Val looked around. They told him he could manipulate his environment. He sucked in a deep breath. Val turned; saw the stinking yellow cur of a car. It reeked of death in the literal sense, but also years of bad memories. Now that he was a superhero, he could melt that fucking thing into a cadmium-yellow puddle. He sent his energy to it. The air smelled of barbecued flesh and gas, hot metal and burning foam. Flames engulfed the car. It looked the best it had since it rolled off the Detroit assembly line. He could feel the heat from where he stood, yards away. The center of the car burned hot—white-hot—and he gave it a push that sent the flames blue. How hot does a crematorium get? How hot does a sun get?
Then everything froze…the tendrils of flame, Spence doing CPR on Kate even though it was useless and she would never breathe again, Felix holding his shitty little pistol.
One of them stood behind him in the deafening quiet, eyes big and black, skin pale and ash colored. The earth no longer rumbled, and Spence, Anderson and Felix looked like statues in a wax museum.
Val turned to face them.
Come with us.
His mind was a tornado, swirling and exploding. He got Kate killed. His one, his only, his love was dead, and he’d done it.
Only we can keep you safe from them.
“Keep me safe? Like you did here? With that?” He pointed at the animal’s corpse. If he’d told it to kill Felix when it had the chance, it would still be alive. And so would Kate. Each thought jabbed into him like an icy needle. He wasn’t worth loving. Like Rich always said: loving him was the single worst decision Kate ever made. And now it killed her.
A weak little pathetic sound squeaked out of his lips. His mother, his girl…even the monster from space who was supposed to protect him. All dead.
We can help her. In exchange for you.
“Help her? How?”
Your biological systems are not so advanced.
Val’s mind thundered. If they could do it, could he? He wasn’t going to leave her. He wouldn’t. How? He looked to Kate. Pictured her healthy, breathing. Pictured the blood off her shirt, the hole in her chest sealed.
You grow strong. The being sounded like he approved. But they are stronger. Kill this one, it gestured with a three-fingered hand to Felix, and many more will come. They will hunt you always.
“So what do I do?” Val asked. Kate lay under Spence’s fists, looking like a woman taking a nap. The color was back in her cheeks. Val knew that when time resumed, her chest would rise and fall again.
Come with us. They will leave Kate alone. It is critically important that they do.
Why? Val thought; it seemed like an odd thing to say, but now wasn’t the time.
“No,” he said. “I stay with her.”
You must come with us. The being was more insistent now.
Panic burned in Val’s chest. I can control the environment. Each time it got a little easier. He looked at the beings, imagined its head. Exploding.
We helped you!
“I just want to be left alone!”
They started to scream in his mind as he increased the pressure. The black eyes went wide, just a little bit, the first semblance of emotion Val had seen from one of their kind. The shiny dome-like head exploded then, splattering the ground and Val with gray matter the same color as their skin. Time resumed. Sound whooshed in like air into a vacuum. Kate crawled away from Spence, wondering what he was doing.
“You were shot!”
Val sent the Sangauman ship pitching into the earth. It went up in a rumbling explosion, the shock wave dropping all of them. Anderson started to move towards him, and Val shoved him back with a blast of air.
Felix.
It all came so much easier now, like a gate in his head had popped open. Val felt strong like a god as he broke the bones in Felix’s forearm. Felix gaped at him, and Val snapped the bones of his other arm.
“You fucked with me one too many times. Buddy.”
Felix dropped as Val shattered his knee.
Val pictured Felix’s heart, red throbbing muscle, and with a furrow of his brow, he crushed it. Felix dropped. This time Val looked for a pulse and found nothing. A kick to the ribs and he was satisfied.
The sight of Felix made him stop, and suddenly shame washed over him. He didn’t want to be a killer. He wanted to turn over a new leaf. Be an upstanding citizen. There was a monster in him, though. He was no better than the Space Puma, worse even because it looked like a monster. He’d left Kate behind with Felix and he’d run. He rubbed at his temples. If only he could cry now…but that part of him felt numb and dead. He didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to see Kate dead, didn’t want to face her.
“Val, stop!” It was her. Asking him to stop. All around him was destruction and burning. The Daytona, the ship. Fallen beings. None of them human, at least.
He turned to her, standing near Spence. Where was Anderson?
“Please!” Her face was wet with tears. Her hair a mess. What had he done? What was he doing?
“I can’t stop.” He’d run. He’d implode Spence’s heart, Anderson’s heart, take Kate and run. They could come at him forever, let them. He was infinite. He could destroy them. Look at how easy it was with Felix.
“Come on,” Spence took a step towards him.
“Don’t move.”
“We can help you, man.”
Val raised his hand.
“Don’t move. Kate, get away from him.”
She looked at Val. She looked scared. Scared of him. Why the fuck would she be scared of him?
Spence moved again, and Val pictured his heart. He started to squeeze, when from behind him, Anderson stepped up and handcuffed him in one slick, fluid motion. Val let Spence be, wheezing and clutching his chest.
The cuffs were a piece of cake to melt. His hands were free in no time, a jangly bracelet on each wrist, and he went after Anderson this time. Then Spence was on him—he couldn’t do both at once. Spence pulled his nightstick, and for Val, everything went black.
36
Anderson stood talking to the new agent. They looked through two-way glass at the man, bound in a straitjacket. He stared at the white wall, once-piercing ice blue eyes dull and staring. His mouth hung open, slack.
“Tele-what?” the new agent said. The badge at his lapel identified him as Agent Johnson.
“Telekinesis. He can move things with his mind. Gotta keep him drugged to the teeth. It broke his mind, though. Poor sonofabitch babbles about aliens, non-stop. They got his mother, he says, and now they’re after him.”
“What’d you charge him with?” Johnson asked.
“Can’t try him. He’s crazy. Look at the guy. But he killed several people, including a state trooper and his wife. Killed another guy in front of me, using the mind thing. The man is a threat. Guys like him are why we ought to have kept the death penalty around.”
Johnson went to the window.
“I’ll take the case from here.”
“With what the psychiatrists have him on, it’s unlikely he’ll ever really wake up. If he comes back, he can kill all of us, even from that jacket. They’re putting a bed in at Juniper Hill for him, and they’ll keep him on this dose forever. Would be kinder to put a bullet in him.”
“Did you know him?” Johnson asked.
“Met him once. Near the end. Guy seemed terrified.”
“I would be.”
“His girlfriend, Kate Fulton—”
Johnson checked the file. “Sister of deceased trooper Rich Fulton?”
“Yeah. Reads like a soap opera. She loves him. So he must not have been a terrible guy. She visits him, holds his hand, talks to him. Stuck by him when he was in the penn, with him now. I’d watch her.”
Johnson nodded, looking at the black and white photo of her, smiling at the camera. He looked at the next photo of one Valentine Slade. He looked a lot different in the candid black and white, eating an ice cream and grinning. Johnson bet that grin had knocked the ladies dead. The
next page was Slade’s mug shot. Even there he smirked at the camera, cocky and ready to take on the world.
Johnson looked up at the man in the straitjacket. No sign of that smile now. He closed the folder and shook Anderson’s hand.
“So there are no aliens, right?” he asked.
Anderson gave a condescending chuckle. “Nope. No aliens. Some really weird shit, but no aliens.”
Johnson smiled at him, and left the psychiatric facility for his car, a black Monte Carlo.
He started the engine and waited for a moment.
Sure, Val killed the body. But he didn’t kill the Alpha inside. And now Val was out of reach, locked up again. No subtle way to get him out of the facility. And no promise the meds they kept him on hadn’t destroyed his mind.
But it didn’t matter.
Johnson opened the folder on the passenger seat and looked at Kate’s photo. Someone had a baby bump. The DNA he needed would be as strong in the child as it had been in the father.
He’d start slow. Be a friend. A sympathetic shoulder for her to cry on in her time of loss. Then they’d be more than that. She’d have the baby, and it would be his.
Johnson eased the Monte Carlo out of the parking spot, and headed it for Lott.
He had a meeting with Miss Fulton to attend to.
About The Author
Kristin Dearborn has never been abducted by aliens (that she knows of). She has an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, loves motorcycles, rock climbing and cheesy horror flicks (particularly creature features). She lives, and has always lived, in New England: fertile ground for horror writers.
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