by Dan Jolley
When Fields surged back up off the floor and lunged at Janey, Janey slapped Fields’ head down face-first into the carpet, stuck the stun-gun in the back of his neck and let him have it.
What few lights burned in the house flickered madly, the scent of overcooked pork filled the bedroom, and Fields’ screams faded and stopped.
Janey kept the current on him for three more seconds before she turned it off and felt for a pulse. She found one, a little spotty but definitely there, and Fields’ arms and legs kept twitching, so Janey didn’t worry that she’d killed the man. Fields made no further attempt to get up, and Janey edged away from him and stood.
She swallowed hard. Her head abruptly felt very weird, and the smell she’d noticed earlier got thicker.
Scott Charles lay on the bed, unconscious and bleeding from his mouth, his breathing ragged.
Janey snapped open a baton and turned to face Brenda Jorden, who said, “I don’t think you want to hit me.” It was like a purr. “I think you’d rather just talk to me.”
Jorden flicked on the overhead light. In the incandescent glow she looked twice as beautiful as she had in the near-darkness. She wore a clinging, soft blue blouse and flowing black skirt, and any words Janey might have used to describe the woman left her head. The hand holding the baton began to shake. The scent grew stronger, filled up her head, and oh, God, it smelled good, better the more she got of it.
At her feet, Fields stopped twitching, but Janey could hear him breathing.
Brenda smiled, and Janey began to feel a sort of detachment from reality—as if she hadn’t just almost killed someone, almost been killed herself, as if she weren’t here to rescue a sick child—and she was ashamed to feel herself responding to this woman physically. Janey noticed Brenda wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her thin silk blouse, and her nipples were very visibly erect. The heavy curves of Brenda’s breasts pressed at the material.
“Of course, I don’t really want to talk,” Jorden said, and took a step forward. She sensuously trailed a hand from her cheek down the front of her blouse. Buttons fell open in its wake. The hand slid farther down, outlined the curve of her waist and the generous flair of her hips. Janey noticed a sprinkling of caramel-colored freckles on the smooth skin between Brenda’s breasts, and felt a sudden and irrational need to taste them. Her head filled to overflowing with Brenda’s scent.
No, no, dammit, what the hell am I doing?
“I know you’d much rather put off talking till later, and...maybe...get a little more...comfortable?” Brenda’s voice grew low and sultry, and her lips seemed to sparkle dark red, like sweet cherry syrup. She gracefully nudged her blouse aside, fully exposing her left breast, and Janey’s breath stopped completely. It started high, near her collar bone, and swept down into an achingly perfect teardrop, the milk-white skin contrasting splendidly with the tightened dark brown nipple.
A wave of heat began in Janey’s stomach and rushed down through her groin. An involuntary moan escaped Janey’s lips, and Brenda smiled. Janey could smell, feel, taste her scent, and her eyes shook with tiny tremors as she whipped them over Brenda’s body, from eyes to lips to breasts and back.
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Brenda smiled again and slipped the blouse completely off. Janey’s entire body trembled, and she almost dropped the baton when Brenda spoke again.
“Come on,” she sighed. “Come with me. Let me take care of you.” Brenda’s hand slid forward, took the baton, and dropped it on the floor. That was all right. Janey didn’t need it anymore. “I know you’d like to be with me...face to face...let your skin touch mine.”
God, she was right. She was so right. All the pain and loneliness since Adam got shot, all the tension with Tim, all the stress Janey had jammed down deep inside herself, all of it she’d condensed into a tiny shard that constantly stabbed through her, soured her emotions, tainted every breath she took. As Brenda Jorden’s thrilling scent filled her body, Janey knew Brenda could make all of it go away, that a night in her arms would be better than a thousand pain-killers, that Brenda could pour herself over Janey’s wounds and heal them in a soothing, tingling rush.
Brenda’s fingers ran up Janey’s arm and across her shoulder, leaving a trail like sweet fire behind them. Janey felt Brenda’s essence enter her skin, wash over the jagged rents and tears inside of her, fill her up and smooth her over.
Brenda’s fingertips brushed Janey’s neck, toyed with the edge of the mask, searched for a grip...
...but couldn’t find one. The mask zipped to the suit, the pull-tab concealed at the back of the neck. Brenda’s caresses turned insistent as she tried to find an opening in the fabric.
Why is she pulling at my neck?
“You need to take your mask off, Jane,” Brenda breathed into her ear.
Jane. Jane? She hated that name. The only person who’d ever called her Jane was her father, and then only when she’d gotten in trouble.
What the hell is she doing?
Janey took a step backward and brushed Brenda’s hand away from her face. The scent still coated her nostrils, filled her lungs, and it smelled so good—but Janey shook her head, tried just to breathe through her mouth. “My name is not Jane.” She took another step away, and her heel bumped Fields’ shoulder, and Fields let out a low, agonized groan.
Janey’s head cleared. As it did, Brenda’s perfect features contorted with rage.
Brenda abandoned her words, her other hand came up, and Janey noted somewhat dully that it held an enormous, serrated butcher knife. Brenda raised it in both hands, took a step forward and rammed it down into the center of Janey’s chest.
The impact hurt, since it struck several of her bruises, but the Vylar turned the blade aside easily.
With a grunt, Janey planted one gloved hand between Brenda’s perfect breasts and shoved as hard as she could, which wasn’t all that hard at the moment. Still, Brenda stumbled backward through the doorway into the hall, tried to catch herself on the doorframe, missed, and fell hard on one elbow. The knife spun out of her hand.
Janey stepped over Ned Fields and flicked off the overhead light. In the darkness, she pulled Scott Charles off the bed and flickered away.
* * *
Alone in the bedroom with Fields, Brenda Jorden panted in the sudden heat and pulled her blouse back around her. Janey Sinclair and Scott were both gone.
For the first time in years, Brenda was afraid.
* * *
Vessler waited for them at the Jeep, which he’d parked in a dark alley behind a drug store. Janey and Scott flickered out of the shadows, and as Vessler came forward he immediately saw that Scott was hurt. His face tightened.
Janey carried Scott to the Jeep, the sight and sound and smell of Brenda Jorden still buzzing in her head like a band saw. Her physical reaction had diminished, for which she was grateful. She had to try twice to make her tongue work before she could say anything.
“Fields hit him accidentally. I think his jaw might be broken.”
Vessler took Scott from her and placed him gently and carefully on the back seat. Not the way someone handles a possession, either; Janey could tell in an instant that Vessler loved the boy dearly. The mask hid her surprise.
Scott breathed, but only shallowly, with ice-cold and clammy skin.
“What should we do with him?” Janey asked. “Get him to a hospital?”
Vessler paused with the back door open. “No. Stamford would find out. I can set his jaw, if it needs it. We need to get him somewhere private. And safe.” He looked pointedly at Janey.
Janey’s eyes narrowed behind the black mesh. “I can’t take him back to the basement. If I had to leave, you couldn’t get in or out.”
Vessler didn’t like that. “Hhmmm...fine. Another motel, then.”
Janey shook her head, not in disagreement, but in an attempt to dislodge the
last lingering effects of Jorden’s scent.
Vessler said, “All right. Follow me. I’m sure you don’t want to be seen with me in a car, with or without the mask.”
Janey nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
Driving away, Vessler tried to look in the rearview mirror for the exact moment when Janey flickered out, but only saw shadows.
* * *
Tim couldn’t decide whether to be insanely frightened or insanely envious—and he couldn’t tell if either feeling was genuine, considering his recent lack of sleep. The last time his sleep patterns had been so thoroughly mucked up was spring semester finals week of his senior year at college. His eyes had popped open at 3:30 this morning, and he couldn’t get them to stay closed; now it was just past four, and he was wired tight.
What happens when fantasies come true? What happens when you know someone actually can fly? He pushed the button and waited for the elevator.
Tim wasn’t a kid anymore, and this wasn’t a fantasy. He’d seen Janey do it. Had her repeat it, in fact, and he couldn’t deny it. After all the initial hysteria, after the painful process of warping a new convolution into his brain so he could accept it, he’d come to a single, possibly irrational conclusion.
Janey’s teleportation was without question the coolest thing he’d ever seen.
In the hours since he’d last spoken to her, Tim had gone through a mental list of hundreds of practical applications for her talent. She could do virtually anything. Because sooner or later, no matter what, the lights went out everywhere.
They couldn’t keep her in a cell. Lights out, and zap, she’s gone.
She could take anything she wanted, from anywhere. Just wait till the store closes, zap, she’s in, zap, she’s out, and nobody knows any better.
She could save a real bundle on air fares. Wait till the sun goes down, and zap zap zap right across the country.
And dammit—why couldn’t he do it too?
Why her, and not him? Why couldn’t he have been chosen, if that was the right word? Seven years ago...that would have put him smack in the middle of his eighteenth year, and God in Heaven, could he have used something like this.
The elevator pinged and opened. Tim got in the car and pushed the button for Janey’s floor.
He found thinking about Janey’s talent easier than thinking about his feelings for her—or about the emotional bear trap she was caught in with Adam.
Not that he really needed to think about his feelings. He knew how stupid it was, to feel this way about a woman who obviously had serious problems relating to...well, to anyone, and was married, for crying out loud. Well, sort of married. But again, that was a bottomless well of guilt he didn’t feel like dipping into just then.
Janey was also the most talented, gorgeous, fascinating woman he’d ever met. And there it was, there he went, head and heels and everything, and he knew if he didn’t talk to her soon his brain would spin right out of his skull.
The elevator door slid open, and he stepped out into Janey’s hallway. It was deserted. Tim went to her door, rapped sharply five times and stepped back to wait. After a minute had passed, he knocked again and said, “Janey? Hey, Janey, are you home?”
The door opened.
A young man dressed in black, wearing the dark gray raincoat Tim had given Janey, stood there in the doorway.
The mugger from the park. Simon.
He grinned and said, “Hi there.”
Tim jerked back, tried to run, but something like a cold white whip lashed across his wrist and his hand went numb. The same whip-thing curled around his throat, cinched tight, and jerked him off his feet.
Simon kicked the door closed as he dragged Tim into Janey’s apartment.
Tim crashed to the floor hard on one shoulder, and the impact sent splinters of pain through his arm and neck. He rolled onto his side as the whip-thing uncoiled from his throat, only to find his cheek pressed against the side of Simon’s boot. He glanced up in time to see Simon’s jaw begin to contort before Simon drew the boot back and drove it into Tim’s face. Agony speared through him as his nose crunched inward, and immediate tears blinded him.
“You’re not who I was looking for,” Simon croaked out. His voice was grotesque, razor-edged. Even through the pain it sliced along Tim’s nerves. “But you’ll do just fine.”
The whip-thing encircled one arm, then the other, and Simon hauled him to his feet. Tim blinked rapidly and tried not to cry out or choke on the blood filling his nose and mouth. His vision at last cleared enough for him to get a good look at the man holding him, and he took it all in in a flash: the needle teeth, the white-on-black eyes, the finger-tendrils extending from grossly lengthened forearms.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Tim whispered, and tried to look away from Simon, but couldn’t. Simon’s mouth writhed and shrank back into something closer to normal.
“You’d be better off saying prayers.” Still through needle teeth, the words couldn’t have been produced by anything like a human throat.
With a grunt, Tim drove his knee upward into Simon’s groin as hard as he could, and felt his kneecap bash through the softer tissues and connect solidly with Simon’s pelvic bone.
As though Simon’s hands were loaded with explosives, Tim flew across the room away from him. He crashed into the wall next to the coat closet, hard enough to leave a head-and-shoulders indentation in the wall, and his vision dimmed—but he refused to lose consciousness, and struggled to his feet. Blood poured down his face and onto his shirt.
Simon lay curled on his side on the floor, his hands shoved between his legs. The finger tendrils had distended crazily, spinning out to twig-like strands more than a yard long. He started chewing on the carpet.
Not for a second did Tim believe one knee to the groin would put Simon out of action for good. With what felt like quarts of adrenaline pumping through him, he didn’t stop to think at all about the insane distortions Simon’s body was going through. Tim saw him only as a threat—a threat specifically to himself and to Janey. If he ran, Simon would only chase him down. He needed to stop Simon, not just escape from him.
Tim took a step toward the kitchen, looked around for a likely weapon, saw a block of knives and started toward it.
He never got there. The impossibly thin tendrils of Simon’s left hand wrapped around his ankle like steel wire, and as Simon pushed himself upright, he pulled Tim’s feet out from under him and dragged him across the floor. Simon still breathed heavily, but he no longer seemed to be in pain.
“I wouldn’t have hurt you,” he said into Tim’s face. His breath smelled like raw hamburger. “Well, okay. That’s not true.” Two tendrils snaked over Tim’s eyes and lips. “But now you’ve—”
He would have finished the word, but Tim caught one of the tendrils between his teeth and bit cleanly through it.
Simon’s blood, thick and nearly black, sprayed out of the tendril as though from a high-pressure hose. Tim had time to spit a mouthful of blood and the severed bit of finger back in Simon’s face before the tendrils from the other hand wrapped completely around his head. The short length of still-twitching finger stuck to Simon’s cheek like a leech.
Simon heaved Tim off the floor using only the grip on his head, and Tim both felt and heard his neck pop.
“You bastard!” Simon screamed, and slammed Tim’s head against a wall.
“You fucking bastard!” He did it again, with greater force. Tim went somewhere past pain.
Somehow, in the flailing, Tim’s hand found something hard and heavy, possibly a bookend. His fingers closed around it, and the muscles in his arm tensed to swing it, but Simon rammed his head into the wall again, and whatever it was fell out of his grip. Crazily the apartment tilted away, and Tim tumbled slowly into a dark, wet place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Simon Grove let
the towel-head thud to the floor and dropped to his knees next to him. He peeled his severed finger off his face and waited for a new one to grow. It didn’t—and for a few frantic minutes Simon tried to reattach the severed bit, holding it to the stump in hopes that it would magically reattach itself. But the stump and the severed finger weren’t quite the same size anymore, so he tried to get the stump to stretch out further, and it did stretch, but he couldn’t stop it from getting too thin, and he howled in frustration.
For a few moments he sat on the floor next to the sand-monkey and stared at the finger, which had finally stopped twitching.
Slowly he brought it to his mouth, placed it on his tongue, and swallowed it.
That made the pain a little better, he thought.
Simon turned his attention to Tim Kapoor: reached out and encircled his throat again. He felt the tingle, just a little bit, but at Brenda’s suggestion he’d fed earlier in the evening, taking a delicious blonde hooker. The hooker was a big girl, at least five-ten, taller than Simon, with bee-stung lips and breasts larger than her head. He hadn’t felt anything that intense or prolonged in months.
“You need to be focused tonight,” Brenda had told him. “You shouldn’t take the chance on getting distracted.”
She was right, of course. If he hadn’t fed so much, hadn’t gotten such a hard, lasting rush, he never would’ve kept it together with the old man and the two morons in the motel. Going for Janey Sinclair tonight was an improvisation, too, and he might otherwise have gotten a little freaked out over the sudden change in plans, but he could still feel the hooker’s blood rush in the small of his back, and he was cool.
Like a cucumber.
No problem.
He hadn’t planned on encountering Janey Sinclair’s skinny boy-toy tonight, but he knew he could use the guy. Somehow. He’d think of something. He could just call Brenda and ask.
Kapoor’s fading pulse fluttered beneath his fingers, but reluctantly he took his hand away.
* * *
Vessler stopped at a Howard Johnson’s. Janey flickered in by the Jeep’s rear bumper as Vessler got out, and watched over Scott as the older man went in to get a room.
