Page 19 of On A Rift's Edge
Kat blushed, which made Lyall’s mind jump to thoughts of how the human would look sprawled out on a bed, flushed and mussed up after vigorous love-making. The jeans he was wearing were suddenly too tight in his crotch.
Shit, he had to get control of himself.
“It doesn’t bother me at all.” Kat was stammering a little now. “In fact, it’s fascinating to see you like that.”
Of course. Kat was studying the medical care of Riftworld species, and few humans had seen a hellhound close up and lived to tell the story. Scientific curiosity, or something like that.
A short time later, their strange party was ready to depart. The young repoequus had grown since Lyall had seen the creature and was close to Amanita’s height, although far more gangly. Chucky tried a few psychic assaults, but Lyall deflected those with his mental shields and let out a snarl that gave the little brat a warning not to try and fuck with him.
Kat didn’t have any psychic defenses, but he didn’t need them. Chucky clearly adored the vet assistant, rubbing his red-scaled snout against the human’s side and allowing paired baskets, one of which contained the trash scorpion, to be slung over his back.
“The weight isn’t balanced.” One of the ranch humans—Javier was his name, Lyall remembered—had shown up to watch the process.
“I know.” Kat stepped back to pick up a saddle bag. “I’m going to add this to the other basket, but I don’t want to put too much weight on Chucky.”
The trash scorpion, which had submitted to the odd arrangement without complaint, began to move. It scrambled up onto Chucky’s back, and the repoequus responded by altering his scales to form an open-air palanquin of sorts. The trash scorpion settled into his scaly throne, the tower of junk attached to its shell wobbling but remaining intact.
Javier snorted. “All that work, and Chucky has him set up like a float in a parade.”
Kat shook his head, laughing, and removed the basket construct. He gave Chucky a horse treat before handing the bridle to Javier. “If you want to take this pair out into the yard, I’ll get Pogo ready and join you.”
Lyall followed Javier and Chucky out to the small corral the horses gathered in before the rides began.
“Are you going to walk all the way to the monstertown?” Javier gave Lyall a curious look. He knew who and what Lyall was but had only seen him in his alterform as a Scottish terrier. “I can saddle one of the more mellow horses for you, if you like.”
“I’m going on my own four feet.” Lyall watched as Kat came out on Pogo, the horse least likely to spook while walking next to a hellhound. Kat was gorgeous all the time, but the charming awkwardness he often displayed in large groups vanished when he was in the saddle. He and the horse moved together in perfect synchrony, his long legs splayed over the animal’s broad back.
Lyall had never been so jealous of an Earth herbivore in his life.
“Are you going to turn back into a terrier?” Javier sounded amused. “I can get you doggy treats if you want. I think I gave you a few of those when you were disguised as Remi’s pet.”
“Something like that.” Lyall gave the human a grin and transformed. His body contorted into his Riftworld shape, and the world settled into his enhanced senses of sight and smell. He shook his huge shaggy head in Javier’s face, enjoying the bug-eyed stare of fear he got back, then turned to lope alongside Kat and Pogo. The repoequus trailed behind with his strange passenger.
“That wasn’t nice,” Kat chided Lyall as they headed out on the trail that would take them into the saguaro forest. Lyall was sure he had pissed off his human companion, but then Kat flashed him another smile, and Lyall’s heart lurched. “Ok, it was funny, but try not to scare my friends any more than you have to.”
The ride outto the monstertown was less fraught than Lyall worried it would be. In fact, it was downright pleasant. Pogo gave a few nervous snorts but settled into a steady pace with a few calming words from Kat. Chucky cast a longing look when a jackrabbit bounded several meters in front of them, but he took his job of protecting his strange rider seriously enough that he didn’t give chase. The trash scorpion maintained the confident air of a politician in an open-air motorcade.
Kat, for his part, showed no sign of concern that he was traveling with a Riftworld monster species whose name alone sent most humans into hysterics. He kept up a one-sided conversation with Lyall, who found himself replying with hellhound vocalizations that the human couldn’t understand. None of that stopped Kat’s cheerful chatter.
The young human detailed everything he and Kaveh knew about the trash scorpion’s biology and gushed over the opportunity to observe the creature’s behavior. He and Kaveh had a theory that the rift animal was exhibiting mating behavior by adding objects to its shell to increase the chances of a crabby love connection.
Lyall hoped the haul from the creature’s excursion into the Tucson art scene gave the animal a claw-up on the competition for a soulmate. The story, though, was perplexing. He had learned a lot about illicit activity while working for Arimanius. Some humans, especially in the military, would pay a lot for a captive Riftworld being. Conversely, there were Riftworld species who wanted live humans for their own unpleasant purposes, like the frog monsters known as hoppers. And of course, phantoms, although the humans they got their tentacles on didn’t live long.
Arimanius had a strong interest in stealing and then selling Riftworld technology, which was largely biology based, meaning that he was trafficking in living beings. Cyberbugs like Remi’s Bug were a well-known example, but even they were rare and expensive. Also, much to Arimanius’s annoyance, cyberbugs simply left if their owner irritated or mistreated them. Bug could go back to the head of the Colony at any time, but it liked Remi and was even on good terms with that damned control object. Most of the sentient Riftworld species who could cross over into Earth had the edge over humans when it came to defending themselves, and few Earth people would dare venture into a Riftworld to hunt any species.
The monstertown was in a rift interzone and reasonably safe for humans like Kat to visit. The military base was under the control of the Saguaro Rift drakones now, and Remi had confirmed that the truce between Kaveh and his clan had included that concession. With the control object living its best life in Remi and Kaveh’s apartment, those boundaries were set now.
So how had a member of a species found only at an abandoned military base inside a riftland controlled by a powerful drakone clan ended up as an art exhibit in a human city?
Lyall was suspicious of Kat’s date’s motives for sponsoring the event where the creature had been put on display. Of course, Lyall already hated this Paul guy’s guts because he was in a relationship with Kat, even if it didn’t sound like it had been going on for long. Was Kat sleeping with the loan shark? Lyall desperately wanted to know, but he had no right to ask a question like that.
They stopped outside the eclectic walls of the monstertown, which had been constructed partly from scavenged material after the fighting that followed the Sundering. Lyall decided it was best to transform into his human shape. He had forgotten he was wearing human clothing again, so it had been left in tatters at Javier’s feet. Dressed in living leathers, Lyall wasn’t much less alarming to the town’s inhabitants than he would have been in his true shape, but he felt it counted as trying.
Kat tied Pogo up in a small stable outside the walls and made sure the animal had fresh water. Lyall took the repoequus’s leash—bridle, whatever—and sent the animal mental images of the two guardians. The komainu were an ancient Riftworld species so powerful even Lyall’s fractious clan would think twice about tangling with them. The little beast had best behave himself around them. Lyall had Kaveh’s permission to go into the monstertown as a guest anytime he wanted during his visit, but deference to the guardians was prudent, and he didn’t want the repoequus to cause trouble for him.
“Thanks for giving me the lowdown on how you found the trash scorpion.” Lyall hoped Kat didn’t find the number of weapons visible on his leathers alarming. There were, of course, many more that were hidden. No sense in taking chances. The human had turned away when Lyall had transformed back and had avoided looking at Lyall’s body for some reason. “I don’t know if that story is connected with the hellmouth, but right now we need to consider anything unusual as possibly relevant information.”
“It was pretty strange.” Kat’s long legs gave him a faster stride, but it was one that Lyall liked to match with extra speed. Chucky trailed behind them, the trash scorpion content to remain on the back of the young repoequus. “I didn’t want to ask Paul anything, because of the whole criminal activity thing.”
