Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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“You need to drink,” he told her. “Slow. But as much as you can. And we both need to eat.” He put a claw right to her face and added, “If you try in any way to warn them we are here, I’m going to kill them anyway and the food you eat will be pulled from their own bodies.”

Raven paled even further, if that were possible, and she nodded.

Kane stepped back and watched while Raven opened cupboards and found a drinking glass. She went to the cold storage and filled her glass with something white, her face expressionless. She made very little noise.

Kane growled low approval when she started to drink and left her to it. She wasn’t as quiet as she thought she was; he would hear her if she ran and he was prepared to abandon the house to keep her. But he didn’t think she’d run.

Upstairs, he found his prey at last. Two humans—a male in one room and a younger female in another, the overpowering scent of their sweat betraying their genders from the hall. Both were sleeping. And if they’d turned off the light in the kitchen before they’d gone to bed, they might have been able to wake up in the morning. Life was funny.

Males tended to be stronger and more aggressive than females, so Kane moved on the male first. The human was snoring loudly enough to cover Kane’s approach, but he wakened just as Kane reached the side of the bed. He managed half a shout before Kane’s hand muzzled him, and he struggled ferociously as Kane swiftly flipped him onto his face. It ended with the dull snap of bone beneath the muffle of a pillow and Kane harvested the precious fluid the human’s brain provided in silence.

The female in the other room uttered a sleepy query and Kane went to meet her, ejecting the spent gland from his harvester as he went. She was already lying back down when he opened her door, but she was quick enough to fly up again at the intrusion. She tried to scream, but Kane leapt, smashing the legs out from under the bed when he landed and crushing the breath from her body. He covered the human’s mouth and shouted for Raven, just to know that she was still in the house.

She came, her footsteps echoing clumsily on the stairs, but stopped when she reached the bedroom door. She looked at him, at the struggling female he pinned. Her face crumpled. “You said I wouldn’t have to help.”

“Don’t help,” he said, and rolled the human onto her side. She was still struggling weakly, like the bird whose breast he had broken, and there was blood flecking her lips as she sucked in her gasping breaths. Time was limited; the gland could not produce its chemicals once the human died. “Just stay where you are.”

He worked quickly, struggling to find a good snapping-place on the back of the young humans underdeveloped skull. Finally, he was reduced to picking up a heavy-looking lamp at arm’s reach and crudely bashing her open. He located the necessary material, feeling the female’s body torpidly squirming as she died. He had nearly filled one ampule. It was a start.

A metallic rattle distracted him. Raven was at the human’s closet. She had pulled some clothing from the articles hanging there and was putting it on over the top of her ruined string-shirt. Her shoulders were shaking.

A good idea. The male in the other room was big, for a human. If Kane was going to be doing much travel by groundcar on the human’s roads, it would be smart to have a disguise.

“Stay close,” he said, and got up.

“Can’t I please go back downstairs?” Raven’s voice was broken, her eyes shining with desperation since her body was too dry for tears. She clutched both her hands before her, miming shackles, and said, “Please? Please.”

Kane glanced at the bed. Blood had soaked the pillow already, was dripping onto the floor. Without answering, he went to the wall and thumbed the switch that operated the light. He went to Raven, catching her wrist though she tried to cringe back, and dragged her to the bedside. He put her before him, his free hand closing on her jaw, aiming her at the body on the bed.

“Take a good look,” he said, unconsciously giving her the same words (and in much the same way) as Uraktus had given him, years and years ago. “That’s death. That’s what I deal in. Look at it. Smell it.”

Raven trembled in his grip. Her eyes were huge, staring. “She’s just a kid,” she whispered. She looked away, at the papers and human images that coated the walls, at the soft toys and pink-colored objects that cluttered the floor. She pushed back, blindly seeking the comfort of Kane’s chest; Kane, who had done the killing.

He patted her arm reassuringly and studied the dead human without much interest. He didn’t think she was as young as Raven believed. The female’s chest-bumps were full and firm, the scent of her musk was mature. She was young, but not that young. Death just had a way of shaving off the years.

Raven turned around and pressed her face into the crook of Kane’s arm. She made that sobby sound, but just once. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

“That’s up to you.”

“I want to live.” He could feel her breath on his bare skin. She said it again, as though trying to convince herself. Then she stepped away from him, her arms wrapped around her middle and her head bent. When Kane left, she followed.

In the male’s room, Kane found only a few items of value to him. Foot covers, heavy and grimed with use, but sized to fit even over Kane’s talons. A long coat, ill-fitting and much too heavy to wear all the time, but an essential thing, he thought, if he was to move for any length of time among humans. A head-cover, wide-brimmed, which Kane took solely to keep the sun out of his eyes as he walked. And finally, sitting right within easy reach of the bed, a weapon.

It was a hand-held pellet-projectile device, black and stinking of oil. Kane picked it up, feeling it heavy in his hand, and gave the dead male on the bed a long look. If he had reached for this instead of shouting, Kane would be dead on the floor right now. Life. Funny.

But he liked the thing. He like the dull gleam of it, the lethal feel of the metal. He glanced at Raven; she was gazing tight-lipped at the corpse. “What’s the name for this?” he asked, hefting the weapon.

“It’s a gun,” she answered dully. “I don’t know what kind.”

“Do you know how to work it?”

She dragged her eyes off the bed and finally came over, holding out one hand.

“Don’t touch it,” he said, pulling the thing back out of her reach and smiling faintly. A part of him was coming to approve of his human, and he thought he might eventually come to like her quite a lot, but he was light-years away from trusting her to hold a weapon. “Just tell me.”

“You need bullets first.” Raven looked around and came up with a box of shiny metal tubes. “These,” she said. “You put them in the clip part…right here…I’m going to have to touch the gun to show you.”

Kane could see where she was trying to get at. He pried at the place she called a clip, and managed on his second try to get it out. He eyed the bullets loaded inside, fit the clip back in place, pulled it out again, and then smiled. Just like a Kevrian pulsor, really.

“Now if you want to shoot somebody, you make sure the safety…this thing…is in the off position. It’s on right now, so it won’t fire.”

Kane toggled the ‘safety’ and aimed the weapon at the wall. It had been designed for a smaller hand and more fingers, but he found he could hold it sideways easily enough, and his thumb claw fit neatly into the trigger guard. He tested the pull, drawing back by minute degrees until the gun jerked in his hand with a flat thunderclap of sound. A black hole opened as by magic on the wall, coughing out a tiny spew of dust.

Simple. Elegant. Very effective.

Kane toggled the safety back on and put the gun into the pocket of his new coat, and then slung that over his arm, along with his other acquisitions. “Anything else?” he said.

Raven bent and picked up the dead human’s clothes from the floor. She put her hands in its inner folds and removed a bundle of flat metal shapes, strung together into a jingling ring like a baby’s toy, and then a leather pocket, shiny with time and bulky with material. From this, she took several folded bits of greenish-grey paper which she held out to him. Kane took them, puzzled. “Money?” he guessed.

Raven nodded. She was wiping down the sides of the leather pocket on her new shirt before letting it drop to the floor.

At first, Kane couldn’t imagine what had compelled her to rob the corpse for human currency. Then he remembered losing the first groundcar because it had expended all its fuel. He gave Raven a long, considering glance. She hadn’t forgotten. Even here, face to face with hard death and hating it, she’d kept her wits around her.

“There’s food downstairs,” she said now. Raven looked one final time at the body on the bed, and then turned away and preceded him out into the hall.

‘Boy,’ said Urak’s voice, in tones of mild appreciation. ‘You could have done a lot worse.’

Silently, Kane agreed. He followed his female downstairs.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Five

East.

The sun rose hot and hateful every morning, and Tagen walked into it. It blinded him, it burned his face and robbed his lungs of breath. It fell behind him every afternoon and Tagen could feel it like the hand of a murderous god, pushing him relentlessly ahead. He took his suppressants, but the heat was there regardless, leadening his limbs and clogging his mind of thought and purpose. His clothing stank. He stank. Sweat was a fog that warded off even the biting insects of Earth. He was in hell.

The forests gave way to mountains after four days of battle with branches and roots. The mountains were cooler, just enough to mock him, not enough to supplant his need for suppressants. And the mountains were more treacherous footing than even the forests had been. The ground beneath his feet was loose, dry, and unstable. He climbed, he fell, he rose bruised and often bleeding to climb again.

There were streams in the mountains, often springing right from the rock itself in eruptive white falls that were beautiful even to Tagen’s increasingly bitter turn of mind. The water was itself a torture, a curse disguised as a blessing. Tagen drank his limit at each he passed just for the sense of fullness it gave him, but the thirst was always with him. He could wash, or at least he could wipe away the newest layer of sweat and grime and briefly cool his burning flesh, but the stink of him never faded. Tagen was coming to hate even the sound of the water, splashing and burbling happily to itself in defiance of him. It stung at him more and more that he had to be grateful for it.

When he thought at all—the heat had a way of stealing in and smothering his brain—he thought of home. Not Earth. Earth was hell. Not even the living quarters the Fleet provided him when he was back on Jota. Home for Tagen was a ship. His own room—he was not a fourth-rank officer for nothing—near the stern, away from the relentless pulse and grinding of the nacelles. A ship, any ship, where it was dark and always cool, and he was surrounded by officers who thought and behaved just like him. Males with whom he could share some camaraderie. Females who would notice his rank and reputation, and make their overtures when the urge was on them to mate. A ship well-heeled with provisions, meat for the taking, iced ul by the bottle. A ship where there was no east.

After three days, the mountains fell again into forest, and Tagen descended its untrustworthy slopes (sometimes on foot, sometimes on his ass, and once, a good fifty meters on his damn face). The forest rose up and swallowed him again, this one thinner and even drier than before. The soil here was red, gritty and volcanic, and stained his talons the color of old blood. The trees were tall and branchless until they reached the sky; there, they grew arms bristling with needles, the same needles that carpeted the ground in slippery brown drifts. There were no more vines and thorns, but there were spiky bushes just shoulder-height, all to ready to slap and scratch at travelers.

The streams died out, but there was food, in the form of small hopping creatures in some abundance. They were tricky game. Unless he managed a head shot, the plasma bolt left nothing but a charred leg or two. Tagen considered himself a good shot to begin with, but three days of having his dinner depend on his aim made him a much better one in a very short span of time. The meat cooked up tough and tasteless, sustaining his physical needs while eroding his spirit.

He hated Earth. Never since reaching his majority had Tagen believed he hated anything or anyone. Hate was, in the words of that dour old soldier who had adopted him, nothing but the decay of discipline. It was pointless at the best of times, reckless at the worst. It was contrary to every fiber of his being. But no matter how much he may wish to be a better man, Tagen could not deny that he hated Earth.

How easy it would be to turn around right now, follow his locater back to his ship, and just go home. He could make out his report from the comfort of space. He could honestly say his investigations had turned up no sign of E’Var or the prison transport vessel. The prisoner had met his end in a mid-Gate termination and let that be an end to bad business.

That would work…right up until E’Var emerged from the abyss and this time, with his own Gate to Earth. And Tagen, lucky Tagen, would get to shoulder the sole responsibility for allowing him to slip through the fingers of the Fleet.

No. Best to stay. Thirty days was the Fleet standard for a fruitless investigation, and off records, sixty days was encouraged. Tagen didn’t have the supplies (nor Earth the resources, apparently) for such a lengthy search, but in five more days, if he had still found no water, no real food, and no trace of his prisoner, he’d return to his ship and wait in orbit around this miserable planet. He hated to do it that way, giving E’Var free reign to harvest humans, but at least he could not fail to see a ship as it left Earth. It would be an ugly confrontation, but prison transports had only minimal weapons. Even though he was confidant the cruiser he’d been given for this mission would prevail in a firefight, it remained a tactic of last resort.

Tagen was lost in these thoughts, unaware of how circular and locked they had become. It was no longer a debate but only a distraction from his body’s complaints. It was a dangerous frame of mind in any circumstances. Here, alone on Earth, it was a killing trap.

He walked right into the human’s camp without seeing it or them. Heat exhaustion and dehydration, so deep he no longer felt them, had ravaged his reflexes. The tree beside him had to explode before the world came back into focus.

Tagen looked around in dull surprise as bark blew out from the tree. He had heard the thunderous sound of it, but he could not immediately force his mind to make the connection.

Someone was shouting.

Tagen turned toward the noise and saw two humans, one larger than the other by a full head. Both were holding what looked to Tagen’s heat-thick mind a lot like ion rifles, only uglier.

For a moment, no one moved.

The larger human said something, too loudly and hurriedly for Tagen to decipher. In the same instant, it hefted the weapon it held, not aiming it at him, but wanting Tagen to see it all the same.

Tagen looked back at the camp. He saw a temporary shelter, another enigmatic groundcar, a portable table and chairs, and several containers crafted from brightly-colored polymers. One of these was open. Tagen could see water and what looked like ice. Actual ice.

Tagen’s mouth had no moisture. He tried to speak, produced only a dull croak and a rattling cough, and tried again. “Hola.”

The large human shouted again, shaking its head in short, sharp movements. The meaning was clear: Get out. Go away.

Tagen looked at the water again. There had to be a compromise here. With difficulty, he made his brain turn to N’Glish. “I mean you no harm,” he said.

He had killed the last human he’d said that to.

“I need water,” he went on, and pointed at the chest for good measure.

Both humans locked their eyes on his extended claw and went instantly berserk. The smaller one screamed and backpedaled. The larger raised its weapon and pointed it at Tagen’s heart.

Tagen’s brain was still stuffed with sand. His body acted without him. He pulled his plasma gun and fired. The bolt sheared through the barrel of the weapon; it took off the human’s hands and then its head. The body dropped forward and gravity, in an act of cosmic cruelty, caused it to somersault with dead man’s grace and land belly-up.

The shorter human staggered back, its face opening up in an expression of grief too awful to be ungenuine. It shrieked, just once, a despairing cry that did not seem to be, to Tagen’s ear, entirely wordless. The sound of it cut through Tagen’s trance-like exhaustion, but it only gave his killing hand a target.

Breath went out of the tail of the human’s scream. It started to look down, started to raise one hand to the gaping hole greedily opening in its chest. It crumpled. It fell.

A roar of pure horror ripped its way rustily from Tagen’s throat and he threw the gun his hand gripped into a tree hard enough to knock bark from it. He ran forward, but it was already over. It had been over from the first instant. The humans were dead.

Tagen bent over the body of the short human, rubbing handfuls of earth into the sizzling edges of char, trying unthinkingly and futilely to stop the progression of superheated plasma, to undo what he had done now for the third time. The water in the human’s camp was forgotten. The rifle-like weapon the humans had aimed at him were forgotten. In that awful moment, even E’Var and his mission were forgotten. He knew only what he had done.

He had murdered them.

*

They rested at the house for hours. They ate leftover chicken, rich and sweet with barbeque sauce, cold from the fridge. Raven drank almost a full gallon of milk and a pitcher of lemonade by herself. Kane just kept bringing her glasses and stood over her brooding while she forced it down her throat. She felt bloated and sick and awful.

Afterwards, he’d taken her to the sagging, smoke-pungent couch in the living room and sat with her under his arm in the dark. He was asleep in minutes. She sat awake and staring blindly. Every little creak and rustle the old house made seemed to her to be the slide of dead feet rising and coming for her.

The sun rose, and still Kane slept. Raven looked at the pictures on the walls. Family photos and horses and trains and Jesus.

When he woke up, it was all at once. One second, soundly sleeping. The next, standing up and looking around the living room. He sniffed the air, glanced upwards, and grunted. She wondered if the bodies had started to stink yet, if he could smell it already. She imagined them lying there, blackening and bloating and drawing flies.

Then he was looking at her, running those empty eyes down her from head to toes and back again. “Anything hurt?” he asked. He put a claw below her chin and tilted her back to study her eyes.

“No.”

He put his thumb into her mouth and she opened like a baby bird and felt the touch of him on her gums and then her tongue. He grunted, looking satisfied, and then stepped back. “Let’s eat.”

The chicken was all gone. Raven made eggs, frying up all eight of the ones she found in the fridge, and dumping the shells into the sink with the dirty dishes. She’d run water over the whole mess when they were done here. They couldn’t get fingerprints off wet things, could they? And she’d remember to wipe down the dials and stuff on the stove, the refrigerator door, anything else she’d touched.

After breakfast, Raven started pulling down boxes of cookies and crackers to take with them in the car. Kane watched her, walking behind her as she carried things out to the yard, and holding doors for her as she passed. The dead man’s keys fit two of the vehicles in the driveway: a fairly-new pickup and a rusty old hatchback. She took the hatchback. She couldn’t drive a stick.

“Is that everything?” Kane still had his hand on the car door, waiting to see if she would go back into the house or not. He was wearing his new clothes. The overcoat was too small; its long sides hung down behind him like demonic wings, and left his chest bare. He had no nipples. Funny, the things you notice.

“I think so,” she said finally, and he shut the door and went around to let himself in the front passenger seat. She got behind the wheel and he handed her the keys. “Where do I go?” she asked, turning the ancient engine over.

“Find us a road and take us east,” he said, and that was that.

They drove all day, navigating out and around through the winding roads and nearly-roads of backwater Oregon, filling up at towns too small for stoplights and pissing in the woods. It wasn’t so bad. The car was old, but the A/C worked, and the miles had a way of slipping by. It was late afternoon before they found a highway. It was evening when they left Oregon. And it was dark again before Kane’s voice finally growled up and told her to pull over.

Raven yawned against the back of her hand, squinting into the sparse line of headlights. There were plenty of turn-offs ahead of her, but it was something behind her now that occupied her mind. It was important to be tactful, not to give the appearance of arguing, but…

“Do we have to?” she asked.

She sensed his eye on her, glittering black at the edge of her peripheral vision. “I know,” she said hurriedly. “I’m on the edge of unsafe here, but there’s a motel up ahead.”

“Motel?”

“Yeah. I…I kind of thought it’d be nice to sleep in a real bed. Maybe get a shower.” She sniffed at her underarm and pulled a face. “Definitely a shower.”

He grunted.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” she asked tentatively. “I’ll pull over here if you really want to.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve slept in a…bed,” he said, in a low, musing voice. “And I could use washing up.” He shifted around and the weight of his gaze became an itch all down Raven’s right side. “When I’m tired,” he said evenly, “it’s easy for me to…over-react. Any little pause or other harmless thing you may say is going to make me want to rip your head clean off.”

There was no hint of malice in his tone. None whatsoever. He was as calm and conversational as if he were telling her that he liked to go skiing in the winter. She did not doubt him for a second.

“Kane,” she said softly. “You said we were going to be traveling together for a while. You can’t really want me to smell this bad.”

He grunted again and faced the windshield. Then he laughed and said, “No, not if I don’t have to. All right, Raven. Take us to this motel.”

She could feel parts of her she hadn’t even known were tense start to relax. Her back, her arms, her thighs, her stomach—how could a stomach even tighten up?—everything. “Thanks,” she said softly.

“You’ll make it up to me.”

Her stomach tightened up again. All at once, the hatchback enclosing her washed out just a little, and she was flat on her back on the dry grass. She could feel him wedging into her, could feel herself crushed and shoved and rocked by the brutal size and uncaring movements he sent against her. Slowly, the car bled back into focus, but her pussy still ached. He hadn’t even glanced at her since that first time. She’d hoped that part was over.

Kane was looking at her again and now he was smiling.

They were coming up on the motel, but there was still no town in sight. It was just a wide spot in the road, really. A little log cabin office with a strip of six rooms off to either side of it. The vacancy light was lit, but the amenities board beneath it read, not Welcome! or Free HBO and Continental Breakfast, but Gone Fishin. Closed until September. Keep cool.

She wasn’t sure which to believe, but the light was on in the office, so she pulled in and parked. “This could be tricky,” she said, unbuckling herself. Little places like this tended not to be as strict as the bigger ones about showing I.D. when people registered, but flags got raised in a hurry if they asked and no one had any. She’d just have to cross her fingers and hope, maybe spin out that old ‘my wallet got stolen’ story if she had to.

Kane didn’t look concerned. He followed her into the office, which was unlocked, and put his arm around her shoulders as she hit the service bell. It was a strange gesture coming from him, right up until she felt his claws digging at her skin below her shirt sleeve and realized just how close they were to her neck. One quick pull, one rush of heat, and it was all over for her. Her throat went dry at once; she tried to swallow for spit and got only a sandy click for her efforts.

“Easy, human,” Kane murmured. “Easy. You’re going to make him nervous.”

Raven sucked in a breath, let it out slow, and smiled as an old man shuffled into the office from a back room. He was wearing a bathrobe with the unabashedness unique to seniors, and he waved at them amiably as he came to the front desk and eased into the worn cushions of a tall chair.

“I was beginning to think maybe you weren’t open,” she said. Her voice sounded too loud and inanely sunny, but Kane’s claws didn’t prick a warning at her. It must be all right.

“Figured what the hell,” the old man said cheerfully. “Might as well hang out the shingle ‘till midnight at least. But I’m meaning to be on my way tomorrow noon, so’s you need to be checkin’ out right on the buzzer of eleven. Not generally so particular, myself, but you see how it is. Damn weather.”

Kane emitted a single cough of laughter and nodded. “Damn weather,” he agreed.

The old man nodded vigorously, leaning forward over the desk. “Got no pool, that’s the problem. Used to be a man could make a living on summer trade ‘n deer season and such with a little premium cable and a muffin in the morning, but can’t be done these days. This weather! Pardon my French if you’re religious, but this goddamn heat!”

“Amen,” said Kane, and Raven blinked at him.

“I’m too old for this crap,” the motel man grumbled good-naturedly. “I got a place up by the lake Ontario-way I ain’t seen in five years, killing myself down here as I am. And so tonight I’m thinking, no hide or hair of customer in five days, and this damn weather, why not?”

“Why not?” Kane shrugged.

The old man made a cheerful grimace and then waved at them again. “Ah, listen to me rattle on and it half-past eleven. Let me get your key. Room 3 got the best A/C, and you might as well take it for a goodbye. I’ll have a good breakfast laid on tomorrow for you, you just come and buzz me, I’ll have it out. You’re welcome to take any and all with you when you go your way, too. Muffins, mostly, and they ain’t fresh, but they’re not bad.”

“Thank you,” Raven said. She filled in the registration card under the name Cain and Cindy Francisco, with a completely fake address in Seattle.

“You folks should have stayed up north,” the old man remarked, setting a heavy brass key on a plastic tab down on the counter. “Nice and cool, s’ I hear. Even rains now and then.”

“Well, we’re headed back,” Raven told him. “Had to…see my sister’s baby.”

“And don’t they come at the worst times?” he asked merrily. “I hear you, I hear you. Now, it’s thirty-five for the room, and I’ll just run a copy of your driver’s license and let you folks tuck in for the night.”

“Um,” said Raven. “The thing is—”

Kane glanced at her, then slipped a hand around the old man’s neck. It seemed to Raven that he didn’t even move particularly fast, but he must have, because the old guy didn’t even get out the first word of a “What the heck are you doing?” before it was over. She heard the coconut-hollow whack of the old guy’s head hitting the counter, and then Kane’s hand was back in his pocket and he was watching, just standing there and watching, as the old guy crumpled off his chair and onto the floor. He landed facedown and mouth open, blood spilling in a wide ribbon onto the cheap carpet.

Raven must have made a sound, because Kane looked at her. “Wasn’t that the tricky bit?” he asked. He was smiling again, teasing her.

“I could have told him something,” she said.

“His listening days are about to end.” Kane took his arm off her shoulders and moved around the counter. He hunkered down, opening his black pack and taking out that rodlike machine he’d used on the brains of the men Raven had been riding with, but then paused and looked more closely into the motel guy’s face. He grunted and touched a fingertip to the old man’s neck. “Damn,” he said mildly. “I think I killed him.”

“You were going to kill him anyway,” Raven said. Not a smart thing to say, but she couldn’t call the words back any more than she could take her eyes off that little winding stripe of red coming out of the split in the old guy’s brow.

“True. But I wanted to harvest him first.” Kane straightened up, dropping his device back into his pack. “Never mind, he’ll keep. Let’s close down.”

Raven picked up the room key, registration card and pen, wiped down the counter with a fold of her t-shirt, and used the back of her elbow to flip the ‘no’ switch for No Vacancy. “I need to move the car,” she said.

“All right.” Kane yawned hugely, showing Raven two rows of pointed carnivore’s teeth. “But we’d better make it quick.”

She parked the car around the back of the motel, away from the road and casual sight. Kane sat beside her in the passenger seat, tapping his claws on one knee and looking very relaxed for a man who’d just killed a guy and was preparing to sleep in the same building as the body.

The disuse of the season was evident in the musty smell of Room 3. Raven kept the lights off, closed the curtains, and moved at once to the air conditioner mounted in the wall. It started up noisy as a ‘67 Chevy, but it did start up, and it worked pretty fast, howling glacial air into the little room. Kane waved a hand before the vent as he closed the door and looked impressed.