Really Unusual Bad Boys (9 page)

“Y
ou're going where to do what?” Lois asked.

“The thin spot,” Anne explained. “Where you came. Maltese is going to take me there, and wish me back.”

“Wish you
back?”
The princess gave Anne a look that would melt iron. “What happened to giving it a chance here?”

“It was Maltese's idea,” Anne said, feeling defensive and then feeling angry for feeling defensive.

“That is true,” he agreed. “It was.”

“Uh-huh. Well, good luck, I guess.” Lois popped another white squashy thing into her mouth. It was the strangest breakfast Anne had ever seen, though she'd been too excited to try and eat. “Maybe I'll see you later.”

“And maybe you won't,” Anne said cheerfully. She wasn't going to let the prickly princess ruin her hopeful mood. Why, by twelve hundred she could be back on the base!

She followed Maltese out into some sort of courtyard, smoothing the collar of her uniform. She'd given in and slept in one of those robes, but had insisted on wearing her own clothes today. Thankfully, they had dried. Still, the robe had been comfortable, and sinfully soft…like silk. And a gorgeous wine red. Though it was early morning, the odd-looking sun was already high in the sky…another warm day. She could understand why everyone wore the robes.

Maltese stopped and was suddenly a mountain lion again, or whatever it was he could turn into…she had kept walking and nearly fell on him.

“If you would climb on, Loo,” he said in her head—oh, she
hated
that—“we will get where we are going much faster.”

She grabbed a handful of fur at his neck and carefully clambered onto his back. It wasn't much like riding a horse. Maltese was all funny bumps and odd angles. She gripped him with her knees and clutched double handfuls of fur. “You must be ready to be rid of me,” she said through gritted teeth. How would she ever hold on while he moved? She could barely hold on and he was standing perfectly still.

“No,” he said shortly, and moved off slowly, giving her time to adjust to his stride.

It was definitely an odd thing, riding a giant cat in a strange world on a journey where she would wish herself home. She supposed if she were a different sort of girl, she would be thrilled by the goings-on. Instead, they just made her more acutely aware of how different this world was, how much she wanted to get back home.

The funny thing was, “home” was the farm, and always had been. But she wouldn't have gone back
there
for all the tea in China. She supposed home was now the base. Though what she would do when the war was over, she didn't know.

She wasn't so foolish to believe, as some of the women did, that there would be a different place for them in the brave new world of post–World War II. “We have jobs now,” they'd say in the factories, the show floors, the barracks. “We put down our spatulas and picked up our handguns and you can't go back, however the war turns out, you can't go back.”

But you could. And they would. No, what would happen was simple: The men who had not been killed would come back. And they would want their jobs…every last one of them. So it would be back to the kitchen, back to the farm, back to the ironing board and the grocery lists.

Well, she would worry about that later. For now, she had to focus on
getting
back. Somehow.

 

“I'm not going to cry,” she said. “I've done more crying in the last twenty-four hours than I have in the last twenty-four months, and I'm
not
going to cry.”

“That may be so,” Maltese said, “but your eyes are leaking.”

“Never mind! Rats and double rats! You're not wishing hard enough, that's all there is to it.”

“I have wished many times for you to go back.”

“Something's not right. Because I'm still here, and we've been at this for hours.”

Maltese shrugged from his cross-legged position on the ground. She paced angrily in front of him, occasionally kicking up a burst of sand and wishing it was going right into his face. She didn't quite dare do that, though she could fantasize, oh yes.

“Rats,” she said again, and slumped to the ground next to him.

“It was worth trying,” he said mildly.

“I haven't given up yet,” she retorted, “and I'm not letting you give up, either. The cost of staying here is too high.”

“The cost?”

“Right. For example. I just now realized you're naked. Again.”

“Of course,” he said, looking mystified.

“But that's the sort of thing I should have noticed earlier, don't you think? Where I'm from, you'd be in jail right this minute.”

“Jail?”

“A cage.”

Maltese shook his head. “Barbaric.”

“No, civilized. Anyway, if I don't get back, who knows what other odd things are going to escape my notice? Hmm?”

He reached out and patted the top of her head, like a dog. “You could try it, if you wished. No one will put you in a jail if you decide to be sensible.”

“Sensible?”

“It is a warm day,” he pointed out. “You seem also warm.”

She
was
sweating, but not so much because of the heat. It was him. Lounging around on the ground, casually nude, as if she was used to this sort of thing, as if she could control the urge to reach out and do some patting of her own. Which was ridiculous. Ridiculous! She had several dozen other problems to worry about; her new lack of self-control seemed the least of them.

“If I have to stay here for a while,” she couldn't help asking, “can I stay in the castle?”

“Of course.”

“That doesn't imply I'm giving up, you know.”

“Of course.”

“And I'd like my own room.” She added, “Please.”

“Of course.”

“And don't read anything into this, either,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him on the chin as she had the night before. Except he was too quick for her, seizing her firmly but gently, and she wasn't kissing his chin, but his mouth. He'd pulled her into his lap and something was digging into her bottom and she just knew what
that
was, and his mouth was on hers, and oh, he was warm and smelled like the sand all around them, clean and hot.

She put her hands on his chest and felt his nipple harden under her fingertips, and resisted the urge to rub it and see if she could make him as oddly out of control as she now felt, make him feel like nothing mattered at this moment except more touching, more kissing, more teeth and lips and tongue and—

She jerked herself out of his grip and he let her go, thank goodness (or was it, rats?). “That's enough of
that,”
she wheezed, running her fingers through her hair in an attempt to look less mussed. Less kissed. Less curious about what else he would have done.

“As you wish,” he said mildly enough, but his eyes were gleaming in a way that she wasn't sure she liked. The pupils were an odd shape, not quite long like a cat's, not quite round like hers. Egg-shaped? she wondered. Egg-shaped pupils? And when did I go crazy? Do they have nut hatches here?

“I think things are complicated enough without that,” she said.

He said nothing.

“Well, they are,” she continued. She realized she was still panting, damn the man, and fought to control her breathing. “For one thing—what's the matter?”

He was on his feet so suddenly she hadn't seen him move. He was looking out to the horizon and his lips were pressed so tightly together, they looked like a scar.

“Them,” he said, almost spat.

“What is it? What's wrong?”

“There.” He pointed. “The dark travelers. My father will not be pleased.”

She looked, but all she could see was sand, sand, and more sand, stretching far into the horizon, stretching into the endless purple sky. She squinted until her eyes streamed, with no luck. But the effect on Maltese was shocking…he was like a different person, tense and stiff and glarey.

“What's a dark traveler?”

“Warmakers.” He glanced over at her, seeming to remember she was there. “Come, Loo. We must get you back to the palace.”

“But—”

“Now.”

He was suddenly the big cat again, and without another word she climbed on top of him. One thing she'd learned in basic training, if nothing else, was to obey an order. And Maltese, she realized anew, was a prince. He hadn't thrown his weight around once since she'd arrived…which made his tone all the more impressive.

No, annoying.

No, impressive.

Dammit.

“W
e should have been more vigilant.”

The castle, at first far off in the distance, was now rearing up in front of them; every thud of Maltese's paws brought it closer. She had been hanging on for dear life and wondering what a dark traveler was

(warmaker)

and if it was as bad

(warmaker)

as it sounded. Surely nothing could have been as bad as the Japanese, all those killer drones doing whatever their Emperor told them, why, it was indecent and…and un-American!

“I don't know,” she shouted in his furry ear. “You spotted them right away. Before anybody. I couldn't even see them. I
still
can't see them.”

“They crept up on us like scum,” he continued, still sounding mightily mad.

“Scum?”

He put a picture in her head: a black sewer rat, its long, scabrous pink tail curled around it, its nose twitching, beady eyes gleaming.

“Oh, scum. Right. Maltese, you're being too hard on yourself.”
And you're running faster than I'm comfortable with, but never mind.
“The princess was telling me just last night that you guys don't have wars here or anything. If you're not used to it, you can't watch for it.”

“We were easy,” he persisted. “We have made it easy for them.”

“We don't even know what they want. They have this thing where I'm from, the Welcome Wagon? Maybe they're bringing coupons and things. We don't
know.”

“No one knows what they want. They don't speak; they grunt like animals.” His loathing was rolling through her head, making her shudder. “They are animals, they come down from the mountains to make fights, they fight until the last scum-loving one is defeated, then they scuttle away.”

“Okay, okay, I understand what you're saying, calm down, you're going to buck me off and trample me, and then how will I get home?” She tried to joke, to lighten his mood. “I see your plan now. It won't work.”

“When we return, you must go with the princess and the Lady Gladys and the children, and you must stay with them until—”

“Wrong again, Maltese. Besides, do you really think
that
princess is going to cower in hiding with the babies?”

Silence, except for the thud-thud-thud of his paws hitting hard-packed sand.

“Right. And maybe I can help. I had a little bit of training before I ended up here. Maybe I can help you talk—”

“You do not go near them. You do not look at them, you do not touch them. You do not allow them to touch you. If one
does
touch you, I will eat his spine.”

“It's good,” she commented, “that we're establishing rules. For instance, being a newcomer here, I might not understand the whole ‘don't touch or be devoured' guideline. And I've said this before—you're being too hard on yourself.”

Silence.

“We have this place where I'm from,” she continued doggedly. Her mouth was getting dry and she wanted a drink in the worst way. She blinked sun and sand out of her eyes and continued. “Pearl Harbor. It was the posting everybody wanted—the weather was kind of like here, breezy and warm but not too hot. And the ocean—that's like a big body of water—”

“We have seas.”

“You understand, then. It was like paradise. You got to fight for your country
and
be stationed in Eden, what could be better? Anyway, my friend—my best friend from home—she was stationed there, and right before I signed up, I visited her at the base. It was like being in heaven. The palm trees and the—it was just really, really nice. And so I saw her, and she told me how great it all was, and it
looked
great, and I went away and signed up, and then the Japanese came and blew her up, and all her friends, too. And we never saw it coming.”

“I am sorry for your friend.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. Her eyes were still watering, but she didn't think it was the sand. “Me, too. But my point is, I know what it's like to be asleep at the switch. You spend a lot of time blaming yourself. You feel so stupid, as if you were the one who failed. When the ones who deserve all the blame are the bad guys.”

“So you especially want to go back,” he said, slowing down as the castle gates came into view. “To avenge your friend.”

“Well…yes.”

“I see.”

“It's just that I would feel better—”

“I understand, truly. I did not, before. I will not stand in your way again. When this…business…is taken care of, we will try again. And this time I will mean it when I wish for you to go away.”

Stupid sand. She couldn't stop her eyes from tearing up no matter how hard she rubbed.