Could I actually kill Morton in cold blood? he asked himself, uncertain of the answer. A vivid mental picture, of Liz dying on the floor of the Crashdown, blood seeping from her wounded belly, her beautiful brown eyes dimming, sprang into his mind, as real as life. He had never felt so scared, so desperate. Maria screaming in the background. Michael trying to hold him back. Liz's smooth, soft skin growing cold and still… "No, please, no! You can't die, Liz. You can't!"Max shook his head violently, trying to dislodge the awful memories from his thoughts. He shuddered, his body responding irrationally to events that had taken place nearly two years ago. The remote canyon, lit by a thin crescent moon, could not have been more different than the Crashdown with its kitschy decor, yet he suddenly felt as though part of him, the most important part, was still kneeling on the diner floor, next to Liz's bleeding body How could anyone do this to her, to Liz of all people? One very special person like Liz, so beautiful, so bright, and so caring, was worth more than a hundred worthless scumbags like Joe Morton. How dare he come so close to extinguishing Lizs life forever? Max's alien blood boiled in his veins and he knew that, at that moment at least, he was more than capable of obliterating Joe Morton for good.
"You okay, kemo sdbe?" Michael asked. Like his friend, the alien youth squatted in the dirt behind the craggy ridge, and had discarded his blond disguise in favor of his usual mop of messy brown hair. High-powered binoculars, purchased at one of the shops in Whites City, rested on his lap, next to a medium-size bottle of Tabasco sauce.
"I'm fine," Max asserted. "I just want to get this over with, and get back to Liz." He peeked at the Indiglo display on his watch; it was already 11:35 p.m. "Not much longer," he promised Michael.
"So why do you think this place is called Slaughter Canyon anyway?" Michael asked casually. He took a sip of the bright red Tabasco sauce. "Are we talking some sort of ghastly Indian massacre here or what?"I have no idea," Max stated, grimacing slightly. His legs were growing numb from holding the same position, so he shifted his weight slightly. "And I don't particularly care." He glanced over at his friend to see how he was holding up.
What he saw sent a chill through his blood. "Michael!" he whispered urgently. "Don't move!" Max froze as well, taking care not to make any sudden movements. "Whatever you do, don't move."There in the moonlight, coiled in the shadow of a flowering cactus plant, its burnished copper scales glittering, a full-grown rattlesnake lifted its serpentine head, only inches away from Michael's ankle. Diamond-shaped markings along its coils advertised its deadly nature and species, while a forked tongue flicked between its predatory jaws.
At first, Michael looked mystified by Max's whispered warning. "What?" he mouthed silently, taking pains to obey Max's instructions even though he didn't yet comprehend die why of them. Then the rattler shook its tail like a maraca, filling the still night air with a dry, staccato warning. Understanding-and fear-dawned in Michael's eyes. "Oh crap," he whispered.
Would rattlesnake venom affect Michael's alien biology? Max didn't want to find out. Holding his breath, he watched the snake with vigilant eyes, hoping that die poisonous reptile would slither away harmlessly. Just go about your business, snake, he pleaded silently, regretting that, unlike some movie aliens, talking to animals was not among his inhuman abilities. Don't mind us. We won't give you any trouble.
If the diamondback could read his mind, which was highly unlikely, then it definitely wasn't listening to him. The dry rattle increased in volume and tempo as the serpent appeared to grow more and more agitated by the hu-manoid intruders trespassing on its domain. The snake hissed again, more vehemently, and Max caught a glimpse of curved yellow fangs, dripping with venom. Its coils rustled atop the dirt and gravel, and the rattler's head reared up, poised to strike at Michael's ankle.
"No," Max declared, unleashing the destructive energy he had been saving for Morton. His outstretched ringers glowed with an unearthly radiance and a bolt of incandescent heat and fury flashed between Max and the attacking serpent. The hiss of burning meat replaced the diamondback's own sibilant vocalizations, and the angry rattling ceased abruptly Startled by the strobelike flash, Michael yelped and scrambled away from the zapped rattler on his hands and knees, not looking back until he had put many yards between himself and his former location. "Whew!" he exclaimed, forcefully expelling all the air from his lungs. His chest rose and fell irregularly as he looked back in surprise at what was left of the snake.
Thin white tendrils of smoke rose from a blackened lump of charred bones and skin. The volcanic heat of Max's psychic blast had even scorched the earth around the smoking snake skeleton, leaving a crust of gray-black ash atop the soil. Climbing onto his feet, Michael nudged the cremated remains with the toe of his sneaker. Nothing rattled, since the fiery mental thunderbolt had fused the rattler's natural noisemaker into a single, inert mass of smoldering cartilage. Michael pushed the barbecued snake parts farther aside, revealing a patch of once-gritty sand that had been transformed by die extreme heat into a thin sheet of cracked and discolored glass, like the epicenter of a miniature atomic explosion. The glazed sand reflected silvery fragments of die moonlit sky overhead.
"Yo, Max," Michael said, shaking his head in disbelief, "you have really got to work on your control." Rescuing his bottle of Tabasco sauce from the ground where it had fallen, he took a deep gulp from the bottle, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Not that I'm not grateful for the timely save, mind you, but, if you don't watch out, you really are going to kill somebody one day."Max contemplated the smoking debris with a sense of grim satisfaction. It occurred to him, belatedly, that he hadn't needed to incinerate the rattler, that he could have just projected a force field instead, but he had few regrets at the way the scene had played out. One snake down, he thought. One more to go.
"Boy, what is it about us and creatures that like to shed their skin?" Michael asked rhetorically, continuing to inspect leftover pieces of rattlesnake. Wired by his near brush with terminal snakebite, he stretched his limbs and gazed past Max's brooding form, out over the canyon. His eyes widened suddenly, and he dropped to the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust and sand. Max started to sneeze, but Michael hastily placed a finger beneath his friend's nose, then raised another finger over his own lips, signaling him to silence. "Sssh!" he hushed Max, tilting his head toward the canyon below. "Look."Crouching lower, onto his hands and knees, Max cautiously lifted his head until he could just peer over the tops of the jutting rocks. He sucked air through his clenched teeth as he spotted what Michael had seen only seconds before.
While they'd both been distracted, understandably, by the overly territorial rattler, Joe Morton had come trudging up the steep desert trail to the entrance of Slaughter Canyon Cave. Brandishing a flashlight in one hand, a pistol in the other, and carrying a canvas backpack upon his beefy shoulders, Morton was breathing heavily by the time he reached the top of the trail, just outside the shadowy gap in the hillside. Posted signs warned hikers not to explore the hazardous cavern except in the company of an experienced guide, but the burly gunman did not look like he was planning any unauthorized spelunking; arriving at the end of the trail, he slipped the backpack off his shoulders, planted his hefty butt on a conveniently flat-topped boulder, and settled down to wait for Lieutenant Ramirez. The night was quiet enough that Max could hear him muttering grumpily about the steepness of the climb, the lieutenant's lack of punctuality, and the general crappi-ness of life in general. He spit a mouthful of chewing tobacco at the base of a sign listing general park regulations. "Lousy, stinkin' nature," he groused. "Who needs all this nothing anyway? Ought to build a casino here or something."Squatting behind the craggy ridge, Michael stared at Morton in disgust. "A real class act, this guy," he whispered softly to Max, his voice filled with contempt. "Reminds me of my absent-and-unlamented foster dad, Hank."Given that Michael's former legal guardian, now happily missing for many months, had been an abusive, bad-tempered drunk, Max knew just what Michael meant. He could readily imagine an irate Hank shooting up the Crashdown the way Morton had, the way Morton had nearly taken Liz away from him forever. Blood soaking through her goofy, adorable space-waitress uniform, her brown eyes glazing over, staring blankly into the void…