Drake got in line at the concession stand, scanning the crowd for anyone who looked like Bubbles. He’d seen her on the first season of American Hero, and was confident he could spot her easily enough. She was big, not just big like Drake, but really big. The line moved quickly and soon Drake was at the front. A man wearing a red BARBARIAN DAYS apron and a horned plastic helmet gave him a quick smile. “What can I do for you, by Crom?”
“I just need a corn dog and a Coke.”
“Small, medium, or barbarian-sized on the drink?”
“Small is okay, thanks.” Drake wanted the big drink, but he also wanted to finish up quickly and get back to Niobe.
The vendor pushed the drink and paper-wrapped feast to the edge of the wooden counter. “Six-fifty.”
Drake fished out the money and turned to walk away, but bumped into a large man. He was unsteady on his feet and his T-shirt smelled like beer.
“Sorry.” Drake quickly sidestepped him.
The man pulled a plastic sword and waved it around. “Kill your enemies. Drive them before you. Hear the lamentations of the women.”
“Okay,” Drake said, through a mouthful of corn dog. “I’m on it.”
Niobe had hated the smell of corn dogs for almost as long as she could remember. Ever since the time in fourth grade when she came down with the flu and sicked up chunks of hot dog and cornmeal under the jungle gym during recess.
Barbarian Days smelled like corn dogs, gamey turkey legs, cheap beer, sweat, and the occasional whiff of manure from an upwind feedlot. And it was hotter than hell.
“Where is she?” asked Drake.
“She’ll get here. She has to,” said Niobe. They’d been searching the crowds all afternoon. So far they’d found no sign of Michelle, or anybody else from the Committee.
Niobe wondered what Barbarian Days were like when a tank of gas didn’t cost a small mortgage and people were more inclined to travel to the middle of nowhere. There were gaps in the midway where absent rides and games of chance should have been. She hitched up her skirt again. It hid her tail as long as she kept it curled around her waist. Her tail ached; it was like having a bad kink in her neck after sleeping funny.
Drake stopped next to an overflowing trash bin buzzing with wasps. “Are you sure,” he said, retying his shoelaces, “she got the message?” He paused, watching her. “Niobe?”
She was staring at the trash bin, and the wasps. Niobe stepped closer to the bin, where the smell was stronger. “Thank God! Are we ever glad to see you.”
“Who are you talking to?” Drake asked.
“Did Michelle send you? Or the Committee?”
Drake looked back and forth between the wasps and Niobe. He looked skeptical.
“Hello? Bugsy?”
The wasps did nothing to indicate that they were anything other than wasps. Damn.
Niobe sighed. “Well, it was worth a try. Let’s get something cool and escape the sun for a while,” she said. The sno-cone booth might give them some plain ice if they asked nicely; they couldn’t afford to spend their last dollars on junk food. She could have sworn they had more cash. Drake’s appetite at work again.
The sno-cone booth was situated next to a stand selling deep-fried candy bars. They stood in line behind a five-foot-tall Conan and a six-foot Valeria. Cute couple. Niobe eavesdropped on their conversation.
“But the Jackalope is dead weight,” said Valeria. “I’ll bet the Diamonds will drop him next. They have to.”
Conan shook his head. “Jack hasn’t had a fair shake yet. He can deliver. Unlike Spin Doctor. All he does is change his hairstyle every week and hope people like it. That’s just freakin’ sad.”
Zane would have enjoyed the conversation. He’d followed the new season of American Hero as closely as living on the lam would allow, right up until he died.
The breath caught in Niobe’s chest as she thought about it. She shivered, tucked the sorrow away where she could embrace it later, and thought about what to do next.
Drake touched her elbow. “Hey. Look.” He pointed toward a row of picnic tables under a green plastic sun shade. Through the crowd Niobe glimpsed a very large woman taking up most of one bench, her back to them. She appeared to be wearing a cape. Not Michelle’s usual attire, but it made sense if she wanted to try to blend in.
Niobe took Drake’s arm and pulled him through the crowd, calling, “Michelle!” Michelle didn’t hear them.
Somebody jostled her. Drake’s arm slipped out of her fingers. Niobe turned to face a tall woman in a skintight leather bodysuit. It wouldn’t have been out of place among the other costumes, except that it covered a body much shapelier than was the norm here. Niobe wondered if the woman was a prostitute.
“Hey!” Niobe said. “Please watch where you’re going.”
The hooker tipped her head at Niobe. She flicked a waist-long black braid over her shoulder. “My apologies,” she said, and melded back into the crowd.
They made their way to the picnic tables. In addition to a cape, the overweight woman also wore plastic armor and a toy sword. She wasn’t Michelle.
“Crap,” said Drake. “Face it. She’s not coming.”
They made another round of the festival, then another. At times they glimpsed other obese women—many of the festival goers weren’t exactly small—in line for rides, or the tour of the Robert E. Howard house, but no Michelle. Drake and Niobe also cruised the midway, where the highest concentration of people lingered.
The sun was low on the horizon when Drake went to go use one of the Porta-Potties. Niobe waited for him. Here, near the toilets and Dumpsters, Barbarian Days smelled overwhelmingly of outhouses and rancid grease.
The crowd was getting louder. Rowdier. Some of these people had been swilling beer all afternoon. Meaning they probably suffered from impaired judgment.
Which gave Niobe a sad, desperate idea.
Drake returned, wiping his hands on his pants. She asked him, “Can you wait here? I want to try something.”
Drake wrinkled his nose, as he had done in Mandy’s car. “It stinks here.”
“Fine. How about you wait for me over by the Tilt-A-Whirl?” She pointed at the ride, farther down the midway. “I shouldn’t be gone long.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“To get help. I hope.”
Finding a willing partner was easier than Niobe had expected. There was no shortage of men half blitzed out of their minds who’d spent the day staring at bikini-clad women. Additionally, it was getting dark out, so by keeping to the shadows she could ensure they didn’t see her face easily. It didn’t reflect very well on the patrons of Barbarian Days, but Niobe stood in no position to judge.
She met a man calling himself Solomon. He led her behind the Dumpsters, to stand against the tall retaining fence that separated garbage from the rest of the festival.
It wasn’t love, but it was a private degradation.
“Is there anything I can do to help you along?”
“Shh,” he slurred. “Tryin’ to concentrate.”
“This never happen’ before. I swear.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Really.”
“Jesus Chris’,” he said. “Thass a tail.”
“Technically, it’s an ovipositor.”
“Ugh. That ain’t helping.”
“Just forget it,” she said. “This isn’t working.”
“Wait. Wait, this is better.”
In the end, Solomon gave her two boys and a girl: Benedict, Baxter, and Belit. Niobe named her new daughter after one of Conan’s many girlfriends, in homage to Barbarian Days.
Benedict, scarecrow-thin with cobalt blue skin and white hair, was a one-man waste-disposal unit. He devoured half a dozen empty bottles while waiting for his siblings to hatch. An ability influenced by his birthplace.
Lithe but muscular Belit had the agility of an Olympic acrobat. Gold-medal material, without a doubt.
The lights on the midway went crazy when Niobe
took the youngsters to meet Drake.
“Hope you like it, Mom!” said Baxter.
When they didn’t find Drake in front of the Tilt-A-Whirl, Niobe panicked. They caught him, and it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left him alone.
Belit somersaulted straight up one of the tall light poles. She scanned the crowd. He’s over there, Mom. She pointed. Buying cotton candy.
Niobe sighed. “That figures,” she muttered.
“Niobe!” A familiar voice came out of the crowd.
She spun around, looking for the owner of the voice. A woman darted through the throng toward Niobe. She waved.
“Michelle!” Relief coursed through Niobe so strongly that it threatened to wash away the last of her strength and leave her collapsed on the midway. “You found us.”
Michelle winked. “Eventually. Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.” She indicated her companion, whom Niobe had disregarded until Michelle introduced her: a stunning woman with long black hair and eyes like silver orbs.
“This is Lilith,” said Michelle. “She gave me a ride.”
“Thank you,” Niobe said.
Lilith looked her up and down, studying her. Niobe shied away from an intense quicksilver gaze. The woman radiated sexiness in waves. Niobe felt like an insignificant bug next to her. “A pleasure to finally meet you,” said Lilith. She even had a husky voice.
Michelle frowned. Niobe hugged her. “You found us,” she repeated. Tears of joy tickled her face. “Thank you for coming. We wouldn’t have lasted on our own much longer.”
Drake returned, munching on a stick of cotton candy. In the corner of Niobe’s eye, Lilith tensed, took a tiny step backward, then stopped herself.
When Drake saw Niobe talking to Michelle, his shoulders slumped in relief. Niobe grinned at him.
“It was worse than you realized,” said Michelle. She took Niobe’s arm, squeezing it. “But you’re safe now.”
“Worse? How could it have been worse?”
“Your friend isn’t who you think he is.”
“Oh, crap,” said Drake.
Niobe, Michelle, and Lilith looked at him in unison. He was looking past them, up the street.
Niobe said, “Drake? What’s wrong?”
He pointed. The crowd on the midway had thinned out. Probably, Niobe realized, because of all the cops at the edge of the throng. They cleared a path for the leather-clad woman they’d bumped into earlier in the afternoon. Her long braid swung back and forth like a pendulum as she strode toward them. Whoever she was, she wasn’t a hooker. Assassins and kinky call girls had similar fashion sense.
“Wait,” said Michelle, staring at Drake. She looked very pale, and not as pretty as she had a moment ago. “That’s the friend you’ve been protecting? A kid?”
“Who’d you think I was with?”
“The most dangerous fugitive in America,” said a man’s voice. The words didn’t frighten Niobe nearly as much as the cocksure tone of their delivery did. “Public enemy number one.”
A man in a well-cut business suit swaggered through the crowd. He elbowed his way between two policemen to join the leather-clad woman.
Niobe turned back to Michelle. “What have you done?”
Michelle shook her head, looking dazed. “I—I didn’t know.”
It was all for nothing. Everything Niobe had done to protect Drake, everything she’d endured, everything—everyone—she’d sacrificed: meaningless. All flushed away thanks to the Amazing Bubbles. Amazing was right.
Niobe grabbed Michelle’s arm. “What have you done?” Her face felt hot. So did the new tears trickling down her face. Whether they were tears of sorrow or rage, she couldn’t say. “I trusted you! They’re going to kill him!”
“They said . . .” Michelle turned to face the swaggering hick and his companion. “You didn’t tell me he was just a kid! What else didn’t you tell me?”
Niobe grabbed Drake’s hand. “Run!”
They headed away from the man in the suit, toward where the crowd hadn’t thinned out. Behind them, Michelle’s voice rose above the hubbub: “I do not appreciate being USED!”
They hadn’t run more than a few yards, Niobe pulling at Drake for him to keep up, when a paunchy, middle-aged woman stepped out of the crowd. She wore a silvery cape and a black bodysuit that covered every inch of her body except her face. The cape might have been natural at Barbarian Days, and she might have been just another festival goer, if not for the huge German shepherd at her side.
Niobe turned in a slow circle. Behind them, the Hound of the Baskervilles and the woman in the silvery cape. Before them, the swaggering man and his companion. And all along the edges of the crowd, half a dozen cops. They were surrounded and outnumbered.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Drake had been happy. Now, looking at the people who were there to take them in, he felt almost sick. They’d walked halfway to hell across Texas, and for what? So the person Niobe had counted on to help them could turn them in.
The crowd was backing off, far enough to be safe from whatever was going to happen but close enough to see.
The big man in the suit spoke. “My name is Billy Ray. I’m a federal agent. Stand away from the kid, lady. If you cooperate, things will go better for you. Resist and we’ll just drag your sorry ass away kicking and screaming.” He smiled. Ass-kicking obviously was what this guy did.
Niobe put an arm around Drake. “Go away. He’s just a little boy.”
“Yes, go away.” Bubbles walked up next to Drake and Niobe. Her large shadow enveloped them both.
Billy Ray made a fist. Drake turned his head to look behind them. The woman in the shiny cape and her dog stopped. “What do you think you’re doing, Balloon Girl? It’s four to one.” Billy Ray pointed to his friends. “Not to mention the fact that we represent the government of the United States. Your government, in case your memory needs refreshing.”
Bubbles looked around slowly. “If my government can’t get by without harming children, maybe we need a new one.”
Drake knew about Bubbles from TV and the Web. He started punching her with sharp jabs. Maybe it would help build up her energy a little, although she was really big already. It hurt his hands, though.
“You’re making a life decision here, a mistake you won’t be able to walk away from. The Committee means squat to me. If you cross us you will go down and it’s going to hurt.” Billy Ray grinned. It was the nastiest excuse for a smile Drake had ever seen.
Bubbles laughed. It wasn’t a girly one like Drake expected, but more of a you-are-so-dead laugh, cold and brittle. He hadn’t ever thought of Bubbles as scary, but he sure was glad she was on their side. For the moment, at least. “Really?” Bubbles said.
She turned sideways, holding one palm out toward Billy Ray and the curvy woman decked out in black leather, the other at Moon and her buddy. A torrent of small bubbles poured from her fingertips, like she’d dropped a hundred bags of golden marbles that moved in pools toward the government agents. It was a conservative move, just to keep them at a distance.
Billy Ray whispered something to the leather-clad woman next to him and patted her on the butt. A burning sword materialized in her hand and wings of flame sprouted from her back. She rose gracefully into the air, holding her flaming sword in a striking position, and flew toward them.
That was when every light in Cross Plains went out. All at once. An instant later they came on again. Some of the rides jerked to a sudden halt, while others began to speed up. The Tilt-A-Whirl was tilting and whirling madly, out of control, and shrieks were coming from the Ferris wheel. The lights went out again, on again. Shouts and screams echoed through Barbarian Days. Drake gave a quick backward glance and saw the giant dog waiting patiently on the edge of bubble carpet. The caped woman had vanished in the sudden chaos.
Bubbles tossed a couple of medium-sized missiles at the flame-winged woman, keeping her from closing in. Drake heard a gunshot from behind. It picked one of Niobe’s kid
s off her shoulder, the dark blue one.
Niobe spun, slipped, and fell. Her momentum rolled her to the edge and two cops sprang from the crowd and grabbed her by the arms. One of the remaining kids, the really muscular one, started bouncing around like a rubber ball, pounding on the cops. The larger of the two policemen grabbed Niobe and twisted her arms behind her back.
Drake lost it. He was tired of being chased all over the Southwest and tired of getting pushed around. Crouching low, Drake launched himself across the bubbles, gliding on his belly to where the cops had Niobe.
The lights were going off and on, on and off. The rides had all gone crazy. People were running everywhere, knocking into each other. Bubbles hit the flying woman in the legs with a bubble, spinning her awkwardly in the air. Two more bubbles quickly followed; the first knocked the burning sword from her hand and the second caught her in the solar plexus, sending her to the ground. Down in flames.
The cops were too busy with Niobe to notice Drake, so he jumped the smaller of the pair and bit his ear. Hard. There was a crunching noise and a scream. A bit of flesh came off in his mouth. Drake felt a pair of hands rip him from the man’s back and toss him to the ground. He got up as fast as his fat body allowed, spitting dust and blood. The shorter cop had a hand to his mangled ear, but his partner had drawn his pistol and pointed it at Drake’s face.
“Go ahead,” Drake said. “Try it and see what happens. The bullet will melt before it even gets to me.”
A tiny spark of doubt crept into the cop’s eyes, but he kept his gun leveled. “Get down on the ground, face-first.”
Drake shook his head. “You’ve got three seconds to set down your guns. Otherwise, this town is going to end up just like Pyote.” The memory made Drake sick inside, but he wasn’t going to let it show. “They did tell you about me, right? Two seconds.” His heart was jackhammering, but he wasn’t afraid. “One second. Say good-bye.”