CHAPTER 43
3:36 a.m.
The dancing blue-white of a television screen was the only light visible in the house, which looked exactly as Vessler had described it: slightly run-down and isolated. One car sat in the driveway, a late-model Ford matching Vessler’s description of the car Brenda Jorden had been assigned.
Matt flickered onto the screened-in back porch and crouched close to the wall. Inching forward, he peered in through the glass door that opened onto the living room. An infomercial played on a big television. No one watched it.
Another flicker, and he crouched beside the sofa. The house smelled...not bad, quite, but thick with something. He sniffed experimentally, tried to identify the smell. Musky, a little like perfume, but not as well-defined.
His head felt funny.
Matt blinked a couple of times and drew the Glock, then moved carefully forward to the hall doorway. Scott was probably in one of the bedrooms, if he was here at all; Vessler wasn’t sure whether or not Jorden knew about Scott’s call. If she did, Scott may be lying in a ditch somewhere with a hole in his head. Matt took a deep, slow breath and started down the hallway.
A door on the left stood slightly ajar, and Matt pushed it a few inches open with his free hand, standing to one side. He’d cranked his night vision up to the top, and he immediately saw a countertop and linoleum on the floor.
Bathroom.
He moved to the next door.
Even before he touched it he knew Scott was inside. He could hear slow, labored breathing, and it didn’t sound healthy. Matt wondered what kind of shape the boy would be in, and whether or not he’d be able to walk. Not that that mattered, really, as far as getting him out of here.
Outside the bedroom door Matt wondered whether or not the house’s peculiar odor was related to Jorden’s “persuasive” personal scent. Vessler’s words stayed with him: “I only know what Scott told me tonight, and he didn’t have time to say much. But if she can control people like he says, for God’s sake stay away from her. He said she does it mostly through touch; maybe if you keep the suit on, and she can’t get to your skin, that’ll help. She’s damned attractive, too, and I don’t know if she’d use that along with the control thing or not, but be aware of it. Or do you like women?”
That last was asked matter-of-factly. “I like women,” Matt said, feeling lame. Vessler eyed him for a moment before he went on.
“Just get in, get him and the machine, and get out. Once we have Scott we can use him to pinpoint Jorden and Grove.”
That bothered Matt. We can use him... Cold phrasing for someone Vessler claimed to care about so much. Or maybe that was the only way Vessler knew how to talk.
With the gun nestled in his hand, Matt eased open the door to Scott’s room.
Scott Charles lay on the narrow twin bed next to the PC desk. Vessler had warned Matt about Scott’s appearance, but even taking into consideration the lack of both pigment and exercise, Scott Charles still looked like hell. The metal headband seemed to claw into the boy’s flesh, and Matt couldn’t shake the illusion that the thick cable passed through the band and bored into Scott’s skull. Matt glanced around the room and checked the closet before he went to Scott’s side.
“Scott,” he whispered, next to the boy’s ear. “Scott, wake up. Vessler sent me here to get you.”
The breathing faltered, and Scott opened his eyes and turned his head. On impulse Matt ducked down, out of sight. He couldn’t take his mask off just then, and he didn’t want to scare the boy to death.
“Who’s there?” Scott murmured weakly. “I can’t see you.”
“It’s okay. I’m here to help.”
Scott muttered something incoherent and shifted on the bed. He seemed atrophied, everything about him, not just his musculature. Weak moonlight fed through the slatted blinds and silvered his face.
Slowly, his tendons creaking like an old man’s, Scott raised up and fixed his eyes on Matt. The mask didn’t alarm him in the slightest. “You. You got here.” Scott’s words mixed fear and reverence, and he didn’t seem much like a boy at all. “I’ve been reading about you.”
“Yeah?” Developmentally, Scott Charles didn’t look a day past eleven. A tiny old man inside a sick boy’s body. He wore only frayed pajama bottoms, and ribs poked out from his pitifully thin torso.
“We’ve got to get out of here, right now,” Scott said. His initial excitement had worn off in a hurry. “I don’t know where they are, but they’re here somewhere. You can get us away, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Matt said reassuringly. “I can. Can you stand up?”
“Lie back down, Scott,” a gorgeous female voice said, behind Matt. He whirled around to face Brenda Jorden, standing in the doorway, a goddess in the faint moonlight. Then a hand like a brick crashed into the side of his head, and he staggered sideways.
Agent Ned Fields didn’t give Matt any time to recover. The small man jumped on him, and the impact was a lot like getting run over by a car. The two of them crashed to the floor, multi-colored spots flashing in Matt’s eyes. He scrambled for the two extra items clipped to his belt as he remembered Vessler’s description.
“Fields is dense,” the older man had said. “And I don’t mean mentally. I mean he’s densely packed. He’s not but about five-five, but last time I checked the man weighed nearly four hundred pounds. He’s got muscles like concrete, and skin like iron. I don’t think you could lift a gun big enough to do him any serious damage, and forget trying to get a needle into him.”
“Great,” Matt said. “So what, then?”
“So we have to get a little imaginative.” Vessler picked a certain item off Matt’s pegboard, held it up in the candlelight. “With a little modification, this will do just fine. I don’t suppose you have another?”
On the floor of Scott’s room, Ned Fields balled up a fist like the head of a sledgehammer and drew it back. Matt knew if that fist connected, it would break whatever bone it hit, so he didn’t give it the chance. He pulled the customized stun-gun off his belt, rammed it into Fields’ crotch and turned on the current.
Brenda Jorden and Scott Charles both watched open-mouthed.
Fields yelped like a shot dog and exploded backwards, and with a wrench in his stomach Matt watched as one of Fields’ flailing hands clipped Scott across the chin with a sickening crack. The boy crumpled on his bed. But Fields’ eyes didn’t close and he didn’t lose consciousness, and Matt knew he’d be back at him in a matter of seconds. So he took the other stun-gun off his belt, the one that he’d fitted with a cord and male adapter, spotted a wall socket next to Scott’s computer desk, and plugged it in.
When Fields surged back up off the floor and lunged at Matt, Matt slapped Fields’ head down face-first into the carpet, stuck the stun-gun in the back of his neck and let him have it.
What few lights were burning in the house flickered erratically, the scent of overcooked pork filled the bedroom, and Fields’ screams faded and quickly stopped.
Matt kept the current on him for ten seconds solid before he turned it off and felt for a pulse. He found one, a little spotty but definitely there, and Fields’ arms and legs kept twitching, so Matt felt sure he hadn’t killed the man. Fields made no further attempt to get up, and Matt edged away from him and stood.
He swallowed hard. His head abruptly felt very weird, and the smell he’d noticed earlier got thicker.
Scott Charles lay on the bed, unconscious and bleeding, breathing raggedly.
Matt drew the Glock and leveled it at Brenda Jorden, and she said, “I don’t think you want to shoot me.” It was like a purr. “I think you’d rather just talk to me.”
Jorden flicked on the overhead light. In the incandescent glow she looked twice as beautiful as she had in the near-darkness. She wore a clinging, soft blue blouse and flowing black skirt, and any words Matt might have used to describe her left his head. His gun hand began to shake, and he braced it with the other one. The scent grew stronger, filled up his head, and oh, God, it smelled good, too, the more he got of it.
At his feet Fields stopped twitching, but Matt could hear him breathing. Jorden smiled, and Matt began to feel a sort of detachment from reality—as if he hadn’t just almost killed someone, almost been killed himself, as if he weren’t here to rescue a sick child—and he was ashamed to feel himself responding to this woman physically. He noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath her thin silk blouse, and her nipples were very visibly erect. The heavy curves of her breasts pressed at the material.
“Of course, I don’t really want to talk,” Jorden said, and took a step forward. She absently touched the side of her face, and sensuously trailed her hand down the front of her blouse. Buttons fell open in its wake. Then the hand slid farther down, outlined the curve of her waist and out along the generous flair of her hips. Matt noticed a sprinkling of caramel-colored freckles on the smooth skin between her breasts, and felt a sudden and irrational need to taste them. His head filled to overflowing with her scent.
No, no, dammit, what the hell am I doing?
“I know you’d much rather put off talking till later, and...maybe...get a little more...comfortable?” Her voice grew low and sultry, and her lips seemed to sparkle dark red, like sweet cherry syrup. She gracefully nudged her blouse aside, fully exposing her left breast, and Matt’s breath stopped completely. It started high, near her collar bone, and swept down into an achingly perfect teardrop, the milk-white skin contrasting splendidly with the tightened dark brown nipple.
Matt swelled against the Vylar, and Jorden smiled as she glanced down and saw it. He could smell, feel, taste her scent, and his eyes shook with tiny tremors as he whipped them over her body, from eyes to lips to breasts and back.
Stop it, stop it, stop it!
She smiled again and slipped the blouse almost completely off, fully exposing her torso. Matt’s entire body trembled, and he almost dropped the Glock when she spoke again.
“Come on,” she sighed. “Come with me. Let me take care of you.” Her hand came up for the pistol. “I know you’d like to be with me...face to face...let your skin touch mine.”
And she was right. All the pain and loneliness since Glory was hurt, all the tension with Diedra, all the stress he’d jammed down deep inside himself, all of it he’d condensed into a tiny shard that constantly stabbed through him, soured his emotions, tainted every breath he took. As Brenda Jorden’s thrilling scent filled his body he knew she could make all of it go away, that a night in her arms would be better than a thousand pain-killers, that she could pour herself over his wounds and heal them in a soothing, sex-tingling rush.
Her hand hovered near the Glock, but she didn’t touch it; instead her fingers ran up his arm, across his shoulder, and left a trail like sweet fire behind them. He felt her enter his skin, wash over the jagged rents and tears inside of him, fill him up and smooth him over.
Her fingertips brushed his neck, toyed with the edge of the mask, searched for a grip...
...and couldn’t find one. The mask zipped to the suit, the pull-tab concealed at the back of the neck. Jorden’s caresses turned insistent as she tried to find an opening in the fabric.
Why was she pulling at his neck?
Why did he have a gun in his hand?
“You need to take your mask off, Matthew,” she breathed into his ear.
Matthew. Matthew? He hated that name. The only person who’d ever called him Matthew was his father, and then only when he’d gotten in trouble.
What the hell was she doing?
Matt took a step backward and brushed her hand away from his face with the gun. The scent still filled his head, coated his nostrils, and it smelled so good - but he shook his head, tried just to breathe through his mouth. “My name’s not Matthew.” He took another step away, and his heel bumped Fields’ shoulder, and Fields let out a long, agonized groan.
Matt’s head cleared. And as it did, Jorden’s perfect features contorted with rage.
She abandoned her words then, her other hand came up, and Matt noted somewhat dully that it held an enormous, serrated butcher knife. Jorden raised it in both hands, took a step forward and rammed it down into the center of Matt’s chest.
The impact hurt, since it struck several of his bruises, but the Vylar turned the blade aside easily.
With a grunt, Matt planted one gloved hand between Jorden’s perfect breasts and shoved as hard as he could, which wasn’t all that hard at the moment. Still, Jorden stumbled backward through the doorway into the hall, tried to catch herself on the doorframe, missed, and fell hard on one elbow. The knife spun out of her hand.
Matt pointed the Glock straight up and blasted the overhead light fixture into fragments. He pulled Scott Charles off the bed, scrambled over to the machine Vessler had described, and flickered frantically away.
# # #
Alone in the bedroom with Fields, Brenda Jorden shivered in the sudden harsh cold and pulled her blouse back around her. Sinclair, Scott, and the filter were all gone, and the floor had slicked over with ice.
For the first time in several years, Brenda was afraid.
AUTHOR'S NOTES FOLLOW IN THE COMMENTS SECTION.
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1 comments:
This weekend just about killed me. I finished up one pretty good-sized freelance job, and did the entirety of another one on Saturday.
I am EXHAUSTED.
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