Alien-Under-Cover (6 page)

No matter how sane he sounded, she knew. She more than anyone knew what drugs did to people. It could turn the most mild-mannered husband and father into a monster. What would it do to someone like John who’d turned monster a long time ago? She’d grown up with criminals, had seen the worst of drug addiction and violence.

She stared at the pieces of snapped iron bars on the cement floor as if hypnotized. If he became violent, all that would remain of her would be bloody pieces scattered in this cell. “What drug are you taking?” she repeated with forced clam. Depending on how long he’s been using it, she might manage not to set him off.

“I am not taking anything.”

He stepped farther into her cell and she snapped. “Help,” she screamed.

Stumbling back from him, holding out her hands in a futile effort to hold off a crazed, Superman-Crack addict, she stumbled away until she crashed into the bars on the other side of the small cell. She tried to duck around him and escape through the opening he made to his cell but he stepped into her path with blurring speed.

The people in the other cells and cages screamed and banged against the iron bars.

“Help, get me out of here. He’s on crack.”

She grabbed the bars and tried to bend them enough to get through but they didn’t budge. No guards came running, the other people in the cages made frightened animalistic noises that became a cacophony in her ears.

“Oh God, please get me out of here. Get me away from him.” She kept screaming until suddenly, with that inhuman drug-enhanced speed and strength, he grabbed her and placed a hand gently over her mouth. She struggled and tried to scream but only muffled sounds emerged.

“Quiet, human.”

Human? Oh yes, he might be calm and surprisingly gentle in the way he touched her but he was definitely on something. She stilled. Maybe he’d only started on the stuff. He might still be reasonable enough to talk with.

“Are you calm now?”

Shuddering, her heart racing, she nodded, determined to do anything it took to stay alive.

He held her close, his muscled body rock hard against her. Always a big well-built man, she could swear now she felt more bulk than she saw. His hands on her back and his body against her front radiated unnatural heat. Raised body temperature must be a side effect of the drug.

One of those warm hands moved down and cupped her left buttock. Squeezed. She jumped and slapped at his hand. “Get off me, you drug-crazed oaf.” She should try to stay calm and keep him from erupting but she couldn’t meekly allow him to feel her up.

He shook her. “Still.”

“Get off me asshole.”

“Human, you belong to me.”

“No I don’t. I told you years ago, I’ll never belong to you and I meant it.”

Her parents had urged her to accept his ring in hopes it would keep her safe and assure her place in the family. After what she’d seen in that warehouse, she’d run and she would run again the moment they got out of this hellhole.

“I will keep you safe and make sure you eat enough,” he said seriously.

“I don’t need you to make sure what I eat.”

She couldn’t believe this crazy conversation. They were trapped in a basement and he would probably tear off her limbs or worse or the reverend would torture and kill them and he worried about what she would eat.

“You will not try to escape or argue with me.” He still sounded so serious and reasonable. Had he forgotten what she was like while she had been away?

“You keep hoping for that, John, and let me know how it happens for you.”

He scowled down at her. “And you will not look at the other warriors when they have bathed.”

“What does that mean? Oh, never mind?” Warriors bathing? Yep, crazy as a hatter.

Every inch of her body was pressed up against every muscled inch of him with no hope of escape. Her father always said she had more guts than sense, but in this instance, she needed to back down. Use his strength to get them out of there. If she had to, she’d shoot him in the head once they were free. A headshot was the only way to kill someone on Superman Crack. She could do it. His eyes followed her hand as she lifted it and bit her thumbnail.

She could.

“All right, say I agree to be yours?” She almost gagged at the thought, which didn’t help her stomach to settle with the terrible stench in the basement. “What happens next?”

It was weird. He didn’t look away from her, but she had the sense he hid something from her. “We have to wait here for a little while and then we will leave.”

“Just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

He looked at her fingers almost curiously. “Yes.”

“How exactly will we get out? Oh, no.”

She bit her lip until it stung and prayed she was wrong. As much as she wanted to get out of this place she didn’t want more enforcers on their way here. That had to be why he was so calm. He thought help was on the way.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked around the cell, cocked his head in that strange predatory way he had, and flipped the thin mattress over. Curling his lip back from his teeth, the way extinct tigers used to expose their incisors, he threw it through the bars. It landed with a soft plop and dust rose from it. Julia shuddered when some critters scurried away from it, scratching over the cement floor.

She looked around for a place to sit that wasn’t disgusting but the floor was too awful to even look at closely and there were no chairs. “This place is a sty. If the reverend or Raiders don’t get us, we’ll probably die of some illness or get bitten by fleas and ticks and who knows what else?”

Taking off his jacket he spread it over the dirty floor. “Sit.”

“Why so chivalrous all of a sudden?”

Whatever crack he was on certainly changed his personality. None of his actions fit the man she used to know. The John she knew in Denver would never sacrifice his jacket to give her a clean place to sit. He’d tried to claim her before but in a brutish almost casual way. Now he focused on her all the time, emotions boiling in his smoldering eyes. Still, she didn’t get the overwhelming feeling of evil that she used to get around him.

“You said we have to wait here. What are we waiting for?”

She sat down gingerly and clasped her arms around her knees. She would’ve liked to brace her back against the wall, but some oily sludge and other unidentifiable objects coated it in a greasy film. He crouched opposite her and she refused to admit that his large presence comforted her. Her creepometer was off the scale but more from her memories of him than his actual presence.

“We need to wait here. That is all you need to know.”

“Couldn’t you break us out of here? Then we can wait outside. This place is nauseating.”

She pressed her hand against her nose but it didn’t keep the stench out. If she could convince that drug-addled mind it would be a good idea to escape and not wait for this mysterious person to arrive, she might be able to get away from him.

“The man I am seeking will come here,” he said.

“So I guess we wait.” Julia traced a finger over her jean clad knee and braced herself to ask the question. “John, what happened to you? Is it drugs?”

“Nothing happened to me,” he said as if she had asked if the sun was shining outside.

“You are different, before you would never have protected me.”

She looked at the other cages and shuddered. Moans echoed eerily through the basement but none of the other captives made eye contact. He narrowed his eyes on a cage in the darkest corner. She peered at it but could only vaguely make out a man’s form.

Julia looked at the children in the cages opposite them and closer to the door.

“They’re so thin. The reverend must have kept them here for a while.” He didn’t answer, just stared at her with that unblinking gaze.

“It doesn’t make sense. Why would he keep them and not sell them?”

“He is waiting for payment. The people who ordered them will not agree to his price,” John said with frightening calm.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“The smell will only make you sicker,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Don’t you feel anything for these people, some sympathy?”

This was the John she remembered--the man without compassion or mercy for those weaker than him.

“No.”

“How can you even admit it? When we escape, we are helping them.” She’d find a way to get everyone out and safe and away from here.

“We will have to move fast when we go. They will hinder us.” No emotion in his voice.

“I don’t care. We
will
help them.”

“No we won’t,” he said.

“I really want to hurt you,” she snarled at him and could have screamed when he didn’t react.

It felt as if they sat like that for hours. But according to her watch, only an hour passed.

“I wonder if they feed everyone once a day or something.”

“You are hungry?”

She shuddered at the thought of eating anything in this stinking place. “No, I was just thinking if they bring food, then you can break the bars, overpower them, and we can let everyone out and escape.”

“No, we will wait here.”

She tapped her foot on the grimy cement floor and glared at him. “I thought nothing could be worse than being haunted by a demon but being trapped in here with you is fast changing my mind.”

“You saw a demon?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.

She was too fed up, scared, and tired to care that he would probably think her crazy. “Well, he said he wasn’t a demon but he had something on his head that looked like a horn.” She shivered. “Those eyes.”

“What about his eyes?” he asked.

“They were the strangest black, so dark it was almost like looking into a mirror but, instead of my own reflection, I saw endless pools of oily black.” She blushed at how dramatic she sounded.

She’d wanted to tell someone about the demon that haunted her and who better than someone that was crazy himself? Someone who would either die from the drug he took or be killed by the reverend.

“And you think him a demon because of his eyes?” He looked down at her and seemed to carefully think it over. “Maybe he was something else.”

“Maybe he’s not a demon like we think of demons,” Julia speculated. “He might be a different species. Except there was no way a different species could exist on Earth without being discovered.”

He looked away from her, glancing briefly at the cell farther down in the dark corner. “Maybe it was a being from another planet,” he said.

Up to now, she’d seen him ready to kill and expressionless, yet now some emotion roiled off him.

“An alien? I don’t think so. Why would he come to my house? No I think I’m going with demon.”

“You will not go with a demon,” he said, so serious she had to bite her lip not to laugh.

The drugs had really damaged his brain, and how sad that it was a great improvement.

“What else could it be? I looked it up on the TC and everything points to the fact that I’m haunted by a demon.” She scowled at him. “Although the salt didn’t keep him out.” She gagged. “And the stench in this place is making my stomach turn.”

He cocked his head in a strange motion. “Salt?”

Something tugged at her memory again.

“They said on the TC to sprinkle salt in the doorway and windows and a demon wouldn’t be able to enter.” Saying it out loud made her sound as crazy as him.

“Did this demon frighten you?”

“You have no idea.”

The way that demon appeared and disappeared freaked her out more than anything else. How was she supposed to fight a being who could disappear? Not to mention the fact that he moved so fast she couldn’t shoot him.

“Did you think him ugly?”

What a strange question. And why assume it was a he? An elusive thought lingered just out of her grasp. “He looked like drawings of some of the demons on the TC.”

“Maybe he just wanted to talk to you,” he said.

“Maybe,” she agreed, not wanting to talk about it anymore.

Between demons, the reverend, and her family she had more than enough on her plate. She searched for another subject.

“Do you know where my friend Sarah is? She’s a little shorter than me and very fine boned, with long golden-blonde hair.”

“I do not know where your friend is.”

“Would you tell me if you knew?”

“Yes, I would find her and bring her to you,” he said in a wooden, monotone voice that did not convince her of his intent.

Julia didn’t know what to say. He was like a totally different person. “Did the family send you after me?” Maybe he found her on his own, or by accident.

“No.”

“Then what are you doing in town?”

“I am on a mission.”

“Why would the reverend detain you? They know who you work for?” she asked. “Wait! Did you branch out on your own?” Wouldn’t it be just her rotten luck if he’d chosen this town to hide from the family?

“No, I do not have the dead wish.”

“Why do you talk like a foreigner sometimes?”

Must be the drugs starting to affect his brain. She suppressed the pity that was stirring. He was a monster. Even if he changed now, she’d seen him do unforgivable things in the past. For now, she’d use him to get out of here but afterward, she’d make a faster getaway than the space ranger on cannibal planet.

“I do not speak like a foreigner.”

Yep, loony tunes. “All right, but I still think it’s strange that the reverend would dare treat you like this.”

“The reverend is a very arrogant man. He thinks his contacts among the Raiders will protect him.”

“Does he know who I am?”

If she managed to escape this place, she would have to disappear anyway but it would help if the reverend didn’t contact her family and tell them about her.

“No.”

That was reassuring. “I might have signed my own death warrant with my stupidity earlier. Why can’t I learn to keep my mouth shut?”

If the reverend followed up on her knowledge of the Benzoni family in Denver, it was all over.

“You do not need to fear the reverend.”

For a moment she could have sworn his eyes shot red sparks at her. She blinked and the illusion disappeared.