Wretched Earth (9 page)

Chapter Ten

“Mother,” Colton Sharp said. “I wish you wouldn’t
prance around like that.”

He winced as he heard the whine that edged his voice. Way to
assert yourself, Colt, he thought.

The woman stood and struck a pose, hand on angled hip, head
tipped with long black hair hanging artfully over one shoulder. One naked
shoulder. One naked hip.

“Prance around like how, dear?” she asked. Her words had a
trace of the accent of her native Mex-land.

As she so often did, Colt’s mother, Miranda Sharp—he wasn’t
clear on whether she was baron in her own right or acting as regent until his
own majority—was fluttering about the common room of their quarters on the third
floor of the baronial palace in the nude.

Miranda stood there artfully silhouetted in the late-morning
sunlight filtering through gauze curtains. It cast a halo around her hair and
her still-perfect, olive-skinned body—narrow waist, flaring hips, lean legs. It
did nothing to hide her full breasts, although shadows added a bit of mystery to
the dark arrowhead tangle between her strong thighs.

She had married Baron Jeb Sharp young, and borne her only
child, Colt, to him. She was still in her mid-thirties and religiously kept
herself trim.

Colton Sharp was sixteen years old, his young, slightly pudgy
body a constant sizzle of hormones.

Buck naked, he wanted to reply. But his tongue would tie itself
into knots if he tried to say that to his mother. Instead he settled on waving
one hand in a feeble gesture.

“Like, uh—that.”

She laughed. “It’s not as if you haven’t seen me this way
before. Who do you think gave birth to you?”

“Well, that was kind of a long time ago. I don’t really
remember it.”

He was babbling. He saw her this way all the time. And far from
getting used to it, it was starting to…affect him more and more.

She came swaying up to him, smiling mischievously. She put her
hands on either side of his head, against the pink upholstered back of the chair
he was sitting in, and leaned in close, so he could smell the freshly bathed
feminine scent of her. In fact, almost suffocate in it.

“Pobrecito,”
she said huskily. Her
forehead was tipped almost to touch his. Her heavy, untamable hair hung around
his face like a curtain. “Does Mother make you uncomfortable?”

“Umm,” he said. He tried to avoid looking at the two perfect
breasts hanging inches from his eyes. His face flushed so hot he was surprised
her hair didn’t start to smolder, not to mention his own blond locks.

She put her lips by his ear. Her hair tickled his cheek and
nose. “You need to learn how to handle yourself in the presence of a woman,
mi amor,
” she purred in his ear. “You need to
learn how to handle a woman.”

“Mom!” he yelped. It was the only thing he could manage to
do.

She straightened and moved away with a half-spiteful laugh.
“You’re a good boy, Colt,” she said over her shoulder. “Mama will see you
brought up right.”

It was double entendre city in here. Colt
had
been well educated. Miranda had insisted. His late father had
figured an iron fist and some reliable henchman were all a man really needed to
get by in life. Not that he’d done so well on that second part.

The upshot: Colt knew what a double entendre was. He could read
and speak three languages. He could do math. But he’d never learned how to do
anything he thought was
real.

Or, indeed, as his mother said, how to handle a woman. He had a
feeling no man would ever really handle his mother. His late father sure hadn’t.
And her current boy-toy sec boss, Jenkins, couldn’t either, that was for damn
sure. Not that
he
realized it.

Colt felt suffocatingly hot, even though the potbellied stove
on its colorfully painted maroon tiles in the corner wasn’t doing more than
keeping the chill coming through the window glass at bay. He had to think of
something to say to break the mood. Anything.

“I want to learn to shoot,” he said. “Dad promised he’d get
someone to teach me.”

She whipped around. “You’ll hurt yourself,” she said,
frowning.

“Not if I’m taught right.”

“But why would you want to use a blaster?”

“To, you know, protect myself and stuff.”

Colt recalled the pants-pissing terror of being caught in the
middle of the firefight when Gate to Hell Jacks had betrayed the baron and tried
to seize control of Sweetwater Junction. Having angry men trying to hurt him was
bad. Seeing his old tutor, Marconi, go down with a big chunk blown out of his
bald head and his brains spilling out on the throw rug was bad. Seeing his best
friend, Anthony, writhing in terminal agony around the two bullets that had
pulped his guts was worse. Hearing bullets crack over his own head as he
sheltered behind a table and a pair of loyal sec men was unimaginable.

Worst by far, though, was not being able to do anything about
it. The sense of utter helplessness. In that awful moment he’d understood as
never before that having a blaster wouldn’t in any way render him less
susceptible to bullets hitting him. But it would let him fight back. Maybe even
shoot somebody before that somebody shot him.

It would give him some kind of power over his own life and
circumstances. Which, young Colt Sharp had also come to realize on that terrible
night of blood and flame and pain, was something he in fact had never had.
Despite the fact that both his father and his mother had brought him up hearing
constantly how he was born to rule.

His mother was frowning deeper and shaking her head. It made
the tip of her nose turn up slightly and her brow furrow.

“You’re going to be baron,” she said sternly. “Shooting
blasters is what you have sec men for. You don’t fix your own wag or empty your
own pisspot. You leave that to the menials.”

“But…but what if the sec men get killed? Or aren’t around?”

Or turn on you like rabid dogs after years of apparently loyal
and devoted service, with the same savagery they brought to the job of keeping
the citizens in their place? he thought.

But he couldn’t say that. Not to his mother, not so soon. It
would throw her into one of her rages. The fact that her fury would be directed
against Brown and the band of traitors—who had tried to kill her and her son,
had succeeded in chilling the desperately ill Baron Jeb, and had stolen half her
ville out from under her—and not at Colt himself, wouldn’t make it easier to
take. He knew that from bitter experience. It wouldn’t even be much safer, if
she got to throwing things.

The way she scowled told him he’d wandered dangerously close to
the edge already. Her face got darker and she took a deep breath. Her breasts
rose and spread on her rib cage.

Oh, shit, Colt thought. Here it comes. Her throwing one of her
epic fits stark naked, with all that entailed, would only make everything twice
as freaky.

A knock sounded on the door to the common room. He slumped in
the chair, instantly coated in sweat.

“Baron.”

It was the voice of Hedders, one of the sec men who had stayed
loyal to the Sharp family, his young voice muffled by thick wood. The veneer
door that had originally sealed the entryway had, unsurprisingly in retrospect,
proved no barrier to bullets. Despite the fact that milled lumber was literally
worth its weight in gold out here in this treeless flatland, Miranda had
insisted on a solid oak replacement. And gotten it.

“What is it?” she called. She reached for a green satin robe.
For all her flouting of her lush naked body in her son’s presence she was quite
prudish about displaying the same goods to the lessers.

“You got visitors, ma’am.”

“Who are they?”

“Three mercies, looking for jobs.”

She nodded. “I’ll meet them in the parlor downstairs. Tell them
to wait.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

“B
ARON
,”
THE
YOUNG
,
intense, dark-haired sec man who called himself Hedders said, “this is
Dr. Theophilus Tanner, Krysty Wroth and Ryan Cawdor.”

The sitting room in the four-story stone structure at the north
end of Sweetwater Junction that served as the baron’s palace was decorated with
salvaged porcelain figurines and fussy-seeming furniture with lace doilies on
arms and backs to prevent staining of the fabric. The room smelled of lavender
and old, dried sweat. Krysty guessed the new baron had had her way in decorating
this room, at least, long before Baron Jeb Sharp reached room temperature. It
seemed to fit, somehow, with the structure itself, which was of a look and
general solidity that suggested it had been old when the Big Cull hit.

“No such thing anymore,” said the tall and extravagantly
muscled sec man introduced as Jenkins, biting into a chunk of dried apple. He
even had muscular cheeks. “What he’s a doctor of? Looking stupe?”

From the corner of her eye Krysty saw Doc give a goofy smile.
Sometimes that meant he had slipped his reality tether again. Sometimes it
didn’t. He seemed, actually, to be more at ease in this setting than he had in a
long time. It went to substantiate Krysty’s theory that the room’s decor was as
old-timey as the building itself. Those old times
were
Doc’s proper time.

“I had the good fortune to receive a stellar education, my
boy,” Doc said cheerfully. “And the term ‘doctor’ was bestowed upon me as a sign
of respect for the vast store of knowledge that I acquired over the years.” The
lie slid smoothly from the old man’s lips.

“Huh,” the sec man said. He had dark olive skin that glistened
as if oiled. His hair was shaved to a Mohawk, a low, dark one that almost looked
painted on. For all his air of hypermasculinity, his manner was petulant and
surly. “You still look like a stupe.”

“Manners, Leroy,” the baron said sharply.

Watch it, kid, Krysty mentally warned the surly sec man. You
have no idea what this man’s capable of.

The Baron’s dark eyes widened considerably once they lit on the
tall, dark and dangerous form of Ryan Cawdor.

Krysty wasn’t much troubled by jealousy. What did concern her
about Miranda Sharp’s not-at-all-subtle interest in Ryan was the mischief it
could cause. Such a woman was used to getting what she wanted, and stepping on
rivals like roaches.

Miranda stepped right up to Ryan, hand extended. Krysty felt
brief relief. The baron held her hand out vertically, as if expecting a shake,
not horizontally, as if expecting a kiss. That’d get things off to all kinds of
a wrong start.

“Ryan Cawdor,” the baron purred, drawing the syllables out and
rolling the
R
s in a Spanish way. “A pleasure to meet
you.”

“Pleased to meet you,” he answered. “And this is Doc Tanner and
Krysty Wroth, like the man said.”

Ryan nodded firmly at his companions. Krysty bit down on a
grin.

“Dr. Tanner,” the baron said, gravely taking Doc’s hand. “You
clearly are a man of the mind. Are you a man of action as well, then?”

After shaking her hand, firmly but gently, Doc did turn it over
and kiss the back. Miranda Sharp’s eyebrows went up.

“So you are a gentleman of the old school, too,” she said.

“I try to be all of those things, madam,” Doc said, “as
circumstances and chivalry require.”

Krysty caught Ryan’s eye behind the two and grinned openly.
Doc, you sly old dog, she thought. Of course, he really was in his thirties, not
terribly older in days actually lived through than the beautiful sex-bomb baron
herself. But his aged appearance counted against him.

Still, he could be remarkably suave when focused and properly
motivated. If the baron didn’t so overtly have her claws out for Ryan—and if the
sulky guy with the stripe down the middle of his scalp, who was looking rad
death at Ryan, wasn’t so obviously her current lover—Krysty thought the
professor might actually have a chance. Baron Miranda was clearly a highly
sexual being who might just give him a try out of curiosity.

Krysty felt no disdain or hostility toward the woman for such
overt sexuality. Her own nature wasn’t all that much different. But she’d
learned to keep it more tightly controlled. Her life hadn’t been the sheltered
one of a baron of a powerful ville.

Finally, the raven-haired woman turned to her. They shook hands
in a businesslike way. Krysty wasn’t surprised to find Miranda’s grip had a wiry
strength hardly less than a man’s. Krysty’s arm strength had the potential to be
greater than a normal man’s, but the baron played nice, without any manlike
hand-crushing games. And Krysty always played nice. As long as it was possible
to
be
nice.

To her surprise the baron enfolded her in a fervent hug, which
she returned belatedly but firmly.

“It is so good to meet a woman of substance,” Miranda said,
breaking free. For a moment Krysty wondered if the baron was making a crack
about Krysty’s build, even more voluptuous than her own. But Miranda followed
instantly with, “
Claro,
you are a woman of education
as well as strength of spirit. I bid you welcome to Sweetwater Junction.”

She stepped back. “All of you.”

“Thank you, Baron,” Ryan said.

“And this is my son, Colton, the future baron of Sweetwater
Junction,” Miranda said, turning to introduce the somewhat ungainly figure who
had appeared in the doorway behind her as if on cue. Which suggested to Krysty
that he had been waiting for one.

He was of medium height for a male, somewhat shorter than
Krysty herself. His obvious youth suggested he had some growing yet to do. He
was fair-complected, unlike his mother, and his eyes were hazel. His hair was
blond, curly and tousled. He was a handsome youth, or would’ve been if not for
the baby fat that padded his cheeks and frame.