Species II (25 page)

Still, Eve stared at him, not moving, not speaking. Her only acknowledgment of his presence was a deep, sudden inhalation that finally put a stop to the revolting undulations. Abruptly she just seemed like a woman to him, young, frightened and beautiful, like some country college girl lost in the big city. Blond hair, clear blue eyes and full lips in a heart-shaped face that didn’t have a single imperfection—it was hard to believe that this gorgeous gal could be anything like the creature he
knew
she was.

Eve must have sensed a change in him, some sort of shift in his pheremones or something. Instead of fighting or running, she smiled and licked her lips, then ran the fingers of both hands up and down the buttons on her shirt in a stripper’s move that she had no way of knowing about. Her technique, however, was much more direct. No fancy music here, just the sounds of fabric tearing and plastic buttons hitting the floor as she wrenched open her blouse and revealed flawless breasts.

Speechless, all Press could do was shake his head and stumble backward when she would have reached for his free hand. He had an idea, all right, of what she planned to do with it and he wanted no part of her—the memory of Stephen Arden’s mutilated body was enough to smash down any jolt of desire this life-form might be able to generate in him. Stephen had been a Harvard Professor of Anthropology and part of the team that hunted for Sil before she’d convinced him to have sex with her. Thanks, but Press preferred his lays to be human. “Eve—”

“Freeze!”

Thank God—the backups had finally arrived. He might be tough and good at what he did, but experience was a bastard and he had no real desire to face off with an alien by himself. At least this time the troops consisted of more than an extra two or three guards so scared they were crapping in their pants—the guy leading them was as true a hard-ass jarhead as Burgess if Press had ever seen one. “We’ve got you covered, lady,” he announced in his gravelly voice. “If you so much as move a muscle the wrong way, you’ll be splattered all over this floor. Your choice.” And no doubt she would be, too—beyond the full auto M-16s, every last man and woman was wearing a hydrochlorine canister as a shoulder pack.

Eve turned her head and glared at the squad’s leader, but he didn’t back down, holding her gaze like a watchdog focused on its upcoming target.

“Eve,” Press said to pull her attention away from the knot of solders. “These guys mean business. Even if they weren’t here, you’ve forgotten something really important.” He gestured vaguely in the direction that he thought would take them back to Laura’s laboratory. “Down in the lab is the tether mechanism. Remember that? You take one step off these premises or you kill one person, then Laura or someone else is going to trigger that thing and you’ll be dead. You don’t want to go down that way, do you?”

Eve’s gaze flicked from him to the row of guards staring at her, their fingers so very close to squeezing their triggers. He could see in her eyes that no, she didn’t want to “go down that way.” He was willing to bet she was thinking that now she had too many things to do with her life, an entirely new realm of it to explore and find a way to expand to its fullest. And Press would have to be stupid not to think that her prime objective was still to find and mate with Patrick Ross. He was, all told, damned glad it wasn’t himself, and let’s not forget that no one in Monroe A.F.B. had any intention of allowing that coupling to happen.

Lulled by the presence of the backup squad, Press must’ve let his defenses slip just a hair too much, because abruptly Eve had him. He struggled but he couldn’t get free, couldn’t get his gun arm up and between them—hell, if he squeezed the trigger now, he’d probably blow off his own big toe. Shocked, he realized that she was kissing him—full mouth to mouth, and all he could think of was the way the now-dead Sil had had that wonderful tongue . . . yeah, the one that had shot down the throat of a rejected mate and eviscerated him from the inside out.

Press heard the sound of weapons shifting and just as quickly, Eve let him go. He swayed backward to get farther away, but she didn’t reach for him again. The smile she gave him was odd—part girl just experiencing her first kiss, part woman who wanted so much, much more. “Magically delicious,” Eve said softly, then held out her wrists. She didn’t look at him again as the soldiers leaped forward with handcuffs and hustled her back down to the bio-environment level.

It wasn’t until she and the squad were out of sight that Press sagged against the wall and gasped for air, and realized that he’d had the muscles of his throat locked in what would have been a useless attempt to stop the alien woman’s tongue.

T
oo late.

Patrick’s long-legged gait pulled up short and he stopped in the middle of one of the never-ending hallways. He knew immediately what had gone wrong—Eve had been overpowered and returned to the BioHazard 4 area, where they kept her imprisoned. He didn’t know why, but he was certain that she’d made the decision to surrender based on all the circumstances—she was not afraid of any of the people around her and most of their weapons would do little to harm her. Something else must have weighed heavily in the decision, something over which she’d had no control and also deemed too hazardous to combat.

This changed everything. She would not be able to meet him, and even as strong as he was, he’d have to be a fool to try to fight his way down there. At this point he was only one, and there were others—his children—to take into consideration. They needed his nurturing and his protection until they had fully matured and could mate and take care of themselves. While he doubted that anything existed on this base that could kill him without taking out everyone else and most of the building, it was not inconceivable that he would be captured and, like Eve, locked in a facility from which it would be difficult to escape. He couldn’t let that happen.

Patrick whirled and went back the way he’d come, intent on finding a stairwell that would take him up and out of here. Always in tune, he heard Dr. Baker and Dennis long before they would have seen him, heard the elevator doors open in response to the plasticized slide of her security card.

“Go on, Dennis,” Laura urged.

The elevator was only a few feet from an L-shaped bend in the corridor, and Patrick sidled up to the edge of the wall and watched them. He could smell Laura from where he crouched, a not unpleasant mixture of perfume and laboratory chemicals over the starch of her cotton lab coat. She was an extremely attractive woman, with her strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes, and exceedingly intelligent—that, especially, made her a good choice. Slender and in good health . . . yeah, she’d do in a pinch.

He watched Dennis step into the elevator, then Laura started to follow. Before she could get all the way inside, the elevator doors began to close. Before
that
could happen, Patrick shot around the corner and yanked her out of the elevator.

“Laura!” Dennis cried, but it was too late. The doors were closing, and they weren’t the forgiving kind found in downtown civilian office buildings. They might not crush your hand if you didn’t get it out of the way in time, but they’d retract only a half inch or so, just enough to let you get free; if you wanted them to open again, you needed that security card. “Shit! Let me
out!”
Alas, pounding on the inside of the doors, as Dennis was doing now, would accomplish nothing. Another two seconds and his former friend’s shouts faded to nothing as the elevator descended.

When Patrick turned, Laura Baker was already backing away. He grinned and began pacing her, step for step; it wouldn’t be long before she realized that the corridor came to a dead end twenty feet behind her. “What’s the matter, Dr. Baker? I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Just . . . stay where you are,” Laura said shakily. “Don’t come any closer. I mean it.”

That almost made Patrick laugh. A great act, but she was defenseless—not even a pistol in her pocket, much less anything that would really work. She might have some measure of influence over Eve, but Patrick felt no such compulsion to obey her orders. Speaking of Eve—

“So where do you keep Eve? I’ve gone through so much trouble, I’d really like to meet her.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Laura replied. Her gaze flicked over her shoulder and registered the wall only a few feet away. There was a shadow of panic on her face, then she forced it away. That was good—Patrick liked strong women. Very much. “You should turn yourself in,” she persisted. “It’ll be easier for everyone.” Despite her predicament, the doctor’s voice had turned calm and rational, persuading.

“I don’t think I want to do that.” Now there was nowhere left for her to go and her back was pressing against the wall as though she could melt right through it. He was in front of her before she could try sliding to the side and making for the one possible escape, the stairwell door about eight feet away and on which Patrick had smashed the security-lock mechanism. He put an arm on either side of her, then leaned forward and pinned her in place. “It’s about time we got to know each other better. Don’t you agree, Dr. Baker?”

“Let me go!” she tried to yell, but Patrick’s head snapped forward and his mouth locked on hers. So good—not perfect, but not bad, and he pushed his tongue out and tried to force it between her lips. Nothing doing—Laura Baker had her lips and teeth clamped together as firmly as she was able; in the meantime she was struggling against him like a wet fish in the hands of a fisherman.

“C’mon,” Patrick said urgently against her mouth. Her response was a hard twist to the side that nearly got her free—desperation could do that sometimes. He threw his weight forward and heard her grunt as air rushed out of her lungs, but she still wouldn’t open up. Such a lack of cooperation, and at this something inside him shifted and got indefinably
darker.
His tongue pushed out and probed again, but this time it was different, elongated and two-pronged, like a snake’s tongue tasting the air, searching along the line of Dr. Baker’s lips for a way inside. Still no good, and the best the dual prongs could do was make the tiniest of openings.

But Patrick’s bag of tricks wasn’t empty yet; a third branch unfurled from the center of his tongue, this one studded with tiny barbs and stingers. Laura’s eyes bulged and her efforts to break free went to the point of frenzy as this spiked appendage wavered in the air, then swung toward the crevice its brethren had managed to create. Teeth still locked, Laura somehow managed to scream, but it certainly wasn’t going to do her any good.

Something crashed behind him and before Patrick could look up, he heard—

“Alien bastard.”

Patrick’s head jerked around and his tongues retracted instantly. He’d hardly closed his mouth before something invisible and full of stinging pain hit him full in the face.

He howled and let go of the woman, who dropped to the floor and rolled away with another scream. Horrible red blisters erupted across his forehead and cheeks, his nose and sensitive lips, the backs of his exposed hands. He tried to wipe the mess from his face and only made it worse when whatever it was that Press had sprayed him was ground into his eyes by his own fingers. Enraged, Patrick swiped the air around him but Dr. Baker was long out of reach. He managed only a malicious, runny-eyed glare toward Press, then spied the door to the stairway and vaulted toward it.

By the time Patrick was on the next level up, the welts and blisters along his skin had already started to heal.

“Y
ou all right?” Press demanded, squatting next to Laura.

She struggled upright and nodded. “Don’t let him get away—”

“I’m on it,” he said and swung the canister back onto his shoulder.

“Wait!”

He paused and looked back, his eyes asking the question he didn’t have time to vocalize.

“Don’t bother taking that,” Laura told him. “The hydrochlorine only works once—Patrick’s alien cells will have already adapted to it. By now he’s not only healed, he’s
immune
to the stuff.” She stared at him, her eyes huge and blue. “Press, you don’t have
any
defense against him.”

“Shit,” Press said. He tore the canister strap from his shoulder and threw the entire stupid setup against the wall, where it hit, then bounced to the floor with a painfully loud clang. His hand slid beneath his jacket and came up with the heavy steel of the Glock 9mm and his expression was like granite. “Sometimes you just have to do things the old-fashioned way.” A last glance to make sure Laura was okay and the corridor was clear, then Press kicked open the door to the stairway and ducked inside.

He took the stairs two at a time, keeping a solid grip on his old friend the Glock. One landing up and caution took over as he heard footsteps not far above; he checked the clip as he climbed more slowly, wondering if bullets would even work on this son of a bitch. Another six stairs and the footsteps grew louder still. Press crouched as a figure turned into his line of fire.

“Freeze!”
he bellowed. “Don’t make a fucking move or I’ll blow your brains all over the wall!”

“Put the weapon down, mister,” said a cold voice. “You’re just a bit outnumbered here.”

Press never forgot a voice and he’d heard this one only an hour before. One of the M.P. squad leaders running patrols throughout the facility, he and his comrades had been introduced to Press and Dennis at the outside gate when they’d brought Patrick into the facility. As he lowered his gun, Press spun and looked back down the stairs—nothing. “Damn it all,” he snarled. “I was going up the stairs and you guys were coming down—where the fuck did he
go?”

The squad leader threw a glance to his left and Press followed his lead. There, across the twelve-foot expanse of the landing, was a three-by-three-foot window covered in narrow steel bars in a crisscrossed pattern. The bars were twisted and curled outward in the center of the window, as though someone had shot a mortar shell right through them.

Patrick Ross was gone.