Jelly Cooper: Alien (8 page)

“And I don’t understand how to use these ‘special powers’, so I guess we’re even.”
I snap, plonking my hands on my hips.

Stubbornness has always been an ally of mine and I gratefully turn to it now.

He mutters to himself.  After a while, he turns and with a small shrug says, “I had better teach you to run, little one.”

Little one.

“Don’t call me that,” I whisper through lips too stiff to work properly.  “Don’t
ever
call me that.”

He looks
upset.  “What?  Little one?  Why not?”

“
He
calls me that in my dream.  He calls me that and then drops me into the canyon.”

Green eyes snap to mine and I see rage burning in them.  Rage and …

Fire! 

Oh shit. 

You know when you hear something or see something that you really wish you hadn’t because your life was warm, fuzzy and much less complicated before you witnessed whatever you witnessed?  Looking into his eyes, the locks start to tumble in my brain. Unless I’m way off track, I’m looking at my father.  My biological father. 

I can’t deal with this.  Not now.  I push the sneaky suspicion to the very back of my mind and with sheer, blind, panic-driven determination, forget it.

Cue one almighty breakdown in the future.

If I have a future.

My life sucks.

“He’s extracting it from your memory.” 

“How’s that again?” I ask.

“I used to call you little one.  He’s retrieved this information from the depths o
f your memory and he’s using it to get at me.”

I splutter.  I can’t help myself.  I mean, come on; I think that I’ve taken the news that I’m an alien from another planet squarely on the chin.  I think under the present circumstances, I’m
doing an award winning job of keeping an open mind.  But enough is enough. 
Memory retrieval
?  Can they even do that on Star Trek?

“How could I possibly remember you?”  I ignore the hurt on his face, because to acknowledge it would be to admit to a fact that I’m no where near ready to handle.  “I was still a baby when I left your planet and I haven’t clapped eyes on you since, until today.  Not even in my dreams.”

Hold on…

Sandal man allows himself the smallest of smiles.  “
You’re thinking with a human mind, with human restrictions.  With training, you could remember the day that you were born.  It’s all there, in your memory, held back by being on Earth.”

“Yes, well.  There’s no need to be smug about it.”  I can’t make up my mind if I believe him or not.  I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt because an image of a yellow raincoat refuses to budge from my mind.  The corners of my mouth twitch upwards.  “Oh man, Agatha
is going to
love
this.”

His fingers dig into the soft
flabby bit of my arms.

“
Ow!  Get off me!”

The fire in his eyes flares and I think that I really do not want to get on this man’s bad side.  “You must not say anything,” he insists. 
“To
anybody
.  It will mean the end of your life if you do.  And theirs.”

And I thought Rhiannon was over-dramatic.

“I don’t lie to Humphrey and Agatha.” 

Well, not usually.

He shakes me! 
It hurts and I struggle. 

“Camille
, Jelly, please.  Don’t speak of this; your birthright, your gifts, any of it.  This is serious.  He
will
kill you, your family and your friends without pause or emotion.”

Best get off the subject and doubly quick.

“OK, OK.  So this, um…this reading thoughts thing; I just concentrate on doing it and it works?”

He looks at me for a long time
and my head feels spongy.

“Don’t tell them, Jelly.  I mean it.  He’ll murder every one of your friends.”

“Don’t read my mind again,” I whisper.  “I don’t like it.”

“Don’t tell them.  You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.  Trust me.”

Trust him!  I shake my head.  “Not for a long time.”

His hands fall away and he puts some distance between us. 
He’s so angry and desperate that he’s choking on it and the weird thing is that I sense it so clearly.  I can read every one of this Crin guy’s emotions.  He wants to say more, but pulls back and switches focus.

Wow.  Did I just read his thoughts? 

He smiles.

“
Almost, Camille.  You got a blurred, muffled version; more like intuition than mind reading.  Telepathy is one of the skills that cannot be taught.  Once aware of the power, it will develop unaided.  You simply have to will it.”

Hmmm.
  Maybe if I will it real hard, Travis Jenson will feel an overwhelming urge to remove his shirt whenever he sees me.

“Okay, I’ll give it a shot when I get back to
Kansas.”

He frowns.  “You don’t live in
Kansas.”

Nobody
ever
gets my Wizard of Oz references.

“Never mind that.
  What about running away?  I hope that’s as easy as reading minds.”

This time, the hand on my arm is gentle.

“Believe me.  You have the potential to run faster than any of the people at your Earth school, Camille,” he smiles, “including the boys.  But it takes time and practice.  That’s why I’m here.  I have many things to teach you, but the priority is to teach you how to pre-empt attack and then how to get away.  He’ll be coming for you soon.”

I shiver and try to push all thoughts of capture and torture to the back of my mind.  It’s a tough cookie to crack.  As I struggle with the cookie,
I have a thought. 

“How d
o you know it’s a him and not her?”

He laugh
s and shakes his head.

“The Hunters will not
take the female form.  All of the
bashrak
Hunters are born male and find it impossible to deceive effectively as a woman.  To understand the form and character of a woman is simply beyond their comprehension.”

Hang on one cotton-picking
minute.

“What do you mean ‘assume the form of’?”

Sandal man looks at me like I’m the village idiot or something.

“The Hunters aren’t human, Camille, or
Javorian.  They aren’t close.  They need to transmute into human form to live on Earth without suspicion.”

I choke.  “You’re saying that they change shape, like Mystique in X
-men?”

He nods, though looks a little
mystified.  X-men obviously wasn’t a box office smash back on planet insano.

“Wow.”

“Yes.  It’s hard to see them, to really
see
them, which gives them an advantage.  But all
bashrak
emit a force that you should be able to feel.  It takes masses of energy to appear human and to keep the shape and sometimes, Javorian’s can pick up their energy pulse.  Have you felt strange recently?  Dizzy, weak, displaced?

“
Displaced? 
I don’t even know what that means!”

“Dislocated; like you
’ve moved sideways but the world has stayed in the same place.” 

His words go ping, ping,
ping in my head like a slot machine hitting the payload. 

“
Yes!  Yes, I’ve felt like that for the last couple of months, but lately, it’s been bad.  Some really weird things have happened.”

Sandal man shakes his head.

“No, that’s different.  That’s down to your powers.  Nothing happens when you pick up on the pulse, other than that you feel…odd.  Like, um…like…oh, I don’t know how to explain it!”

“Do things squirm in your belly?”

He looks at me closely.  “No, that is not exactly the feeling, but why do you say it?”

I shrug, feeling a bit
silly.  “There’s a new teacher at school and when I see him I feel…wrong.  It’s like I’m afraid of heights and out on a window ledge.”  I raise my hands.  “That’s not much of a description either!”

“It’s not what we normally feel, but
you should stay away from this man.  The
bashrak
could have evolved or found a way to change the signal.  It could be him.  I can’t think of another reason for his effect on you.”

“How can I stay away from hi
m?  He’s a teacher at my school.”

His mouth drops open and he runs a hand into his hair.

“You can’t go back to school, Camille.  Everything’s changed, don’t you understand?  I’ll teach you all I can in the time we have left but it won’t be enough.  When you wake, you have to convince your parents to leave Seabrook.  Put some belongings in the car and drive until you can’t go any further.  I’ll come to you when I can.”

“You’re off your head.”

“HE’S COMING TO KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE IDIOT!”

He roars at me and the shock of it is like a punch in the face.
  He swallows and says, quietly,

“He’s coming to kill you and he
will
unless you get away and stay ahead of him.  I can’t teach you enough in one session to defeat an animal that has been hunting and murdering its whole life.  It’s a soldier, Camille, that has been programmed with one order: to find you and end your life.  You’re fourteen years old and this isn’t fair, but this isn’t a dream and it isn’t a game.  You have to face up to the danger you are in and you
have
to think about surviving.  It’s the only thing that matters any more.” 

I turn and walk away.
  He shouts after me, but I don’t stop. 

Chapter Seven

I’m awake. 
Wide-awake.  I’ve been awake for five hours, staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, thinking about everything and nothing and what’s real and what’s not. 

I
push back the bedding and drag on my clothes. I go to the bathroom and squeeze toothpaste onto the toothbrush and raise it to my mouth and move it up and down and think that there’s no point cleaning teeth that will soon be rotting in the ground.  I swill my mouth and spit.

I have no idea what to do, but before I
listen to a man in a dream and leave my life, there are a couple of things I want to try.

As the
sun wakes, I let myself out of the house and set off for school.

***
              ***              ***

The gates are locked, so I decide to climb over them.  What the hell; I’m feeling reckless.

Ten minutes later, red in the face and
shaken after almost falling twice, I stand at the edge of the track, staring into the distance and chewing the inside of my cheek.

This is such a stupid idea.
  Am I really going to let a string of spooky dreams and nightmares rule my reality.

I guess I am.

I think about running really fast.  I stand there, like a plank, and just think about running.  Feet in trainers, pounding the pavement, for miles and miles.  I feel the rhythm in my head and in my blood and in my bones.  I think of the beat until there is nothing else and then I fold into the starting position.

The lane stretches out in front of me.

The man in my dream, my father, kept banging on about focus.  He seemed to think it was the answer to everything.  So the way I see it, if I focus hard enough, my brain will tell my body how to run fast, like yesterday when I watched Trishia.  Everything has to be in tune.

I close my eyes and deepen my breathing.  I feel the muscles bunched in my legs.  The morning grass is wet beneath my fingers and
it soaks the knee of my leggings.  My white breath puffs into the early morning air and drifts away.

One…

Breathe in.

Two…

Breathe out.

Three…

Breathe in…

Four…

Breathe out.

Five…

Breathe in…

Six…

…GO!

I spring out of the hunched starting position
, tuck my head down and go for it.  Focused on my racing heartbeat, my legs pump in tune with my body’s natural rhythm, pushing me faster and faster.  I will myself to gather more speed.  The blood courses through my veins; it feels like it’s on fire.  My legs answer and I shoot forward with a spurt.

The pounding of my feet against the grass track is the only noise.  I focus on the sound, willing the rhythm to
quicken.  Shutting out my mind everything except the movement of my body, I run, faster and faster, my legs settling into the stride.  I race on, round and round and round the track, building speed lap on lap.  My muscles don’t burn and cramp; they tingle and sing.  They want more, so I run on and on and on until there’s hardly any breath left in me.