The Primal Connection Read online

  He had gone to several small towns, sometimes taking a playmate, sometimes not. Then, he began doubling back once they seemed to notice the pattern. He had no thought of what he would do if captured, just a burning desire to do as much of this as he could before he was.

  Dragging the struggling girl through the doorway of the old abandoned house he had set up as his play station, he quickly secured her to the bed in the waiting chains. As she struggled, he noted her bladder had let go. He could feel the warm wetness between her legs. It excited him even further. So much so, he pulled out his cock and began to stroke it.

  The girl watched, torn between terror and fascination. Despite the desperate air of the moment, she noted details about her captor. She had always held a rape fantasy deep in the recesses of her mind, and for a moment, she began to wonder if this was it come true. One look in the crazed eyes of her attacker though told her that if it were, she would not get a repeat performance once he was done.

  Suddenly, his hand shot out and tore the tank top open, the material bunching behind her neck and biting into her skin.

  She yelped in pain.

  Hearing the tender cry in her young voice was too much for him. He reached his climax suddenly, shooting his hot sperm out and letting it land on her tiny breasts.

  Her mind began to shut down then. It wasn’t fair. Another month and she would have been gone, having scrimped and saved for two years since she graduated, working at the local truck stop to finally pay the tuition for college. Instead, she was in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere about to be raped and murdered by a pervert. As if to protect her from what it knew was coming, her mind, at that point, simply stopped functioning.

  Her captor put out a hand to steady himself against the wall. His orgasm took a lot out of him. He recognized the blank stare on the girl. She was going into shock as the deadly earnestness of her situation sank in. Good. It gave him time to prepare. He knew how to bring her out of it when he wanted to. And fear was more intense when it was the first thing you see when you wake up.

  Funny thing was he couldn’t remember where he’d learned that.

  * * * *

  From the rim of the canyon, Terry had watched them enter the house. It was clear this was his target and what was about to happen. He hadn’t been sure of it until then, but at least that part was over now. Trouble was that convincing Benin would take all night unless he had something definite to tell him. Now, he did, but the time it would take for Benin to get out here would give this freak time enough to scar the girl for life.

  He was too far away for Charlie to tell if it was the guy that was one of the occupied, which presented another problem. Faced with imminent capture, the Chrliti inhabiting this guy or, at this point, the girl, he’d just transfer to one of the cops who came to arrest him. What they didn’t know was if this clown was the one doing this or was being manipulated by the entity. Charlie’s people couldn’t ordinarily control a person, but if the host produced enough bioelectricity, they could, in some cases, influence that person’s subconscious, inhibiting control and releasing whatever demons that person had. If it was this guy in this case, it seemed it hadn’t been too much of a fight.

  If he slipped away, he might get into a person that had real power. This guy was just the tool, but what he did would get him dealt with by the law. Charlie and he would deal with the Chrliti though.

  It would have been easy, but for the fact that Charlie couldn’t tell over the distance who was the occupied one here. When they got into town, Charlie had done his thing and checked the town for his people, finding only a handful, all of whom were simply content with their lives in their small town. It was only after the sun had gone down and most of the town’s occupants, human or Chrliti, had gone to bed, that he had detected the one they had followed.

  They had both assumed he was one of the occupied passing through, but when Terry got close enough for a more in-depth scan at a light, Charlie was able to note the vileness of their target. Unfortunately, he was also able to detect the fact that there were two bioelectric fields in the van.

  Unable to define which one the Chrliti occupied, they could only follow along to find out which one was which. Which had led them here.

  Terry got close to this thing outside Billings at an arson scene. Again, Charlie had been able to detect his brethren but not to identify him. And given Billings’ far larger population of Chrliti, he had been unable to track him either. The death of several girls in the ensuing months had given Terry an idea, and he had gambled on checking this place out even after the first attack was long over.

  He had told Charlie, “This friend of your runs a pattern that he follows. Only instead of going directly, he doubles back randomly.”

  Charlie had agreed but added, “Not as random as you think. He waits until the town he struck tries to force itself out of the fear and return to normal. Then, he strikes a second time. It strikes me as reminiscent of the way my people travel through space.”

  Sensing Terry’s confusion, he went on. “In space, we simply hitched rides on whatever happened by. Usually that entailed riding it for a long time going in circles. The result is that we generally think in circles. And doubling back on territory we already went over.”

  Again, Terry found himself learning something new about his companion. They had been together for the years ever since they had met in Iraq. The problem was that Charlie, unused to talking in human formats, seldom told anything new without an almost direct question. Terry spent most of his time dragging answers out of him.

  To Charlie, it was just the fact that he had never had to explain to others of his race. Among them, questions such as how are you doing or feeling okay weren’t done, because there was no need. They could already tell. Having to explain thoughts or, worse, emotions to a human was as alien to him as…they were to humans.

  It served to remind Terry that regardless of how attached he had become to Charlie, he was still an outsider. While Charlie had been on Earth for years, inside thousands of hosts, Terry was barely thirty. He felt like he was a first grader trying to have a conversation with a college professor. A very smart first grader, because even though Charlie was definitely the smarter of the two, he was not a strategic thinker. And as far as deduction for the human contingent, all of that was on Terry.

  Charlie knew all this. And added to the fact that Charlie had no physical form, he knew that it would be Terry who had to do all the work. Fortunately, Terry enjoyed the job.

  Especially this part, as he opened the trunk of his car. From the hidden compartments, he started pulling out his favorite toys. Two nine millimeters in a double holster went over his shoulders under his jacket. After a second, he reached back into the cubbyhole and pulled out a small revolver, slipping the holster into the small of his back.

  “Why do you have three guns?” Charlie asked in his mind.

  Terry smiled to himself, knowing Charlie would sense it. “Force of habit. And besides, I like guns.”

  He could feel Charlie’s disapproval. “Your people have some very strange habits. And you develop so many strange attachments. It’s almost as if you—”

  Charlie never finished as Terry suddenly began whistling. Charlie groaned loudly in his mind. Whistling to him was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Hearing it in the melody of music made him cringe. Show tunes were Terry’s personal addition to the torture simply because he knew Charlie hated them.

  After giving him a minute to get past the sound, Terry smiled, saying, “Some of the worse things happen because of people’s habits, like this clown. You need to be on top of the game if you plan to win.”

  Charlie accepted that without question. Probably because he didn’t want another dose of Terry’s shrilling.

  Terry finished dressing for the occasion. A pair of cuffs and a bowie knife in a leg scabbard completed the ensemble. Lastly, a small canvas pouch clipped onto his belt. If he were right, he’d need it later.

  As a final pr
eparation, he pulled out his cell phone, dialing the number to the Lester P.D. After the third ring, a deputy answered, sounding angry at being disturbed.

  “Lester Police Department, Deputy Abbot speaking.”

  “Hello, Deputy. This is Terry Bridger. Is there a number where I can get a hold of Agent Benin? I think I have some information that he can use.”

  Over the line, Terry could hear the sigh as the man thought about what he had just heard, adding to what he had heard from Benin about the man on the other end of the line. Benin hated Bridger openly. No one there was sure why, but the fact was that Agent Benin was the representative of the federal government, while Bridger was a maverick that just showed up, according to Benin, within five minutes of a news crew.

  “Agent Benin is at his hotel. If you give me a message, I’ll have it delivered in the morning.” He chuckled under his breath. “I doubt you have anything that can’t wait until then, and even if it can’t, so what? I doubt he’ll pay it any attention anyway.”

  Terry refused to give him the satisfaction of getting angry. Instead, he smiled into the phone, saying in an almost lilting voice, “Deputy, do you know a girl about twenty or so, blonde hair, about a hundred, hundred and five pounds? Looked like she might have been working late?”

  Fighting to remember more details, as the deputy still seemed uninterested or unknowing, he remembered one other thing. “She’s got a tat on her wrist. I couldn’t make it out, but it looked red.”

  At the mention of the tattoo, Terry could feel the man’s change in attitude even through the phone.

  “That sounds like Tina Mays. Lives off Main Street and Brown.” Suspicion crept into his voice as he asked, “Why?”

  Terry decided to lie a little. He couldn’t tell them about Charlie, but he had to say something. “I saw her get into a van somewhere near the middle of town. For some reason, it didn’t look right, so I followed him. Maybe I learned a little from hanging around all that FBI expertise, but I managed to stay with him until he pulled off the highway. He just pulled her out the van and went into this old house about thirty miles or so outside of town. And I really don’t think she wanted to go in.”

  The deputy nearly exploded. “You let this fucker take her in there? Why didn’t you call earlier?

  Terry fired back. “To say what? I saw some guy pick up a chick on a side street in the middle of town? As far as I could see, it didn’t look like she wanted to go, but hell if I told you guys, with all the crap Benin told you about me, would you have listened?”

  He gave the deputy a second to think of an answer. Then decided he didn’t care. “Listen, have Benin use some of that FBI super-tech to trace this call. I’m gonna try and get a better look and see if there is anything I can do for this kid. This guy looked like he coulda been Jason Vorhees’s brother.”

  He had no idea if this idiot would catch the metaphor, and at that moment, he didn’t care. He had to go. He dropped the phone on the ground and turned to walk down the hill. Then, as an afterthought, turned and shouted into it, “I think you oughta try to get him that message before morning. That’s if he wants to make it here in time to beat the reporters!”

  He laughed as he walked way.

  Charlie was confused.

  “You know, all you are doing is aggravating Benin further. You should be trying to pacify him. He could be a valuable ally if you could get on his good side.”

  Terry laughed even harder. “I got a better chance of qualifying for the Indy Five Hundred. The only way he’s gonna get on my side is if there isn’t another one. And trust me, he’ll take the time to look.”

  Terry could feel Charlie’s mental headshake. Or he would have if Charlie had a head. “You humans are a conundrum. You have a reputation for helping him and others like him that he is well aware of, but he still despises you. I am sometimes amazed you have all made it this far.”

  Terry continued laughing. “Amazed? Hell, most of the time, I find myself downright astonished.”

  * * * *

  Less than ten minutes after Abbot’s conversation with Bridger, he had contacted Benin, who was fit to be tied halfway through the conversation.

  How the hell does this clown do it? He wanted to play with the idea that he was somehow involved, but he had been in San Diego when this shit started. And he had friends that would probably take a dim view if he tried to blame this on him.

  Alvin Benin hated mysteries. And since Bridger was shrouded in it, he hated him even more.

  He didn’t mind help, but something about this guy rubbed him the wrong way. He wanted to order him off the case, but the police chief and the mayor of the town both wanted all the help they could get. Added to the fact that he promised only to charge if he got results and they were sold.

  He shook his head as he shoved his legs into his trousers. It wasn’t that it bothered him that the guy wanted to help. He just didn’t trust him. He knew too much and never let on where he found it out. Now, he just happens to be in position to see this guy but not close enough to see enough to call the police. It was like he wanted the guy to—

  Benin froze. It was like he wanted him to get out and away. Why? Was he planning to kill him? Join him? It almost made sense except for the call. In either case, why would he call in and tell us where this guy is? That made no sense. Unless…

  Unless that wasn’t where they were. Unless… He stopped then. He was letting his imagination get away from him. He wanted so bad to find something he could use to discredit this guy that he was grasping at straws.

  He just wanted to figure out this guy and whatever tricks he was using. He knew he had a few. This was the third time he’d run across him or heard of him. He had run a check on him and got blocked on a few points. He had pressed, but the familiar run around told him he was dealing with, at the very least, an ex-spook.

  He wondered what his story was. Why had he left the agency? It wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t a common practice. What he could find out was that he had been in the army, two separate police departments and one fairly successful detective agency. Now, he worked as a consultant for anyone with the money to afford him, which oddly enough wasn’t that much. It was like he wasn’t in it for the money, which made him, in his opinion, that much stranger. If he wanted to serve, why leave the agency? And if he wanted to leave the agency, why not try the FBI? He realized that made him sound childish but the question stood.

  He finished dressing even as the phone rang. He had had the technicians triangulate the still-open signal from Bridger’s phone. He had ordered the location found as soon as his feet had hit the floor.

  “Hello?”

  “Agent Benin? This is Reid from technical support. We have the location on that phone you requested. It’s being sent to your phone as we speak. However, there’s a problem. This location is not thirty miles from your current location. It’s more like sixty in those mountains. Even if you come off the nearest highway, you are about forty minutes away, with lights and a whole lot of luck.”

  Sixty miles? What time did this guy see all this crap? How long had he been driving behind his guy? Another thing he hated about Bridger. No matter how hard he worked, Bridger was always one-step ahead. And he had an impressive success rate. Way more than he should have had. Benin didn’t like it. He was too good to be on the up and up. Whatever the reason for this discrepancy, it didn’t look good.

  After thanking the technician, he dialed another number. The phone was answered on the first ring.

  “Have the SUVs ready to go in five minutes. Location will be in the on-board computers. And make sure we got the best drivers you can find in them. We got some mileage to make up fast!”

  With that, he checked his gun out of habit as he headed for the parking lot to wait for the driver.

  Chapter Three

  Bridger made his way down to the floor of the canyon. The darkness worked for him now, but when the moon rose high enough, he might as well be on stage at the Biltmore Theater back ho
me. He rushed across the yard with both eyes pinned on the house. He slid up next to a tree and watched for any sign he had been seen. There was no movement visible.

  He lowered his head and concentrated like they had taught him in training, concentrating on the quiet night to amplify any sound. He waited in the darkness, breathing slowly and shallowly so as not to interfere with the examination.

  Charlie, too, extended outward, searching for signs that their target was inside his range. He could detect the electrical fields humans produced about thirty feet away. He could detect his people’s auras far further. As a result, he could sense that there was one of his people inside, but he was still unable to tell which one was the occupied.

  What he could tell was that neither of the two human bodies was outside his range.

  Inside the silence of his mind, Terry suddenly heard Charlie speaking softer even than normal in keeping with the external quiet.

  “They are barely within my range. But I still can’t tell which of them has an occupant.”

  “How close will you have to get to tell?“

  “If they separate, I can tell at once. But he does not seem to want to get away from her.”

  “Odds are it’s him.” Terry mused. “You said you could sense this was a bad one, didn’t you?”

  Charlie again seemed confused and even a bit angry. “Just because the occupant is not one of our better examples doesn’t mean he’s the aggressor here. Unless you would like to blame my people for all the serial killers your people have produced over the years?”

  Terry couldn’t think of a comeback for that. In his time with Charlie, he had seen all manner of insanity. They had done quite a bit to stop some of it and to repair what damage they could, regardless of whether human or Chrliti did it, but both of them knew it was like farting against thunder. Added to the fact that their partnership was temporary, they knew that they would one day not be able to do that even. The difference this time was that, thanks to the fact that Charlie couldn’t get out of Terry even if he wanted to, they knew they had tried; it could mean that this was the end of the road for Charlie as well.