Jelly Cooper: Alien (22 page)

Travis shakes his head and sighs, again.

“You know I’m not
.”  He runs his hand through his hair.  “We don’t have the time for this now.  You’re just going to have to trust me, OK?”

Our eyes lock. 

Like I trusted you.

It’s what he’s thinking.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” I point a finger at him in the darkness.  “I
don’t
trust you.  You’re going to have to explain yourself.  Let’s go.”

I hoist myself to my feet
.

“You can’t go after them.”

Travis grabs me.  I push at his chest.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about
,” I whisper, furious.

Travis doesn’t budge.  Maybe I should make him.

“You are not haring off to save your friends.  There’s nothing you can do but put them in even greater danger than they’re already in.”

The almighty cheek of it!

“
I
might be their only hope for survival,” I say, hating him.  “
I
got them into this nightmare. 
I’m
responsible for all this.” I open my arms wide. “Me, no one else.  I did this.  I’ve got to stop him”.

Travis shakes his head.

“No, Jelly. 
He
did this.”  He tries to catch my eye.  “Gregory Thorn is to blame for this, so don’t do the guilt thing.  Please.”

I laugh.  It’s a horrible sound
.

“I suppose that if I hadn’t told anyone, confided in my friends about what was happening to me, then the Hunter would have chased them down and killed them anyway.  Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well…”

“If I hadn’t been with them tonight, he would have gone out of his way to round them up anyway. 
Hmm?”

“
erm, no…I mean, possibly…I don’t…”

“The fact of the matter is,
Travis, that you
don’t
know
, do you?”

His shoulders slump.

“No, I don’t know that.”

The guilt is back, like a sledgehammer in the gut.  The paralyzing fear
that my friends are dead, I’m ignoring.

“That
’s why I’m going back for them.”

Travis groans and massages the bridge of his nose.

“Where do you think the Hunter’s gone?  He’s gone back to his house to wait for you, because he knows that’s where you’ll be heading.”

I am starting to really, really, dislike Travis.

“He’d be right!  That’s exactly where I’m going.  What’s the difference anyway?” I rant. “Fight and die here or fight and die there?  At least with option two I can try and save them.”

Travis smiles and shakes his head.  “You don’t know him.  It won’t
work like that, believe me Jay.”

That hurts.  That hurts more than he could know.

“Humphrey calls me that” My eyes brim with tears.  “He has been my closest friend for as long as I can remember and now he might die, because of me?”  My jaw clenches, hard.  “And Agatha, who is
so
special, dead because of me?”  I shake my head.  “I can’t live with that, Travis.  I’d rather die than live with that on my conscience.”

“Look
,” Travis tries to reason with me. “He won’t kill them as long as you’re alive.  He needs them to get to you, so the longer you evade him, the better the chance of keeping your friends alive.”

He has got a point there.

When I hesitate, Travis sees his chance and grabs it.

“I can help you beat him, but it h
as to be on our terms, not his.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Trust me, OK?”

I meet his eyes.

“OK.  You had better know what you’re doing or I’ll kill you myself.”

Travis grins, evidently very relieved.  He’d have to be to smile at a time like this.

“What now?”

Travis looks out to sea.

“Fly us to the Head.”

Chapter
Eighteen

Sitting on the island’s sandy beach, the waves lapping at the shore, it’s hard to imagine the dangers that the night holds.

I sit facing Travis and eyeball him suspiciously. 

“So, how
do
you figure in all of this?”

Travis raises a brow.

“Let’s just say that I’m involved in this mess, whether you, or I for that matter, like it or not.”  He sighs.  “Hard though it is to believe, running around in the dead of night hiding from blood-crazed monsters is
not
how I like to spend my time.”

“No where near good enough.  I don’t trust anyone anymore.  I believed
Thorn
and look what…”

I stop
, tears threatening.

“I wa
s so sure about him,” I whisper, looking out to sea.  “If I was wrong about him, then I can easily be wrong about you.”

I was
so
certain about Thorn.  He felt like
family. 
I don’t know how I could have got it so wrong.  My senses betrayed me.  It won’t happen again.

I should have listened to Humphrey.

“If you want me to believe you, you’ve got to answer two questions.”

Travis’
mouth turns down at the corners.  He doesn’t like this one bit.

“Go on
,” he says, reluctant. 

“One.
  What are you?  I want the full shake down in Technicolour.  Don’t leave anything out.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Travis nods.

“Thorn,” I hiss.  “You’re going to tell me everything that you know about Thorn.”

Travis pulls a face.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t care.  I want to know everything”.  I jab at his chest with my finger.  “Don’t leave anything out.”

Travis’ heart sinks
and the colour around him turns from blue to purple.

I can see auras. 
I can see auras!
 
Man
am I getting better at this kind of thing, and fast
.
 

“Ok.  Have it your way, but remember that we don’t have much time.”  He glances over his shoulder. 
“He’s still out there.”

“I’m listening.  Start talking.”

He draws a deep breath.

“A couple of months ago, I started having these dreams.”

Oh-oh.

“No, hold on, that’s not the beginning
,” Travis shakes his head.  “It started before that.”

Glancing up at the cloudy night sky, he collects his thoughts.

“To really make you believe me, there’s a lot of stuff that I have to tell you about my past.”

“
Wrong.  Just get to the point.”

Travis flinches.
  “Fine.  Have it your way.  As usual,” he shakes his head.  “My family moved here last year.  I remember the day that my dad came home and told us we were moving.”  His shoulders lift. “We’d moved so often, it was really no big deal.  Then he said that we were moving to Seabrook and everything stopped.  I knew that I was meant to come here.  As soon as we arrived, things started to happen.  I kept having dreams about a purple planet with a yellow sky and lots of moons.”

My intake of breath draws a wry smile.

“Yeah, Javoria,” he nods.  “Then I started seeing this redhead running over the hills; running as if being chased by a pack of dogs.  She skids to a halt in front of a deep canyon and this figure appears behind her.  He leans closer to her and -

“I get the picture,
” I say in a rush.  Like I need reminding of being dumped head-first into a canyon.  No one seems to get how truly traumatic an experience that is.

“Right.
  I’d started patching in on your dreams and, bit by bit, I figured out the hunter pray thing.  Then, the weirdest thing happened.  I started to have dreams about Javoria without you being there.  Dreams about the battles between your people and the
bashrak.
”

He registers my astonishment and says, “I was getting help.”

“What kind of help?  From who?”

I only got help once.  Heads are going to roll for this.

“A guy called Crin.  He started to teach me about Javoria and about you.  He told me to watch you; to wait until you were ready.  He said that I’d know when the time came and that I should help you.”

“
Crin’s been talking to you?”

Birth daddy’s got a lot of explaining to do the next time we run into each other.  First he’ll explain,
then he’ll run as fast as his toga will let him, if he’s got any sense.

Travis nods. 
“I see you two know each other.”

“He’s my father”.

“Your father?  He…um, he never said.”

Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.

“No, I don’t expect that he did.”

“Um, sure.
  Well, anyway, when I saw you fly over the sea yesterday, I thought that was it, the time had come.  I came looking for you.  I was walking up Rhiannon’s driveway when I saw Thorn go into the house.”  He closes his eyes.  “I didn’t know what was going on.  I didn’t know if he was the
bashrak
, or if he was a teacher coming to find you and tell you off for skipping school.  I didn’t know what to think and I couldn’t charge into the place or I could have made things worse.  I stayed outside, out of sight, and waited.”

His eyes snap open.

“What the hell went on in there?  He was gone
ages
- I almost went nuts.”

This is what grates me the most.  The fact that he had me fooled. 

“He tricked me, Travis, and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.  That’s what went on in there.”

He squints at me in the gloom.

“Not going to forget that for a while, are you?”

“Nope.”

He sighs.

“Anyhow, when I saw what you did with
Michael this afternoon, I knew that you were ready.  By the way,” he says, leaning over me and laying his hand on my thigh, “that was one classy number you pulled on Marks.”

Travis
has his hand on my leg.

“So, I followed you to Thorn’s house.  I crept in after you and went upstairs.  I almost blew it when you saw me on the landing, but lucky for me, you
freaked out and closed your eyes.  It gave me enough time to duck into one of the other rooms.”

“But why didn’t you want me to see you if you were planning on helping me?”

“I couldn’t chance you giving me away to Thorn.  I needed to get you on your own to explain.  I knew that you didn’t trust me and figured that you might think…”

“That you were helping Thorn
,” I finish, flashing him a guilty look.  “Spot on.”

“Anyway
,” Travis says, “you know the rest.  I ran after you and managed to get out before the…”

He stops and stares at me, hard.

“What?”

His eyes narrow.  “You shouldn’t have been able to do that thing that you p
ulled off back there, you know.”

Great, he’s gone all Dungeon Master on me.  I wish people wouldn’t talk in riddles, it’s really annoying.

“What thing; locking the door from outside the house?”

“The invisible thing.”

Oh.  That.

“You went all invisible-
man, which is cool – turning invisible is part of your birthright – but you shielded me as well.  He should have got a clear view of me, but you did something to the both of us and he didn’t.  I’m not sure how you managed it, but from what Crin’s told me, that’s not the way it’s done.”

Oh really.

“Well it’s the way that it’s done down here.”

He narrows his eyes even more!  What’s he
implying, that I’m some kind of freak or something?  I go on the defensive.

“I’m still confused.  You were destined to come here to help me, right?”

Travis nods.

“But when the Hunter found us, you couldn’t do anything to defend me.”

Travis’ aura turns from purple to pink to red.

“
Er…no.  I couldn’t.  Sometimes, knowing too much can be a bad thing.  I’m well aware of what happens to people caught helping Javoria.  The Hunters don’t do forgiveness.”

Agatha, Humphrey and Rhiannon may all be paying the ultimate penalty for trying to help me.  I feel really, really, sick.