The Primal Connection Page 3

  All that was for another time though. Right now, all that mattered was the girl inside that farmhouse. Whether or not she was the occupied, she was the one in danger, at least as far as Terry could tell. The Chrliti would be dealt with in either case. Trouble was if it was one of the more powerful and controlling this guy, he could be trouble. They could directly stimulate the adrenal glands to turn a normal guy into a monster for a few minutes. Charlie was able to do it as well, so it made for an even field, but Charlie wasn’t psychotic and didn’t want to escape at any cost, including permanent damage to Terry. A fact that might not matter so much to one that could leave of his own accord anytime he wanted, unlike Charlie.

  Returning to the matter of the moment, Terry noted something that gave him real pause. The entire house, as far as he could see, was ringed by a driveway like a moat. Only, instead of being a barrier of water, this was gravel, probably designed to let the house’s occupant know if there was someone trying to sneak in. He could traverse it without any sound, but the process left you a target if the guy already happened to know you were there.

  The answer presented itself a minute later as Terry spotted some old planks, the longest of which could easily cross the driveway. Taking it and a pair of shorter pieces, he quickly constructed an impromptu bridge by placing the board across the drive and then setting his end on top of the shorter pieces. Now there was nothing to touch the gravel, hence, no sound.

  It was of little note except that it made both Terry and Charlie wonder how long had this guy been here. And how many more times had he planned to use this place. With no answer forthcoming, both Terry and Charlie came to the conclusion that whatever happened, this ended tonight.

  Terry wondered absently how much time he had before Benin came over the hill, sirens wailing and lights blaring. Benin had a love for rules that rivaled an obsession. The book said, he did, no question. When he had told them thirty miles, he hoped it would slow him down by making him think it wouldn’t take as long to get there and therefore spend more time planning. Charlie reminded him that it would be a minimal difference as they would more than likely be able to track down their precise location in minutes. Terry figured any little bit helped, and the dumber he looked to Benin, the better.

  Sidling up to a window, he tried to see inside. The window was dirty but still translucent enough to see shadows inside the house. None of them moved as he watched. He tried the window. Locked of course. A quick examination showed there was no way to jimmy it, as it was nailed shut. There was a lock, but time had claimed it long ago. Whoever had decided the window should be kept closed had chosen an old-fashioned method.

  It was the third window he tried before he found one that still had a lock. A little further examination found that not only was it intact, it was wired into what appeared to be a burglar-alarm system. He wondered how it was supposed to work, because the house had no sign of power.

  There was a chance it might be a remnant from when the house was a home to someone, other than a psychotic killer and/or a homicidal alien. A chance he decided he couldn’t afford to take. He continued his search until he found the front door. He wanted to reach for the handle, but Charlie stopped him.

  “I can sense a field around that doorknob. I would surmise he has connected it to whatever power source he has available as a last-ditch defense.”

  “Great, he’s crazy, paranoid and clever. That’s always a bad thing. Any ideas?” Terry knew they were short on time from both ends.

  Charlie, meanwhile, had spread his senses out and tried to find the source of the energy field. No luck.

  “He must have it below ground.” Charlie said finally. “Probably in the cellar. If we can find its exhaust, we can block it and…”

  But, Terry was already moving back down the side of the house, thinking to Charlie, “No time! By the time we find it, Benin will probably be here. And if he isn’t, it won’t leave us much time to deal with our boy in there.”

  “So what do you plan to do?”

  “Hey, you’re in my head and you don’t know?”

  “You know we can’t read your minds like that. I’ve told you that.”

  Terry smiled crookedly to himself. “Yeah, I know; I just don’t believe it. You’ve screwed me up too many times not to be able to.”

  A mental shrug and Charlie said, “I have been lucky on occasion, due more to deduction and reason more than any clairvoyant abilities. We cannot read your minds, Terence. Plain and simple.”

  Terry wasn’t convinced. Mainly because every time Charlie wanted to piss him off, he called him Terence, knowing that would do it. He had no time to dwell on it as he reached the window. A quick look and he slid the blade of his knife up and in between the contacts of the window sensor. Sliding the window up along the blade, it maintained the connection until the hilt reached the base of the upper window. It was a tight fit, but he managed to crawl silently into the room.

  On the floor, gun in hand, he scanned the room. Nothing. Again, he listened for any sound. Silence.

  Charlie, now in the house, again scanned for their targets. And again, owing to the size of the house, still could not get a reading on them.

  Terry cursed fate silently. He had hoped to get some kind of idea what the hell he was dealing with, but it appeared that was not going to happen. He shook his head. Always the hard way.

  He started down the hall, senses on high alert. The walls were covered with moss and fungi. It was clear no one had lived here in quite a while. How this guy found this place was another question. They were miles from the nearest highway. He wondered if that qualified as a point in favor of the male here being the occupied one. Despite Charlie’s half-hearted objection, he still put the odds three to five that the guy was the one that had the Chrliti occupying him.

  He ran a search on the house, room by room, as he went.

  Charlie extended his aura to help.

  Terry realized that with Charlie on duty, anything he did was less than worthless, but he did it anyway. Between army, police and his CIA training, he could no more just walk by the doors than he could see through them.

  The worst part for him was that he was now remembering the girl that he saw pulled out of the van. He could see the fear in her eyes as her assailant dragged her out and into the house. Another reason he didn’t think she was the occupied, even though there was no way to tell from anything they had seen so far. The thought made him that much more determined.

  Charlie could sense his anxiety. Although he couldn’t read his mind per se, just as he had said, he could sense moods and emotions just as easily as a person could see someone was in a bad mood. He redoubled his efforts, knowing that if nothing else, Benin was on his way.

  * * * *

  In a room at the other end of the building, the man in the coveralls froze. He knew he hadn’t heard anything, but he suddenly felt an almost presence. He knew somehow that there was something wrong, that there was someone else in the house with them. He tried to shrug it off, but it persisted. Strongly. As if it was a warning.

  Like Terry, he froze then, straining his ears for some sign he was not alone. He was rewarded a moment later as a sound reached his ears. Normally, it was a safe bet he would never have heard it, but just at the extreme range of his audio ability came a sound sliding through the darkness from beyond the room. A ringing sound, like a sword being sharpened. It barely even qualified as a sound, but it was enough to make him turn his attention from his victim to the outer hall. Grabbing a bowie knife, he looked out into the hall. He was gratified by the emptiness. He moved out into the darkness, stepping softly to keep from making his own noise.

  * * * *

  Benin sat fuming in the back seat of the lead SUV. Despite the fact that the vehicles were breaking every speed law on the books, they were taking far too long. According to the GPS, they would end up eight miles from the target when they got off the highway, so they were running under lights and sirens on the highway. He planned to order
silent running once they had made it close enough to the target to be heard.

  One of the agents had pulled the area up on the computer and showed it to Benin. He had taken one look and groaned. Aside from the valley the house was in, it was flat as the prairies of Kansas. The bowl the house had been built in was another matter. It was flat as well, only it was at the far end of the canyon. Coming in on the road, you would be visible for at least a mile or more. Given the now fully risen moon, it was entirely possible they would be seen long before they got anywhere near the house itself. Their advantage was that there was no other way out of the canyon. The SUVs weren’t great off road, but they easily outclassed this guy if indeed he was in a van like Bridger said. And grudgingly, he had to admit Bridger might be a lot of things he couldn’t find out, but he was honest.

  So, he leaned back and willed the driver to go faster, while at the same time, he wondered what Bridger had planned for their quarry.

  Chapter Four

  In the hall, Terry suddenly felt Charlie tugging at his mind. For a moment, he ignored him, but he suddenly became more insistent. Finally, he gave up.

  “What is it?”

  Charlie almost seemed as if he was out of breath. Which was impossible, as Charlie didn’t breathe. “He is moving this way. Now, I can definitely tell he is the one that is occupied. And his field is strong enough to make the Chrliti in him at least strong enough to influence him! Perhaps strongly!”

  Terry allowed himself to feel a slight rush of pride in connection with his guesswork. It saved the girl at least from that much. Now, though, came the hard part. If the creature inside this guy was running the show, covertly or not, he was also hooked in well enough to be able to boost him up much like Charlie could do for him, which meant that in a straight fight, this guy could be trouble. While Charlie could do the same for Terry, he would not take the chance as said earlier of forcing him up beyond certain limits. This one could and probably would turn this guy into a zombie if he had to in order to get away.

  The bad part about that was in doing so, he would probably plan to jump into Terry and then finish his grisly work on the girl with his body if Terry had the necessarily high bioelectric fields. What he didn’t know was that thanks to his unique arrangement with Charlie, he wouldn’t be able to. None of the Chrliti was able to infiltrate and occupy a body when that body was already occupied. And even so, there were some humans who were simply incompatible with the Chrliti experience. And they all shared the ability to know when a human was available or not.

  The trouble with Charlie and Terry’s bonding was that as near as they could figure out, Terry’s bioelectric fields were so strong, they not only trapped Charlie in him, they also blocked Charlie from others of his kind. While he could still detect them, they could not detect Charlie. He couldn’t even talk to them. Where the others of his kind could talk to each other over distances directly proportional to the level of energy their host produced, Charlie could not contact any of his people except when Terry was in direct contact with their hosts.

  Since this one had no idea Charlie was already there, he had no way of knowing that his only out lay with the girl in the other room. Terry knew that if it came down to it, he could protect her from being occupied simply by shielding her with his body as long as he could maintain contact with her. By merging his already occupied field with hers, the Chrliti would be out in the cold. Given their remote location and the fact their extremely short life spans, once they were ousted, the problem the creature presented would solve itself in a minute.

  Another reason to have this done before Benin and his people showed up. With them there, it gave the Chrliti a whole new set of options. And Terry had no desire to start this up again somewhere else.

  He felt the small pouch in the small of his back. Charlie and he had worked on that for nearly a year after their first adventure together with another of his kind. It was easy to make once Charlie thought about it. It was just a Taser with low power settings but minimally higher amperage, focused through a silver disc. Terry remembered teasing Charlie, “Cripes, you people must be part vampire.”

  To which Charlie had replied dryly, “A better metaphor would have been a werewolf but as you prefer.” Terry was reminded how far Charlie had come when it came to talking and how sometimes it used to drive him nuts. Now, he suddenly realized he kind of missed the almost halting way he used to talk as he tried to find the words he wanted and format them so Terry could understand. At least then, he wasn’t such a smart ass.

  Charlie went on. “That device still may not function correctly. We don’t have any way to test it. If it fails…”

  Terry growled in his mind. “I know. At least, this time, we won’t have to worry about whether or not the guy deserves it.”

  Charlie grew silent at that as he remembered the first time they had tried to use it and it failed. No, that was wrong. It hadn’t just failed. It actually made the Chrliti stronger. Enough that it nearly took over the guy they were chasing and tried to kill Terry. Fortunately, at the time, he had been in the CIA, and the target was wanted dead or alive. After the failure of the device, Terry had opted for dead post haste.

  They had improved it, Terry taking courses on electronic theory and biology to figure out how, while Charlie applied himself to the problem by the virtue of being older than anything living thing on Earth and spurred on by the fact that the answer to one riddle could help him find the answer to his own. Namely, how to get out of Terry before he died and took him with him. A thought that haunted Charlie more each passing day.

  But they had nothing to test it on. So, they were both eager to find out if this latest incarnation held any better chance.

  In the darkness, they saw only dim shadows. The hallway formed a T that led to the main room of the house, still filled with furniture, albeit old and moldy like the rest of the house. The smell of the place indicated its graveyard status among the local wildlife. In contrast, the floorboards were solid beyond anything Terry could remember having walked on as they made no groans or creaks even as his two hundred pounds padded softly over them.

  He took a moment to orient himself. Charlie could give him directions, but he was not good with figuring pathways. Something to do with the limited sensory input humans had to make do with. Terry let it pass. After all, Charlie was used to seeing things very differently than he was and had been doing so for a thousand lifetimes. It would take him a while to adjust.

  Terry noted that the door he had seen the man pull the girl through had been on the other side from the window they had used to enter. He had headed toward the general area as soon as he started moving. Only now, he was at the end of the hall and there was just another room and a closed door. As he reached for it slowly, Charlie fairly screamed in his mind.

  “He’s there! On the other side of the door. And unless I miss my guess, as I believe the term is, he is rather upset with the interruption to his plans.”

  Terry grinned in spite of himself. “I’ll bet,” he thought in reply. “Any chance he’s heard us?”

  Charlie seemed to concentrate then answered quickly, “I doubt it. It would seem my counterpart is sensing your field and directing him accordingly. He knows we are here, but I doubt he had the skill to ascertain the exact location.” He added almost as a reminder, “Few of us do.”

  Terry never quite understood what Charlie meant by that. He had heard him say it several times over the years, and it still struck him as odd. Usually, he forgot about it once they were out of the situation that brought it up, but this time, he vowed to remember to ask when they had time.

  For now, though he had other problems. With this clown so close, he wasn’t sure if he could get the Taser in play fast enough. And if it didn’t work, he was in range of retaliation. Not good if he was going to save the girl and stop this thing. And it would waste an opportunity to test the Taser.

  He smiled suddenly as he began backing away. In seconds, he had padded back down the hall and
into the living room.

  Charlie was quiet, but Terry could feel the question burning in him. He ignored it as he found the front door in the dark. A shaft of moonlight showed the wires running to the door. Charlie had been right. It was rigged to deliver a shock to whoever grabbed it. Probably not a fatal one, given this guy’s mind set. Just enough to incapacitate anyone long enough for them to become the next victim and poof. Two for one day.

  Ripping the wires off, he opened the door, slammed it and shouted, “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Charlie literally went ballistic. Terry could feel a pounding in his skull that meant he was virtually jumping up and down. Confirmation came a moment later as Charlie’s normally almost-monotone voice came through in the form of a screech that would have scared off every barn owl in the state if they had heard it.

  “What are you doing?”

  Terry smiled as he pulled the Taser from its pouch. “Need to get him away from the girl.” He thought in answer quickly. “If the Taser works, it’ll screw him up long enough for us to reach her. If it doesn’t, it’ll still take him a few seconds to disentangle himself from his host. Either way, we need those few seconds to reach the girl. Now, we might not know where she is, but we do know where she ain’t. Once he’s out of the picture, whether this thing works or not, we got a few seconds to find her and get her protected.”