The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) (37 page)

Her weariness quickly turned to yearning, and then resentment.  The name that woke her ceased to be the problem.  She refused to touch Diem first, but his indifference, as he stared at her through the gray shadows, grated her.  For being such a caveman, Diem had maddening restraint.

When the morning light seeped in, Diem rolled on his side, so they were facing each other, and put his hand on her forearm.  She almost moaned from the soft heat of his touch.  How annoying.  He smiled as if he knew it, before rolling away, and then standing up from the bed altogether.

"Where are you going?" Maeve asked.  Her voice was hoarse, sexy.

"Phuck will need the shipment today.  It's the last day of the Hot Seasons."  His eyes drifted over her.  "We'll have to get you some new clothes for the Cold Seasons."

Well, wasn't that romantic.  A conversation loaded down with information as fitting and romantic as overalls.  He wasn't going to address the heat between them, the night of tossing and turning and staring and not touching.  She puffed a lock of hair from over her eye.  A whistle from outside stopped her from responding further.  Diem smiled. 

"Ahhh...Eon's here to help."

Diem opened the door, but Eon mulled around the opening, only popping his face inside after Diem took a step back of welcome.  Eon carried in a stack of clothing.

"For the Cold Seasons," he said.  "Breathe sent them.  Are we ready to train?"

"We need to open a catch first," Diem said.  Eon's eyebrows steepled in the center of his brow.

"You've been keeping them from me?"

"Not from you," Diem said and Eon's brow relaxed.  "Phuck has been keeping them from me.  He has them hidden right over there, on my own dragon grounds.  He buried them, his own cache.  I was stupid enough to overlook them."

"You're going to train them for him?"

"He thinks so," Diem said.  "But we will train them for better things.  Let's dig them up first.  After, you can take the shipment to Phuck."

Eon nodded. 

"I can help," Maeve said.  She stood from the bed.  Diem's eyes swept over her, and a quiver of longing pinched her heart. 

"You can.  It will be dirty work, but you won't need those clothes after today anyhow.  Not for six months, anyway."

"How cold does it get?"

"Very cold.  You'll see tomorrow."

Maeve shrugged.  How ruined could her clothes really get digging holes?  Besides, warmer clothes meant more cloth to cover herself up.  She was looking forward to that.

***

Steven paused, tipping his head to the ceiling.  The sound coming from up above was rhythmic.  It pounded and each strike shook dirt down on his face.  Each strike was also followed by a grating noise.  He suddenly recognized the sound.

Someone, something was digging down as he was digging up. 

He sucked in a breath when he saw the weak little beam of light break through the mound of stones and dirt.  It shone right in his eye, blinding him with bright spots for a moment, before the dirt shifted and covered the hole again.

Cautiously, Steven exhaled.  He stood as long as he could without taking another breath.  If a dinosaur didn't unearth him and eat him, then the poisonous gases outside would kill him.  He wanted to see what was digging before he died, so he stood,  his lungs aching for oxygen.  When he began to feel light headed, he gave in and gulped up the air.

Nothing happened. 

He took another breath.

Still nothing.

Just air.  He set down his pail and stared up at the ceiling, at the bottom of the egg that protruded only a foot away.  

It took several moments until the digging began again.  This time, it was right over Steven's head.

***

It didn't occur to Maeve, until Diem and Eon had taken their spades to the hard Earth, what the catch was.  Her mind gathered the pieces as she watched them and she quickly realized, as they dug near the spindling where she'd emerged, exactly what they were after. 

"Do you mean, eggs?" Maeve asked.  They had begun filling buckets with dirt and dumping the soil a few feet away.  Diem didn't pause as he dumped another shovel full into the bucket. 

"Yes, dragon eggs.  Dragons don't lay one egg at a time, they lay catches," Diem said.  Maeve spun in a small circle.  The broken spindling, the one that Forge had snorted over with Maeve inside it, still lay on the ground near the digging spot.  Maeve's legs went gluey. 

"Are you sure this is where they're buried?" she asked. 

"Yes," Diem laughed.  "This was the place.  Beside that spindling.  Why?"

Her mouth was as stuck as her legs.  Her tongue hardly worked.  "No reason."

They were digging directly over the top of the Archive room where she'd found the eggs.  The room had caved in, but what if they reached the Archive?  But she'd climbed up on the tree roots.  The Archive couldn't be that close to the surface.

But the eggs were.  They had poked right through the ceiling.

Maeve dragged a bucket of dirt and ro
ck away, watching over the men’s shoulders as they dug.  She couldn't stop them.  Maybe she shouldn't.  When it caved in, it could've sealed the Archive halls anyway.  But the Archive was slowly running out of food and once the eggs were gone, there'd be nothing left to eat.  Maybe it was time to tell Diem about how she'd surfaced in his tree after all.

As she dragged away another bucket, she heard Eon whoop.

"I got something!" he shouted.  Eon twanged the tip of his shovel against the shell.  Maeve recognized the thing immediately.  Glinting like crystal in the sun, the men hauled up the egg and Maeve's nerves jingled like loose change beneath her skin.  The hole caved in behind them, to Maeve's relief.

"Wh
oa, what's wrong here?  Why's it so light?" Eon said.  Diem said nothing, but the two climbed out of the hole to inspect the treasure.  Diem slid his hands over the shell.

"It's empty," Diem said.  "There's a hole..."

"A hole?"  Eon swooped down to get a closer look.  "What did that?  Punaise bugs?"

"Too large an opening.  And look, it's perfectly round."

"What bug can do that?"  Eon asked, but Diem just shrugged. 

"I don't know.  Let's get the rest out.  Maybe we'll find what made it."

Eon threw the spade of his shovel into the dirt and stopped.  "What's that?"

Maeve heard the rock and dirt filtering down, as if it were running through a sand timer.  It made her blood run cold.

And then she heard the gun shot.

***

The air around Diem ripped in half.  One half the explosion, the other half Eon's scream.  Eon gripped Diem's arm as he fell back.  Diem jumped, pulling Eon away from the hole with him. 

"It only got the edge of me," Eon panted after further inspection.  He moved to the edge of the digging site and peered down.  "What was that?"

"No idea," Diem said.

Maeve tried to move toward the hole, but Diem caught her and held her back. 

"Get out of my way!" she snapped, but he hung on.  He wasn't about to let her be hurt by whatever had just shaved a layer off of Eon's bicep.

"Stay back!" he said.  "We don't know what exploded!"

"I do!" Maeve said, giving him a massive shove.  It struck Diem at once—Maeve had come up from the ground.  From near this spot.  But she'd said she was alone.

"Is someone down there?"  Diem demanded.  "Are there more like you?"

"Yes!" Maeve said.  He let her go and she fell to her knees beside the hole.  Maeve shouted down into the dirt, "Don't shoot!  It's Maeve!  Don't shoot!"

Seeing the hand that came up out of the pebbles and soil was ghastly, but it came up gripping the loose dirt around it.  As Maeve reached for the hand, Diem dropped down beside her and grasped it himself.  With a mighty pull, he drew up an arm, then shoulders, and finally, the sputtering head of a man. 

"Steven?" Maeve gaped.  Another mighty pull and a man emerged from the dirt.  Diem deposited the man on the ground, his eyes creased shut with dirt, he spit soil from his mouth.  Pebbles filled in the hole behind him.  A long weapon had come with him, undoubtedly the one that he'd used to blow the skin from Eon.  Eon abruptly wrested the weapon away from the unearthed man.  The man clawed for it blindly, until Maeve spoke again.

"Steven,"  she said.  The man hurriedly wiped his eyes and jumped to his feet, blinking to clear the remaining dirt from his vision.

"Maeve?  You're okay!  Oh, good God!  Did I clip you?  Tell me I didn't get you!  Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Maeve said.

"We thought you were dead!  What are you doing here?"  As the man named Steven reached for Maeve, she retreated a step, and Diem intervened.  He moved right between them and the man's gaze swung from Diem's massive chest to his face.  He noticed Eon before craning his neck around Diem to locate Maeve again.  "Who are these guys?  What happened to you?  We thought you were dead!  Why didn't you come back and tell us it was safe up here?"

"Us?" Eon said.  "How many of you are there?"

Steven ignored Eon, focusing completely on Maeve, which brought all the tension to the surface of Diem's skin.  His shoulders tightened, his biceps flexed.  Diem moved closer to Maeve, but as he did, Steven moved closer too.  Adrenaline tingled through Diem as both his hands curled into fists.

"I couldn't come back," Maeve explained.  "The hole caved in."

"Are you alright?" The man leaned in as if he was going to run his hands over her.  The only reason Diem didn't rip off the guy's arms was that it looked as if Maeve might beat him to it.

"I'm fine, Steven," she said tightly.

"Are you sure?  Who are these two?" Steven mumbled to her with a jerk of his chin.  "Are they keeping you against your will?"

"No," Maeve chuffed a laugh.  "This is Diem, and that is Eon.  Their people..."

"We don't need to discuss our people here," Diem said, squaring his shoulders.  Maeve glanced at him, her gaze questioning, but Diem was no longer sure who she was and if he could trust her.   There was a man she'd never mentioned, standing right before him.  There could be whole Houses full of people down below the surface, all with weapons like the one Eon held. 

Rha or not, the gravity of the situation still gripped him.  He scoured the man for signs of aggression, signs of power, signs of a war coming up from the Earth that would collide with the one coming down from Pluto soon.

"How many of you are down below?" Diem asked.

"How many are up here?" Steven countered, crossing his arms.  Diem stepped in and grabbed the man by the throat. 

"I asked how many?" Diem said.  The man's eyes popped like a squeezed ratfish before he decided to answer.

"Fifty three," Steven said.  Maeve yelped.

"There were only 39 when I left!" she said.  "How are you eating?"

"The eggs," the man choked and Diem let go.  The man stepped back and rubbed his neck. 

"You are what's been drilling holes into our eggs?"  Eon demanded.

"Your eggs?  How were we supposed to know whose eggs they were?" the man said.  "Maeve found them and thank God she did.  It's all that's kept us alive!"

Diem stepped forward and the man shrunk back.

"How many have you drained?" Diem asked.  Steven, still cowering, glanced at Maeve.

"The Earth isn't the way we knew it anymore, Steven," she said. "Look around.  Unbelievable things have happened.  Aliens, from Pluto, scorched everything.  Our entire civilization is gone.  These people," she motioned to Diem and Eon, "these are the survivors.  The Plutians transformed the environment, so humans could live here and run their dragon business."

The man had been leaning in, listening hard, until she got to the last sentence.  He dropped away from her with a resounding snort. 

"Dragon business?  What kind of stuff are you smoking?  This is hardly the time to pull my leg, considering..."

Diem gave a short whistle and the ground shook as Forge lumbered from the opening of her lair.  Steven squinted as his mouth fell open.  As the dragon neared, Steven stumbled backward in shock.

"What the hell is that thing?  That's not...that's not real..." 

"It is a real dragon, Steven, I swear it," Maeve said.  She put a hand on Steven's arm and Diem had to swallow the growl in his throat.  "It's a dragon and we were eating dragon eggs."

Eon dropped the gun in the dirt beside him.  "How many eggs are left?"

"None, I don't think," Steven babbled.  "They poked a hole in the last one they could reach and took it to Supply, so that when I caved the room in on myself..."

"NONE?" Eon said.  Diem felt his own blood drain into his feet.  Phuck's stock was gone and now that they'd tried to dig them up, the overseer would believe that Diem was trying to cheat him.   Eon's mumble was nearly incoherent.  "What are we going to do...none...they'll kill us all..."