Jolie appeared through the smoke and crouched beside Clayborn. “The little fucker shot at me with the ray gun, missed, and started the fire. Now that we’ve got him, let’s rescue Carmen.”
I didn’t move.
Jolie looked at me. “What’s the matter?”
It was hard to admit my failure. “Carmen’s gone.”
Jolie remained stone-faced. “What do you mean?”
The next admission was even harder. “She’s been taken from Earth. She’s in outer space somewhere.”
Jolie’s aura blazed as bright as hot, glowing metal. She wrapped her talons around Clayborn’s neck. “Where is she? Tell me or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
Clayborn struggled for breath. He gasped. “There’s nothing you can do for her now.”
Jolie tightened her grip. “You better hope not.”
The fire gained on us. We didn’t have much time.
I peeled her fingers loose. “We better get moving.”
“What about him?”
“We’ll take him with us. He wouldn’t let himself get stranded here without a way to get home.”
Jolie jumped and tore a light fixture from the ceiling. She grasped the wire dangling from the hole and cut a length of about six feet using her talons.
“Here, bind him with this.” Jolie handed the wire to me.
Clayborn remained dazed and docile from the blow against the concrete floor. His black eyes bulged from their sockets. A corona of pain flared around his yellow aura.
I looped one end of the copper wire around his skinny neck and twisted the wire tight. I wrapped the rest of the wire around his torso, cinching his arms against his chest, and trussed him like a pot roast. I picked Clayborn up and tucked him under my arm. He weighed the same as a medium-sized dog.
I returned to the elevator, paused at the threshold, and planned my jump.
Clayborn started to moan.
“Shut up,” Jolie hissed. She tore a swatch from his pants cuff and stuffed the cloth into his mouth.
Flames roared in the room behind us.
I bounded against the opposite wall and zigzagged up the elevator structure to the access hatch I’d torn loose.
We emerged on the roof through the column of smoke pumping out the elevator shaft. Jolie and I coughed to clear our throats. Clayborn gagged and squirmed against me.
Jolie punched him in the head. “I told you to shut up.”
We stepped away from the smoke and crouched on the roof.
Guards shouted in a frenzied chorus. Red and amber lights flashed across the resort. Alarms and claxons blared like wounded animals. Trucks and carts raced over the grounds in carnival-like pandemonium.
“Felix, if your intent was to confuse them, good job.” Jolie dug a cell phone from her hip pocket. She glanced at the phone briefly. “That was Antoine. He’s almost here.”
Jolie lifted her head toward the west. The chopping noise of rotor blades approached.
Chapter
51
Low above the trees raced the dark, humpbacked silhouette of a Blackhawk helicopter, showing no lights and with an orange aura behind the controls. Antoine.
“He’s not going to stop.” Jolie rubbed her hands together and flexed her legs.
I noticed the radio masts behind us. I’d forgotten to mention that hazard. Hopefully, Antoine had spotted them.
The helicopter roared over the resort like a specter. I got ready.
“You go left, I’ll go right,” Jolie ordered.
The Blackhawk rocked and altered its course for us. I aimed my jump for one of the main wheels hanging from the struts on either side of the fuselage.
The helicopter lifted its nose to decelerate. I adjusted my hold on Clayborn and kept him tight under my right arm. The helicopter rushed for us, as big and noisy as a locomotive tumbling off its tracks.
The wheel swung toward me. My legs snapped straight and propelled me through the air.
The tire slammed against my chest, and for an instant I panicked and thought I was going to bounce off. My left hand grasped the oleo strut and I swung my leg to sit on top of the tire. Jolie clung safely to the other wheel.
Clipped radio masts and a couple of dish antennas went whirling below us. I guess Antoine hadn’t seen them.
The helicopter dipped its nose and sped toward the Atlantic. We banked north over the sheen of the metallic water. Behind us we left the resort in shambles and chaos. Flames and smoke swirled from the annex. Dozens of flashing emergency lights clustered around the hotel. Spotlights knifed across the grounds and the walls of the buildings.
Jolie squatted in the cargo hold of the helicopter, her hair tangled by the wind. She shouted over the deafening racket: “Let me take Clayborn.”
I handed the alien to her and I climbed in.
I expected the Spartan interior of a military helicopter. This one had the upholstered seats of a limousine. I kept the cargo doors open to air out the smoke. I took the center seat behind the cockpit and strapped in.
Jolie climbed over the center console and slid into the copilot’s seat. She put on a headset.
Antoine peered over one shoulder back at Clayborn and me. He shouted, “Who is that ugly bastard? And where’s Carmen?”
I shouted, “She’s gone.” Saying those words brought the loss back and rekindled my guilt.
Antoine’s aura brightened with shock. “Where?”
“Where we can’t reach her.” Someone had to pay for the way I felt and I tightened the wire around Clayborn’s neck. “How can we get Carmen back?”
He gagged and managed, “What?”
I shouted louder, “How can we get Carmen back?”
Clayborn twisted his neck and turned one of his little ears toward me. “What?”
“You want to play deaf? We’d get to the questions later and I won’t be so polite.” I shoved Clayborn against the floor and used him as a footrest.
The helicopter kept close to the water and banked for the coastline. The inside of the Blackhawk was darker than the night. Antoine flew without needing the instrument lights.
He pointed to another headset hanging from the compartment ceiling. I pulled the headset on and the snug ear cups muffled the noise. I adjusted the intercom switch.
“Hear me okay?” Antoine asked, turning his face to me again. Jolie handled the controls. His voice crackled through the headset and his eyes glowed like red embers.
I answered yes and explained how we’d lost Carmen.
“Damn,” Antoine replied. “I stole this helicopter just for her. This plush ride belongs to the Department of Homeland Security.”
“She would’ve appreciated that.”
“So what do we do?”
I stomped Clayborn across his back. “We grill our stowaway.”
Jolie piped in, “I’ll supply the lighter fluid.”
Antoine clicked his intercom twice and turned around. He took over the controls and made a small adjustment to our course.
Lights dotted the shoreline. I guessed it was Parris Island, north of Hilton Head.
“Where’re we going?”
“I had this all figured out,” he answered. “I have a vampire friend in Green Pond. Runs an artists’ colony. The plan was to ditch the helicopter close by and then lie low for a while.”
“Good idea. We’ll do that then until Clayborn comes to his senses and tells us what we need to hear.”
Antoine announced that we were cruising up St. Helena Sound. The cool air swirled around us with the humid scent of swampy water. We flew across the ragged shore and over the black Carolina landscape. The moonlight glistened across the surf and the marshes. We flew for another minute. Below us the ground was mottled with the deep black of the woods against the pewter gray of the grasses.
Suddenly the instrument panel lit up. Static rushed through the headset and became quiet. The engines surged, then quit, and the roar of the helicopter was replaced by a foreboding silence. The helicopter yawed t
o the left. Antoine adjusted the controls and the Blackhawk settled into a flat glide. All the instrument lights went dark again.
Chapter
52
Antoine’s hand danced over switches and fumbled with the overhead circuit breakers. He started to shout, then realized how quiet it was. “We’ve lost power,” he said.
I didn’t need to hear that. Every setback put us further and further from saving Carmen.
“No shit, Orville Wright. What happened?” Jolie asked. Tendrils of worry whipped from her penumbra.
“You tell me.”
“Now what?”
“I pick a nice place to land and autorotate, baby.” Antoine shifted in his seat to peer down over the nose of the Blackhawk.
“Autorotate?” I asked.
Jolie answered, “Means gliding this helicopter to earth by windmilling the rotors.”
Somehow, gliding and helicopter didn’t belong in the same sentence. “You’ve done this before?”
“Not at night. And never in a Blackhawk.” Antoine hunched over the controls. “Hold tight kiddos, and enjoy the ride.”
Jolie cinched her harness and glanced at me. Her aura erupted with alarm.
Fear pulsed through Clayborn’s aura. He wiggled to get free. I kicked him in the ass to settle him down.
“There’s a road cutting through the marsh,” Antoine announced. “I’ll put us there.”
As we glided down, the serrated tree line rose to meet us.
The helicopter pitched upward and the whirling rotor blades bit the air with a whoosh, whoosh. A cloud of sand bellowed around us and swirled into the helicopter. My stomach sank against the bottom of my belly.
The tail wheel snagged the ground and the helicopter whipped forward. The main wheels slammed the ground. I knocked my head against my seat. Clayborn bounced against the floor.
For a moment, all of us, even Clayborn, remained still. I wiped the dust from my face and hands.
Antoine released his harness belts and flung them aside. “Safe.” He took off his headset and dropped it on the center console.
He and Jolie climbed out of the cockpit and came around to my side of the helicopter.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Hell if I know. I’m not going to fix the damn thing.” Antoine panned the sky as if to renew his bearings. “Hope you guys are up for a hike ’cause we’re freaking miles from Green Pond.”
“Why not call for a ride?” Jolie dug her cell phone from her pocket. Her expression blanched in surprise. “My phone’s dead.”
Antoine pulled his phone out and flipped it open. “Mine’s dead too.”
I noticed that the second hand on my watch had stopped. I pressed the stem to illuminate the face and it remained dark. This was too suspicious.
Clayborn wormed into a sitting position. His aura undulated in a low boil of despair. Tendrils of anxiety lashed from the penumbra.
Jolie grabbed a loose section of wire and used it to drag him out of the helicopter. Clayborn tipped over the edge of the cargo compartment and fell headfirst onto the ground. He balanced on his big head for an instant, then landed on his back, faceup in the dirt, and those dumbbell feet splayed apart. His pained expression screamed, man, that hurt.
Jolie reached down and jerked Clayborn to his feet. “Ask that little fucker what the hell’s going on.”
I unwound the wire but kept it cinched around his neck. I looped the free end around my wrist to keep him tethered.
Clayborn pulled the cloth gag from his mouth and tossed it on the ground. He stayed quiet.
I tapped my watch to see if it would start working again. It didn’t. “Seems all the electronics are toast.”
Antoine looked up the engine cowling. The rotor blades spun lazily as they slowed. “Could be from an EMP.”
“A what?” Jolie asked.
“Electromagnetic Pulse.”
“Where would that come from?”
“Usually, a nuclear blast,” I answered.
“I would’ve seen that,” she replied.
Clayborn’s big eyes turned upward to the twinkling stars.
I gave the leash a tug. “What are you looking for? Your friends?”
Clayborn’s aura sputtered like the fuse on dynamite. His black eyes fixed me with a glare of hatred. His toothless gape curled into a snarl. He mouthed the words “You’d better kill me because I’ll never forgive this.”
I brought my face close to his. “I don’t remember asking for forgiveness. What I want to know is, how do we get Carmen back?”
Clayborn narrowed his dark, wrinkled eyelids. “Then consider me dead because you can’t. Carmen and the others are gone for good.”
Rage pounded through me. I fought not to kill Clayborn. I froze my grip to keep my talons from ripping him apart. “How’d you move them?”
“Teleportation.”
Teleportation? “Like Star Trek?”
Clayborn smirked. “Please.”
I wrapped both hands around his skinny neck and throttled him. “From where?”
He clutched my wrists. “The lab in the annex. That pedestal? It’s the transmitter. We transported them to an orbiting ship.”
“‘We’?”
“My comrades on the ship.” A veneer of triumphant smugness smoothed Clayborn’s aura. “The payment’s been made. You’ll be lucky to find where your friend Carmen will end up. Make it easy on yourself and forget trying to get her back.”
I punched his ugly face. “That’s not an option.”
Clayborn dropped to a knee.
A low hum echoed through the darkness. Clayborn struggled to his feet and his aura blazed with terror. He shrank toward the helicopter.
Jolie and Antoine gazed about. Their auras surged with confusion and alarm.
“I’ve heard that noise before.” My skin tingled with dread. “When another flying saucer came to take Odin’s body.”
“Flying saucer?” yelped Antoine. “Shit, first the power goes out on everything, then a flying saucer? Whenever one of those shows up in the movies, it’s never good news.”
“The last time they didn’t do anything to me,” I replied.
“Well pardon me if I don’t share your confidence.” Antoine’s aura and face lit up with distress.
Jolie pointed. “There it is.”
A black shape—a disk bisecting a spherical body—floated into view above the trees. This flying saucer was a smaller version of the one that had taken Odin’s body and the blaster.
Antoine backed away in the opposite direction. When his feet stepped off the sandy road and squished into the marsh, he bolted from us. His feet spanked the mud and his orange aura bounced over the saw grass like a burning ball.
Jolie shouted after him. “You goddamn coward, don’t you want to see what happens?”
“Post it on your blog.” Antoine’s voice ripped through the darkness.
Chapter
53
The saucer glided close and hovered a hundred feet from us, right on the edge of the marsh. The hum felt like an electric tickle. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. My kundalini noir writhed in alarm.
Clayborn’s aura burned incandescent yellow with terror.
“They’re not here to rescue you, are they?”
Clayborn stood beside me, quiet as a condemned man.
I gave the leash a tug. “Didn’t think so.”
Three struts extended from the belly of the saucer. It settled into the marsh, the struts flattening the grass and sinking into the mud.
A hatch the size of a car door opened and a ramp extended to the ground.
Clayborn squirmed. Jolie took a step from me.
“Where are you going?” I whispered to her.
“No sense bunching up, in case they open fire.”
Clayborn tried stepping away.
“Not you.” I jerked the leash and put my arm around his shoulders. “Who are they?”
Tendrils of despair snaked from Clay
born’s aura. “I don’t know.”
“Then why are you so worried? Are they fellow crooks you cheated? Or are they the law?”
The tendrils twisted like burning snakes. Either way, Clayborn was in deep intergalactic doo-doo.
But before I gave Clayborn up, his captors would have to help me find Carmen.
A yellow aura filled the hatch of the saucer. One alien emerged, squatting through the hatch and climbing onto the ramp. He had a humanoid shape and unfolded his legs to walk upright down the ramp. A second alien followed him, then a third. Their auras signaled caution, and they each advanced with one arm extended and holding a blaster pistol.
They were identical triplets and looked exactly like Gilbert Odin: mustaches, short-sleeve shirts, and wrinkled khaki trousers—the kind of cheap clothes a civil servant like Odin would wear.
At the bottom of the ramp, the first alien tripped and fell splashing into the marsh. His aura blazed with surprise. The other two aliens rushed beside him, all three tromping in the mud and struggling to get the first alien to his feet.
“So much for an awe-inspiring close encounter,” Jolie whispered.
Finally, the three aliens marched toward us, the mudsplattered one leading. A clip-on tie dangled from his collar. His aura simmered with embarrassment. They halted ten feet from me.
The alien at the left nudged the leader. “Go on.”
Alien number one pointed his blaster at me. His aura brightened with confidence. “Surrender your prisoner.”
A glop of mud fell from the tip of the pistol barrel. Another wave of embarrassment surged through his aura.
Jolie coughed.
The auras of all three aliens flashed like camera bulbs. They whirled and aimed their blasters at her.
I coughed.
Another flash from their auras and they whirled toward me.
I raised my free hand. “Easy now, guys. Someone could get hurt. We don’t want trouble.”
Alien leader lowered his pistol. The other two took his cue and lowered theirs as well.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The Undead Kama Sutra Page 24
