Touched by an Alien (48 page)

Talking to my parents would have been fine, but they were both busy. Mom was with White, discussing moving part of her antiterrorism unit over to base out of the Science Center, and Dad was so deeply engrossed in the translations that a food, drink, bathroom break, and bed rest team had to be assigned to him.

Tim, Claudia, and Lorraine were still debriefing the A-Cs and American military personnel on most of what had gone on. I would be asked to give a full report in a day or so, but since I was new to everything, I was given time off.

Our dogs had the run of the place, thanks to Duchess, who was still the heroine of the day. Pretty much every Dazzler wanted her own pit bull now, and I couldn’t blame them.

The cats were still in my parent’s room, and I went to visit them, to find Christopher in there, all three cats on the sofa with him, purring up a storm.

“Your parents told me I could come in any time.”

I sat down on the sofa next to him. “That’s fine. I don’t think you’re a total jerk any more.”

He laughed. “Good to know.” He looked down at Sugarfoot, who was in his lap. “Is my mother still in your mind?”

I’d been wondering the same thing myself. “I don’t think it’s her so much as her influence.”

“What do you mean?” He still wasn’t looking at me.

“She was dying, and she knew it. Either she willed it to happen, so she wouldn’t give birth to a superbeing, or the impregnation, if we can even call it that, affected her system so badly it killed her. But she knew she was going to die.”

He nodded. “She told us, me and Jeff, that she was.”

My throat felt tight. They’d been ten years old. Too early to become men. “She couldn’t put the memory, the feeling, into your mind—you’d create an image from it, and then you’d know . . .” I couldn’t finish that sentence.

Christopher could. “I’d know my grandfather raped my mother, his son’s wife.” He looked back at me. “We can’t tell my father.”

“I think he knows, or at least suspects.”

“I don’t want to find out you’re wrong.”

“That’s fair.”

“Why Jeff?”

“Who else? He’s the most powerful empath your race has—I’m sure your mother knew that. She was training him, after all.” He nodded. I didn’t mention the glowing cube I’d seen. I didn’t want to let either one of them know what Terry had shown me. “So she did some empathic thing, I have no idea what—Jeff might not either—and programmed him. He knew she gave him something to pass along, but nothing more.” Martini had been looking for me all his life. It made my heart ache to think about it.

Christopher closed his eyes. “You know, there were a few years when I hated him.”

“After Lissa?”

“Yeah. They would have killed her no matter what, though. I know that now.” He managed a weak smile. “At least they didn’t get Jeff.”

“He loves you very much.”

“I know. He’s more than my cousin, more than a brother.”

“Yeah, she showed me. She knew that when it mattered, you two would always stand together.”

“That almost fell apart these last couple of days,” he said with a chuckle.

“No, actually, Jeff offered to step aside so we could be together. Right before Mephistopheles did his tap dance on our car.”

“They won’t let him marry you. I know you don’t want to believe it, but it’s true.”

“We’ll see. I’ve known all of you for less than a week. I think I can stand dating a bit before racing off to the chapel with Jeff.”

“He’ll suggest it the second he can walk again.”

“It’s part of his charm.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Yeah. What was your mother like?”

He leaned his head back. “Like I used to be. Like Jeff is now.”

“You miss it? How you used to be, I mean.”

“Sometimes.” He grinned. “Jeff does it better than I ever did, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Being human. It’s what all of us born on Earth want, to be human. Jeff passes without any issues. Not so easy for the rest of us.”

“I’ll start calling you Chris if that’ll help.”

“No. Don’t take this the wrong way, but my mother called me Chris. And asked everyone to call her Terry, though only Jeff did.” He gave a short laugh. “You’d have liked her, and she’d have loved you.”

I felt a pang for her—so alone in this world, so clear on what her race needed to do to survive, and murdered by the person who should have helped her. I realized I had two people to avenge, not one.

“My mom really cares about you,” I reminded him. “I think she’d be very open to, well, covering what you’d let her of the mother stuff.”

“And here I thought she just wanted to marry me off to you.”

“Oh, she did and probably still does.”

“Your father prefers Jeff.”

“Really? Sure didn’t seem like it.”

“Trust me.”

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, petting the cats. It was relaxing. For a few minutes. Then the memory of the creepy Mortal Kombat Crypt Isolation Chambers inserted itself in my mind, chuckling evilly.

“Can we get out of here?”

“You want to tour the Science Center?”

“Been there, done that, still have no idea where I am at any given time. No, I mean get
out
of here.”

He stretched. “You want to go to Pueblo Caliente?”

“Yeah, I do. Even if it’s just to get another change of clothes.”

“Okay. Not a surprise, by the way.”

“Oh? I thought you weren’t empathic.”

“I’m not, but I remember what it was like for James, the first few days. He was overwhelmed and burned out and just wanted to go home and remember what it was like to be a regular human who didn’t know aliens walked the Earth.”

“We safe to go?”

“Sure, I have the highest security clearance. You do too, now.”

“I meant from a safety perspective.”

He grinned. “I think I can catch you if you fall out of a plane.”

“I’d rather take a gate.”

“I call that personal growth. But I’m not carrying you through it—that’s Jeff’s jurisdiction.”

“That’s fine. Just promise me we’ll run slowly and land in a clean men’s bathroom.”

“Boy, are you picky.”

WE WENT TO MY ROOM
so I could grab my purse, then strolled to the elevator banks. Still stood on opposite sides of the car from each other. No need to put ourselves into another awkward situation.

We got to a gate, calibrations were made, and then we whooshed off to the men’s room at Saguaro International. It felt like years since I’d been here, not days. We were between flights, and the bathroom didn’t require me to act like an idiot, which was a relief, although I was a little let down. I’d prepared a great routine.

We strolled out. “You want to take a cab?” Christopher asked me.

“Do you guys do that? I mean, no gray car, no hyperspeed?”

“Sometimes.”

It was a human thing to do, and he wanted to be human. I might not be allowed to call him Chris, but I could help drag him along. “Sure. You have money?”

He grinned. “Always.”

We walked to the curb, and he held the door for me, but this time he climbed in next to me. I gave my address, as well as the fastest way to get there at this time of day, and we drove off.

“You folks got no luggage?” the driver asked.

“We’re having an affair. My husband thinks I’m out with the girls, his wife thinks he’s in Omaha.” Christopher looked at me as if I were insane.

The cabbie nodded. “Makes sense. You live close?”

“I live here, he lives in Vegas.”

“Ah, Sin City. Guess you can’t meet up there, though, huh?”

“Nope, but this works out. I use my friend’s apartment.”

“Nice friend.”

“She owes me.” I leaned back in the seat and patted Christopher’s leg. “Relax, honey, we finally get a few hours alone.”

The cabbie chuckled. “Your boyfriend’s probably worried your husband’ll drive by and spot the two of you together.”

“Yeah,” Christopher muttered.

“I could put my head in your lap.”

“No, not in the cab,” Christopher said quickly. He looked panicked.

The cabbie chuckled again. “No cameras in this cab, honey. You feel free to have a good time if you want to.”

“Thanks, but I guess we’ll wait.”

We reached my apartment, and Christopher paid up. I made him give the cabbie a generous tip. “Good luck to you two. Hope I get your fare next time.” He drove off, still chuckling.

“Why did you do that?” Christopher demanded as we went upstairs. “Are you crazy, is that your problem?”

I laughed. “You need to relax. It was fun. And your expressions were priceless.”

“Jeff wouldn’t find it funny.”

“No, he’d find it hilarious. And if he’d been in the cab with me, he’d have let me ‘hide.’ ”

“I’m not Jeff.”

I patted his cheek. “I know. But I like you anyway.”

We got inside, and I took a look around. “Someone’s been in here.”

“How can you tell? It was a mess when I was here before, it’s a mess now.”

“It’s my mess, and it’s been moved.” Only a bit, but everything was moved a bit. I took his hand. “In case we have to leave quickly,” I explained as he gave me a panicked look.

We walked through. All my fish were dead. “Overfeeding?”

“Maybe. Maybe they think I love my fish.”

“Who could love fish?”

“Someone, I’m sure, just not me.” I moved us through the apartment, opening everything carefully. We got into the bedroom. No one there. I pulled out a suitcase, shook it out, and then started to toss clothes into it. I moved all my pictures into another bag. There wasn’t that much more I needed, though I grabbed my spare hairspray and put it in my purse.

Christopher checked under the bed. “Nothing. You sure stuff’s been moved?”

“Yeah. You sure you didn’t see anything foreign on anything I packed?”

“No, all your concert T-shirts are devoid of suspicious powders.”

“I packed other things.”

“But nothing else carefully.”

I looked at my bed. “Christopher? I think there’s something in my bed.”

“Bomb?”

“Could be.” No sooner had I said that than whatever it was moved under the covers. I managed not to scream.

Christopher looked at it closely. “Are you afraid of snakes?”

“Pathologically.”

“That popular knowledge?”

“I’m a girl, the bet is always good for snake fear.”

“It’s a snake, then.”

“Rattler?”

“Most likely.”

I was taking this extremely well. “We have to kill it. By we, of course, I mean you. I’ll stand here and scream.”

“No screaming. Screaming tells the people watching your apartment you’ve found their gift.”

“Oh, great.”

“I don’t want to let go of you. You’re right, we’re going to have to move fast. But I need something to use to cut the snake’s head off.”

“You think you can do that?”

“Um, yeah. Hyperspeed and all.”

Duh. “Right. I have knives in the kitchen.”

“No, needs to be in this room. I think if we go back into the kitchen, we’ll be dead.”

“Why?”

“I can hear ticking.”

The Nareemas were not only the landlords but the owners of the entire building. Since they’d come from that very war-torn country and were total paranoids, they were well trained in hasty exits. They routinely made the tenants practice emergency escapes—a small price to pay for great apartments in a great location at a very reasonable rate.

In addition to the drills, all the apartments had an emergency alarm installed, always in the kitchen and bedroom areas, high enough up that most kiddies couldn’t reach the pull levers but most adults could.

The emergency alarm sounded vastly different from the fire alarm, and the Nareemas literally made each tenant sign a contract that if they heard the emergency alarm, they would grab all living creatures, only, and run like hell out of the building. They kept a roster of all the living things. I hadn’t included my fish on the list, but if you considered a cockroach a pet, the Nareemas had it marked on your lease.

If the building was going to go, I was going to clear out my neighbors if at all possible, and the snake could fend for itself.

I looked around quickly. Anything else I had to have before it blew to smithereens? I grabbed my laptop bag after a quick examination that showed no bombs or slitheries. Because I traveled a lot for work, it contained my passport and all my personal information, and it was also where I stored checkbooks and other important things. I cleared out some more clothes and shoes, filling my five-piece luggage set to the brim.

“How do you expect us to carry all this?” Christopher asked as I continued to pack like mad one-handed.