Backpacking Through Bedlam, page 27
“It’s like we’re related or something,” I said.
The telepathic hum had gotten louder as we worked our way deeper into the building, and in this room, it was so loud that I almost couldn’t focus on anything else. I frowned, looking around the room, but saw no sign of Sarah. What I did see was a bunch of highly upset dragons who seemed to have decided that blaming Thomas for all their problems, back to the dawn of time, was going to make those problems go away.
If I still couldn’t see Sarah, she was actively shielding herself as hard as she could. I did inherit some of my mother’s resistance to Johrlac influence, which meant that for her to stay unseen, she had to really be focusing on her shields. She was upset, probably because everyone else was upset, and it’s hard for telepaths to avoid that sort of thing.
No way was I going to stand by while these people upset my granddaughter and blamed my husband for things that weren’t his fault. I stepped over to his side, close enough that our shoulders were brushing, and smiled a bright, unnerving smile at the dragons around the table. “Hi,” I said, voice bright and a little vacant, the way it had been when I was a children’s librarian who didn’t want to worry anyone. “It looks like you’ve started without me. Oopsie. I’m Alice, this nice gentleman’s wife, and he’s not a traitor, and we’re not the ones who led the Covenant to your doorstep. You did that just fine on your own by making speciesist assumptions about humans, which is a reasonable thing to do, since we’re kind of awful sometimes, but works against you when you never take other factors into account.”
The dragons looked at me blankly.
“Humans are primates. It’s part of why we have such a wide range of facial diversity across the species; we evolved from animals that form strong social bonds, need to be able to avoid accidentally impregnating a direct descendant, and tend to travel in groups. We recognize each other almost purely visually, with no dependence on scent cues or psychic signals. That means even closely related humans will have some morphological differences, to help us tell each other apart. Dragons aren’t all identical, but your differences are more subtle than ours, so sometimes we can be assholes and mistake you for one another. And then you assume we’re incapable of telling you apart. But humans will even figure out ways of telling cuckoos apart, if you give us enough time, and the Covenant team that’s been watching the area has had plenty of time.”
“Then how do you explain them attacking just as you arrived?” demanded one of the dragons.
I shrugged. “Shitty coincidence? The universe trying to make sure everything happens at once so we don’t get too comfortable trying to deal with it? The Covenant being smart enough to move when they saw an opportunity? If they saw us show up—and that’s a big ‘if,’ but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen—then they may have thought this was their best shot at acting without attracting the attention of the whole Nest.”
“Why?” asked another dragon.
“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up. “I can’t speak for the Covenant. I was never a member. I’ve never been in one of their strongholds. But I know they’re reasonably clever people, or they wouldn’t have been able to keep causing problems for this long, and they would be aware that new people coming into an established group almost always leads to a period of adjustment. Strike during that period, and your chances are better than if you wait for things to stabilize. One thing’s for sure: you’ve all been complacent and arrogant.”
“I don’t like your tone,” said the first dragon.
“Well, I don’t like the fact that one of the first things Verity said to me was that the Covenant could use temperature sensors to pick you out of a crowd, and you’re all clustered here in a target-rich environment, and there’s no possible way the Covenant hasn’t flagged at least one of you coming or going. They haven’t attacked because they don’t know Verity and Dominic are in here, and because someone let slip about your husband. They must be hoping you’ll lead them to him.”
The dragons looked collectively horrified. Finally, in a stiff tone, one of them said, “That’s a wild accusation.”
“Is it? Because I just met a group of yong who knew you had a male of your species somewhere in this city, but not exactly where. And the dragons in Los Angeles know about him. It was the biggest secret possible. You can’t be blamed for not keeping it perfectly.”
The dragons muttered but didn’t say anything. I took that as a good sign.
“Look,” I said. “They probably think they could wipe you out whenever they wanted. Sometimes the thing to do with a nest of vipers is to leave it alone, since at least then you know where they are. You can always come back and clean it up when the time is right. Your husband, though? He’s a much bigger, better target. They’re trying to find their way to him. They’ve probably been watching for weeks to see how you’re getting the kids in and out of here, and today was just the day they decided to strike.” I didn’t know much about how routewitches viewed time, but if they could bend it like they did distance, even a little bit, the timing of this attack explained why Apple had been in such a hurry to get us out here.
A little warning would have been nice.
“Cara will never talk,” said one of the dragons, hotly.
“Can you say the same about the kids?” I asked. When none of them said anything, I asked, “Does this Cara do the pickup runs very often?”
“She’s our primary driver,” said another dragon.
“Okay,” I said. “Look, we know the Covenant has been looking for you. It’s pretty clear at this point that they know about William, or they know that people believe in William, and they’ve been hunting for dragons. That part isn’t conjecture. We know that’s happening. So if they’ve been trying to find dragons, what makes you think having identical physiognomy was going to be enough to keep you anonymous and safe here? Sure, they can’t tell you by your faces, but they can recognize you by your hair. By your favorite jacket. By your shoes.”
Hair is actually a lot more important than most people want to think it is. Mine had always served me as a form of camouflage, long and tidy when I was playing the good little children’s librarian, short and styled with a literal knife when I was trying to convince the universe that I was a badass bounty hunter who could handle anything it wanted to throw at me. Maybe it’s the shallow human in me, but if I can put the right costume on, I can play the role.
“Sally and I were snatched by a group of yong when we went out for pizza.” So much for not letting Thomas know what had happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn to stare at me. “Okay, well, Sally was snatched, Mary and I tracked her down.” Good thing she’d already declared herself family and hence trackable through phantom means. “They were watching the door before we got here. When they saw Sally, they assumed she was the representative for a different Clutch of yong who’d been allowed access to your Nest for some reason, and they didn’t approve.”
“If you were going to let me in, they thought you should be letting them in, too,” said Sally. “They kinda sucked.”
The dragons were getting visibly upset. “They shouldn’t have been poking around here,” said one of them, sharply. “They had no right to take you.”
Several of the dragons nodded, and it was clear where their thoughts were trending. I decided to cut this off before they could get all the way around to declaring some sort of draconic feud against the local yong Clutch. As badly off as European dragons tended to be in the modern, human-dominated world, all the other kinds have come off even worse, which is sort of funny when you consider that it was European dragons who inspired the creation of the Covenant in the first place.
Sometimes the world puts a concerted effort into not being fair.
I turned my attention on the dragon who’d spoken. “Look. I don’t think the yong are working with the Covenant, but I think the Covenant saw them create a potentially serious diversion by snatching someone who’d come out of your shop, and so they moved while they thought there was a chance the people here might be distracted. They may have used the yong to serve their own ends. That doesn’t make the yong traitors to the rest of the cryptid world.”
“I’m sure you’re unsurprised to hear that I agree with Alice,” said Thomas. “In this case, it’s not because of her tactical analysis of the situation, but because of my own experiences with my former employers. They’ll have changed some of their tactics in the last fifty years, absolutely, but they won’t have changed them enough to voluntarily work with any sort of dragon, whatever their origins. All of your myriad breeds are ranked among their greatest monsters.”
Mary stepped through the door behind us, tapping Verity on the shoulder and murmuring something in her ear. Verity paled as she nodded, then turned to follow Mary out of the room. Oh, that probably wasn’t good. Anything that couldn’t be discussed in front of the people who seemed to be our hosts . . . not great. I kept my eyes on the dragons, standing in steady support of Thomas.
Several of the dragons looked around when they heard Verity pull the door shut behind her. I snapped my fingers.
“Hey,” I said. “We’re the problem in front of you. We’re the ones you’re debating whether or not to trust. I’m assuming that if you come down on the wrong side of things, we get tossed out of here?”
Awkward silence answered me, telling me I was right. I snorted.
“You know how human kids are afraid of finding a bogeyman in their closet? Well, the Covenant of St. George is afraid of finding us in their closet. You don’t want us to leave. You want us to get your people back.”
“Do you think you can?” asked one of the dragons.
“I think we stand a better chance than almost anybody else you might call,” I said. “And I think you can’t be the ones who do it, because that would just put more of you in danger. You need humans. You need people the Covenant might hesitate to shoot. I hate to put it that way, but you know it’s true.”
The dragons turned to each other, muttering too low for me to hear for several seconds before they turned and looked levelly back at us. They weren’t a hive mind. I knew they weren’t a hive mind. In that moment, they managed to seem unified enough that they might as well have been.
“Fine,” said the dragon who’d been speaking before. “We’ll let you stay for now, but only because your granddaughter vouches for you, and you can do less damage where we can keep an eye on you. But you will be watched.”
“Guessing that means we can’t go out for another pizza, huh?” I asked.
The dragons ignored me as they filed out of the room, leaving the three humans alone.
Three humans, and one overwhelmingly loud psychic hum. I looked around as Thomas was turning to Sally.
“Taken?” he asked, voice low and dangerous.
There was a chair shoved into one corner where no chair belonged, too far from the table to be useful.
“I didn’t see them,” said Sally.
“I thought I taught you better than to be caught unawares.”
“For a desolate desert environment, sure, but not here on Earth!”
“You’ll need lessons in urban self-defense, then. Noted.”
“And it was fine. Mary and Alice found me, and the yong didn’t hurt me. I don’t think they wanted to hurt me. They seemed . . . sad, mostly, like they were missing something they couldn’t get back.”
I moved closer to the chair, fighting the sudden urge to look away from it.
“Alice?” Thomas’s voice was sharp with curiosity. “What are you looking at?”
“Well, unless I’m completely out of practice, which I’m pretty sure I’m not, I’m looking at one of our granddaughters who you have yet to meet,” I said, making an effort to keep my voice as gentle as I could. “Sarah, would you like to stop screening yourself and meet your grandfather? He’s been gone for a long time, but I bet he’d be really happy to meet you, wouldn’t you, Thomas?”
“Sarah—oh, the Johrlac.”
“Yes. Sarah.” I kept watching the chair. “She’s Kevin’s wife’s adopted sister, but age-wise, she’s always been part of the grandchild swarm, and she’s a granddaughter as far as I’m concerned. She’s ours, and I love her very much.”
“Um, boss?” Sally sounded dubious. “Alice is talking to the air.”
“Yes.”
“Why is Alice talking to the air?”
“Because I think Sarah is a little too overwhelmed to want to be beheld right now,” I said, and sighed. “Sweetheart, I don’t know why you’re hiding—or when you got strong enough to hide this well, honestly, this is some grade-A hiding, I’m very impressed—but you can come out, I promise. No one here is going to be angry with you. I’ve missed you. A lot.”
“Really?” The question was asked with heartbreaking hesitance as the air shimmered in the chair, and Sarah appeared. No—that makes it sound like she became visible as she entered the room, the way it worked with Mary. She had been there all along. She just hadn’t been something we could see before that moment.
As always, she was skinny and pale, with long, dark hair and shockingly blue eyes, dressed in a sweater at least three sizes too large for her. It bunched around her waist, engulfed her hands, and generally threatened to swallow her completely. Her skirt was almost ankle-length, and she was wearing thick leggings underneath it. Compared to her, I was underdressed. Compared to her, Thomas was underdressed, and he had his sleeves buttoned to the wrist.
“You’ve really missed me, and you’re not mad?”
Sally jumped. “How the fu— Where did she come from?”
I smiled. “Sarah, meet your newest . . . I genuinely have no idea what her relation to you is, and we’re probably going to need a flowchart at this rate, but Thomas adopted her while he was lost in a murder dimension, and she’s going to be sticking around. Her name’s Sally. Sally, this is Sarah. She’s a cuckoo.”
“Hi,” said Sarah, hesitantly. She stood, swaying a little, her hands still covered by the sleeves of her sweater. I opened my arms in invitation, and managed not to stagger as she flung herself into them, clinging to me tightly—careful, I noticed, not to touch even a centimeter of my skin. That was interesting.
One thing Johrlac and cuckoos have in common: their powers work better when they’re making skin contact. Sarah had always been reluctant to touch people, but she’d never been this armored against the very possibility. It was like touching me was the worst thing she could imagine. Added to her ability to shield herself from me effectively while we were in the same room, it painted a slightly unnerving picture of her current situation.
“Sweetheart, are you all right?” I pushed Sarah out to arm’s length, looking at her carefully. She’d lost weight since the last time I’d seen her, and there were dark shadows around her eyes; she hadn’t been sleeping well. I frowned. “You need to eat something.”
“Can that wait until after we find the missing dragons?” she asked, a little anxiously.
“I think it may have to,” said Thomas. “Our hosts are very upset about the loss of their children, as well they should be. People who interfere with the young are the worst kind of predator, and if some of those taken were young males, they’re in extreme danger.”
“Verity already asked me to look for them,” said Sarah. “Unfortunately, the Covenant equips their field operatives with anti-telepathy charms, and I can’t track them. Wherever they’ve taken Cara and the children, it’s a shielded location.”
“Meaning you don’t even know whether they’re dead or alive,” I concluded. I glanced to Sally. “Telepathy has limitations. It can be blocked.”
“And every telepath has an effective range,” Sarah added. “I used to be able to scan an area of about five square miles if I wasn’t trying to look too closely and overwhelming myself. I can do more than that now, but I still can’t punch through strong charms. Thankfully. I know it’s selfish when there are kids in danger, but if I could push through charms, I’d never be able to sleep again.”
“You need to sleep in warded rooms?” asked Thomas.
Sarah nodded. “Or I just pick up on the dreams of everyone around me, and that’s not usually a good thing.”
“What’s your current range?” I asked.
Sarah glanced down at her feet and mumbled something. I frowned.
“I didn’t quite catch that. Try again?”
“I said, I can scan most of the tri-state area if I really try, and I’ve never picked up on a single Covenant agent.” She glanced up again. “We know they’re here, so they’re all protected.”
I didn’t want to ask her how she’d expanded her range to cover that kind of distance, not in the presence of two people who might be her family, but were also relative strangers. So instead, I blinked slowly, then nodded. “Got it. You can’t be much help, then.”
“Not yet,” she said. “I can keep my mind open in case they slip up now that they have the asshole dragon-slayer holy grail in their custody—they might get sloppy with their shielding, but it’s unlikely that’ll happen. It’s good to see you, Grandma. It’s nice to be near someone I can read who’s not freaking out.”
“I think my freaking-out days are mostly over,” I said, putting a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “I found what I was looking for.”
“I always hoped you would,” she said gravely. Flicking her attention briefly to him, she added shyly, “Hi, Mr. Price. I know . . . I know you’re not related to the Healy side of the family by blood, but—”
“I should hope not,” said Thomas. “We’ve had several children, and that would be difficult to explain to them.”
“—I still can’t read you,” she finished. “Your thoughts are even fuzzier than Grandma’s. I know with her it’s because of who her ancestors were. Why is it like that with you?”
“I have anti-telepathy charms built into my tattoos,” he said. “They’re not as effective at close range as the removable kind, but they do well enough for situations like this one.”
