by Gini Koch
“They don’t know,” Lorraine said.
“Sure they do. If they came here from A-C, they know. They’re lying to all of you, but they know. And some of them feel they should turn the other cheek or just ignore Yates and he’ll go away. From what I’ve seen, all the active agents are Earth-born, other than the Pontifex.”
Martini took his legs off the table. “Yes. However, you’re wrong in thinking all the older generation knows. Richard never told them what name and persona his father had adopted. He looks very different here than he did before exile, apparently. Ten years of hard living and disease warped him, externally as well as internally, and that was before the Mephistopheles parasite arrived, too. Most of our people don’t know that Yates is our former religious leader let alone that he’s Mephistopheles—they think he died right after we arrived here. Some figured it out, and of those, yes, the older ones are split about what to do.”
“How long have you two known?”
“Since we were young,” Martini said. “Richard isn’t aware of how young. It wouldn’t help him to know. He feels this is all his fault, his responsibility.” He looked me straight in the eyes. “If killing Yates in human form would work to destroy the parasite, I’d do it myself, on national TV.”
“But it doesn’t work. And, now, let’s all pull ourselves together. We know the truth, and it really and truly sucks. But it’s going to suck a lot worse in a couple of minutes.”
I had their undivided attention, and I saw Reader and the girls work to get themselves under control. I wasn’t worried about Martini and Christopher—they’d been dealing with horrible news for a lot longer than I had.
“Mephistopheles knows all about you. He and Yates are still functioning as mostly separate entities, but he can pull up some of the A-C side when he needs to. Maybe he always could, maybe it’s something he’s learned. But he was talking to me, and I think that memory was implanted into me in case the Yates body died before the Mephistopheles side could enact his plan. And his plan is to use me to turn all of you into superbeings.”
“How?” Reader asked. “Since you said he doesn’t want you to birth those babies.”
“I think he’s figured out how to transfer his essence into someone else. He didn’t have enough time to do it fully with me, just enough to send in some memories.”
“Some?” Christopher was all over this. “I thought it was only one.”
“I did, too. But Yates figured out what the Ancients were trying to do—he was your religious leader after all. I think he figured it out when he got to Earth and saw our variety of religions. He’s known for a long time what the parasites really are. And, I’d guess he was setting himself up to attract the right one.” I turned to Martini. “You said it’s like a love connection.”
He nodded. “All this makes sense. But why are you the person who’s supposed to help spread the parasitic menace? I mean, you’re not an A-C woman, and a smaller percentage of human women than of males remain in control when the parasite hits them.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe we’ll find out.”
“Can’t wait,” Reader muttered.
“We won’t have to wait long. He’s going to come to us, and soon.”
“How do you know?” Christopher asked.
I shrugged. “Like I know other things; it’s just in there, in my consciousness. I think I picked it up from his breath. His awful, disgusting, stinky breath,” I had to add.
“Air transferred?” Claudia suddenly looked normal. We were back into something she was comfortable with. “That seems odd.”
“Maybe not.” Lorraine was better, too. Good old science, the savior of Dazzlers everywhere. “The parasites travel through space, through the air, in order to find a host.”
“But they’re encased in the gelatinous substance that allows the safe space travel,” Claudia argued. Gelatinous substance? I guessed that would apply to the jellyfish things, and it did sound more official.
“However, we know they alter when they join with an in-control superbeing,” Lorraine countered. “For all we know, they do change enough to transfer via air.”
“Wait a second. For all you know?” I managed not to ask them what, if anything, they did know.
“Every in-control superbeing’s been killed using heavy artillery,” Christopher explained. “There’s nothing left for us to examine. Killing them’s been more important.”
“But Mephistopheles is immune to the big guns, right?”
“Right. Which is why you were going to unveil some great idea that involved your hairspray.” I couldn’t tell if Martini was making fun of me or not, but he was right—I hadn’t actually told them what my plan was.
Possibly because I didn’t think they were going to like it.
CHAPTER 32
“WE KNOW WHERE THE PARASITE IS. It’s going to be close to impossible to hit unless someone’s right up there in his maw.” I wondered for a moment why I was doing this, but then the whole saving the world thing knocked on the door. “My hairspray worked—he dropped me screaming.”
“I can’t believe the properties in regular hairspray would cause the parasite to die,” Lorraine said.
“It was extra-hold.”
“Oh, that makes all the difference,” Christopher said, as he rolled his eyes. Well, it wasn’t a patented glare.
Claudia looked thoughtful. “It might . . .” She was lost in thought for a few moments. “Kitty, do you have the bottle?”
“In my purse. Which is in my room. Not that I think I can find my room from here.”
“I’ll get it,” Martini said. He stood up and disappeared. Ten seconds later he was back, bottle in hand.
“What kept you?”
“That purse gets worse every time I look inside it.” He handed the bottle to Claudia and then sat back down.
She examined it. “Lorraine, can you find some regular hairspray?”
“Sure.” Lorraine disappeared, to come back about fifteen seconds later carrying several different bottles of hairspray. So the Dazzlers had to spray and tease to look perfect? I felt a little better.
They examined the ingredients while the rest of us sat there. I hoped my contribution as Impromptu Team Leader would mean I didn’t have to come up with a brilliant scientific idea about what to do next.
“Well,” Claudia said finally, “there’s a lot of ingredients the same, but I think we can isolate one or two that might have been what affected him.”
“The biggest difference between regular and extra-hold is alcohol—the extra-hold has a lot more in it,” I offered helpfully. You can learn a lot in a beauty salon.
Reader stiffened. “Yates is a teetotaler.”
“Is that a religious thing for you guys?” I asked Christopher.
“Not in the way you might mean. We didn’t have drinking alcohol on our home world. We’re not supposed to take impurities into our bodies, though—for a variety of health and religious reasons. So no one’s ever had any alcohol here.” He looked at Martini. “Other than you.”
Martini rolled his eyes. “I tried it once, okay? Once. Made me sick as a dog, never touched it again.”
“How did it make you sick? Did you throw up, pass out, have a headache the next day?” Not that I was asking from personal experience or anything.
“I wish,” Martini said with a grimace. “I was in the hospital. They thought I was going to die.”
“How much did you drink?” Good lord, had he imbibed an entire brewery?
“I had one shot of vodka. We’d taken out a superbeing in Russia, the nice people offered me a drink to thank me for saving them from the bear I’d made them think had attacked them, I took the drink.”
“If I hadn’t been there with him, he’d be dead,” Christopher said flatly.
“Yeah, yeah, I owe you my life. We were twenty years old, cut me a damn break. You want me to start listing all the times I’ve saved your life, or can we get back to the situation at hand?”
Reader and I stared at each other. He spoke first. “Amazing, really.”
“What?” Martini sounded exasperated. “No one on Earth’s ever had a bad experience with vodka?”
“Not like that.” I looked at him. “You’re sure there wasn’t anything in it? No poison, nothing like that?”
“No. For God’s sake, they were grateful. They all drank it, too, poured from the same bottle. None of them got sick, so, no, not poisoned. One stinking drink, and some people will never let me live it down.” He gave Christopher a disgusted look and slouched down in his chair.
“Some people never follow the rules,” Christopher snapped.
I looked at the girls. Both Claudia and Lorraine looked at Martini and Christopher as if they were idiots.
“Who’d you tell?”
“Well, the whole hospital wing, for starters,” Christopher said dryly. “He wasn’t breathing, having convulsions, things like that. Made it kind of hard to pretend it wasn’t a big deal.”
“You couldn’t wait to tell them I’d broken the rules,” Martini growled.
“I did consider just letting you die, yeah,” Christopher said. He actually sounded cheerful. This was a weird family.
“Boys? If we can get you to focus for just one moment, what we want to know is if anyone higher up in the organization, say your father, Christopher, made any connections?”
“My father was supremely disappointed that his nephew had used such poor judgment,” Christopher replied. “And I got a lecture for allowing Jeff to be an idiot. As if anyone could stop him.”
“You getting the picture for why we’d rather marry an Earth physicist?” Lorraine asked.
“Earth men are this dense, too.” They needed to know the fantasy wasn’t perfect, after all. “Jeff? Christopher? If we could get you two to stop squabbling and sort of focus here?” They both glared at me. Christopher really had the edge on glaring, though Martini was giving it a go, and, with some work, might give Christopher a run for the glare money.
“Focus on what?” Martini asked.
“On the fact that we need to get a lot of Everclear and put it into spray bottles.”
Both of them looked blank. “What are you talking about?” Christopher asked. “Are you crazy?”
“No, I’m trying to destroy Mephistopheles and possibly Yates at the same time.”
They both still looked blank. But they were both still gorgeous, so I could forgive them. I knew without asking that Claudia and Lorraine wouldn’t.
“From Jeff’s reaction, we’re deathly allergic to alcohol if ingested,” Claudia said, as if she were talking to the village idiots.
“From what Kitty said, the parasite is affected by it, too.” Lorraine was also talking to idiots, but she wasn’t trying to be kind at all. “If we manage to put this together, we realize alcohol might be the key to stopping Mephistopheles. At least, that’s what the four of us have managed to grasp.”
“And we’re just sitting here in shock, realizing that the two people who know everything that’s going on, who are also the heads of our agent operations, have also had the key to solving the entire Mephistopheles problem in their grasp for ten years,” Claudia added. “And we are wondering if you can possibly be as dumb as you both appear right now.”
“I’m just thinking I’m staying in charge of this team,” I offered. “Apparently my two days is trumping your life’s work.”
Christopher looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to yell, glare, or bang his head against the wall.
Martini slumped farther down in the chair and leaned his head on his hand. “I hate my life.”
CHAPTER 33
I SENT CLAUDIA AND LORRAINE OFF to figure out what the best way to spray the alcohol would be. Portable and potent were going to be the most important factors. Reader went off to round up as much high-proof alcohol as possible, using as many agents as were available.
This left me, Christopher, and Martini with nothing to do. I considered sharing my first drinking experiences with them but decided against it. I cleared my throat.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Martini snapped.
“I wasn’t going to say anything. Earthlings are used to making mistakes.”
“Thanks, we both feel much better now,” Christopher said. “Maybe you can point out what else we’ve been doing wrong all these years. Please wait for my father to be present, though.”
I rolled my eyes. “Boys, you are both really dancing on my last nerve. You couldn’t have figured it out before today, okay? Even if someone knew alcohol was poisonous to A-Cs, it wouldn’t have meant it would affect Mephistopheles.”
“Thanks,” Martini muttered.
“Everyone was just shocked you didn’t see the immediate connection when we identified alcohol as the key element and James reminded us that Yates is a teetotaler.”
“You’re not clear on the concept of stopping while you’re ahead, are you?” Martini snapped.
“Not really. Not a lot of good examples of that kind of restraint around here.”
“You want to tell us why you picked the team you did?” Christopher asked.
No, I didn’t, because if I told them, then the rest of my plan wouldn’t work. But I wasn’t an A-C. “Sure. We’re going to go out to whatever deserted desert area Paul gets cleared for us, and we’re going to lure Mephistopheles there. I’m going to let him grab me, and we’re all going to spray him with that alcohol, hopefully in the mouth, but it’s worth a shot to try it everywhere.”
“That is your plan?” Martini sounded incredulous. “Your entire plan? That’s it?”
“It’s insane, even for you,” Christopher added.
This from the Density Twins? A lot of witty comebacks flashed through my head, but, again, I needed them saved for later. “I think it’ll be best to brief the whole team at once.”
“Don’t let the power go to your head,” Christopher muttered.
“I’ll do my best.” I thought about something I needed to ask them. “Is this the time when you tell the team to say good-bye to loved ones, just in case?”
“Daily,” Martini said. He sounded subdued.
“Do Claudia and Lorraine know that?”
“In a way,” Christopher said. “Probably not. We should have them do the ritual.”
“Ritual?”
“Religious,” Martini answered. “In case we die in the field.” He looked over at Christopher. “I’m not doing it. You get the fun of handling this one.”
Christopher gave him a dirty look. “It’s more your line—they’ll be functioning as field.”
“And your father’s the Sovereign Pontifex, and this is their first real mission,” Martini countered “They also don’t think you’re quite as stupid as me, so it’ll mean more coming from you.”
“Fine. I’ll take care of that now, so you two can be alone.” Christopher sounded angry again.
“Don’t start,” Martini said, tiredly. “There’s undoubtedly no reason anymore.”
Christopher shot a piercing look at me. “We’ll see.” He stalked out, closing the door behind him.
Martini was still resting his head on his hand. His eyes were closed now. “Anything else you want to ask me?”
Yes, but it had to wait. “Not really.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He stood. “We normally regroup on a different level than you’ve been to. Just ask for the launch area, and someone can direct you.” He headed toward the door.
“Jeff, why are you stomping off?”
He stopped at the door, hand on the knob. “It was a great day. One of the best I’ve ever had.” He wasn’t looking at me, just the door.
“What do you mean?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I felt your reaction when I said we had to use you for bait. I can’t blame you.” He looked at me, and it was the shower all over again. “It’s my job. I have to do what’s best for the greatest number of people. Same with Christopher. We don’t have a choice.”
&nb
sp; “There’s always a choice.”
“Yeah. And I made the one I had to. The one I always have to.” He closed his eyes again. “Look, I just want to go, okay? I can’t take it any more.”
“Take what?”
He opened his eyes and looked at me as if I were taunting him. “Feeling you hate me.”
I was prepared for a number of different responses, but not this one. “What? Jeff, what are you talking about? I don’t hate you.”
He gave another bitter laugh. “Empath, remember? I can feel it.”
I shook my head. “No, Jeff. I don’t know what you’re feeling, but it’s not coming from me. I don’t hate you at all.”
“Right. Look, there’s no one else in the room, and I can feel the hatred just rolling off you. Please stop torturing me, Kitty.”
I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Jeff, please don’t leave. Don’t leave the room, and don’t leave me right now.”
“Why not?” he asked, sounding so tired.
“Jeff, it’s not me you’re feeling. It’s got to be him.” I’d been pretty calm, all things considered. But this was beyond creepy.
Martini looked at me with his eyes narrowed. “You’re human, you can lie well.”
“I’m human, and I’m freaked out. You picking up any of that?”
I could see him concentrate. “Yeah . . . just vaguely.” He was still vacillating, and I couldn’t imagine what I’d do by myself right now. I couldn’t feel Mephistopheles, but part of him was in me somewhere.
“Jeff, he’s trying to take over. I don’t know what to do, okay? I know what to do to kill him. But I need you. And he knows it and is trying to drive you away.” I wondered what I was going to do to turn off Reader, Claudia, or Lorraine. Christopher was already barely tolerating me, so I didn’t worry about him. “Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because I can’t feel it,” he said sadly. He opened the door and walked out.
The tears came without my wanting them to. I was scared, and now I was alone. The one person I’d sort of thought I could rely on had bagged on me, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. I still didn’t know if I was in love with him or not, but I knew I didn’t hate him.
