One hundred and five. One hundred and six. Another scream, this one masculine. She couldn’t tell who. Probably one of the cousins or whoever was with Tabby. God, she wished Cain would come back. She was ready for round two.
No more screaming all through the one hundreds, all through the two hundreds. Kati was so good. She didn’t get up, didn’t lose count, didn’t fall asleep.
At five hundred and thirty six, Riffer’s CD ran out of music. No one started it up again.
Eight hundred, and Kati got up to pee, keeping a steady count as she crouched in the bushes and keeping her eyes tight shut to hold to the spirit of Cain’s command.
The nine hundreds were the longest, and she kept getting distracted by little sounds—trees creaking, leaves fluttering, bird calls. Where were all the big sounds, the people sounds?
One thousand. Kati got up and wandered back up the path to the clearing. Owen and Corky were still in the grass, sound asleep where they’d finished, still head-to-toe, although Corky had rolled onto her back at least. Her arm was dangling out into the path. Kati had to step over it.
Nothing moved in the clearing. The boombox was silent. Riffer was lying on his back just staring at the sky. Danny and one of the cousins were stretched out and stone drunk nearby. They’d torn their legs up in some blackberry bushes or something. Pretty bad, too. They’d gotten blood all the way up into their hair.
“Guys?” Kati called. She got a beer out of the cooler and squeezed the top off. There was no splashing by the river, no nothing. And Cain and his two girlfriends were gone.
“He’ll come back,” she said. She sat down on the party log and drank her beer. It was a really dead party. Summer sucked.
D
aria spent the morning alone and filled her empty hours with cleaning. The obvious stuff first—sweeping, mopping, vacuuming—which led to the less obvious stuff—washing the cupboard faces, scrubbing the kick plates, wiping down Grendel’s food mat—and finally to the ridiculously obscure stuff—polishing doorknobs and switchplates. She was dusting her DVDs when the depression caught up to her and she stopped where she was, right in the middle of the Lord of the Rings collection, and sat down on the sofa.
The silence of the house was claustrophobic. She’d been living here alone for six years. Why hadn’t she ever noticed how claustrophobic silence was? She picked up the TV remote and switched it on.
It was a news channel, which was refreshing for the second it took to absorb what she was seeing. A young girl, maybe in her twenties, in the midst of about a thousand reporters, was being taken up some steps into a very official-looking building. One of the journalists, a fella who looked even younger than his disheveled subject, thrust his microphone out and shouted, “Miss Markham, Miss Markham, did you do it?”
‘Sure, fella, like she’s going to admit it on national television,’ Daria thought heavily.
“I guess so,” the girl said, at virtually the same time. The clamor of voices died at once and cameras started clicking madly away. The girl looked dazedly around her, oblivious to the two men in suits who were frantically hissing at her. “I dreamed that bible guy came to me. Maybe he told me to.”
The screen cut to a nice, neat newsroom, with a nice, neat newscaster behind a desk. “Markham’s lawyer has not yet indicated the line of his defense, but the District Attorney’s office has stated that they will be seeking the death penalty if she is convicted. Authorities in the area surrounding Sugarush have issued a warning on the dangers of drug abuse following the killings. Suspect Katrina Markham was allegedly under the influence of alcohol and other drugs when she was discovered with the bodies, including gamma-hydroxymethlyene, colloquially known as Baked Alaska, a powerful hallucinogen known for its euphoric effects.”
Just another sterling example of how Earth didn’t need an alien like E’Var to make its murder quota. Daria started surfing restlessly through the channels.
An euphoric hallucinogen. Tagen hadn’t said what this drug E’Var was making did, but seeing as its main ingredient came from the pleasure center of the human hypothalamus, an euphoric wasn’t out of the question. She considered asking him, but abandoned the idea. Even if she knew how to put the question in words he might understand, what would be the point of knowing? It didn’t have anything to do with her, and it would only put more pressure on Tagen to go out and find his fugitive.
More pressure was something Tagen did not need right now. He looked so much worse than yesterday. Oh, he was moving around more—due in large part, she was sure, to her forcing food and water on him whether he wanted it or not—but he looked horrible. Despite everything he said (and the increasingly hostile way in which he said it), it was impossible for Daria to look at him and not see a dying man.
Right on cue, she heard his door open. His step was slow and disturbingly heavy, and his claws scraped at the walls as he made his way to the bathroom. Daria watched the clock on the wall above the TV. It took him two minutes and ten seconds to walk ten feet. The door closed. A moment later, the shower came on.
She fought hard against the urge to go up and check in on him. He wouldn’t appreciate it. He might need it, but that didn’t matter. The more he needed it, the less he’d appreciate her help. She knew all about the paradoxical effects of pride.
But maybe it wasn’t that simple. Her mind kept going back to the look on his face when she’d asked if there was anything she could do to help him, and to the sound of his ragged voice telling her that she must never touch him, that yes, he would hurt her. These were things that should be filling her with panic. God knew, she’d freaked out more over a whole lot less since he’d come here, but all she felt was sorry…and sorry wasn’t enough.
Daria refocused on the TV, scrolling down through blips and bits of half-glimpsed images until she came to the movie channels. There, she slowed, brooding on the sound-bites Hollywood fed her while her mind occupied itself. Guns and explosions and snappy retorts and trenchcoats and car chases and sex.
Sex.
It wasn’t a big deal. It really wasn’t. She didn’t have to get all edged up like this. Because it was very simple, really. He needed help and she could help him. She couldn’t fix her air conditioner or change the weather, but she could sleep with him and he’d get better.
She’d had a whole night to consider it. A whole night and all of today to think about his hand on her back that day in the kitchen, so cautious. A night and a day to ask herself just what she was afraid of and to realize that when all was said and done, it really wasn’t him. Not even now, when he was probably at his very worst. It wasn’t him.
The water shut itself off, and Daria had time to channel all the way back up to the news before the bathroom door even opened. Tagen came downstairs, moving slow and climbing the banister in reverse, putting one hand in front of the other with a mountaineer’s caution until he stood unsteadily on the floor. He glanced into the living room, his eyes lingering on her before flicking to the TV. The newscasters were discussing with great seriousness the problem of rising gas prices. Tagen said, “Use plasma focus fusion cells,” in a dull voice and then shuffled away toward the kitchen.
She let him go, huddling on the couch and rubbing legs which felt too weak to hold her. In her mind, she heard the words she knew she’d use repeating and repeating themselves in a calm and sensible one-sided argument. She would not allow herself to imagine his reaction.
Something thudded heavily in the kitchen. Not heavy enough to be his body falling to the floor, but the sound was still alarming enough to force her to act, now, before she lost her nerve.
She stood up, smoothing her shirtfront over her waist and thinking of his hands and how they would feel on her bare skin. Knowing that she might just find out in the very near future made her feel flushed and faint-headed, but in fairness, not all of it was dread. The wholly dreadful part lay in imagining how she’d have to bring the matter up, but like everything else in life, it would probably get easier once she’d actually started.
She walked down the hall, her hands in nervous fists at her sides, silently moving her lips though her opening argument. He’d say yes or he’d say no, it was really just that simple, but she’d reached the point where she couldn’t live with herself just ignoring what was happening to him.
Tagen was sitting at the little table in the corner, in the seat he’d turned into his own, slumped over with his head on his arms. He was bare to the waist, positively glowing with sweat. His hair clung in wet lengths to his skin, outlining the precise dimensions of his skull. The day that she’d first caught him coming into Heat in her kitchen, the day he’d only looked a little sick, seemed like it had happened to someone in a past life. It was all of five days ago.
“Tagen…” Daria gripped the kitchen doorway for strength and took a deep breath. On any planet, the next words she was about to say were bound to be ominous ones. “Can we talk?”
He didn’t move, and for one awful second, she thought he was dead. Despite all his assurances that he could not be killed by the awful strain that ravaged his body, his heart had given out and he was dead.
And then he stirred, raising his head as though it weighed a thousand pounds. He shifted to meet her eyes, knuckling sweat from his brow. He was having difficulty focusing. “Daria,” he said, his voice a croak. Then he covered his eyes with both his hands and slumped forward once more.
“It’s not working, is it?” she asked. She got the bag of peas from the freezer and laid it on the back of his neck.
A groan, rusty as a barn nail, tore out of him as he leaned into her. There was agony in his face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand, placed it over the peas, and then went back to the freezer for more ice. “I really thought it would help.”
“It does.” He accepted an ice cube and rubbed it over his chest, his teeth bared. “I thank you for thinking of it. And for taking me to get it. I know it was difficult for you.”
She didn’t know how to feel, seeing him in this state and hearing him half-apologize for making her drive him to the Luv-A-Lot’s. She took a breath to nerve herself and said, “It doesn’t help enough. Tagen, you’re sick all the time. You’re not drinking enough. You’re not eating at all. You’re not sleeping very well. And you’re not getting anywhere in your search.”
“I know.” He pulled the peas away from his neck and placed them on his chest instead. “But it does help. It is a matter of an hour’s effort, not four. For that alone, it is worth it.”
Daria sat at the table and took Tagen’s hand, squeezing until he dragged his eyes up and looked at her. “This can’t continue,” she said.
“It must.” He met her gaze tiredly and without emotion. “I will not leave Earth without E’Var, and so there is no choice.”
“Yes.” Daria was surprised at how steady her voice was, at how calmly she was able to sit and face him. “Yes, there is.”
It seemed that he looked at her for a long time before understanding bled into him. His hawk’s eyes narrowed, very slowly. “I do not know what you mean,” he said quietly. ‘Stop’ was hammered into every word.
“I’ve been thinking,” she continued doggedly. “And if I understand correctly what this…Heat thing does to you…then I think I can help you.”
His eyes shut and he turned away, his mouth tightening to a thin line. “No,” he said. “I will not force you.”
That was oddly encouraging to her. It was ‘No, I will not force you,’ not ‘No, that won’t help’. Daria took another deep breath. “Tagen—”
“No!” He shoved his chair back and rose, letting the peas fall with a smushy sound to the floor. “I have disgraced myself since this mission began, but there are still things I will not do!”
She had been ready for some protest, but this vehement denial of her offer shook her. She looked down at her hands and made them lie flat on the tabletop. “Is it me?” she asked finally.
“You?” He backed up a step and stared at her. “Is it
you
?!” he repeated.
“Am I…so…” She closed her eyes. “Ugly…”
“No!”
He could not have sounded more aghast. It helped.
She looked up at him again. “Then why not?” she asked. “Why not, if you need me and I say it’s all right?”
“Because it is not all right,” he retorted, his voice rising. “And saying it will never make it so. Mere
days
ago, you sat just where you are sitting now and told me you knew what I would have you do and you could not do it!”
“I—”
“No!” he said curtly. “I have done enough to hurt you. I will not inflict this Heat on you as well. It is
enough
, Daria
. It is goddamn well enough
!” He swung around and struck out blindly, leaving a crater in her wall where his fist found a target.
It was the first time she had ever heard him really swear in her language. She looked back down at the table for a second or two, listening to his ragged breath as he pulled himself back under control. Finally, she got up and crossed over to the sink. She wet a clean dishtowel and brought it back to him.
He flinched when she took his hand and then stood immobile and unspeaking as she dabbed at his knuckles.
“I apologize,” he said quietly, “for breaking your wall.”
“I always wanted to hang a picture there, anyway,” she said, shrugging.
“I frightened you.”
“Big deal. I’m always frightened.” She tried to smile and then had to bite her cheeks hard to keep from crying. It was several minutes more before she could trust herself to speak. “But I’m not scared of you, Tagen. And believe me, I’ve tried to be.”
He didn’t smile. Not even a little bit. She could feel his eyes burning down on her as she focused all her attention on his hand.
She said, “You came here to do a job, Tagen. And you’ve been trying so hard to get it done. And you’ve been slipping a little more every single day. Because of the weather. And that’s…that’s a stupid reason, Tagen. That’s the worst reason in the world I can think of to let someone like E’Var get away.”