“Pity,” she said in a disappointed tone, raising her magazine again and tossing a key onto the counter. “I knew that pretty face of yers was too good to be true. Up them stairs, last room on the right. We’s got pure, unmutated beef tonight. I’ll send some up once yer settled. Welcome to Holston Law Man, as long as you got chits that is.”
“Uh, thanks. I think. Um, I was wondering if maybe you’d know where I could
find a guide?”
“Oh, just about everyone here’s would guide ya most anywhere if there’s enough chits in it fer them. Could start with the Hunter’s Guild. They’s probably the most learned hereabouts. Where ya goin’ anyhows?”
“The Spires of Infinity.”
The innkeeper’s eyes instantly narrowed, shifting around as if to see that they were alone.
“Now why ya wanna go all the way out thar,” she asked.
“It’s my mission,” Gabriel said, finding it slightly easier to explain things by taking on the role of the lawman she thought he was.
“Makes sense. Them Spires is ground zero, deep in the Red Zone. Ain’t no one that ain’t NVM is stupid enough to go out there. Too much radiation, even fer those of us what’s been immunized. And them bastard Children of the Chosen’re makin’ troubles for travelers lately too.”
“Ground zero,” Gabriel asked, mind drifting automatically to the remnants of the World Trade Center in New York before he remembered that was the term for the
location of a nuclear detonation. “You had a nuclear war!”
“You feelin’ all right Law Man? Hit yer head or somewhat?”
“Uh, yeah,” Gabriel nodded.
“There’s a doc over on the wesside can look you’s over,” the innkeeper blew
another bubble. “Though he’s sommut addicted to more feen.”
She pronounced morphine as two words, accenting the second syllable strangely.
“Ya might try waitin’ for an NVM caravan to New Hope,” the innkeeper
suggested. “They’s go out near them Spires every few months. Them NVMs don’t get radiated like us normal folks.”
“Uh, thanks,” Gabriel said, filing that tidbit away for later.
Turning away, he climbed the stairs and went to his room. It was small and there was a thin coat of dust over everything. He’d never been so glad to see electricity and indoor plumbing. Wrapping his mind around his situation was hard enough without those comforts. Tossing his saddlebags aside, he removed his duster, hanging it on the back of the only chair in the room before dropping onto the bed and burying his face in his hands.
Yesterday he’d been a rich, powerful, and well-known lawyer. He’d had
everything he wanted. Money, power, a huge house, a sweet car, and a whole internet full of beautiful young women willing to take off their clothes and do just about anything for a low monthly fee. Now he had nothing at all. Had he really died? He could remember the feeling of the bus hitting him and everything going blank.
Things like this just didn’t happen. He had to be in a coma somewhere. He was just having a very vivid and very elaborate nightmare.
“Wake up Gabriel,” he growled at himself, pounding his fists into his forehead.
“Just wake up!”
But he didn’t wake up, because somewhere, deep down, he knew he wasn’t
dreaming.
All his life he’d read sci-fi and fantasy books, played role playing video games and tabletops, and dreamt of other worlds, adventures, and heroics. Now that he was actually in a completely different world, on some sort of holy quest given by god—or at least god’s middle management—all he wanted was to go home.
When his meal arrived, a plate of two ground beef patties with some sort of gravy and a slice of bread, he ate ravenously. If anything resembling real beef had ever touched it he was freaking Ghandi, but he was so hungry that it didn’t matter. Setting the cleaned plate on the floor, he curled up into a little ball on the bed to bemoan his fate, and was soon asleep.
Chapter 5: The Wolf and the Cat
Gabriel wasn’t sure what woke him. No sound broke the complete silence of his dark room, but there were two sets of glowing eyes watching him from the chair in the corner. Sitting up abruptly, he reached for one of the pistols he’d fallen asleep wearing.
Before he could yank it out of the holster the light flicked on and he was blinded.
Squinting, Gabriel forced his eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness as he freed his pistol and leveled it at the intruder. It was the young wolfgirl that had followed him through town earlier. She sat on the chair backwards, with her legs straddling the back and her arms folded across the top. His coat had been tossed unceremoniously onto the floor. Her head rested on her arms, and the cat lounging on her shoulders yawned widely before licking one of its paws. He’d thought it was a toy earlier, but apparently it was a pet.
“What kinda pathetic Lawman are you,” she asked. “I mean, I only walked right into your unlocked room and sat here watching you sleep for an hour.”
“I’m not a Lawman,” Gabriel growled. “Who are you and what are you doing in
my room?”
The girl eyed the gun in his hand, tail swishing while one of her ears twitched.
“Really? Coulda fooled me. Two pistols, two Sa’Dhi, and a shotgun. You’re a Lawman, or I’m hiding a dick somewhere in these tight pants.”
Sighing in exasperation, Gabriel lowered the pistol, though he didn’t reholster it or take his finger from the trigger. “What do you want little girl, I need sleep.”
“Little girl,” she sniffed indignantly, adjusting her skimpy shirt for a better display of her cleavage. “Is this the rack of a little girl? What else would I want with a hot man that appears to have pure DNA?”
Gabriel gaped at her. She couldn’t be older than fifteen! Seventeen at the most, and that was being very generous. What kind of crazy world was he in where fifteen-year-old girls chased after men for breeding purposes?
“I’ve got, uh, twenty-one percent drift, sorry,” Gabriel said.
“Yeah, you and every other pure-blooded male. I’m Sam, by the way, short for
Samantha, but if you call me that I’ll rip out your lungs. You won’t mind a little blood test to prove you’re not pure, will you?”
“Go away Sam. It’s far past time for little girls to be in their beds.”
Before Gabriel could even react Sam hopped over the back of the chair and
jabbed him in the arm with something.
“Ouch,” he cried, rolling up his sleeve to see a tiny pinprick of blood beading on the skin.
The object in Sam’s hand beeped steadily for a few seconds as her tail swished impatiently.
“Come on already,” she muttered as it beeped one last time.
Grinning excitedly, Sam looked from the device to Gabriel. Her tail began
wagging and her ears laid back against her head.
“Ninety-eight percent pure human,” she cried and threw her arms around him.
She was a lot stronger than she looked. “Oh my god! You’re perfect!”
“Ninety-eight percent,” Gabriel asked, feeling somewhat let down by the missing two percent.
“Now, if you’d be so kind to spill a little figurative Mayo in my figurative taco, I’ll be out of your hair in no time, and I won’t tell another soul you’re pure, it’ll be our little secret, okay? You being a Lawman and all, I’m sure you’ve got important things to do and don’t have time for every woman hereabouts.”
“Eeew. That’s disgusting!” Gabriel gaped at her. Mayo in her taco? It was rare that he heard a new euphemism, especially coming from a girl her apparent age. “Wait, what!”