Stone Cold (31 page)

Read on for an excerpt from

Devon Monk's thrilling new novel,

 

HOUSE IMMORTAL

 

Coming in September 2014 from Roc!

They named the comet Mercury Star. Not for how brightly it burned, but for the star-shaped hole it punched into the land and the rich, strange mix of minerals it left behind.

—L.U.C.

The way I saw it, a girl only needed three things to start a day right: a hot cup of tea, a sturdy pair of boots, and for the feral beast to die the first time she stabbed it in the brain.

“You missed, Matilda,” Neds called out from where he was leaning in the cover of trees several yards off.

“No,” I said, “I didn't. This one doesn't have a brain to hit. Kind of like a certain farmhand I know.” I pulled the knife out of the crocboar's skull and sank it into the thrashing creature's eye.

It lunged at me, its three-foot tusks and long snout lined with crocodile teeth slashing a little too close for comfort. Crocboars weren't smart, but they had the teeth, claws, and tough skin to make up for it.

“Now you made it mad,” Neds said.

“Not helpful.” I jumped out of the way and pulled out my other knife.

“I've got the tranq gun right here,” he said. “And a clear shot.”

“No. Wait. I want the meat clean.”

Keeping property out here in the scrub meant occasionally trapping and taking down feral beasts before they damaged crops or the domesticated animals. Crocboar weren't good eating, since they were too filled up with the nano that laced the soil of this land. But they made terrific dragon chow.

The beast thrashed some more, ran out of steam, folded down on its knees, and fell over dead.

Just like that.

“Can't get over how quick these things fall,” Right Ned said.

“Who are you calling brainless, by the way?” Left Ned said.

I shook the slime off my gloves—crocboars excreted oil—and glanced at Neds.

Most people stared, eyes wide and mouths open, when they first met Neds. There was good reason for it. Neds had two heads but only the one body, which was never the most normal sort of thing.

Both of him had sandy blond hair cut short and soft blue eyes that gave him an innocent shine, when most times he was anything but. He was clean-cut good-looking, a few inches taller than me, tanned and hard-muscled from farmwork—something you could tell even though he wore a dark green T-shirt and baggy denim overalls.

He'd left the touring circus and was looking for a job, when he saw the ad I'd taken out at the local feed store. I wanted a farmhand to help with the land and the stitched beasts my father, Dr. Case, had left in my keeping. Especially since my brother, Quinten, hadn't been home in over three years, something that worried me terribly.

Most people had been scared off by one thing or another in that ad: the hard work, the beasts, or me—a single women holding down her own chunk of land far enough from a city that I was barely covered by House Green and wasn't even on the power grid. Neds never complained about any of that. He'd been a fixture on the farm for two years.

“Bring the net over,” I said. “We have some dragging to do.”

It didn't take us long to throw the net over the beast and tug it tight so the rough hide caught in the rope fiber.

I took one last look around at the trees and the dry summer underbrush. Nothing else moved; nothing reared for an attack. So that was good.

“Who gets this one?” Right Ned asked, tossing me a rope. “Pony or the leaper?”

“Lizard. I think it's about ready to molt. It should be nice and hungry.”

“Just tell me we don't have to boil down scales today, and I'm happy,” Right Ned said.

I took a rope and slung it over my shoulder, and Neds did the same.

“No boiling,” I said as we dragged the half ton of dead and stink behind us. “But we could have a little fun and see if we can scrape a few scales free while it's eating.”

“Never have seen the fun in that,” Left Ned said. “But if it pays extra . . .”

“Same pay as every day: food, roof, honest work, and the pleasure of my conversational company.”

“About that raise?” Left Ned said.

“When we clear a profit, you'll get your share,” I said.

Right Ned slid me a smile, and I grinned back. We'd had that conversation since the day they'd wandered up the lane.

Lizard wasn't hard to spot since it was approximately the size of a barn and was napping behind the electric fence. It was harmless as long as you didn't move fast around it, didn't look it straight in the eye, and didn't poke it.

“Never have asked,” Right Ned said. “Where'd you get the lizard? Did your Dad make it too?”

“Yep. Stitched it up piece by piece.” We stopped dragging, and Neds and I bent to the task of pulling the net free of the beast.

“What's it all made of?” Right Ned asked.

“Iguana, if you'd believe it,” I said. “Of course bits of other things too—crocodile, kimono. No boars.”

“And how do you explain the wings?”

“No idea. Mom always said Dad had a whimsical side to his stitchery. Said if he was going to make living creatures, he may as well make them beautiful.”

I threw the last of the net off of the crocboar and straightened.

The lizard stirred at the commotion and shifted its big shovel-shaped head in our direction.

“You stand on back with the tranquilizer,” I said. “I'll heave this into the corral. Plug it twice if it gets twitchy. Takes a lot to put it down. Are we gold?”

“We're gold,” Right Ned said. He stepped back to give me room and pulled out the tranq gun.

“You know, no one says that anymore,” Left Ned said. “Gold isn't what it used to be.”

“Gold is just the same as ever,” I said. “People aren't what they used to be.”

I hefted the front half of the dragon kibble up off the ground, dragged it a little closer to the fence. It was heavy, but I was an uncommonly strong girl. My dad had made sure of that.

“Did you ever ask your father why he stitched a dragon?” Right Ned asked.

“Lizard.”

“Four legs, four wings, reptile the size of a house.” He raised the tranq gun at the beast, which had opened its slitted yellow eyes and then raised its head, lifting up onto its feet. “Dragon.”

“All right, ‘dragon.' Who knows? Mom said it was during his scatty years, shaking off his time after he left House White. Maybe just to see if it could be done.”

“So your dad gets a pink slip and stitches together a dragon.” Right Ned shook his head, and I was pretty sure there was admiration in that smile. “Wish I'd met him. He aimed high.”

“I wish he'd aimed smaller.” I heaved the first half of the crocboar over the metal wires. “Then maybe Lizard would go catatonic like most stitched creatures of a certain size.”

I heaved the other half of the lizard's breakfast over the fence. It landed with a squishy
thump
.

“And maybe it wouldn't be such a big, smart pain in the hole to deal with.” I backed away from the fence but did not turn my back on the lizard. That thing was cobra-fast when it caught sight of something it wanted to eat.

“Do you think it could survive on its own if it were set free?” Right Ned asked, his voice muffled just a bit from holding the gun ready to fire if our fences failed.

“I suppose. Well, maybe not in the city. It's never been on dead soil. Large things unstitch there, don't they?”

Left Ned answered, “Can't keep a stitch that big alive in the city. Hard even to keep the smaller bits alive unless they are very, very expensive and very, very well made. It's not because of the soil, though.”

“Sure it is,” I said. “It's all about the soil. Out here in the scratch, we still have devilry in our dirt. Makes stitched things stay stitched.”

“Never thought you were the sort of girl who believed in magic, Tilly,” Right Ned said in the tone of a man who clearly did not believe in the stuff but had spent years taking money from people who did.

“Stardust, nanowitchery. Whatever you want to call it, Lizard there is breathing because of it.”

Lizard finally got a solid whiff of the dead thing and smacked at the air, sticking out its ropelike tongue to clean first one eye, then the other. It started our way, with that half-snake, half-bowlegged-cow waddle that made a person want to point and laugh, except by the time you got around to doing either of those things, lizard would be on top of you, and you'd be bitten in half.

It opened its big maw, scooped off a third of the beast—quick as a hot spoon through ice cream—lifted its head up, and swallowed, the lump of meat stuck in its gizzard.

“All right, gold.” I said as the lizard made contented
click-huff
sounds. “Looks like it's not going to attack the fence. Or us.” I pulled my gloves off and smacked them across my thigh to knock off the rest of the dirt. “So, are you hungry? 'Cause I could eat.”

Neds shifted his finger off the trigger, set the safety, and leaned the barrel across his shoulder. “I wouldn't mind a hot breakfast.”

“Good,” I said as I headed up the dirt lane toward the old farmhouse. “It's your turn to cook.”

•   •   •

Left Ned complained his whole way through it, but he and Right Ned put up a decent egg-and-potato scramble.

I made sure Grandma had her share of the meal, ate more than my share, then did the dishes, as was only fair. Just as I was drying the last plate, there was a knock on the door.

Neds stopped sharpening the machete they called a pocketknife. He glanced at the door, then at me. We didn't get visitors. Ever.

Grandma, in the corner, just went right on knitting the twisted wool spooling up off the three pocket-sized sheep that were puttering around at her feet. The sheep were another of my dad's stitched critters, built so they grew self-spinning wool. I'd tried to breed them, thinking I could sell them and make a little money for the repairs on the place, but like most stitched things, they were infertile.

I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel and opened the door.

“Are you Matilda Case?” the stranger asked in a voice too calm and nice for someone who was holding his guts in place with one hand.

“I am,” I said, even though the Neds always told me I shouldn't go around giving people my name without having theirs first. “You're a long way from the cities. Do you need a ride to a hospital?”

The stranger was a couple inches shy of seven feet tall, had a broad sort of face with an arrangement of features that fell well into the rustic-and-handsome category—five-o'clock shadow included. His mop of brown hair was shaved close by his ears and finger-combed back off his forehead so that it stuck up with a bit of natural wave, which had passed for fashion maybe a hundred years ago.

His shirt, under the brown coat he wore, was high-collared and buttoned and might have once been white. That, along with his dark breeches and military boots laced and buckled up to his knees, gave him a distinctly historical sort of look. Brown clothes meant he was non-House: not owned by or affiliated with any of the eleven Houses that ruled the modern world's resources, from technology and agriculture, straight on up through defense, fuel, and the gods we worshipped.

I had changed out of my filthy hunting clothes into a pair of faded blue overalls and a checkered shirt. It wasn't at all House compliant, but then I'd been off-grid and below radar all my life. Just the way my brother wanted me to be.

“Unless you're here to sell me something,” I said as I leaned the door shut a bit. “In which case, I'll just save you what air you've got left and say, no, there's no Matilda Case living here.”

He didn't smile, but his eyes pulled up a bit at the bottom and something that looked like humor caught fire in them. That's when I noticed the color of his eyes: cinnamon red, like mine when I was injured.

I took a step back, startled, and he took a step forward.

Neds racked a round into the shotgun he'd had propped by his knee, and then all of us in the kitchen held perfectly still.

Well, except for Grandma. She just kept on singing her knitting song about sunshine through lace and liberty's death, her fingers slipping yarn into knots, smooth and liquid for a woman of her years.

“Not a single step closer,” Left Ned said, his voice always a little colder and meaner than Right Ned's. “You have not been invited into this home.”

The stranger looked away from me, and I thought maybe for the first time he noticed that there was a house, a room, and people around us. A whole farm, really: a hundred fifty acres tucked back far enough in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania that the nearest fill-up station was thirty miles away.

He certainly noticed Neds—both heads of him. And the gun.

Since Left Ned was talking, I knew he was willing to bloody the stranger up a little more if that's what it took to keep him out of the house.

“I'm looking for a doctor,” the stranger said. “Dr. Renault Case.”

“He doesn't live here anymore,” Right Ned said calmly, everything about his voice the opposite of Left Ned's. “If you need someone to take you to a town doctor, I'd be willing. But there's no medical man here to help you.”

The stranger frowned, sending just a hint of lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. “You think I came here for help?”

I nodded toward his gut. “You are bleeding rather strongly.”

He looked down. An expression of surprise crossed his face, and he shifted his wide fingers, letting a little more blood ooze out, as if just noticing how badly he was injured. If he was in pain—and he should have been—he did not show it.

Shock, maybe. Or expensive drugs.

“I didn't come here looking for help from Dr. Case,” he said, his cinnamon gaze on me, just on me, and the sound of his blood falling with a soft
tip tip tip
on my wooden floor. “I came here to warn him.”