6.
The Scottish village wasn’t really much of a village. It was more like a collection of houses that were grouped casually together with a church, a petrol station, as they called them, and little else.
Luckily for me, there were woods nearby, and I took full advantage, ditching the cop car after I wedged it between two trees in a parallel parking situation right out of Austin Powers. I didn’t do the parallel park myself, of course; I actually picked up the car and moved it there, partially to take this particular instrument out of Police Scotland’s arsenal, and mostly to test my own succubus-level strength, because it had been a while since I’d done anything without Wolfe power.
I was still strong enough to lift a car, so that was good. And it wasn’t even the full height of my powers, luckily, because I had a feeling that if the dread that was building in my belly gave way to an actual reason for being rather than just a nervous residue of the ass-kicking I’d received last night, I’d be needing that strength.
Hiking back to the village only took a short while, a quick run over uneven ground. I surveyed it while remaining hidden in the trees, trying to figure out where I’d do my respective misdeeds.
I needed, in this order: another car, preferably one that wouldn’t be missed for a while; clothes to disguise me; and possibly some petty cash and/or a meal. Because I hadn’t eaten since either yesterday or the day before (sad that I couldn’t recall), and my stomach was whining in hunger as well as fear, though it was getting hard to tell the difference.
Making my way out of the trees, I tried to walk as casually as possible. I was up on a high approach to the village, and it seemed likely someone was going to see me at some point. There I’d be, a police officer strolling down out of the heights. I wanted to try and make it look casual, no big deal, just out on patrol without a police car anywhere in sight. To that end, I didn’t run, I just walked like I had all the time in the world, because furtive movements would do a lot more to give me away than casual action. The entirety of Scotland was now in a manhunt for Sienna Nealon. Watching a lady cop walk out of the hills was weird, but it would be a lot less weird than seeing one come darting out of the hills like she was trying to play spy. That kind of thing got the cops called on you, even if you were a cop.
I strolled down into the backyard of the nearest house and vaulted the fence lightly like I owned the place. I’d read that in Scotland there was something called the “right to wander,” which meant you could basically cross private property without consequence so long as you didn’t mess with someone’s cattle or do something similarly dickish, and so I just kept my hands at my sides and walked like I had nothing going on this morning as I strolled toward the small blue house ahead.
Other houses were a ways off, probably fifty yards to my left and right. There were only about ten homes in the entirety of the village, so if someone saw me, I was under no illusions about how fast word of my appearance would travel. Hell, it was probably already fully spread through this place.
Coming up to the somewhat ragged back door of the house, I gave a polite little knock, then tilted my head to look at the picture window to the right of the door. A dog barked inside, and I could hear its claws drag the carpet as it scampered toward the back door to…I dunno, lick me to death or something.
Once again, I looked to my left, to my right, and then behind me. I couldn’t see the houses on either side, and behind me there was only a slow hill climb up to the woods, so…this was about the best I was going to get, especially since there was no sound of a human from within the dwelling.
I reached down and broke the door, cracking the mechanism right out of the frame and pushing it in slowly. I didn’t want to turn Fido into a skidmark on the entry carpet, so I took my time and the dog yelped, skittering around and barking furiously. I debated letting the pup out, but instead I slipped inside and then closed the door behind me.
Greeting me was a pug that was probably no bigger than a double burrito from Chipotle. His barks were low, and a little wheezy. “Hey, big guy,” I said, and he sniffed my pant leg, putting aside the barking. Dogs liked me, and I had little idea why, because I was pretty neutral on them. Maybe it was all the meat I ate, oozing through my pores. This is a kindred spirit and meat sister! they’d be thinking, and then try to lick me until they got all the good stuff. That was the only explanation I had.
This pup was no exception, and he dutifully followed me around after I stooped down and offered him my hand, fist closed, extending it for him to give a lick or two. He backed off first, then trudged forward experimentally and gave me a couple of sloppy, cool slurps with the old tongue. After that, the barking was done and we were fast friends.
I was pretty sure no one was home, judging by the fact that no one answered the door. That was hardly conclusive evidence, but I’d also not heard anyone, and given my super hearing, that was a little closer to proving my thesis correct. I made my way through the house quietly just in case, sweeping from the hallway next to the rear door and into the main living area. I listened carefully, trying to hear over the pup scampering along the wood paneled floor behind me.
The whole house was dark, but, judging by the outside, not terribly big. I’d assembled a mental sketch of it from the exterior, and it looked long and linear, all the rooms built sideways with the front facing the street, and the back, obviously, facing the wilderness I’d trekked through to get here. I’d entered on the left side, and there didn’t seem to be much room for anything other than a bathroom and a coat closet on this side of the house, which I quickly confirmed as being the case before turning right and entering a small kitchen and living room combo.
There wasn’t a light on, and the place smelled of stale cigarettes, which made me cringe. I hated the smell of smoke, and it doubly bothered me because of my meta sense of smell, which enhanced almost everything, allowing me to partake in secondhand smoke (fortunately not a health risk to me, just stinky) from what felt like miles away. I’d caught a whiff of this from outside, but what else was I going to do? It was the house best angled to prevent people from seeing my B & E, and it didn’t seem like anyone was home…
That changed quickly. I heard something stir in the bedroom, and for a brief second I hoped it was another dog; just another pup, happy and friendly as this one, but more lethargic. Getting some zzzs, maybe. I froze halfway across the living room, my tiptoeing act coming to an abrupt stop so quickly that the pug following behind me collided with the back of my ankle. It would have been comical if the little shit hadn’t surprised me in doing so.
I squelched the desire to let out a yelp of surprise, but the dog did not. He caught my calf and Achilles tendon right in the face, and although it couldn’t have hurt much, he seemed offended by it, and let me and whoever else was in the house know it with a series of barks.
If there was someone stirring in the bedroom, they were either hiding—possibly having called the actual police before doing so—or else they were the heaviest sleeper in the history of man. “Archie! Shut the hell up!” someone bellowed in a heavy Scottish accent. It took my brain a second or two to translate that.
Archie took off, apparently so offended by my sudden stop and his own clumsiness that he was going to run to his master. He shot around the corner, yelping all the way, like a kid going to tattle to mommy. “Traitor,” I muttered low enough that only the dog and I could hear it. I was probably the only one who could understand it.
The dog jumped on the bed with a squeak, agitating his master further. Heavy Scottish brogue that I couldn’t make head nor tails of came from behind the bedroom door across the way, and I tiptoed across the living room in the interim, wondering how best to solve for this problem. I could have left, I supposed, but this problem of mine related to clothing wasn’t going to go away anytime soon, and—as the Brits might say—in for a penny, in for a pound. Hell, Americans said that, too.
“Police Scotland!” I announced, trying to throw on as general of an Edinburgh accent to my words as I could. “Come out with your hands up!” I said it bullhorn loud and forceful, and it produced an immediate reaction from inside the bedroom.
Archie let out a fury of barks as he hit the floor, preceded by a yelp that suggested he’d gotten bounced from the bed in his master’s haste to exodus the tangled sheets. The smoke smell was even heavier over here, and my already uneasy stomach was moving toward queasy. A burst of furious Scottish came out the open door to the bedroom, and I took a second to loosely translate it as, “What the hell?” It didn’t really sound like that, though.
“We know you’ve got methamphetamines in there,” I shouted. “Come out with your hands up and make this easy!” I knew no such thing, but I knew it’d get one of two responses, and I hoped for it to be the one that most harmonized with my needs.
“I don’t have meth in here,” the outraged Scotsman said, coming around the corner with his hands up, and speaking a little more clearly, but not much. I’d crept up to just next to the door while he’d made his way over to it, and as soon as he emerged, ready to protest his innocence at what was clearly a huge mistake, I jumped him.
There was a difference in how I approached this guy versus how I would have approached a bad guy, and it was night and day. I caught his arm and dragged it down, clamping my left around his wrist as he walked out the door beside me and wheeling him around to put my right forearm squarely against his left elbow. If he didn’t move where I wanted him to move now, I could really do some damage to his joint, and like most people do when you put them into a painful situation where their arm could break in about two seconds, his gut got the point before his brain caught up.
I whirled him around and put his face in the wall—but gently. Mostly. “Hi,” I said, once he was good and planted there, not moving. “Know who I am?” I dropped the Edinburgh accent.
He nodded sharply. “Uh huh.” That I understood instantly.
“I’m going to take some of your things,” I said. “Some clothes. Some food. And I’m gonna hang out here for a while. I might borrow money when it’s all said and done. You’re okay with all this, right?” I asked extremely sweetly, though I did still obviously have him in a position where I could shatter his arm like a candy cane against concrete.
“Uh huh,” he said, nodding as best he could with the wall in his face. He really rubbed against it, like he wanted to shave the first layer of skin off. “Take whatever ye want.” Man, his accent was thick.
“I’m going to tie you up now,” I said. “Don’t scream, and you won’t get hurt. Fair enough?” He nodded. “Do you live with anyone?” I doubted he had a girlfriend by the state of this place—clothes were strewn across the floor, dog toys everywhere—but he surprised me with another nod. “Who, and when will they be here?”
“Kytt,” he said, smacking his lips together. “She gets home from work around six.”
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ll be out of here well before Kytt gets home,” I said, nodding along with him. “So she’ll find you here tied up, and you’ll have a fun story to tell all the reporters. You’ll be famous.” For about five seconds, I didn’t bother to add, Until I assault some other poor schmoe, or wreck a town while passing through, and the media forgets about my last grievous offense in favor of the next one. “What’s your name?”
“John,” he said, blinking. “John Clifford.”
“All right, John,” I said. “You have any rope I can tie you up with?” He shook his head and I sighed. “Clothes it is, then.”
I trussed him up with a bunch of old flannel shirts, tying them tight enough that he wasn’t going to easily get out, but not so tight it’d cut off circulation. The truth was, clothing was a terrible choice for binding people, because ideally whatever you used would produce chafing and resistance so they didn’t try and worm their way out. Clothing was too smooth for that, the fibers easier to rub up against repeatedly in the course of wriggling your way out, but I did the best I could with what I had and knotted it meta-tight, to the point where the sleeves sounded like they were going to rip off.
Once I was done getting John all bound up, which was mostly for psychological effect since he could most likely have escaped them with concerted effort, I led him like a submissive puppy into the next room. “Do you have any duct tape?” I asked, something I should have asked earlier. Duct tape wasn’t much better for binding than clothes, honestly—you could escape duct tape with a reasonable amount of torsion against it—but there was a profound consequence to mentally surrendering, and I wanted John to experience it fully, so that he wouldn’t do something dumbass like try to escape. Because that would really put a kink in my plans for how today was going to go.
John nodded toward the kitchen, and I dutifully led him back there and found the duct tape. I wrapped him up tight around the wrists, then checked the knot on the clothing. It wasn’t coming off easily, and he seemed fearfully impressed, so I just left it along with the double precaution of the tape. I led him back toward the bedroom, not willing to let him out of my sight for long. Once there, I started to raid his closet.
Well, Kytt’s closet, anyway. John was too tall for me.
Kytt looked to be a few sizes too tall for me, but unlike Goldilocks, I didn’t have a “just right” third option to choose from, so I made do by rolling up Kytt’s pant legs. Archie wandered around the entire time, not looking particularly upset by the fact that I’d bound up his master and was now raiding his mistress’s wardrobe. He came up and gave me a sniff, like he was trying to decide if whatever scent Kytt offered—it smelled a little lilac-y to me—was better than the sweat of meat that was my signature. He didn’t seem impressed either way, and licked my ankle until I put my shoes back on.
I’d kept John’s face in the wall while I changed; no threat or anything, just a subtle physical reminder as I turned his head for him that I could break him into tiny, tiny pieces if he pissed me off. I wasn’t going to threaten him at all verbally, though he would probably not realize that until later, if ever. Words were slower than pressure applied to a sensitive joint in getting a point across, after all.
“Mind if I hit up your fridge?” I asked once I was done, pulling John off the wall and pushing him toward the living room/kitchen again.
The sound he made was awfully discomfited, but it squeaked out politely enough, and clear, thankfully. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks,” I said, and pulled him along, Archie trailing in my wake, to finally, finally, get something to eat, and settle in for a few hours until I needed to make my way to the airfield so I could get the hell out of this country before anything worse could happen.