Touched by an Alien

emotional hit toward him. “She’s required.”
    “Yeah, I know. Yates wants to meet me.”
    Beverly nodded. “He has something special planned for you.”
    As long as I could talk and keep her talking, we had time. This room had glass on the wall opposite the door, so I could see behind me. The terrorists hadn’t closed the door, probably because they wanted to hear what was going on.
    “Funny that he’s more interested in me than in you. And, you know, you’d think, since you’ve been his mistress all this time, that he’d want you.”
    “He has greater plans for me,” Beverly snarled.
    “Yeah, um, right.” I nodded my head toward the girls. “I’m sure. ’Cause, you know, Yates is known for dating, ah, mature women. Not girls younger than Lorraine.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “What he chooses to amuse himself with doesn’t matter to me.”
    “Really? Wow, are you understanding. Now, if it were me, and my so-called main man was shagging every hot young thing under the age of twenty-five, I’d be kind of pissed. So you’re either gullible or stupid. Or both.”
    “You have no idea of what he plans,” Beverly hissed.
    “Oh, come on. It’s so freaking obvious.” I could see my guys moving up. They each had a cloth in their hands. I hoped they’d found some chloroform as opposed to just having allergy attacks. “Yates is dying, and Mephistopheles wants to make babies. But he doesn’t exactly seem to have the right equipment. Believe me, I’ve been up close and personal, and there are no reproductive organs on any of Team Fugly. So they can only reproduce via parasitic infection.”
    “They represent our next level.”
    “Is that what he’s telling you? Wow, and you believe him? You are one freaked-out piece of work, Bev.”
    “Beverly.”
    “Bev. You’re acting like a human, babe, aren’t you? Humans are the ones big on betrayal and lying, not A-Cs. I mean, that’s why no one but Jeff uses a nickname. It’s a human thing, and he’s the only one who gets it.”
    “Gets what?” Beverly looked confused. So did the others. Martini just looked as though he was going to die.
    “The right evolutionary choice is to mate with human-kind. Make us stronger, spread out your genetics, combine the two races. But Mephistopheles knows what that would do.”
    “Destroy us!”
    “Destroy him. And his kind. Either because we’d be able to reject the parasites or because they’d be able to join with us as they’re supposed to.”
    “They create as they were intended.”
    “They create as he intends. Not as God intends.”
    I hit home with that. “There is no God.” But she sounded unsure.
    “Wanna bet?” There were no more terrorists at the door. “Girls? I’d like to mention that you’re field operatives now.” They didn’t react. I hoped it was because they didn’t want to give anything away, not because they had no idea of what I was talking about.
    Beverly seemed to have an idea, though, because she grabbed a needle. “Now, now. I’m not going to kill Jeff.”
    “No? What are you going to do?”
    She smiled, and it was a very evil smile. “I’m just going to make sure that he can’t cause any more problems. He doesn’t have to die. If I give him this shot, he’ll be allowed to live. Christopher, too.”
    I knew without asking, but I had to ask anyway. “And what does that shot do?”
    “Causes sterility.”
    Martini’s eyes closed, and his face scrunched up. I could tell he was fighting to not react. I want to get married and have a lot of kids. He’d said it many more times than once. There was no way I was letting her do this to him. Plus, those were my potential babies she was trying to kill, too.
    “Over my dead body.”
    “Gladly,” she snarled.
    “But, Bev, it’ll be the A-Cs who die. And you’ll go first. Or haven’t you put it together yet and figured out what, exactly, killed Theresa White?”

CHAPTER 53
    A MEMORY THAT WASN’T MINE came rushing over me, as if I were watching a scene from a movie.
    A woman and two little boys were in a bedroom, all cuddled into bed together, the boys on either side of her, one lying down. The woman looked close to death, but I could see a resemblance to both me and my mother. The boy with the smaller build had his eyes closed; it was clear he’d cried himself to sleep. The other boy was awake, tears rolling down his face. He had light brown eyes and darker hair than the sleeping boy.
    “Aunt Terry, you can’t