Change, page 19
Zita took an unnecessary breath and made herself slow down and lower her voice. “Normally, when some dude blows me off, it’s a clear no thanks. I get it. I move on. With you, it’s different and confusing and I actually give a shit, and now we’ve got Barcelona to deal with as well.”
Freelance regarded her steadily. His shoulders were tight, his posture so rigid that he seemed like a bowstring pulled to its limits.
At some point, she’d started pacing, constrained laps around the small space, though she didn’t remember when she’d started. She shook her head. “You got to give me something to work with. Necessary secrets are one thing, but at some point, you got to give a little.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. Maybe not enough, but I stopped talking about my stuff because you never gave nothing back. Did you know you didn’t even give me anything to call you in the past year and a half? Not even the eight months of that where we’ve been sort-of dating? You’ve just gone with Freelance. If I called you Ninja SWAT Man like when we first met and I needed to talk about you—”
He blinked and held up a finger.
She barreled on. “Would you ever have given me another name to use? I know it’s not coincidence that your crew never calls you anything but Boss or Bossman in front of me. Speaking of which, did you know that Vaudeville ambushed me to let me know you’ve been dealing with some issue? I kept waiting for you to say something yourself, but you haven’t.”
He was silent.
“Mi hombre.” Zita stopped in front of him, so close the very fine white scars under his chin and behind his ears were visible. Her eyes scanned his face. “This is the part where you say something. Despite what people keep telling me, I know you got feelings, so let’s figure out what’s going on. I thought we agreed we’d talk if one of us wanted a change. Are you playing me?”
Freelance gave a brusque head shake. “No. You were.”
“With you, not with you. I mean, we play together, but we’re not—”
A distant sound distracted her from her babbling.
“Is that screaming?” Zita raced to the cave opening and stuck her head out, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. When another shriek tore through the air, she dropped out of their hiding place and flew to the entrance off the main tunnel.
Another sound echoed, growing fainter.
“I think it’s going deeper into the mountain, like maybe they carried someone by on their way to the cells. Carajo. You think they found Koschei? He probably ditched the nymph so he could sneak by and get his vengeance. I should never have left the old dude, but he said he couldn’t climb. He couldn’t sneak for shit, either.” Zita ran a hand over her stone hair, back and forth.
“Healer,” Freelance said.
“Could be.” They hurried through the corridors, with Zita practically vibrating with worry every time they had to hide from a patrol.
As they hid from one patrol in a side cave, she caught Freelance frowning at a pile of bones with three skulls and a heap of modern equipment so battered that it appeared chewed. She averted her eyes.
They continued on as soon as the patrol passed.
When they reached it, the side cave they’d had Koschei hiding in was empty except for the stun stick she’d left him with. The room smelled of the old man and the crushed green scent of the flowers he’d been using as a bed.
In the nearby cavern, the nymph was sobbing over her cauldron of kykeon and absently weaving a long chain of asphodel. “It’s you! I was trying to figure out if there was anything I could do, and I didn’t want to bother Styx.”
“Are you okay? Where’s Koschei?” Zita blurted out.
Freelance was a silent shadow at her back.
“My sisters sent me an emergency flower, so I stepped back home to see what the problem was. It’s so sad! We’ve been... naughty. This adorable little monkey came through a portal once and escaped to our fields. We took him as our secret pet and we all love him so much even though he belongs to your world. He’s so sweet and mischievous and loves hugs and being carried! We were shuffling him around to keep him safe, but a patrol captured him and will probably kill the poor thing.” The nymph almost wailed the last part.
Zita darted a panicked glance at Freelance.
He’d stepped back while she was distracted, and was almost lost in the shadows as he took Koschei’s abandoned cattle prod.
She swore inwardly, but hadn’t really expected him to comfort the nymph. “I’m sorry about your monkey. If I see him, I’ll set him free? Don’t cry... you want a, pues, leaf or something to dry your eyes?”
The nymph sniffled. “Thank you. It’s kind of you to pretend a god would do anything to help the flowers.”
“I’m not faking nothing, and I’m not a god. I just turn into stuff and do things.”
The other woman didn’t seem convinced.
Zita would’ve been insulted if she hadn’t heard how the metahumans claiming to be gods had treated the nymphs in Olympus. “With as much time as I spend as an animal, you think I want to see one hurt? If I can free him, I will. Do you know where Koschei is?”
“He’s not with you? When he was gone when I got back and my pot was half-empty, I thought you must’ve come back and gotten him. He was sound asleep when I left. I even put a silence charm on his metal club so no one would hear him snoring or tossing and turning back there.” The nymph put her fingers to her lips.
Zita swore. “I was afraid of that. What about the healer? Have you heard of any new prisoners?”
“No, none, nor have they opened any portals since before you came here. I checked for you.”
“Thank you,” Zita murmured.
The nymph beamed.
So, no healer in the Underworld yet. Zita paused as a thought struck her. “Hey, how come the ghosts aren’t living in nymphs? Are you all too fast for the old geezers?”
The nymph blinked. “While they may harm us in other ways, even reshape us if they regain their full powers, they cannot inhabit us or feed upon our lives or abilities.”
Her head hurt from all the magic talk, and Zita forced her shoulders to loosen. “So only other humans.”
Lavender hair bobbed as the nymph nodded. “Even that has limits. A mere human would age and die within weeks if they tried to inhabit them. Heroes can host them for longer, especially if they drink the powers of others regularly. Styx said their current bodies will die within the year if they do not choose new ones. To regain their full lifespans and powers, they must claim the physical forms of other gods.”
Although Zita had tried not to think too hard about it before, her horrible theory forced her to ask the question. “Any mortal that you’d consider a god would do?”
The nymph nodded again. “Yes, though they’re vain, so they’d prefer young, attractive ones with the powers the fallen ones know best, that of sky and magic.”
Even though she didn’t need to breathe, for a moment her throat closed and Zita struggled at the confirmation she’d been dreading. She forced out a translation for Freelance.
He spoke, “Other prisoners. Hosts?”
That answer she knew. “Oye, no, most of those were hostages, not even metas. Besides, they’re gone.”
“Gone?” Freelance tilted his head as he tucked something into a belt pouch.
Zita rocked on her heels, her mind processing all the information they’d been given and plotting out the best way back to the room with the cells. “Muse gave me a one-use magic item to get home. I used it up sending all the prisoners home with a warning about the planned attack on the conference. Koschei was supposed to go with them, but he stuck around instead. If he’s the one who screamed, I need to go help him right away. We’ll need to figure out how to get him past the army as soon as they leave so it doesn’t happen again.”
“You stayed?” Freelance’s gaze was intent, though he angled his body both toward her and sideways, as if expecting something.
“You were still here.” The answer slipped out before she could censor herself, so Zita tacked on a bit more, forcing nonchalance. “Plus, I wanted to mess up the ghosts’ plans, too.”
His head tilted down as he studied her.
Another horrific scream echoed, much less human-sounding and louder than before, thanks to their proximity.
Koschei! You poor, stupid pendejo! Zita hurled a soft thank-you and goodbye in ancient Greek over her shoulder.
“Bye!” the nymph said, forlornly making another tiny wreath.
Freelance touched Zita’s shoulder. “Trap.”
“Probably, but I can’t let them torture nobody! If you want to help, don’t kill anyone!”
Hoping the way would be clear, Zita flew toward the prison.
Chapter Fourteen
“Sometimes a monkey is just a monkey.” Garm’s deep voice echoed in the dim cave.
In his massive wolf form as always, Garm stood beside a guard in the center of the room, by a big wheeled cage that had been covered in chicken wire. Each of the three remaining sides of the cage had another guard covering it, and large wheeled ballistic shields faced the exit where she and Freelance stood.
Given Freelance was loose, Zita had to agree with the precaution. She leapt-flew to the ceiling and crawled slowly through the doorway. “Cover me,” she whispered as she went.
A brown capuchin monkey adorned with the remains of a flower wreath screamed from inside the chicken-wire cage. A bright ring of fur around its neck and shoulders shone like gold chains, like the animal she’d seen at Mwangi’s clinic in Brazil.
Wait, disco monkeys... Janus said they were all over their base... No time to think about that now. Zita inched forward, going around a clump of lavacicles.
The rest of the cave was as she’d last seen it, down to the discarded axe in a puddle of water near the entrance and the grisly stack of corpses on the far side of the room. Someone had replaced the generator that had powered the grate on her cell, but not the light that had been shattered during her escape. The cave was lit only by the remaining lanterns and the sullen red light from the chasm.
A guard frowned at the monkey. “It could be her.”
White teeth flashed as Garm sniffed the air and growled. Midnight-black hackles rose on his oversized back. His gaze fixed on her as he stalked toward her position. “No, because she’s up there on the ceiling right now! That creature is not her. You should’ve let me eat it. Maybe I will eat it after I rip Arc—”
A gunshot snapped, booming in the cave and making the monkey scream again.
Blood poured from a hole in the center of Garm’s forehead, and the great wolf toppled.
“Step back from the monkey and nobody else has to get hurt,” Zita shouted, hoping Freelance would avoid killing anyone else.
The guy he’d been talking to ran for the closest shield, almost shoving the man already behind it out of the way. All the guards crouched behind their shields, with men on either side of the cage shooting blindly at the entryway. A single guard squinted up at the ceiling, while the fourth just stared around wildly.
If I’d been thinking instead of distracted, I would’ve recognized the screaming was a monkey, even with the distortion of the caves and the stupid tiredness. Doesn’t mean they haven’t tossed someone in the cells, like the healer, either. Zita abandoned her original plan to creep up and take down Garm and flew along most-shadowy parts of the ceiling, evading lavacicles until she passed over the head of the man farthest from the entrance. She glanced at the cells, but didn’t see or hear irascible Koschei and couldn’t spare the time to search for him or the source of an odd slurping sound.
Gunfire echoed as the men on either side of the monkey cage kept firing at the exit. Someone popped off a shot in her general direction. The two sharing a shield were muttering to each other as they alternated shots. The last man, her new target, held his weapon ready but wasn’t firing it, probably because he lacked a clear view around everyone else.
She dropped down behind him, touching down gently and using the weapons fire to disguise her own sounds. Zita pounced on him from behind, dragging him backward and choking him, counting off seconds in her head.
As his companion continued a steady barrage, one of the men sharing a shield lit a flare, wound up like a baseball pitcher, and hurled the glowing light at the entry.
The flare bounced and rolled and fell short of the entry, but illuminated it enough the empty cage nearby threw shadows.
Zita’s victim flailed and struggled, but the sounds were lost and he soon went limp.
She eased his limp body to the ground, kicking aside his weapons. As she prepared to spring on the guard who was alone behind his shield, Garm’s body twitched and rolled to the side, out of the line of sight of the doorway. He got to his feet and began sprinting toward the entry, staying out of Freelance’s sights.
The gunfire slowed.
Freelance! Zita leapt onto the man she’d been intending to target, digging in her claws and using him as a springboard. She barely noticed him falling into his shield as she flew at the wolf. “Garm’s up!”
Warned by her shout, the wolf avoided the brunt of the impact with her, but he turned and attacked even as she hit. They rolled to the side in a ball of fur and stone.
Her claws drew blood, but he bit at her enough she was certain she’d have bruises when she shifted back.
They separated. His injuries were visibly healing, and his head swung toward the empty doorway.
No mames. Time to do what I do best, even when I don’t want to. Her mind whirled as she tried to figure out how to end the fight without anyone dying as she got to her feet and began a ginga to get into position. “Running away from me? I can understand that. You’re afraid of breaking a tooth on me and then me ripping you up. I accept surrenders, you know.”
Another exchange of shots interrupted anything else she would’ve said. While Freelance wasn’t directly visible, the reddish light of the flare threw his shadow onto the floor and the cage by the doorway whenever he fired into the room.
The wolf paused, glancing at the doorway and licking his lips. “I don’t run from the weak.”
Inspiration struck. Zita somersaulted closer to the burning light and continued her dance. “You sure seem like you’re trying to escape me now. You remember all the times I’ve kicked your culo before? They sort of blur together for me. How many times is it now? Four? Five?”
His ruff rose, and he snarled, hurling himself at her. “You cheat all the time! You’re not so tough without your tricks, like that basilisk thing or switching between shapes.”
An idea sparked in the back of her mind, but Zita shoved it aside for later, focusing on their fight now. She dodged, rolling to the side and seizing the flare. Waving it in front of her, she feinted at his face, making him flinch.
“You’re all mouth and no power. I’ll kill you and then your friend in the hallway!” Garm snapped his powerful jaws at her again. He was so close that drool splattered her and a wave of warm canine breath assaulted her.
“Oye, your breath is awful. You been eating poop? You know you can get some pills for that,” she taunted, continuing to shove the light at his face. Her wings flared, spreading wide behind her and flapping as she angled herself.
The wolf shifter’s eyes blinked rapidly, and he shook his shaggy head once before snapping at her again.
I need him to lose his mind. As Zita danced backward again, still waving the flare in his face, she winced inwardly. With a silent apology, she threw out the words she knew would cut deeper. “What is it, boy? Is Tiffy calling you to come lick her boots? Oh, wait, she hasn’t come back for you since she tried to sacrifice you, has she?”
“Don’t say her name!” His howl was barely intelligible.
“Tiffy. Tiffy. Tiffffffffy.” Zita feinted with the flare.
All reason left his eyes, and he lunged at her.
She sidestepped him at the last second.
Garm slammed into the open cage behind her so hard that it rolled back and hit the wall.
Zita slammed the door shut and locked it.
He hurled himself at her, but the cage held. The enraged wolf shifter bit at the bars.
She turned toward the two remaining men.
A click sounded, and a grappling hook trailing a long rope shot out of the entryway and hooked onto their shield. His body mostly covered by the entryway, Freelance leaned out and pressed a button. The rope began to rewind.
The shield rolled forward, hit a snag in the floor, and toppled.
Zita lifted off and flew toward the now-exposed men.
The two guards broke and ran for the far side of the room, taking cover behind the pile of corpses. The man she’d used as a springboard chased behind them, while the fourth one who had been unconscious pushed himself up groggily.
In his cage, Garm gave a series of staccato barks.
An odd grunt and a moan responded from behind the pile of corpses.
“You’re not going to make me fight Cerberus, are you? I thought you liked him, and he seemed like a good boy. Boys? Does he count as one being or three?” Zita glanced that way.
Freelance jogged over and righted the shield, keeping it between himself and the corpses. He retrieved his grappling hook, winding up the attached rope.
The massive wolf stopped gnawing on the bars long enough to sneer. “Cerberus guards the entrance, well away from you and the leeches. I brought an eurynomos to clean up once I killed you, but I suppose watching it kill you will be entertaining enough. I’ve eaten smarter chickens than that animal, so you’ll be fighting on your own level.”
The taunt escaped. “What does it say about you that I tricked you a second ago, then?”
A scream and flurry of gunshots came from the other side of the room, but none of them were aimed at her. Two guards burst out from behind the pile of corpses, running for the elevator and shutting themselves in.
A creature crawled over the dead men, the movement almost human thanks to four hairless limbs that bent like arms and ended in crusty appendages somewhere between talons and fingers. The furless head and body resembled that of a deranged, half-starved hyena with a massive underbite, glowing red eyes, and baggy, wrinkled skin mottled in sickly reds, purples, and black like the mud monsters. It was two or three times the size of Garm. The lower half of a man’s arm, still clothed, hung from a cruel, jutting jaw as the animal moaned again and turned beady eyes toward where Zita stood. Unlike the creatures they’d fought at the entrance, no words shone from its forehead.
