Chapter 11

Tabatha quietly closed the door to Ethan’s bedroom and turned around.

“Thanks, Cathy,” she said to the girl who’d sat for Ethan tonight.

The teenaged girl facing her smiled and held out her credit pad. Grinning, remembering her own babysitting adventures of a dozen years ago, Tabatha punched in her code. ‘It’s a lot easier to get paid, now, ‘ she thought as she and Cathy walked toward the door.

“What?” Cathy asked, noticing the smile on her employer’s face.

“Oh, I was just remembering a time when I was babysitting,” Tabatha replied. “The father tried to pay me with the ugliest little green statue off his bookshelf ‘cause he’d been robbed and didn’t have any money. I flat-out refused and stormed out of the house. I brought my uncle back with me the next day and he made the guy pay me what he owed me.”

“Is that it?” Cathy asked, beginning to feel annoyed that she had to listen to such a pointless tale.

“No, actually,” Tabatha told the girl. “I found out later that the statue was Jade. It was worth a lot more than what I settled for.”

“That’s...” Cathy thought for a moment, trying to be polite. “Cute. Goodnight, Mrs. Hedron.” ‘Yawn!’ Cathy thought to herself as she trotted down the steps. A small sports flitter magically appeared above her and landed. She hopped in.

“Hi, Davie,” Tabatha heard her say cheerfully. Then the little Astro blasted noisily into the night sky, totally oblivious to the speed limit.

Tabatha turned and went back inside. The door closed and the alarms set automatically as she walked by.

Her husband, Jake, was in the bedroom. She walked in and watched him as he prepared for bed.

“What is it, darling?” Jake asked, hearing her sigh. He looked at her. She was beautiful, as always. Her face looked... ‘Unanimated, ‘ he decided was the best way to describe it. ‘Numb.’

“Listen, sweetheart,” he said, trying to help her deal with the night’s events, “I didn’t know about any of this, either. It’s as much a shock to me as it is to you.” He pulled off a sock and threw it toward the closet. The clothes hamper reached out quietly and grabbed it off the floor. “Come ‘ere,” he said, patting the bed beside him.

Tabatha walked her body over and sat it down next to him. He began unlacing the back of her gown.

“You know,” he began, “I have the greatest grandfather in the world. If there’s anything that can be done – he’ll figure it out. And then the rest of us will wonder how we missed such a simple solution.” He smiled at her and touched her cheek. Tabatha smiled gently and turned toward him.

“I suppose you’re right,” she admitted. “It’s interesting to notice how young he looks yet how old he seems when I talk to him. “Do you know what happened when Béla initiated me?” she asked, seeming to change the subject completely.

Caught off guard, Jake could only blink. He looked at her, waiting.

“Béla cut her wrist, and made me lick the blood off,” Tabatha told him. “It was such an incredible turn-on. Every cell in my body began tingling!” She sat for a moment, silent under her husband’s quiet gaze.

“After Frank ... Junior, I mean, left the room with Ethan, Béla and I ... well, we made love,” Tabatha confessed. “She made me feel so wonderful that I couldn’t stop myself. It was rough, and violent. I felt this sensual – need – to test out my new body.

“Béla encouraged it, I think,” she continued. “She bit me on my breasts and neck. It hurt at first. She drew blood. Then it felt so fantastic that I started biting her. I tore into her neck like one of those vampires in an underground Tri-d. Then we wrestled on the bed, humping each other and sucking each other’s blood. Then she let me into her mind, let me share her sensations like I let you share mine, only I could see images, too.

“Her home is on another world, Jake,” she told him, becoming more animated, now. “There are already humans from earth populating that place. She’s here, with ... your father ... She stays because she loves him. But she’s terribly homesick. She hides it from herself pretty well, but I saw it.

“There’s a ship coming for her in a few more years,” she continued. “Béla plans to take us all with her and abandon Earth. I never understood why until now. She managed to hide that from me when our minds were merged together.”

“That’s amazing,” Jake said, dumbfounded. “So, I guess we don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen here. Béla’s already solved the problem of mankind’s continuation.”

“You don’t mind leaving Earth?” Tabatha asked, astounded by his complacence.

“No,” admitted Jake, smiling at her. “I can live anywhere, so long as I’m with you.” He said it very simply, not intending to put any special romantic meaning into it. It was simply a fact.

Tabatha smiled. She could see in his mind that what he said was true. She realized she felt the same. But... “I love Earth, Jake,” she said softly. “In my five years of working at OCI, I traveled all over the world. I was kind’ve ... looking forward to spending a few hundred years discovering how many beautiful, romantic, exotic places you and I could find for making love. I don’t imagine that will happen, now.”

“Sweetheart, I’m sure there are beautiful, romantic and exotic places on Béla’s home world, too.” He smiled at her, trying to cheer her up.

“Home World?” Tabatha asked, surprised. “No. She doesn’t know where her home world is, or even the name of her species. The place she wants to take us to is just a really big space station out by Jupiter somewhere. Inside, it’s the same all over – mostly farmland and small communities. Béla’s homesick for her sisters and the alien being she thinks of as her father.

“Also, she’s revered as a goddess there,” she added as an afterthought. “It’s like she’s their queen or something ... She misses that too, but she’d never confess to it.”

“Queen Béla, huh?” Jake asked, amused. “Well, she is special. If it weren’t for her, our entire family probably wouldn’t even exist. If Gramps somehow met Grams, anyway, they would be old and gray by now.”

“My parents are dead,” Tabatha admitted. “I don’t even remember them. I don’t remember a single event – a birthday, a holiday – anything we did together as a family. It’s like nothing happened, and then they died. It’s really weird, you know, suddenly having this huge family around me after being raised by just my uncle,” she continued. “But I like it. It feels... normal.”

She smiled and pulled him down on the bed, softly nuzzling her face against his neck, remembering his earlier words. “Wherever we go,” she whispered, “we’ll go together. This is a promise I’ll do my best to keep.” She kissed him and pulled herself up alongside him so the lengths of their bodies were touching. ‘Would you like to see what making love to Béla is like?’ she asked softly in his mind. ‘She showed me how to project images, too.’

“You tore her neck open like that?” Jake asked, suddenly seeing Tabatha and Béla wrapped around each other, sucking on each other’s jugular.

“She did to me, too,” Tabatha admitted. “It felt wonderful, exchanging our body fluids like that. It’s been a long time since I had a blood-sister.”

“Tabatha,” Jake began...

“Cat,” Tabatha said quietly.

“What?” Jake asked.

“She used to call me ‘Cat’,” Tabatha said, clarifying herself. “My first blood-sister, I mean.”

“Where is she now?” Jake asked, interested in finding out something new about his still mysterious wife.

“She ... died,” Tabatha told him.

“I’m sorry,” Jake said softly.

Tabatha smiled. It was a sad smile. “I blocked her death out for years. I only remembered it again after the raid on those South American drug runners. She was the only person I ever allowed to give me that nickname.”

“Cat?” Jake asked.

Tabatha nodded.

“I loved it. I felt like it was my real name,” Tabatha explained. “My secret name.”

“You loved her, too,” Jake said, “I would be able to see that, even if we weren’t mind-linked.”

“Oh, yes! Mind-linked!” Tabatha said, suddenly brightening up. “I was going to show you what vampire sex is like while we make love.”

“You’re not going to bite my neck, are you?” Jake asked, trying not to show any fear of his own wife.

“No, silly,” she grinned. “I’ll just let you wallow in my lesbian images of humping against Béla’s leg while we sucked each other’s blood. And while you’re getting your perverted little rocks off, I’m going to impale myself on your beautiful cock and ride you to heaven...” ‘Anywhere I can go to escape this terrible calamity... ‘

“Sounds wonderful,” Jake grinned back at her. “Just don’t flood me with those images so heavily that I can’t watch you take that magnificent ride...”

She rolled over on him and began kissing and licking his chest and neck. Somehow, her gown came off. She merged her mind with his, always surprised at how her taut, but otherwise unremarkable body aroused him.

For the first time ever, she let him see the images that made up her thoughts, her mind; the images and beliefs that made her who she was. He was shocked and saddened when he found her ‘blood-sister’, Lorraine. He was terrified along with her as he watched the cable car plunge a thousand meters down into that Spanish canyon. He shared her fear, her fever, and her loneliness as she huddled against her dead parent’s bodies, shivering, trembling, and trying to keep warm, wondering fearfully what would become of her.