He stopped himself there. Whatever Bridger was, he was no fool. And given his extensive background in the military and police work, plus his mystery time somewhere else, he didn’t figure him to be in much trouble.
He just hoped he didn’t need any of the things he learned in that
mystery
place. That could get real messy, and the paperwork was a real bitch.
He had just settled back when the two men came out of the woods at a run. A fast set of hand signals and the men jumped onto the running boards and drew their weapons. The drivers started forward slowly, still maintaining as close to a stealth mode as possible. Either way this went, it was going to be over soon.
The Chrliti fought to re-orient itself. Having been ripped out of his host had staggered him, the collision with the silver disc had stunned him and, now, the separation from any source of bioelectric energy was slowly killing him.
It wasn’t death, as we or any other corporeal would know it, but rather a dilution of his very being. Without the bioelectric fields of a human to act as cohesion, the gravitational forces of the planet and its multitude of interacting fields would act like currents in the ocean on a drop of oil, tearing apart the forces that held him together. In minutes, his energy would be so low, he would lose cohesion and simply begin to fade away. Long before that, when he reached a point of saturation, where his body was infiltrated by too much of the natural radiations of Earth, all he was, all he ever had been, would be gone.
He had only minutes before he reached that point by the time he was finally able to move again, a side effect of the Taser’s higher-than-normal amperage. Now, he had to stretch out his senses and see where his former host and his assailant were. It had been no surprise to find his attacker in the room with the girl, in keeping with his role as her rescuer.
What he found strange was that he had taken his host with him. It was almost as if he was trying to keep the two of them apart. His reaction to the thought was as close to laughter as he could get. Until he thought about the fact that he couldn’t possibly know about him, and therefore, there was another reason for his action. His problem was that if he did not know about him, his actions made no sense. There was no reason to move him into the other room. It would have been far easier to cuff him and leave him there. He doubted there was any truth to the ruse he was unable to get a signal on his cell phone. He had begun to doubt that he was alone in the first place, at least until…
He stopped then, fighting to remember. The silver disc. He fought to remember what he knew about the device. He had never really been one to follow primitive devices, but he had learned some of the technology behind those kinds of devices simply because it was something he could use in his pursuit of his particular brands of pleasure. In that research, he realized that he had never seen one that used a silver disc for any reason.
He was unsure what it meant, but the implications of it caused him a very correct emotion that he shared with humanity. Fear! There was, like the movement of his host to the other room, no reason for its presence there other than one. An impossible one! Humans were not able to detect his people, yet this one used a device that had no other use than to stun and disorientate one of the Chrliti. If he knew that…
Now, his fear magnified exponentially as he thought of what it could mean. And just as quickly, it faded. Regardless of what he knew or didn’t know, there was no way to prevent him from reestablishing his link with his host. And even if that link was no longer possible, there was still
him
as well as the girl. Even if he had allies coming, he would be safe once he was inside a host.
Given the apparent knowledge this human had displayed of his people, the most logical choice for that host was this strange human so intent on rescuing this female. Even if he were a poor candidate, it would at least give him access to how he knew how to create that accursed stunner.
He drifted upward then, intent on returning to the soothing confines of a host and assimilating the new facts he was finding. Given the seriousness of his situation at the moment, he had to prioritize. He had his normal sensory inputs back now, unhindered by a human host’s limitations, he spread his senses to find out what was happening in the area. Unfettered, it was simple to detect his former host, his victim and his attacker. He still wondered about the silver in the Taser and what it implied, but that was secondary or less at the moment. He could feel the fields of this planet tearing at his being and knew he had no time to waste.
Quickly, he drifted upward. He could move faster but the effort would accelerate his deterioration. He used what energy he had left to maintain his integrity as he floated toward the unconscious body of his former host. It was only after he got closer that he realized something was wrong. Although he could sense the energy fields he wanted, he could not even begin the process of integrating with
any
of them. It was as if they were already occupied, yet he could sense no other Chrliti, just this human with his mysteriously extensive knowledge of his people.
Losing his battle with the environment, he suddenly became aware of the fact that he was entering the final stages of decline. Already, his sensory inputs were beginning to
tunnel,
losing the edges of his inputs to dissolution. His situation was rapidly becoming critical.
Panic began to grab at him then. Desperately, he began to cast his senses about, searching for a source of bioenergy he could exploit. In desperate times, his people could use a large animal such as a cow or even a large dog as a host. Their fields were seldom powerful enough to be influenced, but they were enough to allow the occupant to survive.
The trouble was that his range was deteriorating as well, and with his weakened condition, he could hardly reach beyond the confines of the house to search for even one of those.
The panic deepened. He tried again to penetrate whatever the barrier was that was preventing him from entering any of the humans there, failing even worse this time as his strength began to fade as well. He was seconds from
death
at this point.
* * * *
Charlie noted the approach of their opponent. He knew that in most cases, his people truly had no concept of good and evil, having evolved past that point eons ago. To them, there was no right or wrong, just their survival.
Of late though, he had noticed there was a growing faction among his people, himself included, that not only began to rediscover that facet of their intellectual character, they had found that they enjoyed it on levels they had long forgotten. To Charlie, his own choice was not an issue. He had long ago found he liked to help other sentient beings. To him, it was his own reward.
So as not to think there was no pleasure in his existence, however, he also enjoyed the segments of input that he could share with Terry when he enjoyed life. Good food, sex, any form of gratification that Terry enjoyed, anything that caused Terry pleasure, Charlie could experience to some degree. Given that he was unused to the intensity of the emotions though, Charlie needed to access only part of the total depth of the emotion to feel more than he needed to. It struck him as being simple logic not to let himself get too far into the well of human emotion for fear of becoming one of those of his people that became, for lack of a better word, addicted to the feelings they experienced, albeit second hand.
Since most of his people were unable to interact with their human hosts, relatively few had the level of ability to influence their host actively. Even in the most extreme cases, they still couldn’t make a person act contrary to their nature. While they could suggest a host try something new, the host had to enjoy it enough to repeat it.
This one was one of the ones that had gone too far down the path. He had found a host that suited his desires or, perhaps, had molded him into what he wanted through suggestion and manipulation. In either case, he was, in Charlie’s opinion, the cause of all this misery and too far into enjoying himself at the expense of both the host and humanity in general.
In short, he had to go.
Openly panicked now, the Chrliti tried to infiltrate each of the humans in the room in turn, failing at each attempt. His
body
slammed into each of them to no avail as Charlie’s presence blocked not only Terry from his invasion, but also the others as well, as long as Terry maintained physical contact with both of them.
Terrified now, the Chrliti slammed into its former host, again and again. There was no impact, but each one jarred the creature nonetheless.
Finally, weakening faster now, the creature latched onto its former host and tried to seep into him, fighting frantically to penetrate his neural network. The continual contact allowed Charlie the first chance he had had to talk to examine it before it noticed his presence. And since Charlie was in contact with the body the creature sought to inhabit, and the creature was not inhabiting anyone, he found he could talk to it directly.
There were no surprises. He decided quickly that this was just another of his people, seduced by the pleasures of a world most of his people would have thought so primitive as to be unworthy of thought until relatively recently in their history. He decided with equal alacrity that the creature’s dispersion would be the best thing for all concerned.
In the language of the Chrliti, Charlie faced his brethren and began to berate him for his choices.
“There was no reason for this. There was no need for it. You could have existed without this. You could have done great things with your ability to contact that human. Instead, you let yourself be distracted by the simple pleasures this world offered, and then, in the ultimate act of selfishness, you found a perversion that suited you and exploited it to the point of being its own crime.”
The Chrliti cried out in terror, dissolution beginning to undermine his thought processes.
“You can help me! You can let me back into my host! Please! You can have your host turn him over to their authorities and—”
“And what? You think me a fool? Once you have regained your strength, you will begin searching for another to play your games with. The time it may take you is immaterial.”
The Chrliti implored him piteously.
“You cannot allow one of your own kind to die! There are too few of us! When we are gone…”
Terry felt the grin Charlie expressed even though he could not hear their conversation. It struck him there was a hint of sadism in it.
“When we are gone, we will be no more. Then, the universe will see how it does without us. I, on the other hand, am most anxious to see how it does without you.”
With that, Charlie called up a portion of Terry’s own massive bioelectric field, wielding it almost like a sword, jamming the electrons between the host and the Chrliti’s body, forcing him to relinquish his last hold on cohesion. As he watched, the malevolence that was one of his brethren drifted off of its former host, too weak now to even try to make a last grasp at it, barely able to even register on Charlie’s senses as he faded, screaming in Charlie’s mind.
Terry was unaware of all of the particulars of this. He could only sense the things happening on the most esoteric levels of that other plane. That said, a warm feeling of satisfaction drifted through the ether to register on his brain in a manner that was familiar although rarely so intense.
And in the corner of Terry’s mind where Charlie lived, Terry could feel him smile.
The girl had looked at Terry as he entered the room with a mixture of terror and hope, the latter coming to the fore as she saw he had her captor in tow, rather than being a second wave of the horror she had found herself in.
She had watched as he searched her attacker, hopefully for the key. Failing to find it, he shook his head as her dread returned. Her eyes implored the man to do something. He did not disappoint.
The only thing he could do now was either wait for Benin and his men to arrive, or… One look in the girl’s eyes made him sure that there was no choice. Forcing his prisoner on his back, he drove a heel into his solar plexus, not hard enough to cause what he felt would have been well deserved damaged, but enough to remind him that far worse awaited should he opt for anything less than full compliance.
Finally, there was the man himself. Now bereft of the alien presence that had guided his actions for so long, he found himself confused and frightened. There was no merciful amnesia to block out his deeds of the last few weeks, no fuzziness of his memory. No, he remembered every gory sickening detail of each and every murder, of every atrocity he had committed. Every evil, incomprehensibly disgusting thing he had done glowed in his mind like a beacon illuminating a history so vile it scared him.
He could remember the burning desire he’d had to kill the man who now had his heel in his chest just a few minutes ago. The feeling had been overwhelming. He could not understand what had driven him to such a rage. For that matter, he couldn’t explain any of his actions over the last few weeks. His tastes had always been perverted by most standards, but he had spent years hiding his true passions from everyone. Only lately, he had felt them grow beyond his control.
After he killed Regina, he had run. He wanted to keep running, but the urges made themselves felt again; this time, in Billings as he burned a building and the body of a victim to hide evidence. Now, he was caught, and he felt almost relieved by it.
But now, the reality of his situation was settling in. He was going to jail if he was lucky. He was possibly going to die at the hands of a civil servant who had no interest in what he did, what he wanted, nothing.
With his hands cuffed behind him and his muscles still twitching from the shock of the Taser, he knew there was no escape from whatever fate his captor had in store for him. In a strange way, he hoped it would be a quick trial. At least he could spare his mother and father that.