Текст книги "The Earth Dwellers"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Lolita: So Perry can you tell us a little something about yourself (like who and what you are)?

Perry: Well, as you mentioned, my name’s Perry. Well, it’s not really. I never really had a name, until this strange black-haired girl came along and starting talking to me, which nobody had ever done to me before, and well, she called me Perry and it kinda stuck.

What am I? Hmmm, I understand that most of your readers are from the 21^st century, so they’d probably understand the term “cactus” although the people of fire country refer to me as a “prickler.” Basically, I’m a thick-skinned plant that grows even under the harshest conditions, like in fire country, where’s there’s not enough burnin’ water to barely quench my thirst. I’ve got spiky little buggers all over me, so watch out if you get too close—Siena learned that the hard way when she ran smack into me. I’m able to store loads of water in me, so the natives like to use me for a quick drink and something to munch on, if they can get past my pricklers that is! Sometimes I bear beautiful flowers, but only if we get enough rain, which is rare, so usually I’m just plain old gray-green Perry the Prickler.

Lolita: How old are you?

Perry: If treated well, I’m immortal, able to last for centuries even out in the desert, but because of the Meteor god, who became angry with the humans, all desert plant life was pretty much wiped out. Somehow, somewhere, some prickler buds survived though, and sure enough, I started growing once the great dust clouds rose and disappeared, and the searin’ humans started crawling from their hiding places. Long story for a short answer, I know. I’m approximately exactly Four hundred and eighty nine years old, by the humans’ reckoning. In prickler years that makes me twenty one, so I’d like to say hi to all the ladies out there looking for an extremely eligible bachelor. Hiiiii!

Lolita: What is your favorite color?

I love a deep magenta with a yellow border. I sprouted these flowers once that were exactly like that. Absolutely breathtaking. A nasty baggard by the name of Keep picked them clean offa me and gave them to a female inmate up here in Confinement, trying to win her affections and such. Well, she spat in his face. But then she wore my flowers behind her ears until they withered away to nothing but brown mush.

Lolita: What is your favorite time of the day?

Perry: Nighttime, when the searin’ humans are sleeping. Not that a little darkness ever stopped Siena. In fact, she seemed to talk to me more at night than any other time, always going on and on about conspiracies and her father and blah, blah, blah. I was like, hey girlfriend, can a guy get a little shut eye? Not that I have any eyes, but I still need my beauty sleep.

Lolita: How is it like to be bound to one place?

Perry: Bound? Oh, I wouldn’t call it bound. I mean, I ain’t got any feet, but that don’t stop me from walking far and wide. Maybe not in person, but through the eyes of other pricklers. You see, all pricklers are connected. We see what each other see, we hear what each other hear, we know what each other know, you get me?

Ha! I could see it in your eyes that you bought that whole load of tugblaze! I was just screwin’ you around a little, all in good fun of course. Honestly, it really sucks sometimes, not being able to move from one place. I’ve got to rely on all the action coming to me up in Confinement, but I still feel like I miss so much of the goings on in fire country. But I guess it could be worse. I could be one of those pricklers stuck in the middle of the desert with only ’zards, Cotees, and vultures to keep them company. Or worse yet, one of those pricklers that end up in someone’s prickler salad, all cut up into little chunks.

Lolita: How does your normal day look like?

Perry: Well, when the sun comes up and turns the sky all red and the clouds all yellow, I usually start with some stretching, reaching for the sky, working the kinks out. Then I do mental jumping jacks, just pretending, trying to get some exercise. It’s almost the same thing as actually doing them, and I swear I would do them if I had legs and well, arms.

What next? Ahh, yes, I drink a smidgen of the water I’ve got stored inside me, just enough to quench my thirst and keep me from drying out and getting too brittle. Nobody likes a brittle prickler! Then, if there are any brambleweeds being blown past by the wind I do my best to catch them on my spikes. You know, like sort of a game. It’s fun. I mean, I can only lean a centimeter or two to either side, but sometimes that makes all the difference.

When I get bored in the afternoon, I usually take to taunting anyone who’s nearby. I’m an avid taunter, did you know that? Of course, I’m sure you do. I pretty much taunted Siena every second of every day she was stuck in that cage of hers, and even when she wasn’t. I tend to taunt those I like the most, so she got a very healthy dose.

As night falls I always watch the sunset, because hey, I got the best seat in the house and who doesn’t like a good sunset?

Nighttime is for listening, and although I’ve got a big mouth, I can listen pretty searin’ good if I put my mind to it. The desert has so much to say at night with creepy-crawly things, well, creeping and crawling and slithering and scurrying. And Cotees howling too, a mournful, eerie sound that makes you shiver in the best way possible.

Lolita: What do you like doing in your free time?

Just having fun mostly. I mean, what else is life about but having fun. So I usually try to keep things exciting by making up new taunts I can use on any passing humans. Or I might scare a passing ’zard with a loud “Argh!” in their face. That always gets me laughing. But really, I don’t have too much free time, what with all the humans passing through to observe. Then it’s my solemn duty to pass any information I get through the mental telepathies of all the other pricklers….Ha! Got you again! I wouldn’t know a prickler on the other side of fire country from a prickler sitting right next to me.

Lolita: Can you tell us something about your first meeting with Siena?

Perry: Well, first of all, you should read her book, Fire Country, because it’ll tell you everything that happened. But if you want to know one thing, it’s that I didn’t mean to prick her with my spikes. I tried to move, I swear it, but my two-centimeter lean wasn’t nearly enough to get out of her way. And when she crashed into me and my spikes got her, I felt awful, terrible really, for maybe five, ten seconds. And then I just thought it was really funny and I couldn’t stop laughing, because who runs into a prickler!

Lolita: Can you tell us something interesting you have seen happen in the confinement of Fire Country?

Nothing really. These humans are so wooloo, I never know what they’re thinking. They shove people in these cages, which is pure foolishness, because what a waste it is to have perfectly good arms and legs and not be able to use them. That’s why I was really happy for Siena when she used her perfectly good arms and legs to bust out of Confinement, not once, but twice! Impressive, really, although I couldn’t help giving her a hard time about it. A human’s gotta be free and a prickler’s gotta laugh, right?

Lolita: Thanks so much Perry for letting me interview you! I think it was one of the most fun interviews I have ever done !

Perry: Wow, is that it? Is that my fifteen minutes of fame? But I’m not done yet, I have so much more to tell, I just want to say—

***It was at this point that a tugskin was thrown over Perry’s spiky head to convince him it was nighttime and that he should be sleeping. Thankfully, he fell for it and shut the scorch up***

3) A Sneak Peek

BREW

BOOK 1 OF THE WITCHING HOUR

Available anywhere e-books are sold January 16, 2014!

In the black of night,

’Midst shattered dreams,

Come darkest terrors, once unseen.

Hidden amongst us,

Conjuring invisible power,

’Til the wraiths step forward, for the witching hour.

The Witching Hour, Rhett Carter

Chapter One

April 13^th, 2031

Midnight

Shrieks and screams tear me from an already forgotten dream. They’re not human—the howls. Well, maybe some are, but certainly not all; and not those which are the closest.

As I sit up sharply, heart leaping forward to sprinting speed, another ear-rending

screeeeeeech!

shatters the night. Metallic. That’s the only way to describe the sound. Like we’re in Oz and the tin man is being ripped in half by impossibly strong hands, reduced to shredded hunks of scrap metal.

Screeeeeeech!

I flinch away from the window, as if it might burst inwards, but no…whatever’s tearing through the metal is outside. At least for now.

Voices from the other room, muffled at first, and then raised, shouted. “Laney! Stay in your room!”

“What’s happening?” my sister cries through her door.

“Just stay inside!” Dad’s booming voice thunders through wood and plasterboard. “Rhett! You too! My gun, Marla!” My adopted father’s told me few stories of the time he spent in military service, but suddenly it’s not difficult to imagine him barking out orders and snapping salutes off like gunshots.

“Take it,” my mother says. There’s a double click—chook-chook!—and my father’s heavy footsteps pound past my room and rumble down the staircase.

Kicking my legs over the side of the bed, I almost trip on the sheets, which are tangled around my ankles like vines. I high step, not unlike running through the tire course at football camp, and manage to slip free. Two long strides—I’m only fifteen but taller than most of the kids at school—and I’m at the window, peering into the unlit yard, searching for the source of the cacophony.

Under the glow of the half-moon, the wrought-iron fence around our front yard is shining, mangled and bent and ripped in several places. The gate at the end of the brick path is missing…no, there it is! Two jagged halves lie on opposite sides of the yard. Whatever did that is strong beyond imagination…

There are shadows on the lawn:

The dark echo of the big rosebush, tenderly cared for by my father, whose large hands are surprisingly as dexterous as that of a woman’s as he cuts and prunes it on the weekends; a wheel barrow, still half full of mulch—my responsibility unfulfilled—casts a black spot amongst the lush, green grass; the shadows are moving. Not the roses or the barrow, but others, darker and lurking, creeping toward the front door.

There’s a bright flash of light and the rosebush bursts into flame, its thorny stems painted with chaotic red and orange strokes. Glowing orbs appear in the midst of one of the moving shadows and they’re—they’re—

–staring at me.

Unnaturally large eyes in the dark. The shadow raises a finger, points at me through the glass…

The wheelbarrow rockets through the air, spinning and sending clumps of brown mulch flying in all directions, heading right toward me…

I dive and duck just as the window explodes inwards, glass shrapnel raining all around, tinkling like crystal wind chimes. There’s a whoosh! and a whoomp! and a heavy crash as the barrow bashes into my door.

A scream. Laney.

A shout. My father.

A gunshot. Then another.

Covered in shimmering glass shards, I push to my feet, ignoring the spots of blood welling up from my skin. The wheelbarrow is on its side in the hall, having destroyed my bedroom door. I barely spot my sister’s bare foot as she climbs past and toward the staircase.

“Laney, no!” my mother shouts, clambering over the barrow after her. “Rhett, stay here,” she says through a mop of unkempt blond hair.

My entire family is running toward the danger and I’m frozen, glued to the floor, unable to speak, unable to act.

There’s a roar of agony from somewhere downstairs, another gunshot, and then my sister’s scream, a wail of fear and terror. Something snaps inside me and I can move again, charging through the opening, leaping over the barrow, rebounding off the wall, half-stumbling down the hall. I take a sharp left and bound down the steps two at a time.

A cool breeze hits me in the face, unimpeded by the front door, which is wide open and hanging awkwardly by a single hinge. To my left the couch is overturned, splinters of ceramic from a broken vase littering the wooden floorboards around it.

Where’s my family?

I glance into the yard, where the rosebush is nothing more than a glowing pile of ash. The moving, bright-eyed shadows are gone. Are they inside?

“Mom?” I say, surprised that my voice comes out more than a whisper. “Dad? Laney?”

No answer. Silence. Silence. And then…

A scream. Not inside—but somewhere else, down the street perhaps. Another house. Can’t worry about that now. Have to find my family.

I tiptoe into the living room, stubbing my bare toe on something hard. My father’s gun skitters away, clattering across the wood as more screams fill the night. Screams of terror and pain. Neighbors, friends…what’s happening?

I bend down and reach for the gun…

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice says from behind.

My heart skips a beat as I whirl around, instinctively taking a step away toward the tipped-over couch. Glowing orbs stare back at me, too bright to gaze at directly. I shield my eyes with a hand, trying to discern who or what is connected to the blinding light. “Where’s my family?” I say. A black cloak, thin at the top and flared out toward the bottom, sits below the eyes.

“You won’t need them anymore,” the eyes say.

I reverse another step, feel the gun against my heel.

I crouch down, being watched by the animal eyes the entire time. Blindly grab for the gun. It’s warm and soft. No. Doesn’t make sense. For a moment, I risk tearing my gaze from the black-cloaked menace standing before me.

I’m holding a small, dark-skinned hand. Screaming, I drop it, fall to the side, my breath coming in ragged heaves, my heart in my throat, my brain finally catching up to my senses.

“No,” I breathe. And again: “No.”

LaneyohLaneyohLaneyohnonononono!

She watches me with wide, white, unseeing eyes. Her neck is wet and glistening with spilled life.

Tears blooming like roses, I wail at the presence, at my sister’s body, at the empty room, my cries joining the screams and shouts that seem to be everywhere now. “What have you done?” I cry. I’m dreaming—oh please let this be a nightmare. Pinch myself. And again, harder. A groan gurgles from the back of my throat, a cry of rage and hurt.

I jump to my feet and charge the shadow, forgetting my father’s gun because I don’t need it, don’t need anything but my own two fists and unbridled anger.

I blink and it’s gone.

“You can’t fight me,” the voice says, behind me again, standing over my sister’s dead body. It’s a woman’s voice. I only now realize it.

“Get away from her,” I growl through my teeth.

A laugh. How could she be laughing when Laney is broken beneath her? She must be a demon; there’s no other answer. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You and your family”—she points at the couch and it flips over as if it weighs no more than a feather, revealing the still bodies of my adopted parents—“are coming with me.”

They’re not moving, not breathing: dead like Laney. Just like before. Not again.

I clamp my eyes shut as a flash of pain sears through my skull.

I’m five years old, drinking a juice in the backseat. Watching a cartoon on the screen built into the back of the driver’s seat. My first adopted dad curses and I wait for my adopted mother to correct him like she usually does, but then she curses too, and the car is suddenly lurching to a stop and it feels like my body is trying to rip through my seatbelt. My head hits the video screen just as there’s a magnificent

CRASH!!!

and it’s like the car’s an accordion being played for money by one of the men down by the docks. There’s no space in the back and even less in the front and I’m crying and fiddling with the seatbelt—which WON’T COME OFF—and my parents aren’t moving.

When I open my eyes, they’re still there. My new family, the first one I’ve felt comfortable with in a long time, gone to a place I can’t follow. And the glowing eyes, too, still staring. I run at the she-demon, and this time she doesn’t vanish, and I hit her so hard, like I’m tackling Brent at football practice, but it’s like crashing headfirst into a stone wall. Her icy hands clamp around my throat and she picks me up like I’m not big for my age and five foot eleven and a hundred and fifty pounds. Like I’m the size of one of my sister’s dolls, which Laney will never play with again.

“Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” she says, and I can see her teeth, which are straight and white and in perfect little rows above and below her lips, not rotted and sharpened into fangs like I expected. She squeezes my throat and I can’t breathe and I’m surprised when I realize:

I don’t care.

Breathing doesn’t matter. The sharp rap of the heartbeat in my chest doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now that they’re gone.

And then something hits me, and at first I think it’s the demon, but we’re both flying backwards, and her grip loosens and she releases my neck. I crack the back of my head against the fireplace before slumping to the floor, very aware of the demon beside me. A flash of metal cuts through the darkness and she disappears, like before.

Three faces appear, each identical and framed by well-trimmed gray hair and webs of wrinkles. I shake my head and three faces become one.

“Mr. Hanover?” I say, glancing at the long sword he’s carrying in his left hand. Hastily, he shoves it into a loop on his belt.

“She’s gone,” he says, bending over and picking up my body as easily as the demon did.

“So are they,” I say through the tears and the wave of dizziness that assaults me, and he nods with sad eyes.

“The witching hour has begun,” he says, just before my vision fades and I lose consciousness.

Chapter Two

Two years later

I stop, drop and roll. It’s what every kid learns to do in school when the fireman comes in and talks to your class in second grade. Except that’s for fire.

And this isn’t exactly fire.

Blue lightning streaks over me, crackling into a moose head on the wall and jarring it loose. Singed and smoking, the giant, antlered hunter’s trophy swings back and forth and then falls.

I reach out to catch it, but another jagged arc of lightning blasts it out of the air. It erupts into flame, bouncing off the wall and catching a couch on fire. The couch I was sitting on not two minutes ago, trying to enjoy a rare chance to watch a DVD I pillaged months ago from a mostly-standing rental store.

My brain is already processing the information at hand, transferring the knowledge to my hands and feet, kicking them into gear before I can fully comprehend what I’m dealing with.

Keep moving. That’s a rule. To stop is to die.

I roll onto my back and snap my legs forward, regaining my feet in one swift motion. My hands are grabbing at the magicked up throwing stars in my belt, which are laced with some kind of potion that cost me about ten cases of instant noodles that I scavenged from a burned out minimart on a highway in Arizona. The seller, an odd character named Tillman Huckle, drives a hard bargain.

The witch is moving, too, her long, unnaturally red hair flashing as she runs with graceful strides that don’t seem to touch the floorboards of the hunter’s lodge that’s been the closest thing to a home I’ve had since I left San Francisco and began my trek to the east coast. Raising a pale-white hand, she shoots another jagged, blue lightning bolt in my direction. I duck hard to the left and flick my wrist, the throwing star spinning away like a Nolan Ryan fastball, right into the path of the—

She abruptly changes direction and the sharp, metal star misses her, imbedding itself in the log cabin wall.

I’m about to chuck another one when she stops. Her mouth curls into a red-lipped smile, her green eyes seeming to cut almost through me. Strangely, my heart begins to race. I’ve fought dozens of enemies since leaving the west coast and each time have managed to stay as cool as fresh lemonade on a hot summer’s day, but now…

I feel unnerved.

She’s wearing a red, lacey dress that’s more like lingerie. A gown that’s meant to attract attention, ultra sexy. An odd thing for a witch to wear. She winks at me and my heart skips a beat. It never does that.

Ultra sexy just doesn't do it for me. Maybe I'm going against nature or a freak or something, but whenever I'd catch a touchdown pass and turn to the crowd, my eyes always skipped right past the short-skirt-wearing cheerleaders to Blythe, who would usually look up from whatever book she was reading to smile at me, her finger keeping her place. And I was never angry that she didn't see me catch the ball or score or anything, because, you know what? If the roles were reversed I'd have my nose in a book too, or be writing, or something other than watching a meaningless game. It was enough to know that she came to be there for me. The book nerd kind of girl is more my type, not the diva in front of me—and yet…

I can’t take my eyes off her.

She frowns, raises her hand, and I dive behind a table, pulling it down to create a bunker of sorts. The drapes over the window catch on fire as thousands of volts of electricity slam into them.

Leaping up, I snap off another throwing star. At the last second, I have the urge not to throw it, even to chase after it once it leaves my grip, but I bite back the desire and watch as the witch, now wide-eyed with surprise, tries to duck out of the way. She’s too slow and the star slices into her stomach, opening up a ragged gash.

There’s one thing I learned early on in my training: Witches bleed just like the rest of us.

Thick, red blood bubbles from the wound. Her eyes narrow for a moment, as if daring me to throw another, and then she rushes across the large room and through the lodge entrance, which is now missing its door.

I’m left speechless and wondering why I’m squeezing the third throwing star so hard that it’s cutting into my flesh.