Really Unusual Bad Boys (16 page)

“M
aybe this is a silly question,” Gladys began. “O my Gladys, I doubt that.”

“Wait 'til you hear the question,” Lois suggested.

“But why can't we just cancel the Groomfight?”

“Cancel?”

“You know…send everyone home? Tell them the prince got married while he was—uh—abroad, and there's no point to it, and thanks for coming, and then they can go.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Anne commented. “But I imagine there is a deeply ingrained cultural—”

“Cancel means to say you will be a host and then
not
be a host?” Sekal looked as horrified as Rica had ever seen him, and since the king had been having a rough week, that was pretty bad. “To invite people—females—from across the land, and then when they arrive after a long journey, say there will be no fight, that they came for nothing, and they must go home without even the honor of open combat?”

“Okay, okay, calm down, Sekal.” Lois flapped her hands at him. “Your pills? See, I knew it wasn't going to be that easy.
Nothing in my new life is easy.”

“I'm sorry we're such a burden,” Anne said.

“I never thought about how difficult all this must be for you,” Rica added.

“Aw, bite me, both of you. You're the sisters-in-law from hell, I swear. Nope, the only thing for it is for Rica to go down there and kick some major ass.
All
the ass, in fact.” Lois looked a little anxious. “You've got a plan, right, Rica? Or at least a gun? Right? You're not just going down there for the sake of pride to get your ass kicked? There's a plan?”

“It will be fine,” Rica assured her, which was a bit of a lie—she had no idea if it would be fine or not. But she would try. She would be her father's daughter and give it everything she had.

And she would be her mother's daughter as well.

“Where's Shakar? I mean, I know he's not exactly thrilled about this—”

“Oh, he'll be along,” Lois said cheerfully. “He's tied up right now.”

Rica frowned. “You mean in a meeting? A prince thing? Well, if it keeps his mind off—”

“No, I mean tied up. With rope. Except these guys don't use rope, it's like some kind of living—never mind.”

“Maybe you'd better start over.”

“Okay. Damon and Maltese were up at first light and set a trap, literally set a trap, and I guess he's been trying to get out of it so he can stop you from taking his medicine. Or something like that.” Lois cocked her head, listening. “Oh, okay. He's almost out. They're all in their puma forms—you've seen Shakar's big cat, right? Right. Well, your mom could probably do it, too.”

“If your mother could do it,” Anne began, “isn't it possible that—”

“Hello, talking here!”

“There are times when I loathe you,” Anne told her, “so much.”

“Anyway,
your disgraced sweetie will be here any second. Just in time to introduce himself to the crowd.” Lois moved to the window and peeked out. “How many women would you say are down there, anyway? Boy, just think, all of 'em want to have hot monkey love with Shakar.”

“How could they want him?” Anne exclaimed, also taking a peek. “They don't even know him.”

“Oh, honey, you've never seen a picture of Prince William, have you? Never mind. Rica knows what I'm talking about.”

“Who?” Rica asked.

“You know. Pr—”

“Rica.” The king stepped into the room. “It is time. Are you ready?”

“Sure. Let's get it over with.” She tried to smile and, after a moment, succeeded. “Once I get down there and in the middle of it, I won't be nervous anymore.”

“That is how it is,” the king assured her. “If you cannot flee, you must fight, and if you must fight, your dread departs.”

“Someone should cross-stitch that on a pillow,” Lois said.

“I'll get right on that,” she replied, and allowed him to lead her to the lower level.

To the Groomfight.

“I
t is an honor for me to see how many of you wish to participate,” the king was saying…Lois couldn't
believe
how much Sekal was droning.
Get
on
with it, Chrissake.
Rica was probably a nervous wreck, ready to spew even if she didn't have morning sickness. “It is an honor,” King Droney McDrone continued, “in light of this, our newest celebration, the Groomfight.”

“I hope nobody on this balcony is thinking this is my fault,” Lois said sharply.

“Oh no, why would we think that? It's not like you planted the idea in his head after the thing with Damon. Don't let your elastic conscience give you a moment of trouble,” her mom said, in that deadly sweet/sarcastic tone Lois knew so well.

“—our son, the good Prince Shakar!”

Cheers. Waves. Feminine shrieks. It was like a Beatles reunion down there.

“I protest this and insist that all you good ladies immediately—
whgggllllfff!”

“Whoops, he's down again.” Lois observed Damon and Maltese tackle their youngest brother, bearing him momentarily out of sight. She had a glimpse of Shakar's foot flying up and then disappearing as he was borne off of his chair. “Poor guy. He really needs to just accept what's going on.”

“Yes, dear, you're the exact right person to give that particular piece of advice for this particular occasion.”

“Mooooommmmmm…” It's just as unacceptable to throttle your mom here as it is back home. It's just as unacceptable to throttle your mom here as it is back home. It's just
—“Whoops, here we go.” Looked like things were (finally) starting up down below.

There was already a line forming on the opposite end of the arena; man, those chickies were itching to take a crack at Rica. There was an awful lot of whispering and meaningful looks, too. Lois wondered if the gossip—that Shakar was already married, so take it easy on the little woman—might backfire:
There's the ho that stole our man.

She heard a crash from Shakar's general direction—nuts, she'd thought all the breakables had been removed from the general area. She didn't bother to look; she kept her eyes on the arena floor, where—there! The first challenger had transformed into…it looked like a small leopard, all spotty and sleek and, frankly, more than a match for Rica with her two legs and bare, vulnerable skin.

“Barbaric,” was Anne's comment. “And not just the fighting. She doesn't seem to mind being unclothed in front of all these people. I guess that's something. I know I couldn't do it.”

“Being naked is the least of her problems,” Lois said, eyeing the competition.

“I agree. At least give her a weapon. Possibly six.”

“Seems like there's a plan, though,” Lois said. “Sekal's a little too relaxed, get me?”

“Mmmm.”

Sekal was saying something—probably “Please don't kill my daughter-in-law”—but she lost it in the roar of the crowd. The little leopard started circling Rica, almost lazily.

And then…

“What on God's
earth?”
Anne gasped, but of course, they weren't on God's earth, this was another place entirely, and Rica…

Rica was a panther. A large, muscular, sleek panther of deepest black, a panther who left prints in the sand that were far, far bigger than Lois's hand, a panther whose muscles moved like velvet beneath the fur. Lois caught movement out of the corner of her eye and saw Damon, Maltese, and Shakar, all with their arms wrapped around each other (
awwwww
), all gaping at the enormous jungle animal Rica had become. She was…she was so…she was…

“My God, she's gi-normous! Well, sure—shit, Rica's a big girl, too, it makes sense—thanks for telling us so we
wouldn't worry or anything!”
Lois bawled down to the arena. “I mean, it might be considered, I dunno,
important information to share,
but shit, what do I know?”

“I'd say we have just deduced the plan,” Anne said.

“Oh, please, look at that girl. She could
eat
all of them and still have room for lunch. This fight's over.”

In fact, it did seem like Rica's transformation to her other form—her mother's gift, as it were—had made a powerful impression on the other participants. The small leopard had gone from lazy circles to wary backpedaling.

Rica popped back to her two-legged form. “Oh, come on,” she said, and laughed a little. “There's gotta be
one
of you who doesn't mind having a spat.”

“It's not just the color—though it's striking, and I've never seen anybody else here with fur like that. It's her size…she must be a head taller, at least, than all these other women. So, correspondingly, her animal form—puma? Panther? Well, it seems that—”

“Yeah, yeah, it's all a rich mystery just waiting for you to figure out.
Oooh,
there goes Shakar—he either knocked our husbands out or they let him go. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall down there right now?”

 

“Now, I know you're mad—
oof!”
She fought for breath as he hugged her hard enough to make her gasp. “Okay, okay. Yes, I'm fine. And I know I should have told you. But to be fair, there were quite a few things you left out of our engrossing dialogue. So I figure, this squares us up. Now, it's not that I'm embarrassed or ashamed or anything, but only my mom and I could do that, and it kind of freaked Dad out, so I sort of got used to it being a private thing, and after they died, it was a
really
private thing, and there never seemed a good time to bring it up, and then with the baby and all—”

“Oh, Rica,” Shakar said into her hair, squeezing her like she was—well, like she was a black shiny thing that should have been a feather but wasn't. “I'm
so glad
you're safe. Both of you.”

“Yeah, well, Lois is right, you're a dumb-ass,” she laughed, squeezing back. “I think part of the reason I didn't tell you is because I was waiting for you to figure it out. Didn't you tell me your mother was from my world?
You're
all half-breeds, too.”

“Yes, but my good father is the king. Kings are different. They can do many things ordinary men can't.” Shakar said it with total confidence, and Rica decided to save that one for another day.

“…And to treat her honorably and gently through all my sunrounds. This I so vow,” the king added. “It is my vow.”

Dead silence. Then Gladys said, “I don't know why I keep expecting a minister to appear out of nowhere and run this thing…now please say, man and wife.”

“Man and wife,” the king repeated obediently.

“Okay, now we're married.”

“There, was that so friggin' hard?” Lois asked.
“Thank
you.”

“Two weddings!” Gladys cried, and gave the king a loud smack right on the mouth. He looked surprised, but happy. “One right after the other…though I s'pose they were already married. Er, were they?”

“No one can say we're not married now,” Rica said, reaching up and squeezing Shakar's hand, which had been hovering protectively over her shoulder since she'd left the arena. “Wasn't that part of the point?”

“It was a splendid surprise,” the king said.

“Oh, yes,” the queen added. “I thought it was impressive when you did that in your room when it was just the three of us, but to see it out on the floor like that in front of all those other girls…”

“Who got even paler.” Rica smirked. “If that's possible.”

“Attempt to be less smug in victory,” Anne advised.

“You showed the king and queen?” Shakar asked, sounding wounded.

“Well, if you'd been there, I would have shown you, too. But you stayed away. All night long.”

“I thought…I had brought disgrace upon us. I felt you would not welcome me to your bed.”

“Well, see what happens when you stay out of the bedroom. You miss all kinds of things.”

“There wasn't much of a fight, though,” Lois said. “So, canceling it would have been a huge breach of honor, but all of them chickening out and not fighting wasn't?”

“There were a couple of dustups,” Rica said. “Couple of them wanted to try their chops. It was fine. Nobody got hurt. Well,
I
didn't get hurt.”

“And—I'm not
quite
done bitching and moaning yet, Rica, sorry—and the dark travelers, the devils, the horrible evil awful things, they turned out to be grumpy brunettes with speech impediments. Meanwhile, Rica's black—I'm not the only one who noticed, right? And her cat form is black—naturally. And everyone's all,
ooooooh,
that's so different it's cool. I mean, what is
with
you people?”

“I think any culture seems different and strange when you look at it from the outside. We would have difficulty explaining our society to our husbands, don't you think?”

“Well, at least Rica's from the same place as Mom and me. But how can you not know who Prince William is?” she joked.

“I've heard of
King
William, of course.”

“Sure, sure, K—one more time?”

“Well, you know. The British royal family kept their titles but lost their money years and years ago, but in the history books, King William did a lot for England after his grandmother—”

“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.” Lois turned to Shakar. “I thought you said you went to my world. Her farm in my world.”

“I did. What is wrong?”

Lois turned back to Rica. “Your farm on Earth.”

Rica laughed. “Of course not on Earth. Nobody can afford to live on Earth anymore.”

“Uh-huh. This farm—barn animals, right?”

“Sure. You know, like krakens and bo'swill and, I dunno, some shrepen…animals you'd find on any farm, I guess.”

“On any farm in the Twilight Zone! But…you can't be an alien, your slang…contractions…Anne says most languages don't evolve anywhere near the same way, so the chances that you'd be an alien who could speak perfectly accented English and who—”

“I was born on the farm,” Rica said, mystified—why did Lois look so oddly at her? “Of course, I'm not from Earth, but my grandparents were. They helped build the ships…that's why we call ourselves colonists. We explored and made new homes for ourselves.”

“So that place is not where my mother was from?” Shakar, thank goodness, was taking this a lot better than Lois was. It had never occurred to Rica…she assumed he…well, frankly, she did a stupid thing and assumed he knew things he couldn't possibly know. So who was the dumb-ass now? “Well, it is a very nice farm and I wish to go back.”

“And now we can. We can go back and forth, like we planned.”

“Wait a minute here, let's try to stay on track. So…Anne's from the past…the forties. And Mom and I are from the present. But you…you're from the future.” Lois was walking around her admiringly. “No wonder you're so tall! Ah, but ultimately cool, as anyone whose parents were from Earth must be.” She stopped prowling around Rica, which was something of a relief. “That makes you think, though, doesn't it? You guys all found the perfect wife…mate…and we're all from different times and one of us is from a totally different planet. I mean, what are the chances?”

“Well, my father built this machine that can move between worlds—”

“Of course he did, of
course
he did, he's some kind of supergenius from the future!”

“Um,” Rica began.

“He probably built invisibility rays and flying cars, too. Did he have a gi-normous head?”

“Not that I ever noticed. So, Shakar, in all the excitement I never got a tour of this place.” She seized his elbow and started to propel him out of the room.

“I guess the party's over,” Anne said, sounding amused.

“I bet he
did
have a gi-normous head. How can I get her to tell me?”

 

“All this excitement. My! It's much more interesting here than in Cottage Grove.”

“Do not fear, Gladys. It is quiet here,” the king—her new husband—assured her. “For many sunrounds, nothing happens.”

“Oh. Well, that's good. At my age I like a little peace and quiet.” They were in the king's sumptuous quarters, standing beside the window and looking out into the darkening SandLands. Her home now. Odd how a girl born and bred in Minnesota could find comfort in the heat of a strange desert, under an odd sun.

“Your age, my Gladys? You are not so old.”

“After the last couple of months, I feel old,” she admitted.

“I like your smile marks,” Sekal said, putting a big hand on her face and then tracing her laugh lines. “I like that you have seen many things. You will tell me many things?”

“I'll tell you whatever you want.”

“Will you tell me that you cherish me?”

“I don't think we should base this marriage on lies,” she teased, but when he didn't smile back, she said, “I do cherish you. I think you're wonderful. I—I didn't like my last husband. I like you a lot.”

“Your first mate, with all respect, sounds like a fool.”

“He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer,” she admitted, “but back then, beggars couldn't be choosers. I was in trouble and he—”

“I do not wish to spend our first night as mates speaking of old mates.”

“Me either.” In a sudden fit of daring, she leaned forward and kissed him, half-waiting to be

(“Susan Sarandon is older than you and her ass is in a helluva lot better shape.”)

rebuffed. To her delight, not only did he kiss her back, but his strong arms came up and around her, cradling her. Making her feel safe. Cherished.

“Oh, Sekal,” she whispered, staring into his wise purple eyes. “You're wonderful.”

“I am only as you see me, my queen.” He kissed her again, more urgently, and she tugged on his robes as they fell on the bed together.

 

“Forget it, Damon.”

“But, my Lois—”

“No. I can't do it when I know my mom is somewhere else in the palace doing it.”

“But it is one of the queen's duties to mate with—”

“Stop,
stop
!”

“But—”

“No way, Damon. Any other night but tonight.”

“Oh, Lois.”

“Sorry, pal.”

He sighed. “Will morning never come?”

She laughed. “Cry me a river, Damon.”

 

Rica stretched. “It serves me right, assuming you knew where you were.”

“It serves me right, then, also. But it does not matter, Rica, truly. I thought I sought my mother's world, but as I have said, it was you I truly sought.”

“Aw.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “You keep talking like that, you'll make me forget I'm still pissed at you.”

“And I at you, Rica. It was still a foolish risk.”

“Are you kidding? Did you see all those scrawny little white girls? And their scrawny little kitty shapes? My grandma could have taken 'em.”

“Perhaps that is so but I found the morning quite…aggravating.”

“Race you back to the farm.”

“Well, no, Rica, but soon? I confess,” he added, pulling her to him, “I miss our privacy. It was our place.”

“This can be, too. My folks could only have one world, and it sounds like your mama couldn't run off and leave this place without a queen. But we're luckier: we've got both worlds. Your home, full of family and fun and the people you love, and my home, with the animals and the work and the space. All that space…” She sighed, thinking of her home. Their home. Someday to be her baby's home…that, and the SandLands, where he or she would be a member of the royal family. But time enough to work all that out later.

“And the lake that was made by men,” he added. “Do not forget that.”

“Forget it? Honey, I've been trying to figure out how to bring it up. You know, it'd be really easy to design one. Then we just gotta get it built. Then—”

He stopped her with a kiss. “Then we will do many things and you will build many things to honor your father. But as for now…” He scooped her up easily enough, though he nearly whacked her head against the door frame. “…I never did see your room.”

“It's the second star to the left,” she sighed, enjoying the sensation of being carried. “And straight on 'til morning.”

“What?”

“It's the doorway at the end of this hall.” She wriggled free and he nearly dropped her. She looked up at him, laughing. “Race you.”