Dark Changeling Part 8

Neil bent over her, his hands pressing on the couch on either side of her head. "So tell me. Why won't you let me read your emotions? What are you hiding?"

Sylvia sat rigidly still, visualizing those hands compressing her skull. "I won't say any more. I wouldn't turn you in to the police, but I certainly won't betray him to you, either. Especially when I'm not sure."

Neil straightened up. Sylvia couldn't help letting out a relieved breath. "I think you're lying. You're inventing this third person just to make me believe you're not a traitor. If there were another of us in Boston, I'd know."

Sylvia said nothing.

His eyes bored into her. "Then open up to me." When Sylvia shook her head, he said, "Just give me a name-then I might believe you're not guilty."

Standing up, she said, "Neil, this conversation is over."

He relaxed the pressure on her mind and headed for the door. "The conversation may be over. What I'm going to do to you sure as h.e.l.l isn't."

Chapter 7

In the pa.s.senger seat of Sylvia's car, Roger stole wary glances at her. Since leaving her apartment earlier that night, she'd hardly spoken to him. Nor had she stopped to claim a vic-tim. He felt her anger but couldn't guess the reason for it.

Finally, on an expressway deserted except for the speeding Mustang, Sylvia said, "I guess I'm cooled off enough to talk now.

Roger, does the name 'eil Sandor' mean anything to you?"

He went cold. "So you really do know him."

"What I'm asking is, how do you know about him?" Her anger felt like an ice pick between Roger's eyes.

"I helped the police in their investigation of the serial murders, as a consultant to the prosecution."

"So somehow you unearthed his name-and yougave it to them!" She gunned the engine. "How in the name of all the powers of darkness could you do something so stupid?"

Now that the jolt of hearing her mention Sandor had re-ceded, Roger felt indignation rising in him. "Stupid? Turning in a murderer?

What would you expect me to do, s.h.i.+eld the man?"

"Yes!"She screeched the word, and her fingers worked spasmodically on the wheel. Calming herself, she said, "You never, never betray one of us to ephemerals, no matter what he's done."

In no mood to cater to Sylvia's fantasy, Roger said, "You know I don't believe there is an 'us.' And even if there were, I'd feel no obligation to protect a killer."

"You still need convincing? Well, stand by to be convinced." Taking an off-ramp two exits further along, she drove into a rural area, unlit two-lane back roads overhung with trees. She cruised with the headlights off. Some twenty minutes after leaving the freeway, she pulled the Mustang off the road into an open field. "Looks good and deserted." She killed the ignition and stepped out.

Roger followed her a few hundred yards through damp weeds. "Pleasant night for a walk, but I don't see the point of it."

"Just watch." She lifted her face to the sky, spreading her arms to test the wind. With her back to Roger, he could see her muscles undulating beneath the skin as the outline of her body blurred and re-formed. The glow of her aura intensified, and the energy she radiated ruffled the hair on Roger's arms. Her skin color darkened from white to glossy blue-black, sprouting velvety fuzz.

Petrified with disbelief, burrs clinging to his trouser cuffs and gnats buzzing around his head, Roger stared at what unfurled from Sylvia's back.

She had wings.

Veined like newly-budded leaves, they spanned over ten feet from tip to tip. When she spread them to full extension, they quivered in the cool breeze. She glanced over her shoulder and laughed at his astonishment. He noted that her ears had become pointed, her face more feline than human. She took a running start for a leap into the wind that reminded Roger of a child trying to launch a kite twice her own size. She kicked off her sandals as she left the ground.

Catching an updraft, Sylvia glided toward the trees, her body arched like a bow. She barely skimmed the highest branches before attaining a safe alt.i.tude. Not much of one, around fifty feet. In a gradual spiral she managed to ascend another twenty or thirty.

Recovering his powers of observation, Roger noticed that the motion was more of a glide than birdlike flight. The wings flexed only to restore balance or to steer.

After a few minutes she spiraled down, drifting to the ground a few yards from Roger. Her aura crackled with energy, as if she'd absorbed electricity from the atmosphere. She combed her tangled hair back from her face with both hands, arching her neck with a wordless purr of delight.Her elation infected Roger. He stepped up to her and gave her an exuberant hug, half disappointed that the change was already reversing. Holding her at arms' length, he gazed into her glowing eyes.They're red, like live coals! "My G.o.d, that would be worth a lifetime of lurking in the shadows!"

Pulling away, she said, "You should be able to do it, too. If you're like me-"

"Give it up, Sylvia." Momentarily his head swam with vertigo. At the thought of changing-dissolving-like that, and breaking loose from the earth, he felt as if he were falling into an interstellar void.

"You're afraid to let me teach you."

He shook his head, snapping the world back into focus. "If it'll satisfy you once and for all, you may try."

Her blazed with eagerness. "Wonderful! Look at me, con-centrate." He allowed her to lure him with her eyes, draw him into the maelstrom of energy spinning around her. The wings erupted from her back. When she clasped his hands, hers burned his skin like dry ice. "Now, Roger," she whispered. "Come with me, soar with me!"

For an instant his vision misted over, and he lost all awareness of Sylvia's touch and the ground beneath his feet. A second later, the dizziness faded, and he saw and heard only the mundane spring night. Again Sylvia looked fully human.

Her disappointment pressed on him. "Try again," she urged.

"No, thank you, once is enough. Accept it, Sylvia, this knocks out your a.s.sumption about me." He felt a grim satis-faction in the failure.

She withdrew her hands from his. "Let's go back to my place. We need to talk."

"Yes-we certainly do. Why did you choose to show me that now?"

"Because I was fed up with your stubbornness, thinking I was crazy. You see where it got us?"

In the car, easing it back onto the pavement, she remarked, "I can't figure out why you don't have the power."

Maybe because this notion that I'm like you is a friendly piece of wishful thinking.

"No human being can do that," said Roger.

Sylvia shrugged. "I'm not human. When are you going to admit that you aren't, either? Our psi powers include limited control over our physical forms. We can s.h.i.+ft our molecules into an alternate configuration, a shape that's-imprinted on the genes, I guess-for a brief time. Except for the oldest ones, it takes a pretty big expenditure of energy. What the observer sees partly depends on what he expects to see. Oh, Roger, I can't explain it, not the way one of the elders could. Can't you just accept, for once?" Accelerating down the highway, she launched into a falsetto crooning of "Little Old Lady from Pasadena."

A few minutes later she said, "I think I know why you couldn't change. You don't want to badly enough."

"You're fantasizing again." The subject made him physi-cally uncomfortable, constricting his lungs with anxiety. "Would wanting to be a fish make me able to breathe water?"

Back at Sylvia's apartment, Roger felt her mood s.h.i.+fting to grim apprehension. He asked, "How did you know I'd turned Sandor in?"

"He came here," she said, handing Roger a gla.s.s of wine and sitting on the floor with her own drink. "First time I'd seen him in months. He had a clash with the police and barely got away." "I know about that," Roger said. "The detective in charge told me about the suspect escaping." O'Toole had described one arresting officer's broken neck and the multiple fractures sustained by the other. "He said they later found Sandor's car abandoned a few miles south of the city." The Lieutenant had also told him about Albert Warren's hysterical terror upon being told of his imminent release. The judge had committed Warren for a ten-day period of psychiatric evaluation, probably for the best with Sandor on the loose.

"Neil threatened me." Roger sensed Sylvia's fear. "He thinks I gave him away. I guessed it must've been you, but of course I didn't tell him that.I have a few principles."

That stung. "How could you expect me to adhere to the ethics of a group I didn't know existed?"

Sylvia bristled. "I told you often enough. You should have listened. Anyway, you know now."

"I know that you are something-not human. It seems plausible that Sandor belongs to the same species-though his habits are radically different from yours-if there is a species. For all I know, you might belong to a family group carrying a unique complex of mutations."

Putting down her wine gla.s.s, Sylvia plunged both hands into her hair. "I give up-I absolutely give up!"

"Am I supposed to take your word for all this? Prove it by introducing me to your people." He didn't know whether to hope or fear that she would take him up on the dare.

"After what you've done? I told you, I'm not allowed to pa.s.s out indiscriminate information-and you are a menace!"

"What do you think Sandor will do? If he's on the run, maybe he won't have time to hara.s.s you."

Sylvia hid her face in her hands for a moment before staring up at Roger. "There's no telling what he might do. He's a renegade; rules don't mean anything to him."

"Renegade? Then surely your group-if there is a group-doesn't approve of his crimes."

"Killing ephemerals conspicuously is against the rules," she said. "Betraying one of our own is acrime . The worst thing any of us can do, besides murdering one of our kin." She tossed her head, brus.h.i.+ng tangled hair out of her eyes. "But you don't think any of that applies to you."

Roger finished his wine, fortifying himself for what he intended to say. "Sylvia, I know this isn't worth much, but I apologize for doubting your-difference."

"My inhumanity, you mean. Thanks, I guess."

"May I-would you demonstrate that shapes.h.i.+fting again? I was too shocked to notice the details."

"All right." He felt himself blus.h.i.+ng when she peeled off her sundress. Amused at his discomfort, she turned her back to him. "You'll get a better look this way, and I can change more fully. I'm nowhere near advanced enough to include clothes in the transformation."

Again Roger sensed the air around her vibrating with elec-tricity. Here she hadn't s.p.a.ce to extend the wings completely. They were as light as parachute silk, yet aglow with the vitality of her aura. "I still don't believe what I'm seeing," he murmured. "I've had to accept some forms of ESP, but changing the very shape of your body-that's a whole different order of impossibility."

"Not so much as it seems," Sylvia replied. "My ma.s.s and internal organs don't change. It's all on the outside."

He ran a fingertip along the satiny surface of one wing. A velvet layer of hair covered it, as well as her shoulders and arms.

She started, with a hissing intake of breath. "Careful-when my molecules are in flux, I'm super-sensitive." "I won't hurt you." He lightened his touch but didn't break contact. The membrane's delicate strength fascinated him. It quivered under his caress as it had in the night wind. Sylvia's breathing and heartbeat quickened. Turning to face him, she reached up to grasp his wrists, but if she'd intended to remove his hands, the will to do so deserted her. She leaned against his chest as he continued stroking her wings, his arms encircling her. Now her whole body trembled-excited, he sensed, by his touch on her transformed flesh. Their lips met. The cool caress of her mouth t.i.tillated without violently arousing him. He broke off the kiss when her nails dug into the nape of his neck. "Sheath your claws."

"They really are claws if I don't clip them often enough," she said, her breathing ragged. "You still taste strange-almost human, but not quite."

"You have a rather interesting flavor, too." He nuzzled her neck.

Suddenly her embrace lost its playful quality. Melting back into fully human shape, she flung her arms around his neck and fastened her mouth to his neck with desperate intensity.

Instinctively reacting as if to an attack, he raised his hands to ward her off. Recovering, he stiffly put his arms around her again.

"Sorry," she gulped. "The last few days have been terrible. I keep having nightmares. Or should that be 'daymares'?"

"That's one of the sillier neologisms I've ever heard." He led her to the couch and fitted her half-empty wine gla.s.s into her hand.

"Care to talk about it?"

"I dream about Rico," she said. "And our kind aren't supposed to dream frequently or vividly at all. I'm on the verge of taking him, and he suddenly grows fangs and attacks me. Stuff like that." She sipped her drink and said with more animation, "Don't bother trying to a.n.a.lyze it, Doctor."

"You already know what I would say."

"Okay, on this one thing you were right, and I was wrong. I shouldn't have told Rico where to find me."

"So you regret your cradle-robbing already?"

"Don't rub it in." She hunched her shoulders, trying to dislodge the arm he'd draped around them. "The kid came to visit me the night after we picked him up, and he's been hanging around the building ever since. He won't take no for an answer. The doorman threatened him with the police, so now he loiters across the street as long as he can get away with it."

"I can understand you don't want that kind of attention focused on you," said Roger. "But surely he'll give up sooner or later?"

"Sure, if I don't encourage him."

"You wouldn't have any reason to do that."

She set her gla.s.s on the coffee table and looked up at him in wide-eyed appeal. "But I already have. It isn't a matter of reason.

Roger, he's so- It's no use, I can't explain why I want him. Help me."

What did she expect from him? Noticing the washed-out hue of her aura, Roger said, "You haven't had anyone in several nights, have you? That's unusual for you."

She grabbed his hand, her nails gouging his wrist. "I need what you can give me."

"Sylvia, you'll have to explain more clearly." But he sus-pected, with dismay, that he knew what she meant.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him, a hard, grinding pseudo-caress. He had to force himself to return the embrace and stroke her head and back, gentling her until her mouth softened under his. Her body temperature seemed lower than usual, her taste like crisp, chilled white wine. She snuggled into his lap, burrowing under his s.h.i.+rt and raking his back with her nails. Her bared teeth skimmed his cheek and throat without quite breaking the skin. He felt her trembling with the effort of restraint.

He perceived her need as a whirlpool sucking him under. With gentle firmness he dislodged her and placed her a few inches from him on the sofa. "As you yourself told me, we can't get that from each other. What you need is human prey. Whether it's right for me or not, it obviously is right for you."

"Not when I'm wanting that boy this badly. It's an addiction-and maybe you could help me break it, if-" She gulped a couple of deep breaths. "Let's drink from each other."

"No, don't ask that," said Roger, feeling her bristle at his rejection but unable to accept her advances.

He sensed the effort it cost her to speak quietly. "Listen, Roger, I know you're moving away. Soon, isn't it?"

He nodded. "Around Labor Day." He'd already done most of his packing and had accepted a farewell steak dinner from Matthew Lloyd and his wife.

"Then it may be a long time before we see each other again. Do this for me before you go-as kind of a parting gift."

"Sylvia, I just can't- Believe me, I'll do anything else to help."

Her lips curled back from her teeth. "Easy to say-after you're taken from me twice."