by L. A. Graf
“No ambulance . . .” The hoarse mutter came from the bundled lump in the blankets between them. George rolled onto one elbow to frown down at his partner. Sikes’s eyelashes fluttered, then fell closed again as if the effort were too great. “No . . . ambulance,” he repeated stubbornly.
“Matt, you need to see a doctor.” Cathy touched a hand to his stubbled and still-pale cheek. “Didn’t they hurt you when they threw you in the river?”
“Didn’t get thrown,” Sikes muttered without opening his eyes. “I jumped.”
“You jumped?” George sat up in surprise, heedless of his bare back this time. He thumped a hand on Sikes’s rib cage through the blankets when the human didn’t reply. His partner groaned. “Why did you jump into a river in the middle of winter?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Sikes opened his eyes at last and scowled up at him. “George, what the hell are you doing in my bed?”
“Getting you warm, along with Cathy and Susan. And for your information, Matthew, you’re in my bed.”
“Oh.” Sikes looked blank for a moment, then shivered and clenched his eyes as if returning memory had called up an emotion he didn’t want them to see. “Oh, shit, that’s right. That thing tore up our room.”
“What thing?” demanded George.
The human shivered again, more convulsively this time. Cathy wrapped her arm across his chest to warm him, but George guessed this wasn’t a physical chill.
“It wasn’t a Newcomer.” Sikes’s voice was low but certain. “It looked like one, but it wasn’t. Same naked head, same skin, same god-awful strength. But it acted like an animal . . . like a dog. A Newcomer dog.”
Sudden, sick fear curled through George’s stomach along with incredulous recognition. He shot a glance at Susan and Cathy but saw only puzzled looks on their faces.
“Newcomers don’t have dogs,” Susan reminded Sikes from the end of the bed. “There were no animals with us on the ship at all.”
It took George a minute to find his voice again. “There was one.” This time, Susan and Cathy turned their puzzled looks on him. He ignored them, focusing down at Sikes. “Matthew, did this thing—this dog—have eyes?”
“No.” Sikes shivered again. “No ears either, I don’t think. All it had was a big sloppy nose like a bloodhound.” Intent on facing the memory, Sikes missed Susan’s almost soundless gasp. George heard it, though, and saw comprehension bleach his wife’s blue eyes to gray. “That’s how it hunts, I think, by tracking smells like a bloodhound. It was after Cathy when it came into our room, but I took her coat and fooled it into chasing me.”
George closed his eyes, memories of wild flights on distant planets flooding through him. “And did this thing smell like blood? Like Tenctonese blood?”
“Yeah.” Sikes glanced sharply at Cathy, as if he’d felt the intake of breath so quiet George barely heard it. Shock had turned Cathy’s eyes even more colorless than Susan’s, to a green so pale it was almost silver. “You guys know what this thing is, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid so.” George groaned as the pieces fell into place: the thefts, the impossible break-ins, the violent attacks. Even the overwhelming smell of blood that had accompanied each murder. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it, but it shouldn’t exist on this planet! We destroyed the last of them on the ship during the Days of Descent.”
“The kleezantsun could have made others.” Despite the pulsing heat of the room, Susan had wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “After the ship landed.”
After a moment, Cathy nodded. “The technology exists on Earth,” she said, an odd breaking quiver in her voice. “All they needed to save was an embryo.”
“An embryo of what?” Sikes sat up, scowling at them. “What the hell was that thing chasing me this morning?”
“A thing genetically designed to chase,” George told him bleakly. “An animal the Overseers engineered to track down escaped slaves on colony worlds. A levpa.”
“Levpa.” Sikes grimaced, as if the alien word left a bad taste in his mouth. He huddled back into his blankets, eying George suspiciously. “You’ve seen this thing, haven’t you? You knew what it looked like and how it smelled.”
George didn’t answer. Noticing that Cathy had closed her eyes for the moment, he slid out of the bed and reached for his pants.
“George used to run away whenever he got sold to one of the planets we visited,” Susan told Sikes. An echo of long-ago dread swept through her voice, like a ripple from a distant storm. George heard it and yanked a dresser drawer open harder than he had to, searching in vain for a dry undershirt. “That way, the colony would send him back to the ship as a troublemaker before he got left behind. The kleezantsun always sent their levpa after him.”
Sikes cursed. “Then why the hell didn’t you recognize it, George? Why didn’t you know what had to be murdering the Newcomers here?”
“Because it never ripped slaves apart when it caught them!” George swung away from the dresser and glared at him, guilt and anger roiling together inside his chest. “Would I be here now if it did?”
“Oh.” Sikes shoved lank, damp hair out of his eyes, fury fading into a thoughtful frown. “So normally, this levpa thing just caught you and kept you until the Overseers arrived? Sort of like a bloodhound from hell?”
“That’s right.” George took a deep breath, trying to evict from his mind the memory of a sinewy body locked against his, pinning him to an alien forest floor while wide, wet nostrils snuffled blindly across his face. “The kleezantsun always told us that they could have ordered it to kill us if they’d wanted to. But we were too valuable. I never saw them do it.”
“Until now,” Sikes said flatly.
George nodded, closing his eyes against the torrent of painful memories. “Yes,” he said softly. “Until now.”
C H A P T E R 1 7
BACKED UP AGAINST the bed’s flimsy headboard, his knees pulled to his chest and the blanket crumpled in his lap, Sikes scrubbed both hands over his face as if that would help erase the smell and feel that still clung to his skin like spider silk. His fingertips were cold. He told himself it was the chill that had him shivering despite the Newcomer heat smothering the room, but he knew that was a lie when he opened his eyes to Cathy’s hollow expression and George’s stiff back. The sight of their subtly alien features made him shudder with revulsion.
He disguised his reaction by gathering several folds of the blanket closer around him. “Okay,” he sighed gustily. They were people, just like him. He was ashamed of himself for thinking otherwise. “So somebody’s got this levpa thing, and they’re sending it to tear up Newcomers. Whoever it is has to know all about you guys, which means they’re probably from L.A. How the hell did they get a levpa out here? Getting it past airport security must have been a bitch.”
“It followed us,” George said tonelessly. “It followed us on foot.”
Sikes couldn’t help barking a disbelieving laugh. “From California?”
George’s shoulders jerked with tension, and Sikes immediately regretted his outburst. “If it was given a scent and told to follow it,” the gannaum stated with grim certainty, “it would follow until it died.” He turned a bleak look over his shoulder at Sikes. “And if you don’t think it could track us while we were in an airplane, or that it couldn’t cross the continent that quickly, then you’ve never tried to outrun one before.”
And, besides, Sikes told himself, it could just as easily have been brought by car, or sicced on somebody who wasn’t on the airplane who would have been easier to follow. Either way, the question of how it got to Pittsburgh wasn’t nearly as pressing as the question Why?
When no one said anything, Sikes elaborated, “Why go to all this effort anyway? Putting together a levpa, shipping it clear across country—just to kill a couple random Newcomers? Why?”
Susan just continued to stare fearfully at the fog outside the window, and George went to sort a clean shirt out of those
hanging in the alcove by the bathroom. Sikes could hear Cathy’s soft, rapid breathing, but nothing else from that side of the bed.
“Maybe they want to kill all of us,” Susan said at last. She turned pleading silver eyes to Sikes, and he felt his heart turn over with despair for lack of having anything soothing to tell her. “If the levpa can find just a few of us in this whole city, what could it do to the thousands and thousands of us left in L.A.?”
Sikes shook his head, fighting for confidence despite the enormity of her suggestion. “It would be easier just to car bomb every auto in Slagtown.” He waved a hand at George when his partner came back into view, a heavy sweater balled up in his hands. “Hey, George, you got some pants I could borrow?”
George nodded absently, then tugged the sweater over his head while answering Susan. “Matthew’s right. The levpa can only track what it’s already smelled. That means its owner would have to steal some personal item from every Newcomer in Los Angeles. That would take centuries.” He opened a drawer at random and pulled out a pair of trousers. “This thing has to have some more specific purpose.”
“All we have to do,” Sikes said, leaning forward to take the pants from George, “is figure out what that purpose is.” He hesitated, pants in one hand, the other poised to push back the covers so he could crawl out. Susan looked surprised when he raised expectant eyebrows at her, then her eyes darkened with embarrassment, and she scooted around on the bed to face her husband, granting Sikes a sort of privacy. He glanced at Cathy, still huddled beneath the blankets with her arms hugged across her stomach, and thought better of disturbing whatever troubled her thoughts just now. It must be hard for her to realize that she’d come so very close to dying just like Sandi Free. He hated the thought himself. Swinging his legs over the other side of the bed, Sikes hurried to pull on George’s pants with hands still weak from cold.
“I don’t know enough about this levpa to tell you how to guess at its thinking,” Sikes said, pushing to his feet. “But I do know that if we want to figure out why it’s doing anything, we have to start by figuring out who—” A tingle of gray numbness caught him mid-thought, and he had to brace himself against the wall to keep from stumbling. It only half worked—his elbow thumped loudly against the plaster, and he caught his head awkwardly in one hand.
“No.” George’s hands clenched hard and warm on his bare shoulders. “We start by getting you to a doctor.” He pushed Sikes back onto the bed, and it was all the human could do to keep George from laying him flat atop the covers.
“I’m fine,” Sikes grumbled, shoving aside George’s hands. They both glanced up when a knock sounded at the door, but Susan rose immediately to answer it, so Sikes turned his attention back to fighting with his partner. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need to sit for a minute and let my head clear.” Voices mingled tensely out of sight in the hotel hallway, and Sikes guessed what was about to come even before Susan led the others into the room. “Coffee would help, too.”
“Sikes? You in here?”
Sikes elbowed George away in earnest, and the alien took the silent edict, stepping back to stand beside the headboard so that Jordan wouldn’t see him ministering to his partner. “I’m in here,” Sikes called, even as Jordan and Golitko stepped into view, all gray-suited and serious.
Jordan glanced over the combination of half-clad human and half-clad aliens, then fixed his gaze on Sikes as though the others didn’t matter to him. Golitko merely looked embarrassed.
“Are we interrupting something?” Jordan asked with politic neutrality.
Susan frowned with confusion, and Sikes suppressed a smile. “Just make it quick.”
Jordan nodded and dug his hands into his pockets. “Those Purists,” he said, “the ones we’ve been hunting. You know they broke into your hotel room?”
Sikes raised an eyebrow in feigned surprise. “Did they?”
“They did.” But Jordan’s eyes narrowed as though he wasn’t buying the sham. “Tore out your window and busted the hell out of your door. Don’t you know anything about it?”
Sikes shook his head and pulled his feet up to tuck them under his knees. “I was gone this morning,” he said contritely. “Got a little wet by the riverside, then came up here. I’ve been here ever since.”
Jordan hunched his shoulders with displeasure, staring at Sikes in the cold, gray manner every FBI agent used to prove he wasn’t fooled by lousy liars. Ironically enough, Sikes had found that lying well didn’t much change their expressions, so putting forth the effort hardly seemed worth it now. He followed Jordan’s gaze when the agent flicked a nod toward the other side of the bed. “What about her?”
Pain caught Sikes by surprise when he turned to look over his shoulder and saw Cathy with her face hidden behind both her hands. The pillowcase beneath her face was dark with subtle wetness, and the rapid rise and fall of her prominent rib cage kept time with sobs, not breathing. Sikes clenched one hand in the sheets beside him, afraid to reach for her while Jordan could see. “She’s fine,” he said thickly. “She’s been with me.” He made himself tear away from her suffering to scowl across the room at Jordan. “Anything else?”
Jordan shook his head but didn’t take his eyes off Sikes and Cathy as he nudged Golitko back toward the door. Before turning to go, he asked coolly, “You’d tell me if you knew anything, wouldn’t you, Sergeant?”
Calling on his rank was a low blow, and Sikes didn’t like it. “Hey, Jordan, whose side do you think I’m on?”
It was supposed to be an easy question, but Jordan considered it without speaking just long enough to make Sikes’s heart labor. “We’ll be down the way,” the agent said at last, not answering Sikes’s question. “You and your girlfriend might want to think about staying here for the night. If that’s okay with Mr. Francisco.”
George nodded, his face unreadable. “Thank you, Agent Jordan. We’ll be careful.”
“Yeah.” Jordan brushed another disapproving glance across Cathy. “You do that.” Then he followed Golitko to the hallway, pulling the door shut behind them sharply enough to swirl the air in the wake of its slam.
Sikes rolled away from their retreat without even waiting for the sound to die. On hands and knees, he scrabbled over the rumpled covers to the trembling form on the other side. “Cathy? Honey?”
Her crying was more audible now, but when he crouched above her to stroke the back of her head, she gasped and jerked away from him with a cry. “Don’t touch me!”
Sikes froze, wrestling his fear for her under control before reaching for her again. “Hey . . .” George caught his arm, but Sikes shook him off with a growl. He brought his face down close to Cathy’s, letting her feel his warmth this time, smell his worry. “Hey, it’s me . . . Cathy? . . .” They touched, temple to temple, and she rolled over into his arms.
He gathered her up as close to him as he could—not in a lover’s embrace, but the way he would a little child, with her head against his chest and his arms all the way around her so that nothing in the world could reach her without going first through him. She pressed tight against him, oblivious to her nakedness even though she shivered like a frightened puppy. Sikes was glad when Susan silently drew the blankets up over Cathy’s exposed shoulders, but didn’t break his attention even long enough to thank her for her care.
“Cathy, baby, what’s the matter?”
She drew in two short, hiccupping breaths and balled her hands into fists so tight they trembled. “I know where it came from,” she whispered against his chest. “The levpa—I know how they bred it!”
Sikes felt George’s solid presence move up close behind his shoulder. “Who, Cathy?” he asked, very gently. “En?”
She shook her head, crying, and Sikes pressed a hand against the side of her face to nestle her under his chin. “Cathy, what do you know about this thing?” When even that garnered no answer, he said softly, “You’ve got to help me. I’m scared it’s going to kill you.”
She reached up to
twine her shaking fingers with his, but didn’t open her eyes. “The kleezantsun . . .” Her body rocked in painful rhythm with memories only she could see. “On the ship, they were so . . . proud of their levpa. Sometimes, they would barter levpa into slave sales to the colonies because they could get a higher price if there were levpa to ensure that no one could run away.” She looked up at him then, and her eyes were nearly colorless with horror, with soul-deep remembrances of things Sikes could barely imagine, much less believe. His own stomach twisted in sick sympathy for what she must keep hidden from human sight every minute of every day.
“We couldn’t carry excess cargo on the ship.” Her voice was calmer now, almost without emotion. She’d retreated behind that wall Sikes hated so much, the wall that separated her present from her past. “Our food was always in premeasured nutrient packs, and fluids were strictly controlled so that the kleezantsun could alter our rations for punishment or reward. Even excess sansol weren’t allowed. They kept the binnaum hidden and only bred us when they needed to meet a quota. Even then, they monitored the pod’s sex and genetics and used outstanding purchase orders to decide which ones would be allowed to grow to term.”
Still silent, Susan slipped onto the bed beside Cathy and threaded her arms around her to clasp hands with George, who knelt behind Sikes. It frightened him sometimes to think of the things they’d shared before knowing him—things he could never be a part of, no matter how much he loved them or how long they stayed. He wasn’t comfortable wondering how many children with Cathy’s beautiful eyes or Susan’s wonderful smile had never been able to join their parents in Earthly freedom. He hated knowing that only an Overseer’s unfathomable whim had even let Cathy be born in the first place.
“When they needed to order a levpa . . .” She shifted a little, huddling more tightly. “It wasn’t like a Tenctonese pod—the kleezantsun could keep the levpa embryos in cryogenic storage almost forever. They had to implant them into preprepared wombs, though, ones that had already been serviced by a binnaum, but where the original pod had been . . . evacuated.” Oddly, she turned to look at Susan. “We carried them just like a normal child, only instead of passing them on to our mates, they were given to a kleezantsun from some other ship to incubate. It bonded the levpa to the kleezantsun, they told us. Even though it grew inside our bodies like our very own child, the levpa would grow to love only the kleezantsun who birthed it, and it would hunt us down and kill us if we ever tried to see it again . . .”