Dragon's Teeth Read online

  Simpler was better. Hold your horses. It’s Herb. It really is. Hell, go take your lunch and talk to him, you’ll see.

  Another long pause. The hell you say. How?

  Well, now that was a tricky question. Not sure, really. My guess? It wasn’t his time. Simplistic and not my best guess. I don’t believe in fate; I’ve personally changed “fate” too often. Closer to say that Elementals don’t work like us. They have different rules. He used up everything of himself for you guys, but something’s kept him here. Like maybe his will. Earth Elementals have the most powerful will of all of the Elements. Herb just could have made up his mind that he was not going, and imposed that on the universe. Of course, there had to be a reason why he would have decided that—

  Like what?

  I dunno, our friendship maybe? Or maybe he just wants to see what shit you’ll get into next. Could have been either. Could have been both. Could have been a reason I hadn’t even guessed at.

  Captain Sarcastic had to put in his two cents on it, of course. So now . . . what . . . he’s your delivery boy?

  I didn’t rise to the bait. He wanted to say hi in person. Other than that . . . he hangs out with Gray and does what he wants to do. Right now, that seems to be MMORPGs. He’s with the Horde.

  Evidently I said the right thing. Just shook his hand. Now he’s dancing.

  I found myself reluctantly smiling. He likes you.

  I did not expect the response I got. Yeah, everybody makes that mistake at the beginning.

  Say what? Bitter much? I replied.

  Again, a response I did not expect; not from a guy who, from everything I had seen, had an ego that almost left enough space in the room for some air to breathe. Many hours of expensive psychotherapy have classed it as “acceptance,” thank you very much. Yeah, right. As if the Djinni would ever come within a nautical mile of a shrink if he could avoid it.

  I decided it was a good idea to switch subjects. How’s action at the target? All quiet on the Western Front?

  Immediate reply. Nothing, I’m getting extremely cold vibes here. How solid is your intel on this one?

  That part, I was sure of. The DG sighting was a definite maybe. The bomb lab is a hard yes. But our little Nazi sympathizer might not be home.

  Evidently his patience had been stretched thin. Okay, I’m heading in. Breaking contact for a bit, keep Herb around, he might need to get back to you with a report if I don’t come out. Give me ten minutes.

  What could I say? It was his op. The building was all artificial, I couldn’t even scry in there clearly. Roger. Be as safe as you can.

  And thanks, the coffee was good.

  It was a very long ten minutes. My only comfort was that Herb was there. If the excrement really did hit the rotating blades, Herb could get through to me quickly. Though small, he still had enough power to do that.

  And he did. Before I got a text, I got a message from Herb, as a bloodstone apported to my desktop. Not good.

  I opened Bella’s freq. “Bell! Djinni’s hurt.”

  “How bad?” was the instant reply. “I’m at ECHO Medical, I can add myself to any team that goes out after him.”

  “Don’t know yet—”

  I was about to open Djinni’s radio freq in defiance of the orders when I got another text.

  Area’s secure, Overwatch. Send in the cleaners.

  I pulled my little smoke-and-mirrors thing, and called ECHO dispatch using a CCCP freq. “Comrades, this is Upyr, of CCCP. You are to be havink man down, Comrade Krasny Djinni. He is to be sendink me at safe distance, and is to be tellink me to be havink cleaners and medic sent.” ECHO proper did not know about Overwatch. ECHO proper was not going to learn about it until Tesla gave it the official blessing.

  “Roger that, CCCP Upyr.” They didn’t ask what a CCCP op was doing out of their neighborhood, and I broke the freq. When ECHO Medical got the buzz Bell would handle it.

  All this took seconds. I texted back. Herb says you need a Band-Aid. Scrambled ECHO Cleaners with Bell in tow.

  Wouldn’t mind if they rushed a bit.

  My heart jumped into my throat. OK, I knew he was able to heal himself crazy well, and I was still kinda annoyed with him but—You okay? I responded immediately.

  The reply did not comfort me. Not really, the guy knew how to use that machete.

  My heart nearly stopped. Shit Red! How bad?

  Pretty bad, I can see . . . well, parts that I shouldn’t be able to see.

  I wanted to swear and didn’t have time. Instead, I got on Bella’s CCCP comm. When she answered the thing, I could hear the siren in the background. “This is beink Upyr, Comrade Blue. Your man down is nyet good. Is being cut half open.” This was for the benefit of the others in the response vehicle.

  “Roger. Spasiba, Upyr.” Off-mic I heard, “You heard the woman! Floor it!” then the comm clicked off.

  I got back on the keyboard. Got the pedal to the metal. You should be able to hear the sirens soon. Stay with me, keep typing. What about the mark? I didn’t want him to pass out. He was experienced. He knew what to keep pressure on, how to make his body help him, and he would as long as he could. He was his own best aid at the moment.

  Oh, HIS parts are all over the place now. He didn’t leave me much choice.

  I was going to type anything to keep him alert. And DG?

  No sign of him. Hope the cleaners pick up his scent.

  A pause, and I was about to try and prod him when more text came. Herb’s not dancing anymore. He just keeps looking at me.

  You made him sad. I’ll explain it to him later. Now . . . that was way, way oversimplifying. Herb was an Elemental. He might be childlike, but he was no child. He understood very well what Djinni had just done, and—although I do not know this for certain, I am quite sure that either an Elemental Herb knew, or even Herb himself, had killed in the past when someone had tried to coerce him magically. They did that. That was what Red had been afraid of. You’d fight to the death, too, if someone tried to enslave you. And Herb was an Elemental. They are nature spirits. As in “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” They are well-acquainted with innocent violence. These are not happy peaceful little stone Buddhists.

  So Herb was not sad that Red had killed someone. He was sad that Red had been hurt, and sad that Red had been forced to kill someone and that—which the text “he didn’t leave me much choice” told me—had made Red feel guilty. What I would explain was why all of this had happened, why it had been needful, and that humans felt guilt even when we did needful things.

  He might act with the open emotions of a toddler, but his understanding was completely adult.

  Another message from Herb. A roughly truck-shaped rock apported to my keyboard with a click. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  But Red . . . Red didn’t know what I knew, or what I meant. And the last text I got from him as Bell and the crew reached him made my heart ache.

  Guess he likes me less now. Told ya. Everyone makes that mistake in the beginning . . .

  Haunt You

  Mercedes Lackey and Cody Martin

  This might have been the best motel John had ever stayed in in his entire life.

  Vickie had guided him to it, after having him leave the beater rental van, pick up a newer rental van, and visit a mega-mart. It wasn’t just a room, it was a whole two-story suite, one of those “extended stay” places. Three bedrooms and a bath up, one bedroom and bath, a living-room-thing and a real kitchen down. The fridge even came stocked. With beer. And other things, but the beer was what interested John most after that little adventure in the missile silo. He’d been listening to the radio on the way back to KC, and the explosion had made the news, which meant that John had been very eager to not make himself available in the immediate area. Someone might have noticed an athletically built fellow with some interesting bags and a beater van in that no-tell motel. Can you say “terrorist profile”? I knew you could. So now he was an athletically built fellow in newish clean athletic ge
ar, athletic bags and a name-brand rental van, with the story that he was waiting for his sports team—sport unspecified—to arrive, and they were all going to be living here in a fancy suite motel. Now someone just had to think of a sport that would have a lot of Russians on the team. Pavel might be part of it. He didn’t think Pavel was going to go unnoticed.

  John closed the door behind him, noted that Vickie had gotten a suite that was as secure as a motel could be, and let his guard down, a little. He chose the downstairs bedroom, which had a king-sized bed, dropping his bags on the floor. “Nice digs. Still with me, blondie?”

  “Five by five, tall, dark and waterproof.” The voice in his ear sounded relaxed, almost cheerful. “It’s easier to hack their stuff than the Roach Hotel, oddly enough. I’m on channel 99.”

  “A-ffirmative.” John retrieved a cold beer from the fridge—local swill, but he wasn’t about to complain—and plopped down on his bed with the remote in hand. A smart-remote, so this TV was equipped to surf, which meant he could treat it like a computer of sorts. “An’ we’re up. Start feedin’ me whatcha got.”

  “Tesla and Marconi got me a translation program, so all that stuff we downloaded is cooking at a rapid rate. There definitely is a big staging area somewhere there in KC. Saviour is sending you a team, hence, the suite.”

  “How big are we talkin’ ’bout here?” He took a long draught from the beer, looking up to the TV.

  “Well, this is where the trucks are coming from for this area. So big enough to load the trucks. More staff than the silo. Staff to repair the armor and maybe the Robo-Wolves and Robo-Eagles. Didn’t seem to have anything for Death Machines.”

  John had read briefings on the mechanical horrors that the Thulians fielded, but he never had had the unpleasant opportunity to fight against them. “Nasty customers, their Robo-whatsits?”

  “Pretty damn. Uh, look, I can do something called ‘retro-scrying’ if I have a piece of stuff that came from where I want to look. I was gonna call up the fight that the Misfits had down in the Catacombs after I lost their feed and before I got it back. I could do that now and you could watch it while I burn it to memory. Want?”

  “Certainly.” He retrieved a fresh beer while Vickie did whatever mumbo-jumbo she did to make this stuff happen. “Got any relevant AARs an’ dossiers I could browse in a sidebar?”

  “Yep, got the analysis ECHO did on the downed eagles from the Slycke caper. Use the scroll-down and page-down buttons on your remote, this hotel rig is set up for reading email.” The screen split into two windows, one with text popping up and the other with some . . . interesting patterns at the moment.

  “You’re a peach.”

  “I can’t do a lot in the field, Johnny. I kinda gotta make it up with what I can do in here.” She was muttering something too quietly for him to hear, but it didn’t sound like English, so he didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. “Did I ever tell you that magic on the computer level is basically math and physics?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “All that high-level physics stuff running around these days says that pretty much everything in time and space is connected, you just have to bend things around the connections and you’re looking at what you want to.”

  “Y’know, this all sounds like it’s a helluva lot higher than my pay grade. Hey, I’m still gettin’ paid in things other than beer, right?”

  She chuckled. “Right now you’re getting one meeeeeeellion Polish zlotys a day.”

  “By my math, I might be able to buy a few popsicles with that. If I find someone that’s nearsighted.”

  “And you call yourself a Marxist!”

  “Not in the slightest, cupcake.” He leaned back, propping his head up with a pillow so he could still drink and watch the television. “Anyways, keep goin.’”

  “I do have something of interest for you besides your wallet and the intel. KC is a beef-packing town. There’s some very nice T-bones in the meat drawer if you can cook. Aha.” The patterns on the screen resolved into a static image. “And here we go. Connection between now and then, my rig and the Catacombs established. And rolling.”

  At first, there wasn’t much of interest to see—except for the rank upon rank of power-armor down in that enormous vault, and the Misfits wandering around among the silent giants like kids in a museum. He was getting an overhead view, which was interesting, and probably better than the original camera feed would have been. “So, why are they called the Misfits again?”

  “We,” she corrected. “I’m part of the team.” She sighed. “No one else will have us but Bulwark. He makes a habit of trying to save people. Particularly the ones no one else believes in.”

  “Huh. Kind’ve a raggedy-looking bunch. And y’all have that Djinni guy with you?” John had heard about “the” Red Djinni during his time on the run; the criminal element and people like John seemed to intermingle regularly.

  “Red . . . has his moments.”

  “Don’t we all—” John was cut off when the doors in the Vault slammed shut. A structure smack dab in the middle of the room seemed to change, and very quickly the Misfits were fighting Robo-Wolves and Robo-Eagles. They got split up immediately; the three girls, Bella, Harmony, and Scope, were under attack by the birds, while one wolf chased Djinni and one chased Acrobat. “Jesus, those things are mean. Besides blowin’ them to hell an’ softenin’ them up with fire, what weaknesses do they have?” John was already looking for joints, ammunition magazines, power cells, anything that could be exploited. It was becoming increasingly hard with the flurry of action on the screen.

  “There’s a pretty good AI in there, and we think that the wolves had an uplink somewhere. The wolves are fangs and claws, the eagles are beak, claws and an energy gun in their mouth that uses a different mechanism from the arm-cannon. They’ve got IR and UV vision, night vision of course, the usual ability to camera-zoom in tight on a target. Bella found out that if you shoot that area in the eagle’s mouth where the gun is, you have a good chance at making whatever they use as ammo explode the head. The eagles DON’T seem to have radar; when Scope shoots out their eyes later, they collide.”

  “All the sensors located in the head? Whatever they use for a processor?”

  “From the wreckage, the processor is buried deep inside the body, the sensors are all in the head.”

  “Well, that’s a pain. But, y’knock out the head, ought to be easier to pry the bastard apart.”

  Right about then, Bulwark, who had raised his force-field, was driven to his knees with a grunt as the wolf on him pounded the outside of the field. “Yeah, that looks harsh. Bull’s power isn’t like a sci-fi field; energy applied outside gets some transferred inside.”

  “Jesus! Any casualties on this op? I hate surprises.”

  “Thanks to the powers that watch over fools, no. Bull was pretty messed up with a lot of internal injury, Scope nearly ruptured her eyes, and Bell was drained down to just about nothing. And Djinni looked like one of those carcasses hanging on a hook over in the stockyards. But everybody lived. Oh, watch this, this is how Djinni takes out his wolf.” Red was looking a little worse for wear—and naked—but certainly not as bad as Vickie had made out to be. John saw how he ended up matching her description. The meta paused, measuring up the Robo-Wolf, and then pounced on its neck. His hands dug into a seam that had formed where the contraption had taken a beating, and then his hands seemed to distend and harden into grotesque claws, while his body somehow grew a kind of encasement that was part insect carapace and part rhino hide. The wolf did not like this turn of events, and started to buck and turn to try to dislodge Djinni. It was vicious and fast, but finally a shower of sparks erupted from the seam, and the wolf slumped to the floor.

  “Well, I’ve gotta say, I’ve seen some eight-second rodeo riders that would’ve had a helluva time stayin’ on for that ride.”

  There was silence for a moment on the other end. Then, “Holy Jeebus Cluny Frog on a pogo stick. I—wow. Uh, OK, this is where I got the feed
back.”

  This version was one-sided; John couldn’t hear what Vickie was probably saying, but as the weird protection sloughed off, leaving the Djinni raw and bruised but looking reasonably like a human again, if a skinned one, Red said something in Russian.

  “OK rewind. I’ll show you Bull and Acrobat taking out theirs.” This was a little more straightforward. Acrobat teased the wolf into chasing him, returned on Bulwark’s signal, and the two of them working together got the wolf impaled on the gigantic sword of one of the more primitive suits of toppled armor.

  “Those damned things were carrying swords? I never really thought I’d dislike Nazis more than I already did, but I’m learnin’ new things every day.”

  “We are pretty sure that’s something like Version 1.5. They hadn’t figured out how to make energy cannon yet, or maybe how to get the stuff small enough to fit in an arm. So since these things were supposed to be terror weapons, they just gave them honking big swords to mow people down like a John Deere harvester.”

  John shook his head and finished his beer. “If they had come out with those things a couple of decades earlier, they could’ve still done some nasty damage.”

  “Rewind to Scope taking out the two birds with a couple good shots.”

  This was even more straightforward. Despite being under fire, despite a lot of hysterical screaming and shouting, and with Bella finally pouring enough of herself into Scope that she went the color of skim milk and passed out, Scope managed to take out the “eyes” of both birds in mid-dive. Unable to see or correct, they crashed into each other.

  “So. Dat’s dat. More shit went down with a Death Sphere that was probably operating on AI, but you already know how to take those out, and I have the camera feed on on that. I’m not looking forward to when they figure out what we’re doing and make improvements.”

  “Tough customers. Remind me never to play ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ with you, though.”

  “Trust me, this was not my idea, nor would I have sent in one small team.” The second window closed, leaving John with the report on the downed eagle from outside Atlanta. “On one level, I am glad Alex Tesla is gone. He made some piss-poor decisions.” Her voice sounded curiously hard, even a little angry. “I know they say not to bad-mouth the dead, but those were my teammates he put on a suicide mission down there.”