His face searched for me. “Clayborn took her. And the others.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.”
“Goodman, I’m way beyond pissed off. Give me a straight answer. Now.”
“Clayborn sent the women up there.” He pointed to the sky with his thumb.
“You mean outer space?” The hairs stood on my arms. I didn’t want to know the answer.
Goodman replied, “Of course.”
The aliens. This had grown worse beyond belief. “When?”
“Yesterday. Right after you got away from us.”
“How?”
“Using more of that alien hocus-pocus.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, you stupid fucking bastard, that I don’t know and I don’t care. Clayborn doesn’t share everything with us. I don’t trust him but that’s not my job. I only follow orders, like I’ve done my entire life.”
“How do I get Carmen back?”
“My guess is that you hitch a ride to Pluto and start there.” Goodman straightened and squared his shoulders. He chuckled. “In other words, Felix, go back to your home planet and fuck yourself.”
I stepped in front of Goodman. I grasped his upper arms and held him tight. He squirmed to escape but my grip was like iron.
“Goodman, listen to me. I got news for you. I am on my home planet.” I stared into his eyes, the whites now gray and marred with clots of red. His irises dilated in the effort to focus on me. I gave him an ultra dose of hypnosis, and still nothing.
“I’m no alien. In fact, I’m a veteran and every month I collect a disability check for what happened to me in Iraq.”
He squirmed again.
“Goodman, do you believe in the supernatural? You should.”
“What the hell do you want from me?”
“I want you to die knowing the truth. I am a vampire.”
Goodman shook and howled. His spit splattered on my face. “Vampire. Alien. I don’t give a shit.”
I wrapped my arms around him and nudged his head aside with mine. He smelled of burned ammunition and explosive, sweat, and my favorite, raw fear. My fangs rasped against the nubby beard growing from his throat.
I sank my fangs into his flesh. His blood spurted into my mouth, a delicious male nectar flavored with testosterone and adrenaline from his terror.
I pumped enzymes to hasten the healing process and hide my marks. Then I stopped the other enzymes that deadened pain. I’d kill him the way Carmen would have, al dente.
Goodman howled in agony. He wrestled to get free. His face and neck became livid and red. The tendons pressed against the inside of his throat. His hands clutched my side and his boots thumped against my shins.
I let him go and he crumbled to the floor, grasping his throat. He retched and convulsed. Drool seeped between his teeth, over his lower lip, and down his chin. Pain surged through his aura, the penumbra becoming as turbulent as waves in a storm.
He dropped to his side, still retching. His eyes bugged out from their sockets, big as peeled eggs. Blood dribbled from his ears and tear ducts. His legs kicked and his back arched. His aura flashed and dimmed, fading until it disappeared. His corpse lay with his limbs splayed in a death dance.
Goodman was dead, yet I felt empty, unsatisfied. Another death on my slate and what had I accomplished? My friend Carmen was still on her way to another solar system.
I grabbed a desk and hurled it against the computers.
“Where is she?” I screamed at no one. I seized another desk and continued my rampage through the lab, wrecking as much as I could to vent my fury.
Chapter
50
I was wasting time. I returned to the freight elevator and looked down to the floor below, where Clayborn lived. I’d go there and interrogate him, provided Jolie hadn’t ripped him to pieces already.
I smelled a different odor from the burned explosive in the lab. This smell came from below. Was the annex on fire?
I leaned forward and caught the elevator cables. I shimmied down one floor to the next door. The smell grew stronger. I swung from the cable and balanced on the ledge below the elevator door.
I felt heat coming from the metal door. There was a fire. I had to find Clayborn.
I jabbed my talons through the door. Smoke jetted past my fingers. I sawed a gap wide enough for me to use both hands and tear the door in two.
Heat and smoke rolled over me. I started to panic. I had to act fast or I’d lose any way of ever finding Carmen. I dropped to the floor, where the air was clearer.
I shouted, “Jolie.”
“Felix,” she answered from inside the smoke-filled room, “he’s coming your way. Get him.”
Before I could think to ask whom, Clayborn rushed from the smoke, bent over in a stooped sprint, those big clown feet of his propelling him with amazing speed. He clasped a ray gun in his right hand.
I pushed from the floor and clotheslined him. His neck folded over my arm and those Bozo feet of his arced through the air. The gun clattered across the floor and down the elevator shaft. Clayborn landed on his back, and his head smacked the hard floor.
Jolie appeared through the smoke and crouched beside Clayborn. “The little fucker shot at me with the ray gun, missed, and started the fire. Now that we’ve got him, let’s rescue Carmen.”
I didn’t move.
Jolie looked at me. “What’s the matter?”
It was hard to admit my failure. “Carmen’s gone.”
Jolie remained stone-faced. “What do you mean?”
The next admission was even harder. “She’s been taken from Earth. She’s in outer space somewhere.”
Jolie’s aura blazed as bright as hot, glowing metal. She wrapped her talons around Clayborn’s neck. “Where is she? Tell me or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
Clayborn struggled for breath. He gasped. “There’s nothing you can do for her now.”
Jolie tightened her grip. “You better hope not.”
The fire gained on us. We didn’t have much time.
I peeled her fingers loose. “We better get moving.”
“What about him?”
“We’ll take him with us. He wouldn’t let himself get stranded here without a way to get home.”
Jolie jumped and tore a light fixture from the ceiling. She grasped the wire dangling from the hole and cut a length of about six feet using her talons.
“Here, bind him with this.” Jolie handed the wire to me.
Clayborn remained dazed and docile from the blow against the concrete floor. His black eyes bulged from their sockets. A corona of pain flared around his yellow aura.
I looped one end of the copper wire around his skinny neck and twisted the wire tight. I wrapped the rest of the wire around his torso, cinching his arms against his chest, and trussed him like a pot roast. I picked Clayborn up and tucked him under my arm. He weighed the same as a medium-sized dog.
I returned to the elevator, paused at the threshold, and planned my jump.
Clayborn started to moan.
“Shut up,” Jolie hissed. She tore a swatch from his pants cuff and stuffed the cloth into his mouth.
Flames roared in the room behind us.
I bounded against the opposite wall and zigzagged up the elevator structure to the access hatch I’d torn loose.
We emerged on the roof through the column of smoke pumping out the elevator shaft. Jolie and I coughed to clear our throats. Clayborn gagged and squirmed against me.
Jolie punched him in the head. “I told you to shut up.”
We stepped away from the smoke and crouched on the roof.
Guards shouted in a frenzied chorus. Red and amber lights flashed across the resort. Alarms and claxons blared like wounded animals. Trucks and carts raced over the grounds in carnival-like pandemonium.
“Felix, if your intent was to confuse them, good job.” Jolie dug a cell phone from her hip pocket. She glanced at the phone briefly. “That was Antoine. He’s almost here.”