A Little Rhine Must Fall (15 page)

“You can change your looks?” Sarah asked in awe.

Duh!
I thought.
You didn’t think that she was
born
just happening to look exactly like our older sister?

“Yes.” Alien/Karen looked confused. “Your species cannot?”

“Nope,” I said, then rethought, “well, most of us can’t. Humans can’t. Other species can.”

“Fascinating,” alien/Karen said.

“Yeah, whatever, Mr. Spock,” I growled. “Can you change again?”

“Why?” she asked.

“It’s a little awkward for you to be looking like my older sister.”

“Why?”

I sighed. “Look, not everyone knows about all the different species that live on this planet. In fact,” I looked at my little sister, “Sarah and I here are two of only three humans that know. Now, my mom might seem like a bit of a scatterbrain to you, but trust me, she’s going to notice sooner or later that you’re not her eldest daughter. That’s going to cause problems.”

“Problems?”

Yeesh! This alien was not the sharpest crayon in the box. “Problems,” I said slowly, sounding out each word. “Humans don’t know about aliens and vampires,” I pointed at Cecily, “and talking cats,” I pointed at Bastet. “You need to change your looks again. You can’t go around looking like Karen.”

She frowned and looked thoughtful. “You are not the planetary leader?”

Good grief! We’d passed that part of the conversation decades ago! “No,” I said again. “I am not the planetary leader.”

She stood up, “You must take me to your planetary leader.”

Sarah giggled. Cecily smirked and even I had to crack a grin. It was too cliche.

“Have I said something?” alien/Karen asked.

“‘Take me to your leader,’” I said.

“Yes. That is what I said. You must take me to your leader.” She looked at us puzzled. “Why is that amusing? I have explained the situation. Earth must surrender.”

I shook my head in disgust. “You don’t get it. Never mind, it’s just an Earth joke about aliens.”

“Have Earth people had much interaction with other aliens?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then how is it that you have jokes about aliens?” She really didn’t understand.

I tried to explain. “We joke about aliens, and have stories about aliens, but nobody really believes in aliens. They’re make-believe.”

“But that is false. I am clearly real.”

“Yes, you are. But you’re the first alien that has ever come here. People who believe in aliens are thought to be crazy.”

She frowned again. “If someone believes in something that is true, how does that make that person crazy?”

I blinked. This was a weird conversation to be having outside Starbucks. “Because they can’t
prove
that it is true to other people.”

“Is proof necessary for people to believe?”

Sarah and Cecily were only too glad to leave this entire explanation to me. I wasn’t a philosophy major! I was just a stay at home mom who wanted to go home and pretend like none of this had ever happened. I searched for the right words. “Most people need some kind of proof before they will believe that something is true.”

She thought some more. “So, if I tell you that my ship will explode if you kill me or if you attempt to deactivate it, and that the explosion will destroy your moon, although this statement is
true,
it is possible for humans to not believe it until it has happened?”

“Yes!” I said. “You get it.”

“This is very foolish. Are you saying that humans must die before they will believe that they will truly be killed?”

“Yup,” I said.

“And at that point it is too late.”

“Uh-huh,” I nodded. “That’s humans for you. Totally illogical.”

She steepled her hands under her chin. “You have given me much to think of. Perhaps it would be better to cleanse the planet and not make use of your species as a work force. You seem to be very odd and hard to understand.”

Sarah clapped quietly. “Way to go, Piper.”

I’d like to see her do any better. It was like arguing with a four year-old, and I had plenty of experience with that. I tried not to sigh again. Sometimes I thought that I spent too much of my life sighing. Maybe if I weren’t surrounded by vampires and aliens and motherin-laws and sisters then I wouldn’t have so much to feel upset about.

“What now?” I asked alien/Karen, lifting my cup to slurp up the last bit of melted frappuccino. The cup exploded in my hand. I don’t think I screamed, but I would have been totally within my rights if I had. We all sat frozen, covered with bits of ice and coffee.

Cecily moved first, she was a blur and I was bundled into the driver’s seat of the van before I even connected the sharp “pop” I heard with my cup exploding.

“Drive!” she screamed and my keys were jammed into my hand. I fumbled with the ignition while Sarah, Bastet, and alien/Karen were also thrown bodily into the van. Part of my brain was wondering why Cecily bothered to save the alien, while another part was saying “if she dies the moon explodes,” and a final part was screaming at all the other parts to just shut up and focus on getting the minivan into reverse.

Somehow I had kept my head and managed to start the car before Cecily herself dropped into the side of the van. Since I was out of “park,” the Odyssey complained about the open sliding door with a loud beep. Cecily ignored this and forcibly yanked the door closed. I heard the metal bend and cringed. Then the passenger side mirror shattered and I quit worrying about what my husband would say if I brought the van home totaled and started worrying about what he would say if I didn’t come home at all.

I’ve never been a great “backer-upper” at the best of times, and this definitely did not classify as one of those, so it’s no wonder that I clipped the car behind me and took two wheels over the curb before straightening out and speeding onto the small entry road that connected Starbucks with the larger deserted parking lot.

Cecily gracefully swung over the tray between the two front seats and landed in the passenger seat. “Buckle up,” she said over her shoulder and there was a gleeful sparkle to her eyes. She was having fun.

“What’s going on?” I screamed as I neared the exit. I am usually a very cautious driver (Mark says I drive like an old lady) but, without even slowing, I squeezed the Odyssey into a hole in the traffic that a Mini Cooper might have thought twice about trying.

The back window shattered to the sound of screaming (from the backseat) and loud honking horns (from the car I had cut off in traffic and the one I forced into the median as I swung the van wildly into the other lane).

Cecily turned to look behind us, “We might have lost him,” she said, “I don’t think he was near his car …”

“Who?” I screamed louder. Yeah, I know she was sitting right next to me and had better than human hearing; it just seemed like the perfect time for a raised voice.

“Matthew,” was the chilling answer.

“Oh, crap.”

“Who’s Matthew?” Sarah screamed from the back seat. She and alien/Karen had decided to forgo seatbelts and were laying face down on the floor. Bastet was curled into a ball, half hidden under a seat, her eyes reflecting the glow of streetlights and wide with terror.

I relaxed a bit as we pulled up to a red stop light. “He’s this vampire I staked.”

“Why is he shooting at us?” Sarah screamed again. Wow. That was annoying. Didn’t she realize that I was sitting three feet away and could hear just fine?

“I don’t think he was too happy about being staked,” I answered calmly.

“What is ‘staked’?” asked alien/Karen.

Cecily was scanning the road behind us but answered. “A sharp spike, driven through a vampire’s heart, will incapacitate it for years until it can heal.”

The light turned green. “Unless the WAND help out,” I muttered. “Then it takes months.”

“You should have killed him when you had the chance,” Sarah criticized.

“I was a little busy with
dying
at the time,” I reminded her. “But sure, next time I’ll wait to pass out and I’ll cut off his head first.”

“SUV,” Cecily pointed and I risked a look in the rear view mirror. Sure enough, a huge silver SUV had just rammed a small car off the road and was quickly catching us.

“Crap. Crap. Crap,” I swore under my breath and floored the gas pedal.

Chapter Fourteen:

Car Chase

I have occasionally watched those police TV shows about car chases. From the helicopter viewpoint, high in the air, it seems that the cars are slowly rolling along at maybe thirty miles an hour. They crawl carefully through red-lights, and stay completely on their side of the road. The police seem to be driving just as carefully and I always wonder why in the world can’t they stop that stupid driver sooner and when will Mark change the channel to a more interesting show?

I now have a little more respect for those drivers. Tearing through the streets of Melbourne at fifty miles an hour was terrifying. There were red-light intersections, other cars pulling out onto the road without looking, stupid drivers changing lanes (also without looking), and sharp corners that seemed ready to flip my minivan over into a roll. What there were
not
were police. Not a one in sight.

“What is our tax money going?” I yelled as I tore through another red-light. Once, as a small child, my grandfather had let me drive his golf cart. He jokingly told me that if I saw a car coming towards me to put my hands over my eyes and scream. That technique was coming in handy now. Sarah and alien/Karen also seemed to be employing it.

“What?” Cecily yelled, the light of battle in her eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Taxes,” I swerved around a car that was traveling only five miles over the speed limit.

“Taxes?” Sarah shrieked from the floor, “
taxes
?”

“For the police,” I pointed out.

Sarah had raised up on her hands and knees and was staring out the windshield. “Car! Car! Car!” she screamed in my ear.

“I see them. I see them,” I muttered. There was nowhere to go on our side of the road. Traffic was stopped five cars deep at the light. I decided to use another driving trick that my grandfather had taught me. The golf-cart lessons had taken place in a gated golf community up in the mountains of Georgia. We’d played a game called, “Don’t touch the brake” where each of us would take turns driving with only the gas pedal and trying to time the coasting so that the cart came to a stop at stop signs.

“Brake! Brake! Brake!” Sarah screamed again. What is it about other people’s driving that always makes you want to yell things three times?

I ignored her advice and punched the gas pedal. I slid the wheel carefully over to the left so we jumped the median curb, first with the left wheels, then with the right. Still not braking we continued down the median and then into the other lane of traffic.

“AAAAGGH!!” Sarah screamed, apparently made speechless by my Daytona 500 skills.

I now had all of my brain focused solely on keeping the van on the road and avoiding the cars that were hurtling towards us. Hands firmly at three and nine o’clock, we sped and swerved against the traffic, lights flashing past as horrified drivers blared their horns.

“He’s still back there,” Cecily said calmly. “You need to get to a more deserted road.”

“Why?” I managed to spit out.

She pointed up at the sunroof. “Get where there are no cars and I’ll jump out and have some words with him.” Her canines were elongated and her smile was shark-like.

In answer I spun the wheel left again and headed diagonally through the Babcock intersection. Babcock was still a big road but there were more options as we headed into the heart of Melbourne.

There were less street lights here and I inched the van up to seventy miles an hour. A quick glance in the rear view showed that the SUV was still slowly gaining on us. He must have fallen back at the intersection, but that wasn’t going to stop him for long.

Cecily pointed up at the sunroof and I managed to pry one petrified hand off the steering wheel long enough to punch the open button. She was out of her seat, head out of the car and ready to make the jump up onto the roof when I saw the detour signs ahead. They were repaving the road and there were orange barriers set up with a sign pointing left.

“Detour!” I yelled and slewed the van to the left. Cecily was thrown against the passenger side door and Sarah and alien/Karen started screaming again. Bastet was making that low growling noise that terrified cats made. Anytime she wanted to step in and save the day was a good time for me.

Cecily glared at me. “You almost tipped us over! You didn’t have to turn!” I think she was just mad about how ungraceful she looked flying through the air.

I spared her a quick glance, “The sign said to detour.”

“There’s also lots of signs that say ‘forty-five,’” she pointed out a little acidly. “I don’t see you obeying them either.”

“That’s different,” I had slowed to a mere fifty to plow through the subdivision, praying that all small children were in bed where they belonged and not going to chase a ball out into the street in front of me. “I’m trying to keep my law-breaking to a minimum.”

“Piper!” Sarah yelled.

“Hold it!” I had seen something that gave me an idea. “How far back is he?”

Cecily twisted around and there was a moment’s pause. “There. He’s coming around the corner.”

“Sweet.” It would be close, but I thought my plan would work. If it didn’t, no one would be around long enough to complain. Much.

I peeled around the corner onto the next street and made a large loop back to the street we had just been on.

“Haven’t we been this way?” Cecily asked.

“Yup.”

We were now going 60. This would either work or we were going to wind up planted in someone’s living room wall. I was hoping for the first option.

“Can you see him?” I yelled.

“No,” was the answer. “I think you lost him when you made the turn back around.”

“Okay.” This was my chance. I killed the lights and jumped the curb up into an empty lot between two houses. The screaming from the back seat was deafening. Without slowing I bumped through the lot and around behind the six-foot privacy fence surrounding the next lot’s backyard. I slammed on the brakes and quickly killed the engine.