Species II (12 page)

Another few breaths, more precious seconds passing while some dim part of his brain told him that his father must have introduced him a while ago, that he was supposed to be
out
there by now, and damn it, he’d better get his ass in gear. A final deep breath and he thought he had it—amazingly, his erection was gone, his heartbeat had slowed to a fast walk from the roaring it had been, the surface of his skin no longer felt like a lit burner on a stove. Incredible and unexplainable, but he’d worry about that later.

Right now, John Q. Public awaited.

A
sea of people stared at him, expecting to be impressed by the man who had walked on the surface of the red planet more than thirty-five million miles away. They had made him into a demigod, placed him on the pedestal of American heroism, and now they waited, breathless, to hear what he had to say.

No problem.

“When I looked through the viewing portal, at first all I could see was blackness. It goes on for an eternity—certainly for anything we’ll ever live to see—broken only by the sparkle of a million stars we’ll never reach, a million more planets that man, with his limited lifespan, will never visit Then the ship swung homeward and the Earth filled my sight—a beautiful blue globe covered in white swirls.”

Patrick gazed at the audience, knowing they were mesmerized by his voice, by this retelling of an experience they would never know. He waited a beat, then held out his hand in a gesture that was a perfect balance of drama and entreaty. “Seeing it from up there,” he continued, “makes it look so small. So . . .
fragile.
I couldn’t help but think about how painfully easy it would be to destroy this most beautiful of God’s creations. In the whole of the universe, we are nothing but a
speck
in the eye of God, and we could be wiped away so effortlessly. As we look into the future, perhaps we will see that our greatest mission should be to nurture what we have right here at home.”

An excellent finish and one that garnered him a standing ovation. As he stepped from the podium, Patrick felt strangely as though his eyesight had increased tenfold. He could see his father’s eyes—red-rimmed and clearly well-liquored—all the way from here, as well as Dennis and his date, Anne and Harry, and, of course, the lovely Melissa. He smiled and waved as they stood with the rest of the crowd and applauded enthusiastically, caught up in the moment with everyone else. Pride shone from his fiancée’s hazel eyes and her radiant smile was only for him; still, Patrick felt vaguely disconnected from her and whatever tenuous hold she might have on him, from
all
of it, as he waved a final time and stepped off the platform and beyond the curtain an usher held aside for him.

All those people out there. When they looked at him, they saw a budding politician whether he wanted to be one or not, a man who was fair and kind and whom they believed could take their world into the stars and beyond while keeping a firm eye and a stable grasp on what was happening on the homeworld. They recognized his intelligence, his charm, his wit, his righteousness. They
believed
in him.

And how very easily they were . . .

Deceived.

T
he fifth-floor corridor of the Watergate was deserted when Patrick stepped out of the elevator. It hadn’t been difficult to elude the crowds and his family—Melissa had proven the biggest challenge, but even she had believed him when he’d pleaded a headache because of the stress and the crowd. Another little speech about how people didn’t understand the pressure he was under, all the expectations, et cetera, and her bewilderment had changed to concern. She’d wanted to ride home with him and stay with him, all night if necessary, but Patrick wasn’t ready for that just yet.

He had other things to attend to tonight.

He strode down the hallway, checked once again to make sure none of those annoying reporters had followed him, then knocked on the door of the Lincoln Room.

“It’s open.”

Patrick twisted the doorknob and stepped inside, then took the “Do Not Disturb” tag and hung it on the outside knob. When he closed the door behind, he made sure to flip the double bolt.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

We? Three steps took him past the door to the bathroom and into the main area of the suite. Sprawled atop the king-sized bed were two women, each stunningly beautiful and clad only in nearly matching silk lingerie. The sexy young woman he’d almost taken behind the stage in the ballroom inclined her head toward the dark-haired newcomer lying next to her, then reached over and ran her hand slowly up the woman’s thigh. Her fingers slid beneath the line of fabric at the hip joint, and her companion shuddered. “I’d like you to meet my sister,” the brown-eyed woman purred. “We share
everything.”

America’s Number-One Astronaut smiled and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“P
ulse rate is twenty percent below human and her temperature is stable.” The young biologist—the name
BREA
was embroidered across the pocket of her lab coat—made a face at her coworker. “This certainly isn’t the most exciting part of my career.”

“What do you expect?” retorted Vikki, the second biologist on shift. “She’s watching the Yankees and the Orioles.” She made a few notations on her clipboard, then peered at the monitoring console again. “With that in mind, she ought to be asleep. Don’t you think she looks a little restless?”

“She’s an idiot,” returned Brea. “She’s got the remote—if she’s that bored, she ought to change the channel instead of just sitting there and staring at it. Not exactly the exciting Movie of the Week. That game is about as much fun as watching grass grow—or us watching her watch the game.”

Vikki sighed and snapped the clipboard shut as Brea settled at a terminal and began keyboarding the latest round of data into the computer. She leaned her chin on her fist and stared down at the alien woman in the habitat, who in turn gazed at the television screen and seemed completely engrossed in the utterly boring drone of the baseball announcer. None of the electrodes taped to the life-form’s body were registering anything interesting, so there was absolutely nothing for Vikki to do right now. She’d gone through a lot of bullshit and background investigations to get the clearance needed to work on this project with Dr. Baker, but somehow she’d thought that research on an alien would be a lot more scintillating. A few toxin experiments took place now and then, but most of what everyone did here in the laboratory seemed to be just . . . look.

“I should’ve gone into oceanography,” Vikki said glumly.

But right now, there was nothing to be done but sit and wait for her time to be over.

S
ated for the moment, Patrick rolled off the first woman—he vaguely remembered her telling him her name down on the main floor, but that piece of information was gone now, as was any notion that he might have once been faithful to Melissa. Faithful—what was that, anyway? The concept no longer made any sense to him. Something in his body had changed and now demanded not only that he mate, but that he do so as often as possible and with as many
different
partners as he could find. Once he spilled himself into a woman, some dark, newborn instinct told him he could never do so again.

“Oh, my
God,”
breathed the woman. She quivered next to him, as if she could still feel the power of his lovemaking inside her. “You really
are
a hero.”

Her dark-haired sister came over and curled herself next to Patrick, her hands roaming at will across his muscled chest and stomach, then farther down. “Hey,” she said coyly. “I think it’s
my
turn now.”

Patrick grinned, his first conquest already dismissed. He turned on the bedspread and pinned the young woman down, feeling the firm globes of her breasts against his chest, the curve of her belly, the heat between her thighs as they parted. Already he was hard again, completely ready. God, he felt
great.

“Yeah, baby,” he said with a satisfied smile. “It’s your turn, all right.”

She licked his ear in response and pressed herself tighter against him. “You’ve got a dangerously gorgeous body, Mr. Astronaut.”

Patrick’s smile widened. “And it’s got something really, really good for
you.”

L
indsey closed the door to the bathroom behind her while she cleaned up. She could hear Patrick Ross rocking on the bed with Claudia, who wasn’t really her sister at all but her best friend. She and Claudia went all the way back to college, when they’d done this same type of thing a time or two, usually on a dare with each other and involving the most unreachable of the hierarchy on the faculty. And just like the almighty Patrick Ross, every damned man the girls had set eyes on had fallen victim to their charms, been used and ultimately—just like Patrick Ross would be—used up.

She checked her face in the mirror—flushed, of course. My goodness, but that man could move! She pursed her lips, then broke into a smile when she heard Claudia practically screeching. That silly girl, the whole dorm had always known when she made orgasm. What the hell, Lindsey thought and turned to open the bathroom door. No one ever said I couldn’t join in—

A nasty wave of nausea spiraled through her belly and up her throat. Lindsey grabbed for the sink, fighting not to retch as sweat popped out on her forehead and across her upper lip. What the hell was this—some kind of food poisoning? It had to be that; what else could make her want to throw up so badly, spin the room on her, and send a knife-twist of pain through her gut like this?

She groaned and leaned over the sink, closing her eyes in anticipation. But nothing would come up; her ears were ringing with the sounds of Claudia’s cries, the noise all mixed up and distorted in her head until it sounded like Claudia was screaming and Patrick was roaring at her. God, couldn’t they just shut up? Didn’t they know she was sick in here, damn it?

Something cold touched the skin of her naked belly and Lindsey forced her eyes open and looked down, trying to see, trying to function around the urge to vomit that was pulsing through her. The sight that met her eyes would have made her scream had she been able to draw enough air into her lungs.

The “something” that had touched her was the sink, and actually it was her
belly
that had touched it, not the other way around. Her stomach was huge and distended, belly button thrust out by the pressure of whatever was inside her and making her gut bloat further by the second. Lindsey sucked in air, then gagged and stumbled backward against the wall as a tremendous pain knifed through her abdomen, circling around and under her rib cage to finally twist deep within the center of her pelvis, all the way to her groin. The floor came up hard to meet her as she slid down the wall, the knobs of her spine grinding along the tile edges, leaving tiny spots of blood from scrapes she never felt.

Lindsey’s eyes bulged and all she could manage was a low groan as her stomach rippled, then ballooned out even farther. The scream she’d wanted so badly found its voice at last when the flesh along the grotesque mound that was once her stomach, stretched and
split.
The agony was unspeakable but she voiced it anyway, for as long and as loud as her shock-washed system would allow, never realizing that the sound was indistinguishable from the howls of her friend in the room beyond and the wailing of the hellish infant to which she’d just given birth.

She lived exactly five more seconds.

Long enough to see the blood-covered brown creature, half human and half something she’d never imagined, reach up and pull itself free of the ruins of her body.

“W
hat’s the matter, baby?” Patrick demanded. His movement never faltered, despite the struggles of the woman beneath him. Something about him had suddenly freaked her out, a . . .
movement
of something along his back, the release of some new part of himself that he hadn’t known wanted to be freed. Now that it was, his partner had hold of it and was wailing like a terrified cat, while he worked his way toward his second climax of the evening. “I thought you said you
liked
my body!”

Instead of answering, the delusional woman thought she could choke him, wrapping her puny hands around the corded muscles in his neck and trying to squeeze. “Let me up!” she screeched. “Get off of me, you fucking monster—Lindsey! Lindsey,
help me!”

Patrick just laughed and kept hammering at the woman’s body. “One . . . more . . . second,” he panted. “Just . . . one . . .”

All that noise, and the woman jerked when she finally realized that her sister was doing her own screaming in the bathroom. She bucked savagely beneath him, clawing at his face, her body’s gyrations unwittingly bringing Patrick so very, very close—

“Enough,” he snarled. He gripped her shoulders and pinned her arms in place, holding her down as a few more deep thrusts finally gave him his release. Patrick sighed deeply and rolled to the side, letting his rigid body relax as fully as he could, while the screams from the bathroom ceased abruptly and all that was left to hear was the quiet mewling of his already maturing son.

“What’s that? Lindsey? Are you all right?” Her face twisted with hate, the woman with whom he’d just mated started to climb off the bed, then she froze. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw her unwanted lover’s new, freer form.

When she would have screamed, Patrick clamped a hand over her mouth and held her thrashing body down on the bed.

All he had to do was wait a few minutes.

“W
hat the hell’s going on?” Brea demanded. “Haven’t you been watching her?”

“Of course I’ve been watching her!” Vikki snapped. “Why do you think I called you over here?”

“Maybe it’s an equipment malfunction. How did it start?”

“Beats me,” Vikki said. Her hands were a blur as she worked her way across the medical console, running spot checks and comparing figures. “The last I checked she was still watching that stupid ball game and playing with the baseball—maybe Ripken hit a home run or something. The next thing I know her pulse rate’s gone through the ceiling, her temperature’s up ten degrees—”