Chimera (The Weaver Series Book 1)

by Vaun Murphrey

  I laughed softly at myself, but I couldn’t shake the strange sensation that someone who shouldn’t be was in the bathroom with us. The cabinet door squealed on its hinges as I pulled out a towel and tossed it over the curtain rod. I sighed and leaned over the edge of the tub to turn on the tap and get the water warm before we got in. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me right now. I have that eyeballs-on-me-at-all-times feeling I used to have in our cell.”

  My underwear rolled off of our hips to land in a tangled ring around our ankles. I kicked them toward the vanity behind us. The water was fairly steaming now, and our heart rate had calmed down some. Our body was feeling feeble, but the thought of liquid warmth and some of Maggie’s peppermint scented shampoo sounded heavenly.

  While I was enjoying the heat on our chilled skin and lathering our hair, the bathroom door opened.

  Maggie called, “I left you clean clothes on the counter, dear. Are you feeling okay in there…no dizziness?”

  I raised my voice, not just to carry over the water but also to make it sound stronger and reassuring. “I’m doing fine, just washing my hair. I should be out in a minute or two.” The door gave a soft sound as it clicked closed and I finished rinsing out the shampoo then moved on to clean the remaining blood.

  The eyes on me feeling had gone sometime during our shower, and I was feeling refreshed and hopeful as I rubbed our body dry. Maggie’s clothing grab looked random. The knit pants were turquoise blue which didn’t match the burgundy V-neck pullover. Right on top of our underclothes sat a pair of fluffy bright pink socks. Those things were like bad freaking pennies.

  “Seriously, did she forget to turn on the lights when she got those?”

  “It’ll be fine. Hush, we’ll just switch them out in a minute.”

  Maggie knocked. “Hey, are you still doing okay, sweetie?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Well, David is on the way with what we need. I’ll take care of everything in the kitchen. After you dress, have a seat back in there. Facilities & Repair is sending somebody by to board up the window, and I haven’t heard anything from Gerome yet.”

  “Okay, Maggie.” I pulled on our under things first and then tugged on the too bright pants along with the soft long sleeved pullover. I refused, however, to don the pink socks and Silver echoed the sentiment in my mind.

  Our hair was still really wet, and it was soaking the back of our shirt. I didn’t feel up to breaking out the hair dryer, so I dug around in one of the drawers until I found a hair tie then twisted the wet strands up into a sloppy bun. Our pallor was sickly when I examined our foggy reflection, even with the slight flush of pink from the heat of the shower. Our lips weren’t much darker than the skin around our mouth, and dark circles underscored whiskey colored eyes.

  The watched feeling came back abruptly. I pushed away from the counter top to open the bathroom door with a speed that made our head spin and stepped out in the hallway trying not to lose my balance. My vision blurred slightly, and when it cleared, Gerome and Kal stood in the entryway as if they had always been there. Steam had built up in the bathroom while we showered and I could feel it moving in the air currents on the back of our neck where our hairs were standing on end.

  Silver’s voice became strained, “I’m sorry I made fun of you earlier. Something is up…even I felt that…whatever it was.”

  Gerome took in my stance and expression then started forward. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook myself and let a shiver run its course up our spine before I could gather my wits for a response. I felt like we had just dodged another bullet and my gut instinct pulsed like another heartbeat.

  Kal raised his nose as if he smelled something and shot past Gerome and me into the bathroom.

  My uncle cupped my shoulders as he waited for my answer. “I felt someone watching me. Silver didn’t believe it the first time, but we both sensed it just now.” It sounded incredibly stupid saying it out loud and I wanted to cringe at how babyish my fear must seem.

  Kal’s gruff voice came from behind us in the bathroom. “He was here, Gerome. You know what that means.”

  My uncle’s eyes widened in alarm and then narrowed again with anger as he responded, “He can’t have her, damn it. Find a way to keep her safe.”

  Maggie stepped out of the laundry room into the hallway and gave a tiny squeak of surprise when she saw us all gathered around the bathroom doorway. “What the hell, Gerome! When did you get back?”

  My head turned first to look at Gerome and then over to Kal. “Who is this ‘he’ and why would ‘he’ be interested in us?”

  Kal cocked his head at Gerome, who waved my question and Maggie’s away. “In a minute, it’s too much to relate right now. Kal, I mean it, he can’t have her, and you’d better figure out a way to keep her safe.”

  A knock on the front door interrupted the intense tableau, and Kal faded out of sight at a look from Gerome. It was different this time because I got the sense he was still here in the house but invisible to us. The 'eyes on me' sensation returned but without the creepiness factor.

  Maggie pushed past both of us in irritation when we didn’t move to answer the door. She turned to say waspishly over her shoulder, “Make yourself useful, Gerome, and get her to a chair at the table.”

  My uncle put a gentle hand on my elbow and steered me to the kitchen. I sat obediently. My eyes were too busy racing around the room trying to pick up on any telltale signs that Kal had followed us. I couldn’t detect anything, not even a sound that was out of place.

  Gerome knelt down in front of my chair and snapped his fingers.

  “Hey, Earth to Cass?”

  Silver spat, “I want to know how he does that!”

  I could hear Maggie’s voice at the front door and then she walked back into the kitchen with David in tow. He had a small red and white cooler in his left hand and a long black duffel bag in the other. They were discussing my state of being. David had questions Maggie flat out didn’t answer, which I could tell was frustrating the heck out of him. His lips were thinned out and pressed together. David set down the supplies next to my uncle. He couldn’t get any nearer for an examination of his own since Gerome wouldn’t move, and the table blocked any approach from the other side.

  I stopped trying to find Kal in the room and took a closer look at the stonewalled nurse. His pants were wet from the knee down from the blowing rain, and his hair was all disheveled from his hood, or maybe the wind as well, since it was slightly damp. I cleared my throat, and Gerome got a wild look in his eye as if he was afraid of what I might say. Someone needed to head my aunt off at the pass before she pissed off her nurse beyond retrieval.

  “I’m good, David. I’m sorry we had to drag you out in the weather. Thank you for your help.” I said the thank you as a dismissal and hoped Maggie would pick up on it and stop arguing.

  She caught on and smoothly directed his attention to one of the items in the black duffel which turned out to be a collapsible pole for the IV solution. After he helped her snap the long metal pole into a standing position and they both verified it was secure, Maggie smiled brightly.

  “Let me walk you to the door, sweetie. I promise to call if we need anything else. Thank you so much for getting out in this weather.”

  My aunt continued to babble cheerfully along the same vein all the way to the entryway. She hustled David onto the front porch and closed the door firmly in his confused face. Once we were alone again, Kal reappeared in a slow shimmer sitting casually in Gerome’s favorite loveseat with his legs crossed at the ankle and his elbows on his knees.

  Maggie noticed the direction of my stare and jumped when she saw Kal sitting quietly in the living room. She hustled over to my side to mutter under her breath to Gerome, “You need to tie a dang bell around his neck.”

  Not five minutes later there was another knock on the door, and Maggie was busy inserting our IV, so Kal faded out of sight again. Gerome rose from his kneeling position to answer it.<
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  Maggie skillfully inserted the needle. She took no pleasure from hurting me, but the burn and pinch as it penetrated our skin wasn’t pleasant. As she raised a bag of fluid too far over our head for me to read the black print, I asked, “What are you giving me?”

  She smiled down absently as she hung the clear plastic bag on a metal hook at the top of the pole. “Ringer’s lactate and then probably a small bag of an antibiotic as well since the screwdriver wasn’t sterile. I’ve got no clue what Silver did if anything to guard against infection when she healed your wound.”

  “We don’t have an infection, but if it makes her feel better it can’t hurt us. Is anybody else but me curious about the elephant in the room named Kal and the mysterious ‘he’ that freaked out Gerome so badly?”

  I heard the front door close, and Gerome walked back into the living room to face Kal’s last known position, but he materialized across the table from Maggie and me instead. My aunt jumped and almost dropped the small bag of what I assumed was the antibiotic she had mentioned.

  The mobile alien murmured roughly, “My apologies.”

  At the sound of his voice, Gerome turned toward the kitchen with an annoyed, angry cast to his features. I opened my mouth to ask the questions that Silver had just posed, but my uncle shook his head and gestured down the hall to the master bedroom where I could now hear sounds of movement. There were several loud knocks as someone or a couple of somebodies, I assumed from Facilities & Repairs, nailed plywood in place from the outside to board up the broken window.

  Once all noise from the rear of the house had ceased, the light on the alarm on the hall wall began to flash a bright silent red.

  Gerome looked down at his watch. “Police are inside the compound now. Malcolm will escort them directly to the Harris house—with Cora barking mad the whole way—where they’ll find a deceased Calvin with proof of what he’s been up to strewn around his body.”

  My uncle came to the table and slumped then rubbed his cheeks as if to wake himself up. “Calvin was a busy little bee. We found a copy of the key to the evacuation tunnel on his person and a lot of other unpleasant things I won’t mention in a lock box underneath the floorboards of his closet. It’s all strategically strewn over his floor as if he collapsed while he was admiring his trophies.

  “The official story is I ordered someone from security to collect him for questioning about how and why he was outside the fence earlier, and they found him dead with incriminating evidence all around the body, so we contacted the local authorities who just happened to be outside our fence. We look good because of our willingness to cooperate and Cora doesn’t get a chance to dispose of any evidence that points to Calvin’s involvement in the missing girls’ cases.”

  “It’ll seem like one bad egg in the bunch, not the whole lot of us here up to no good. Although I have to wonder if Cora had a clue what her son was doing. She’s the one who so fervently campaigned to cut off our charity work and anything else that ran us into Outsiders on a regular basis.”

  “See! I told you he was nuttier than a peanut butter factory!” Silver exclaimed.

  “What about the other missing girls?” Maggie asked. “If one escaped maybe the other two are still alive. Do you know where he was keeping them?”

  Gerome shared a look with Kal that spoke of something more and then answered curtly, “They didn’t make it. Calvin was using an abandoned farmhouse on our land to stash them away. Part of the structure collapsed into the cellar where he was holding the girls. We found two decomposing bodies. Some angled floor supports hinted at the sole survivors escape method. She’s lucky they didn’t just break underneath her when she put her weight on them since the wood was mostly rotten. All we need now is for her to survive and make a positive ID on Harris so the authorities can call this a slam dunk. The only thing they won’t be able to explain is how Calvin himself died.”

  I guessed Kal’s method of transport had enabled them to zip here, there, and everywhere undetected on their fact-finding mission.

  With that last sentence, all eyes were on Silver and me. She mentally chirped, “What are they staring at?”

  I echoed out loud, “What?”

  Gerome gave me his best serious face. “You’ve been busy lately, or so Maggie tells me, in the Web.”

  My eyes skated over Kal and then back to my uncle, but I couldn’t think of anything to say in our defense. I curled our fingers into a fist in our lap which jarred the IV in our arm and made me more aware of the cold fluid flowing through our veins. Maggie checked the line to make sure the drip was steady, and she brushed a stray hair away from our neck absently.

  Kal interrupted our stare-off with his rough voice. “None of this addresses the issue of my quarry’s visit to your home. Tell them the rest, Gerome, so that we can get on with this. You are wasting time.” A faint accent that I couldn’t pin down echoed in the alien’s words, like a slur on certain consonants.

  My uncle threw an irritated frown at the foreign man’s commanding tone.

  Silver sing-songed in our head, “Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah, it’s not so nice when the shoe’s on the other foot, is it, Gerome?”

  I tried not to smile or laugh, but a small smirk managed to escape before I hid it away.

  Gerome turned toward Maggie. “I didn’t keep things about Kal from you without reason. First of all, I thought the less you knew, the more I could keep you out of it. Secondly, it wasn’t my secret to share. Kal isn’t here for his health, and what interaction we have had with one another is actually against the rules.”

  Maggie arched her eyebrows as a response, and I could tell she was going to be mad no matter what explanation Gerome gave.

  “What rules, whose rules Gerome?” Maggie asked.

  “Earth is a backwater planet with protected status. In other words, we’re savages that still need to civilize ourselves and mature as Weavers. No other sentient life is supposed to interfere with our development. There are rules in place along with an intergalactic organization to enforce them. When you violate the rules, they send someone like Kal to clean up the mess.”

  Maggie interrupted in a flat tone, “That still doesn’t explain why he’s here or why he chose to involve you.”

  Gerome shrugged dismissively. “Our meeting was more of an accident or happenstance, and it’s not that relevant to the story.” Maggie got a stubborn set to her mouth, and my uncle pretended not to notice before he continued. “One of their own went rogue or native, whatever term you’d like to coin to describe a total disregard for the rules. This ‘person’ that Kal is after likes to prey on young Weavers on developing planets, eventually killing them or driving them insane. It’s all a game to him and apparently since his latest toy is now dead, he’s interested in Cass.”

  Our heart started to beat a little faster.

  Silver muttered, “We can’t catch a freaking break!”

  I cleared our throat to ask Gerome, “Why would I be of interest to this…person?”

  Kal answered in his gravelly voice instead of letting Gerome speak as he had been about to do. “His pattern is fairly predictable. If you have a bent toward violence, he would be interested in you, but he is also always searching for talented youth. If you have any capabilities that are new to your race and might prove to advance your planet’s development as a whole, it would please him to no end to destroy or twist you.”

  Silver asked, “Does this big bad wolf have a name or should we make one up? Ask about the trick of disappearing he shares with our stalker.”

  Kal watched alertly the whole time I listened to Silver, and his eyes narrowed as I asked, “Does this criminal have a name or do you just call him ‘he’? Also, I would like to know how you disappear.”

  Kal didn’t answer my question right away but continued to assess me silently. I felt Maggie shift, checking the IV line when it was apparently working just fine.

  “You do not seem to be frightened that an alien from another planet with capabilities you
do not fully understand would like to do terrible things to you.”

  I replied in a flat tone, “Someone already tried to kill me once today. Please answer the question.”

  In point of fact, I was petrified, but there didn’t seem to be any profit in having a panic attack about it. Gerome smirked at my response and Maggie laid a gentle hand on our shoulder.

  Kal crossed his arms. “I come from a mature world. It is our belief the universe has a sentience to it. As each planet in each galaxy that can support life develops, this sentience directs the path that each civilization takes based on the needs of the universe. My planet has talents that other planets do not. For instance, we can bend time, space, and light. When I fade from your sight,” he blurred and all that was left was an empty chair.

  His voice when he spoke again sounded right in my ear, and I jumped.

  “I am still here, but I have bent the light around myself in such a way that you cannot see me. We practice this skill from birth and it is as natural as breathing.”

  Kal had to have leaned over the table to speak in my ear, but I hadn’t heard a thing. He appeared in his seat as if he hadn’t moved.

  Maggie spouted angrily at Kal, “Ninja aliens at my kitchen table and serial killers from another planet after my niece…what else can go wrong today? How do you propose we protect her from this nut job?”

  The rather ordinary looking alien blinked slowly and rubbed at the whiskers on his cheeks absently before responding, “You cannot protect her.”

  When both my aunt and uncle looked about to explode in anger, Kal raised a hand to forestall their objections. “How would you be able to guard against teleportation? I could be right next to you, and you would not know it before I grabbed Cassandra and teleported to parts unknown. You have no chance of detecting the danger or tracking him once he has taken your niece.”

  Gerome growled back, “So you’re saying we should just resign ourselves to her death?”

  Silver laughed bitterly. “I’m not giving up on us that easy.”