"Grandma Demure and Her Three Weird Boys"
Feb. 9th, 2024 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Granny Demure and Her Three Weird Boys"
8/19/2015
I.
As Timothy dropped down his kickstand and turned off the engine, Gabby disengaged herself from where she had been hugging him from behind. She hopped down to the side of the country road and gratefully tugged off her helmet to let a full mane of curly brown hair tumble free.
Only a few inches over five feet tall, Gabriella Elizabeth Marchetti felt she didn't have much of a figure, so she compensated by showing off two very trim legs which this late in the summer were nicely tanned a golden brown. Above the flip-flops and denim shorts, though, she sensibly wore one of Tim's leather jackets for protection in case of a fall. At the moment, the round piquant face was displaying an enormous grin of pure joy.
Timothy Lambert was under six feet tall and his own black leather jacket hung loosely over a slim body. When he tugged off his helmet, bright blond hair the color of fresh butter hung down into friendly blue eyes. He couldn't help smiling back at her blissful expression. "That was a nice ride, huh? Up one side of Overlook and down the other."
"I am STARVING, Tim!" she yelled loud enough to make a bird take off from a nearby tree. They were fifty feet from the tiny general store that sat tucked back from the road without a parking lot. Ancient hand-done lettering in the plate glass window read FRIENDLY MARKET - BEER, SODA, CIGARATTES with the misspelling immortalized by now. "I didn't have breakfast. We've been riding for two and a half hours."
"Except for that hour in the store outside Woodstock," he objected. "You like our rings?"
Gabby held up her left hand so the silver circlet on her second finger caught the sunlight. It was a Claddagh friendship ring with two clasped hands. "Oh, do I ever! I'm kind of glad there can't be any romance between us, Tim, it's just not in your hardwiring. But a solid friendship that has lasted since first grade is a real treasure."
"Yeah, we met when we were six!" Tucking his helmet in the crook of one arm, Tim patted his beloved Harley the way a cowboy stroked a beloved horse. "Boy, Megan made some great modifications, huh? We hardly used any gas, the bike handles like it can read my mind and I get GPS projected onto a corner of my visor."
"Are you deaf or something? My poor little stomach cries out in anguish. Let's empty that store! Do you think they have ready-made sandwiches? Oh, and maybe some potato salad or at least a big bag of Nachos? And I wouldn't say no to a can of Red Bull right now."
"Nothing's stopping you..." Tim protested politely as she seized his arm and dragged him bodily toward the store. Parked alongside old Germantown Road were a beat-up aged Dodge truck on tires twice normal height and a similarly old school Volkswagen Bug with a door held shut by clothesline. Off to the south, the rounded blue shape of Overlook Mountain loomed up in the sultry sky.
"I hope they have a bathroom," she muttered, "My kidneys are floating..." Gabby stopped short and her eyes bugged out behind the round-lensed glasses at the biarre individual who had dropped down from the driver's side of the pick-up truck.
It was hard to tell just how big the stranger was because of his strange posture, but he must have been well over six feet tall and nearer three hundred pounds than two hundred. He was wearing loose Navy blue sweatpants and an equally baggy sweatshirt that was Canary yellow with blue side panels His oversized hands and feet were bare. The man had a wide, homely face under a thick thatch of light brown hair but his expression was amiable enough.
What was remarkable was that he had dropped to stand with his weight supported on stiff arms with his fists pressed down on the hot roadway. The thick brawny arms were visibly longer than the massive legs, and this posture looked entirely reasonable for someone built that way. Simian comparisons were inevitable.
Gabby made a sound that could be best represented as "Gack."
"You'd be Timothy Limbo, right?" asked the apelike man in a rather mild and squeaky voice.
A veteran of the Midnight War for years, Tim was not taken aback at all. He smiled pleasantly. "I think I'd remember if we had met before."
"I DO make an impression," admitted the apelike man. He raised one thick-fingered hand in a greeting. Like his ankles, his wrists were matted with thick light brown hair. "My grandma would like to see you."
Tim leaned back, placing more weight on his rear leg, readying for an attack. His years of Kumundu training did not alert him to any body language indicating hostility in this strange man. No tension showed in the neck or facial muscles, there were no subvocal tremors in that childlike voice. And yet, it was always good to be wary. "You seem to know my name, Mr....?"
"Oh. I'm Clench. Clarence Rudolph Ambrose, but everyone calls me Clench."
"I'm Gabby. Gabrielle Elizabeth Marchetti, but everyone calls ME Gabby." She shrugged. "Not that you seem interested."
"This has to be Midnight War related, right?" asked Timothy as the VW Bug puttered finally away.
"I calculate so. Shall we proceed? Grandma is waiting." Clench waved an arm thick as most men's legs toward his truck.
"We are going to eat first," Gabby insisted, seizing Timothy by one arm. "That's not up for discussion."
"Yeah, whatever your grandmother wants, it'll have to wait a few minutes," Tim agreed just as a size 22 bare foot crashed against the side of his head. Even with all his experience and training, Timothy was taken off guard by the sheer speed and dexterity of the apelike man. That kick seemed to come out of nowhere and knocked him out completely. As he fell, dragging the confused Gabby down with him, she was tugged away by Clench and hauled straight up twenty feet into a thick horizontal branch of an elm tree. Gabby gasped and clung to the trunk of the tree by pure instinct before she was consciously aware of what had happened.
Picking up Timothy by the back of his jacket exactly as one might lift a kitten by the neck, Clench placed the limp form in the passenger seat of his truck. As he loped over to the driver's side, he waved up at where Gabby was stuck in the tree. "Please be careful getting down, miss," he called cheerfully. "You might want to wait for someone with a ladder."
II.
Gabby thought she was handling all this remarkably well. She was not screaming or shaking, and despite the pressure in her bladder, she had not wet herself. Having gone through two actual Midnight War experiences with Tim and their friend Haley Laswson helped, and of course Tim had told her about many of his adventures. She felt calmer than circumstances might suggest she react.
Getting down....
Well, there was a thick bush nearly right below her. That might help. The smart thing to do would be to wait until someone pulled up to get in the store and call for them to get the fire department. But what about Tim? That guy who looked like a Missing Link had kicked Tim in the face and carried him off. She needed to get going. Without giving the matter any further thought, Gabby swung off the branch, hung for a second with both arms around it and then dropped down.
The impact wasn't as bad as she had feared, but it still knocked the breath out of her for a minute. Nothing hurt more than scratches on her bare legs. Rolling over and getting to her feet, Gabby straightened her leather jacket and felt unreasonably pleased with herself.
Okay. Next she picked up her helmet and hustled over to Tim's bike. His own helmet was sitting on the seat where he had placed it. This might be easier than she had thought, because he had explained so much about the Trom tech that he and the KDF used. Gabby lowered the lightweight helmet down over her head and thumbed the right ear pod as she had seen him do. Instantly, the clear visor slid down from its internal track and clicked shut.
On either extreme side of the visor, small green numbers and letters lit up in vertical rows. She tried to be patient enough to figure out what they meant. "42.1126° N, 74.0482° W".. well, those were co-ordinates. The date and time were next, as well as air temperature. Most of the other numbers and abbreviations seemed completely random to her. The blinking green blip on the upper right hand side of her visor was significant, though. It had a number next to it that was increasing steadily.
She knew what that meant! It was a tracking signal. Instead of a smartphone, Tim carried a KDF device called a Link. It was thin as three playing cards in a stack but it could do all kinds of interesting functions. Quite a few times, Timothy had complained that even when he was off duty, his captain back in Manhattan could locate him by the tracking signal his Link sent. Of course this meant he was being taken away by that Clench Ambrose galoot.
And she could follow him.
The key was still in the ignition. Tim's friend Megan had wanted to replace it with a keyless ignition that started with a code on a punchpad but he resisted it. Megan kept making improvements and renovations on the Harley anyway, and Tim had to watch that she didn't turn it into some unrecognizable futuristic spaceship on wheels. So, Gabby thought, now she could follow Tim and that Clench goon. What she would do when she caught up with a guy that looked half gorilla was another question.
Gabby started to straddle the seat, hesitated and then ran around behind the corner of the store. There was nothing back there but trees, a propane tank and a dumpster. She knew she was going to urinate in a few seconds no matter where she was. Relieved but also slightly unhappy about the hygiene of it all, she quickly strode around to the front of the store. An elderly woman in a beautiful baby blue Lexus was just going in the front door. Gabby hopped up onto the seat, turned the key and saw the gauges come to life.
There were sure a lot of them. In addition to the usual speedometer and tach, there were six small digital readouts whose numbers meant nothing to her. Tim's friend the Trom Girl was kind of a nut, she thought, she'd probably rework a microwave into something that could launch missiles. Up near the handlebars were two indicator lights glowing a reassuring green.
Once she pulled out onto Old Germantown Road, her confidence increased greatly. Gabby had learned on her sister's Yamaha and this bike was much bigger and heavier but it handled so smoothly it seemed alive. She could see why Tim wanted to ride all day every day. For a few seconds, she toyed with the fantasy of asking Megan Salenger to modify and improve her own sad old car. But no. Tim had often said that the Trom were a secretive Race of cold super-geniuses and that Gabby already knew too much about them.
The road began an upward slope as she approached Overlook. Glancing down at the speedometer, she was shocked to see she was doing eighty-five and immediately throttled down. The ride was so smooth she had felt she was going a moderate speed.
The road got steeper and she began to downshift but realized the bike had already done so. Feeling more secure and confident, Gabby's thoughts turned to her lifelong best friend. Hang on, I'm on the way, she thought.
III.
In less than a minute, Tim snapped back to full clear-headed awareness. Tel Shai knights were neither invulnerable nor immortal, but their Tagra tea regimen gave them an enhanced healing factor beyond what anything conventional medical science could explain. Timothy was not suffering dizziness, nauseau, blurred vision or any of the other serious effects a concussion could produce.
He was experienced enough not to give anything away. Head lolling down, he decided he was in the front passenger seat of the Jeep, held upright by the safety strap across his chest. The truck sounded smooth enough, but the jolting of the ride showed they were going at a good clip up an incline on a back road.
Tim was not overly concerned about Gabby. She was level-headed and resilient, and she had been through the Cave of Hours and the White Crawlers adventures without panicking. Tim expected she would call Sable at the KDF headquarters in Manhattan to report what had happened. Sable would immediately dispatch whichever KDF knights were available to rush up here. The situation was not as hopeless as it seemed.
He turned his full attention to the driver. Tim's Kumundu training gave him a proximity sense that instantly helped him assess possible opponents. This Clench Ambrose character had an immensely dense and muscular body with little body fat. The breathing was deep, clear and unstrained. Under the circumstances, Tim could not enhance his hearing enough to hear a heartbeat, that was a trick only possible in a quiet room. Opening his left eye the barest possible squint, he judged Clench would stand five feet two inches tall and weigh two hundred and sixty pounds. The arms and legs were unusually thick, the hands and feet way oversized. As the truck took a turn, Tim risked getting a better look.
The man's profile showed a protruding brow ledge, flat face and receding chin. The thick coarse hair was medium brown with a reddish tint. The color of the eyes could not be seen. Tim decided it was time to come back to life. He wheezed, moaned a little and shifted his weight.
"Sorry about applying my foot to your face," offered Clench in his mild tones. "Grandma said you was a Tel Shai knight and it wouldn't do much damage."
"That.. is a great comfort to me. What happened to my friend?"
"Oh, the lil curly haired gal? She's fine, I'm sure someone has helped her down outta that tree by now. Lissen, Mr Limbo, there's a few things you gotta know about the Ambrose clan."
Straightening up in the seat, studying his captor with an anthrolopogist's eye, Tim ventured, "Go right ahead, Clench."
"Walll, we are a reclusive bunch. Keeps to ourselves. Onst there was a whole town full of Ambroses, near a colony ya might say. Now it's just me and my two brothers and Grandma. She's afeared we're in danger of dying out."
Timothy grunted as he realized from the angle of the sun at this time of afternoon that they were headed Northwest, on a side road off the main Old Germantown Road. The angle of ascent had lessened. With his estimate that fourteen minutes had passed since the assault, he should be able to pinpoint their current location on a map. Out loud, he said, "None of you boys thinking of getting married?"
"Naw. None of us is what you might consider ideal husband material, specially since we have a combined annual income of mebbe twenty thousand dollars. Well, here we are. I wants yer word not to try and run, I catch rabbits by hand near every day for supper."
"Sounds like I wouldn't get far," Tim agreed. Strangely enough, despite having been kidnaped by force, he had little sense of being in any real danger. This Clench had taken him by surprise. On the alert, Tim was sure his Kumundu training would easily enable him to beat Clench without trouble. And, as usual, his main personality trait was curiosity and he was very interested in finding out what was going on here.
For the moment, Timothy did not draw on his unique power of summoning his caspers to look around but contented himself with direct observation. There was an overrun front yard with knee-high dry yellowed grass and an assortment of junk scattered about. The main structure was a single-room white-boarded shack in dreadful disrepair. Several windows had tar paper covering missing panes, the shingled roof sagged in at one end and fresh paint was a vague distant memory. Twenty feet to a side stood a handled pump indicating a well. Tim saw no signs of any power lines at all. A narrow outhouse was visible far behind the shack, complete with a crescent moon cut in its door for meager ventilation.
Adjoining the hovel was an open chicken coop, its door hanging open with a dozen hens meandering nearby. Close at hand was a goat with its horns sawn off, tied to a tree and munching quietly on a shrub.
It might have been a scene from pioneer days, it should have felt quiet and even peaceful. Yet something was making Timothy uneasy. His years in the Midnight War made him sensitive to the unearthly, and right at that moment his nerves went on edge.
Behind him, Clench spoke so abruptly that it made Tim give a start. "Family home started as a schoolhouse more than a hunnert years ago. Great-grandpa Ambrose settled in when he came back from Europe during the Great War. We've lived here ever since. No one bothers us. They don't even send us tax forms any more, them government men get real nervous around these parts."
I'm not surprised, Timothy thought, something was definitely making his skin crawl. Out loud, he merely said, "Your family at home?" As he spoke, the screen door creaked open and two equally bizarre figures stepped out blinking in the sunlight.
IV.
For the past few miles, Gabby had passed nothing except woods and a single marshy pond to her left. According to the readout on her visor, Tim was less than a mile away. Suddenly uncertain, she slowed and pulled over to the side of the road but left the engine running smoothly. Wait a minute. What the heck was she going to do against that apelike man anyway? She had seen him jump ten feet horizontally from a standing start and kick Tim in the head, and she knew Tim was a master of Kung Fu or Karate or something. She herself had never been in a single fight. The closest she had to any martial arts training was one semester of Les Mills Introduction To Yoga where being able to do a split had been her greatest achievement.
This was a problem. Biting her lower lip, drumming her fingers on the handlebars, she decided to check the saddlebags. Heavy as the bike was, it was so perfectly balanced that she could knock down the kickstand and hop off without trouble. She started digging through the saddlebags. Big flat first aid kit, spare T-shirt, reusable water flask... and one of the dart guns! She hefted the odd looking, handcrafted pistol with its extended needle-thin barrel.
Gabby didn't know much about even mundane weapons, let alone this KDF gizmo. But she could see there was a magazine in place within the grip. There were two obvious safeties that she clicked off as she had seen Tim do once. These guns worked by highly compressed gas and were nearly silent. The darts themselves looked like sewing needles with a collar midpoint to prevent them from penetrating too deeply.
Now she felt a little bit better. Of course, she had no marksmanship skills at all, but there wasn't anything she could do about that now. No holster? Oh well. She unzipped her leather jacket nearly all the way down and tried holding the dart gun in there. No good. It kept sliding over and starting to fall out. Drat. Finally, she had to settle for sticking the weapon into the front of her waistband tightly enough that it would stay there. She hoped.
There were a few other baffling little gadgets in the bag, small metal cylinders and round globes the size of gumdrops and some flat hooked tools. She couldn't come up with any idea what any of them might do, so it would be better to leave them alone. They might be grenades, for all she knew. The dart gun would have to be good enough. Gabby swung up onto the seat, lifted the kickstand with her foot and pulled out onto the back road again. Maybe it wasn't being too brave but deep down she hoped she would find Tim had taken control of the situation by the time she got there. After all, he WAS a Tel Shai knight and she had seen him pull off some impressive stunts.
IV.
"Hey you guys, here he is," Clench called over to the two men emerging from the doorway. The taller one was easily seven inches over six feet but couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds, with bare arms straight as straws. His bony beak-nosed face was split with a grin noticeable for several missing teeth. Close behind him, shorter and well-built, was a remarkably handsome young man with a square jaw, straight nose and blue eyes gorgeous enough for any starlet.
"Timothy, this here's my older brother Wilmer, some folks call him Stretch, he's two men high and half a man wide. T'other one's Errol, the babyface of the family."
"Uh... Hello," Timothy said. Considering he had been kicked unconscious and abducted, everyone seemed so casual and friendly that he was uncertain what how to react. The inner pockets of his leather jacket held several miniaturized Trom weapons, including two dazzler and two smoke grenades, and there was a five inch long serrated combat knife secured in his right boot. But at the moment, it didn't seem appropriate to attack anyone. There was a short but not a tense silence before Clench went over and dropped down on a long redwood picnic bench next to four folding chairs.
"Might as well take a load off," offered the gangling Wilmer, gesturing at the chairs while taking one for himself and sighing contentedly. The good-looking Errol remained where he was, staring rather vacantly off into the distance.
Timothy decided to go along for the moment. He still had his Link communicator clipped to the side of his belt. With an unobtrusive touch, he could depress and hold the Alert function and his captain back in Manhattan would send some teammates to help out. But by now, he was not angry or afraid, just curious as to what was going on with these brothers.
"I s'pose you're wondering why you're here," Wilmer drawled at last.
Tim nodded."The thought had crossed my mind."
"It's Midnight War business, of course," the tall skinny man said. "Grandma knows all about the Seven Races and the adjacent realms and all that."
"She was a big leader in the old Red Sect," Clench interrupted. "Grandma was hitched to one of the Lundborgs back in the day. That'd be Gramps Milton Lundborg. One of the most powerful warlocks of his generation."
Timothy seemed to be doing no more than listening politely. Unnoticed by the three Ambrose brothers, a small whirlwind formed behind Tim and scooted away around the house. Tim's 'friendly ghosts' were barely visible even when someone was consciously looking for them, as they seemed to be no more than a vague whirling mass of air a few inches high. He could see what they saw and hear what they heard in a telepathic sense that did not involve actual sights or sounds.
No one knew for certain what these caspers were. Some Midnight War scholars thought they were Tim's subconscious mind forming gralic force to act as he wished. Others speculated they were actual energy-based life forms that had attached themselves to him. Not even the wise Teachers of Tel Shai were sure. Tim himself had decided they were his little pals and left it at that.
As he said, "Really? Tell me more," Tim was taking in the scene behind the house and seeing nothing unexpected. The casper spun into the house through an open window, relaying the sight of plain wooden floors, a pot-bellied wood burning stove with a frying pan sitting on top of it, a single narrow bed and three shapeless masses of bundled blankets, a crude table and a few stools. Clothes were piled against one wall. A few stools sat around a short table, and a bookcase in a corner held some ancient volumes held together with twine.
It was reassuring to see no one lurking in the area with a gun or other weapons, but Tim quickly forgot all that. His casper hurtled back out of the cabin and came up behind him to pop out of existence like a soap bubble. None of the Ambrose boys noticed it. Everyone's attention was focussed on the tall slim figure in the shack's doorway. A woman not more than thirty years old in a simple white dress that showed an elegantly curved figure. Long shiny hair the same light brown as the brothers had hung down her back. Oblique green eyes gleamed in a flawless face. When she spoke, her mellow voice belied the startling words, "I greet thee, Timothy Limbo. I am Grandmother Demure of the family Ambrose."
V.
From the wild untended bushes not fifty feet away, Gabby suppressed a gasp. She had sprinted up the dirt road until first glimpse of the shack, then dropped to a crouch and crept up through the undergrowth as quietly as she could. On hands and knees, barely breathing, she peered at the strange scene in front of that hovel. Those were some strange looking guys, all right. She had met the one who seemed to be half ape. Another one looked as if he had been somehow stretched like taffy to be a foot taller than he should be. The third was handsome enough but had a vacant expression in his eyes as if he was not following anything anyone said.
And there was Timothy, sitting at the table as relaxed as if he had been invited to a barbecue instead of having been abducted by force...! The guy drove her nuts sometimes. He was a little TOO comfortable with weird situations and bizarre people and violence in general. Gabby shifted her weight and decided to watch a little longer. She had heard Tim say once there were fifteen of the anesthetic darts in a clip, so even with her dismal marksmanship, she felt she could tag these geeks before they reached her.
The big good-looking goof had hustled to bring a chair over for the black-haired woman. She lowered herself into it, sitting up straight as a queen taking her throne. "Thank you, Errol. Mr Limbo, there has long been bad blood between Red Sect and the knights of Tel Shai."
"That's fair to say," Timothy replied.
"But today, survivors of our congregation are few and widely scattered. I fear Red Sect will soon be history that only scholars of the Midnight War will remember as a footnote. That does not concern us now. Mr Limbo, none of my grandsons have taken a wife and to be honest, they do not seem likely to do so any time soon. Yet for cabalistic reasons, there must be a new life added to the Ambrose family soon."
Tim shrugged. "Errol there looks like he wouldn't have any trouble getting a date."
"You think? Watch. Errol, look!" she snapped and extended a perfectly manicured index finger toward the shack. Errol stared at the finger rather than where she was pointing.
"Not enough brains to fill a thimble," the beautiful Grandma Demure said. "Clench and Stretch have not done any better at finding a bride, sad to say."
The apelike Clench sighed. "We even brought two homeless women from Delmar here, offering them hot meals and shelter from the weather. They ran away as soon as they could. That hurt."
Watching from the bushes, Gabby barely suppressed a snort of amusement.
"Have you tried mail-order brides from Russia or Asia?" asked Tim.
"That is not suitable for our needs," Grandma Demure said. "No. Gralic sorcery sets standards. It is time for me to wed again, unfortunately. Three times have I been a bride and three times a widow, but my responsibility demands I take a husband again."
"If it's not too forward to say so, Ma'am, you're a beautiful woman. You hardly look like anyone's grandmother!"
"My arts have kept me so," she replied with a sly smile. "The High Priest of Red Sect is on his way. Once he arrives, we may begin the ceremony."
Timothy sat up straighter and his voice rose an octave. "Wait a minute..."
"I have learned much about you, Timothy Limbo. As a knight of Tel Shai, you have been vetted and found to be both honest and reliable. You are healthy and fit as any Olympic athlete. And you have survived years in the Midnight War and have shown some odd gralic power of your own, although its nature remains obscure."
Grinning from concealment, Gabby rejoiced that Tim had kept his friendly ghosts mostly a secret. Only his teammates and the Teachers knew for a certainty that Tim could send forth the tiny, barely visible caspers as extensions of himself. She was getting a cramp in one leg from her crouched position but Gabby dared not move around too much.
Grandma Demure made a clucking noise of disapproval. "Why that dismayed expression, dear one? Take a long look at me. Perhaps I flatter myself, but surely performing your conjugal duty with me would not be too unpleasant a task. The marriage will be annulled once I am with child and you will go about your way."
"I...That is, I don't know how to say this but I'm not what you would call good husband material..." Tim began, seeing the simian Clench and the elongated Stretch assume hostile stances at hearing his hesitation.
The slightest hint of iron edged Grandma Demure's velvet tones. "There is no good reason why you cannot marry me."
Surprising herself, Gabrielle Marchetti stood up and called out, "Tim is going to marry me! We're engaged!"
VI.
For a confusing half a minute, everyone talked over each other, except for Errol was seemed fixated on a Monarch butterfly close at hand. Then Grandma Demura barked out "Silence!" in a whiplash tone that might have stopped a runaway truck. "Who are you, missy?"
"I'm the future Mrs Timothy Lambert," Gabby shot back, keeping the dart gun concealed behind her back. "We've already talked with Father Mertzluft at my church."
Seeing the mixture of outrage, surprise and fury in the faces turned toward him, Tim meekly held up his own left hand to flash his Claddagh ring. "That's what I was trying to say," he managed to get out. "I'm taken. Sorry."
"Silver rings.." hissed Grandma Demure. The gorgeous contours of her face had tightened into a cold mask. "Only silver could forge a bond my magick may not break."
"Well, and the fact that I'm four months pregnant," Gabby offered. "Maybe I'm not showing yet but the pharmacy test came back postive twice."
Getting to his feet, Timothy Limbo stepped back to where he could keep an eye on everyone at once. "I AM sorry, Mrs Ambrose. A beautiful woman like yourself can surely find some suitable fiancee, but Gabby and I have to be leaving now."
"You can not wed a dead girl," Grandma Demure said. "Clench! Stretch! Rid me of her!"
Loping forward on his stiffened arms more like a primate than ever, Clench rushed across the yard toward the bushes. But he was in for a surprise. This time Timothy was ready and alert. Three years of Kumundu training under the great Teacher Chael kicked in. Tim rushed in to intercept Clench with a hooking leg sweep that dropped the apelike man flat on his face and as Clench struggled up to a kneeling position, Tim blasted a sharp right backfist and left hook that cracked hard to the Ambrose boy's face with a noise like a hammer hitting frozen beef. Clench hadn't even had time to realize he was being struck before he sagged face down to the grass.
During the two seconds this had taken, the brother called Stretch began to also run toward Gabby. His outstretched arms elongated unnaturally, extending forward twice their natural length as if made of rubber. Gabby triggered the dart gun five times, its low cough barely audible, and at least two of the potent darts jabbed into the man's body. Instantly, the Trom-formulated sedative dazed Stretch and slowed him to a stagger and by his next breath, he was falling senseless to the ground. He would sleep for at least an hour and be too nauseous for any strenuous activity another half hour after that.
"Errol! Errol! Kill her for me!"
The placid handsome face finally seemed to notice what had been going on. He turned toward his grandmother and asked mildly, "Who?"
"Her! Over there! That curly-haired slut with the silver ring!"
"I'm not a slut, I'm a nice Catholic girl," objected Gabby, still clasping the dart gun with both hands.
"That's true," Tim added. "And I don't appreciate you talking about her that way."
Straightening to her full elegant height, Grandma Demure raised both impeccably manicured hands and raised them into clawed position by her face. "Silver rings or not, let my gralic bolts char thee now." And then she gasped and reeled back. Three of the vague whirling blurs of the caspers were spinning close to her eyes. She could see only a shimmers like the heat on a desert highway and it alarmed her.
The little tornadoes could not harm her, but she had no way of knowing that.
"Stay where you are and I won't blind you," Timothy called over to her. "Let's not meet again, okay?" He strode over to where Gabby was waiting with a relieved smirk and said under his breath, "Nice shooting, cowgirl."
"Ah, it was nothing," she laughed. They set off at a good brisk walk down the dirt road. In a minute, the three caspers spun up to Timothy and popped out of existence. Gabby handed him the dart gun and said, "I left your bike about a mile up the road. And I'm still hungry, this has been the longest day."
Putting one hand high up to rub reassuringly between her shoulder blades, Timothy exhaled. "Man. You surprise me, Gabs. You've got nerves of steel."
"Not me. My knees felt like cooked spaghetti."
"I thought you would call Sable. You know, she'd have the rest of the team up here to the rescue. My jaw dropped when you stood up in the bushes and yelled at that sorceress."
Gabby didn't answer for a second. "You know, Tim, I realize you're not inclined to like girls THAT way. But honestly, would sex with a hot babe like her have been that bad?"
"Heh. Oh, man. What we saw was an illusion. My caspers showed me the truth. Grandma Demure is all bent over, wrinkled and gnarled and with maybe three teeth. She's seventy years old."
2/9/2024
8/19/2015
I.
As Timothy dropped down his kickstand and turned off the engine, Gabby disengaged herself from where she had been hugging him from behind. She hopped down to the side of the country road and gratefully tugged off her helmet to let a full mane of curly brown hair tumble free.
Only a few inches over five feet tall, Gabriella Elizabeth Marchetti felt she didn't have much of a figure, so she compensated by showing off two very trim legs which this late in the summer were nicely tanned a golden brown. Above the flip-flops and denim shorts, though, she sensibly wore one of Tim's leather jackets for protection in case of a fall. At the moment, the round piquant face was displaying an enormous grin of pure joy.
Timothy Lambert was under six feet tall and his own black leather jacket hung loosely over a slim body. When he tugged off his helmet, bright blond hair the color of fresh butter hung down into friendly blue eyes. He couldn't help smiling back at her blissful expression. "That was a nice ride, huh? Up one side of Overlook and down the other."
"I am STARVING, Tim!" she yelled loud enough to make a bird take off from a nearby tree. They were fifty feet from the tiny general store that sat tucked back from the road without a parking lot. Ancient hand-done lettering in the plate glass window read FRIENDLY MARKET - BEER, SODA, CIGARATTES with the misspelling immortalized by now. "I didn't have breakfast. We've been riding for two and a half hours."
"Except for that hour in the store outside Woodstock," he objected. "You like our rings?"
Gabby held up her left hand so the silver circlet on her second finger caught the sunlight. It was a Claddagh friendship ring with two clasped hands. "Oh, do I ever! I'm kind of glad there can't be any romance between us, Tim, it's just not in your hardwiring. But a solid friendship that has lasted since first grade is a real treasure."
"Yeah, we met when we were six!" Tucking his helmet in the crook of one arm, Tim patted his beloved Harley the way a cowboy stroked a beloved horse. "Boy, Megan made some great modifications, huh? We hardly used any gas, the bike handles like it can read my mind and I get GPS projected onto a corner of my visor."
"Are you deaf or something? My poor little stomach cries out in anguish. Let's empty that store! Do you think they have ready-made sandwiches? Oh, and maybe some potato salad or at least a big bag of Nachos? And I wouldn't say no to a can of Red Bull right now."
"Nothing's stopping you..." Tim protested politely as she seized his arm and dragged him bodily toward the store. Parked alongside old Germantown Road were a beat-up aged Dodge truck on tires twice normal height and a similarly old school Volkswagen Bug with a door held shut by clothesline. Off to the south, the rounded blue shape of Overlook Mountain loomed up in the sultry sky.
"I hope they have a bathroom," she muttered, "My kidneys are floating..." Gabby stopped short and her eyes bugged out behind the round-lensed glasses at the biarre individual who had dropped down from the driver's side of the pick-up truck.
It was hard to tell just how big the stranger was because of his strange posture, but he must have been well over six feet tall and nearer three hundred pounds than two hundred. He was wearing loose Navy blue sweatpants and an equally baggy sweatshirt that was Canary yellow with blue side panels His oversized hands and feet were bare. The man had a wide, homely face under a thick thatch of light brown hair but his expression was amiable enough.
What was remarkable was that he had dropped to stand with his weight supported on stiff arms with his fists pressed down on the hot roadway. The thick brawny arms were visibly longer than the massive legs, and this posture looked entirely reasonable for someone built that way. Simian comparisons were inevitable.
Gabby made a sound that could be best represented as "Gack."
"You'd be Timothy Limbo, right?" asked the apelike man in a rather mild and squeaky voice.
A veteran of the Midnight War for years, Tim was not taken aback at all. He smiled pleasantly. "I think I'd remember if we had met before."
"I DO make an impression," admitted the apelike man. He raised one thick-fingered hand in a greeting. Like his ankles, his wrists were matted with thick light brown hair. "My grandma would like to see you."
Tim leaned back, placing more weight on his rear leg, readying for an attack. His years of Kumundu training did not alert him to any body language indicating hostility in this strange man. No tension showed in the neck or facial muscles, there were no subvocal tremors in that childlike voice. And yet, it was always good to be wary. "You seem to know my name, Mr....?"
"Oh. I'm Clench. Clarence Rudolph Ambrose, but everyone calls me Clench."
"I'm Gabby. Gabrielle Elizabeth Marchetti, but everyone calls ME Gabby." She shrugged. "Not that you seem interested."
"This has to be Midnight War related, right?" asked Timothy as the VW Bug puttered finally away.
"I calculate so. Shall we proceed? Grandma is waiting." Clench waved an arm thick as most men's legs toward his truck.
"We are going to eat first," Gabby insisted, seizing Timothy by one arm. "That's not up for discussion."
"Yeah, whatever your grandmother wants, it'll have to wait a few minutes," Tim agreed just as a size 22 bare foot crashed against the side of his head. Even with all his experience and training, Timothy was taken off guard by the sheer speed and dexterity of the apelike man. That kick seemed to come out of nowhere and knocked him out completely. As he fell, dragging the confused Gabby down with him, she was tugged away by Clench and hauled straight up twenty feet into a thick horizontal branch of an elm tree. Gabby gasped and clung to the trunk of the tree by pure instinct before she was consciously aware of what had happened.
Picking up Timothy by the back of his jacket exactly as one might lift a kitten by the neck, Clench placed the limp form in the passenger seat of his truck. As he loped over to the driver's side, he waved up at where Gabby was stuck in the tree. "Please be careful getting down, miss," he called cheerfully. "You might want to wait for someone with a ladder."
II.
Gabby thought she was handling all this remarkably well. She was not screaming or shaking, and despite the pressure in her bladder, she had not wet herself. Having gone through two actual Midnight War experiences with Tim and their friend Haley Laswson helped, and of course Tim had told her about many of his adventures. She felt calmer than circumstances might suggest she react.
Getting down....
Well, there was a thick bush nearly right below her. That might help. The smart thing to do would be to wait until someone pulled up to get in the store and call for them to get the fire department. But what about Tim? That guy who looked like a Missing Link had kicked Tim in the face and carried him off. She needed to get going. Without giving the matter any further thought, Gabby swung off the branch, hung for a second with both arms around it and then dropped down.
The impact wasn't as bad as she had feared, but it still knocked the breath out of her for a minute. Nothing hurt more than scratches on her bare legs. Rolling over and getting to her feet, Gabby straightened her leather jacket and felt unreasonably pleased with herself.
Okay. Next she picked up her helmet and hustled over to Tim's bike. His own helmet was sitting on the seat where he had placed it. This might be easier than she had thought, because he had explained so much about the Trom tech that he and the KDF used. Gabby lowered the lightweight helmet down over her head and thumbed the right ear pod as she had seen him do. Instantly, the clear visor slid down from its internal track and clicked shut.
On either extreme side of the visor, small green numbers and letters lit up in vertical rows. She tried to be patient enough to figure out what they meant. "42.1126° N, 74.0482° W".. well, those were co-ordinates. The date and time were next, as well as air temperature. Most of the other numbers and abbreviations seemed completely random to her. The blinking green blip on the upper right hand side of her visor was significant, though. It had a number next to it that was increasing steadily.
She knew what that meant! It was a tracking signal. Instead of a smartphone, Tim carried a KDF device called a Link. It was thin as three playing cards in a stack but it could do all kinds of interesting functions. Quite a few times, Timothy had complained that even when he was off duty, his captain back in Manhattan could locate him by the tracking signal his Link sent. Of course this meant he was being taken away by that Clench Ambrose galoot.
And she could follow him.
The key was still in the ignition. Tim's friend Megan had wanted to replace it with a keyless ignition that started with a code on a punchpad but he resisted it. Megan kept making improvements and renovations on the Harley anyway, and Tim had to watch that she didn't turn it into some unrecognizable futuristic spaceship on wheels. So, Gabby thought, now she could follow Tim and that Clench goon. What she would do when she caught up with a guy that looked half gorilla was another question.
Gabby started to straddle the seat, hesitated and then ran around behind the corner of the store. There was nothing back there but trees, a propane tank and a dumpster. She knew she was going to urinate in a few seconds no matter where she was. Relieved but also slightly unhappy about the hygiene of it all, she quickly strode around to the front of the store. An elderly woman in a beautiful baby blue Lexus was just going in the front door. Gabby hopped up onto the seat, turned the key and saw the gauges come to life.
There were sure a lot of them. In addition to the usual speedometer and tach, there were six small digital readouts whose numbers meant nothing to her. Tim's friend the Trom Girl was kind of a nut, she thought, she'd probably rework a microwave into something that could launch missiles. Up near the handlebars were two indicator lights glowing a reassuring green.
Once she pulled out onto Old Germantown Road, her confidence increased greatly. Gabby had learned on her sister's Yamaha and this bike was much bigger and heavier but it handled so smoothly it seemed alive. She could see why Tim wanted to ride all day every day. For a few seconds, she toyed with the fantasy of asking Megan Salenger to modify and improve her own sad old car. But no. Tim had often said that the Trom were a secretive Race of cold super-geniuses and that Gabby already knew too much about them.
The road began an upward slope as she approached Overlook. Glancing down at the speedometer, she was shocked to see she was doing eighty-five and immediately throttled down. The ride was so smooth she had felt she was going a moderate speed.
The road got steeper and she began to downshift but realized the bike had already done so. Feeling more secure and confident, Gabby's thoughts turned to her lifelong best friend. Hang on, I'm on the way, she thought.
III.
In less than a minute, Tim snapped back to full clear-headed awareness. Tel Shai knights were neither invulnerable nor immortal, but their Tagra tea regimen gave them an enhanced healing factor beyond what anything conventional medical science could explain. Timothy was not suffering dizziness, nauseau, blurred vision or any of the other serious effects a concussion could produce.
He was experienced enough not to give anything away. Head lolling down, he decided he was in the front passenger seat of the Jeep, held upright by the safety strap across his chest. The truck sounded smooth enough, but the jolting of the ride showed they were going at a good clip up an incline on a back road.
Tim was not overly concerned about Gabby. She was level-headed and resilient, and she had been through the Cave of Hours and the White Crawlers adventures without panicking. Tim expected she would call Sable at the KDF headquarters in Manhattan to report what had happened. Sable would immediately dispatch whichever KDF knights were available to rush up here. The situation was not as hopeless as it seemed.
He turned his full attention to the driver. Tim's Kumundu training gave him a proximity sense that instantly helped him assess possible opponents. This Clench Ambrose character had an immensely dense and muscular body with little body fat. The breathing was deep, clear and unstrained. Under the circumstances, Tim could not enhance his hearing enough to hear a heartbeat, that was a trick only possible in a quiet room. Opening his left eye the barest possible squint, he judged Clench would stand five feet two inches tall and weigh two hundred and sixty pounds. The arms and legs were unusually thick, the hands and feet way oversized. As the truck took a turn, Tim risked getting a better look.
The man's profile showed a protruding brow ledge, flat face and receding chin. The thick coarse hair was medium brown with a reddish tint. The color of the eyes could not be seen. Tim decided it was time to come back to life. He wheezed, moaned a little and shifted his weight.
"Sorry about applying my foot to your face," offered Clench in his mild tones. "Grandma said you was a Tel Shai knight and it wouldn't do much damage."
"That.. is a great comfort to me. What happened to my friend?"
"Oh, the lil curly haired gal? She's fine, I'm sure someone has helped her down outta that tree by now. Lissen, Mr Limbo, there's a few things you gotta know about the Ambrose clan."
Straightening up in the seat, studying his captor with an anthrolopogist's eye, Tim ventured, "Go right ahead, Clench."
"Walll, we are a reclusive bunch. Keeps to ourselves. Onst there was a whole town full of Ambroses, near a colony ya might say. Now it's just me and my two brothers and Grandma. She's afeared we're in danger of dying out."
Timothy grunted as he realized from the angle of the sun at this time of afternoon that they were headed Northwest, on a side road off the main Old Germantown Road. The angle of ascent had lessened. With his estimate that fourteen minutes had passed since the assault, he should be able to pinpoint their current location on a map. Out loud, he said, "None of you boys thinking of getting married?"
"Naw. None of us is what you might consider ideal husband material, specially since we have a combined annual income of mebbe twenty thousand dollars. Well, here we are. I wants yer word not to try and run, I catch rabbits by hand near every day for supper."
"Sounds like I wouldn't get far," Tim agreed. Strangely enough, despite having been kidnaped by force, he had little sense of being in any real danger. This Clench had taken him by surprise. On the alert, Tim was sure his Kumundu training would easily enable him to beat Clench without trouble. And, as usual, his main personality trait was curiosity and he was very interested in finding out what was going on here.
For the moment, Timothy did not draw on his unique power of summoning his caspers to look around but contented himself with direct observation. There was an overrun front yard with knee-high dry yellowed grass and an assortment of junk scattered about. The main structure was a single-room white-boarded shack in dreadful disrepair. Several windows had tar paper covering missing panes, the shingled roof sagged in at one end and fresh paint was a vague distant memory. Twenty feet to a side stood a handled pump indicating a well. Tim saw no signs of any power lines at all. A narrow outhouse was visible far behind the shack, complete with a crescent moon cut in its door for meager ventilation.
Adjoining the hovel was an open chicken coop, its door hanging open with a dozen hens meandering nearby. Close at hand was a goat with its horns sawn off, tied to a tree and munching quietly on a shrub.
It might have been a scene from pioneer days, it should have felt quiet and even peaceful. Yet something was making Timothy uneasy. His years in the Midnight War made him sensitive to the unearthly, and right at that moment his nerves went on edge.
Behind him, Clench spoke so abruptly that it made Tim give a start. "Family home started as a schoolhouse more than a hunnert years ago. Great-grandpa Ambrose settled in when he came back from Europe during the Great War. We've lived here ever since. No one bothers us. They don't even send us tax forms any more, them government men get real nervous around these parts."
I'm not surprised, Timothy thought, something was definitely making his skin crawl. Out loud, he merely said, "Your family at home?" As he spoke, the screen door creaked open and two equally bizarre figures stepped out blinking in the sunlight.
IV.
For the past few miles, Gabby had passed nothing except woods and a single marshy pond to her left. According to the readout on her visor, Tim was less than a mile away. Suddenly uncertain, she slowed and pulled over to the side of the road but left the engine running smoothly. Wait a minute. What the heck was she going to do against that apelike man anyway? She had seen him jump ten feet horizontally from a standing start and kick Tim in the head, and she knew Tim was a master of Kung Fu or Karate or something. She herself had never been in a single fight. The closest she had to any martial arts training was one semester of Les Mills Introduction To Yoga where being able to do a split had been her greatest achievement.
This was a problem. Biting her lower lip, drumming her fingers on the handlebars, she decided to check the saddlebags. Heavy as the bike was, it was so perfectly balanced that she could knock down the kickstand and hop off without trouble. She started digging through the saddlebags. Big flat first aid kit, spare T-shirt, reusable water flask... and one of the dart guns! She hefted the odd looking, handcrafted pistol with its extended needle-thin barrel.
Gabby didn't know much about even mundane weapons, let alone this KDF gizmo. But she could see there was a magazine in place within the grip. There were two obvious safeties that she clicked off as she had seen Tim do once. These guns worked by highly compressed gas and were nearly silent. The darts themselves looked like sewing needles with a collar midpoint to prevent them from penetrating too deeply.
Now she felt a little bit better. Of course, she had no marksmanship skills at all, but there wasn't anything she could do about that now. No holster? Oh well. She unzipped her leather jacket nearly all the way down and tried holding the dart gun in there. No good. It kept sliding over and starting to fall out. Drat. Finally, she had to settle for sticking the weapon into the front of her waistband tightly enough that it would stay there. She hoped.
There were a few other baffling little gadgets in the bag, small metal cylinders and round globes the size of gumdrops and some flat hooked tools. She couldn't come up with any idea what any of them might do, so it would be better to leave them alone. They might be grenades, for all she knew. The dart gun would have to be good enough. Gabby swung up onto the seat, lifted the kickstand with her foot and pulled out onto the back road again. Maybe it wasn't being too brave but deep down she hoped she would find Tim had taken control of the situation by the time she got there. After all, he WAS a Tel Shai knight and she had seen him pull off some impressive stunts.
IV.
"Hey you guys, here he is," Clench called over to the two men emerging from the doorway. The taller one was easily seven inches over six feet but couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds, with bare arms straight as straws. His bony beak-nosed face was split with a grin noticeable for several missing teeth. Close behind him, shorter and well-built, was a remarkably handsome young man with a square jaw, straight nose and blue eyes gorgeous enough for any starlet.
"Timothy, this here's my older brother Wilmer, some folks call him Stretch, he's two men high and half a man wide. T'other one's Errol, the babyface of the family."
"Uh... Hello," Timothy said. Considering he had been kicked unconscious and abducted, everyone seemed so casual and friendly that he was uncertain what how to react. The inner pockets of his leather jacket held several miniaturized Trom weapons, including two dazzler and two smoke grenades, and there was a five inch long serrated combat knife secured in his right boot. But at the moment, it didn't seem appropriate to attack anyone. There was a short but not a tense silence before Clench went over and dropped down on a long redwood picnic bench next to four folding chairs.
"Might as well take a load off," offered the gangling Wilmer, gesturing at the chairs while taking one for himself and sighing contentedly. The good-looking Errol remained where he was, staring rather vacantly off into the distance.
Timothy decided to go along for the moment. He still had his Link communicator clipped to the side of his belt. With an unobtrusive touch, he could depress and hold the Alert function and his captain back in Manhattan would send some teammates to help out. But by now, he was not angry or afraid, just curious as to what was going on with these brothers.
"I s'pose you're wondering why you're here," Wilmer drawled at last.
Tim nodded."The thought had crossed my mind."
"It's Midnight War business, of course," the tall skinny man said. "Grandma knows all about the Seven Races and the adjacent realms and all that."
"She was a big leader in the old Red Sect," Clench interrupted. "Grandma was hitched to one of the Lundborgs back in the day. That'd be Gramps Milton Lundborg. One of the most powerful warlocks of his generation."
Timothy seemed to be doing no more than listening politely. Unnoticed by the three Ambrose brothers, a small whirlwind formed behind Tim and scooted away around the house. Tim's 'friendly ghosts' were barely visible even when someone was consciously looking for them, as they seemed to be no more than a vague whirling mass of air a few inches high. He could see what they saw and hear what they heard in a telepathic sense that did not involve actual sights or sounds.
No one knew for certain what these caspers were. Some Midnight War scholars thought they were Tim's subconscious mind forming gralic force to act as he wished. Others speculated they were actual energy-based life forms that had attached themselves to him. Not even the wise Teachers of Tel Shai were sure. Tim himself had decided they were his little pals and left it at that.
As he said, "Really? Tell me more," Tim was taking in the scene behind the house and seeing nothing unexpected. The casper spun into the house through an open window, relaying the sight of plain wooden floors, a pot-bellied wood burning stove with a frying pan sitting on top of it, a single narrow bed and three shapeless masses of bundled blankets, a crude table and a few stools. Clothes were piled against one wall. A few stools sat around a short table, and a bookcase in a corner held some ancient volumes held together with twine.
It was reassuring to see no one lurking in the area with a gun or other weapons, but Tim quickly forgot all that. His casper hurtled back out of the cabin and came up behind him to pop out of existence like a soap bubble. None of the Ambrose boys noticed it. Everyone's attention was focussed on the tall slim figure in the shack's doorway. A woman not more than thirty years old in a simple white dress that showed an elegantly curved figure. Long shiny hair the same light brown as the brothers had hung down her back. Oblique green eyes gleamed in a flawless face. When she spoke, her mellow voice belied the startling words, "I greet thee, Timothy Limbo. I am Grandmother Demure of the family Ambrose."
V.
From the wild untended bushes not fifty feet away, Gabby suppressed a gasp. She had sprinted up the dirt road until first glimpse of the shack, then dropped to a crouch and crept up through the undergrowth as quietly as she could. On hands and knees, barely breathing, she peered at the strange scene in front of that hovel. Those were some strange looking guys, all right. She had met the one who seemed to be half ape. Another one looked as if he had been somehow stretched like taffy to be a foot taller than he should be. The third was handsome enough but had a vacant expression in his eyes as if he was not following anything anyone said.
And there was Timothy, sitting at the table as relaxed as if he had been invited to a barbecue instead of having been abducted by force...! The guy drove her nuts sometimes. He was a little TOO comfortable with weird situations and bizarre people and violence in general. Gabby shifted her weight and decided to watch a little longer. She had heard Tim say once there were fifteen of the anesthetic darts in a clip, so even with her dismal marksmanship, she felt she could tag these geeks before they reached her.
The big good-looking goof had hustled to bring a chair over for the black-haired woman. She lowered herself into it, sitting up straight as a queen taking her throne. "Thank you, Errol. Mr Limbo, there has long been bad blood between Red Sect and the knights of Tel Shai."
"That's fair to say," Timothy replied.
"But today, survivors of our congregation are few and widely scattered. I fear Red Sect will soon be history that only scholars of the Midnight War will remember as a footnote. That does not concern us now. Mr Limbo, none of my grandsons have taken a wife and to be honest, they do not seem likely to do so any time soon. Yet for cabalistic reasons, there must be a new life added to the Ambrose family soon."
Tim shrugged. "Errol there looks like he wouldn't have any trouble getting a date."
"You think? Watch. Errol, look!" she snapped and extended a perfectly manicured index finger toward the shack. Errol stared at the finger rather than where she was pointing.
"Not enough brains to fill a thimble," the beautiful Grandma Demure said. "Clench and Stretch have not done any better at finding a bride, sad to say."
The apelike Clench sighed. "We even brought two homeless women from Delmar here, offering them hot meals and shelter from the weather. They ran away as soon as they could. That hurt."
Watching from the bushes, Gabby barely suppressed a snort of amusement.
"Have you tried mail-order brides from Russia or Asia?" asked Tim.
"That is not suitable for our needs," Grandma Demure said. "No. Gralic sorcery sets standards. It is time for me to wed again, unfortunately. Three times have I been a bride and three times a widow, but my responsibility demands I take a husband again."
"If it's not too forward to say so, Ma'am, you're a beautiful woman. You hardly look like anyone's grandmother!"
"My arts have kept me so," she replied with a sly smile. "The High Priest of Red Sect is on his way. Once he arrives, we may begin the ceremony."
Timothy sat up straighter and his voice rose an octave. "Wait a minute..."
"I have learned much about you, Timothy Limbo. As a knight of Tel Shai, you have been vetted and found to be both honest and reliable. You are healthy and fit as any Olympic athlete. And you have survived years in the Midnight War and have shown some odd gralic power of your own, although its nature remains obscure."
Grinning from concealment, Gabby rejoiced that Tim had kept his friendly ghosts mostly a secret. Only his teammates and the Teachers knew for a certainty that Tim could send forth the tiny, barely visible caspers as extensions of himself. She was getting a cramp in one leg from her crouched position but Gabby dared not move around too much.
Grandma Demure made a clucking noise of disapproval. "Why that dismayed expression, dear one? Take a long look at me. Perhaps I flatter myself, but surely performing your conjugal duty with me would not be too unpleasant a task. The marriage will be annulled once I am with child and you will go about your way."
"I...That is, I don't know how to say this but I'm not what you would call good husband material..." Tim began, seeing the simian Clench and the elongated Stretch assume hostile stances at hearing his hesitation.
The slightest hint of iron edged Grandma Demure's velvet tones. "There is no good reason why you cannot marry me."
Surprising herself, Gabrielle Marchetti stood up and called out, "Tim is going to marry me! We're engaged!"
VI.
For a confusing half a minute, everyone talked over each other, except for Errol was seemed fixated on a Monarch butterfly close at hand. Then Grandma Demura barked out "Silence!" in a whiplash tone that might have stopped a runaway truck. "Who are you, missy?"
"I'm the future Mrs Timothy Lambert," Gabby shot back, keeping the dart gun concealed behind her back. "We've already talked with Father Mertzluft at my church."
Seeing the mixture of outrage, surprise and fury in the faces turned toward him, Tim meekly held up his own left hand to flash his Claddagh ring. "That's what I was trying to say," he managed to get out. "I'm taken. Sorry."
"Silver rings.." hissed Grandma Demure. The gorgeous contours of her face had tightened into a cold mask. "Only silver could forge a bond my magick may not break."
"Well, and the fact that I'm four months pregnant," Gabby offered. "Maybe I'm not showing yet but the pharmacy test came back postive twice."
Getting to his feet, Timothy Limbo stepped back to where he could keep an eye on everyone at once. "I AM sorry, Mrs Ambrose. A beautiful woman like yourself can surely find some suitable fiancee, but Gabby and I have to be leaving now."
"You can not wed a dead girl," Grandma Demure said. "Clench! Stretch! Rid me of her!"
Loping forward on his stiffened arms more like a primate than ever, Clench rushed across the yard toward the bushes. But he was in for a surprise. This time Timothy was ready and alert. Three years of Kumundu training under the great Teacher Chael kicked in. Tim rushed in to intercept Clench with a hooking leg sweep that dropped the apelike man flat on his face and as Clench struggled up to a kneeling position, Tim blasted a sharp right backfist and left hook that cracked hard to the Ambrose boy's face with a noise like a hammer hitting frozen beef. Clench hadn't even had time to realize he was being struck before he sagged face down to the grass.
During the two seconds this had taken, the brother called Stretch began to also run toward Gabby. His outstretched arms elongated unnaturally, extending forward twice their natural length as if made of rubber. Gabby triggered the dart gun five times, its low cough barely audible, and at least two of the potent darts jabbed into the man's body. Instantly, the Trom-formulated sedative dazed Stretch and slowed him to a stagger and by his next breath, he was falling senseless to the ground. He would sleep for at least an hour and be too nauseous for any strenuous activity another half hour after that.
"Errol! Errol! Kill her for me!"
The placid handsome face finally seemed to notice what had been going on. He turned toward his grandmother and asked mildly, "Who?"
"Her! Over there! That curly-haired slut with the silver ring!"
"I'm not a slut, I'm a nice Catholic girl," objected Gabby, still clasping the dart gun with both hands.
"That's true," Tim added. "And I don't appreciate you talking about her that way."
Straightening to her full elegant height, Grandma Demure raised both impeccably manicured hands and raised them into clawed position by her face. "Silver rings or not, let my gralic bolts char thee now." And then she gasped and reeled back. Three of the vague whirling blurs of the caspers were spinning close to her eyes. She could see only a shimmers like the heat on a desert highway and it alarmed her.
The little tornadoes could not harm her, but she had no way of knowing that.
"Stay where you are and I won't blind you," Timothy called over to her. "Let's not meet again, okay?" He strode over to where Gabby was waiting with a relieved smirk and said under his breath, "Nice shooting, cowgirl."
"Ah, it was nothing," she laughed. They set off at a good brisk walk down the dirt road. In a minute, the three caspers spun up to Timothy and popped out of existence. Gabby handed him the dart gun and said, "I left your bike about a mile up the road. And I'm still hungry, this has been the longest day."
Putting one hand high up to rub reassuringly between her shoulder blades, Timothy exhaled. "Man. You surprise me, Gabs. You've got nerves of steel."
"Not me. My knees felt like cooked spaghetti."
"I thought you would call Sable. You know, she'd have the rest of the team up here to the rescue. My jaw dropped when you stood up in the bushes and yelled at that sorceress."
Gabby didn't answer for a second. "You know, Tim, I realize you're not inclined to like girls THAT way. But honestly, would sex with a hot babe like her have been that bad?"
"Heh. Oh, man. What we saw was an illusion. My caspers showed me the truth. Grandma Demure is all bent over, wrinkled and gnarled and with maybe three teeth. She's seventy years old."
2/9/2024
no subject
Date: 2024-02-10 01:55 am (UTC)Tim IS gay but he also is very easy-going and likes women as pals, so people sometimes got the wrong impression. It's not something I feel needs to be dwelt on. His relationship with Foster is another dangling plot thread that I should feature again, too.
There's also a good chance the apelike Clench Ambrose will turn up, try to join the KDF and make a pest of himself when he gets turned down. Some potential for slapstick there.