Alien Taste (28 page)

“She's going to get herself killed.”

“Oh no, not a possible carrier of Prime's grandson. His Get would rather shoot themselves than hurt her. What a wonderful truth you wove to protect her. Then you finished it off by pledging us to her.”

“I did?” Ukiah shook his head. “I don't remember.”

“You did. We've kept an eye on her for you, but to be truthful, it's been a great satisfaction to watch her wreak her carnage on Hex.”

It occurred to Ukiah that the activities listed would take up days. “How long have I been out?”

“It's been two days. You woke up yesterday once, and now.”

“So, if the Ontongard got the memories to work for them, they have the remote key.”

“We don't think they'll be able to get the memories to work in that way. We've handled your memories here, and they've proved most stubborn at cooperating.”

“Yours wasn't a ball of laughs either.”

“But mine was built of fractured DNA. You could force it to break and submit. Your memories are seamless, unbreakable little buggers. While they like Hellena, even she can't take them in. We thought it
was because you were near at hand, but those we took out still refused.”

“So they don't work.”

“Not as memories.”

“What else would you use them for?”

“There are three other ways of using them that I can think of—and unfortunately they can try all three.”

“Oh God, I'm even afraid to ask.”

“The first is they could make Get out of them. One mouse could make one Get, and because you're a breeder the success rate would be close to guaranteed. Your Get receives your memory, but it would also have your will and determination. Hex would have to torture the information out of it.”

“Oh Jesus, no.” Ukiah started to get up and got pushed down again. “I can't let him do it.”

“It's been two days. If he's managed to grab a human, it's done. There's a chance that your love has harassed him too hard to give him time, but there's nothing you can do.”

“What's the second way?”

Rennie indicated his borrowed face. “A single mouse would provide enough information for a host of Ontongard to wear your guise.”

“Why the hell would they want to look like me? What good would that do them?”

Rennie tightened his hold on Ukiah's shoulder. “While your family might think you're dead, Hex knows you've survived what he did to you. He might seek hostages to lure you back to him.”

Ukiah nearly howled then, and fought Rennie's hold. “Let me up, damn it! Let me up!”

“I told you, your Lady of Steel made arrangements to move your family.” Rennie growled softly. “Now hold still. You're only hurting yourself.”

“What about Indigo? What about Max?”

“We're watching your love, don't worry about her.”

“And Max?”

Rennie took a deep breath and let it out, much the same way Max often did when he conceited a point that he didn't want to give in on. “We'll find your partner and protect him, cub. We're gathering the entire Pack to search out Hex. The Hell Hounds have already arrived. We can spare the manpower.”

“Promise me.”

“We'll find him. We'll protect him.”

Ukiah collapsed back into the bed. Darkness pulsed at the edge of his vision in time with his heartbeat. Much as he wanted to get up, he realized he couldn't. “What's the third way?”

“The third is to grow the mouse in a full human. It would take time, but Hex is used to having centuries to work with. It would give him a breeder to work with. It would be probably his best bet because it won't have your memories—thus your hard-won strength of character—and will be pliable in Hex's hands.”

“No memory?”

“To grow that much, the mouse would have to dump its memory storage. The more it grows, the less memory it has. To go from mouse to adult human, it would wipe out everything.”

“Is this just theory, or have you done this before?”

“We grew Bear back from a mouse. It took about twenty years. When he was full grown, we gave him Pack memory from one of his Gets, which was the best we could do.”

His life, Ukiah decided, had gotten very twisted lately.

There was a knock at the door. Rennie lifted his
head, nose flaring, eyes narrowing. Then the Pack leader relaxed. “That's Hellena with supplies.”

She had bought clothes for him to replace the blood-soaked tatters of his own clothes. She also brought bags of produce and cheese bought at the Strip district, and greasy bags of hot food from the Strip's food vendors.

“When you wake up, you should be back on your feet completely.” Rennie indicated the key ring with his eyes. “I've brought your bike back from Kittanning and parked it at the Kaufmann's garage, top level. Very nice bike.”

“Thanks.” Ukiah yawned deeply. “If you find one of my Gets, you're not going to hurt it, are you?”

“Of course not.” Hellena took away his plates and pushed him back into the bed. “They would be Pack. Pack takes care of Pack.” She tucked the blankets about his chin and kissed his forehead. “It keeps us human.”

 

He woke alone. Hellena and Rennie were gone, and all his mice too. For a moment he thought the two Pack members had taken the mice with them, then realized that, during his last sleep, they had all merged back with him. With a slightly fuzzy focus, he could remember all of the showdown between himself and the Ontongard.

He was stiff and sore, and covered with scars, but he was intact. He took a long hot shower. It was only as he dressed that he noticed the note written on the Hilton's stationery, in elegant cursive handwriting. Pack memory told him was Hellena's. It read: We fear the remote has fallen into the Ontongard's hands. We must find Hex or all will be lost. Take care.

The Ontongard had been to the farm.

He snatched up his key ring, wallet, and wireless phone and headed out to find his motorcycle. Minutes later he was streaking out of Pittsburgh toward home.

 

Dead dogs littered the front yard. Pools of blood marked where something larger had been killed and taken away. The house was abandoned, starkly empty, a shell of what it had been. There was no clue as to where his family had gone.

He climbed up into the tree house and checked the stash hole. Rennie had been there, an Ontongard, and Max. Who had been first? Rennie was obviously the last. Had Max come out to the tree house, following something Indigo told him, and found the key? Or had the Ontongard found the key, and Max come later?

Max's phone still didn't pick up. He flew back down I-79 to Pittsburgh, frantic now for Max.

 

The office had been trashed. He picked his way through the wreckage, trying not to cry. The grandfather clock had been smashed, the Frank Lloyd Wright desk overturned, the drawers broken. Paneling had been torn from the wall. He wandered up to his room and found all his clothes on the floor, the inside of the closet torn apart. He picked up one of his tracking T-shirts. It had been torn out of spite. He went through his whole collection of tracking T-shirts until he found two intact. He took off his stiff new shirt and put one of the black T-shirts on.

The four garage doors stood open and all of the vehicles were gone. The gun safe was empty except for Max's phone, its low battery message flashing. The floor safe had been pried up and carried away.

He collapsed onto the front porch and called
Indigo. Her voice message system picked up, stated that Agent Zheng was not taking calls, and hung up. He called directory assistance, got the FBI front desk number, and put a call in.

“FBI.”

“Can I speak with Special Agent Zheng?”

“I'm sorry, Special Agent Zheng is not taking calls. Is there anyone else that can help you?”

“This is her boyfriend. Is there any way I can please talk to her?”

“Sir, I have had people call claiming to be every possible member of her family and ask for her. If you want an interview with her, I suggest you try the public relations office. Do you want me to connect you?”

“No.”

He hung up and noticed that the last three days of newspapers were on the porch. He picked up the one following the night he was killed. It unrolled to a quarter-page picture of Indigo holding his body. “FBI Agent Saved, Rescuer Killed.”

God, what a nightmare. The world about to be invaded, his family missing, Max missing, Indigo unreachable.

He regarded his phone. He had fifty-seven numbers in memory. The first three were home, the office, and Max. Number four was Chino.

Chino answered on the third ring. “Hey hey hey—who the hell is this? You're using Ukiah's phone.”

“Chino, it's Ukiah. I need to find Max.”

“This is a trick, isn't it? I saw what happened out at Ukiah's moms'.”

“What happened, Chino?”

“Hey, Ukiah is dead. I saw him. I kissed his soul farewell. The man is dead.”

“Chino, look, okay, let's forget who I am. Do you know that the office has been trashed?”

“Huh?” There was a pause as Chino missed the change in subject and needed to backtrack mentally. “Max warned me to stay away from it.”

“Well, the place is a wreck. The bad guys came and went. If you can't believe I'm Ukiah, can you at least call a locksmith and get the front door fixed? It's busted and standing open. See if you can get a carpenter to fix the paneling. The damn bastards tore it off the wall. Hire a maid to clean the kitchen. They dumped all the food out three days ago, and it reeks. Might as well stock it again too. Get a pen and I'll give you the petty fund's PIN number and leave the ATM card for you to pick up.” He gave him the PIN number and reached back and stuck the ATM card in the mail slot. “It's in the inside mailbox. And can you send someone out to my moms'—Ukiah's moms'—and get the dogs buried. There's a rock about a hundred feet north of the kennels. That's where we buried the other dogs that died. Can you get someone to bury the dogs back there?”

There was long silence, and then a frightened “Ukiah, that's you, isn't it?”

“Yes, Chino, it's me. It's hard to explain, but has anything about me ever been normal?”

“No, man.”

“Have you seen Max? His phone is here at the office. I've been trying for three days to get ahold of him. All the cars are gone too.”

“I don't know shit about the cars. I was with him in Wheeling when you called. We flew back from West Virginia and still got there far too late. You were cold, oh so stone cold. Shit man, you were a good kid, no one should have took you down like that. Agent Zheng said that you were taken down
because you had something that you'd hidden and wouldn't cough it up. Said you had hidden it in a tree, and just like that Max had to leave for the farm.”

Max had the key. Ukiah closed his eyes and wondered if this was a good thing or a bad thing. “What happened at my moms'?”

“You don't know?”

“Not a clue, except there are dead dogs everywhere.”

“FBI scrambled a team out to your place to move out your folks. They were giving the wolves one last run when a car pulled up. Six men got out. One was wearing your face. Your moms almost went out to him when the wolves took him down, tore him to shreds. You know what they say, can't fool animals. That started a gunfight.”

“What happened to my moms?”

“The FBI came out on top. Six-zip. Thanks to the wolves. They got around to looking close to the one wearing your face. The build was wrong, you know, wrong size shoes, wrong size pants, slightly too tall. Creepy shit.”

“Did Max go out to the farm soon after that?”

“Yeah. We hit it right after the mop-up of the bodies. No one had told your moms anything yet. It was all ‘do this, do that,' with no why. Max told them about you. They took it hard and then the FBI took them away.”

“But they're safe, they're not hurt, right?”

“They're fine, man. You know that Max wouldn't take another step until he was sure they were okay.”

“Yeah. Did he go out to the tree house?”

“Is it in that great big tree out back?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure did. Was that where you hid the thing? In a tree house?”

“Yeah. I couldn't tell them where it was, not with it on top of my folks.”

“I hear you. Look, don't worry about the office or the dogs. I'll take care of it. I'll put out the word that you're back and looking for Max.”

“Thanks, Chino.”

“Take care of yourself, kid. A lot of people love you.”

Number five was Janey's home phone and she didn't answer. Her answering machine picked up and Ukiah left a stilted awkward message.