Free Délon City: Book Two of the Oz Chronicles by R.W. Ridley

there’s one there is the other...”
    “Gordy, shut up!” I said. I mounted Chubby. “Lou, can you look after him?”
    She reluctantly nodded. “You sure you’ll be okay.”
    I looked at Roy who had gotten his twitching face under control. “I’ll be fine.”
    ***
    We rode for a half mile without saying a word. I had never seen Tullahoma from the back of a horse. The view was somehow different. It was purer, more utopian than it was from the window of a fast moving automobile. It smelled of pine and late fall. Taking in the sites of the small southern hamlet from the saddle made me feel whole. I didn’t know why, and quite frankly, I didn’t question it. I just enjoyed it.
    Roy broke the silence. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
    I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure beautiful was the right word. I wasn’t sure it was a big enough word. “A little more than that,” I said.
    He smiled. “I know what you mean.”
    “This is why you don’t travel by car?”
    He nodded. “You can’t feel the land from a car. They’re necessary. That’s the only reason we allow them, but they’re not for Délons.”
    I turned to him. His face twitched some more. It looked as if it would hop from his skull at any moment. “This is a trick, isn’t it?”
    “Huh?” He touched his face. “Oh, this. I just thought this face would please you more.” I thought back to the Georgia Dome when Pepper’s man, Shaw, had morphed into a Délon right before our eyes. “Personally, it disgusts me. If you wish, I could return to my true self.”
    “No,” I said. “I prefer this.”
    “As you wish,” he answered.
    We rode in silence a few minutes longer. I strained to observe him out of the corner of my eye without him noticing. At one point, I saw a spider leg emerge from his wind blown brown hair. It was more disturbing than seeing countless dozens of them dancing on top of his head.
    He broke the silence again. “You can’t go home.”
    I looked over my shoulder towards my house and then back at him. “Why? What’s going on at my house...?”
    “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You can’t go back to the way it was. I know you think you can, but you can’t.”
    I swallowed hard and mulled over what he was telling me. “Why exactly am I supposed to believe you?”
    “You are trying to change the nature of things...”
    “The nature of things,” I laughed. “There is nothing natural about this place. It’s all a twisted fantasy of some poor mentally handicapped guy in New Jersey because jerks like me wouldn’t let him have a moment’s peace and live with some dignity.”
    This time he laughed. “Cruelty is the heartbeat of nature.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “To be cruel is to be true to nature. A lion does not tenderly tear a zebra’s belly open and feed. It stalks it and chases it and sinks its teeth into the zebra’s neck until it chokes the life out of it. The strong feed on the weak. That is the way of nature.”
    I snickered. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a zebra.”
    “No,” he smiled. “You’re a lion. You fed on Stevie Dayton, ripped the hope and self-worth from him as efficiently as any carnivore has ripped the entrails from its prey.”
    His words stung me like a hive of angry wasps. I wanted to deny it, to scream at him, to demand that he take it back, but I couldn’t. As much as I hated to hear it, it was the truth. He was right. I knew it. I had even admitted it to myself over and over again, but hearing it out loud, spoken with such clarity and admiration made me sick to my stomach. I was a Délon before Délons even existed.
    “You spend too much time denying your true nature,” Roy said. “You are not just one of us.” He chuckled. “You are the reason for us.
    “Is this why you asked me to ride with you, to make me feel like crap for what I’ve done?”
    “On the contrary. I’m trying to make you feel proud.”
    I dug my heels into