Page 175 of Blue Moon

They’d probably be pissed if they saw me with my feet on the dash too, but Storm seemed pretty chilled about the whole thing.

The helo was fitted out with a state-of-the-art thermal imaging system, and now we were flying back and forth over the Utah wilderness, trying to find Luna’s dog before a bear ate him. Pale had headed back to the log house to direct the multi-jurisdictional shitshow; Dice had gone with him to deal with the reptiles, including the loose snake that had greeted the team when Spider got the door to the study-slash-herpetarium open; and Dan had gone to the hospital with Ryder, Luna, Kacie, and Michelle. Luna seemed fine, but Kacie had twisted an ankle on her cross-country run earlier.

Which left me with Tulsa and Knox, and I knew which of us was getting tossed out of the helicopter with a packet of beef jerky when we spotted the mutt.

“What’s so special about this bird, anyway? Apart from it being so quiet?” I asked.

It wasn’t your typical piece of military equipment, that was for sure. It was pale blue, for starters, and the sleek shape looked more corporate. Up close, the coating was slightly iridescent, definitely not your typical gloss paint, and there was a fake company logo painted on the front doors. A globe with RSC written across it. Earlier, Dusk had told Knox it stood for Really Secret Corporation, but RSC was also Pale’s initials, so I suspected he’d put them on the team’s new toy as a joke.

“I’ll show you after we land.”

The inside of the helo had plenty of bells and whistles, and if the firing buttons were anything to go by, there were some rather loud toys on board as well. I watched the central display screen for any dog-sized creature. There were a lot of deer up here.

“Bottom left,” Knox said from the back. “Is that…?”

The display switched to a different mode, and it was a fox. Why wasn’t it asleep? Weren’t they nocturnal?

“Nope.”

“We have half an hour of search time left,” Storm said. “This baby’s good on fuel, but she still has limits. Actually…” She pointed at the screen, top right. “There we go.”

Damn, Rocky still had the deer carcass. Good going, little dude. On the minus side, now I had to persuade him to part with it.

“Does your snazzy toy have a winch?” I asked Storm.

“Yes, it’s called Knox.”

As I prepared to fast-rope out the side door, I noticed Tulsa had a pair of gloves on.

“Are you coming too?”

“Sure, I could use some entertainment.”

And she got it. Rocky did not want to give up his prize, even for the whole packet of beef jerky, and in the end, I had to hack off part of a leg and bring it with us. He grumbled as I packed him, the bone, and several pieces of jerky into a duffel bag and signalled Knox to haul the mutt skywards.

Good thing I loved animals.

“Dinner?” Storm asked. “It’s been a while.”

“Can’t. I have to speak to a girl about drugs.”

We were back in Nevada, at the Cathouse, on a helipad surrounded by neatly trimmed bushes. And when I said bushes, I meant bushes. Storm had landed the helo neatly on an electronic dolly, and when it rolled away into a Grecian-style hangar, I saw the ornate mosaic beneath was patterned to look like a vulva. The Prince of Porn’s presence hadn’t been entirely erased.

Most of the Choir’s toys were tucked away elsewhere, Storm said, and by “elsewhere” I assumed she meant Groom Lake because if you wanted to fly a spaceship or whatever, that was the place to keep it. And Storm lived to fly. She could hold her own in a gunfight, by all accounts, but she preferred to leave that to Jezebel, Tulsa, and Dice.

While Storm took care of the helo, Tulsa was coiling up the various ropes we’d used during the op, and Knox had taken Rocky to pee on the nearest patch of grass.

“Drugs?” Storm asked. “We have weed in the house. Probably a little speed too.”

“Medical drugs, not recreational drugs. But I’ll bum a cigarette.”

Yeah, yeah, knew I shouldn’t. And mostly I didn’t. But every couple of months, whenever I’d had a particularly bad day, I gave in to temptation and sucked down a lungful of carcinogens. With the amount of wild shit I did, there was no way I’d live long enough for cancer to kill me.

“Can’t. I quit.” She sighed. “Again.”

“How long this time?”

Tulsa answered for her. “Three weeks. She’s in the ‘bitch’ phase.”

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