“Defend herself? Hundreds of people were killed. A lot of them were minding their business driving over a causeway when your little friend decided to ‘defend herself.’ Was she threatened by a mom with her kids in a minivan? What about Matt Kane going fishing? Or some teenagers hanging out on the dock?”
“That’s not how it was intended. They had no other option but to…”
“But to what? Kill everybody in my county?” Sneed’s face boiled with rage. She had grown used to the contempt directed at her from his eyes, but this went far further. He gazed upon her with unmitigated hatred befitting a genocidal dictator. “Their deaths are on your hands, Moni. I did everything I could. You prevented me from saving their lives. All you had to do was tell me about the girl, and we would have been done with it. But that’s what a decent person would do. You’re not one of those, are you Moni? Hell, you’re not even a person no more.”
Staring into the barrel of Sneed’s gun, Moni had never felt so ready for a bullet between her eyes. She had taken an oath to serve and protect the people of Brevard County. Instead, she had overseen their slaughter. She’d given away their most precious environmental treasure without consulting anyone. Even her father resembled a saint compared to her.
She shouldn’t listen to Sneed, Moni suddenly thought. Of course he blamed her-just like he always kept people of color down. That’s why he never invited her on his investigation teams. It should figure that the racist pig hates aliens without making an effort to understand them.
“I’m more human than you are,” Moni told Sneed. “Because I realize that all intelligent life, no matter how different from our own, deserves a home. Unless you want full scale war, you better step back.”
None of the officers moved an inch.
“I’ve given you, and that demon too much space-that’s the problem,” Sneed said. “The way I see it, they took our lagoon, so we’ll take something of theirs.” He fixed his sights firmly on Mariella.
The aliens wouldn’t even consider that offer, and Moni understood why. Mariella had the strongest connection to the alien consciousness of all the possessed beings. With the original species in gestation as its environment is prepared, they needed an independent entity with a capable brain to direct their network. The ambassadors are only as strong as the brain they inhabit.
“No deal,” Moni said.
“It’s not a deal. It’s a demand.”
Based on the severe inflection in his voice, Moni ducked away from his gun. That didn’t save her from the ham-sized fist that clobbered her jaw. She tumbled on her back in the road. Mariella had squirted out from behind her before she fell. The girl dashed across the street. The officers surrounded her with their weapons drawn. Moni leapt to her feet and sprinted into the circle of guns. She heard Aaron calling her. Stepping out from the backseat of a cruiser, he begged her to stop. She couldn’t. Moni wouldn’t let them hurt her baby.
When Sneed pressed the barrel of his gun against Mariella’s neck, she realized that she couldn’t stop them.
Mariella reached out, and gently brushed her slender hand on Sneed’s wrist right behind his gun. The detective seized the little girl around the collar and yanked her toward him, but not in aggression. Sneed had grasped her in desperation so he didn’t collapse. When Mariella casually peeled his fingers off her, the great bulldog dropped on his belly with his cheek bouncing off the pavement.
“My head…” he said weakly. Sneed ground his fingers into his temples. Moni remembered doing the same thing when Mariella had first started communicating with her. She hadn’t recognized it at first, but the headaches she had experienced must have been a side effect of uninvited whispers into her mind. What Mariella shoveled into Sneed’s skull must have resonated through there like a hundred roaring stadiums.
Moni braced for the worst when she scurried through the thicket of guns, and scooped Mariella up on her hip, but the five other officers no longer posed a threat. Three of the men were cradling their heads, and nearly immobilized. One officer paced back and forth with his cell phone on his ear asking his mother if she was okay. The last one dashed down the street screaming, “Fire! Call 911!”
“Damn, what’s happening to them?” Aaron asked as he gingerly approached Moni and the girl. She noticed him limping badly and wondered whether Mariella’s friends had tried to murder her potential boyfriend-a man who had defended the girl several times. “Is she doing this?”
“Her people communicate through their minds. That’s why she doesn’t speak,” Moni said. “When they get loud with you, it’s like an invisible beat down. For real.”
Aaron suddenly froze. Mariella had him transfixed in her gaze. He didn’t hold his head or run. His face flushed white as if he were going eye-to-eye with a king cobra.
“I’m not here to hurt her. I just want to make sure you’re safe, Moni.”
“We’re keeping each other safe,” Moni said.
Something inside her yearned to tell him, “We don’t need you.” But her heart didn’t feel that way. Aaron had been the only person who stuck by her in the face of monsters like her father, Darren and Sneed-besides Mariella, of course. He risked his life staying on the beachside unarmed so he could be by her side for this world-changing event.
“I’m taking her home to the lagoon.” The moment after the words left her mouth, something told Moni she shouldn’t have said anything.
“Are you really telling me goodbye?” Aaron took a couple of woozy steps toward Moni. The girl in her arms hadn’t eased her stare one bit. Without hitting anything physical, Aaron’s head snapped back as if he’d ran smack into a light pole. “Ow! That hurts.”
“So will this,” said a deep-throated voice from below and behind Moni. As she whirled around, Sneed fired at Mariella. Blood sprayed across Moni’s shirt. It wasn’t thick human blood. It was watered-down and appeared more light pink than red. It gushed out of the right side of Mariella’s chest. The girl reached up and grasped Moni so hard around the back of her neck that she nearly crushed her vertebra. With each passing moment, her grip grew weaker and weaker.
Chapter 47
Moni felt every ounce of the poor child’s agony. She dipped her fingers in the blood. She wished she could put it all back and stitch her baby together again. The smoldering grief swelled up inside her throat and nose so bad that she could barely breathe. No, it wasn’t grief alone.
That bastard had shot her baby. Her child might bleed to death in her arms. Sneed had tried stealing Mariella away from her since the moment he saw them together. Finally, he had his wish. In no time, the spark of life that represented the only hope for a species, and Moni’s only remaining love on this earth would vanish, leaving nothing behind but a broken doll.
As she saw the huffing Sneed climbing to his feet, intent on bringing his gun to the girl’s head and extinguishing the last remnants of her life, Moni drew her pistol. She shot him in the head. She shot Sneed again before he hit the ground. The bulldog wouldn’t get up from that.
One officer had run down the street searching for help and another sped away in a cruiser looking for his mother, but the other three were coming around to reality now that Mariella lay in critical condition. Moni pumped a bullet into each of them as calmly as if she were putting away the dishes. The men fell dead. She swiveled around with her gun extended until its aim settled on Aaron. Her impulse told her what she must do. He stood in their way. He had brought those cops here and exposed the secrets of Mariella’s people. Now that Aaron knew Mariella’s identity, he would no longer defend her. He’d destroy her if someone doesn’t stop him.
“Wha-What are you doing?” Aaron asked through trembling lips as he recoiled from the gun pointed at his face. He looked even more terrified of Moni’s gun than he did of Darren’s back at her house. Maybe the thought of who would shoot him scared him more.