Motherlode by James Axler Read Free Book Online Page B

herd on this crazy outfit, run the shows, do some sleight of hand, run a few scams on the side, do what I can to keep everybody fed and safe and the wags running. Otherwise my job is Woman of Mystery.” She said the last pointedly.
    “As to why we could handle you so fast,” Masked Max said, “it’s the same reason I can throw knives and Stretch can put his heel behind his head when he’s standing up—practice.”
    “It’s hard enough on my people being muties and freaks,” Madame Zaroza said. “My traveling show just barely gives them a pretext to be accepted among norms, and that’s limited in degree and duration. Even here in Amity Springs, and that’s an accepting place.”
    She sighed. “Or was. So we don’t dare hurt any of the locals. Nothing permanent, anyway. You see?”
    “Yeah, well...” Ryan said. “What I saw was that you people were ready enough to put the boot in when you had us down.”

Chapter Seven
    Madame Zaroza sighed theatrically. Krysty felt some of the sudden tension bleed out of the crowded room.
    “We can’t afford to let the rubes feel like they can pick on us with impunity, either,” said Squatsch. His voice was surprisingly high, given his size. While he was shorter than Ryan, he was thicker and his fur made him look bulkier still. “So we got plenty experience in beating them down and teaching them a good lesson, without leaving more than bruises.”
    “You see our dilemma,” Madame Zaroza said. “Anyway, though Sleeping Beauty warned us, and Catseye watched you the whole way, kept me informed of your kids creeping around my mobile home and everything, you didn’t give us time for a better plan.”
    “That wasn’t rightly our intent,” J.B. said with a slight smile.
    A woman came into the already-overstuffed room from the passage to the rear that no doubt led to the bedroom. She was a small but curvaceous woman with long blond hair framing a pretty face. Also she was entirely naked.
    Ricky uttered a squeak like a stepped-on mouse.
    “S.B.,” Madame Zaroza said, “you’re naked.”
    Sleeping Beauty, who this evidently was, yawned and stretched.
    “You make me wear clothes all the time, Z,” she said. “It’s not comfortable.”
    “Yes,” Madame Zaroza said. “When marks are around. As they are now.”
    “No,” the blonde said sleepily. “These are Dark Lady’s friends. Tol’ you.”
    “Employees.”
    “Whatever. I’m hungry.”
    Masked Max, sans mask, reached to a kettle of washed but unpeeled and uncooked potatoes on the stove. He picked one up and without looking lofted it over his head toward the naked woman.
    Without even opening her blue eyes fully, Sleeping Beauty reached up and caught it one-handed. The movement made her full breasts dance in a way that made Ricky’s eyes stand straight out of his head. Her pink nipples played hide-and-seek with her long gold ringlets.
    Without a further word she turned and padded back the way she’d come. Krysty looked over to see Ryan frankly admiring the play of her well-rounded naked buttocks as she walked. Good thing I’m not the jealous type, she thought.
    As if sensing her attention—or unusually self-conscious—Ryan’s lone blue eye flicked toward her. They traded smiles.
    Madame Zaroza shook her head. “She’s a sweet girl, and an ace draw,” she said. “But she got no more sense than a week-old blue-tick hound pup. She sleeps a good twenty, twenty-two hours a day, like lazy old Belphegor there.”
    She nodded at the orange tabby, who had settled, purring, on Krysty’s lap.
    “So,” Ryan said, “where’s what you took from Dark Lady?”
    The woman cocked her head at him. “Did she tell you what it is?”
    “No,” Ryan said.
    She laughed. “I have no earthly idea, either,” she said. “And I looked at it. Baron told me not to, of course, and of course I did. Just like I told those fool kids not to look, and of course they did.”
    Moss dropped his eyes and shuffled his feet. “We