Bite Marks by Jennifer Rardin Read Free Book Online

“Wotthehell? I haven’t said I won’t cooperate!”
    “You’d better, or the gnomes will boil your kids and have them for appetizers while your wife slowly roasts in a hole they’ve already dug for her.”
    I swallowed, hoping Ruvin would realize the threat wasn’t all bluster. Gnomes didn’t regularly stoop to cannibalism. But on special occasions they’d been known to munch a little long pork, especially around planting and harvest time. They stayed away from humans, a move my old Underground Creatures professor had shrugged off to fear of our massive military might. Possibly. Or maybe the Whence delivered its own brand of justice, which tolerated the gnomes’ inclinations as long as they didn’t piss off the wrong people.
    Ruvin began to breathe so heavily I wondered if he was going to hyperventilate. “Y-you! D-don’t hurt my family! I’ll do anything you want. Just leave them alone!” His tormenter laughed. “You’d better make good on that promise,” he said. “Because the gnomes have chosen you to be the midwife for their larvae’s birth. So you’re going into the Space Complex with me tomorrow. And after the larvae have arrived safely, your family will be released.” Ruvin moaned. Which told me he knew what many others didn’t. That gnome midwives weren’t the nominally respected birth-helpers Americans sometimes used in place of doctors. They were the death-row inmates who’d lost every last appeal. Because the larvae would burst from their carrier starving for living flesh. And unless someone saved him, Ruvin’s would be the sustaining meat that gave them the energy they needed to destroy Canberra Deep Space Complex.
    The gnomes would probably keep his family alive until the larvae ate him. But after, who knew? Once I’d have bet my own life on their safety, but this new shaman had flipped all the old traditions sideways.
    Which was why we were here in the first place.
    Who is this shaman? I wondered, wishing we at least had a picture to study. And why do they follow him? Are they really that hard up for answers that they’ll swallow any line a dude throws out there just because he swears it came from their deity?
    No comment from Granny May, which meant Brude must be stomping around my subconscious again.
    Before I could take inner stock Ruvin said, “Promise. Promise me they’ll be okay.”
    “Of course. You cooperate and your family will be just fine.” Deep, ragged breath. “Then I’ll help. But I have other jobs waiting. If I don’t show, they’ll call my dispatcher, who’ll call the cops, because I never miss an appointment.”
    “Just make sure you’re at my front door at two a.m. Or your family dies.”
    “I’ll be there, Mr. Barnes.”
    Aha! Our hearse driver had just been accosted by the vice president of Odeam Digital Security.
    I wished I knew what that signaled for the other four members of the Odeam team. Two of them were software engineers named Johnson and Tykes. One was a marketing exec they called Pit, and Barnes had brought his executive assistant/mistress, Bindy LaRule.
    But Barnes didn’t reveal any more details of his plan. All we heard were car doors opening and closing, the engine starting, and chilly silence for what would be at least a forty-minute journey.
    “Now is the time,” said Vayl. He glanced at his watch. “It is nearly eight p.m. We have the benefit of darkness and plenty of time in which to work. Shall we meet back here in an hour?” Raoul nodded. “We’ll be done by then. Here, this should help if the demon returns before us.” He handed me his sword, which made my arm dip so fast I hoped he never asked me to spar with the thing.
    I’d last for maybe thirty seconds before my elbow joint would completely unhinge and I’d be left with a dangly appendage that would force me to jerk my whole body in a semicircle just to slap somebody in the face!
    I made myself smile. “Gee, thanks. What would you say the chances are of me needing