Chapter 29 – Luna
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Luna
“Still heading west,” Nilesh reported into the walkie talkie that was in his hand.
He and I were sitting on a bench across from Zach and Paco, who were sitting the same, only they were holding hands. It wasn’t necessarily romantic—it was more like they were on the same terrifying amusement park ride, and neither one of them wanted to be alone.
And the dowsing gemstone swung from Paco’s other hand. We’d started going off-road an hour ago, and had had to stop the van all the way several times now, even turning the engine off, to make sure what we all saw was real and not just road noise from jiggling.
Paco glanced up, giving me a worried look. I inhaled to tell him that he’d be fine, Zach and I wouldn’t let him burn, but I stopped myself, because I knew that wasn’t it—it was Jack.
“You feeling okay?” I asked him, wondering if he knew something that we did not.
“It’s just very quiet now. Inside,” he said, and Zach held his hand a little more tightly.
“Quiet’s not the same as dead though, right?”
He frowned rather than answer me and concentrated on the stone. “Stop the van.”
Nilesh radioed it forward, and the accommodating Faithful up in the cab stopped and turned the engine off.
“It’s just hanging,” Nilesh said, looking from the gemstone to each of us.
“Did it stop working?” Zach turned towards me, as the resident magic-ologist.
“I don’t think so,” I said—but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t Maya or Rosalie.
But the easiest answer for why it wouldn’t work anymore was the worst one—that there was nothing left for the stone to point to.
That we were too late.
“No,” Paco said, shaking his head in denial, like he’d just read my mind. “This isn’t over yet. It can’t be.”
“Paco,” I said, leaning over and reaching out.
“No!” Paco growled—and then Zach shook himself free of Paco’s grip.
“It’s still working!” he said, excitedly. “And it’s pointing the right direction!” He kicked a boot against the van’s metal bed. “They’re underground!”
Paco looked at him in awe, and then engulfed him in a hug so hard it almost made the van sway. Nilesh looked to me and I shrugged.
“It’s just like a puzzle in a videogame!” Zach said, the next time he could breathe.
“Works for me,” I said. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Near Desert Well Station,” Nilesh answered.
“Never heard of it.”
“Because it’s not on a fucking map,” he said, sitting up straight and hitting the roof over our head hard, twice. “It’ll take us until dawn to drag up a construction crew.”
“Fuck, man,” Paco said, standing after pocketing the stone, looming over all of us and taking up far too much space. “Just give me a shovel.”
A Faithful unlocked the door to our compartment from the outside, letting the moon shine in.
“No can do, don’t have one,” Nilesh said, jumping out to the ground.
Paco made a frustrated sound, leaping down to probably start karate chopping rocks with his bare hands, as Nilesh meaningfully cleared his throat.
“But what would you say to doing some pre-excavation work with directional explosives?”
Paco grinned at the man, his teeth white by the moonlight. “I’m in.”
“That seems really unsafe,” Zach said, hopping out of the van much more slowly.
Seeing as his personal level of safety had apparently allowed Paco to drink blood from his erect dick to make the stone’s ceremony work earlier, I found his statement fairly profound.
I stepped down carefully, and then hugged myself, wearing one of Jack’s hoodies. “Ignore them. They’re both functionally immortal,” I said, checking his shoulder with mine.
“What are you going to do while they blow shit up?” he asked me.
I jerked my head up toward the cab. “I would bet money these smug assholes have snacks.”