Dust City (17 page)

Tom stumbles over and shoves the map at me. “You take it! I don’t want it anymore!”

Begrudgingly, I crumple the map into my pocket.

A few mourners on the sidewalk hug their children close, drawing them away from us. Tom lays his paw on my shoulder catching his breath. “What
was
that thing?”

I can only shake my head.

“When you flashed the light . . .” He trails off. “It looked like—like . . .”

“I know. What
did
it look like?”

There’s no time for Tom to answer, because the ground starts shaking. The mourners scream and all at once, the collapsed hole we just climbed out of erupts in a geyser of asphalt and cement. The creature itself bursts through the ground, coughing and roaring and pulling itself into the light of day.

27

TITANS

THE CREATURE ROARS, LOUDER THAN EVER, SHATTERING THE GLASS OF A SHOP
window across the street. Even though we can see it clearly now, it is still impossible to say what this thing is. Though one claw is huge, black, and mulish, the creature’s other hand is long and thin, with the amphibious sheen of a frog. Halfway up the same arm, quills begin punching through the oily skin, bristling thicker to cover its back, which is streaked with the fins of a water nixie. The legs and the head are wolfish—save for the globbish tusks that burst out like sabers. And everything—every mixed-up bit of this thing—is blown up to the scale of a giant. It’s a freakish chimera of everything in the city. Maybe this is what happens when you thrust all of us together. You get something awful.

The creature rears up, its huge eyes trained on us. A massive set of raven wings extend from its back, heaving and dragging its bulk along the ground.

Tom screams and gallops past me, off along the edge of the cemetery. I chase after him as fast as I can, and the iron
bars of the fence become a blur. The creature hobbles and flaps, shedding a trail of jet-black feathers, revealing patches of white flesh.

Meanwhile, Tom and I are running in tandem, scampering like a pair of crabs, tossed off-balance by the quaking earth. From behind me, I hear something that sounds like the pulling of a thousand teeth, the cracking of a thousand bones. It’s the cemetery fence, as the creature rips it out of the ground. The fence undulates along its length and crashes down, knocking us to the asphalt. No, not us. It’s just me who’s crushed under the fence.

“Tom!”
I call to him. “You gotta help me! You gotta lift it!”

He stops, but he doesn’t make a move. “It should’ve been Zeb,” he whispers. “Not you.”

The creature thunders closer.

“But just now in the tunnels! I
saved
you!”

“I know,” he says. “Zeb never would’ve done that.” He stoops and grips the fence, straining to lift it while I press up with all four limbs.

“Come on!” Tom screams at me. “Slide out! Hurry!”

“I can’t. I’m still—”

There’s a whoosh of air as the creature’s claw sweeps over us, batting Tom away like an insect. He shoots across the street, tumbling into the shadows of an alley.

The creature roars, baring teeth and tusks. It picks the fence up with ease. I try scampering out, but it’s got me and as I’m raised into the air by the scruff of my neck, I get a
good view of the deserted street. Everyone has run for cover. I can see a family of elves cowering in the cemetery trees.

The creature hauls me up to its face. Up close, it’s less wolfish. The hide and hair are a kind of mosaic, patches stitched together and looking loose, puffy, and ready to crumble.

“I know,” I say, speaking as calmly as I can, “that I lied before about having some dust in my bag. I don’t have any, but I could get you some.” But I’m giving this thing too much credit. It doesn’t understand a word of what I’m saying. Its other hand latches onto one of my ankles. I think to myself,
This is it. I’m about to be torn in two by a giant, mixed-up abomination from the pit of the city
. Then I sniff something on the breeze. Cigarette smoke.

“YOU ARE HURTING HENRY FRIEND!”

All at once, the throbbing pressure in my limbs vanishes. The creature drops me. It drops me because it’s defending itself—from David, the gravedigger, who has come thundering out of the cemetery in a blind run, toppling trees and kicking over mausoleums. I’ve never been so happy to see a giant in my whole life.

I land on all fours in the cemetery bushes, right in the midst of the startled family of elves. They huddle together, backing away. Instantly, we’re all thrown to the ground by a new earthquake, this one caused by David and the beast tumbling to the ground, wrestling and punching and taking cars and lampposts along for the ride.

“Henry!” someone whispers.

The elves flinch like they’ve all been shot.

“Henry!”

“Fiona?”

“Over here.” She comes crawling through the hedges, down on all fours with her camera swinging low between her forepaws. She tosses it around her back and lunges for me, throwing her forearms around my neck. “I thought that thing was gonna kill you!”

“So did I.”

“Had to convince David to come to your rescue. It wasn’t easy.”

“Guess I owe you my life.” I’m beginning to hug her back when she sees the quivering elves ogling us. She pulls away, embarrassed.

Fiona brings up her camera, snapping a few pictures. “What is that thing?” she asks.

“I have no idea.”

The fight’s moving down the street, wreaking all kinds of havoc. David’s slightly bigger, and well-muscled from a life of digging holes and lifting gravestones. But he’s only got his arms and legs to battle with. The creature has wings. And that mulish claw. And that snout full of goblin tusks. It’s using them, too, cleaving deep into David’s shoulder.

Fiona covers her mouth. “Oh, David!”

Police cars scream past. Instinctively, I hunch down to hide myself.

“I see you’re still a wanted wolf.” Fiona moves to shield me from view.

“They’re gonna send me back to St. Remus.”

Fiona lowers her voice. “Maybe you should go. Let them finish with you.” She shakes her head. “How does running away help? Look what happened to Roy.”

My throat tightens up. “W-what happened to Roy?” As if I don’t know.

“They found him a couple nights ago. In Dockside. He’d been left in a gutter, under a pile of trash.”

“Oh, no.”

“He was nearly dead.”

“Nearly?”

“They have him in the hospital now, pumping him full of dust. But it’s not enough. They can’t wake him up.”

The cops are out on the street now, trying to surround the thunderstorm of two grappling titans. All of them are armed with rifles, and they are taking aim. David’s heel kicks a parked car and sends it scudding across the street (and there goes the local pool hall).

“Fire!”

The police let loose. Tranquilizer darts loaded with sedative dust
thwip
through the air and
pop-pop-pop
into the giants’ bodies. Each one explodes on impact, barbs hooking into the skin and puffing out clouds of riot-grade fairydust.

The creature prods its snout curiously into the cloud. David, meanwhile, is startled. He fans his huge hands, trying to escape the fog of dust. But escape is impossible. The dust
knows what—and who—it’s for. David screams as the cloud swarms inside him.

Almost instantly, the giants’ feet falter and their knees buckle. A moment later, the two of them are slumped on the asphalt, dead to the world and snoring in a bruised and bloody heap.

“You should go,” Fiona tells me, “but I’m gonna stay. In case David wakes up. He’s not so good at explaining himself.”

“Okay,” I tell her. I reach out to squeeze her paw. “Thank you.”

She laughs. “Don’t worry about it. I doubt it’ll be the last time I have to save your butt.”

I drop to all fours and scamper off into the trees. I follow them along the wall and come out near one of the cemetery’s less conspicuous exits. Before heading any farther, I consult the map. I’m hoping to find another entrance to the refinery, one that will take me in behind the wall where the nixiedust is made. If Dad is right, then somewhere back there I’ll find—

“Hello, Henry.”

I close the map and crumple it into my pocket. Standing at point-blank range behind me is Detective White. She’s got her weapon drawn, leveled squarely at my chest.

“Relax,” she says. “I probably won’t shoot you, but just in case you’re wondering, this isn’t loaded with tranquilizers.” She waves her gun in the air. “I’ve always preferred real bullets.”

28

THE WAY THINGS ARE

WHITE NODS AT THE POCKET WHERE I STUFFED THE MAP. “CARTOGRAPHY,”
she says. “It’s good to have a hobby.”

I raise my paws to show her I mean no harm. “Listen,” I say, “you have to let me go.”

She laughs. “Why would I have to do that?”

“Because I know where the fairies are.”

Her face goes grim. “You shouldn’t joke about that.”

“Who’s joking?”

“You are. Obviously.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“No, kid, you might
think
you’re telling the truth, but you’re not. Nobody knows where the fairies went. They’re just gone. I oughta know. I was on the squad assigned to find them and bring them back. Only we didn’t find squat. Eden was a ghost town.” She spits on the pavement. “They’re gone. It’s just the way things are.”

“What about that thing back there—that thing that came out of the ground?”

“What about it?”

“You ever seen anything like that before?”

She shrugs. “No.”

“That’s my point. Maybe sometimes ‘the way things are’ isn’t the way they are at all.”

She raises the gun until it’s level with my snout. “Enough philosophizing. You’ll make me forget I’m still ticked off about how you gave me the slip last time around. So be a good little pup and do as I say. Sit, roll over, and play dead. It’ll make things easier.”

“But don’t you—”

“Do it.”

A shadow flashes between the trees and springs out of the hedges.

White manages to mutter something like “Wha—?” before she’s bowled over by Fiona. The gun goes skittering up the path and into the bushes. Fiona snarls and struggles to pin White to the ground. “Told you,” she says to me through gritted teeth, “I’d have to . . . save your butt . . . again.”

But White’s as slippery as they come. She’s fast, too. Every motion has the practiced calm of a martial art. All Fiona can do is hope to outweigh her. Unfortunately, as I’ve already seen, a weight advantage isn’t much use against Detective White.

She slips out of Fiona’s grip, spins low to the ground, and sweeps her leg into the back of Fiona’s knees. Fiona falls flat on her face, while White flips to her feet without any
effort at all. She spends an instant roving the path with her eyes. When she can’t spot her weapon, she hunches into a grappler’s stance. Her pale hands, still spotted with scabs of countless brawls, curl into fists.

“Two against one,” she says. “That’s okay. Try
seven
against one sometime. That’s more my speed.”

My own eyes go to the bush where the gun skittered away. I don’t think White saw where—

Fast as lightning, she’s on me, throwing punches and kicks that seem to come ten at a time. She snatches one of my fingers and chicken-wings me just like she did Gunther, shoving me to my knees. Then, suddenly, she eases off. She steps back with her head cocked to the side.

“You’re not very good at resisting arrest, are you?”

“I’ve never had to before.”

“The least you could do is make it interesting.” She shrugs. “Aw, never mind. I’ve wasted enough time on you already.” She approaches casually, as if it doesn’t matter what I do. That makes me mad. I rise up to my full height and rotate my big, thick skull, smoothing out the kinks. Fiona rises up, too, a pair of big bad wolves against one puny hominid.

White smiles. “Now that’s more like it.” She rushes me, but this time I’ve steeled myself, and I block as many of her blows as I can. A few still hit their mark, but she’s got to contend with Fiona now, as well. Only White’s ready for her. She seems to get better—swifter, more accurate—when she’s in an unfair fight.

She chops me one in the throat that sends me coughing and reeling backward, and then deals Fiona a backhanded punch followed by a leaping kick to the ribs. Fiona goes tumbling into the bushes, which makes me even angrier.

White lunges for me and lands a heel on my thigh muscle. The promise of a bruise resonates all the way into my gut. But she has taught me a thing or two in this fight, namely, diversion and speed (in that order), so I fake with one paw and lash out with the other. She’s fast, but my knuckles catch the curve of her chin.

She staggers, dazed and shaking some sense back into her head. I can’t help regretting what I just did: punched a woman half my size square in the face. But in a second she’s steadied herself and is regarding me with something that looks a lot like admiration. Cherry-red blood trickles from her cherry-red lips. She doesn’t bother dabbing it away. “Nice one,” she says. “Nobody’s hit me that hard in weeks.” She smiles, spreading her lips so the flow widens and dribbles from her chin. “Maybe I misjudged you. Maybe you’re more like your father than I thought. Maybe someplace deep down, you really
do
have that killer instinct.”

I roar at her, and for the first time, I see real fear in the eyes of the infamously hard-bitten Detective White.

Then there’s a gunshot.

It’s Fiona. She’s standing in the bushes, White’s gun cocked straight up at Eden.

White looks her up and down. “I know you,” she says. “Or
rather, I know your brother.” She nods thoughtfully. “How’s he making out, by the way?”

Fiona points the gun at White. “Where’re your handcuffs?”

The detective narrows her eyes. “In here.” She points to a pocket. “Why don’t you come and get them?”

Fiona shakes her head. “Get them yourself. But first, throw me the keys.”

Reluctantly, White does as she’s told.

“Good. Now cuff yourself to the fence.”

White doesn’t move.

Fiona takes a step forward. “I’m not kidding,” she growls. “Do it.”