The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (14 page)

“But,” Hope growled
, her hands bony, whitened fists, “
you
wanted to stay here!”

“Only I’m not into barricades
; it’s not the zombie apocalypse, is it?  Which brings me to my next point:  Welf’s a necromancer, Pocket’s a floromancer.  Trees is what this fine son-of-a-bitch does.  You see his stick?” I asked.  “Look at that stick.  Big ol’ stick.  Bet you ask nicely he’d let you touch it.”

Pocket blushed crimson.

Thank the Mancy for Valentine, she’s the only one who laughed.

“Foul Mouth,” Welf kept hissing, “I’m going to hurt you.”

“But he has a point,” Raj Malik logically supplied.  “If we are to trust the Mancy, then a floromancer would be the obvious person to lead us.”

“Yeah!” Naomi Gullick agreed, floromancer herself.  Have I mentioned there’s like five floromancers in Class ’09?  That, kiddos, is what we call a political base.

[CLICK]

Pocket won.

Nineteen to eleven.

Welf didn’t get a single vote.

Yup, that felt good.

Excuse me while I generalize and do some bad ol’ telling for this next part of our story.  I don’t really want to waste time I don’t have to on it, because, as always, it’s the destination that matters, not the journey itself, no matter how many wordy son-of-a-bitches tell you fucking otherwise.  I’ve got a shop to set up, little assholes, I don’t got the time to wonder about how many ways I can talk about even more little assholes walking through the woods.  Sure, Jethro Smith would be ashamed, but he’s a necromancer:  he don’t get no opinion.

So
. . . the group of us huddled over into the camp and packed up.  Pocket told us to forget the tents; it would waste too much time to clean them.  Instead we settled for sleeping-bags.  He also had us lighten our backpacks by throwing out our extra pairs of shoes, some of the pans, utensils and the like.  We were told to keep as much water as we could and quickly realized our meals for the next few days were going to be beef jerky and trail mix.

There are worse meals than beef jerky.  Actually
. . . I think every meal might be a worse meal than beef jerky . . .

At a half hour
Pocket called a stop, told us to gather up in a line, then he went about mixing us up.  Unlike Samson, he put us in twos.  Also told us to keep an eye on each other and to never leave our partner.  “Even going to the bathroom,” he told us.

I got the front spot beside Pocket.  Jason and Welf were told to bring up the rear.  This wasn’t Pocket going for payback like I would have.  He seemed to trust Jason to fight off anything that might go bump in the night.  Why did no one believe my Asylum-Has-Samson-Fucking-With-Us theory?

For the rest of the order, Pocket went straight up political on our asses.  He put the kids who had voted to stay at camp in the middle of the class and surrounded them with kids who had voted to find our own way out.  In one move, Team Barricade was forced to go wherever the group went and not cause a fight or complain.  Mostly Team Barricade was Estefan’s guys, Debra’s girls, and then Curt’s slacker group, who seemed to be worrying about his asthma, bastard wheezing like a mute mockingbird.

We set out.

Walking.

T
rees.

Sa
me trail as before.

Wait
. . . I feel adjectives coming on . . .

. . .
Nope, just gas.

[CLICK]

The road w
here our bus stopped was our destination and we made it in the same time as the day before.  Pocket didn’t push us like Samson had, we even had a pair of breaks, but the time we hiked was better spent.  Our packs were lighter and our feet were driven by the possibility something in the woods was after us.  Even doubtful little fourteen-year-old-me kept up, not wanting to get yelled at for goofing off.

I didn’t give
much a shit about looking good for myself but I could make an impression for Pocket’s sake.  He seemed to really care about doing a good job now that he’d been forced into a leadership position.  Friendship, I was just learning the in-and-outs but I figured this was one of those times to man-up.

I saw the road first, since
Pocket had a habit of watching backwards down the line.  I yelled out, “Road!”

T
hankful gasps behind me.

Pocket grinned.  “We made it, dude!”

“Think this was the easy part, man.”

“Yeah, but now it’s out of the way
, so we don’t have to worry about it.”

Right.
 
Why did I befriend the optimist again?

The thirty of us spread out along the road.  It wasn’t wide.  Barely enough space for two cars and tight at that.  Didn’t deserve to be called a highway or a freeway or much of anyway, but it was paved asphalt and a sign some part of civilization was around here.
  Roads had cars and cars had people.  Unbreakable logic, right?

“I could kiss the ground,” Naomi Gullick squealed, bouncing up and down in a girlish hop, her fists pumping like a cheerleader.

“She could kiss me too,” I whispered not-so-quietly to Pocket.

He covered his mouth to hold back a laugh.

“Come on, that’s funny . . .”

Naomi heard it all, walked past
me with a glare, and gave Pocket a kiss on his cheek before he could think about resisting.  “Good job,” she told him with a smile.  “You made your fellow Forestplanters proud.”

Pocket stayed silent, blushing maroon until she strolled down to her
giggling group of friends.

“Man, you owe me so much for today,” I told him with a shake of my head at the unfairness of the world.

Miranda Daniels came running up to us, bouncing in a completely different way than Naomi had.

I gave her a leer.  “You going to kiss him too?”

She wasn’t interested in boys though.  Not in that moment.  Maybe not ever.  Never been sure about what team Miranda plays for . . . or if she just don’t play at all. “Valentine’s not here!” she screeched.  Her face was flushed; her green eyes darted side to side behind fogged over glasses.  Miranda looked near panic, like she might scream and then tear out some of her fuzzy ginger hair Old Testament style.  “
She’s not here!
”

All the chit
chat quieted down to nothing.

I frowned;
the words didn’t seem to want to work through my brain.  “
What
?”

“She’s gone, you idiot!” Miranda yelled in my face. “She was right beside me a minute ago and now she’s disappeared!”

Every single kid in class looked to the woods.

“Valentine!” Pocket yelled, hands cupping his mouth.

“Valentine!” we took up the call.

Nothing.

“Where is she?” Miranda went full on panic now, attacking her fingernails.  Her arms and head shook together.

“Hope’s gone too!” another girl screeched, probably Jessica Edwards again, being friends with Hope.
  And a bit of a screamer . . . not personal knowledge this, but . . .
curtains
.

“So’s that Jesus kid!” said a guy’s voice.

Suddenly, Miranda wasn’t the only one in Old Testament panic land.

We all were.

Maybe I was wrong about Samson fucking with us . . .

Maybe monsters
are out there . . . .waiting to pick us off . . .

In the sky, the sun moved further towards twilight.

Tighten up, little assholes.

Sometimes I wish I actually liked math.

I hate numbers.  A pain in the
ass . . . the whole system.  Puzzles, I can’t stand puzzles either and that’s all number problems or math as a whole really is.  I’m a Gordian Knot kind of guy.  Think around the problem, cut away what you don’t need.  If that don’t work . . . cheat.

But sometimes
. . . like all that time I spent on a bench waiting for T-Bone to show up . . . I wish I actually liked me some math.

Statisti
cs being the thing.  Like every boy I learned about statistic through free throw percentage and batting average, then when I got into MMA I guess you could add on striking percentage.

Statistics tell us the likelihood that something is going to happen.  Get really simple and you got yourself a coin flip
. . . get a little more complicated and you got yourself some dice.  Get
very
complicated and you got my question I wish I had some numbers to answer.

What are the odds I run into JoJo like that?

She has to choose that specific grocery store.  I have to decide on
grande
whatever-the-fucks.  Suit goes full asshat with the lady just as I’m walking back.  It’s a puzzle, ain’t it?

JoJo is good with numbers.  Up until middle school she was a straight-A student.  Believe that?  It’s true.  Then
. . . I don’t know what.  Mom hit a tipping point I guess.  Hormones came into play.  Something changed quick.  Then . . . fighting and more fighting . . . and she’s gone not long after Susan.

She used to help me with
my homework when I was still young enough to care about homework . . . wonder if she’d help me with the statistics now?

“Why you end up a
Coyote, JoJo?”

Maybe the Price
s are cursed.  Me a mancer, JoJo a Were, and Susan disappeared.  I hadn’t thought about my family much since I started dealing with my shop . . . but seeing JoJo, getting shot over her . . . I thought on it again.

I looked up into that windy March sky and I asked, “W
hat we do to piss you off, you bastard?”

[CLICK]

I walked up to
T-Bone’s car the moment he pulled it into a parking space near the Sheriff’s Department building.  Being that it’s downtown the only reason there even was a parking space was thanks to the time . . . 4AM.  No one around but law enforcement, homeless, and crazy ass mancers plotting a game at unseemly hours.

“This is a bad idea,”
T-Bone told me without even leaving the car.

I leaned over, talking to him through the window.  We didn’t look like drug-dealers or nothing
. . . promise.  “It’s the best idea I got.”

“Attack
ing one of the scariest men I’ve ever met is your best idea?” T-Bone’s hands never left the steering wheel.  If he’d had muscle to equal his size the whole thing probably would have been ripped off.  “We should calm down . . . hide out at my place.  I have a spare room you can use.  I’ll have to move some computers off the bed, but . . . you can spend a few days with me.”

“Now there’s a sitcom everyone would watch
. . .”

“
Stop being so calm!
”

“Who you think we could get to play the cute next-door neighbor?  Blond chick from
The Big Bang Theory
reruns is a cutie . . . maybe we can borrow her?”

“
Stop making jokes!
”

“Probably getting old by now though
. . . tits starting to sag and the like . . .”

“
Stop making sexist jokes!
”

T-Bone
freaked out like any normal person.  Like I should have been.  Bullets really didn’t scare me . . . it was kind of a revelation.  Dad’s belt growing up, waking up to see Mom wasn’t home in that body of hers . . . yes to both.  Bullets . . . not a bit.  “Ceinwyn is coming, right?”

The thought of Auntie
Badass getting nearer lightened up the grip on the steering wheel.  “Yes, she is.”

“She at the Asylum for once?”

“It’s March . . .”

It took me a second.  “Second Evaluations?”

“Yeah, that and Winter War, the only times Miss Dale is guaranteed to be around.”

“So you just want us to hang out at your
place playing your Playstation 4 while Ceinwyn comes and fixes everything for us?” I asked, my tone letting him know I thought this was about as stupid as going raw-dog with a Thai hooker.

“She fixed everything for you the first time around.”

I shook my head.  “And we still ended up here. 
We
need to handle this. 
We
are Fresno’s Ultras.  The Coyote Nation just tried to kill us.”

“You don’t know that,”
T-Bone decided.  His eyes had trouble looking at anything.  He didn’t want to look at me and he
really
didn’t want to look at the Sheriff’s Department.  “I actually think if they were trying to kill us we’d probably be dead.  It was just a warning or something else we’re not aware of.”

Ethos
.  T-Bone worked on what’s right, assumed the world would work on what’s right.  Which is a pity . . . I don’t got a bit of ethos in me.  “Say Ceinwyn does handle it . . . what’s to keep them from doing this again?”

“Fear of retaliation from the Asylum, fear of breaking the treaty that keeps Fresno from exploding.”

“
Now
you’re talking: fear.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, King Henry!”

“We need to hit back, beat up some of his boys, make him know we’re something to fear too.  Add that with all the rest Vega is worrying about and maybe we find some space to survive.”

T-Bone
finally met my eyes, his face was surprised.  “You mean . . . you aren’t planning on killing him?”

“Of course not,” I lied.

“Oh.”

I faked some anger
. . . not hard in my present mindset.  “You see me killing a lot of people, do you?”

“We both know you have a temper
. . .”

“I do
. . . damn fucking right I do.  They thrashed my shop so I need to thrash something of theirs.” I leaned down further, glanced all the way in the car.  Electric just like my bike and brand new too.  You didn’t see many new cars that weren’t at least hybrids nowadays.  American Muscle had faded in place of American Intelligence. 
Lesson in that
.  Of course, the car was a Japanese piece of shit . . . but . . .
lesson in that
.

“I just want to find his house or some property and crack a gate or some pipes, let the Coyotes know we can get to them,” I lied some more. 
I want to bash his fucking face in until his skull cracks against my knuckles.  I want to grab the Shaky Stick and level his whole house.  Some downright biblical Sodom and Gomorrah epicness.  I want . . .

Vega
tried to kill me.  Vega was grunting and humping my sister . . . turned her into some
creature
. . . kept her under guard like a good little prisoner.  Prices are a variety of screwed up . . . but the one thing we always crave is freedom.  What the hell had Vega done to JoJo to get her to walk back into her golden cage?

And why is Horatio
Vega interested in JoJo Price?
  Granted if I thought about it fairly my sister was cute in that pixy, small frame kind of way . . . but . . . had herself an attitude, body had seen some wear; tattoos, piercings, drugs, drink. 
Why JoJo Price and not some supermodel imported for the job?

I wanted revenge
. . . and I wanted answers.

“No killing?”
T-Bone asked.  “No more guns?”

I smiled at him.  “Not if I can help it.”

Fists, I want to use my fists . . .

[CLICK]

T-Bone
took to the plan of cracking a gate or some pipes or whatever inanimate object of Vega’s we could find before Ceinwyn came to town and forced a peace.  I let him believe the fiction.  He was helping, that’s all that matter.

I wasn’t proud about using him, but I told myself it was the only way:  fu
cking necessity.  Besides, I’m partly right about things playing out his way.  Ceinwyn makes a peace with Vega, what’s to protect us from him?  Vega already proved he’s more than happy to flaunt the gentleman’s agreement already there to try to kill us, already proved he’d give the biggest show of violence Fresno had ever seen just to kill us too . . . and Fresno’s had itself some serious violence in its years.

I loved
me some Ceinwyn, she’s family.  I could count on her to protect me . . . but when it came to Horatio Vega or even what had happened with Annie B . . . Ceinwyn’s a veil of clouds, not a steel curtain.  I had to settle this . . .
now
.  Vega and I needed to meet . . . needed to have us a
talk
. . . then . . . if I’m lucky and he’s as big of a prick as expect . . . I get to kill him too.

The hope lightens my heart.

Be a prick . . . please be a prick.

“Why are we still sitting in you
r car?” I asked.

T-Bone
brought my artifacts along with him.  My static ring—still labeled with the good ol’ KHP—had never left my finger through lead cop or Ribera.  It was charged up, ready for use again.  My SEM-DEW went into my right coat pocket, on account of it needing to be thrown and on account of me being a righty.

The aero-fan went to my left pocket, though it didn’t much matter since it wasn’t charged.  I flapped it a few times, frowning.  It had taken the better part of a week of random couple minute fannings
to build up that burst of air.

It wasn’t a good design.  Wasn’t an
efficient
design as Plutarch would have scolded me.  Every anima type has its weight, if you will.  Geo, necro, hydro . . . those are heavy and dense, stop you cold.  Don’t take much to get them to be useful.  Aero . . . that’s right near the bottom.

Of course
. . . the fan didn’t actually
use
anima.  Just like the static ring didn’t.  The anima only stored the physical equivalent . . . electricity or air. 
But aero-anima makes for a crap container, which means lots of flapping and flinging my arm to get this thing to work again
.

There were other artifacts in the boxes.  My two working pairs of cold cuffs
. . . those I stuck in a pocket.  Covered in pink fluff or not, I might need to restrain myself a Coyote or maybe even a
coyote
or two before the night was over.  All the bullets and punches so far, I think I deserved seeing at least one Shift in person.  Then I’d run through a door and lock the dumbass up when it followed.

Thumbs, motherfuckers,
they’re awesome.

Then more SDRs
. . . I’d never tried to wear more than one at a time. 
No time like the present
, I thought before I slipped one labeled PL on my left hand to mirror KHP.  Pocket could just wait on his birthday present until after I survived the next twenty-four hours.  There were more than his . . . RM, JV, RQ, and even a CD. 
One extra . . . try more and you’ll burst into flames, Price
.

I fumbled through the rest, all of the experimental and unproven i
tems far away from usable in most cases.  But in a pinch . . .
no time like the present
.

Anti-Vamp Hot Cuffs or AVHCs:  no use for humans or Weres.  They kept going too hot and were likely to burn a normal person alive
.  Would probably burn a vampire alive too . . . not that I’m against it in the general principle, but it hadn’t been my design intention.

Fake
Laser Sword Attempt Two:  instead of pyro-anima I’d tried spectro-anima, but on account of how spectro is lighter than even aero I couldn’t get the artifact hot enough to burn anything but unsuspecting gingers.  Looked awesome and realistic though . . . I’d have sold it to some uber nerd but then George Lucas would have sued my ass.  He’s from Modesto and that’s even worse than being from Visalia . . . you don’t want to fuck with people that have been bearing that kind of stigma around all their life . . .
trust me
.

Another metal ball, same casing as the SEM-DEW:  now that
. . . might be useful.  Tell you about it?  Spoil the surprise?  Where’s the fun in that?

“
T-Bone?  Earth to T-Bone . . .” I said to try to get his attention again.

He waved at his shoulder; that ‘
don’t bug me
’ sign everyone recognizes but no one ever actually listens to.

I was in
the backseat with my artifacts; he was in the front with a laptop leaning again his steering wheel and some kind of tablet-computer in the passenger seat that he picked up occasionally to check something on.  There wasn’t even music . . . just typing keys or thudding touch-screens.