Jelly Cooper: Alien (24 page)

“Oh.”
  His eyes flash. 

He wants it bad.  The opportunity to fight me is too much of a temptation.  I knew it would be.  He grins.  I stare back.

sssssssssssssSLAP

He hits me.  Not with his fists, but with power
, and it
hurts
.

I feel the force of the blow in every bone in my bo
dy; my entire skeleton rattles.  I imagine Humphrey at the hands of the
bashrak
and welcome the pain.  I suck it up.  When I kill this piece of filth, Humphrey’s going to be with me every step of the way.

Lightening flickers out at sea as I tumble backwards, my head spinning.
  Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse the Hunter circling to my left.

Sneaky weasel.

I spin and, reaching out my arm, send a shock wave towards him.

Caught off guard,
the Hunter catches the brunt of the blow and cartwheels backwards.  He stops in the air and rights himself, his lips peeling back.  He runs his horrible purple tongue over a row of razor sharp teeth. 

Sick.  The guy needs
help.

Without warning, Thorn launches himself at me, physically. 

Wasn’t expecting that.

Framed by flashing lightening, he looks huge, like
a monstrous, evil, leviathan, coming straight at me.  His robe streams out behind him as he closes the gap between us with terrifying speed.  There’s no time to prepare and, in seconds, he’s on me.  His hands close around my throat, squeezing my windpipe.  I claw at his hideous bony fingers as the pressure increases and try to draw some breath into my burning lungs.  His nails scrape my skin.

He mutters to himself as he squeezes.

“I’ve tried the old ways, I’ve tried the new ways.  I’ve tried tricking you, being your friend, threatening your friends, your family.  And where has it got me?”  He shakes me and stars explode behind my eyes.  “I’ll tell you where it’s got me:
no where
!  No where at all.”

I force three fingers underneath one of his and try to
pull his hand from my throat.  Fighting for air, my vision starts to go. 

“You just refuse to l
ie down and die.  Do you know how annoying that is?  Hmm?  EXTREMELY ANNOYING!” 

Spit flies onto my face as he screams.

“So, I’m going to do it the
human
way.”

He laughs.  It makes me think of a bucket of worms, slick with slime, writhing against each other.

As the storm draws nearer, I start to lose consciousness.  My body is dissolving.

The Hunter chuckles as he closes my windpipe.

“Oh, that’s cute.  That is
so
cute.  You might be invisible, but I can still feel your scrawny neck under my fingers. A neck that I’m about to break.  I am
feeling good!
”

It’s not supposed to end this way.  I will it not to end this way.

Thunder booms from the clouds.  Thorn jumps and his grip on my throat slips.

Gulping
a ragged breath, I come back from the brink of unconsciousness. 

“
Jelleeeeeeeeee, Je-lleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

I hear Travis shouting my name from the beach below and something clicks in my mind.  Something he said earlier, when we were hiding…

Maybe it’ll thunder.  They hate the thunder.

Why do they hate the thunder?  It can’t hurt them, can it? 

Can it?

Something I’m missing…I can’t quite
…

They don’t hate the thunder.  They fear the lightening that comes before it.
  And I can call it.

Drawing strength from my core,
I yank his hands from my neck.  Grappling in mid air, we spin like wrestlers.  The clouds flicker as my army of electric soldiers lie in wait, jostling and bristling in the dark underbelly. 

Thorn senses the change.  He tightens his grip on my wrists and starts to spin us around.  He’s going to launch me into the sky then come after me with all he has.  I can feel it.

I can feel
everything.

“Never going to happen
,” I whisper, twisting my wrists, grabbing him and sinking my nails deep into the pale flesh of his inner forearms.  “You’re not going anywhere.”

As we spin, the energy field swells.  It’s happening.

“Come on, come on…”

I call to the night sky
as the Hunter struggles. He sees the sparks shooting from my fingers; he feels them burning against his skin.  His nostrils flare as they fill with the smell of his own burning flesh.

My body jerks as the sky
warps with energy. 
Energy that I can harness.

The power inside me is so strong
; it’s beautiful and terrible.  As I nurture the storm, the last pieces of the puzzle slot into place. 

Then…nothing.

Just deadly calm.  No thunder, no lightning, no wind; just me. 

Thorn
grins his wicked grin.

Idiot.
  Next time, they had better send someone with a brain.

Letting go of his arms, I grab him by the collar and yank his face to within an inch of my own. 

“It’s over.”

“I don’t think so.”

I clasp the violated body of Gregory Thorn, whom I would have liked, to my chest and whisper to the evil inside.

“You
are
going to hell,
bashrak
, but you won’t be lonely for long.  I’ll send some friends your way real soon.”

I let go.

We hang in the air, side by side.

With a horrible, vengeful grin, I glance up at the clouds,
then back at Thorn.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty…”

I reach out my hand.

A bolt of lightening unleashes itself from the clouds and strikes the Hunter with stunning accuracy. 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

His cry of pain should make my stomach churn, but it doesn’t and I don’t look away.  I watch,
closely, as the lightening holds him in its coils, charging his body with hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity.  The air becomes singed and rank with the smell of burning
bashrak
flesh.

Again and aga
in the lightening hits his body; Thorn’s body.

It stops. 

The lightening recoils into the clouds.  Released from its grip, the Hunter drops like a stone.  He hits the water with a splash.

I float back down to earth, where Travis waits for me.

“Is he…?”

I look to the shoreline.  The Hunter’s body lies face down in the surf.

“I don’t know.  Let’s go check.”

We wade through the shallows and, taking an arm each, drag the body up the beach.  Travis nudges him over with the toe of his trainer.

I crouch over the corpse and put my fingers to his neck.  I listen to his chest, just catching Travis’ wince as I lower my he
ad.  Red marks circle my throat; imprints of the
bashrak’s
hands.  Travis looks away.

I kneel there for endless seconds.  I have to be sure.  Finally, I look up at Travis.

“Well?”

My face crumples.

“It’s over.”

Travis kneels beside me and holds me in his arms.  Great, hulking, sobs shake my body and he tightens his grip.

“I heard about Agatha, and Humphrey.  I couldn’t move, but I could hear…” 

He strokes my hair, just like Humphrey did not so long ago. 

“I’m so, so sorry Jelly.”

Travis whispers
soothing nonsense words, just so that I will hear his voice and know that it’s over, that I’m safe.  He holds me for a long time, until, exhausted, I stop.  Standing on shaking legs, I stumble over to my family.

I force myself to bend over Molly and place two fingers to the base of her neck.  I note the pallid cheeks. 
The complete stillness.  The weak pulse.

Faint with relief, I hurry to check my mum and dad.  They’re unconscious, but alive.

Travis is at my side.

“We’d better go,
Jay.  We need to get them home.”

We undo their bonds and lower them to the sand. 
I reach and wrap them in silver tentacles, lifting them high into the air.  Closing my eyes, I elevate us to the same height.  Tears of sorrow and relief leak from beneath my lashes and mix on my cheeks.  Making no attempt to blink them back, I fly us across the water, over the village rooftops and into our back garden.  With Travis’ help, I guide each member of my family through the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs and into bed.

I hope they don’t remember.  I hope they never know what I’ve become.

Chapter Twenty

I sit with Travis in the kitchen.  We don’t speak.  The clock above the door ticks on, but to me, time is irrelevant.  You can’t turn it back and get the chance to do things differently.

If I’d known what I could do – what I
can
do – back in Thorn’s room, he’d be dead and
they’d
be here.  Alive.

Travis clears his throat.

“So…um, Jelly.  Do you think that your parents will be OK?”

My voice doesn’t work.  My throat is sore and dry and when I open my mouth, nothing comes out.  I try again.

“They’ll be OK,” I croak.  “Whatever he did to them is wearing off; they should be fine by morning.”

“How do you know?”

Staring at the table top, I shrug.

The ticking of the clock grows louder.
  Travis takes a deep breath.

“When I was
eight years old, our cat, Bootsy, went missing.”

I can’t do this right now.

Travis grabs my cold hand and strokes it.  He doesn’t realise that I’m going to fall apart any minute and he’s making it worse.

“My older sister, Jenny, was devastated. 
Bootsy was her pet and had been with the family for most of Jenny’s life.  The whole family searched for hours for Bootsy, but no one could find him.  Jenny was a mess.  Jelly?  JELLY!  You with me?”

A tear trickles down my cheek and he wipes it away.

“It was getting dark and there was still no sign of Bootsy.  Jenny started crying and I realised that I knew exactly where he was.  I grabbed my dad from the back yard and convinced him that I’d heard mewing coming from the empty house two doors down from us.  We snuck in through a back window and found Bootsy stuck in the spare bedroom, where I knew she would be.”

He stops and lifts my chin.  He looks into my eyes.  He wants me to respond, to show some life, some interest, but I can’t. 

“It’s OK, Jelly,” he whispers as my lips start to tremble.  “Two years later, I found a little girl who’d fallen down a well.  The police had been searching for her for thirty-six hours with no luck.  I didn’t even know that anyone had gone missing; I just had to go there.  I knew that I had to hurry - that someone needed my help.”  He shrugs.

Because I know he wants me to, I
manage to ask.

“
Did you get there in time?”

Travis smiles and
my breath hitches in my throat.

“Yeah
, I found her and raised the alarm.  She was as hungry as hell, but otherwise OK.  The year after that was a busy time: I found another missing person and saved a seventy-year-old grandfather who was about to kill himself.”

I look up.

“Dodgy heater, carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Travis stalls, his smile gone.

“The year after that I helped five people,” he says quietly.  “Not all of them needed physical saving, but all five needed help in some way and I was being driven to give it to them.”

Travis looks away.  His shoulders droop and he hangs his head.

“The year after that was worse…I had visions, flashes from people’s lives.  I started to feel resentful: angry that this thing kept happening to me.  It could strike at any time, anywhere, and I would be forced to follow my instincts wherever they took me.  My life was being constantly disrupted; I was at the beck and call of this thing, whatever it was, and it was ruining my whole life.”