He felt plaster dust against his skin as she shook her head. 'Evil Emperor Zurg's minions are doing their damnedest to blow us away and you're blaming me for it? “
'You must have set off an alarm when you brainwiped those guards outside,' he said, crouching close to the floor himself. Fortunately, the sun hadn't yet risen, and darkness had always been his friend. But Rath knew they wouldn't stand a chance of escaping if they were still pinned down inside this warehouse after daybreak.
'No way. Lonnie must have set us up,' Ava hissed.
Rath didn't want to think about that. After all, Lonnie was his lover as well as his accomplice in Zan's murder. He and Lonnie had no choice but to trust each other. Ava, though, had spent enough time away from both Rath and Lonnie over the past year to place her loyalties in doubt.
'You're a walking bull's-eye, Queenie,' Rath said, his jaw set into a hard line. 'These bums must've locked onto your latest Jedi mind trick somehow.' Whether she'd intended to or not, Rath was certain that Ava had gotten the three of them into a lot of trouble… maybe more than even they could handle.
Another bullet chewed up the wall immediately behind Rath and Ava, coming even more uncomfortably close than any of the others.
'These 'bums' are about to blow great big holes through us, Rath-man,' Ava said. 'Think we could bookmark this argument for later? “
Rath had to admit that she had a point. Their attackers, of course, were anything but 'bums.' There were any number of warring political factions back home on Antar, many of whom temporarily occupied the bodies of Earth humans in order to parley on neutral ground with their adversaries. Some of these Antarians liked to take over the bodies of derelicts or street criminals… people who, like the East Coast Royal Three, weren't likely to be missed by the locals.
A few of these individuals had little reason to surrender their now heavily armed host bodies to their original owners… and even less restraint about placing those bodies at risk.
Strange how these freaks didn't start coming after us until after Ava came back from the desert. She found a whole new kind of trouble out there, and let it follow her home like a bunch of stray cats.
At the moment, Rath guessed that at least a dozen alien-possessed street-folk had them cornered.
Been through worse, he told himself, though at the moment he was hard- pressed to recall just when that was. Though the darkness concealed him from the freaks, it also prevented him from finding a specific target onto which he could focus his powers. My zappers work way better as a rifle than a shotgun, he thought, and those bastards out there know it.
He clenched a fist in frustration, and it began glowing a dull red. They want me to fire blind. They want to tire me out.
Another bullet tore through the drywall nearby, only narrowly missing his glowing fist. He shoved his hand into a vest pocket as he pulled Ava along with him. They had to keep moving.
'If anybody's a 'walking bull's-eye' around here, Rath, it's you,' Ava said, looking at his hand, whose glow was still slightly visible, even through the leather vest.
'Shut up,' Rath said, though he knew she was right. He continued hustling her along, hoping they'd come upon a door or a window soon. 'You seen Lonnie? “
Ava laughed bitterly. 'Let's hope she's not cutting a deal of her own right now with those nice people shooting at us. It's happened before, you know. “
A familiar voice cut through the intermittent staccato of gunfire. 'All right! Hold your fire! I'm gonna give you what you want! “
Rath recognized the voice immediately, despite the creepy echo that the huge, darkened warehouse imparted to it.
Lonnie.
'1 knew it,' Ava whispered. 'She's gonna sell us out to the freaks. “
'Shut it,' Rath said. 'Lonnie has a plan. “
'Come on out where we can see you, Vilandra,' came the response, a harsh, gravel-coated voice, speaking in perfectly inflected High Antarian. 'You can't hope to stand against us all. “
Rath saw shadowy forms moving ahead of him. He wondered if dawn was already breaking, or maybe his eyes were simply adapting to the darkness. With no way to tell the exact time, he hoped for the latter.
Then another shape began to move. It was bathed in a faint glow that the freaks surely had to be able to see.
Lonnie.
At that moment, Lonnie spoke inside his mind, using the lover's bond they shared as a communication channel. Rath, can you hear me? Rath scowled. Her mental voice was faint, as though something were interfering with her thoughtcast. What's wrong, Lonnie? I haven't heard anything blow up yet, and our 'friends' are still here and hostile.
They've protected their machines from our powers somehow, Lonnie thought to him.
Rath felt despair engulf him, threatening to drown him like that time the riptide had nearly killed him off the Jersey Shore. Great, Lonnie. If we can't blow up their machine, we can't send these guys back to whatever planet they came from. And they're gonna kill us.
No, Lonnie thought back at him. He felt an almost playful undercurrent in her psionic 'voice.' I found a boiler room in the basement. They've got an oil furnace down there. These guys didn't bother to protect that. It might take a few minutes, but it's gonna go boom really soon.
Rath grinned, imagining valves being turned and flash-welded temperatures cranking up and up, fuel tanks igniting. That's my girl, he thought. Mass destruction and fireworks, the old- fashioned way.
Buy us some time, Rath. I can't see them with my eyes yet, but I can feel 'em moving toward me.
Lonnie came to a stop a short distance away, her body still glowing with focused, barely contained power. Rath could hear weapons cocking in the darkness, instruments sounding metallic notes that echoed back and forth across the cavernous space.
'I can give you Rath and Ava,' Lonnie said aloud, her voice projecting far and wide. 'But not if you shoot me. “
'I knew it,' Ava muttered. Crouched beside Rath behind one of the shelving racks, she started to rise.
Rath restrained her with a hand to the shoulder. 'No. We wait. “
Ava tensed, forming a psionic connection of her own with Rath, just as she had done with them all so many years before, after the Royal Four had first emerged from the gestation pods. All at once, Rath could see into Ava's mind, as well as the images Lonnie was sending him.
Rath felt as if he were suddenly floating invisibly near the warehouse's high ceiling, and from this vantage he could mentally 'see' each of the armed men and women… all of them apparently malnourished drug addicts or other assorted street people… who had surrounded them.
Touch Ava, Lonnie said inside Rath's mind. Let her see what I'm showing you.
Already done, sweetcheeks, Rath answered silently, grinning in the darkness. There were exactly fourteen of the freaks, and as of this moment he knew exactly where they were standing. He knew that Ava did as well.
To Ava, he thought, How many freakazoid brains can you jry at once? Answering inside his mind, Ava seemed ashamed of her earlier distrust of Lonnie. I guess we're about to find out, General. Through the hand he'd placed on Ava's shoulder, Rath felt her body tense as the alien power gathered and built within her.
