Chapter 10 Cup of Coffee
Cup of Coffee
The pickup truck was already on-site and tents set up by the time the recreational vehicle bumbled in and parked—without the Sons, who had leapt from its top a half-mile back along a country road.
There were far fewer amenities here, Nigel noted, but that would make little difference to soldiers.
Camp was made in short order, and they posted guard with reasonable discipline.
The ordinary in charge, a bandy-legged, broad-chested fellow, seemed something of a martinet but was obeyed with good humor.
Best of all, there was no hint of distress from the Dreamer. Just that stillness, as if she were accustomed to sleeping while being carried to a different location—or too exhausted to care.
He and Edward circled the campground, found an excellent vantage very close by despite the risk of being sensed by exquisitely sensitive antennae, and watched through the long summer day; patience was finally rewarded.
The lirai appeared, a slim shape with a tumble of gold-streaked hair crossing dry beaten earth with the grace of a shy doe before stopping near the taller, perpetually nervous blond man tending the campsite’s cooking-fire.
Nigel waited until she’d been poured what was undoubtedly a cup of much-needed coffee before nudging his Elder and unfolding from their spot in the undergrowth.
The Sons loped swiftly downhill, passing silently through brush and over gravel, before slowing at the curve in the drive rendering them visible to those without enhanced senses.
For ordinaries, her group reacted swiftly.
By the time the Sons stepped over the invisible threshold of camp ‘space’, those at the picnic table had risen, the martinet and a fellow soldier hurrying to greet guests while the third man set off for the bulky red-and-white pickup.
The one working on the motorcycle glanced over, wiped his hands, and headed for the truck as well.
No doubt weapons were stashed there, items more robust than the sidearms everyone but the lirai was carrying.
Not that it mattered against two Sons, or even one. But if it helped them feel better, very well.
The Dreamer stood stock-still, watching their approach.
Being under her scrutiny was a half-familiar, thorny pleasure, calling up memories of the last time he’d felt the warm haze, the blissful relief—a ceremonial blessing right before they’d left to go far westward and attempt cleansing a city crawling with unclean.
Even his signet oscillated, though the dark gem did not throw a spark.
Her tousled hair moved gently, caressed by summer breeze, and not only was the chestnut streaked with glowing highlights but her velvety dark-brown eyes and fair skin had golden tints as well.
She would no doubt burn easily, and probably used all the sunscreen she could find.
A blue T-shirt bearing a red and white circle on the front, slightly too large, and a pair of well-loved jeans, battered trainers with double-knotted laces, completed an odd but relaxed costume.
The cook put out a wiry-muscled arm, gently shifting her back, and even at this distance Nigel could tell she was shaking, for the mug in her pretty hands jittered.
So he halted, and Edward drifted aside a few steps, right where he needed to be if these blokes decided to become troublesome.
“Well, hello there.” The solidly built, curl-haired martinet had an easy smile, a nose that had been battle-mashed more than once, and eyes like cold java someone had snuffed a cigarette in. “You boys lost?”
Edward left the duty of a reply to his commander; the Elder was focused wholly upon the lirai. If gunfire broke out, her safety was the highest priority.
“Not particularly,” Nigel said, and hoped his tone was pleasant enough. A Father rarely had use for anything other than dry irony, informative murmur, or lightly seasoned sardonicism.
The lirai peered around the cook. Did these soldiers feel the power, the singing grace and absolution of being in the presence of a miracle? They should.
This close, she was terribly thin. Though she’d presumably been resting all day, dark circles lingered under those large, thickly lashed eyes.
Her hand continued to tremble, the cup still sending up thin curls of steam despite afternoon heat.
A great deal of nervousness was understandable, but she looked absolutely done in.
Her gaze caught his, held. A soft thrill slipped through Nigel’s veins—the Dreamer was scanning him, and probably his Elder too.
“We’re here to help,” he continued, aiming the words at her instead of the martinet. The cook didn’t quite twitch, his eyebrows drawn hard together, but he did draw himself up a little straighter.
They were protective of the Dreamer. An encouraging sign.
“That’s nice.” The martinet was calm, not quite bristling yet. “But I think you are lost, and oughta go right up on the road.”
“Not your call.” Edward bristled, albeit quietly, not bothering to look away from the lirai. “Any orders we take are from the lady.”
Settle down, lad. Now was the time for whatever diplomacy a Father could scrape together.
“I’m Nigel.” The two near the pickup had acquired rifles; that was reasonable, he allowed, since he and his Elder were dressed in tattered remnants, their guns visible, and he wasn’t bothering to hide his sword.
The lovely sensation of a Dreamer’s attention passed over him in deep, soft waves.
She had a startling amount of power, though the touch was rather clumsy.
Half-trained, often worse than no training at all.
“This is Edward. We saw you last night, ma’am, and we mean you no harm. We’re here to protect you.”
“Cass?” The martinet’s head turned slightly, chin tucking; his attention was still trained on Nigel and his hand rested on a pistol-butt, looked like a 9mm.
Hopefully they all had good trigger discipline.
“It’s them.” A sweet alto, so very soft.
Nigel tried to imagine handling a lirai’s gifts without any frame of reference, dodging shadowbeasts on a motorcycle, living with this collection of men.
What was the relationship here? She was alarmingly young; her aura of breathless power was overwhelming though frayed at the edges.
Was she simply running on instinct, looking for protectors?
Had she been attempting escape from these men last night? Not likely, but then, what was she doing?
“I don’t like it.” The crewcut lad on the martinet’s right spoke up, glaring at Edward. His posture screamed cop, just as the one who had headed for the pickup was clearly a professional soldier gone a bit rogue. “They’re armed, and they look crazy.”
“Well, so are we,” she pointed out. Not quite a strained attempt at humor, more of an observation.
The feeling of being scanned drained away, leaving only the regular breathless, wonderful warmth of a Dreamer’s presence.
“At the very least we can offer a cup of coffee. Maybe they can share where they got that fancy ammo.”
* * *
The martinet muttered something about ‘kaffeeklatsch with hobos’, but returned warily to the picnic table, the lirai in his wake.
She hopped gracefully to perch atop the furniture, coincidentally blocking any view of the stacked papers on one side, then regarded both Nigel and Edward curiously.
Neither Son missed the way the other men arranged themselves in a reasonably effective guard pattern around the camp as the cook brought two more full mugs, offering both with a scowl more suited to poison than caffeine.
The Sons were not invited to sit, but that was no trouble. In fact, it was comfortingly familiar; when a Dreamer was present, you were on your feet and ready to obey—or protect.
Despite the fact that the martinet was unquestionably in command, it was the lirai who began the questioning. “You’re bogey-hunters. Right? You saw them last night. The tentacle-dogs, the spider-things.” A faint note of challenge, as if she expected disbelief.
Or worse. Curiouser and curiouser.
“Nthlei,” Nigel said, accepting both cups and handing the spare to Edward without looking as the cook shuffled away.
There was no harm in good manners, and if the brew was indeed poisoned a Son’s metabolism would burn off any toxin in short order.
After exposure to the many varieties of unclean venom, nothing stung very deeply.
“And jana-spiders, yes. Worse was on the way; we covered your trail as best we could. Our apologies for startling you, ma’am.
” He avoided saying my lady only by an effort of will.
She was a modern woman, and might consider traditional address laughable or worse, sarcastic.
“You damaged her bike, but we’ll let that slide for the moment.
” The martinet shook his curls, beefy arms crossed high on his barrel chest as he hovered protectively next to her, booted feet braced wide.
His shirt was pink and yellow, a truly virulent floral combination.
“Nifflee, you say? And… junnum spiders.”
“Those are the terms, yes.” Nigel cupped the enamel mug carefully; the day was warm, and boiling liquid qualified as a weapon in its own right. “You call them bogeys, we name them shadowbeasts. The unclean.”
“Proper classification aids in effectiveness,” Edward murmured, and the lirai’s gaze fastened on him. Her interest was plain and she almost spoke, inhaling, her lips parted.
But the martinet was first off the mark. “What the hell do you want?”
Nigel had to suppress a twitch—one did not interrupt a Dreamer. “I’ll repeat myself, we mean the young lady no harm. We protect those with her gifts.”
This assertion was met with a curious silence. The lirai, arrested in the motion of lifting still-steaming coffee, turned her head to regard the stocky man, her profile clean and sharp as a well-carved cameo. Did widows still wear those nowadays, or jet beads in mourning?
Nigel couldn’t quite recall, and the thought itself was a bad sign. Fatigue wasn’t an issue while bathing in her spreading cloak of numinous force, but the relief caused problems of its own.
“No offense, but you boys look rode hard and put away wet.” The curl-headed commander smiled; any amusement didn’t reach those piercing cold-coffee eyes. “Where you from?”
“We were last in Boise, cleaning it out.” Nigel watched the Dreamer’s expression.
What the ordinaries thought was beside the point; he wished, very much, to gain at least a measure of her cooperation from this interaction.
“It didn’t go well, not least because we didn’t have a…
have someone like the lady with us. Now we’re faced with a somewhat different situation. ”
“Idaho. Huh.” Soft and thoughtful, though the man was tense. The other ordinaries were watching closely, waiting for a sign. “A bit east from here, ain’t it.”
“It is.” Now wasn’t the time to initiate this bit of cannon fodder into the intricacies of Sons combat protocols, though the thought of delivering that particular lecture was bleakly amusing.
“Our common enemy was very interested in not letting us back over the mountains to rejoin our organization.”
Which was bothersome. If there was any chance they could brush up against an active lirai—or the Mad God only sensed a very strong potential through his minions—shouldn’t the thing have wanted to drive them from his territory back over the Divide?
The relentless attacks were… strange, but then again, the deity-thing was literally mad.
Now, with direct contact proving just how powerful this fragile, painfully thin young woman was, and what the god stood to lose if she was brought to a proper temple to the east, several uncomfortable suspicions were blooming in Nigel’s head.
Chief among them was a singularly strange, rather outré supposition.
Perhaps, just perhaps he and his Elder were being used to flush out a Dreamer who had done the impossible, surviving in country crawling with the Mad God’s eyes and slithering fingers?
The god could not easily whisper inside their heads while she was nearby, but could certainly track where his Sons vanished from his regard, using negative space as an indicator.
Which sent a cold chill down Nigel’s back; it was, he decided, the prospect which bothered him most about this. He noticed the martinet’s lightning-quick glance at the lirai on her perch, and her tension was unmistakable.
“Your organization?” Her tone was dangerously soft. The cloak of warm golden energy sharpened, invisible pressure applied.
“Sons of Ymre.” No reason to lie, for a Son could not dream of doing so to a lirai. Nigel was certain she was alert for, indeed exquisitely sensitive to, any whisper of untruth.
“Sons of… is that a biker gang?” Slight lift to her beautifully arched eyebrows, very fetching. The Dreamer leaned forward, bracing sharp elbows on skinny jean-clad knees, and the liquid sunlight gilding every inch of the table was no match for the sheer glowing breadth of her talent.
“No tats,” the martinet supplied, a flash of grim amusement. “And no bikes, either.”
“Maybe they were after mine.” A slight quirk to soft, chapped lips. How had she survived in this part of the continent? Had she escaped some temple on the other side of the Divide? There were too many questions. “What about that ammo you carry, mister… Neville, is it?”
“Nigel, ma’am. It’s not a biker gang, but explanations are complex. As for our ammo…”
“Standard,” Edward supplied, lifting his cup slightly to toast the Dreamer before attempting a small sip. “Hardly needed it, my lady. You reached right through us and turned the nthlei to goo.”
Their new lirai regarded him as if he’d shouted an obscenity. “I did what now?”
“You’re capable of far more than you know.
” Nigel had a bad feeling over the direction this conversation was trending.
Even basking in her nearness, mounting unease prickled all over him.
The surrounding forest was silent, locked in the heavy summer syrup of late afternoon.
“We act as amplifiers for some of your abilities. But that’s. ..”
She wasn’t listening.
The Dreamer stiffened. The hot liquid in her mug spilled, but he was already moving, dropping his own cup and stretching in a dive, his arms closing around her just as the first shot cracked from the trees.