Separation (4 page)

Maze rooted around in the bag and came out
with five delicate slivers of something wrapped in elegant gold
foil. “Oh...” she said with delight. “Jason, you are
so
thoughtful! This is La Diva, the best chocolate around!”

“Only the best for you,” he replied,
affection coating every word.

Quickly, she took off the foil wrappers and
shoved all five pieces in her mouth. A satisfied “Ah” sound came
from her and she got back to typing. It seemed all was
forgiven.

Soon a map appeared. It was of Rome, and she
pointed at it with a chocolate-stained forefinger. “This is what I
was searching for before you called us, sir,” she said to Farrell
and hastily licked the remaining chocolate from her fingertip. “You
asked for unusual heat emissions. We found them.”

“And where would they be?”

Jason walked over to tap a key. Maze got an
annoyed look on her face, as if perturbed someone had the temerity
to invade her personal space, but said nothing. “It’s here,” he
said, “right under the Vatican.”

He had to be kidding. “What’s going on down
there?”

Harry posed the question, but he felt he
shouldn’t have asked. The Vatican had their secrets, and they
weren’t about to give them up so easily.

“Satellite imagery suggests people,” Jason
said. “That’s what the guys in Intelligence are saying.”

Maze tapped another key. A sharper image
appeared, one of the Vatican, and then another of a thermographic
image. It showed twenty people in a chamber deep beneath the
surface, perhaps twenty meters down if not more.

Staring at the picture, Harry wondered who
might by down there, although he was pretty sure. The question
remained as to why those people had taken up a position under so
powerful an organization. “Do we go?”

Anastasia seemed to arrive at the same
conclusion and a thoughtful look appeared on her face. “Those
people might be like us. They also might have clues to where other
transgenics are hiding.”

It was also possible Istvan was still alive.
“Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?” asked Harry, trying
not to sound too positive. Even if this was some kind of trap, he
felt obligated. Istvan had saved his life in Russia, freeing him
from a jail cell, and he owed the little man.

She nodded. “Istvan, yeah, I’m thinking about
him. If he’s alive, we have to go after him.”

“Agreed,” Farrell said. “He’s too important,
and we need him.”

The meeting soon broke up after that, with
Farrell saying he needed some time to make the proper calls.
Sitting in a lounge downstairs, Jason leaned against his girlfriend
with a look of love in his eyes.

“Yeah, we’re going to get married one day,”
he said after Anastasia asked him about it. He put his arm around
Maze’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “And you,
Harry, you wifed her! That is totally cool!”

Trust Jason to come up with a dumbass
statement. His best friend had often used the term, “wifing
someone,” and now that it had come to pass, he felt more than a
little uncomfortable hearing it. “I married her, Jason. Use a
regular term, please.”

“Well, I think it’s cool, too,” Maze
affirmed. She’d gotten a few chocolate bars from the candy machine
down the hallway, and was busily shoving them in her mouth as fast
as possible. “Are you into having kids?”

Fur or not, the red in Anastasia’s face
showed clearly. Jason withdrew his arm and elbowed his girlfriend.
“That’s a little personal, don’t you think?”

After his previous social faux pas, he
shouldn’t have said anything, but he had, and Maze got an annoyed
look on her face. “No, it’s not,” she replied with an air of
indignation. “Married is married, and sometimes kids happen.” She
nodded at Anastasia. “Am I right?”

Nothing came out of Anastasia’s mouth except
for a mumbled, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“See?”

Harry said nothing, but decided if his wife
wanted children, he was all for it, although he wondered what their
kids would look like. When he’d done the DNA scan on himself as
well as Anastasia, it showed an almost perfect split of feline and
human. Since she was healthy and physically capable of having
children...

The sound of coughing interrupted him.
Farrell walked over to them, his hand over his mouth. He cleared
his throat and said, “Sorry, the air’s sort of dry here.” He
thumped his chest as if to clear away any obstructive inner
materials. “I’ll run you two back.”

In spite of the hacking fit, he seemed more
comfortable now, and his color had returned to normal. Jason and
Maze went back to work, but not before congratulating the Goldman’s
on their marriage once again. “We gotta keep in touch,” Jason
said.

“Count on it,” Harry replied. At first, it
seemed odd to hear the name Anastasia Goldman, but at the same
time, he found it a distinct thrill. Another rite had been passed,
another step in his journey to adulthood.

Farrell drove steadily along the highway, and
soon the noise, concrete and steel of the city transitioned into
the green and quiet of the countryside. After he’d dropped them
off, once inside their cabin Anastasia flopped down on the couch
and waved at Harry in a playful come-here gesture. He willingly
joined her and they put their heads together.

“Sorry about today,” she began. “It wasn’t
your fault. It was mine. That host,” she practically spat the word
out, “was a total jerk. I thought the attitudes of people would
change since we got married, but no. They still think of us as
freaks.”

“Not everyone,” he answered. “You remember
the people who asked us to take pictures with them, right? They
seemed grateful enough.”

“They’re the minority.”

Maybe so, he reflected. “If we’re going to
change anyone else’s mind, then we have to start somewhere.”

They nuzzled each other for a few moments,
and Anastasia peeked over Harry’s shoulder at the window. “It’s
still afternoon,” she murmured in a husky voice, one that promised
love and affection and a whole lot more. “It’s early, Mr. Goldman,
and we might have visitors.”

No one had come around for the past two
weeks, save Farrell. “We have privacy,” Harry answered as he picked
her up in his arms. “Just don’t scratch, okay... Mrs. Goldman?”

She giggled as he carried her into the
bedroom where they soon fell into the throes of love as all
newlyweds did. Growing up shy and nerdy, Harry had never dreamed of
meeting any girl, much less one as special as Anastasia, but an
experiment of evolutionary proportions, a happy coincidence, and a
whole lot of raging hormones had brought them together, and now
they were here...

Day soon turned into night, but Harry
couldn’t sleep. He pulled on a pair of jeans and stood near the
window, waiting until night fell. A sense of unease overtook him...
he didn’t know why, but he felt something was out there.

No, not something... he sensed two beings.
Opening the door a crack, he listened carefully. One of them had
light, almost delicate footsteps. The other’s footsteps were
heavier, plodding... and powerful.

“You hear anything?”

Anastasia had come up silently from behind
him, and he marveled at her aural ability. During his
transformation in the Genesis Chamber, the process on him had been
interrupted. That was why she had a tail and he didn’t. She was
also somewhat stronger and possessed a keener sense of smell and
hearing.

However, in terms of speed, he could actually
outrace her and figured they’d matched up well, if not equally. As
they were the only two of their kind—so far—it wasn’t as if they
were going to look for anyone else.

Anastasia placed her hand on his shoulder.
“No, I don’t hear anything, but...” she sniffed the air, “I smell
something. No, check that. I smell two of them, but only one has a
smell... like food. The other smells like a wet dog.”

So she’d come to the same conclusion he had.
In turn, he also tasted the air with his nose. An odor of oil and
pasta wafted its way into his nostrils. Ridiculous—the nearest
Italian restaurant lay over twenty miles away. Still, this person,
whoever he or she was, didn’t give off any bad vibes.

In the past, other hybrids, either human and
one species of animal or a composite of two or more animals and
human, had often set off alarm bells. It was as if his instincts
had developed to the point of being able to instantaneously
separate friend from foe. This time, one of these visitors wasn’t a
foe... but at the same time, he, she or it might not be altogether
friendly. As for the other, he didn’t want to take any chances.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy, but it
smells like someone’s been eating pasta. The other one, yeah, it
smells like a wet dog—and a really dirty one.”

Anastasia chuckled, but her laugh carried no
humor in it. “I don’t think you’re crazy. For the record, I agree
with you.”

She raised her head toward the ceiling and
walked around, her nostrils dilating and expanding rapidly. “You’re
right. I smell meat sauce... pasta... and someone’s added
oregano.”

“So either we’re being pursued by a giant
bowl of spaghetti or else...”

Anastasia beat him to it and jerked her thumb
at the door. “Let’s go see who’s out there.”

Carefully stealing outside, they split up,
with her taking the right flank and him taking the left. Unlike
some other celebrity couples, they had no surveillance equipment
installed. They preferred to keep a low profile, as low as possible
under the circumstances. Both of them felt with added security, it
would be a matter of time before some nut came around to test
them.

In any case, no one other than the human
variety of life had come around... until now. Harry crept quietly
along the forest floor, picking his way here and there, smelling
and listening for anything other than human or cat. His sense of
smell wasn’t as finely developed as Anastasia’s was, but he could
still discern a number of different odors at the same time.

To his right, he caught the scent of five
rabbits out foraging for a late night snack, and beyond them, he
heard the rustle of an owl’s wings as it sought its evening’s prey.
He heard a squeak which abruptly cut off. Field mouse, he thought.
Bad luck for you... but a good evening’s meal for Mr. Owl. He
continued listening, every nerve ending on edge, waiting...

Something leaped out at him. He only got a
brief glimpse of something short, squat, and with heavy legs. It
jumped him from his side and knocked him down, its fangs gnashing
and its claws going for his face. “Kill you, kill you!”

Not a very friendly first meeting, thought
Harry as he replied with a smash to the thing’s face. It continued
to attack and succeeded in slashing his right forearm. Blood
spurted out, and Harry, emitting a bellow of rage, slammed the palm
of his left hand against the thing’s face. Rolling aside, he got to
his feet, his claws out, ready and waiting.

“Kill you!”

Not friendly at all, and although the thing
kept slashing at him, Harry, being the quicker of the two, shucked
and jived and managed to stay out of arm’s reach while darting in
occasionally to land a few blows to his opponent’s face and
body.

“Kill you, kill you,” the other animal-person
repeated in hoarse grunts. Its vocabulary consisted of only two
words, but it obviously had some intelligence as it backed off,
shaking its head and pawing the dirt.

Getting a good look at it, Harry saw a
combination of a warthog and a man—brown fur, elongated nose and
piggy eyes, but no tusks. Instead, this thing walked like a man on
oversized feet and also had extremely long claws, perhaps five
inches in length. It was immensely strong, but also slow. “Who sent
you?”

This time, the other creature didn’t offer
its usual two-word reply. Instead, it leaped forward, arms
extended, which left its throat vulnerable. Harry judged the
thing’s leap, stepped aside with a millisecond to spare, and let
fly a slash that tore its throat out. It collapsed in a heap.

No time to celebrate, as the sound of another
struggle took place off to his left. “Anastasia...”

Wasting no time, he ran over to the source of
the sound and heard his wife saying, “Hey, don’t struggle, I won’t
hurt you.”

Arriving at the scene, he found Anastasia
holding onto a rotund little man. Short people weren’t uncommon,
but this man was far from common.

At the height of barely five feet, he
resembled a mole more than anything else, with a tiny twitching
nose and even tinier eyes, oversized and powerful looking hands
used most presumably for digging, and a gray, furry body. He
squinted up at Anastasia, made a faint squealing noise, and fell
silent.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Your face and arm
are bleeding.”

Panting, he acknowledged her question with a
nod. “I had a run-in with a warthog. He’s... history. I’ll
heal.”

She started toward him, but he waved her off
and took a good look at their captive, clad in stained and torn
blue overalls. The smell of pasta and oil was unmistakable. “If
you’re a refugee from a pasta factory,” he said to the visitor,
“then I’m going to be really disappointed.”

“It is my last meal,” the mole-man replied in
a thick Italian accent. While his English wasn’t perfect, he made
enough sense for Harry to understand. “I go to restaurant in city
below. I eat what they throw off. I then come here.”

Harry motioned to the scene where his most
recent altercation had taken place. “I want you to meet a friend of
ours.”

They escorted him to where the body of the
warthog-man lay. Immediately, the little mole-guy began to shake.
“I do not know that thing. I come... came here to tell you. I was
sent.”

“By whom,” Anastasia wanted to know.

“My friend... he tell me come here. So I come
to tell you and warn you.”