Alien Nation #7 - Extreme Prejudice

by L. A. Graf

  “Hey, George!” A familiar shout from below yanked George out of his whirl of speculation. He leaned over the balustrade to see Sikes standing in the main hotel lobby, his jacket still damp from the outside fog. Two hotel guards flanked him, inspecting a soggy piece of cardboard that might once have been a name badge. They didn’t look impressed. “Tell these guys I’m with the symposium, will you?”

  “I can vouch for him,” George told the guards, and they reluctantly allowed Sikes onto the marble staircase. He took the steps two at a time, vaulting over the red velvet rope at the top before the guard there could unhook it. His tennis shoes left dark grimy spots on the carpet behind him as he crossed the balcony, and he smelled powerfully of diesel smoke.

  “Nice fashion statement, George,” Sikes said, tapping at the purse. “Doesn’t match your belt, though.” He turned to peer into the darkened ballroom behind them. “Cathy didn’t give her talk yet, did she?”

  “About fifteen minutes ago.” Lips tightening with embarrassment, George tucked the purse into the crook of his arm to conceal it. “She was disappointed that you weren’t there.”

  “Damn!” Sikes turned and slammed a fist down on the marble railing, then cursed again at the pain. “I can’t believe I came all the way out from L.A. for this and missed her talk!”

  “I can,” George said frankly. “You do things like that to her all the time.”

  “I know, but this time she really wanted me to be there.” Sikes groaned and buried all his fingers in his tousled hair. “Oh, George, I’m a dead man.”

  C H A P T E R 1 3

  SIKES SAT WITH his stockinged feet propped up on the heater, a tepid cup of coffee trapped under his hands while he watched the darkness gather outside their hotel room window. He would rather have been inside the saunalike bathroom, talking to Cathy while she finished her before-bed shower, but a guy could stand only so much silence from the other side of a shower curtain.

  He heard the water turn off and took his feet down from the heater to scoot his chair around. “I said I was sorry.” He spoke in a normal tone, knowing his voice would carry just fine for Tenctonese ears.

  Likewise, Cathy had learned long ago that she had to shout from a bathroom if he was to hear her. “I know.”

  Sikes dropped his head and counted to three. “I really am sorry,” he sighed. “I’ve been looking forward to your talk ever since we got here.”

  “Matt, you think the impact of women in the professional sciences is the most boring subject on the planet.”

  The accuracy of her comment stung. “Okay, so maybe the talk itself didn’t have me dancing with anticipation. But I really did want to see you up there, looking so smart and beautiful, being proud of you . . .”

  The bathroom door whispered open with a breath of steam, and Sikes thought she’d at least keep the discussion going long enough for him to convince her of his sincerity and thus win some forgiveness. Instead, she simply went about the business of folding away her clothes from today, neatly hanging up her Penguins sweater, laying out her clothes for tomorrow. Her face had taken on the completely unreadable, emotionless expression Sikes knew she must have learned for protection during her days as a slave. He hated it when he made her look like that.

  “Cathy . . .”

  She pushed a drawer closed without turning to look at him. “I’m not sure we should talk about this right now.”

  “Goddammit!” He thumped the Styrofoam coffee cup to the dresser top, earning a startled look from Cathy when sticky liquid splashed all over his sleeve and hand. “It was just a stupid talk,” he argued, leaping to his feet to shake the coffee off his hand. “I tried to get back for it, okay? I spent six bucks on bus fares just trying to get someplace I recognized! I’m sorry I missed it, and I’m sorry you’re mad, but I don’t know what the hell you want me to do!”

  She watched him curse and wipe his hand dry on the leg of his jeans but didn’t move to help him or even offer him a towel. “I don’t want you to do anything,” she said calmly. “In fact, I . . .” As though suddenly thinking better of whatever she’d started to say, she turned abruptly back to the dresser and pulled out a drawer to inspect the contents. “It’s not fair for me to want you to be . . .” She cocked her head, still looking at her underwear as she searched for words. “. . . different,” she finally decided, “just because we share sexual relations. It’s not like you’ve ever cared about what I do—”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “No, Matt, it’s true.” The firmness of her voice startled him and hurt in a way he hadn’t expected it could. She faced him with her hands tucked under her elbows. He couldn’t remember the last time she had looked so beautiful. “Tell me—do you have any idea what the project is I’m working on right now?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t even shake his head. She already knew he hadn’t the faintest, or she wouldn’t have bothered asking.

  “Do you even know the name of the biochemist I’m working with?”

  This time he looked away from her to the window again. He didn’t even know why, just that he couldn’t always stand to look at her when she told him the truth like this.

  Behind him, Cathy sighed softly. “All you care about, all you’ve ever cared about, is catching the next bad guy.” He wished she’d at least sound angry and not so goddammed reasonable and calm. “And that’s okay—really. I knew the way you worked and thought before I even decided to get involved with you. But I’m not perfect.” The heat of her body coming up close to his back inexplicably made him shiver. “It’s just that, sometimes, I think it would be nice to know I matter to you at least as much as all this crook-chasing does.”

  He turned in surprise, nearly bumping into her, and took her face between his hands. “Oh, Cathy,” he whispered, “you matter! You matter more to me than anything.” He pulled her close, as tight as he dared, and squeezed his eyes shut against the horrible image of her disemboweled like Sandi Free. “That’s why I was out there today, because the thought of anything happening to you scares me a whole lot more than anything you could do to me if I missed your lecture.” He felt her smile against the side of his neck, and he smiled a little, as well. “We’ve got to catch these guys. I’ve got to catch these guys. I can’t let them do this to anybody else, and if they try to hurt you—”

  Her arms gripped him painfully. “Don’t.”

  “It’d kill me, Cathy,” he finished hoarsely. “I swear, just kill me.”

  “Matt, don’t!” She pushed away from his embrace but didn’t let go of his arms. “There’s nothing going to hurt me. Not with you here.” Her eyes, as strong and cool as milky jade, forced him to look at her and believe everything she said. He opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a frown. “Not with you to protect me,” she insisted, slipping her hands across his hips and into the back pockets of his jeans. “My big, strong policeman.”

  He snorted but answered her smile by resting his forehead against hers. “Good try, pumpkin head. But you and I both know you could whip my ass with one hand tied behind your back.”

  Cathy acknowledged that with a little shrug. “Very true.” Then she ducked abruptly to cut his legs out from under him and sweep him up into her arms. Sikes yelped with surprise and clutched around her neck for fear of falling. But her hold was strong and steady. “I guess that means you can’t resist me if I decide to use force to take advantage of you,” Cathy commented with a sigh.

  Sikes smiled, liking the way her mind worked. “Yeah, I guess not. Oh, well.”

  Sikes jolted awake in the darkness, overhot, muscle sore, and exhausted. He thought he jerked when he came out of his dream—something about hiding in Cathy’s apartment while a dog from the K-9 corps tore at the outside door—but Cathy still sighed peacefully asleep beside him.

  He clenched both hands in the bedclothes and listened. Nothing specific, nothing real. Just a feeling that itched along every inch of his skin, warning him that something was going on in the dark
ness that he didn’t like. It was the same feeling that warned him where a shooter crouched in a warehouse, or hinted about just which cars he shouldn’t approach without a gun in his hand. He wanted to shake Cathy awake, whispering like a nervous housewife, “Honey, I think I hear somebody in the room!” But that was asinine—anything he could hear, Cathy could hear better, and she was sleeping like a baby while he pissed in his shorts over nothing but a bad dream. He rolled over, burying his face in the pillow.

  And Cathy bolted upright with a horrible gasp.

  Just then, in the room adjoining their own, a woman’s bellowed profanity followed an explosion of shattering glass.

  “What is it?” Cathy gasped, wrapping herself in the bedclothes. “Matt, where are you going?”

  He was out of bed without even realizing it, yanking at the door separating their rooms as if he really expected it to be unlocked. “Open up!” He pounded the door so hard he knew his fist would bruise. “Open up!” he shouted again in his deepest, gruffest voice. “This is the police, dammit!”

  Cathy pushed between him and his first attempt at throwing his weight against the lock. “Let me—”

  “Call George,” he tried to say, but she glared at him and shouted, “Let me! I can break it!”

  No sense dating a woman with twice your own strength if you didn’t make use of it every now and again. He danced to one side, fidgeting unhappily as he darted his eyes around the room in search of some kind of weapon. Cathy wrapped both hands around the smooth metal doorknob, wrenching back with a grunt just as Sikes caught sight of the Bible he’d flung from the bedstand to the bureau the night of their arrival. He scooped it up, feeling a little stupid, and the door gave with a shriek and a crack as the doorjamb tore loose, lock and all.

  There was a second door beyond the first, this one knobless and smooth. Cathy broke it in with a single slam from her shoulder, then jumped away when Sikes grabbed her arm and hissed, “Call George!” Relief throbbed through him at her brisk nod. Then she was out of sight behind him, and he had only a cheap Bible between himself and the blackened adjoining room.

  He slipped into the room as quickly and carefully as possible, Bible high over one shoulder. Thumps and gasps pounded from behind a rumpled bed, and winter wind, as sharp as the broken glass beneath the window, tattered past the curtains to swirl painfully around the lightless room. Sikes tried to step past the glittering debris, and instead slammed his foot into some cold, heavy chunk of metal that sent him sprawling with a shouted curse.

  Cathy’s voice arrowed in from the other room, sharp with concern. “Matt?”

  He struggled to all fours, suddenly terrified of who might have heard her, and shot a frantic look toward the violent sounds in the corner. A dark, big-headed silhouette already stretched above the humped outline of the bed. Sikes felt his heart crowd up into his throat as it planted both hands on the bedspread and launched itself across the room.

  He reared up on his knees to hit it, but it cleared the distance with inhuman speed and crashed into him before he could do more than draw back for the blow. The stench of Newcomer blood swarmed around him, spicy-sweet, and he coughed against the strength of the smell as the floor slammed him and knocked his breath away. A broad, sloping Newcomer head lowered close to his, and Sikes swung at it. He struck a corded shoulder instead, and the Newcomer on top of him wrenched the Bible out of his hand and threw it aside without turning away from him. The book smacked the far wall with a sound like a gunshot. “Get off me, damn you!” Sikes whispered fiercely.

  As if in reply, it twisted its head aside, drowning its deep eye sockets in shadow. Sikes had only the barest glimpse of its elongated jawline before it was thrown into the air with a mindless, guttural cry.

  Sikes felt a dash of stinging heat across his cheek. Blood, he realized, Newcomer blood, just as his attacker ripped through carpet and curtains and glass to flee out the broken window. A drizzle of bloody spittle trailed behind it.

  Sikes tried to sit up but couldn’t. His chest still felt hot and tight from the Newcomer’s blow, and he could feel the tingly beginnings of shock nibbling away at his fingers. Someone mumbled above him—

  “Na tog toe sacka wrap’da . . . Na tog ma syka tam eckwa . . .”

  —but it was sibilant Tenctonese, and the words meant nothing to him. Straining to see upward through the dimness, he could just make out thickly muscled legs and a powerful fist gripping a bloodstained iron dumbbell, then Ann Arbor swayed with a thick gurgle and collapsed atop him.

  C H A P T E R 1 4

  A DISTANT CRASH shattered the midnight stillness as George burst out of his hotel room, still struggling to fasten the pants he’d grabbed when he heard the phone. He ran down the dimly lit hall, fear hammering in his blood. From the concierge’s desk behind him, he could hear one of the FBI agents yelling questions, but he ignored her. The thick smell of Newcomer blood swirled out to meet him two strides before he skidded into the alcove that sheltered Ann Arbor’s room. George felt both his hearts lurch in dismay. Was he too late again?

  He pounded on the door of Room 1612 and heard the muffled sound of gasping through it. “Matthew! Cathy!” He battered on the door again, then lost patience and ripped it entirely off its hinges. It tore away with a shriek of stressed metal and splintered wood. Frigid air blasted through the opening he’d made, nearly choking him with the reek of spilled blood.

  George stiffened, seeing the tangle of heaving bodies on the floor beside the shattered window. Two shining spots lifted from that huddle and focused on him—Cathy’s eyes, pupils widened by the darkness. As George’s own vision adjusted to the unlit room, he could see the biochemist kneeling beside Ann Arbor, blood-drenched hands pressed to the bigger linnaum’s chest. A ragged slash ripped through the athlete’s white T-shirt, exposing ropes of dark coral muscle and the ivory gleam of bone beneath the skin. Her left arm twisted at an impossible angle to her shoulder, the muscles around the joint already swollen to a hardened lump.

  Blood spurted between Cathy’s fingers as the athlete heaved beneath her. The pink liquid came out so frothy and bright that George knew it had to be flowing straight from one of the huge veins that fed oxygen to both hearts. His own chest wall clenched in horror.

  “George, don’t just stand there—pull Matt out!” Fear and frustration gave Cathy’s voice the fragile sharp edge of glass. George realized that the heaving motion came from his partner, trapped under Arbor’s considerable weight. He groaned at his own stupidity and lunged forward to lift the athlete’s unconscious body with one hand while he hauled Sikes out with the other. The frantic sound of gasping eased at last.

  “Is he all right?” Cathy’s gaze was locked on Ann Arbor, but her anxious voice told George who she was really worried about. “He couldn’t answer me before.”

  George steadied his partner against the icy night air, scanning him for injuries. Despite the dark red bruise on his chest and the blood trickling across his chin, Sikes did not seem seriously hurt. “I think he’s just winded.”

  The human nodded forcefully, still too breathless to speak. A glare of light washed the room with sudden bright colors and made George’s eyes sting. He swung around in time to see David Jordan burst through the open door, clad only in trousers and a scowl. The FBI agent cursed when he saw Arbor’s blood-stained body, then handed his gun to one of the agents who had piled up like grim logs behind him.

  “Is she alive?” Jordan strode over to examine the athlete, ignoring the blood-splattered carpet under his bare feet. One of his agents followed him while the others waited more warily in the hall. “How fast do we need an ambulance?”

  “As fast as you can get one here.” Cathy didn’t look away from the bloody flesh beneath her hands, but the quiver in her voice betrayed her strain. Sikes scowled at her, then jerked free of George’s support and went back through the splintered connecting doorway into his own room. “One of her pulmonary veins is cut.”

  “Kosak.” Jordan glanced over
his shoulder at the young man who’d trailed him in. George recognized him as the same man Ann Arbor had knocked out the day before. “Get the life-flight helicopter from Allegheny General. Tell them they can land on the hotel roof.”

  “Yes, sir.” The male agent spun and launched himself down the hall at a run. His colleagues stepped aside to let him through, then took up their posts in the doorway again. George realized they were keeping a curious crowd of Tenctonese symposium guests from flooding into the room.

  “Who did that?” Jordan demanded, jerking a thumb at the battered doorway. “You or the perps?”

  “I opened the hall door.” It occurred to George that the cold night wind was probably draining Ann Arbor of much needed heat. He yanked the coverings off the unmade bed, then carried them over to her. The unconscious athlete didn’t stir as he tucked the blanket around her hips and legs, then began ripping the sheet to make a pressure pad. “I assume Cathy broke the other one. The attackers came through the window.”

  “The hell they did.” Jordan’s voice shivered with disbelief. “We moved to the sixteenth floor, and they still came in the window?”

  “Yeah, some protection that turned out to be.” Sikes emerged from his room fully dressed, with a heavy peacoat slung over his arm. He ignored Jordan’s glare, crossing the room to drape his coat over Cathy’s bare shoulders. “What are you going to do next, move us to the roof?”

  “The roof!” Jordan started to cross toward the open window, then yelped and leaped back as glass crunched under his bare feet. “That’s how the Purists must have gotten in—they rappelled down from the roof. Go see if there’s a rope hanging out there, Francisco.”