Crow - The Awakening (54 page)
Lohet looked down at the burn and ripped away the charred bit of clothing that still clung to that arm. Penipe examined the wound. It was a distinct pair of hand prints. "It looks like the paint took the worst of it, but you've got some tissue damage."
"He's burning now. We don't have much time. I would have terminated him tonight were it not for the aircraft." Lohet looked at his arm. He was not accustomed to injuries like that, but he was already healing. Penipe closed her eyes, shuddering as she thought about what her daughter narrowly escaped suffering. Taking a deep breath, she composed herself. She had to get to the deviant and find a way to break their bond without killing her daughter. But if he fully manifests, there was simply no choice. She remembered the brief contact she had with him in the trees.
"Lohet, these people are leaving a trail of bodies. I saw them in his mind." She closed her eyes. What she remembered perplexed her. "He's hurting for these people." She looked up at Lohet, "That's impossible. What is happening?"
Lohet didn't have an answer. Things were not progressing with this deviant in the same way that they progressed with the other deviants he had to terminate. There were distinct differences. However, a deviant was a deviant. If they were not dealt with when they were still vulnerable, the trouble they could cause increased astronomically. "It's possible you saw what he wanted you to see," Lohet postulated. Penipe looked down, wondering if she could be as easily fooled as Asherah. She had to get to him. She needed more than a glancing touch.
Without warning, bullets ripped into the trees around them. Lohet looked over near the wreckage as an armed and armored SUV pulled up, firing at them with a turret mounted machine gun. Sirel flew up into the night sky as Penipe and Migalo ducked behind the trees. Lohet frowned. As the vehicle pulled to a stop taking a bead on his chest and releasing a barrage of bullets at him, Lohet rushed the vehicle with the energy he had stored up to terminate Steven. He launched so fast that a puff of condensation formed in the vacuum of where he had been standing. In spite of the heavy armor, the vehicle still wrapped around him and nearly split in half when he hit it and it was knocked out of the park onto the street below. Both of the occupants died instantaneously from the force of the impact. Lohet brushed glass off his shoulder and chest and realized the last shreds of Terran clothing were now completely gone. It was time to depart.
It took an enormous level of will power to bring his speed back down to the legal limits. Steven had barreled down the highway with the pedal completely on the floor and the speedometer maxed out, passing cars rapidly as he sought to put distance between the park and himself. But that in itself could cause problems too, if law enforcement noticed, so he started letting off the gas, a nearly constant eye on the rear view mirror looking for any sign of pursuit. He saw an off ramp he recognized and crossed several lanes to take it and suddenly he was in a mixed residential and commercial part of town.
Navigating through town at night proved difficult with a shattered windshield. Oncoming headlights illuminated all the pieces of glass like little prisms, making it almost impossible to see the street. A police car was one of those headlights and Steven checked his speed and slowed even more below the limit. The car passed by and was a couple of blocks behind Steven when he finally started to relax. But quite suddenly its police lights turned on and it made a quick u-turn. Steven's legs went numb and he started looking for a place to run. He was in the business district with few hiding places. The police car accelerated up to right behind him and Steven hesitated then pulled over to the side, ready to hit the gas the instant the officer exited the vehicle. He was exhausted and just the thought of running now was wearing heavily on him. But he had no choice. Brandon was still in danger.
As he pulled the car over, the police car swerved around him and sped off down the street, turning a few blocks up. He could hear the sirens recede into the distance. Steven put his head on the steering wheel, trying to catch his breath and slow his racing heart. "Oh, this is getting so old," Steven whispered to himself. He had to get off the streets and find some place to rest.
Pulling back onto the street, he noticed that he was near the college he had graduated from. Thinking hard, he vaguely remembered an apartment complex not too far from there that had a park and pond nearby. He used to like walking the trails and climbing the trees there between classes or when he was waiting for his ride. Looking around for more police cars, he made it there safely, driving as timidly as he could. Steven found a parking lot nearby and parked the car in the darkest part of the lot. He sat there for several minutes to see if anyone was going to jump out of the shadows. All seemed quiet, however.
Taking a deep breath, he got out of the car, wincing when the door creaked and popped loudly as he opened it. The man who jumped on the hood must have dented it when he hit the windshield. He didn't bother closing the door, fearful that it would make that sound again. He noticed the front quarter panel was dented in pretty good and figured that was where the man originally hit the car when he jumped on the hood. Curious rips in the metal caught his attention. They appeared to be claw marks. Steven tried to think what could have caused that but his brain was getting fuzzy from exhaustion and he decided it wasn't important enough to riddle out.
Sticking to the shadows, Steven snuck behind a row of cars in the apartment parking lot, trying to make his way to the park without being seen. He slipped on a piece of slick trash and bumped into a car. The car alarm went off and Steven jumped, yelping as he fell into the bushes of the flowerbed that bordered the parking lot. He scrambled over them into the tight area between the bushes and a metal fence, peering over the top of the shrubs to see if anyone had noticed him. Thankfully, the car alarm was completely ignored and it eventually went silent on its own. Steven caught his breath and climbed out from behind the bushes and resumed his trek to the park.
Once he got to the end of the parking lot he looked at the entrance to the park. It was rather well lit. Steven looked back at the apartments and wondered if there was anyone looking out. He didn't think it was likely, but as he was about to step from behind the bushes, a car pulled into the empty parking space right in front of him. Steven ducked behind the bushes and watched as a man stumbled out of the car. He reeked of alcohol and tobacco and Steven made a face as the odor wafted over to him. The man dropped his keys and grumbled as he leaned against the car and reached down to pick them up, wobbling on his feet. Finally he had them in his hand and he started stumbling toward the apartment. Steven couldn't understand how the man was able to drive.
It very quickly got quiet again. Steven figured the best way to walk into the park would be as if he belonged there. So he stood up and stepped out of the bushes and straightened his clothes. Looking around, he walked as amicably as he could into the light and whistled a little while he walked down the park trail, relieved that there were no alarms or people yelling at him. As he got deeper into the park, he looked around. Most of the trees were pretty young and well manicured, so he walked down the trail looking for the bigger trees. There was one that he liked to climb deeper in the park so he headed toward that one. The trail skirted around the pond at one point and he noticed a corrugated steel culvert where the pond would overflow in heavy rains. The culvert was dry now and Steven stopped, tempted to crawl in. After all he had gone through, it did represent more cover than the trees. But up ahead were taller trees and that appealed to him even more. He still felt safer with the trees and instinctively headed toward them.
Steven found his favorite tree and scaled it easily, climbing up as high as he could so that no one from the ground could see him. He looked out at the neighboring trees, making sure he had a way to escape if he needed. There were a couple of ways he could go through the trees that would take him to the edge of the park and potential freedom. The attack at the last park left him shaken. Now he kept his guard up, feeling everything in the park. Not a bird moved in its nest without Steven detecting it. But it was exhausting maintaining that level of attentiveness and Steven rubbed his eyes, wondering how this was going to end. After he got to Brandon, what then? He found it hard to think beyond that, however. Steven was sure once he got back to his apartment he could once again disappear under the cloak of anonymity, though.
After he got himself situated and started coming down from his adrenaline rush, he scanned the area around him again, looking for any hint of movement. This late at night, or rather early in the morning, there wasn't anyone out at all, in the parking lot or the park. He was essentially alone. It was intensely relieving to be alone at the moment. After that day, it meant no one hunting him, chasing him or shooting at him. Steven groaned inside as he leaned back against the trunk of the tree.
Starting to relax finally, he thought back to the other park. Steven saw his vampire, or someone who looked very much like him, and also the wolfman, though he also looked very different. The vampire's arm was like stone. He remembered that clearly. And the energy he commanded, it was overwhelming. Steven felt it through the ground. And the woman. She was up in the tree with him. But she looked like a regular woman. No fur. He shook his head, confused. No one climbed trees like he did that he knew of. She looked different, but then very similar to what he remembered before. And she touched him. He recalled the shock of her touch that coursed through him before he let go of the branches. It was like he could hear her thoughts. They were of Asherah and were very angry. But was it real?
Steven rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was having an episode. Normally he dreams about them but they've not been a problem since he's learned to dominate his dreams. Now he's seeing them while he's awake. He felt like he was going crazy. But then, in the past day he's been chased almost the entire time, watched people die, was shot up in a car, arrested and assaulted. Perhaps the stress and lack of sleep was getting to him. He lay back on the branch, trying to get comfortable. As his thoughts meandered, he remembered the busted windshield. Did he really see a wolfman punch it? Or perhaps he hit someone and his brain interpreted that way? Steven's heart raced a little, thinking he may have left someone mortally wounded in the parking lot and not even know it.
But he didn't have the energy to obsess about it. Sleep was calling loudly to him and the slight breeze was causing the tree to gently rock him as his eyelids got heavy. It wasn't long before he drifted off to a fitful slumber, waking periodically to scan the forest below.
They found the car at the back of the parking lot, with its door still open. Laurence pulled in behind another SUV and put the vehicle in park. He looked at his scanners. The chip was definitely in this area. But the isotope was getting too weak to get a reading. He scratched his temple, frustrated. He had unloaded his scent sniffer back when he thought he had Steven and suddenly missed it now. Without the isotope, finding him was going to be difficult, even with the chip. The margin of error for the chip was pretty wide. The aircraft could have narrowed it a little but it was now a heap of scrap in the back of a dump truck on its way out of town. Hand held scanners were too easily thwarted by structures to be of much use.
Shaking his head, Laurence got out and went to the car. Its hood had massive claw marks on it that peeled the steel back and it just tenuously remained attached to the car. Something had hit the windshield, too. It was too small an imprint to be a head. Laurence wondered if someone had hit it with a large hammer, but a hammer would have punched a hole or left a much smaller imprint. And that didn't explain the claw marks. He put his fist against the impact mark and while his was smaller, it fit. The windshield had been punched. No human could do that. The presence of the aliens, however, made for a plausible explanation. He put his hand on the hood, feeling its warmth. Steven had just recently pulled in here.
Tapping his bluetooth, he signaled to his commanders. "Okay, we're going old fashioned now. Door to door. Break down any that don't answer. The margin of error places him on this side of the complex so hit those apartments first." He called his technical support. "I need 911 proxied for this complex and all cell towers in the area. Monitor police bands and inform me if we have incoming." Looking around, he clapped his hands, "Okay folks, lets do this and make it quick."
Laurence's team fanned out, some busting into cars of the parking lot, using their jammers to disable car alarms as they searched the cars. Others spread out and barged into apartments, startling the occupants but encouraging their cooperation aggressively. Still others focused on the bushes and trees in the complex and the private porches. Anyone that objected was dispatched without a second look as the agents created a Roman Line and swept through the complex, leaving no gaps for escape. Another line hung back, covering them just in case they were breached. Laurence looked out at the park. "Get some men out there and clear that park." He commanded. A dozen agents rushed into it. "You, hit up those dumpsters."
He looked at his scanner again. The chip's location blinked out a couple of times and he refreshed the connection. He figured the satellite must be getting low on the horizon. As he called in to get another satellite tasked he noticed that the signal appeared to be moving. He looked around. They were not far from the highway and there was some traffic on the roads in spite of the early morning hours. Could have have stolen another car? But the scanner didn't lie. The chip was on the move. "Folks, he's on the move. Heading southwest!"
The agents had just about made it to Steven's tree, using infrared goggles to look in the bushes but not looking up in the tree yet. It was right above them and the men were scanning meticulously, not missing a thing. All they had to do was look up and Steven would be running again. However, they heard Laurence and backtracked quickly. SUVs were already on the road as the rest of the team started filtering out of the parking lot.
