Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (best color ebook reader .txt) 📗

Leonard on Netflix. Bubba, try not to get dead.” He beeped off, and I put the phone back in my pocket.

“Let’s roll,” Tyson said. He clicked his seatbelt into place and put the truck in gear. We didn’t move; he just sat there staring at me. I took a minute to figure out what he wanted, then I put my own seatbelt on. Once I was properly restrained, he took his foot off the brake and started driving toward the exit of the Grant County Airport, south of Hurley, New Mexico. It was a little one-runway job that looked like it might see ten planes a week if it got real busy.

Once we got out of the airport gate, Tyson continued. “I appreciate y’all helping me out while my foot heals. Damn Gila bastard almost took it off, but I got him good.”

“You said it was a were-lizard?” I asked. “I ain’t never heard of such a thing.”

“I don’t know if it was technically a lycanthrope, or maybe some variant on a skinwalker, or just some type of shapeshifter. I can’t rightly tell you since there wasn’t but the one, and he wasn’t too talkative when I was done with him. All I know is it was the biggest damn lizard I ever seen, and I’ve lived out here my whole life. No way in hell that thing was natural. I put him down, but he got one good bite in, right through my damn boot, and that venom has completely wrecked my foot. I’ve got a healer coming in from one of the reservations twice a week working with me on it, and he says it oughta be back right in another four or five treatments, but for now I can’t run, jump, or climb anything.”

“That sounds like a good way to get dead in our line of work,” I said.

“Don’t I know it,” Tyson agreed. “That’s why you’re here. This thing out in the flats has got to be dealt with, and I can’t do it. So I’m glad the Church had somebody they trusted enough to send.”

I didn’t want to tell him that trust probably had very little to do with it. I wasn’t the closest Templar to Tyson’s territory, but I was the one who was usually the biggest pain in the Church’s ass. So if there was a chance somebody was gonna get killed hunting down whatever was out in the desert, it made sense to send the Knight they thought of as the most expendable. That was me in a nutshell.

We rode along for another forty-five minutes, shooting the shit, arguing about whether Chris Stapleton was better than Jason Isbell, about whether Colt or Sig made a better .45, and about whether barbecue was supposed to be made out of a pig or out of a cow. You know, the kind of crap guys talk about. Finally, we pulled up in front of Tyson’s house, a wide old adobe-style ranch with not so much a driveway as an area of slightly flatter dirt than the dirt just off the road.

A good-looking woman in her mid-forties came out to meet us, her dark hair blowing in the wind. “Hey there, you must be Robert,” she called as she came forward to give me a big hug.

“Call me Bubba,” I said. “Nobody calls me Robert but the Bishop and the police when they pull me over for speeding.”

“I’m Vanessa. I’m Ty’s wife,” she said. “Ty, you get your ass on in that house. Gerald will be here in an hour for your treatment. And no whiskey. You know how loopy you get after he works on your foot. We don’t need you trying to dance in the swimming pool again.”

“We ain’t got a swimming pool, woman,” Tyson said with a grin. I noticed he didn’t slow down as he limped toward the house, though.

“That’s my point, jackass. You were so stoned after Gerald’s doctorin’ and one beer you thought you were doing damn water aerobics in the middle of the desert.”

“I woulda paid to see that,” I said.

“Oh no, you wouldn’t, either,” Vanessa said, laughing. “He was doing it butt-naked!”

I shook my head, wishing I’d packed some brain bleach for the trip. “Yeah, I’d like to amend my earlier statement,” I said. “Hey Tyson!” I hollered at his back. “You leave the keys in the truck?”

“Yep,” he called back. “It’s all you, buckaroo!”

“You’re not coming in?” Vanessa asked.

“No ma’am,” I said. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I figure I oughta let you and Tyson get his foot worked on in peace. I’m gonna go ahead and drive out to where the weird things are and see what I can find.”

“Well, give me your suitcase. I’ll put it in the guest room,” she said, looking up at me. “Try not to get dead.”

I laughed. “That’s always the goal, ma’am. Always the goal.” I handed her the backpack with my clothes in it, grabbed my duffels full of weapons and tossed them in the cab of the truck, then slid behind the wheel. I put the old GMC in gear and pulled back onto the highway.

I pressed a button on the Bluetooth ear thingy Skeeter made me wear all the time and said, “Where am I going, Skeet?”

Skeeter’s voice came through the thousands of miles just like he was sitting beside me in the truck. I wasn’t entirely convinced this was a good thing. “Head east for another thirty miles, then take the next road off to the north. All of Tyson’s reports are coming from a couple of old homesteads in that area.”

“Anything around there?”

“Dirt and wind, as far as I can see,” Skeeter said.

“And were-lizards,” I added.

“Poisonous were-lizards,” Skeeter clarified.

I pulled up to an abandoned homestead about an hour later, having made one wrong turn and stopping at one gas station for a couple of hot dogs and a Pepsi. One thing is universal—it don’t matter how far you travel, gas station hot dogs