Immune (43 page)

The tone of his voice hit her as hard as the words, melting any resistance before it had a chance to form.

“Bitch, you’d better make me believe you’re loving it or I’m going to reach over and start cutting on your kid.”

Without releasing his hold on her hair, Eduardo worked the blade, severing her clothes in cuts that touched but did not damage the perfect skin beneath them. Forcing her down on the bed, face up beside her son, Eduardo mounted her, thrusting inside her tight body with a fierceness that shone like ice in his black eyes.

Beneath him, the woman’s body moved with a passion born of fury, hatred, and a panic he increased by periodically moving his blade hand closer to the terrified child. Feeling her fear intensity peak, Eduardo swept his knife arm up and sideways, sending a fountain of blood spraying out across the bed from the new mouth that opened in the boy’s throat.

The mother’s eyes widened as despair filled her soul.

Transition.

The blade swept down, sending a new jet of blood pulsing upward, mother’s blood combining with that of her child.

Transition.

Eduardo shuddered as he climaxed, spending himself inside the dying woman’s beautiful black body.

Transition.

The intensity of the moment left him collapsed atop the corpse, so drained he was unable to move, the better part of two minutes passing before he found the energy to rise and make his way to the bathroom. Stepping into the shower, he scrubbed himself and his stiletto clean, pausing to dry his body and slick down his hair before moving back to the closet to don his suit.

After retrieving the shoulder holster and sliding into his jacket, Eduardo stopped in the doorway, turning back to survey the scene. So much blood, his DNA thoroughly mixed within it. The police would certainly isolate it.

As he turned and walked out of the room, Eduardo laughed out loud at the thought. Finally, the Americans would have real proof that El Chupacabra exists.

Mark held Heather’s arm as he walked her down the line of cars in the dark parking lot, her eyes as white and unseeing as the full moon in the night sky overhead. Suddenly, her eyes rolled back to normal.

“This one,” she said, pointing at the car to his right.

“You sure?” Mark asked.

“I’m sure. Just do it.”

Mark ran the coat hanger down between the driver’s side window seal and the glass, jerking back up with a quick stroke that popped the latch on the old Ford Pinto. Reaching under the steering column, he ripped away the plastic covering and pulled out the wires, found the pair he was looking for, and stripped the insulation to short them together and ignite the engine.

By the time Heather had moved to the passenger door, Mark had unlocked it and settled into the driver’s seat. Heather sat down beside him, slamming her door.

“She may be ugly, but at least she’s old,” Mark said with a grin that showed more bravado than he felt.

Heather managed a smile. “Let’s just go.”

Mark knew she didn’t like stealing a car any more than he did, but she had worked out the odds in her visions. No other method of travel except hopping a freight train provided them much of a chance of escaping capture. The problem with the freight train idea was that they still had to get to Santa Fe before they could hop on one going in the right direction.

Mark headed out of town, taking highway 502 toward Santa Fe. From there they’d get up on I-25 until they got to Albuquerque where they could catch I-40 west.

“How long do you think we have until they sic the cops on us?”

Heather shook her head. “Our folks won’t miss us until morning.”

“And the guy whose car we just stole.”

“He’s in the bar, and I don’t think he planned on leaving before closing time. By then he probably won’t be sure if he drove or caught a ride with a buddy.”

Mark chuckled. “I doubt if he’ll be in any big rush to report his DUI ride home was stolen.”

“Borrowed.”

“Whatever. How far west are we going?” Mark asked.

Heather shrugged. “Several hundred miles at least. I could only get a direction from the headband signal. We’ll need another direction reading from a new spot before I can pinpoint Jen.”

“Right. Triangulation.”

“Same general concept. But subspace geometry is non-Euclidean, so it’s not quite as simple as laying down a map and drawing a couple of intersecting lines.”

Mark grinned. “That’s why it’s a good thing I have you along, eh? To handle all that jazz.”

“And all that jazz.” Heather reached over and touched Mark’s arm. “I’m so glad I have you with me. I don’t think I could do it by myself.”

Mark squeezed her hand, a lump rising in his throat. “I’ll always be here for you. I swear it on my dead mother’s eyes.”

Heather laughed out loud at the old B-movie line. “Thank you. I think I’ll sleep now.”

True to her word, Heather leaned over until her head rested on Mark’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Long before they reached Santa Fe, she was sound asleep. For the next several hours, the pressure of her head slowly put Mark’s shoulder and right arm to sleep as well, but he ignored it. God’s archangel Michael could come down and smite him for all he cared, but he’d be damned if he’d make a move to wake her.

Her head rested on his shoulder. If Mark could have made the moment last for eternity, he would have. And, just so, they passed through Santa Fe, then Albuquerque, then Gallup, as the stars rose higher in the sky and the moon sank toward the west.

Jennifer was out there somewhere to the west–northwest. What she was trying to do, he had no idea. Mark just knew that he wanted his sister back, wanted the three of them back to what they used to be. But that wasn’t likely. Jennifer was a runaway, and he and Heather were now car thieves, all of them pulled forward by forces well beyond their control.

Mark’s thoughts went back to the day when he had found the Second Ship, when they had first tried on the alien headsets. If he had known then what he knew now, how they would be augmented, how it would change their lives so drastically, would he have even tried the damn thing on? Would he have even ventured near the alien starship?

The answer struck at his heart. Yes. God help him. Given everything he had learned, everything they had suffered to this point, he would still do exactly the same thing.

As the white lines that divided the lanes of I-40 swept by beneath him, Mark looked up at the sinking full moon. If he could have bayed like a werewolf, he would have.

Heather yawned and stretched, wiping the sleep from her eyes. It was morning. At least the sun was thinking about rising above the eastern horizon, a peachy glow having lit the skyline outside the car window.

“Good morning.” Mark’s voice brought her head around. He leaned in the open driver’s side car door.

But he had aged at least ten years. What the hell? Had she slipped into one of her visions while she slept?

Seeing the shock in her expression, Mark straightened, the age lines melting from his face as he did, leaving the boy that she knew.

“Sorry I startled you. Just wanted to try out my new look.”

Heather opened her car door and stepped out into the brisk morning air. “What just happened?”

Mark shrugged. “I had been driving all night, just thinking about things as the car rolled along, stopping for gas here and there while you slept. I got to wondering how we would get by without being discovered. I mean two kids our age. We’d stick out like a sore thumb. Then, just about an hour ago, it hit me. Our age.”

“Our age? What do you mean?”

“Think about it. What does it mean to look older? Mostly it has to do with the age lines in people’s faces.”

Something clicked in Heather’s head. Of course.

Mark nodded. “So I stopped the car and started working on it in the mirror. If you scrunch your face, you get a ton of wrinkles. Then I just started relaxing a single muscle here and there, changing the look gradually until it matched a picture of some thirty-something people in the magazines. Once I had a look I liked, I memorized its feel. With our kind of neuromuscular control, we just have to recall the feeling to get that look back.”

“Show me.”

Mark’s face moved, the slight age lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes and mouth producing a remarkable transformation. It was like looking at a different person.

“Wow!”

Heather’s heart hammered in her chest. Moving to the car mirror, she tilted it outward. Then repeating the technique Mark had described, she scrunched her cheeks and forehead, feeling all the muscles tense, forming lines across her face. Then, one by one, she let them relax, retightening some as she worked the age look to match the facial lines on a woman she had seen in
People Magazine
.

Although it probably took her a bit longer than it had taken Mark, within thirty minutes Heather had mastered the lines of that look. She was sure she could pass for a woman in her early thirties.

As she demonstrated the finished product for Mark, he clapped his hands. “Hello, Mrs. Robinson. I don’t know if a young man like me should be seen with you. People will talk.”

“You know what this means?” Heather asked.

“What?”

“We’re going to need new fake IDs.”

Mark slid back into the driver’s seat, reaching across to open the door for Heather. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

Starting the car, Mark took the access road toward the freeway onramp. On the radio, Rod Stewart began crooning “Maggie Mae.” When he reached the verse about the morning sun really showing her age, Heather glanced at Mark and, together, they began to laugh. As the sun peeked over the distant mountains, they kept laughing, while the tears rolled down their cheeks.

It was late and Raul was tired, something that he hadn’t experienced for a long, long time. The harder he worked, the more the Rho Ship responded to his efforts. Even Stephenson seemed impressed. Not that he gave a shit what Stephenson liked. Raul found himself thinking of Heather again. In the end all his work to repair the ship centered on the same thing. He was lost without her, constantly trying to picture her face in his mind, to recall the sound of her voice.

Every new power cell he brought online brought him closer to his dream, closer to the reunion that was destined to be. And just as he was becoming a god, she would become his goddess.

Raul glanced down at his legless body. As much as he loved the look of Heather’s long legs, as much as he loved to picture them wrapped around him, they would have to be removed. It was only right that the two of them should float here in this room, legless, but with a power that would shake this world. Once he had cut her lovely legs from her body, there would be no running away from him, ever. Not that she’d want to. How could she?

The latest of the subspace probes worried him. The Enemy was still out there, and somehow they had found his ship. At first, Raul had thought that the subspace probe must have come from the dead ship in the Bandelier cave, but a scan of all Rho Project data on that ship indicated that it showed no signs of activity, no energy fields whatsoever. Dr. Stephenson checked on it periodically but showed no active interest in the ship or its technology. As much as Raul hated the man, he had to admit that the deputy director was a brilliant scientist. If there was anything that warranted concern, Stephenson would be all over it.

But tonight was not about Stephenson, or the probe, or even the ship. Tonight was the first night in a long time that he would indulge his fondest desires. It had been so long since he had taken any time for self-pleasure that he could barely contain his excitement. And that excitement swept away the fatigue his round-the-clock work had inflicted upon him.

Pooling the ship’s new power, Raul felt himself floating upward in the stasis field until he stilled at the exact center of the chamber, drawing upon the nexus that would form the strongest and most stable worm fiber he had yet constructed, one that would let him follow Heather through the hours of the evening, from undressing in her bedroom to her bath and back again. Perhaps he might even be able to pass a breath through the fiber to ripple the fabric of her nightgown, a soft lover’s touch that would tickle her with excitement.

He smiled.
It’s all right, my lover. It’s okay to want without yet knowing who it is that you want.

The worm fiber formed in the air before him, the gravitational improbability swirling as he brought the incredible power of the Rho Ship to bear on it, stabilizing the instability, directing it according to his will.

The parlor inside the McFarland house swam into his vision, empty and dark, except for a small light from the kitchen. Moving his viewpoint into the kitchen, he found it empty, the light coming from the illuminated time display on the microwave oven. 7:14 p.m.

Odd. It wasn’t that late. The McFarlands should be at dinner. Where was everyone?

Raul moved the fiber upward until it passed through the ceiling into Heather’s room. Empty. The bed perfectly made. No sign of after-school activities, no tossed aside backpack, no books scattered on the desk. No clothes scattered about. What the hell?