Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tagen heard running feet in his dreams before the hammering at his door finished killing his sleep. He bolted up from the bed, grabbing his plasma gun and aiming it just as Daria burst in.

“We’ve got to go right now!” she told him, and then skidded to a stop and stared at the weapon in his hand.

The suddenness of her halt made him think for one horrible instant that he had fired. He uncurled his thumb from the killing switch with excruciating slowness and put the gun down. Only then did he breathe, folding forward and covering his face with his hands, breathing deep and slow until his heart had calmed.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I need to put that damned thing away somewhere.” He spoke against his palms, muffling the words, but then looked up at her. “What has happened?”

“Someone broke into a movie theater in Hillmark and killed every single person in the building,” she replied. “They’re not saying how, but they’re saying more than fifty people died.”

“At once?” Tagen pushed himself off the bed and grabbed for his clothing. “How? How could even E’Var do such a thing?” The idea that the prisoner might have acquired a neural stunner during his escape came to Tagen for the first time, freezing him in place. The pilots who manned prison transporters were not supposed to go armed—the best means of preventing prisoners from taking one’s weapons was still not to carry them—but it was a policy that had seen a lot of bending over the years, and even though the stunners were no good against a Jotan prisoner, they were just as effective against the occasional Kevrian raider as they were against humans. “Were they sleeping?” he asked cautiously.

“No, but…I don’t think you understand. Movie theaters are like buildings with huge TV screens in them,” Daria was saying. “They’re dark and noisy, and I think it’s completely plausible that he just went from person to person and killed them all without anyone even noticing. And even if someone did scream or something, he’d only have to wait until someone in the movie was screaming, too. You’ve seen some of our movies. There can be a lot of screaming.”

He shook his head, not refuting her but unable to accept her argument. “But how could he know that? How could he know even what a…movie theater…was?”

“I don’t know,” Daria said. “But I know Hillmark is only thirty miles from here. The TV says they only found the bodies an hour ago. Your guy might still be in the area.”

“And you will take me there?”

She blinked rapidly, seeming surprised. “Of course,” she said.

“You are not afraid?”

She laughed at him. “I’m terrified. Are you coming or not?”

Tagen stepped forward and pulled her against him, feeling her hands come up and grip at his back, feeling the tension in her small body. She was terrified. And she was still going with him. “Thank you,” he said, stroking down the soft fall of her hair. He squeezed her lightly and stood away, taking up his supply pack. “Lead me.”

She went ahead of him down the stairs and out the door. There she paused and came back. She moved past Tagen to the kitchen and brought down two tins of the cat’s food. Grendel was there at his dish in an instant, miawing anxiously as she filled it. She touched the animal’s head as he dove in, and then she came away again.

“Leave the door open, Tagen,” she said, as she moved past him and outside again. “Just in case, you know, I don’t come back. For a while.”

His brave human.

Tagen left the door ajar and followed her down the groundcar. She stared straight ahead as she strapped herself down and her eyes were dry. In her face, he saw the looming possibility of danger, of death, but he also saw a determination to face it.

“I could not do this without you,” Tagen said as she ignited the engine. It hurt him to admit it, but it was truth and truth was all he had to give her in exchange for what she did now. “It is you, not I, who is saving your Earth.”

“I know I should care about that,” she said, pulling the car around and onto the path that led to the road. “But I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person, not one, that I can honestly say I want to save. I’m sure they’re out there. I’m sure there’s millions of shiny happy people who deserve to be safe and happy for their whole lives, but I’ve never met them. I meet people like Traynor Polidori. That’s who I meet. And I don’t really want to think too hard about the fact that I’m saving them, if you don’t mind.”

Tagen watched the trees flow by outside his window. “I wish that you were not doing this for me,” he said.

He caught the startled, hurt look she gave him in the reflection of his window.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I do not deserve such devotion.” He rested his hand on his supply pack, imagining he could feel the burning of the dermisprayer within, still loaded with the mild sedative with which he had robbed her of choice. “I am the thief of your peace. I am putting you into this danger.”

“I…” She said nothing for a long time, only drove along the dark and empty streets. “I like you,” she finished finally. “I’m doing this because it needs to be done, and because you’re the only one who could make me do it.”

“I regret that.”

“You know,” she said dryly, “sometimes you say the most amazing, romantic and overwhelming things a girl could imagine. This isn’t one of those times, Tagen.”

He smiled a little in spite of himself. “I suppose that it is not,” he admitted. “But I am Jotan. We do not put our females into danger. They are precious even when we do not love them. I feel that I am betraying you.”

“Are there women in the army on your planet?” Daria asked, with that same infernal logic he had just known she would use.

Tagen sighed. “Yes.”

“Do you let them fly around in ships looking for bad guys? Do they get into gunfights and get shot?”

“Yes.” He glanced at her. “The difference being, they have chosen that life.”

“And I’m choosing this.”

“It is not the same.”

“It’s the closest I’m ever going to come to doing anything worthwhile with my life,” Daria said.

Silence, for a very long time.

“I am appalled that you would believe that,” he said at last.

“You had it right when you called me a throw-away person,” she countered, as swiftly and ably as if they sparred with blades and not with words. “I’ve been hiding from the world for years. The only one who’ll miss me when I’m gone is Grendel, and he’ll only miss me long enough to find a new home. I’m pointless, Tagen. I’m a worthless, pointless person. Helping you is the one thing I’ve ever done that gives my life any purpose at all. Don’t argue with me. You know it’s true, too.”

“I know,” he said, “that it is not. I have met many humans in my time. Perhaps hundreds. There is not one of them with half your strength of will. I was wrong to call you what I did that day.”

“You’re only saying that because I’m sleeping with you now.”

He did not answer that. “Our past does not define us unless we allow it to do so,” he said instead. “The circumstances of years ago should never force you into a role you have not wished for yourself.”

“Uh huh. Tell me again why you joined the army.”

Tagen looked at her sharply and then gave over to a grudging smile. “A hit,” he said. “A well-aimed hit. I could always trust to you for that.”

She winced and drove in silence for several minutes. “Sorry.”

He waved that away.

“You deserved to find a nicer person,” she continued glumly.

“Nice,” Tagen echoed, tasting the word as if it were alien fruit. “Daria, my friend, I have no use for a nice human. I found instead a clever one, a brave one. A passionate one.” He let his hand squeeze her knee briefly. “Niceness is a quality often at odds with sincerity. I have the human I desire and no, I do not deserve her, but I am grateful she has accepted me regardless.”

“Is that your way of saying I’m a bitch but you don’t mind?”

“No, it is my way of saying I prefer wit and honesty to empty politeness. If I had a wish to change you, it would be that you could see your value.”

“I wish I could, too.” Daria’s voice was low and sorrowful. Her eyes remained fixed on the road. “Because I believe you, Tagen. I have to believe you. But I just can’t see it.”

The lights of a human town were shining in the distance. Tagen could see the red and blue flash of police presence already. The sight was a sobering one, a reminder that their problems paled beside the fact of E’Var culling for Vahst among the innocents of this world.

“Do you know the way to this…movie theater…where the dead were found?” Tagen asked.

“Yeah, but they’re not going to let us in to look around,” Daria said, with a feigned brightness and nonchalance that left her previous words firmly behind them. “I thought we’d just drive through—”

“No. I have questions to be answered. It would be a grim thing to follow along this road seeking E’Var and then to learn the human police had the true killer already imprisoned. For all that we know, the humans within were burned to death or shot.”

Daria sent him several fleeting and uneasy glances. “How were you planning on finding out?”

“The same way I have done once before.” Tagen tapped his claws on the top of his supply pack. “Find me a human who seems to know something.”

Daria parked down the street, squinting ahead at a parking lot filled with media cars and lawmen. A great throng of on-lookers milled anxiously at the perimeter as several uniformed men answered the shouted concerns of the news crews. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I can see a guy talking to some reporters who looks like he knows what’s going on. But you can’t just walk up and start talking to him.”

Tagen leaned back in his seat, shrugging himself comfortable. “Wake me when he leaves this place,” he said. “And we shall follow.”

“As simple as that, huh?”

“Sometimes, Daria Cleavon, it is that simple.”

*

They made very good distance after the hunt, following the highway and quickly leaving the killing grounds behind. Raven would drive through the night if he told her to, but being in the cramped car after a good kill felt abrasive to him. Kane had come to recognize the word ‘hotel’ and when he saw it next, he told Raven to stop.

The rooms were arranged in two long arms along a single floor, and they all appeared unoccupied, or at least quiet, but for one. Naturally, it was the one to which Kane and his females were placed adjacent. The sounds of riotous male celebrations came right through the walls, but Kane was still in a good mood. He had filled twelve vials at the place Sue-Eye called a theater, which would themselves reduce down to six of concentrated Vahst, and that put him over the mid-mark. Kane felt a little like celebrating himself.

And so, it seemed, did Sue-Eye, who watched him arrange his equipment with a triumphant expression. No doubt she felt she’d won a battle and true enough, Kane was inclined to be more tolerant of her.

‘Ah, human,’ he thought now, good-naturedly enough. ‘Never confuse tolerance with affection.’ It was one of Urak’s many sayings, and a damned good one. One that every man in Kane’s trade knew the truth of, even if he’d never heard the phrase, and one that a hard little creature like Sue-Eye ought to know as well.

“Raven,” he said, inwardly relishing the sudden shock and anger that Sue-Eye was not too quick to smother.

Raven came to him, looking merely puzzled, and he gestured for her to sit at the hotel table. There was paper provided here and a writing stylus. Kane took them both and quickly jotted down the thirty letters of the alphabet, speaking each aloud as he drew their shapes—jan, eveh, orus, tan and on up to eb—and then again, making just the sounds they made.

She frowned, her eyes tracking the letters very closely, and looked down at the mark he’d put on her arm so many days before. He watched her sound the letters out, struggling at them like a child. “Eeee…vuh. Ver. Ever. What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the curt, curving mark that divided the first letter from the second.

“It’s called a hiats. A hard separation,” he said. “E’Var. Not ever.”

She repeated him.

“Look here.” Kane spelled his full name and then put the stylus into her hand.

He expected her to copy him. Instead, to his delight, she picked out the letters of her own name, gnawing at her lip with the strain of it.

“Ran, ayro, veve, een--“

“Eveh,” he corrected, grinning. “Raven, not Raveen.”

“Eveh, nan.” She peeked up at him, and the room beside theirs erupted with cheering, as though their neighbors saluted her success.

“Practice,” he told her, glancing at the wall.

“Sue-Eye,” Raven muttered, bending over her paper.

“Ai, chirak, uu, tan , ahm, hiats, ahm,” he recited distractedly. He could hear, he thought, three distinct male voices. “Ichuta’a.”

“What does that mean?” Raven asked, writing it.

Kane’s gaze dipped to the female in question, now sitting on the foot of the nearest bed and trying not to glare at him. He smiled. “It means pussy,” he said. “More or less.”

Sue-Eye’s jaw clenched. That was all.

“Are you my ichuta’a?” Kane asked, his voice silky and good-humored.

She nodded.

“My eager ichuta’a?”

She nodded again, but her eyes were burning. She knew she was being mocked.

Good.

“You did well for me tonight,” he said. “Very well.”

He heard Raven’s stylus stop writing at the same time as Sue-Eye drew back from him. Beatings either one could take. His praise made them nervous.

“What would you like?” he asked. “If I felt like rewarding you, what would you ask for, ichuta’a?”

Sue-Eye hesitated, unsure of him, and Kane waited. He gave her no encouragement, no clue as to what answer he sought. He watched her agonize and he saw the exact instant she settled on a reply.

“I want to fuck,” she said.

Once again, she delivered a damned good answer. A safe answer. One she probably couldn’t imagine going badly for her. He pretended to consider it.

“You’ve been very good tonight,” he said at last. “All right, let’s go. Raven.”

“Go?” Sue-Eye echoed.

Kane tucked his harvester into the waistband of his pants and stood up. He snapped his fingers and both his females leapt up without further hesitation and followed him out the door. He walked down the side of the building to his noisy neighbors and knocked.

“Fuck off!” someone shouted irritably, but someone else came to open the door.

Kane put his hands in the pockets of his human coat and smiled down at the male who opened to him. It was a young one, too young to grow a beard but old enough to try. Its eyes went first to Sue-Eye and Raven, lingering, before turning on Kane. Better and better.

“We’ll keep it down,” the human said, and started to close the door.

“I don’t care about the noise,” said Kane, putting his foot down on the threshold. He turned and fixed Sue-Eye with his cold smile.

She stared back at him without expression.

“Invite us in,” said Kane, returning his attention to the young male before him.

The human looked back over his shoulder, his eyes seeking those of a grizzled and hard-cut male, his leader, if humans could be said to have them. The leader was sitting on one of the two beds, a smoking herb-stick between his teeth and an open bottle of something inebriating in his hand. Kane could feel the assessment in that stare, but still, the females at his side had a way of drawing even those watchful eyes and he wasn’t surprised when the leader finally nodded.

The bathroom door opened and out came the third male Kane had heard through his wall, fat and unshaven and smelling strongly of toxic fermentations. He stared at Kane and his females as they came in and the door was closed, and then he, too, looked toward the leader.

“What’s on your mind, fella?” the leader grunted, tapping ash onto the carpet before drawing another lungful of smoke.

“I’ve had a very good day,” Kane replied. His gaze slid to the tee-vee, which was on and displaying mating programs. His smile broadened. Three males, bored, half-drunk, and restless for sex. He couldn’t have planned this any better. “I thought you might like to help me celebrate.”

“Want a beer?” the young male asked, shrugging a question at his companions.

“No. Ichuta’a, tell them why we’re here.”

All three males looked curiously at his blonde human when Kane nudged her forward. His ichuta’a colored under their collective stares. Beside her, Kane felt Raven step a little closer against his side and he put his arm around her. The gesture caught Sue-Eye’s attention and he saw her lean body tense before she faced the room again.

“I want to fuck,” Sue-Eye said.

The males stared at her. The young one looked like he’d been punched, and the leader merely grunted and smoked. The fat one sent several fleeting looks up Kane’s way and then went to the second bed and lay down. He picked up an open bottle and drank from it, looking nervous and bewildered. And Sue-Eye, Sue-Eye did nothing to convince them.

“Is that my eager ichuta’a?” Kane asked.

Sue-Eye raised her chin and said it again, almost angrily. “I want to fuck.” She looked at him with defiant eyes. “May I please fuck them?”

“Yes, you may.” Kane pulled the room’s only chair around and nodded for Raven to sit. He watched the males exchange more guarded looks. He was enjoying himself immensely.

Sue-Eye stripped off her shirt and stood bare-breasted before them. She reached up and pinched one of her nipples, and every human pair of eyes went right to her hand. “Anything you want,” she said, raking them with her furious gaze. “Just please fuck me. Fuck me hard. Fuck me all over. Cum in me. Cum on me. I need to be fucked. Please.”

The young one made a hesitant move toward her, his eyes shooting Kane wary glances the whole while. Kane merely smiled when he put his hand on Sue-Eye’s arm, and thus encouraged, the male pulled Sue-Eye to him and kissed her mouth.

Sue-Eye didn’t like it, but she kissed him back, grimacing only a little. The male groped at her breasts, pulling and kneading them until the pale flesh began to redden. Suddenly, he stood back, laughing. “Dude, are you serious?” he demanded of Kane.

“Dead serious,” Kane said. “She’s all yours.” But his smile switched off when the young male glanced Raven’s way, and he added, “And that’s mine,” in a hard tone.

“Yeah, man, cool. Cool.” The young male squeezed Sue-Eye’s breast, licking his lips as he looked her up and down. Behind him, the fat human’s hand tightened on the bottle he held, his thumb moving in the same circular motions as the young male’s thumb on Sue-Eye’s nipple. “What does she do?”

“Anything,” Kane said. And as an afterthought, added, “You can slap her if you want, but no punching.”

“Slap her,” the young male echoed, shaking his head. “Jesus.”

“Shit or get off the pot, Steven,” the leader said abruptly. “She ain’t for looking at.”

The young male twitched and shifted his weight. “Let’s, uh, let’s see that pink, baby.”

Sue-Eye stripped out of her skirt, now wholly naked. Her lips were thinned, her cheeks high with color.

“Show them,” Kane said.

Sue-Eye spread her thighs slightly.

“You can do better than that.” Kane folded his arms, letting himself sound a little annoyed, although he was still smiling.

Sue-Eye arched her back and pushed her pelvis forward, parting her pussy with two fingers and displaying herself to all of them.

The fat male unzipped his coverings with a shaking hand and drew out his cock, his eyes huge with disbelief.

“How much is this going to cost us?” the leader asked curtly.

Kane shrugged, leaning against the door. “Whatever you think she’s worth. I’ll take your money when you’re done with her, and I don’t think there’ll be any argument.”

“Fair enough. Get out of the way, Stevie, if all you’re gonna do is stare at her.” The leader stood up, crushed out his herb-stick and gave the young male a shove to one side. He planted his legs wide before Sue-Eye. “Ain’t had a blow in a coon’s age,” he said. “On your knees, honey.”

Sue-Eye dropped, obedient and silent, and undid the human’s belt and fastenings. She gripped the stiffening cock that was offered her and stroked it with well-schooled hands. “Thank you, Kane,” she said, and closed her mouth around it.

Kane shook his head. You just had to admire her persistence.

The leader closed his eyes and put a hand on Sue-Eye’s head, pumping into her throat and breathing evenly and coarsely. “That’s it, lady,” he muttered. “Work it like you mean it.”

Sue-Eye slicked and lathed and sucked, her hands rolling at the male’s swinging tsesac. The sounds she made were wet and loud, vigorous if not entirely enthusiastic. The young male paced around the two of them while the third remained where he was, working himself in his fist and watching.

The young male was stiffly erect in his clothes, but was clearly unwilling to do for himself and too impatient to wait for his leader to finish taking his privilege. He stopped behind Sue-Eye on his next pass and shucked himself out of his lower coverings, glancing only once at Kane. His discomfiture at being half-bare in front of a stranger was obvious, but not enough to dampen his mood. He went to his knees between Sue-Eye’s legs, pawing at her until he could angle up at her smooth-shaven sex.

Sue-Eye pushed her hips back for him as she continued to bob and slide over the leader’s cock. She grunted tightly at the first thrust, and soon her adept rhythm was sent into jarring chaos by the young male’s rapid pumping. The fat male’s hand worked faster as Sue-Eye sucked above and was jostled below, and the smell of sex and sweat grew stronger.

“You’re gonna suck this down now, sweetheart,” the big male grunted. “Every drop.”

She nodded around the cock she lathed and Kane soon saw her throat working. She drew back, sucking at the head, and then licking all down to the base and back, cleaning him with motions Kane knew from experience.

“Nice-mannered little bitch,” the leader said, patting her cheek as he withdrew. He returned to sit on the edge of his bed. He removed his boots and his jeans, preparing for a second go while his cock still dangled, wet and limp. “Best blowjob I’ve ever had.”

Kane slipped his hand down the nape of his Raven’s neck and underneath her thin shirt to rub at her bare back. He’d had better.

Sue-Eye, freed to just one mate, was pushed onto her hands and knees so her male could fully ride. Her flanks juddered, her breasts swung, and her teeth were tightly grit. The young male’s head was back and his throat working with occasional spastic half-shouts. He slammed himself even harder against her, using her with all the intensity and total lack of finesse that was the hallmark of the very young. Sue-Eye didn’t need to work him; she only waited until he came, every muscle locked and straining, and finally he fell off her, gasping for breath.

Sue-Eye crawled a little out from him and gained her feet shakily. Kane reached out to catch her arm and help her rise, steadying her until she was balanced. “Thank you, Kane,” she said again, her head still bent to hide her furious eyes from him.

“I see a cock that’s wanting you,” he replied, and gave her a push toward the fat male’s bed.

The human lay back, licking his lips as Sue-Eye approached him. “Just, uh, just whatever,” he said.

“Talk to me,” called Kane. He toyed with the tips of Raven’s hair and she huddled against his side. “How does it feel? Is my eager ichuta’a grateful?”

“Oh yes. Oh, it feels so good.” Sue-Eye swung her leg out over her male and enveloped his quivering cock. “God, I love it, Kane. Thank you for letting them fuck me. God, I love the feel of it pumping up inside me. Oh, he’s so thick and hard. I love it, Kane. I love it.”

“Then you’re gonna love this, honey.” The big leader, fully erect again, climbed onto the bed behind her and gripped her ass, pulling her cheeks wide apart.

Sue-Eye’s recitation of playacted pleasure broke off at once. She grunted hard as he penetrated, her face reddening with effort or with pain, and she seized the headboard of the bed and leaned into it.

“Tell me,” Kane said evenly.

It took a few false starts. “Thank…Thank you,” she managed at last. “I feel so full. He’s fucking me so good. Thank you, K—ah!”

The big man had yanked her up by the hair so that he could crush her breasts in his hands. His hips worked with violence, forcing the rhythm that Sue-Eye used against her own prone partner. “Don’t thank him, thank me,” he growled. “Tell me, honey.”

“I-I’m s-so ungh! So h-hot and ungh! Thank you for f-fucking me!” A tear slipped from one eye and streaked down the glowing coal of her cheek. “I w-want more!”

Kane leaned out and gently kicked the young male watching from the carpet. “She wants more,” he explained.

The male bounded up and onto the bed, straddling the fat one’s head so Sue-Eye could take his cock in her mouth. She uttered a single, shuddering scream before the young male gagged her.

Kane admired his work, his hand stroking Raven’s shoulder, feeling her shiver. She was probably afraid of being thrown into the mix of them and he was content to let her be afraid, but he’d never do it. Sue-Eye was a perfect poem of human misery that needed no assistant. She wasn’t even moving anymore; they were moving her, trapping her between the three of them in a storm of bodies. She was a doll in their cooperative grip, voiceless and powerless. She was bruising right before his eyes, her flesh pulled and shoved and battered.

The leader was cumming already. For all his size, he had no stamina. Kane released Raven with a pat and strolled over to the bed. He caught the human’s head and pulled, snapping the skull off and taking the gland from the opened brain. It was a deep, swollen purple and the juice it gave him filled the empty vial in his harvester nearly halfway.

Kane seized the corpse and pulled it away, throwing it to the floor behind him. Sue-Eye screamed against the young male’s belly at the retraction, probably aware no better than the other humans of what was happening. He gave her ass a friendly slap as he moved around the bed, and she sobbed around her gag of flesh.

Kane reached up for the young male, hooking him first by the throat and then pulling him down to harvest him. The human yanked back reflexively, popping free of Sue-Eye just as Kane cracked his skull. Blood and cum sprayed Sue-Eye’s face; she swallowed, gagged, and swiped at her eyes, succeeding only in smearing the mixture into a mask.

The male she rode was screaming. Kane bashed in the open mouth and then picked Sue-Eye off him and tossed her behind him. He flipped the fat human over and did his work, loading a fresh vial into the harvester to contain the deluge of dopamine produced by a male in rut. Sue-Eye scrambled back from him and promptly fell off the bed. She landed on the big male, gasped out a whistling scream, and tried to climb away.

Kane swung his foot lazily around and stepped on her back, pressing her flat into the dead man’s chest. He waited, watching her with half an eye as his harvester hummed in his hand. The gland was spent; he ejected it and tucked the tool away. He could feel her shaking through his boot. Finally, it came.

“Thank you, Kane,” she whispered.

“Was it good?” he asked serenely.

She nodded, her whole body shuddering with the fury of her fear.

“Did you cum?”

She nodded again.

“Because you were very good tonight,” he continued, pushing her a little further into the body. “I’d hate to think you didn’t enjoy yourself.” He regarded her shivering efforts not to look at the pool of blood spreading beneath her and the corpse she laid on. “Shall I fuck you now?” he wondered aloud.

Her eyes squeezed shut, but, “Please,” she said.

Kane laughed and removed his boot, allowing her to stand. “Go clean yourself up,” he said. “You weren’t that good tonight. Raven, go get my pack. We’re leaving.”

*

Between the reporters at the crime scene and the briefing back at the precinct, Detective Pete Skarlson didn’t get home until past six in the morning. That was bad. What was worse, there wasn’t even anyone there to be pissed off at him about it. He needed to get a dog.

He unlocked his front door, stepped inside and disarmed the alarm, and then left the door open while he went back out to the car for the groceries he’d stopped for on the way home. He had no intention of going out again today.

His vacation started yesterday, but he’d got the call anyway, and that should have been telling enough. He had what the captain called a “TV face”. They always used him when the public needed extra soothing, so he’d thought he was prepared as he drove to the scene. Yeah. He’d thought he was all kinds of prepared. He wasn’t. But he’d done his thing in front of the cameras and as of now this was officially not his case, and he thanked God for it. He’d never seen anything so awful in his entire life, not even in the war.

He never saw the man who came up behind him. Never heard him, either. The first he knew that he was not alone was when he felt cool metal at his throat and a hiss like air being let out of a tire. There was a sharp pain in his neck, but before he could even think to slap up at it or turn around or do anything at all, his world washed out into a pleasant field of pastels.

He let the bag of junk food and beer drift down from his arms as he gradually relaxed them, and watched as a muscular arm reached around him and a strange hand caught it. How thoughtful. Another hand pushed lightly at his back, propelling him into his living room, and he went along with it, smiling dreamily. Everything was so nice.

“Is that what I looked like when you did that to me?” a woman asked.

“No,” a deep voice replied. “You tried to fall down.”

‘What a good idea,’ Pete thought, and fell down. The carpet was so soft.

Someone rolled him over. It took a few seconds for Pete to realize his eyes were open and he did not find the lack of thought particularly disturbing. But he should, he thought vaguely as he stared up at his living room ceiling. He should be very disturbed.

A woman sat down on the carpet beside him, her attention aimed up at the dark shape of someone else moving behind him. She was a beautiful woman. He didn’t think he knew her, but he decided he sure would like to.