Immortal Essence Box Set: Aligned, Exiled, Beguiled (24 page)

Someone grabbed Michael around the neck with one arm and placed a hand over his mouth.  They were wearing black gloves. The smell of oiled leather seared his nose. He tried to wrestle free. Being a big guy, a football player, he figured he’d be strong enough, but whoever it was knew what they were doing.

“Michael. It’s me, your father. Stop. We need to talk.”

Michael hadn’t heard from his father since he was seven. He’d been glad to see him go. Hadn’t cared if he ever saw Frank again. His mother had trashed every picture of his dad. Good riddance. He’d kill Frank if he’d done this to her. She hadn’t been Michael’s favorite person, but she was all he had.

The voice at his ear sounded familiar. Michael figured it probably was his dad, but he needed to see his face. And he needed answers. That meant he needed to hear the jerk out. Michael stopped struggling.

“Okay.” It came out a mumble.

“Are you going to stay calm?”

He grunted a yes.

The hand came off his mouth and the arm around his neck disappeared. Michael spun around, determined to see what sort of man his father had become.

Frank wore a charcoal gray suit, a white shirt and a black tie. His hair had been clipped short. His skin tan, excessively tan. He recalled streaks of gray in his father’s hair. Now, there wasn’t a single gray strand.

Probably dyed. Lame
. Michael couldn’t help snorting.

“What?” Frank asked.

His father’s clear brown eyes didn’t seem a bit surprised by Michael’s appearance. Even though he’d grown probably three feet since he’d left.

“
Nothin
,” Michael said. His body still shook. From shock, he guessed. His mother’s frightened eyes and those marks all over her body kept flipping like photographs through his mind.  His stomach churned, bile rose into his throat again.

Frank waited, the picture of patience.

Jerk.

“What happened to Mom? Who did that to her? Why are you here?” Michael placed his hands on the kitchen counter. He needed to steady himself. The lights suddenly seemed too bright. His head throbbed. “We should call the cops.” He heard the words leave his mouth, but they didn’t sound like they were his. Grabbing a barstool, he pulled it out and sat, resting his head in his hands.

“Michael—son, it’s okay. I
am
the
cops
, the good guys . . .”

“What? No you aren’t. Mom told me what you did.
A computer analyst.
Besides where’s your uniform?” The last question had come out sounding childish, he knew, but it took everything he had not to run from the kitchen and cry uncontrollably.

“I had to keep it a secret. Your mom never knew the truth.” He patted Michael’s back.

Michael wanted to punch him.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Michael spat, furious.

“Look, Michael. I get that you have many reasons to be upset with me. I’m sure I deserve it, too. In fact I know I do. But now’s not the time.”

“What are you going to do?” Michael asked, quietly, keeping his eyes on the counter. If he moved, no doubt he’d puke again.

“We’re going to handle everything. Our unit is different than regular cops. Special. I belong to a government group called, A.L.T. And what happened to your mom, it’s the work of a certain type—”

“The government? Seriously, you expect me to believe that not only are you a cop, but a government-type cop. What are you? Like FBI?” Michael shook his head, which caused him to become even more nauseated. “Why should I believe anything you say?” He finally looked at Frank, glared actually. If he were honest, he’d have to admit Frank
did
sort of look FBI-
ish
. The suit. His hair. The way he was acting—too calm. He decided he didn’t care. If Frank would help find his mother’s killer, he’d deal.

For now . . . 

Michael realized there were sounds coming from the other room. Low voices. Other people were in the house. “What’s going on?” He bolted from his chair and ran back into the living room.

“Michael, wait.”

He heard his father following. Frank grabbed his arm as he reached the entry to the living room. Two people in white were leaning over his mother, inspecting her. One had a syringe and a slide like he’d used in chemistry class earlier in the year.

“Get away from her.” Michael made a move toward her, but his father grabbed him and pulled him out of the room. “Stop. Make them stop,” he yelled. The thought of them doing tests on her, treating her like a lab rat, infuriated him. What did they think happened to her?

“Like I said, we need to talk.” Frank half pushed, half dragged Michael back into the kitchen.

Michael breathed heavily, trying not to cry, but seeing her that way, so small and broken. And all the blood, he couldn’t help it. Then the smell—a combination of copper, the effing citrus from the cleaning products, and . .
.  death
. It was too much.

“Why’d this happen?” He closed his eyes and pressed both palms into them, rubbing. They stung with unshed tears. And his mother’s carved and bloodied body seemed tattooed to the insides of his eyelids.  

“Michael, you’re old enough to understand what I’m about to tell you. He clapped him on the back. Ready?”

Michael nodded.

“Our agency has been tracking . . . life forms that don’t originate from our planet.” He stood next to Michael, his presence overwhelming. Calmly, he continued, “The A.L.T. agency was created in the eighteen hundreds. The government believes extraterrestrial life exists. Hell, the whole world does. Our species have been curious about what else is out there for—well, forever.”

Michael’s head thumped in pain. Was Frank going to give a history lesson right now?

Frank continued, “They discovered the first real evidence fifty years ago. In the last nine, we’ve known for a fact . . .”

He paused and Michael took his hands from his face. He wanted to see Frank’s eyes. Instinctively, Michael knew Frank wasn’t lying, wasn’t kidding around. The truth of it sank deep in his bones. But if Frank was going to say it, the word
alien
, he had to watch the words leave his mouth. See Frank’s lips move to be sure he heard him. 

“Say it.” Michael waited, desperate to go back to . . .

And then events of the past few days hit him.
The girl, Venus.
The way she’d made him feel.
The color of her blood.
What she’d said to his mother. Words like, ‘where I’m from’ and ‘wish you were dead’ filtered through his brain, like the
drip, drip
of leftover coffee. At each memory, his face shifted, twisted in agony. 

“You tell me, Michael.” His eyebrows scrunched together making the skin between them ripple, like an old pug.    

“No, go on. Finish what you were going to say.” Michael forced himself to concentrate on Frank’s eyes instead of the wrinkled protrusion. 

Frank sat in a barstool next to Michael. “You know what I’m going to say. I can see it on your face. But—” he paused, perhaps gauging how Michael would respond. “Aliens are here on our planet. And you know how the movies portray them as enormous monsters or little green men with big, black eyes?” He’d used his hands to help describe them. All Michael saw were flailing fingers.

Frank waited.

Michael’s headache throbbed harder, beating against his eyes and in his ears. Michael squinted, hoping that would help ease the pressure. This was crazy. Unbelievable. Insane.
And even more unbelievable?
Michael didn’t feel any sort of real freak-out happening inside, at the information Frank revealed.

Aliens existed. 
Aliens existed!

He waited for his mind to sift more thoroughly through the words.

Aliens. Aliens. Aliens are real.
But, that was it. No panic. No fear. Zip! “Okay?”

“My division, we’re Alien Life Trackers, and little green men don’t exist. At least I’ve never seen them. What I have seen are creatures that look like you and me.
Except they aren’t anything like us.
We’ve been tracking one for many years. The thing can run fast—like lightning. It’s strong.
We’ve shot it with different types of guns, tried to burn it, cut it
,
you name it
. So far, we haven’t found a way to kill it, haven’t even put a scratch on the alien. Every kind of weapon we’ve used has been useless. It mocks us, knows nothing on our planet can harm it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with a thumb and first finger.

The horror in Frank’s voice spoke volumes more than his actual words. He heard fear, but more precisely, Michael heard disgust.
A familiar sound.
He’d been on the receiving end of Frank’s loathing many times. Most of Michael still believed Frank was the enemy. And he wanted to lash out. Fight him. Beat him. He’d grown almost as tall as his father, looked like he weighed more. Certainly he was in better shape. Michael was a hundred-percent positive he could take him.

“Why would . . .
it
kill mother?” Michael asked, keeping most of the hatred he harbored for the man next to him behind gritted teeth.

Frank sighed. The first sign of weakness he’d seen. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Michael. “It’s making the chase personal. The alien has no problem killing. There’ve been other dead bodies, cut up the way we found your mother. We figured it was smart, but now we know it’s more than that. It’s vindictive. Recently it’s begun tracking down our families. Thaddeus
Holstrom
, my old boss was killed a few days after the alien killed his wife and two children. Now I’m the boss, it appears to be coming after my family.”

Michael unfolded the white sheet of paper and read.

While he scanned the lyrical handwriting, Frank continued, “You’re all the family I have left. If he follows the same M.O. . . .” He let the words hang in the air like a paper airplane caught in a burst of wind. The wind died. “You’re next, Michael.”

The rest of the long night continued in a blur of men in white suits. These men took samples of his mother’s skin, hair and blood. They scraped under her fingernails, stripped her and bagged up her clothes, and they ran some sort of beeping machine over every inch of her body. At first Frank tried to keep Michael from the room, but it wasn’t possible. Michael had to know what they were doing. 

His relationship with his mother had been rocky, at best. Right now, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that some monster had murdered her. And that the monster might be someone he’d begun to care about. Venus.
Yet another relationship that would let him down.

Regret also bogged him down. Guilt over the way he’d treated his mother the last time they spoke. The last words he’d said. There’d never be another opportunity. No more hope for a chance at reconciliation. 

The last time he’d seen her had been dinnertime the night before. His mother flung a paper plate full of mac and cheese at him. Yelled ‘happy birthday,’ and then started in on her usual barrage of spiteful words. Michael hadn’t backed down. They’d fought. She’d yelled at him for bringing ‘that slut-girl into
her
house’ and said, “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”  She’d hit him, more than once, not that it mattered now, not when he remembered what he’d said back.

He’d grabbed her arm, yelled in her face, towering over her, “I hate you.” He hadn’t stopped there. He’d said worse. “No wonder Dad left. He couldn’t stand to be around a crazy bitch. Neither can I.” 

He’d stomped out of the house. It was the last time he’d seen her alive. Her mouth twisted in anger, gray eyes burning with hurt and hate.

Sadness tore through him.

When they zipped his mother into the body bag, Michael puked again. His thighs wouldn’t stop shaking. Then they wheeled her body out of the house, on a gurney, and slid her into the back of a black van.

He never got to say good-bye.

The police showed up not too long after the van drove away. Frank and his team were able to clear them off the street and out of the neighborhood within minutes. Not a single police officer made it inside the house. Frank made a phone call and they went away. By four o’clock in the morning, the living room looked as pristine as it had when he’d left earlier that day. There wasn’t a trace of blood. Even the coppery, citrus scent had vanished, replaced by the odor of Clorox.

Frank informed Michael that he needed to be in protective custody.

“No way. I can’t.” The words came out with conviction, but Michael was still underage—seventeen. Whether he liked or trusted Frank was beside the point. He was Michael’s father, so he had to do what his father asked. Didn’t he? Alcohol never sounded so good. He wanted to be numb, to forget.

You are stronger than you think!
The words forced their way in. It hadn’t sounded male or female. But like . . . both—many.

“Michael? Hey!” Frank snapped his fingers in Michael’s face.