George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] by Inside Straight Read Free Book Online

Seeds. They instantly took root in the concrete and grew at a terrific rate. In minutes, vines sprouted and climbed, sending outleaves and tendrils, anchoring on the brick wall. Following Hardhat’s lead, she used living vines instead of conjured steel.
    Before the vines reached the first window, however, they blackened and caught fire. The plants collapsed into ashes.
    “Damn,” she muttered.
    “You got anything in there that can shoot water?” Wild Fox asked.
    “There aren’t any plants that shoot water,” she said, scowling at him.
    Meanwhile, Hive rubbed his hands together in preparation of—something. His expression was uncertain, however. “Maybe I can do some scouting. Find out where the people are so we don’t waste any time searching.”
    His outline fuzzed. Then, his shirt and pants collapsed, and in his place a swarm of tiny green wasplike insects hovered. The swarm maintained the outline of the man—a disturbing, wavering form, rather than anything with human features—and raised a nebulous, buzzing arm in salute. Then, he scattered. The swarm broke apart, zoomed to the building, and entered through three different windows.
    “Is that bastard going to be okay?” Hardhat asked, staring. He’d built a second scaffold by another window and rescued a third victim.
    In only a second, almost as quickly as they’d entered the building, the swarm returned, tendrils of insects shooting out of the windows and dropping to the ground. There, they coalesced, crawling together to form the shape of a man, kneeling and naked. “Bugs and smoke… don’t mix,” he managed, coughing.
    Wild Fox pointed. “Dude, you know you’re naked?”
    Regaining his feet, Hive glared. “Thanks very much. I might have missed that little fact.” With a bout of angry buzzing, his hip region snapped out of existence, to be replaced by a Speedo band of writhing insects. He went to retrieve his clothing.
    “I bet the girls love that,” Curveball said, smirking.
    He leered. “You could find out.”
    “We don’t have time for this.” She drew a pair of marblesout of the pocket of her shorts. Then she wound up for the pitch. She threw with that odd softballer’s pitch, the underhanded swing and snap. The marble flew, faster than a softball, faster than any thrown object had any right to fly. It burned through the air, glowing yellow, before impacting on the front door. The wood shattered with the force of an explosion. She threw the second one at a ground-floor window. The impact left a jagged hole in the side of the house.
    “Great,” Hive said, deadpan. “Now we can see the fire even better.” She glared at him.
    Exposure to more air only made the flames larger and more ferocious. The baby was still crying.
    Curveball turned to Ana. “Earth Witch, you try something. We’ve got to do
something.
”
    Ana shook her head. She wasn’t going to open a hole in the ground just for the sake of doing something and run the risk of undermining the whole building. They hadn’t been too successful so far, but that would take the cake of failures.
    She said, “Maybe we could try the fire hose.” Stupid idea, yeah. That didn’t mean they had to stare at her like she was an idiot—like they were doing now.
    Curveball and Drummer Boy glanced at each other, then ran to the hose and fire hydrant. They wrestled with it for a minute, without making progress. Buttoning up his shirt, Hive helpfully observed, “I don’t think you’re doing that right.”
    “Then you do it, Bugsy!” Drummer Boy said. He dropped the hose, which he’d been hoisting with all six hands.
    The heavy nozzle yanked out of Curveball’s grip. “Hey!”
    “Shit,” Drummer Boy muttered. “Here, let me try.” Using brute force, he manhandled the nozzle into place and managed to wrench open the valve on the hydrant. The hose filled, writhed, and twisted out of their grip, spraying a sheet of water across the pavement.
    “Watch it!” Hive shouted as a tail