Chapter 12
Vesta’s bedroom wasn’t at all what I expected.
To be honest, I really didn’t know what to expect.
I had only ever seen Hannah’s quarters on Greenacres, and she had it decorated like a full-fledged apartment might be.
Hannah was two years older than Vesta and had been independent from her parents’ quarters since she was seventeen.
I guess I expected something from a video show: pink, posters of celebrities, a mirrored vanity, and probably lots of stuffed animals.
I was blown away when she showed me her small suite of rooms, and I found them filled with plants, bits of alien technology, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with an eclectic mixture of fiction and informational tomes, and cozy vintage furniture.
She favored murder mysteries and textbooks on ecology, sustainable economics, witchcraft, ancient languages, and a collection of Far Side and Charles Addams comics from decades ago.
“This guy is the Addams Family dude, right?” I asked as I paged through a book called Nightcrawlers.
“Yup. Very dark stuff,” she said.
“It’s official. I’m going to start calling you Wednesday,” I said.
“Bring it on, Dundee. She’s one of my heroes.”
Buster was making herself at home in something that Vesta called a beanbag chair. On Greenacres, we ate beans, we didn’t sit on them. Vesta claimed it was vintage—big deal; just about everything not made on planet was at least twenty years old on Greenacres.
“My backwoods rustic education taught me that the economy on Earth had been rebuilt after the Vorsook Wars?” I asked her as I looked at a cartoon of Uncle Fester and Lurch about to dump hot oil on Christmas carolers.
“It has. Power is free, thanks to Omega’s reverse engineered Vorsook generators.
So is online education and most medicine, and food is cheap because witches are running the farms. The population has recovered somewhat but is still less than it was than twenty years ago.
There are plenty of jobs or if you want to start your own business, capital is fairly cheap. ”
“So why were those guys all bent out of shape and driving ancient vehicles?”
She shrugged. “Some people don’t want to work at all. They feel entitled to everything.”
“Send them to Greenacres,” I said.
“To learn their lesson?” she asked, sliding up behind me.
“Oh, yeah. That’s it,” I said, distracted as her arms wrapped around my waist, her hands sliding under my shirt.
“What did you mean then?” she asked as I put the old book back on her shelf.
“Ah, lazy people just die on Greenacres,” I said. “Usually. Hey, are you sure your folks are okay with me bunking in here with you for the holidays?”
“You are my beloved. The only person who could really object is you. Are you objecting?” she asked as her hands roved farther.
“Nope,” I said and turned in to her embrace.
“Nice bed,” I said sometime later.
“It sleeps good too,” she answered, her head on my chest.
“Well, maybe I’ll get a chance to verify that for myself later?”
“Don’t count on it,” she purred. Then she sat up. “Oh. Mom and Dad are back,” she said and rolled off the big mattress completely naked.
“Um, you said they wouldn’t care?” I accused, jumping up myself as she pulled on yoga pants.
“They won’t. They don’t,” she said. “I’m just curious about the outcome of the events in Maine.”
I pulled on my own clothes, glancing in the mirror to see how disheveled I looked.
Already at the door, Vesta turned back and snorted. “Mom can smell a mosquito fart at a hundred yards… nothing you do will hide what we’ve been doing.”
“Lovely image,” I muttered.
“Do the weres in your surrogate family’s pack hide sex?” she asked.
I stopped for a second, realization flooding my brain. “Ah, no. Pointless.”
“Yeah, same here.”
“Um, Steward of the whole world,” I pointed out. “White werewolf too.”
“Not to me. He’s Dad and she’s Mom.”
“Yeah. That’s not necessarily better,” I said. She grabbed my hand and towed me behind her.
The inside of their secret mountain lair was a complete surprise. I had expected rock tunnels, or tunnels lined with concrete or maybe just melted rock, but it was like the inside of some kind of spaceship or something. I said as much.
“Um, because it is,” Vesta answered as we walked through white hallways that were lit from under the surface of the strange material covering the walls.
“This is a giant drone, built inside the mountain. I can show you the original base later; it’s below us, tunneled into the rock.
But after the Vorsook War and the last fight with the demons of Hell, Omega built this drone right inside the mountain.
It’s about the size of two Megalodon class drones. ”
“Cool. Um, why?”
“Well, there were security faults with the old one. This one is air, water, vacuum tight. And if we need to evac, the whole thing goes.”
“What about the mountain around it?”
“It’ll be smaller,” she said with a shrug.
We entered the big round room where we had arrived when Vesta had portaled us home. Her Aunt Darci and Uncle Levi had been at the base, keeping the fires burning, so to speak, and they had greeted us before she dragged me off to her nest. Not that I fought back, even a little.
Now the whole team was back, although they were already dispersing in various directions. Kristin brushed by us, turning to give us wide eyes and putting one slim hand in front of her mouth as if she was completely shocked even as the edges of her smile appeared on either side.
Vesta scoffed. “Like you wouldn’t?” she whispered back to the tall Scandinavian werewolf.
“Fair point,” Kristin said with a wink and disappeared down the passageway.
Alex and Holly had disappeared out another door, leaving just Ashling, Stacia, and Declan.
“Craig, that bit with the drone was inspired,” Declan said, even as Stacia made bug eyes at us from just behind his shoulder. She knew from across the room!
“Inspired by desperation. I couldn’t figure out how to convey the location of the ill intent I felt, so I just conveyed the whole drone to where I felt the brain and heart.”
“Very handy. Good thinking. Okay, I’m off for a shower,” he said and turned to leave out the same door that Alex and Holly had.
“Showers are probably a real good idea,” Stacia directed our way, then followed her mate.