Ghostlands

TWENTY

For hours, the windsong of the grasses was their sole companion as, an invasion force of two, Shango and Mama Diamond soldiered on into the heart of Iowa.

Then, as dusk drew its cloak across the land, Shango pointed out a black speck in the east, moving across the sky like torn fragments of leather lifted on a storm wind. Black, and distant, and purposeful. Mama Diamond could barely make out the telltale crenellation of the distant wings.

It was a dragon, though by no means necessarily Ely Stern.

It dipped below the level of the horizon and could not be seen anymore.

A sound came rippling though the air to them, like a distant crack of thunder.

The dragon rose, was visible for just a moment, then dipped down out of sight again. A second, identical sound pierced the night, and Mama Diamond realized it wasn’t thunder but rather something that would have been as out of place and astonishing to a Styracosaurus or Australopithecine in their day, had they the sense to know it.

It was gunfire.

When Mama Diamond and Shango reached its point of origin-and it didn’t take all that long at full gallop, having chosen to stow the bike and its payload behind-they didn’t find the gun or the shooter.

But they did find one hell of a big dead dragon.

Not Stern, Mama Diamond observed with some disappointment, very clearly not Stern.

Shango crouched by the huge carcass, lamp held high as he investigated the killing mark smack dab between the creature’s eyes. He studied it until he was certain, and then stood again.

“A bullet wound,” he said, leaving unspoken the vast panorama of all that might imply.

Hoofprints led in one direction away, and tire prints another.

The path of treadmarks lay along a road that dipped into a valley. Peering down into it in the dying remnant of the light, Shango gasped and his face betrayed that rarest of emotions for him-fear.

Mama Diamond followed his gaze and was perplexed, seeing nothing that would draw such a response. But then she understood that what she perceived bore no relation to what Shango was seeing.

And Mama Diamond knew it wasn’t because of what in the old days (the pre-Stern days) had been her rusty old vision, the cataract on her left eye and what she jokingly referred to as her “good” eye on the right, the sight that had remarkably become acute. No, this came up out of the part of her that was her dragon soul, that could tell the difference between false and true.

Mama Diamond spoke low and calmingly to Shango, reassured him and in due time got him moving forward into the valley, against the evidence of his eyes, his nose and all his other knife-sharp loner instincts.

Beneath the killer moon, the Rock and Bone Woman and the Cat Who Walked Alone descended into the waiting arms of the town called Atherton.

Leather Man will have my hide, Inigo thought anxiously as he stood at the crossroads, in what the Great Unwashed, the normals, laughingly thought of as darkness, breathing hard from the running and the fright, standing bent over with his hands on his thighs, trying to catch his breath and decide just exactly what he should do.

Take the portal on the left and head back to New York City-or fake New York City, at any rate-where Papa Sky and Christina were waiting for him, where he could report mission accomplished and get a gold star and maybe a hot meal or two and not risk a major ass-whipping.

Or do something really stupid.

But he knew, he just knew that where he had led Herman Goldman to was one major suckhole of a quicksand pit that old Mr. Hippie Wizard there would absolutely positively not be able to extricate himself from, at least not without some major help from an amigo or two or three.

And if young Master Inigo Devine, he of the blue-gray skin and pale saucer eyes (which really didn’t look that bad once you got used to them), just slunk on back to the Bogus Apple without flagging anybody as to the whereabouts of Goldie Five Aces, well then, it really wouldn’t matter where Inigo as the representative of the man in black, who was not really a man, led Cal Griffin and his little group-at least, not to Herman Goldman, who wouldn’t be a member of that little group, or any little group for that matter, except maybe the constituency of the dearly departed.

And yes, Inigo knew that Goldie had squeezed him for info, and perhaps for a fleeting moment had intended to do a great deal more. But Goldman had thought better of it, because, Inigo sensed, that wasn’t Goldman, not really, not the better part of him, just the small, dark fraction that was like most of Leather Man and the totality of the Big Bad Thing, and even a little black corner of Inigo himself. I mean, who didn’t screw up now and then?

Inigo had to admit, he liked Goldie.

And he had just left him in a world of shit.

He swore under his breath, in that lightless corridor a quarter mile beneath the prairie grasses, under the waning moon.

What would his parents tell him to do, if they weren’t both individually MIA or in the Big Hereafter, if that was indeed where they had gone?

They’d tell him to get his meandering grunter ass back to the Ghostlands and Bogus Manhattan before he was missed on his little walkabout. Because Leather Man was in the service of the Big Bad Thing, and Inigo was protected so long as he didn’t cross either; he wasn’t significant enough to bother with, at least while he served their need….

But tonight, he knew, he’d been on a secret mission that very much did not serve the Big Bopper, numero uno, and right now what he was considering doing wouldn’t be serving either Boss Man number one or number two (not that either could reasonably be termed men anymore).

Which greatly increased his chances of being noticed and squashed by one or the other, or both.

So he knew Mommy and Daddy in absentia would tell him to be sensible, to get on home.

But where in the Taco Bell Chihuahua had that ever gotten him?

Inigo turned away from the portal.

No gold star tonight…

It took him a bad long time to reach the surface, get to the lip of the silo where he had last seen Colleen Brooks writhing on the ground, temporarily blinded by the flash balls Goldie had wielded, that had allowed Inigo to slip from her grasp and propel himself into this universe of doo-doo.

Naturally, she wasn’t there any longer. But even in the depths of night it was ludicrously easy for him to track her heat-radiating, stumbling footprints back to camp. And even if there’d been no prints, he could just as have readily followed her scent.

Mighty handy to be a little gray guy every now and then.

He found her in the bowels of the grain silo just as dawn was breaking, making him squint against the light and giving him yet another in a long line of Excedrin headaches (only, of course, there was no Excedrin to be had). Colleen was engaged in an intent powwow with Cal Griffin and that Russian doctor guy. Near them, he noticed, that husky old scientist Dahlquist was hunkered down with a newcomer, and they were holding a Coleman lantern over big unrolled sheaves of paper that looked like blueprints of some kind.

The newcomer hadn’t changed his attire since Inigo had seen him before, at the train siding, but he’d have recognized him anyway.

It was Bomber Jacket.

A new day was just starting, and already it was a ball-breaker.