Alien Taste (27 page)

Hex turned away. “Burn them both.”

Ukiah flailed on the floor. He had to save Indigo.
“No.” His voice wasn't much more than a croak. “You can't hurt her.”

“I can't?” He lifted up the shotgun to point at Indigo.

The words were impossible to form. “She's carrying,” he gasped for a breath and forced the rest, “my seed. She's my mate. I'm Prime's son.”

Pack memory translated the disbelief, then dismayed revelation flashing across the alien's features. He wiped blood from Ukiah's face and tasted it. “You're Prime's brat, a God damn breeder and I just blasted you full of holes!”

Out in the night, a wolf howl lifted, deep and angry.

Hex screamed with anger, turned, and shot one of his own Get. He emptied the shotgun into the hapless man, then used the gun like a club. Finally he flung the gun aside.

He stooped down beside Ukiah. “You're going to help me take this world.” He reached down and plucked up a squirming ball of fur. It was, Ukiah realized distantly, one of his mice memories already forming from the blood pooling about him. “One way or another.” Hex shoved the mouse into a pocket and reached down, snatching up two more. “Bring them both. Hurry.”

There was an explosion at the door that Ukiah had come through earlier. Hex glanced toward the noise and fled in the other direction, running before the Pack.

The remaining Get scurried to free them. Ukiah could only lie and watch them fumble with the blood-slick links. He felt like he was under water, trying to suck air through a layer of water. The pain was gone and there remained just a growing coldness. Things seemed to be traveling away from him,
as though he was slowly falling down a well. Dimly he was aware that they had undone Indigo's chains, and that she fought them silently, savagely. Then the Pack was there and Hex's Get became instantly dead bodies strewn haphazardly on the floor.

“Go after Hex,” Rennie snarled. “Run him down and kill him.”

The Pack went, nose to the wind to catch the trail. Indigo came and gathered him into her arms, a furnace of heat against his cold skin. There were tears in her eyes, turning them to pools of mercury. Rennie crouched beside Ukiah. “Cub?”

Ukiah fought for the surface of the well. “I told Him—I told Him—who I am—Indigo my mate—with my seed. Keep her safe.”

Rennie touched his bloody cheek.
I'll keep her safe. You can stop fighting and rest.

Ukiah looked over to Indigo and lost himself in her eyes and died.

Monday, June 22, 2004
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Ukiah came awake with the thunder of guns echoing through his head, as if the report had been stuck in his ears until he was aware enough to register it. It faded to oppressive silence. He listened for some time to his ragged breathing and stumbling heartbeat. Eventually they strengthened and steadied, becoming monotonous.

Then he noticed he was cold, weak, and naked. He opened his eyes. Smooth white porcelain pressed against his cheek and filled his vision. He could see a sliver of the room beyond the wall of porcelain. An unfamiliar bathroom spread out around him, smelling of disinfectant and enclosed air.

What am I doing here?

It was his first conscious thought but there were no answers forthcoming. He remembered sitting in his moms' kitchen, Max about to serve him eggs—then nothing—not even choppy flashes of unattached memories. His mind had been wiped clean. No clue remained why he was sleeping naked in a strange bathtub.

What happened to me?

There was movement and three black mice scurried along the lip of the bathtub to his face. One, braver than the other two, came up to rest tiny paws on his nose and eyed him closely.

Are you mine?
he wondered.
Are you memories I lost? What happened?

Suddenly he felt a wave of mice pour across his body, heard their tiny feet magnified by sheer numbers into a weak rumble. They crowded onto the edge to press close to his face, weaving and bobbing. Bursts of images careened through his mind.

Flashes of pain, of an alien's face, of the smell of Indigo, like flashbulbs, exploded across his senses and were gone. He latched firmly on one thought and moaned in agony. Indigo! The Ontongard had Indigo!

He waved weakly at the mice, trying to get them out of his way. They fled to the other side of the tub. He clawed at the slick surface, finding all his muscles weirdly weak. It was as if the Pack had gassed him again. Had they?

He got up on the edge of the bathtub. Hundreds of small objects he hadn't noticed before rained off him, pinging off the ceramic floor. He caught one after it dribbled to a stop. It was a tiny gray metal ball, smaller than a pea in size. He frowned at it until enlightenment dawned on him. They were shotgun pellets. The Ontongard had obviously used a shotgun on him, many times.

He toppled onto the floor. The bath mat had a big H with Hilton written through it. He could see into the next room now, obviously a hotel room with the standard two beds, chairs, and a TV set.

He was at the Hilton?

Someone moved in the next room. He recognized the person as Pack before they came into view.
Hellena stopped in the bathroom door, looking slightly bemused at him.

“You're awake.” She lifted him with surprising ease, carried him like a child into the next room. One of the beds was already turned down. She laid him in it and tucked the sheets about his chest.

Although he couldn't see them, he was aware of the wave of mice following after them. Their numbers finally impressed on him the fact that he had been hurt badly.

“I need to find Indigo,” he whispered to Hellena.

“You've already found her,” Hellena soothed. “You were a knight without armor, riding to the rescue. You saved her, and now you need to heal. You're feather light from all the blood you lost.”

The mice joined him on the bed, their thoughts on food. He could feel their hunger along with his own. “I'm starving.”

She laughed and picked up the phone. “Hello? Yes, this is Suite 320. Can I still get breakfast? Good, I want four of the works. Pancakes, sausage, orange juice, anything that looks like breakfast, please bring it up. Also, can I have a plate of cheese? Cubed. Thank you.” She hung up and smiled at him in her maternal way. “There. It will be up in a few minutes.”

He looked around the room. “Why are we here?”

“We're hiding.” She tweaked the blankets closer to his chest. “Hex now knows that you exist and that you alone know the location of the remote key. He would kill to get ahold of you.”

Remote key? What was a remote key? Pack memory called it up, and he realized it was the strange object he had found in Schenley Park. The implications cascaded down on him. The key was only good if the ship had survived. If the ship had survived,
then the sleepers could be woken. If the sleepers woke, Earth was doomed. He shuddered at the casualness with which he had slipped the key into his stash hole.

“You'll be cold until you eat.” Hellena misunderstood his shudder. “Your body used most of its energy up healing itself. You're not completely healed yet, but your body needed to let you wake up to take fuel in.”

Ukiah indicated the mice with his eyes. “What about them?”

“When you're completely healed and they are fully fed, you can take them back in. If you tried now, the system's wide energy drain would kill you again.”

“Again? I was dead?”

She shrugged slightly. “It happens. You were dead in Schenley Park when Rennie and I first found you.”

Obviously I have to rethink some of my past.
How many times he had woken up cold and starving with no clue as to what had just happened? The first had been with Joe Gary, with the rifle hole that had seemed like it should have gone straight through him, but hadn't. There had been the motorcycle accident last winter, the one he had never told anyone about, waking alongside the road with his neck hurting as if he'd broken it. There had been the blankness of his early childhood. Had he been killed, left for dead, only to revive with no memory at all?

He moaned as it suddenly hit him; if he had rescued Indigo and then died, Indigo would think he was dead forever. She would tell Max. Max would tell his moms.

“I need to call my moms, and Max, and Indigo. I need to let them know I'm okay.”

Hellena caught his hand as he reached for the phone. “You're not okay, not yet. A kitten could kill
you by just playing with your mice. When you're dead, you're helpless. Wait.”

“They think I'm dead.”

“And they've thought that way for a full day now. A few more hours won't add or subtract from that first blow of grief.”

He considered, then shook his head. “My moms and Indigo, yeah, I think they can take it. I'm afraid for Max. I'm afraid that he'll blame himself and do something stupid. Please.”

Her dark eyebrows drew together in worry, but finally she nodded. She dialed the number and held the phone to his ear. Max's wireless phone rang three times and then dropped Ukiah into the voice mail. He entered Max's security code and worked through the stored messages. Most of them were from Kraynak, abrupt requests for a return call. The last hinted that Max wasn't even carrying his phone. Ukiah deleted all traces of his call from Max's system and exited.

“I thought those things were supposed to be more secure,” Hellena murmured as she hung up.

“If you have the security code, then you can do anything with them.”

“Do you know the code from overhearing it, or did your partner tell it to you?”

He looked at her, surprised. “If he trusts me with his life, why wouldn't he trust me with his privacy?”

They heard a knock on the door of the adjoining room. Hellena leaned down and produced a shotgun from under the bed. She undid the locks on the bedroom door, stalked out to the adjoining sitting room. She stood for a moment silent beside the door. Ukiah found himself trying to sense what stood beyond the far door. Pack? Ontongard? Human?

Hellena judged it to be human, because she called softly, “Who is it?”

“Room service. You ordered some food.”

“Wait a minute.” Hellena tucked the shotgun behind a chair beside the door and came to shut the door to the bedroom. Ukiah could hear her undo all the security locks and chains and opened the door. “Just leave the cart, if you can.”

“Okay. When you're done, just push it outside. Please sign here.”

A moment later the outside door closed and Ukiah relaxed. Hellena redid the locks, pushed the cart into the bedroom, and locked that door too. The smell of food was maddening. The mice abandoned him in a wave to rush the cart. She laughed and set the dish of cubed cheese on the floor for them.

“You know,” Ukiah tried to sit up and failed, “as a private detective hired to find someone, I usually check hotels first.”

“Humans use hotels.” Hellena helped him to sit and stuffed pillows behind him. “The Pack normally hole up in abandoned buildings or head out to a national park.”

“Why aren't we, then?”

“Necessity. The rest of the Pack are looking for the Ontongard. I couldn't take care of you alone elsewhere. Here I have running hot water, food delivery,” she set a plate of pancakes down in front of him with a flourish, “and, if necessary, a security team who will view me as right, because I'm the paying customer. The suite gives me two sets of locked doors they have to get through, and being off the ground floor means they won't come in through the window.”

Ukiah attacked the pancakes as he considered the slight Pack woman. Unsaid, but implied, was the fact that she was the last line of defense before the Ontongard reached him. She seemed in her late
twenties, but she appeared early in Rennie's memories, making her at least a hundred. There was no clue as to how she had been made into Pack, she had just appeared at a Gathering, awkward and shy. To give Rennie credit, he had loved her on first sight, and had stayed true to her through the course of a century. Memory led to memory, and Ukiah was suddenly recalling what it was like to make love to her.

Blushing, he devoted himself to the sausages, and recalled only his own memories.

He didn't finish the breakfast, although he made impressive inroads on the four meals. At some point he was chewing—and then he was asleep.

 

Ukiah woke with a stranger standing over his bed.

He yelped in surprise and tried to fling himself aside. Steel-strong hands caught hold of him, clamping over his mouth, smothering an instinctual growl.

“Hush, cub, we don't want to bother the neighbors. It's just me.” It was Rennie's soft brogue, his scent, his pack awareness pressed against Ukiah, but it wasn't his face.

Rennie?

Aye, cub, it's me. I'm wearing a guise, nothing more.

The words
guise
and
Rennie
connected to spill out borrowed memories. A shearing pain as chin and cheek bones rearranged themselves under flesh to copy another person's appearance. The taste of blood that provided the pattern to be copied. Of looking into a mirror and being startled by one's own appearance.

Ukiah studied the broad Asian face, complete with almond-shaped eyes, and nodded. Rennie released him and settled on the edge of the bed, dropping keys in a loud jangle onto the nightstand.

“Why do you look like that?”

“Just being careful not to lead anyone back to you,” Rennie said. “If we'd left with your loved ones, you'd be six foot under right now, but we don't truly have time to keep an eye on you ourselves right now.”

Ukiah frowned, momentarily confused. Oh yes, Hellena said he'd been killed, not that he remembered it happening yet. “So why are you here?”

“Where's the remote key?”

“I put it where it should be safe,” he hedged, not wanting the Pack at the farm.

“Hex took three of your memories. Any place
you
know of is no longer safe.”

Ukiah sat up in a bolt of terror—and fainted. A few moments later he woke again, aware that there had been a dilation of darkness. He started to sit up again. “My moms and sister, I have to warn them.”

Rennie pinned him to the bed with frightening ease. Ukiah hadn't realized how weak he still was. “We warned your one true love, and she was making arrangements to protect your family even before we took your body. We take care of our own, Cub, and that includes their families.”

“It's in my tree house. There's a knothole that I've used over the years as a treasure chest. I put it there.”

Rennie flashed white, straight teeth. “Ahhhh, the tree house. Your love told us that they had only gotten ‘in the tree' out of you. With all of Schenley Park to choose from, I'm sure that Hex is howling in frustration. Your love seemed confused by the reference. Would your family be too?”

“They would know. Max would too. There's The Tree for me, and then all the rest in the world. Indigo has been in the tree house, but I didn't explain how important it is in my life. I should. She should know these kinds of things.”

Rennie laughed and tousled Ukiah's hair. “If you had to have a woman, at least you picked one with steel in her gut. She wept for you, and then turned her cold vengeance on those that hurt you. She ordered for Tribot to be seized. She's found two of Hex's dens already—broke them open and all the Get have been killed in gunfights. Word is that she's tracing all Tribot's financial backers and having the IRS go over them with a fine-tooth comb. Hex will be sorry he ever woke her anger.”