The Future Falls (39 page)

“We will not be harmed by the warm.” Jack thought the expression the taller turned his way was a frown, although given the glittering planes and angles of the Frost Giant's face, it was hard to tell for sure. “Outside this shelter you will be stronger. I do not trust you. Why should we trust you, Dragon Prince?”

“You shouldn't.” Not that they'd believe him if he said they should. “But I don't want you here, and if I open the gate you came through, you'll end up where you left from.”

The shorter giant's lipless mouth moved, working that through. “We will go home?”

“You will.”

“The one we calved from will be angry.”

“Dude, I have family problems of my own.” Out over the threshold, he could hear approaching sirens. “And other problems coming in fast. Let's go. Stay unseen. I'll follow in the air.”

The taller's suspicions left him unconvinced. The shorter really wanted to go home. Their argument sounded like a Zamboni drag race, and Jack had started to worry he might have to blow up another car when they pushed past him—the push was totally unnecessary, he would've moved—and raced
across the parking lot to the darkness beyond. In spite of the stumpy legs, they could really boot it.

The Courts had opened the gate barely half a kilometer away from the plant within a triangle formed by two hotels and a church. They'd wanted the giants seen and that meant they wanted Jack and/or the Gales to know about it.

“Dirtbags.” Snow steamed as Jack landed. Which is when he realized he had no idea of how to open a gate. He'd opened a gate to save Charlie's life, but that had been need more than sorcery and as much as he needed to get these guys home before someone with a camera left the marshmallow roast on the other side of the meat packing plant, it wouldn't be enough.

Because he was useless.

He could feel the form of the gate, but he had no idea of what sorcery the Courts had used to open it.

“This is the place. Right here. This. Is this not the place?”

The taller smacked the shorter on the back of the head. “This is the place. Dragon Prince?”

“Give me a minute.” Charlie could open it. Charlie had disappeared out of his room without even a potted plant. But Charlie was a G . . . “I'm an idiot.”

The shorter giggled. Seemed that had translated just fine.

“Get ready, I'm a little short on supplies so you'll only have until the smoke dissipates.” Jack changed, breathed out a cloud of smoke, and formed it into the charm Allie used to open things—pickle bottles, CD cases, and the bag inside cereal boxes for the most part, but the theory was sound. Gales used the charm to open things. He was a Gale. He had a thing he needed to open. “World's most complicated smoke ring,” he muttered, tugging the outer swoop into a fuller curve. When it was right—mostly right—he tossed it into the imprint of the gate. The air filled with the scent of burnt butter, and the gate opened. “Go!”

To his surprise, they went. Way too trusting. “And stop listening to the Courts,” he yelled after them, “they're dicks!”

Then the giants were gone, and the smoke was gone, and only an ice slick remained on the pavement. From the blue/white gleam under the streetlights, Jack had a feeling it was permanent.

But, hey, it was Alberta. Who'd notice?

Kiren blinked up at the sky half expecting to see the asteroid dominating the stars, blazing so brightly familiar constellations had ceded their positions to the harbinger of death.

“Harbinger of death?” Apparently, when exhausted, the writers at FOX News provided her mental voice. She rummaged a half-eaten power bar out of the bottom of her tote, picked a bit of tissue off the damp end, and wondered what day it was while she chewed. Thursday? Friday? If it was actually still Wednesday, then the video conference with Houston and Washington must've created a small black hole. That was the only possible explanation for the time dilation. Too bad a few of the politicians hadn't been sucked into it.

The problem with NASA was that too many of the people who worked there were capable of putting two and two together and getting pi divided by the number of liters in a gallon minus three.

Although it sounded illogical, it turned out that the more people who put the pieces together and came to the correct conclusion, the more people there were who subsequently needed to be told.

She'd been running simulations for . . . well, it probably only felt like years. Most of them were for fellow scientists and she'd already started getting data back. One, however, had been stripped down to the “rock hits planet, planet goes boom, almost everyone dies” level, and even after that there'd been an extensive argument over both
boom
and
almost everyone
. Dr. Adeyemi had been driven to banging her head against the conference table.

Here and now, in the star-strewn sky over JPL, the asteroid was not visible.

The stars meant she'd missed the last bus to the east parking lot again—although
as usual
would be the more accurate observation. Her ass ached, her eyes burned, her skin felt like it didn't quite fit her body, but on the bright side, when . . . no, if the asteroid did finally hit, she'd welcome the chance to fall over.

The sole of her right shoe dragged against the asphalt, the rubber shrieking in protest, the sound eaten up by all the empty space around her. Even
though she knew there were half a dozen engineers in the Assembly Facility . . .

“On the one hand, we might be going the way of the dinosaurs.” Howard grinned at her. “On the other hand, they're letting us play with the really cool toys.”

...
she felt like the only person alive. Wall-E, not Will Smith, doing her job at the end of all . . .

Hoofbeats?

Kiren stopped under a lamppost and squinted in the direction of the Angeles National Forest. There were deer in the forest, there were occasionally deer in the parking lots, but as far as she knew, there'd never been deer actually inside the perimeter fence. It had been specifically built high enough to keep them out.

The sound was definitely coming from this side of the fence.

The banging two coconuts together sound of hooves on pavement.

Coming closer.

With no actual idea of how a running deer would sound, Kiren didn't think that sounded like deer. It was too . . . purposeful
.
This was an animal running with intent. This was . . .

A unicorn.

Large and muscular, it looked like a draft horse crossed with a narwhal, two species even Kiren—an exhausted non-biologist—knew were incompatible. It gleamed in the shadows between the streetlights, muscles moving fluidly beneath its coat. Silver-gray hooves struck sparks from the ground—impossible, but
unicorn
, so Kiren let it go—and its mane and tail both flowed and rippled so perfectly she had to remind herself it wasn't CGI.

The ivory, spiraled horn had surprisingly deep, dark grooves.

As she watched, too tired to do anything more than stand and wonder if the power bar had been a little too far past its best before date, the unicorn's nostrils flared—they were impressively red on the inside—and it pivoted on one front hoof, turning almost a full ninety degrees from its original path and heading directly toward her.

“Sweetheart, given the traditional criteria, you're way too late for . . . um . . .” Heart racing, sweat rolling down her back, her hindbrain took over and spun her behind the lamppost as the unicorn passed. She could feel the impact of each hoof with the ground. Smell salt and something sour that
coated the roof of her mouth. Hear the damp snort that ended each breath. See that the shadows on the horn were stains, red-brown not black.

If this unicorn came out of a fairy tale, then it was the kind of fairy tale that featured severed feet dancing through the forest not singing mice creating haute couture.

She turned as it . . . No, he; definitely he. She turned as
he
did, keeping the lamppost between them, fighting the stupidly suicidal urge to run. Her heart pounded in time with the hoofbeats, nearly deafening her, nearly drowning out . . .

Madonna?

Someone was singing “Like a Virgin” off in the shadows between two eucalyptus trees.

The unicorn reared, screamed in rage, and charged toward the singer.

Arm draped around the post to keep her standing, Kiren thought that was a bit of an overreaction. It was a decent cover, if a tad clichéd under the circumstances.

His horn split the air between the trees—literally split the air, Kiren caught a glimpse of a sunlit wood before it closed behind him.

The silence that followed had substance, texture, and Kiren sucked tiny gulps of air past her teeth so as not to disturb it. The underbrush rustled and she stopped even that, aware she was fully visible, but convinced it would be the sound of her breathing that would give her position away.

When Charlie Gale stepped out onto the road, blue strip in her hair, jacket and jeans over red cowboy boots, Kiren drew in a deep lungful of air, choked on a bug, and went to her knees. After a moment, the coughing that had been about the bug turned into something verging on hysteria and she couldn't stop. Then strong hands gripped her shoulders and a quiet, commanding voice told her to breathe.

“Deep breath. Slowly. Okay, now let it out.”

In. Out. Eyes streaming, Kiren straightened. “That was you,” she said to Charlie Gale. “Singing.”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“And before that, that was a unicorn.”

“Yes, it was.”

Kiren accepted a hand up onto her feet, then waved off any other help. “What the hell is going on?”

Charlie Gale glanced toward the spot where the unicorn had disappeared, then back at her. “Dr. Mehta, do you want to go for a coffee?”

Her mouth tasted like she'd been chewing coffee filters. “I think I've had enough.”

“Tea?”

Kiren adjusted her glasses, brushed the dirt off her knees, and struggled for detachment as she noted a hoofprint gouged into the road. “I could do
tea.”

“. . . AND THEN EINEEN SAID, it's been thousands of years. Do you know how widespread our bloodline is? And I said, that's why
we
keep it in the family.” Charlie let her sleeve fall to cover the bruise. “Which is when she smacked me. She's stronger than she looks.”

“Eineen the Selkie?”

Nudging a pile of magazines into a configuration less likely to collapse under its own weight, Charlie set her empty mug down on top of the stack. Paper, from books to journals to equations scribbled on the backs of junk mail envelopes, covered every available bit of horizontal space in Dr. Mehta's condo. Even the studio portrait of an older couple—Parents? Grandparents?—that hung over her fireplace had a Post-it note stuck to it. “You were nearly kabobbed by a unicorn; why are Selkies so hard to believe?”

“They're just . . .” Kiren waved her hands and splashed herself with tea, having forgotten she still held her mug. After a moment spent frowning down at the glistening wet mark on the top of one bare foot, she shrugged, yawned, and said, “It's the crossbreeding. It's biologically impossible.”

“But metaphysically likely.”

“I guess I can't argue with that.” As Charlie sagged back into the sofa cushions, Kiren finished her tea and stared into the bottom of the mug.

“What do you see?” There were no tea leaves to read, but that didn't matter much.

“Death. Destruction. Although, technically, I suppose destruction comes before death.” She sighed and set the mug beside Charlie's. “Should
you even be telling me all this? Selkies and aunties and the soundtrack of your life?”

Charlie considered shrugging. Decided she didn't have the energy. “Sometimes you need to talk about shit.”

“I hear you.”

“And I know you can keep a secret.”

“And you're going to wipe my memory when you go.”

Okay, that was unexpected. Although Kiren didn't look terribly upset about the prospect. “How do you figure?”

“Acknowledge the facts, consider the implications, create a hypothesis. Your family, and all the . . .” Her hands sketched unicorns and Selkies in the space between them. “. . . extras, run completely under the radar. A few random data points aren't a problem, they'll be turned into stories and we all think we know the difference between fact and fairy tale, but if someone with the ability to connect the points into an actual theorem finds out, then you're threatened with exposure. As you've never been exposed, and—excluding your monologue on the moral implications of not removing the ass head from that Spurs player on the drive from JPL—we've been talking for . . .” She blinked at her watch.

“About an hour and a half,” Charlie offered.

“Magic?”

“I can see the clock in your kitchen.”

“Right.” Kiren waved that off. “Okay. Everything points to you and your family having a system in place to prevent exposure. As I can now expose you, you need to take care of that. Me.” She frowned and seemed to think the point needed more clarifying. “My ability to expose you. I assume you're not carrying around confidentiality agreements although, traditionally, signing a contract is a valid way to apply metaphysics. Applied metaphysics. Fantasy engineering, right? Besides . . .” The yawn caught her in the middle of giggling. “. . . you already told me you did Gary. Gary's memory. Not Gary.”

Charlie'd always known that exhaustion and alcohol created similar symptoms. She'd never seen it proven quite so conclusively. “When was the last time you got any sleep?”

“Lying down? In a bed? My bed?” Kiren dragged both hands back through her hair. “When was the last time I saw you?”

“Come on.” Charlie stood and tugged the smaller woman up onto her feet. “The sandman's waiting.”

“Is he real?”

“Not as far as I know.” The door after the bathroom led to a guest room/office. Also filled with paper. Shifting her grip as Kiren bounced off the wall, Charlie revised her belief that a scientist would have to be uber organized. Of course, there was always the chance this
was
organized and she wasn't smart enough to spot the system.

“Santa?”

“Jury's still out.”

“Surya?”

The master bedroom was behind the door at the end of the hall. With Kiren hanging off her right arm, Charlie had to twist past her to flick on the light. “I don't even know what that is.”

“Hindu sun god. One of the lesser Devatas.”

“Given the family baby-daddy, I'm probably not the best person to ask about gods.”

The bed hadn't been made. Charlie dropped Kiren on the edge of the mattress, then tugged the comforter free of the crap piled on it.

Kiren watched a pile of paper tabbed with multicolored Post-it notes slide to the floor, and snorted. “Paperless office, my ass.” Then she snickered. “Paperless bedroom, my ass. I think you should know,” she added solemnly, “I don't sleep with girls. Women. Where sleep is a commonly used euphemism for sex.”

“I do sleep with girls. Women. Where sleep is a commonly used euphemism for sex. But I am perfectly willing to take no for an answer.”

“You didn't ask.”

“You answered anyway.”

“Efficiency. Go team.” She toppled sideways. “Any sufficiently advanced technology can be mistaken for magic. Arthur C. Clarke. More or less.”

“Auntie Ruby was in Sri Lanka in the early sixties.”

“Are you saying . . .”

“That Auntie Ruby got around. That's all. In fifty years, we'll be throwing around quotes inspired by my sisters.”

“I doubt that.”

“You haven't met my sisters.”

“Not what I meant.” Sighing, Kiren squirmed until she was lying more-or-less the right way around, her head on the pillow. “If you can't stop the Armageddon Asteroid and I can't stop the Armageddon Asteroid, then in sixty years we—where we is the whole human race including your quirkily unique subset—we will be scraping out a subsistence living in isolated pockets where incidental geography or possibly geology . . . I'm a little tired . . . provided protection. From the Armageddon Asteroid. God, I hate that name.”

“None of that means we won't be talking about my sisters.”

She smiled, a tired, sad smile that took a good shot at breaking Charlie's heart. “Fair enough. You know, there's speculation that after the Chicxulub asteroid the entire surface of the earth baked for over a decade.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Baked. We'll be cookies.”

“Pie.”

“What?”

“My family leans toward pie.”

Kiren nodded. “I like pie. I like you. You give me hope. If there's people like you and yours in the world, anything can happen.
Anything
.”

Charlie pulled the comforter up and made a mental note to turn the air conditioning down. “Get some sleep, Kiren.”

“You can sleep on the couch, it's comfortable. I've slept on it lots of times.” Yawning, she rolled over onto her side. “Wipe my memory in the . . . you know, after sleeping.”

The couch
was
comfortable. Between the asteroid and Jack, Charlie hadn't been sleeping much either, and it wouldn't be long until morning.

“I don't want to be pie,” she sighed as she turned off the light.

Instead of heading north to Calgary, Jack detoured west into the foothills and snatched a big white-tailed buck off the side of the highway. This close to the end of October, he had a full rack of antlers and the severed head dropped like a rock. After all the flying and the flaming, a second deer would've hit the spot, but—with even a partially full belly—sleep called.

With Charlie off sorting out the Courts' crap in the wider world, he had
no reason to go home. Sure, there'd be pie, but there was always pie. Sometimes, pie wasn't enough.

Since caves weren't exactly easy to spot from the air, and if he had to sleep outside, he might as well have stayed in the freezer, he broke into an isolated barn. Well, he had to squeeze through the big double doorway—with a belly full of deer he couldn't change either his size or into skin—but,
technically
, nothing broke. The barn smelled of cattle, probably rounded up and taken off the high pastures with the end of summer if
Heartland
could be trusted to have slid a few facts in under the angst. He only watched
Heartland
because Charlie watched it and Charlie only watched it because she knew one of the writers and the two of them agreed that no way Caleb should've divorced Ashley. He shoved two big round bales of hay against the walls out of his way, and curled up with his chin on a third. Protected from the wind, his body heat soon got the barn up to an almost comfortable temperature. Wrapped around the place he and Charlie overlapped, he drifted off to sleep.

“Hey, you.”

Jack knew he was dreaming. Not because the Charlie facing him was his age, or, at least, well within his seven-year break, all army boots and attitude and blue/black hair, but because the connection he still felt didn't lead to her. For all she looked and sounded like Charlie, he couldn't even count it as wish fulfillment because it
wasn't
Charlie. He sat up, still in scales, putting them eye-to-eye as she walked one of the barn's beams. “Go away. I don't want you.”

“Too bad.” Arms out, she pivoted at the end of the beam and headed back, dust motes dancing around her like Pixies. “You can have me. You can't have her.”

“You can't tell me what I can't have.”

“Yeah, dude, I can.”

“No, you can't.”

“If you want to be a Gale, you have to follow this one rule. You can't have her.”

Tail out for balance, he reared. “Yeah, well, maybe I don't want to be a Gale!”

“If you're not a Gale, you can't have her.”

“Stop saying that.” His wings slammed into the walls. The walls shook. “She's not something to
have
.”

“Okay, fine.” A dismissive flip of blue/black hair. “She can't have you. Works out the same either way. Big fucking hole in both your hearts that'll never be filled.”

“Stop it!”

“You can't be together.”

“Shut up!”

“No way, no how.”

“Shut up!”

She burned, fat crackling, skin peeling in blackened strips. Smiling, not screaming.

She smelled like pork.

His mouth watered.

And he woke up, clutching at his connection to Charlie.

It hadn't changed.

The relief, completely illogical relief because he knew he'd been dreaming, left him feeling light-headed and he dropped his head, chin resting on the floor in the meter or so of fresh air remaining under the thick smoke that filled the barn.

The thick smoke?

Wings tight to his back in embarrassment, he put out the fire seconds before one of the beams ignited. He hadn't spontaneously flamed in his sleep in years. The third bale had been reduced to ash, but at least no one had seen; the aunties would never let him live down that kind of property destruction. And Cameron would have never let him live down the whole nocturnal emissions thing.

Pale, predawn light spilled through the grimy windows. It'd still be a few more hours before he'd be able to change into skin, but he'd digested enough he could adjust his size to fit through the door without needing to fix the frame afterward. A dump out off the main trail where weather would take care of the evidence brought him a little closer to thumbs. Not that he needed thumbs. He needed to see Charlie. He needed to hear her complain and see her smile and smell her and touch her and argue with her about how little thirteen years meant to an immortal. Eyes, ears, and nose needed to know she hadn't burned.

He'd used the blood tie to track his father from the UnderRealm, so cross-country, or countries, to find Charlie would be a piece of cake. Or,
more probably, pie. Trouble was, he couldn't count on Charlie to stay put and she traveled too quickly for him to keep up. He should go home. She always came home.