Dragon Prince on board extended the room necessary for a full stop by a significant margin. “. . . which we can't know if we don't know where we're going.”

“And because you'd already spent the whole morning in the same room with me and you figured that was plenty.”

Maybe because very similar words had run through her head as she headed out to meet Auntie Catherine, she was sharper than she'd ever been with him. “Surprise, Jack, it's not all about you!” He had no choice but to believe her. She hated herself a little, but she let it stand.

They stood for a moment, listening to the wind howl through the badlands.

Then Jack said, “I'm sorry.”

Charlie swallowed her second apology. “For what?”

He shrugged, scales rippling down his torso. “Making the end of the world about me.”

“It won't be the end of the world.”

“Okay.” They watched sparks trail behind his bare foot as he rubbed the side of it against a rock. “We good?”

“Always.” She may have put a different power behind that. With any luck, Jack was still young enough he couldn't tell them apart.

“Right.” He smiled a little sheepishly. “So
do
you trust Auntie Catherine?”

“Not entirely.”

Jack snorted, changed, and glided down off the ridge to stomp out a burning bush.

“And that,” Charlie called down to him, “is also why we need to talk to Dan.”

Resting up on his hind legs, tail stretched behind him for balance, Jack adjusted his size until his head was level with hers. “He has a flop down by the water.”

“The Loireag . . .”

“Leaves him alone.” Jack smiled.

Dragons had a lot of very sharp teeth. The Loireag may have been chronically depressed, but she wasn't stupid. “Will he talk to me if you're there?”

“I don't know how much sense he'll make.” The tips of Jack's wings stirred up dust devils when he shrugged. “But he'll talk. Fly with me?”

As Jack spread his wings, Charlie took a step back. He'd never asked her before. She thought about climbing onto his shoulders, settling with the smooth, gleaming curve of his neck between her legs, gathering up a double handful of the flexible strands of flesh that made up his mane, her heart pounding as he rose into the sky . . . “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“Afraid?” He'd gone nearly cross-eyed trying to look down his muzzle at her.

“Hell, yes.” Although not of flying.

“Your loss.” Spread out like golden sails, his wings blocked what sun there was. He leaped skyward with the first downstroke.

“Wait! You didn't wipe out your footprints!”

He circled around, grinning as he swooped in close enough Charlie had to brace herself against the wind, eyes squinted almost closed. “I know. Drives the dinosaur guys crazy. Funniest thing ever!”

*   *   *

Charlie was there waiting as he landed on the Fort side of the river, in behind a bank of dogwood, out of sight of the road.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, back on two legs.

She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “Well, I went to Mexico for a couple of days to shake off October in Alberta, but after that, only a few minutes.”

Jack stared at her for a long moment, nostrils flared. “Liar. You don't smell like tequila.”

“I can go to Mexico and not smell like tequila.”

“You smell like tequila when you go to Taco Bell.”

“Ow!” She clasped her hands over her heart. “Brutal! Get dressed and let's find Dan.”

He made his T-shirt from late leaves, golden brown and skin tight. His jeans and shoes and jacket were brown as well, probably from the darker mud by the water. Although he usually stayed on the Gale side of the line between Gale and Fey, the colors he'd chosen made him seem otherworldly. Exotic. Momentarily less like himself than when he wore gold scales and wings.

“Okay, so Dan . . .” Rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, Jack looked past her toward the fort. “At this time of day Dan's probably out by the parking lot, trying to decide where to go for lunch.”

“Nice he has choices,” Charlie muttered, stepping off the narrow path so Jack could lead the way.

“The Chinese place on the corner of 9th and 8th sometimes feeds him and so does the diner on 13th. If there's something on at the stadium, he'll dumpster dive and the stadium Brownies know they're to save stuff for him.”

“There's Brownies at the Saddledome?”

“It's a prime holding.” Jack paused at the edge of the parking lot and Charlie moved up beside him. “There he is.”

Toque holding his hair in place, hands shoved deep into the pockets of an oversized trench coat, Dan shuffled along the graveled path that led to Fort Calgary.

“He knows you,” Charlie began, and stopped when a plain black sedan drove into the lot and parked as close to Dan as possible. The man and woman who got out might as well have had police stamped on their foreheads. Carefully looking at nothing in particular, Charlie whistled an eavesdropping charm at them.

“What does the FBI want with this guy anyway?” the driver asked, circling around to join his partner.

She twitched her collar into place. “Why would I know if you don't?”

He shrugged. “You might have heard something.”

“If I knew more, I'd have told you while we were driving over here to pick up the crazy person who's going to stink up the backseat of our car.”

“He's not going to go quietly either. There's going to be yelling and he'll piss himself and then there'll be more yelling. We should wait until that school group gets in their bus and goes; I don't want to traumatize the kids.”

“Is Dan an American?” Charlie asked Jack as both cops smiled and nodded at the gaggle of preteens leaving the Fort. The kids collectively rolled their eyes.

“Don't know.” Jack glared across the parking lot. “You think they're after him because he was going on about the world ending?”

“I think it's more likely YouTube dredged Dan's past and something nasty floated up.”

“If he's like Auntie Catherine . . .”

“If he was female, clean, and significantly less hairy,” Charlie muttered.

“If he sees the future, like Auntie Catherine,” Jack specified, “he could have escaped the American government. One of their experiments where they're trying to make super soldiers with psionic powers.”

“One of?”

“And before you say it's all comic books,” he continued ignoring her question, “why does it keep coming up? Books, movies, comics, TV . . . You know what they say where I come from?” He folded his arms. “Where there's smoke, there's lunch.”

“You know what they say where I come from? Don't be a dumbass. Unless the question is who's dumbing down the electorate, government conspiracy is never the answer.” Charlie frowned as the kids began piling into the bus, the arguments over seating arrangements needing no amplification. “You distract the police. I'll take Dan into the Wood and out again across the river by the zoo. That should be close enough, he won't freak out too badly. You meet me there.”

Jack grabbed the gig bag as she stepped forward, rocking her back on her heels. “Why distract them? Why can't you just tell the cops to go away? It's not like they could refuse.”

“Removing choice is a slippery slope, Jack.”

“Tell that to the aunties.”

“You first.” Hypocrite she might be, but she sure as hell wasn't going to give the aunties that kind of an opening. As the bus pulled out onto 9th and merged with traffic, she shoved him toward the parking lot. “Distract.”

“Fine.”

Flames shot out of the garbage can farthest from Dan. The smoke smelled like pot.

The pot smell was a nice touch, Charlie acknowledged racing across the crushed gravel, humming “You Don't See Me” as she ran.

Between the smoke and the yelling for backup and the digging for the fire extinguisher buried under dry cleaning in the trunk, neither cop noticed as Charlie hooked Dan under the arms and dragged him toward the trees at the edge of the path.

He yelled, “Depress handle!”

It had been a long time since Dan or his clothing had been in contact with soap and water. Grateful for the cold, but still breathing as shallowly as possible, Charlie hit an A and wrapped it around Dan.

Dan yelled, “Damn kids!”

They stumbled between two sycamores and into the Wood. Dan stiffened, then relaxed in Charlie's grip. She heard him draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly. A moment later they were in the copse of trees next to the zoo's south parking lot.

“Six pounds of oranges!” Dan's volume was impressive and, while the sound of sirens approaching from across the river meant the police were still busy, attracting their attention would be a bad idea.

She grabbed his wrist as he twisted out of her hold. Dug in her heels as he tried to get away. He was stronger than he looked.

“Four sixty-nine a dozen? Who the hell can afford that?”

“Dan, be quiet.”

Yellowed whites showing all the way around his eyes, he flailed his free hand in the general direction of the zoo. “I don't want to hurt him!”

“Then don't!” Hand poised to go over Dan's mouth, Charlie let it drop as Jack stepped out of a familiar pillar of flame. “Jack, tell him to be quiet.”

“Why don't you
tell
him?”

“Second verse, same as the first. Choice. Slippery slope. Also, he's broken.” She could hear the pieces rattling around in his voice. “I'm afraid that if I tell him to stop, there's no guarantee I can get him to start again.”

“Why even have power if you never use it?” Jack muttered, crossing to take Dan's face in his hands. “Come on, dude, you know me. Calm down.”

“I didn't get his name!”

“Whose name?”

“Still two hundred short!”

“Dan.”

“Polycarbonate!”

“Okay.” Jack stepped back, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “I've never seen him this bad. You might as well let him go, Charlie. He's too fried to tell us anything.”

“If we let him go . . .” Charlie jerked her head toward the river. The sirens had gone quiet, the fire dealt with. It wouldn't take long for the police to find him. They clearly had a fairly good idea of his natural habitat.

“Fucking elephant shit!”

Jack coughed out a small cloud of smoke and shifted upwind. “So we stash him somewhere until he's chilled.”

No longer fighting to get free, Dan maintained a constant pull against her grip, tendons corded under her fingers. He'd been cranked tighter than Auntie Jane's sphincter since she'd grabbed him.

Wait . . .

“While we were crossing through the Wood, he relaxed.”

“You were in there for like five seconds,” Jack pointed out. “How's that time to relax?”

“I've shifted plenty of drunks, I know limp. I'll bring him out in the park, wait for us there.” Maintaining her grip on Dan's wrists, Charlie charged toward him. Eyes wide enough she could see the bloodshot, yellowish whites all the way around, he stumbled backward, mumbling about being late. “Tell David we're coming.”

Kicking up faded cedar mulch, they crashed between junipers in a parody of a two-step and out into the Wood where sunlight spilled through a canopy of birch and ash and alder, drawing lines of gold from sky to earth. There were no paths through the underbrush. No birds. No insects.

Dan froze, drew in a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “So quiet,” he said after a moment.

Allie's song, Jack's song, her mother, her sisters, the aunties . . . Charlie thought she even heard Gary's bouzouki taking the lead on “The Mist Covered Mountain.” When Dan opened his eyes and tugged against her hold, she let him go. He couldn't get anywhere without her, and she was curious about what he'd do.

Hands out to either side, he walked slowly forward, placing each duct-
tape-wrapped rubber boot carefully on the leaf litter, grimy fingertips lightly caressing bark and leaves. “My head is empty.” He spun around suddenly and fixed Charlie with a remarkably sane stare. “I can't hear you.”

“I'm not talking.”

“No. I can hear you here.” Fingers tapped his ears. “But not here.” Tapped his forehead. “You're not in my head. No one is in my head but me. I'm all alone.”

“And you're usually . . .”

“Not. Not alone. Not ever alone.”

“You're not usually alone in your head.” That was the sort of statement that needed considering. Charlie listened to the staccato, neo-punk rhythms of her younger sisters for a moment, then let them fade. “You hear what people think?”