Cloud Country by Andy Futuro Read Free Book Online

maintain the Hathaway empire—are astute and pitiless. To them a rogue Gaesporan is a precious opportunity. A chance to change the rules of the game!” He pronounced this with flourish, like he was introducing a theatrical production.
    “The Hathaways have an excuse to drill into my skull and discover how the mind of a Gaesporan ticks.” John brought two fingers to his temple and made a drilling sound. “Not that my brain will yield any great secrets, severed as I am from the shared consciousness, but the seneschals cannot know that. The possibility of tapping into the Gaesporan telepathy is priceless.”
    “You win,” Saru said. Maybe John was lying, but that was a hell of an elaborate fib to spew on a moment’s notice. “I believe you, I guess. The prize is that now we’re fucked together.”
    “Yes. Our asses are conjoined in this escapade.” This seemed to delight John, and his delight was annoying her.
    “That is not a reason to be happy.”
    “Forgive me, but this whole experience is fantastically new. Not to disparage my erstwhile brethren, but membership within the Gaespora had its drawbacks. Life was regimented. I do not think I was ever allowed to make a meaningful decision. Can you imagine?”
    “I hate to piss on your parade, but unless you can conjure up a miracle, this ‘escapade’ is coming to a bloody end pretty damn soon. We’ve got no supplies, no friends, no allies, and the entire ‘apple pie’ of America will be sniffing after us the second that freak show back at the estate reaches climax. My plan is to crash into the woods and live like savages until we kill each other out of boredom. You got anything better?”
    “I may,” John said. “First, however, you must tell me: what were you doing at the cottage?”
    “The cottage?”
    “Priscilla’s Jersey cottage, which we have just fled in magnificent style.”
    “Oh. I was trying to rob the bitch.”
    “I have been honest with you,” John said. “You could extend to me the same courtesy.”
    Saru sighed. Why? Why tell him anything? And why not? This clown might be one of the few people on Earth who would actually believe her.
    “I was tracking a girl ElilE hired me to find,” Saru admitted. “She was a girl the Blue God was supposed to have a margin with or something. I dunno, I was just doing it for the cash. I found her beneath the city. Beneath Philadelphia. There was a pit there, and a…creature made of human bodies…and a cathedral. It was full of feasters and monsters of the Hungry God. The UausuaU. I guess you know what I’m talking about?”
    “All of the Gaespora know the UausuaU.”
    “Fantastic. Anyway, the girl, Ria, she was dead, so I suppose I’m never gonna get that ten million dollars. But she came back to life so, maybe. Maybe split the difference? Five million? That sounds fair. What do you think? I guess it’s a moot point. So the girl came back to life and all these monsters started crawling out of the walls. Ria and me, well, we fought ‘em. Then this laser came down from the sky and destroyed the monsters. That’s what happened in Philadelphia. It wasn’t a terrorist attack or anything. It was the Blue God. The Blue God burned a giant fucking hole in the city.”
    Saru’s stomach was turning. She remembered the joy she’d felt basking in that destructive light. How exhilarating it had been to see her enemies burn and die, how it seemed like the whole city had come to worship at her feet.
    John nodded as though her incredibly dumb story made perfect sense to him.
    “Then what happened?”
    Saru laughed—it was too crazy to say out loud. John was taking her seriously and it scared her.
    “Then I was flying. Not in a plane, but on my own, free, rising up on a platform made of light. I saw this thing in the sky—it was like a giant chandelier. It was taking me up, like I was being abducted, like you’d see on the feeds. I felt like I was a God, like I had all the power in the world. We got