“The logistics of this operation are,” Clayborn rubbed the ends of his fingers together, “sticky.”
Sticky as blood. “How do you choose which women to kidnap?”
“I have a profiling list and I give the names to Colonel Goodman. He and his team have been resourceful and thorough. If their government doesn’t have a problem with this, why should I?”
His logic made me dizzy. “How many women do you plan on taking?”
“Whatever the market will bear.”
I wanted to puke. I couldn’t hide my disgust with him and his human partners in this gruesome conspiracy.
“Don’t look so upset.” Clayborn uncrossed his legs. “I’m an expert in homo sapiens behavior. They can rationalize anything. Take war. They’ll bankrupt their economies, sacrifice the best of their young, unleash a bloodbath that impresses even me, at the expense of providing shelter, food, and medicine for their own people. Compared to that, the sale of a few women is trivial.”
“Unless you’re one of those being sold. I don’t trust you, Clayborn. There’s more to this than taking Earth women and cigars.” I grew quiet and thought about what he really wanted.
“When I said we wanted to control humans, perhaps that was the wrong word.” Clayborn’s mouth curved slowly into a reptilian smile. “I should’ve said ‘domesticate.’”
I immediately saw rows of humans tagged and warehoused in pens. “Like animals? You’re crazy. Impossible.”
“Not at all. We give the humans what they want and they line up so we can milk them like contented cows. They hand over their women and in return they make more money.” Clayborn leaned forward from his chair. “We’ve already got Cress Tech and their Ivy League patrons in the National Security Agency mooing for more.”
The very people who were supposed to protect us have sold us out. There hasn’t been a betrayal this deep since Judas. “Clayborn, you’ve been doing a lot of talking. What for?”
The alien set his hands on his knees and leaned even closer. “Good point. That brings us to your friend Carmen.”
My anger snapped back into focus.
“She’s a special prize. I don’t blame you for wanting her back. At auction, she brought an astronomical sum.”
Carmen sold at auction? My kundalini noir rose within me, a cobra readying to strike. I boiled with rage. Clayborn must have surely been blind to psychic auras, or else he would’ve seen mine light up like an exploding bomb.
“What makes her so special is that she’s one of you. Her psychic energy field is exceptionally strong. What is she? What are you, Felix?”
Vampire. I wanted to flash my fangs and talons. I wanted to revel in his gore as I ripped that leather hide off his alien bones.
My sixth sense made my ears ring and my fingers hurt, they tingled so hard. Careful. He’s baiting you.
My mind stepped back to distance myself from my emotions. How could I regain the advantage? What did Clayborn not expect me to know?
I smiled. “Where’s Goodman’s blaster? The one he used to kill Marissa?”
Clayborn nodded. “I have it.”
I kept my smile. “Odin had a blaster of his own.”
Clayborn’s aura flared. His fingers clutched, as if snatching something from the air. He caught himself, relaxed, and smoothed his trousers. “I wasn’t aware of that. Where is it?”
“Before he died, Odin asked me to dump his body in the gulf. A spaceship took his corpse and the blaster. Don’t suppose they were friends of yours?”
Clayborn’s penumbra tightened around his form. He snubbed his cigar and left it in the ashtray. “Are you sure you’re not with the Union? You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m a curious guy.”
“What’s the expression? Curiosity killed the cat.”
“A cat’s got nine lives.”
“How many have you used up?”
“I’m keeping track, don’t you worry. Give me Carmen. I’m not leaving here without her.”
Clayborn swiveled his big head toward me. His eyes were as cold as ice. “You shouldn’t have said that. Because it means you’re not leaving.”
A wall of white light shone between Clayborn and me.
Time to strike. I sprang to my feet.
He smiled from behind the translucent haze.
I didn’t know what that light was. I snatched the ashtray from the end table and threw it against the light. The ashtray exploded.
Clayborn’s smile widened. A force field protected him. He retreated behind the partition.
An alarm went off. The red light on the entrance flashed.
I ran to the closest wall to break through and escape. I scraped my talons against the surface. Concrete. Same for the floor and the ceiling. It would take time for me to claw my way out, time I didn’t have.
Chapter
43
The light beside the door went from red to green. The lock snapped open.
I ran beside the door and got ready to attack.
Two men carrying submachine guns rushed in. I swept my foot along their ankles and bowled them over. Their heads smacked the floor and their auras dimmed as they lost consciousness. I leaped into the foyer and slammed the door shut behind me.
The elevator doors were open. Red lights blinked in the hallway. An alarm blared, its horn screeching and echoing.
I didn’t see any stairs or another way out, other than the elevator. The exits out of the building were below me, and the guards would assume that the only way to escape would be down.
The elevator was all I had and I got in, trap or no trap. Cameras stared at me from opposite upper corners in the compartment. I swung my fists and knocked the cameras from their mounts. Let the guards work to find me.
I jumped and hooked my talons into the elevator ceiling. I tore at the ceiling panels and made a hole big enough to slide through.
Standing atop the elevator, I saw that I was on the second floor. I grasped the girders supporting the elevator and climbed to the third floor.
I set my toes and hands against the doors for the elevator and clung with supernatural sticky force. I ran my fingers between the doors and pulled them apart.
I faced an empty hall and paused for a second to get my bearings. No alarm sounded on this floor, but I could still hear the one shrieking downstairs.
Men shouted to my left.
I dodged right down the hall, turned the corner, and came face-to-face with a human guard armed with a shotgun. He stood before a metal door that looked like the hatch on a ship.
His eyes gaped at me. I didn’t have time to zap the guard; instead I knocked him out with a punch across the jaw.
The door was milled from thick steel and fastened to the wall with heavy bolts. The door lock had a slot for swiping a badge.
The guard carried an ID badge clipped to a shirt pocket. I took the badge and swiped it through the lock.
A screen above the lock flashed: BEGIN RETINAL SCAN.
What now?
An arrow on the screen pointed to a lens above the door lock.
I lifted the guard by his hair and pulled his left eyelid open. I wasn’t sure if this would work.
I pressed his face against the wall with his eye centered over the lens.
The screen showed an image of the guard’s retina. A line scrolled top to bottom across the screen.
The screen flashed: RETINAL SCAN COMPLETE.
A light on the door lock pulsed from red to green, and a latch inside the door clicked.
I dropped the guard and turned the handle of the door. I stepped over the threshold into a long, darkened room.
The only illumination in the room came from small desk lamps and the blank faces of computer monitors. I could see well enough.
I pushed the door closed. All the outside noise hushed. I spun the door handle until it stopped, then gave it an extra twist to jam the mechanism.
The room took up most of this floor, about fifty feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet to the f
ar wall. Computer servers sat in bookcases, blinking spasmodically, sharing shelf space with stacks of notebooks and binders. A laboratory of some type?
Two rows of strange metal cylinders, each with a soft, bluish luster and big enough to hold a coffin, rested on wheeled dollies in the middle of the room. Each row had four cylinders, for a total of eight.
Four more cylinders stood along the circumference of a pedestal in the middle of the floor. The circular pedestal was about fifteen feet wide and rose above the floor about a step’s height. Two more rows of cylinders lay on dollies on the opposite side of the room.
The door of a freight elevator stood on the north side of the wall, directly above a door similar to that I’d seen in Clayborn’s suite. This elevator must be how they moved the cylinders from floor to floor in the annex.
I approached the closest cylinder. It held a large glass capsule. Inside the capsule lay a woman in a white medical gown, resting on her back against a white cushion, hands to her sides, her expression serene, as if in peaceful sleep. This woman’s complexion was the color of milk chocolate. Given her skin tone, her nose, and the oval shape of her face, she looked like the photo I’d seen before of Vanessa Tico. I turned to the next cylinder.
Inside rested a blonde. Janice Wyndersook, Vanessa’s fellow passenger on the doomed flight.
I dashed between the rows of cylinders, hoping that I’d find Carmen. Another woman, whom I didn’t recognize, lay in one of the cylinders. The rest were empty.
I approached the pedestal. Each of these cylinders stood on parallel grooves that pointed to an indentation in the center of the pedestal. The glass capsules of the cylinders faced the indentation.
Hesitantly, I put a foot on the pedestal—it looked made of polished steel—and stepped up to see inside the cylinders.
The first one contained Carmen.
The joy at finding her ran through me like electricity. I got close to the cylinder and placed my hands against the cool glass.
Restraining bands across her torso, middle, and arms held her upright. Like the other women, Carmen wore white. Her eyes were closed.
Her aura shimmered softly, the visual equivalent of a soft hum. She was in a deep sleep.
How had they captured her? Drugs? A paralysis ray? A mechanical restraint?
I had to get her out of the capsule. I raked my talons across the glass. Didn’t even scratch it.
I tore the metal leg from a nearby table. I smacked the capsule again and again. Carmen remained in her slumber.
A circular contraption the diameter of the pedestal hung from the ceiling directly over us. The contraption was a concave disk dimpled with ridges radiating from a thick glass rod pointing to the indentation of the pedestal.
The capsules must be slid down the tracks to the indentation, and then what? Was this a scanner? To measure psychic energy? A diagnostic tool? What?
In any case, it didn’t look good.
I beat my hands against the glass and shouted: “Carmen. Carmen.” I wanted her to wake up and shine her tapetum lucidum.
Desperation choked me. I roiled with anger. I tried to tear the cylinder from the tracks but it remained fixed in place.
Okay, acting like a gorilla wouldn’t solve anything. I calmed myself and examined the outside of the cylinder. There had to be a way of opening these things. I found a rectangular indentation on the right side beyond the glass front. The indentation was at hip height, low for me but right for someone of Clayborn’s stature.
The indentation protected a series of slots and female connectors. This was where external devices or cables were attached. What devices? What cables?
Heavy steps rushed to the door.
Hurry, Felix.
I looked around for anything that would seem to fit the connections. A collection of devices, small boxes with cables, sat on the closest desk. I ran to the desk, scooped all the devices in my arms, and hustled back to the cylinder.
The front door began to squeal as if it was being twisted apart. The guards would soon make their way in.
I grabbed one device, ran my fingers over the cable to the end plug, and hunted for the correct connection. I turned the plug until it seated square, and pressed it tight.
The device, a blue plastic rectangle the size of a wallet, suddenly flashed a row of blinking lights. I fumbled with the device, trying to make it work. Nothing.
I dropped the device and picked up another. Its plug fit into a slot. This device, the size of a paperback book, had a screen that lit up. I tapped, then pounded on the buttons along its side. Again, nothing.
The front door clicked, the sound of metal snapping.
I rested my cheek against the cold metal of the cylinder. Carmen, I was so close. Please hear me.
Suddenly, there was silence. The guards in the hall had quit moving.
They were about to charge in. I had no choice but to escape. I couldn’t fight them forever. With every passing moment, the guards would gather more reinforcements and greater firepower.
I felt like a coward abandoning Carmen, but if I stayed I’d be overwhelmed and either dead or inside one of these cylinders myself. In a final gesture of desperation, I kicked the pile of devices and cables and scattered them across the floor.
I pressed my hands against the glass. “Carmen, I’ll come back and get you.” I wanted her eyes to flutter, her mouth to twitch, anything, but her expression remained distant and serene.
Escape. That’s what mattered now.
I chose an empty cylinder closest to the door the guards tried to open. I tripped the brake on the dolly. I wheeled the cylinder to point one end toward the door.
The door opened with a groan.
I shoved the cylinder and raced behind it.
Ramming speed.
Gunfire started and bullets pinged off the cylinder in front of me.
Men shouted, “Get back.”
The cylinder rolled to the doorway and smashed into the center of the group. Two men tumbled past me. A half dozen more scrambled to get away. I leaped over the cylinder toward the open door of a stairwell beyond. I levitated over the steps and was out of sight before the guards could yell a warning.
At the bottom of the stairwell, six more men stood, barking orders into their radios. They jumped in astonishment and clutched their weapons.
I ran through the center of the group. I grasped the largest guy by his equipment harness and swung him in a circle to knock the others down like nine pins.
I let him go and sprinted at vampire speed down the corridor. A steel blast door lowered and I dove under it, sprang to my feet, and raced out the basement door, up the incline, and out onto the grass.
Guards on the roof shouted and opened fire. The silencers on their weapons muffled the gunshots to fft, fft, fft.
I dodged left and right. I hurtled over the chain-link fence and landed beyond the hedge. I turned south and raced through the trees of the golf course.
A white SUV, lights flashing and siren blaring, charged onto the golf cart path after me.
I reached the resort boundary and vaulted a fence into the garden behind a row of condos. I kept going into the street. A panel truck pulled up to a stop sign.
I slid under the truck. Down here it smelled of hot metal and grease. I hooked my hands and feet into the frame and hugged the drive shaft. The truck rolled forward. The universal joint of the shaft spun inches from my crotch. I hoped the driver took it real slow over the speed bumps.
A quarter of a mile down the street, the truck halted. From this angle I couldn’t see much, except for the bottom halves of cars and the legs and shoes of people.
The baggy black trousers and boots of a guard came up to the driver’s side of the truck.
“We’re looking for a fugitive. About this tall, black hair. He’s wearing a red shirt.”
“Haven’t seen anything,” the driver replied.
“Get out anyway. We need to search your truck.”
The driver steppe
d out. He and the guard went to the back of the truck. The latch snapped open and the rear panels rattled.
“Nothing but furniture. Wanna look? Be my guest.”
The man in black climbed inside. His boots scuffed the floor above my face, and it sounded like boxes were being shoved around. He hopped out. The driver rattled the rear doors closed.
“If you see anything suspicious, call this number.”
“Why not 911?”
“No. It’ll be easier if you call the number on the card.”
So the hunt for me wasn’t about law enforcement. Surprise, surprise.
The driver got back in the truck. The guard returned to the SUV. The truck started up again and we drove to Highway 278, over the bridge, and into Bluffton. The odor of exhaust, especially the accumulated fart smell of catalytic converters, made me gag.
The truck passed a golf course and made a left off the highway. I craned my neck to see that no one followed. When the truck slowed at a corner to make another turn, I let go and dropped to the road. I kept myself as flat as possible, to let the differential pass and not conk me on the forehead.
The truck pulled away and the bright sunlight hit me full in the face. I jumped off the asphalt and hustled into the shade of an oak.
I was in an older residential section, mostly cottages with sagging fences and kudzu choking everything. The highway was to the north. The chalices’ mortuary should be south, between here and Buck Point.
I dug into my pocket for my contacts, which I put in. Goodman and that extraterrestrial hoodlum Clayborn were on to me. They had Carmen and they knew I’d be back to get her. Plus they knew I wasn’t human. Both of them assumed that I was another species of alien, which was fine. As long as they didn’t realize the truth, that the undead walked among them.
I had to get Carmen soon, as I didn’t know what plans Clayborn had for her. The familiar clammy hand of panic gripped me. I had to act.
Down the street I saw a carnecia and a shopping center catering to area Latinos. Piñatas dangled from the awning. Signs advertising phone cards and music CDs decorated the windows of a mercado. A truck from May River Commercial Laundry sat in the corner of the parking lot. I’d seen this truck before, at the Grand Atlantic.
The Undead Kama Sutra Page 21
