by Gini Koch
I nodded. “In the case of this dream or implanted memory or whatever it is, I didn’t die, remember? And neither did Mephistopheles. He put something inside me that made me change. But I changed only internally. Externally, no one could tell the difference.” I took a deep breath and turned to White. “That’s why I’m the catalyst. I’m the first female Mephistopheles has been close enough to to physically interact with.”
“And you were angry,” Reader added. “You weren’t scared by him, you fought him. As an equal, not as a frightened animal.”
“That’s how he and the other parasites see us, I’m sure. As animals. We’re not as evolved as they would be, we’re so much younger in terms of planetary advancement, you’ve all told me this more than once.”
“Wait a minute.” Mom was still upset. Not that I could blame her. “Yates is around women all the time. This theory doesn’t hold water.”
“Yates is around them. But he’s not going to turn superbeing every five minutes. Is he?” I directed this to White.
“No. Mephistopheles only manifests a few times a year.”
“Oh?” More information they hadn’t shared with me. “I’d also like to get the full story, before I’m in life-threatening danger. Again.” I directed this to Martini.
His eyes flashed. “Fine.”
“And the female agents?”
“Who do you want?” Martini was angry as well as upset, I could hear it in his voice, despite his best efforts to keep his tone completely bland.
I shrugged. “Who’s willing?”
“Me,” Claudia and Lorraine said in unison.
“That’ll do.” I didn’t want any of the other Dazzlers anyway. These two did the job I knew we’d need done with practiced skill.
“Anyone else?” Martini was barely moving his lips, let alone his jaw.
“You.”
CHAPTER 28
I SAW MARTINI RELAX, just a tiny bit, but the anger was still there. At the same time Christopher’s eyes narrowed. Good. I wanted them mad—at me, at each other, at the world. Frankly, I wanted everyone mad.
Well, everyone but Reader. Him I wanted calm.
However, that was later. Right now, I actually wanted the situation to diminish to something at least faking tranquillity.
My parents were still arguing about the latest wrinkle in what I was fast coming to accept as my new life. I decided to deal with the one in charge. “Mom, stop.”
She closed her mouth but crossed her arms. Ready for combat. Ready to protect me with her life. Only, under these new circumstances, she’d endanger that life.
“Mom, as hard as this is to believe, I know what I’m doing.”
“How? You’ve been living a secret life your father and I don’t know about?”
“Hilarious. No, actually, I haven’t been pretending to be anything I’m not all this time.” Other than a virgin longer than in reality, but that wasn’t important right now. “But I’m your daughter. Everyone says I’m just like you.”
She shook her head. “I’ve had decades of training. You’ve had some Kung Fu and track and field. There’s no comparison.”
“Sure there is. You had to start somewhere. Well, this is where I’m starting.” I walked to her. “This is my Mossad. Understand?” I wanted her to, desperately.
She blinked. And I saw her look at me differently than she ever had before. “My baby’s all grown up.” Her voice caught, and I could see tears in her eyes. I did not want her crying right now, because I didn’t need to start bawling again.
I hugged her. She hugged me back in that breath-removing bear hug way of hers I’d so recently started to experience. “I’ll be okay, Mom,” I whispered in her ear. “I think I know what I’m doing. And if I don’t, I’ll have people with me who will be able to bail me out. I promise. It’s like you said—sometimes it’s not about you and your family, sometimes it really is about saving the whole world.”
“I hope you’re right.” She sighed. “I’ll explain it to your father.”
I pulled away and shook my head. “I bet you don’t have to explain it to him.” I turned around. “Does she, Dad?”
He gave me a small smile. “Like mother, like daughter. I wondered when it would show up in you. I don’t like it, mind you,” he added sternly. “But I also realize you’re going to do what you think is best, no matter what I say.” He looked innocent suddenly. “What about bringing in your Uncle Mort for this?”
“No,” I said flatly. “I know what you’re trying to do. I know Uncle Mort, remember? He’ll take over, get me safely locked away, and have his leathernecks handle things.”
Dad shrugged. “It’s a decent plan from my viewpoint.”
“Except that it’ll fail,” Martini said, voice still clipped. “Your military’s had several chances at Mephistopheles. They’ve blown every one.”
More information I didn’t have. The debrief was going to take days. Days that what Martini called my female intuition said we didn’t have.
“Not as if your boys have done all that well,” Dad retorted.
“Better than you have,” Christopher said. “We’ve managed to stop the majority of all forming superbeings while keeping your populace from total panic.”
“By not allowing them to know what’s really going on.” Dad sounded huffy again.
“Oh, Dad, please. As if you’re not the one who gave me all those ‘herd mentality’ lectures growing up. You know the herd would panic and stampede if they knew what was really going on.”
“It’s not as though Mort would recommend sharing this with the civilian public,” Mom added.
“No, but I know he’d protect his niece with his life.”
“Stop worrying. I’ll take my hairspray with me.” Crickets. Tough room.
Reader cleared his throat. “My parents have no idea what I do. They think I threw away a successful career to shack up with some black guy I barely knew who comes from an odd family. It’s a lot easier that way.” He winked.
Mom rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. I give up. We’ll stop acting as though we don’t function in this kind of environment all the time. What do you need from us, Kitty?”
“Mostly for the two of you to stay here in the hollow mountain with the critters and leave me alone. About everything.” I hoped they’d catch that this included my sex life and relationship with Martini, whatever that might be now.
Mom nodded. “Fine. Anything else?”
“Well, I would like all the information your two covert operations have on this.”
“I had no idea we had ETs around, let alone on the planet,” Mom said. “My knowledge is all Yates-based.”
“Share it, he’s got half the mind.”
“This is considered highly confidential and requires a higher level of security than most people in this room are likely to have.”
White cleared his throat. “I promise you, we have that clearance. Possibly higher.”
“You didn’t know about them, but they didn’t seem shocked by you, Mom.”
“Good point. I expect this to be treated as all classified information is, then.” All heads in the room nodded. “The Al Dejahl terrorist organization is a worldwide group. Unlike most of the terrorist groups out there, they aren’t religiously or racially based. They have as many members who claim no religion as they have who identify with all the popular religions. Their stated goal is overall chaos. However, it’s clear that they expect to make a lot of money from that chaos.”
“How is someone like Yates their head dude?”
“He’s got the money, the means, and the drive. He comes up with wide-scale, intricate plans as easily as he does commando mission ideas, suicide bombers and the like, and small, targeted attacks. He recruits well, from all accounts, he’s able to quickly identify what each potential recruit wants, what drives them, and exploit it.”
“He personally recruits?” This seemed awfully hands-on for a guy with Yates’ level of public profile.
&n
bsp; “Not as much any more. He’s taught his recruitment personnel how to imitate his techniques. But when he was first forming Al Dejahl, yes, he did the recruiting himself.” Mom shrugged. “He has no scruples. He’s got lots of attractive women available to offer the men, money and influence to offer to the few women who join, and the promise of world domination for all of them.”
“How many do they number?”
Mom sighed. “We don’t have an accurate count. They were in the tens of thousands, but we’ve made some real inroads in the last few years, and we honestly have them on the run. My team cleared out several terrorist cells recently, so we feel we have most of the foot soldiers in custody or in the ground.”
“Well, that explains why Yates wants you dead.” Nice to know my mother was efficient. Not so nice to know she was marked for death, but apparently that was running in the family, too.
“Yes, undoubtedly. If we can stop Yates, we have a chance of stamping out Al Dejahl for good. Due to the way they work, if we can get rid of the leader and his closest generals, the remainder of the organization should crumble.”
“Kind of like the Nazis.”
“Only the Al Dejahl organization wants to wipe all religion off the map, not just Jews,” Reader offered. “They’re open-minded that way.”
“Wonderful. Dad, what about your need-to-know info that none of us knew but now actually do need to know?”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t have as much exciting information as your mother does, kitten. However, it occurs to me that what the A-Cs do to hide the parasitic activity might be helping the Al Dejahl group.”
“You accusing us of working with terrorists?” Christopher wasn’t snarling, but he was glaring, and snarling looked imminent.
“No.” Dad seemed unperturbed. “What I’m suggesting is that if you change a superbeing attack into a terrorist attack in the minds of the public, then you give the terrorist organization that takes the ‘blame’ more credit and airtime than they deserve. Just something to think about.”
I’d mentioned this before myself, but right now it was bordering close to overload for me, and from the expressions on most of the A-Cs’ faces, for them, too. “I think we’ll tackle that one after we solve the itty-bitty Mephistopheles problem, Dad.”
Mom chuckled and looked at Dad. “That’s our cue to leave, hon. We’ll be around to help if you need us, Kitty.”
Dad sighed. “I liked this better when I thought it was just about Homeland Security.”
I kissed Mom on her cheek, then gave Dad a hug and a peck. They nodded to everyone else and left the room. Whether this meant they were going to shadow me or actually leave me alone I had no guess.
“Now what?” White asked.
CHAPTER 29
“NOW, EVERYONE I DIDN’T NAME clears the hell out. You can take the book with you,” I said to Beverly. “But I’d really suggest you ask my father to help you get the translations corrected. You might find something that’ll help keep the rest of us alive.”
Beverly pressed her lips together, snatched up the book, and then she and the rest of the Dazzlers on Book Duty stalked out of the room.
“No one talks to her like that,” Lorraine said. She sounded impressed.
“I teach courses in how to win friends and influence people.”
Reader laughed out loud. No one else cracked a smile, though I got the impression Martini wanted to.
“Miss Katt, I’d like to remind you that you’re not in charge here.” White was giving it a go. I was impressed. I’d just talked down my own parents over this issue, but he was going to try to pull rank. Fine.
“No, I’m not. But then, you’re not, either. You’re the front, the decoy.”
Wow. I made alien jaws drop. It was turning out to be a cheerful morning.
“What do you mean?” Christopher asked, eyes narrowed into what I was coming to think of as Glare #3.
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. “Please. The two people arguing about procedure and who’s in charge of what are you and Martini. Your father never tells either one of you what to do, and he also almost never tells you two to shut up and play nicely, just like he almost never pulls rank. When he does, it’s in front of someone who’s not a part of the inner circle.”
“He doesn’t pull rank because he doesn’t have to,” Gower said. “We give him the respect he deserves without his demanding it.”
“I’m sure you do. The head of any religious organization always gets a lot of respect.”
Uncomfortable looks. It was great working with all these people who couldn’t lie to save their lives. I’d spent the few years of my so-called career in marketing, a profession where everyone learns to lie to the entire world within their first week on the job. If Mephistopheles actually succeeded in his plan, I wouldn’t have to kill them all—I could lie to them and make them do my bidding that way. A chilling thought, for a variety of reasons.
Reader was pointedly not looking at me. I figured he didn’t want to get into a fight with Gower about him sharing trade secrets. Not that he had, but him confirming my suspicions would probably cause a domestic dispute.
“We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll just say this and get it over with. You have two distinct agent divisions—field operations and image control. And as I’ve heard them tell each other more than once, Martini’s in charge of the field and Christopher’s in charge of image control. The two divisions have to work together, clearly, but they don’t always agree about procedure. I realize there are distinct differences between A-Cs and Earthlings, but I’ve seen your bureaucracy in action, and it’s just like ours. Layers—lots and lots of layers.
“Yet, who was at the scene when my personal flying nightmare showed up? Martini and Christopher. The heads of their divisions. Sort of overkill for a single superbeing, and before you try to say otherwise, there were other manifestations the same day, because agents were bringing in other boxes while we were at the storage facility. Agents who apparently could function without Christopher or Martini telling them what to do.”
“So you lucked out,” Martini said.
“No, you all just managed to avoid telling me something. It’s about the only way you all successfully lie. You don’t tell a falsehood, you just don’t share the full details, unless you’re asked a question point-blank. So, get ready. You all knew Ronald Yates was in Pueblo Caliente, didn’t you? And that’s why the heads of their divisions and, for want of an easier word, your Pope, were in attendance. Correct?”
Oh, easily correct. Not a one of them could meet my eye. Reader was looking up at the ceiling. He was grinning.
“I’ll take the silence as confirmation. Oh, and all those SUVs full of agents who went with us to the crash site? They weren’t along to protect me. They were along to protect you, Pope White.”
“We use a different word,” he said quietly. “Pope is really not appropriate.”
“True, you get to marry and have kids. I could call you Rabbi Richard, but you could make it easier and just tell me what the title is.” Silence. No problem—I knew how to get things out of these boys. “Bossa Nova? The Head Cheese? Mister Big? Papa Grande? The Head Honcho? Numero Uno? The Grand Poobah?”
Martini started to laugh. It was a relief in more ways than one. “I really like Bossa Nova,” he said to White. “You should consider it.”
“He’s the Sovereign Pontifex,” Christopher snapped. I’d figured he would end up the one to crack first. I was making fun of his father, after all. I decided not to point out the title would translate to Pope—they weren’t stupid, and it’s safer to try to blend in with the dominant religion of your new land.
“And he’s the religious leader of your tribe. Which, I do realize, makes him your official leader. But like the Pope, he doesn’t run the operations so much as he’s the face of them. To the governments and to anyone who might want to talk to the head man. It’s really impressive to the new recruits, too. Until we figure out that the Sovereign Po
ntifex here never actually calls any shots.”
“Oh, I call a few,” White said with what I realized was a smile. “I’m the one who passes judgment on whether or not an Earth recruit actually has what we require to join the team.”
“Which is why you showed up at the courthouse with your adjunct,” I nodded at Gower. “Or is he just called personal assistant?”
“He’s called the Head of Recruitment,” White said. “Officially, that is.”
“When did I pass the test?”
White managed a chuckle. “In the warehouse.”
“Thought so. You stopped ordering people around after that and never seemed fazed when Martini and Christopher were giving directions.” I looked at Martini. “It was really obvious you were high up when we were in the dome at the crash site. Only the head honchos get to tell people whose entire job is guarding something to shove off, and get to do so with no arguments whatsoever.”
He shrugged. “I told you, most people like me.”
“So you claim. Now, I don’t think we have a lot of time. I need to get a lot of information, and we need to form a plan for what to do and how to survive it. I really only want to discuss this with the people who’ll be going on this little journey with me.”
“Why don’t you want any of the rest of us?” Gower asked. “We haven’t been getting in your way all that much, and we might have some ideas that could help.”
“I don’t want you around, Paul, because you and the Pontifex here have to convince the various government agencies to clear out of a very large, secluded, and unpopulated desert area and not get involved, no matter what.”
“Kitty, we need artillery to kill these things,” Reader said, sounding worried.
“Apparently that doesn’t work on Mephistopheles. So we’re going with my plan.”
“What, we’ll all be armed with hairspray?” Martini asked, sounding as though he wasn’t going to be surprised if I said yes.
“In a way, yes.”
Dang. He looked surprised.
CHAPTER 30
AFTER A LITTLE MORE WRANGLING, whining, and useless posturing, White and Gower left. Finally. Alone at last. Just me and the five other people I was going to put into mortal peril. I wondered if my mother felt like this every time she told her terrorism unit their next assignments. I had a horrible suspicion she did.
