Explosive chemistry, p.7
Explosive Chemistry, page 7
Liliana’s sister, Isabella, her brother-in-law, Rizke, and niece, Ariadne, were all the family she had left now, and they were far away in Europe somewhere.
Doctor Nudd cleared his throat. “I’d heard that spider seers tend to choose mates from the fiercer Other species.”
Liliana nodded, pulled from her melancholy thoughts. She was pleased to find someone who was familiar with her kind. “Yes. My grandfather was an oak goblin, like you. Only from my first mother’s stories, he was more inclined toward bashing things than tending wounds.”
“Right, well, the goblin reputation is not entirely un-deserved.” He fell silent for a moment. His brown eyes widened suddenly. “You’re not looking for a mate, are you?”
The unexpected question startled Liliana. “I have nearly four years before my first blood fire time, when I will be old enough to bond with a life mate.”
The goblin seemed to relax. “Ah, all right, then.”
“But I would like to choose one before my blood-fire time. Once that happens, hormones and chance will choose, and I would rather make a choice for myself.”
Doctor Nudd swallowed, and set his teacup down a bit roughly, endangering the delicate china. The goblin doctor understood some of the nature of spider seers. So he was probably familiar with the blood-fire time. She could understand why discussion of such out-of-control behavior would bother anyone.
For the second—or was it third—time that month, Liliana found herself thinking about when she would be biologically compelled to find a mate and produce a child. She hadn’t thought about it much in the last half century, but now, she felt the pressure of it coming up fast. Her first mother hadn’t had the chance to teach her much about the blood-fire time, except that the overwhelming urges would be temporary. She must simply choose a male and ride it out. The more she thought about it, the more Liliana found the whole idea of being compelled to mate disturbing.
She had no one she wished to make a child with. She wanted to carefully choose the father of her daughter, as her mother had. Solifu loved and kept the man who fathered her children, and also the woman they both loved. She used her venom to extend their lives as long as her own. Liliana’s three parents had been happy together for centuries. Liliana wanted that, not the random forced choices of a biological imperative.
She stood up suddenly, no longer comfortable in the goblin’s home. She had returned his sweater and given him the necessary message. They had shared tea and conversation and gotten to know each other better. “I’m going home now.”
The goblin followed her to the door. “Well, then. Thanks for stopping by, unexpectedly, in the middle of music practice, for no apparent reason, without even calling.”
“You’re welcome.” Liliana paused at the door, thinking about what he said. “Would you prefer that I call first next time?”
“That would be a nice change.” The goblin’s voice seemed to almost always have that hint of mixed meanings. Again, she chose to accept his words at face value. Without looking into the goblin’s mind, she had no idea what else he might mean.
Liliana nodded. “Okay.” The cab pulled up just at that moment to pick her up. She had looked ahead before she left home, seen when she would leave on the goblin’s grandfather clock, and told the self-driving car exactly when to come back for her.
Doctor Nudd shook his head as she walked away, muttering, “Red wolves, flower sprites, spider seers… What’s next, dancing bears?” as he closed the door behind her.
Well, that had gone very well, Liliana thought, pleased with herself for overcoming her fear. She opened her fourth eyes and looked ahead. It hadn’t been enough. The goblin would still die in a few weeks. She had only bought him a few extra moments of life on the crucial day.
It was a beginning, but Liliana had more work to do.
Chapter 6
How To Train Your Wolf
A few days later, on a Saturday morning, Liliana sat in the branch of a tree in a part of the pine forest not far from Doctor Nudd’s house, near Smith Lake. The cold snap had let up and the February day promised to be warm and clear.
The Green glowed deeply here. She could see with her third eyes the rivers of energy flowing like healthy blood vessels in the skin of the earth. She listened to the wind in the leaves, the birds singing, and the occasional drip of water from the early morning dew. The air smelled of leaf mold, growing things, and the first hints of spring to come.
The world had changed a great deal in the last three decades of Liliana’s life. She remembered even this relatively rural area as having the stench of pollution in the air and living under the constant threat of the super-storms of global climate change. The green rivers of light her third eyes saw in the ground had once been faded and sluggish.
Liliana was amazed at how a few technological breakthroughs had changed the face of the world and brought back the waning power sleeping in the earth. Modern batteries were lightweight, made from readily available materials, and capable of storing and putting out power reliably. Modern solar cells could charge those batteries faster than the power could be consumed.
In the mid-teens of the new century, the US Navy had needed a cheaper and more reliable way to get fuel for their ships. They found a way to make hydrocarbon fuel out of seawater in a carbon neutral process. Solar energy could also split seawater into unlimited supplies of hydrogen and oxygen that burned clean. This made even internal combustion engines produce clean water, not unwholesome poisons. The use of hydrocarbons had all but ceased. In the mid-thirties, the global warming trend completely reversed. The earth had begun to heal.
And more than heal. To thrive.
Liliana took deep breaths and reveled in the beauty that this new age brought with it. She spent far too much of her time inside her house. She promised herself that she would come to this place again. Many times.
She felt a little guilty for liking this new resurgence of nature.
Many powerful people once depended on the scarcity of hydrocarbon-based fuels for their livelihood. Political upheaval had been violent, both in the United States and in countries abroad.
In the States, some rejoiced in the new, cleaner, cheaper sources of power, but those powerful, wealthy few who depended on the status quo were not so happy. They paid enough to fuel propaganda that swayed many to their side. The country had nearly erupted in civil war.
The frequent need for martial law to quell riots led to the power of the military to act within US borders being significantly increased by a frightened Congress.
In the end, there was no way that the energy companies could put the genie of cheap, limitless power back in the bottle. Many of the mighty had fallen. New leaders had risen to take their places.
Wars still raged around the world, the echoes and aftershocks of economic upheaval. American soldiers still bled in many of those wars. And their families looked to Liliana for reassurance and guidance.
For Others across the globe, the changes were a breath of oxygen for people who had been suffocating. Gaia’s favored children felt their ancient strength returning.
Liliana would not have been entirely surprised if the tree she crouched in, which had an unusually bright green soul, one day yawned and stretched and regained a human form it hadn’t worn since the industrial revolution.
Young beast-kin like Pete didn’t even know what it was like not to have comfortable ease with their three natural forms. Liliana remembered years and places when her brothers couldn’t reach full lion form at all, and only attained demi-lion form when the moon phase was favorable.
Liliana wondered what other effects the resurgence of nature’s energy would have on the world.
After maybe an hour of sitting silently in the tree, thinking, Liliana heard two familiar men’s voices and a high-pitched feminine voice slowly coming toward her. They were deep in a friendly debate over the merits of various types of knives. For three people moving through wilderness, making no attempt to be stealthy, the wolf-kin and the two Fae made surprisingly little sound aside from their conversation.
Doctor Nudd and Pete strolled into the clearing near the spider-kin. Siobhan walked at their heels.
“This looks like a good place to practice,” Doctor Nudd said. “No one around for miles.” He hung a large grapefruit as a target from a branch of the tree that Liliana sat in. Behind it, he draped a quilted packing blanket that should catch stray blades that missed the fruit, so they wouldn’t get lost in the leaf mold.
Siobhan hung back a bit, turning her head from side to side with a furrow between her carrot-red eyebrows. Flower sprites tended to be deeply in touch with the plants around them. Liliana didn’t fit the normal pattern of this forest. The flower sprite looked up finally, saw Liliana, and opened her mouth to say something.
Liliana put a finger to her lips to ask for silence.
Siobhan grinned and shifted form, becoming far smaller. Bright purple and fuchsia double wings like a dragonfly’s sprouted from her back, emerging through slits in her bolero-style leather jacket. As she shrank, the jacket stayed the same, looking more like a trench coat to the tiny woman with the hot pink mohawk. She fluttered up into a large branch of a nearby tree with a good view, then settled in to watch the show.
“You’re not going to practice, Siobhan?” Pete asked.
“I’m good. You go ahead.” She popped a small pistol apart into her lap, produced a tiny set of tools from somewhere, and did incomprehensible things to the gun.
Pete practiced throwing knives at the swinging fruit from various distances and angles, standing with feet wide apart, taking his time to aim carefully. Liliana recognized it as a good stance—steady, stable, and highly unlikely to be attainable in the middle of an actual fight. Pete’s marksmanship with throwing knives was excellent. Doctor Nudd pushed the hanging grapefruit to make it swing wildly so it became a more difficult target. Pete’s accuracy still required them to replace the fruit several times.
Pete seemed fairly pleased with his ability. Liliana shook her head in frustration. That would not do.
Pete removed a few dead lower branches with his old sword. He wielded it with raw force and a lack of finesse that would have been more appropriate with an axe.
If that was sword practice, then Liliana was a boggart.
He followed with some friendly wrestling with Doctor Nudd, both in their human forms. Pete’s strength and speed, even as a human, were impressive, but his form was awful. Liliana’s father would never have tolerated such sloppy footwork. Pete was off balance more than he was on.
The goblin was worse. Doctor Nudd depended entirely on his strength and long reach. He fought like a barroom brawler: all offense and zero finesse.
Liliana’s father taught her toe-to-toe fighting with various weapons and without. He made certain that his daughter became an expert in the grappling dance of balance against balance of Greek wrestling, and the brutal but flashy weapon styles of the gladiator. Her first mother taught her the fighting style of the spider seer. Set traps, wait patiently, entangle the enemy. Her second mother taught her the fighting style of the jaguar-kin. Stalk silently, ambush from above, kill the enemy with lightning-quick merciless attacks.
Liliana used all three styles, depending on the situation. For the most part, it was her first mother’s style, the fighting style of the spider seer, that she had used to defeat Pete. The sacrifice wrestling throw she’d used to defeat Stella was one that her father taught her.
Now that she no longer feared the red wolf, she realized that she could have defeated Pete in any of her fighting styles.
Any of the three beast-kin who raised Liliana would have destroyed this red wolf without breaking a sweat. Far too soon, he would face four Wolfhounds, all strong and properly trained. Even if he had magic to pierce their protections, Pete didn’t stand a chance. Not without allies, and not without training.
When she felt like she’d seen enough, and the two men were starting to look a little winded from their inadequate practice, she dropped onto Doctor Nudd’s shoulders from above. He fell on his face in the soft grass with a yelp of surprise.
Pete reacted instantly, drawing one of the throwing knives he had been practicing with and striking down at her.
Liliana blocked his arm with hers, set her foot behind his ankle, and shoved.
The red wolf landed on his butt in the grass and leaves next to the goblin. Her arm blade was at his throat before he could even begin to fight.
His bright blue eyes widened nearly as much as they had in her vision of his death. “Lilly! Where the hell did you come from?”
Liliana felt an odd sort of thrill in her belly that the red wolf showed only surprise, no sign of fear, even though her blade was at his throat. He really did trust her. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that the Celtic wolf-kin no longer feared her in the least? She really wasn’t sure. But it wouldn’t help him survive. Pete needed a little fear.
He tried to get up, but she added a knee to his belly to shove him down on his back and cause him discomfort. “Hit the fruit now.”
He blinked at her in confusion for a moment, then his eyes flickered to the swinging target.
She nodded.
Pete hurled the knife awkwardly, at an uncomfortable angle. He missed. The heavy blanket backdrop kept the knife from getting lost on the forest floor.
“This isn’t exactly an ideal throwing position,” Pete said.
“When enemies come for you, any position you can hit them from is ideal.”
From the tree above them, a small choking sound became increasingly louder. At that moment, Siobhan erupted in full-fledged guffaws. She pointed at them and squealed with laughter. She laughed so hard tears ran down her cheeks, and Liliana worried she might fall out of the tree.
Liliana sighed and flicked her wrist to sheath her arm blade back in the natural pocket in her forearm. “You are not helping,” she told the little sprite. “Pete and Doctor Nudd must take training more seriously.”
Siobhan choked out, “Your faces!” before dissolving in giggles again.
The spider-kin turned back to Pete. “You must practice throwing from your back, while running, while falling, while off balance, while surprised. Your enemies will not wait while you take careful aim.”
She extended her hand to the wolf. Pete took it, and she helped him to his feet.
Doctor Nudd got to his feet on his own and brushed leaves off his thick sweater.
“Why are you here, Lilly?” Pete asked.
“I will train you.”
“Pardon me, madam.” Doctor Nudd said, “I am training this young wolf.” The tall goblin glared down at her small, slender form, probably intending to be intimidating. The goblin undoubtedly felt she was impinging on his territory. That, she understood. Lion-kin like her father and brothers tended to react the same.
In a single motion, Liliana stepped forward diagonally past the goblin’s position, placed her hip behind his thigh, and pushed with her arm across his chest, the main force on the opposite shoulder. He flipped over her hip and landed on his back in the grass again. Tall men were much easier to throw than short men or women, because of the higher center of balance.
Doctor Nudd snarled and shifted to his Fae form so that the teeth he showed her were yellow and pointed. His skin hardened and roughened like the bark of the trees around them. His lanky body filled out with lumpy muscles the density of oak hardwood and added a foot to his already impressive height. He leapt to his feet far faster than seemed possible based on the wrinkles around his eyes.
Liliana snapped her arm blades out. Each blade was a foot of curved, slender stone-hard bone that angled outward from her wrists in a position useful for both defense and offense, with an outer edge sharp enough to part falling silk.
The oak goblin swallowed. He brought his legs together and twisted his hips away from her instinctively. Then he put his hands up and shifted back to smoother human skin. “Perhaps we could simply discuss this.”
“No talking. Defend yourself.” Liliana slashed at him, deliberately missing.
Doctor Nudd flinched, arms up defensively. “I was under the impression that we had come to an accommodation of sorts, that we might even be considered friends.”
She slashed at him again. “You must learn to fight properly so you will not die.”
Doctor Nudd looked up at Siobhan, who had stopped laughing. “A little help, perhaps?”
The sprite shrugged. She waved her reassembled pistol. “What do you want me to do, shoot her?”
“Whoa, whoa, no one is shooting anyone here,” Pete said. “Lilly, what the hell are you doing?”
Liliana slashed at Doctor Nudd again. “Stop me, Celtic wolf. I could kill your friend.”
Pete grabbed her shoulder.
Liliana twirled, freeing herself from his half-hearted grip, and punched him in the face, hard enough to rock him back on his heels. He would not fight until she made him take her seriously.
Doctor Nudd tried to grab her while she faced Pete.
She sheathed one arm blade so she wouldn’t accidentally stab the goblin, stepped back between his legs, hooked his ankle, and elbowed him hard in the belly, just below the ribs. At the same time, she threw her weight back. Her second mother, Ixchel, taught her that when people grabbed you, they expected you to try evasion, not to attack them.
The goblin’s breath whooshed out, and he fell backward, but one of his long arms hooked Liliana’s belly as he fell, pulling her over with him.
She flipped her legs up and over her head as she went backward, landing her full body weight hard on the goblin’s chest just as his back hit the ground. He wheezed, coughed, and his grip loosened.
Her roll continued into a back somersault onto her feet. While the goblin made choking sounds, she leapt over him toward the red wolf, one blade out front as if she intended to decapitate him. She swung backhanded at Pete. On her blades, the sharp edge was outward. If she hit him, it would be with the blunt inner edge.
