Robert Liparulo - The 13 th tribe

“He has something of ours,” she said.

“Leave your address,” Jagger said. “I’ll mail it to you.”

Silence. Then: “We’ll find him.”

Jagger closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. “Just… leave. Please.”

“Not without what’s ours.” A beat. “Is he yours, the boy?”

“What does that matter?” Jagger said, but his words felt like denying Tyler. “Yes, he is.”

“All we want is what we came for. If he…”

Jagger stopped hearing her words. Tyler had appeared behind her, rising up from the stairs. He smiled when he saw Jagger but recognized that something was wrong-not the least of which, Jagger thought, was the backpack floating between them. His boy froze, except for his lips, the corners of which drooped.

Go back, Ty, Jagger thought, hoping beyond hope that somehow, some way his son would hear him, would understand. Back up, Tyler.. go… away.

Jagger forced his attention back to the floating eyes, but it was too late. She’d caught something in his expression or in the flick of his gaze. The eyes disappeared, and the backpack rotated around.

“Tyler, run!” Jagger yelled. “Go! Go now!”

The pack began bouncing in midair, heading toward his son.

Tyler spun and descended the steps.

Jagger lifted the revolver and pointed it at the backpack. “Stop!” he yelled, then added the word that had become, in the culture of cops-and-robbers entertainment, weighted with a specific consequence: “Freeze!”

The pack stopped and shifted sideways; it rotated back and continued toward the stairs. Jagger wondered if she had forgotten about the backpack, that it betrayed her location.

He nudged his aim a few inches to the right of the pack and fired.

When faced with something not only new but contrary to everything one has ever learned about the world, some humans are prone to suspect the supernatural or otherworldly-that hovering saucer must be from outer space because planes need wings and helicopters need rotors; those flickering lights, dropping temperatures, and self-opening cabinets are, of course, evidence of poltergeist activity. Upon first encountering the invisible being, Jagger’s mind had flashed through the possibilities- angel… demon… alien… ghost… But then he’d seen human eyes and heard a human voice, and he’d put it together: ordinary bad guys with extraordinary technology. What happened when his bullet struck the invisible thing sent his mind spinning back into the Twilight Zone.

A small explosion sprayed fire and smoke from the point of impact, as though the weapon had been loaded with exploding ammo, followed by an eruption of sparks-not the empty Bic lighter sparks the blade had kicked up when it struck RoboHand, but big, Fourth-of-July sparks. A body appeared, sleek and charcoal-colored, with blue electrical currents flashing lightning-like around every contour, every limb.

At that moment it seemed to Jagger more of a probability than a possibility that the thing was some sort of space-aged robot, a real-life Terminator who’d come from the future not for John Connor but for Tyler Baird.

The creature-definitely female, or at least constructed to resemble one-reached back with both arms to claw at the sparking point of impact. She spun around like a dog chasing its tail, like a man on fire. She pulled off the backpack and slung it aside. She slapped at her arms, stomach, head, trying, it seemed, to catch the quick squiggles of electricity coursing over her. But her hands always landed after the current had passed. In desperation, she gripped the scaly flesh of her shoulder and tore at it, spinning away from him as she did.

After ten or fifteen seconds, the sparks sputtered and stopped. The blue streaks of current diminished to a few random bursts, except in one area: they congregated around her neck, concentrating into a pulsating color of bright blue threads that flew like shooting stars over her shoulders, up around her head.

The figure turned back toward him. Both hands grabbed her neck, and in a quick upward motion she peeled off her face, revealing-Jagger realized with some relief-her true identity: very human and very beautiful, an observation coming more from the part of Jagger’s mind that told him marauding psychopaths who attacked monasteries and kids should not look like this than from the part that appreciated pretty things.

She had already torn away the material over her shoulder, arm, and chest, revealing a black athletic halter top. At first he thought her bare skin was dappled with shadows, but they were too crisp and formed images: thorny vines, a grinning skull, crosses in a variety of styles. Black, gray, blue tattoos. Among them one stood out: on her forearm, the same gold fireball he’d seen on the man.

She clutched at her neck again and pulled down, ripping the material from clavicle to armpit. A flap fell over her chest, exposing a metal collar identical to the man’s. She fumbled with something in the back-a latch, he realized, when she pulled the collar off and hurled it to the ground.

Grimacing, she rubbed her throat, then her face. Her right hand slid around to the back of her neck, and she released a curtain of black hair. She scratched at her bare arm, then at the other through the material, then her legs. She placed her hands on her knees and stayed that way, catching her breath. Slowly she raised her face and gazed at him through strands of hair.

“That hurt,” she said. More heavy breaths, then: “Well, what are you waiting for? Shoot.”

Jagger’s finger tightened on the trigger, then he relaxed it. “It doesn’t have to end this way,” he said. “Just-”

From their tall tower near the basilica, the monastery’s carillon bells began chiming, loud in the still air. Nine bells of different sizes-a gift from the czars of Russia in 1871, Gheronda had proudly told them-peeled out a rhythmic tune that to Jagger’s ears recalled the grating horror of the shower scene in Psycho. He focused more intently on the woman, thinking she’d use the distraction to get the upper hand.

When all she did was smile, he yelled, “Leave now and live. Stay and die.”

She simply stared.

“Take your friend and go!” He hoped he wasn’t making a second mistake of mercy. The way these people fought-the man and earlier the teen, who he was certain was part of them-they were people he didn’t want to underestimate.

In the States, he’d have held the woman until the cops arrived, but he wasn’t confident the Egyptians would do anything or that she wouldn’t fight if she knew his intentions to turn them in.

He looked behind him, a quick glance, which his mind processed after his eyes returned to the woman. The terrace was clear, at least as far as the light reached before the shadows devoured it. Not that he would see someone creeping up, not if the attacker was invisible.

“How many are you?” he yelled at her over the ringing of the bells.

“Inside? Now?” she called. “Just me and him. There was a third. He took off for our vehicle when Phin”-she nodded toward the downed man-“radioed that he had what we came for. Now he says your son took it.”

The details made him believe her. But what would she say? Five more, and they’re right behind you? He could only hope she was telling the truth.

She held her palms out, showing she had nothing in them. She straightened and took a step toward the man- Phin, she had called him-then stopped and cocked her head.

He heard it too-barely audible between the clangs of the bells, growing louder: Tyler’s rattling utility case. It was coming from the walkway on the other side of the arch, and Jagger knew what it meant. Tyler had circled around to reach his father from another direction. If he believed the woman was pursuing him, of course he would try to get back to Jagger without crossing her path.