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He put his arms around her tentatively, hoping it was the right thing to do. "Why tell me this?"
She melted against his chest. "Because I trust you and because I have to tell someone and because I need to figure out what to do. I don't want to go to jail, Gabe. Maybe all my patients didn't need to be on antidepressants, but a lot of them did. " She sobbed on his shoulder and he began to stroke her hair, then pushed up her chin and kissed her tears.
"It'll be okay. It will. "
She looked up into his eyes, as if looking for a hint of disdain, then not finding it, she kissed him hard and pulled him on top of her on the couch.
A Higher Power
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?
- Revelation 13:4
Twenty-three
Steve
What horrors can a dragon dream? A creature who has, in his o
wn way, ruled the planet for millions of years, a creature for whom the mingy man mammals have built temples, a creature who has known no predator but time - what could he possibly dream that would frighten him? Call it the knowing?
Under a stand of oak trees, sexually satisfied and with a bellyful of drug dealers, the dragon dreamed a vision of time past. The eternal now that he had always known suddenly had history. In the dream he saw himself as a larva, tucked into the protective pouch under his mother's tongue until it was safe to venture out under her watchful eye. He saw the hunting and the mating, the forms he had learned to mimic as his mercurial DNA evolved not through generations, but through regeneration of cells. He saw the mates he had eaten, the three young he had borne as a female, the last killed by a warmblood who sang the Blues. He remembered the chan-ging, not so long ago, from female to male, and he remembered all of it in pictures, not in mere instinctual patterns and conditioned responses.
He saw these pictures in the dream, brought on by the strange mating with the warmblood, and he wondered why. For the first time in his five thousand years, he asked, Why? And the dream answered with a picture of all the oceans and swamps, the rivers and bogs and trenches and mountains beneath the sea, and they were all empty of his kind. As sure as if he were floating through the cold black at the end of the universe, where light gives up hope and time chases its tail until it dies from exhaustion, he was alone.
Sex does that to some guys.
Val
"Oh my God, the rat brains!" Gabe shouted.
It was a different response to lovemaking. Val wasn't sure that she might not be hurt, feeling vulnerable as she was, with her knees in the vicinity of her ears, a biologist on top of her, and her panty hose waving off one foot like a tattered battle flag.
Gabe collapsed into her arms and she looked over his shoulder to the coffee table to check that they hadn't kicked the wineglasses off onto the carpet.
"Are you okay?" she asked, a little breathless.
"I'm sorry, but I just realized what's going on with this creature. "
"That's what you were thinking about?" Yes, her feelings were definitely hurt.
"No, not during. It came to me in a flash right after. Somehow the creature can attract mammals with lower than normal serotonin levels. And you've got, what, a third of the population running around in antidepressant withdrawal?"
She was pissed now, not hurt. She dumped him off her onto the floor, stood up, pulled her skirt down, and stepped away. He scrambled into his pants and looked around for his shirt, which lay in shreds behind the couch.
He had a tan that ended at the neckline and just below the shoulders; the rest of him was milk white. He looked up at her from the gap between the couch and the coffee table with a pleading in his eyes, as if he were looking up from a coffin in which he was about to be buried alive.
"Sorry," he said.
He wasn't looking her in the eye, and Val suddenly realized that he was talking to her exposed breasts. She pulled her blouse closed, and a battery of insults rose in her mind, ready to be fired, but all of them were mean-spirited and would serve to do nothing but make them both feel ashamed. He was who he was, and he was honest and real, and she knew that he hadn't meant to hurt her. So she cried. Thinking, Great, crying is what got me into this in the first place.
She plopped down on the couch with her face in her hands. Gabe moved to her side and put his arm around her. "I'm really sorry. I'm not very good at this sort of thing. "
"You're fine. It's just too much. "
"I should go. " He started to stand.
She caught his arm in a death grip. "You go and I'll hunt you down and kill you like a rabid dog. "
"I'll stay. "
"No go," she said. "I understand. "
"Okay, I'll go. "
"Don't you dare. " She threw her arms around him and kissed him hard, pulling him back down onto the couch, and within seconds they were all over each other again.
That's it, she thought, no more crying. It's the crying that does it. This guy is aroused by my pain.
But soon they lay in a panting sweaty pile on the floor and the idea of crying was light-years away.
And this time Gabe said, "That was wonderful. "
Val noticed a wineglass overturned by her head, a cabernet stain bleeding over the carpet. "Is it salt or club soda?"
Gabe pulled away far enough to look into her eyes and saw that she was looking at the stained carpet. "Salt and cold water, I think. Or is that blood?" A drop of sweat dripped off his forehead onto her lips.
She looked at him. "You weren't thinking about that creature that doesn't exist, were you?"
"Just you. "
She smiled. "Really?"
"And a weed-whacker, for some reason. "
"You're kidding. "
"Uh, yes, I'm kidding. I was only thinking of you. "
"So you don't think I'm a horrible person for what I've done?"
"You were trying to do what you thought was right. How could that be horrible?"
"I feel horrible. "
"It's been a long time. I'm out of practice. "
"No, not about this. About my patients. You really think something could be preying on them?"
"It's just a theory. There may not even be a creature. "
"But what if there is? Shouldn't we call the National Guard or something?"
"I was thinking of calling Theo. "
"Theo isn't even a real cop. "
"He deserves to know. "
They lay there in silence for a few minutes, staring at the spreading stain on the carpet, feeling the sweat run down their ribs, and listening to the beat of each other's hearts.
"Gabe?" Val whispered.
"Yes. "
"Maybe we should go to couples' counseling. "
"Should we get dressed first?"
"You were serious about the weed-whacker, weren't you?"
"I don't know where that image came from. "
"There's supposed to be a good couples' guy in San Junipero, unless you'd rather go to a woman counselor. "
"I thought we were going to call the National Guard. "
"Only if it comes to that," Val said. Thinking, When we tell the shrink about this, I'm leaving out the part about the wine spilling.
Theo
Is there anything more irritating than people who have just been laid? Especially when you have not. Not for a long time.
Oh, it was obvious as soon as they came through Molly's front door, waking Theo for the second time that night: Gabe's grin looking like the oversized grill on an old Chrysler, Val Riordan wearing jeans and almost no makeup; the both of them giddy and giggling and blushing like children. Theo wanted to puke. He was happy for them, but he wanted to puke.
"What?" Theo said.
Gabe was obviously amped and trying not to show it. He put his hands in his pockets to keep from waving them around. "I" - he looked at Val and smiled - "we think that this creature, if it exists, may be attracted to prey with low serum serotonin levels. "
Gabe bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited for his statement to sink in. Theo sat there, staring at him, with no discernible change in expres-sion from the weariness he'd worn since they came through the door. He guessed that he was supposed to say something now.
"Molly was here," Theo said. "The creature exists. It ate Mikey Plotznik, and Joseph Leander, and who knows who else? She said it's a dragon. "
Gabe's grin dropped. "That's great. I mean, that's horrible, but it's great from a scientific point of view. I have another theory about this species. I think it has some specialized mechanism to affect its prey. Have you been horny lately?"
"There's no need to be arrogant, Gabe. I'm glad you two had a good time, but there's no need to
rub it in. "
"No no, you don't get it. " Gabe went on to explain about Val Riordan's decision to take her patients off antidepressants and how the lowering of serotonin levels could lead to increased libido. "So Pine Cove has been full of horny people. "
"Right," Theo said. "And I still can't get a date. "
Val Riordan laughed and Theo glared at her. Gabe said, "The rats I found alive near this trailer, where we think the creature might have been, were mating when I found them. There are some species of carnivorous plants that give off a sex pheromone that attracts their prey. In some species, the behavior of the male - a display, a dance, a scent - will stimulate the ovaries in the female of the species without any physical contact. I think that's what's happened to us. "
"Our ovaries are being stimulated?" Theo rubbed sleep from his eyes. "I gotta be honest with you, Gabe. I'm not feeling it. "
Val turned to Gabe. "That's not very romantic. "
"It's incredibly exciting. This may be the most elegant predator that the world has ever seen. "
Theo shook his head. "I have no home, no job, no car, there's probably a warrant out for my arrest, and you want me to be excited over the fact that we have a monster in town that makes you horny so he can eat you? Sorry, Gabe, I'm missing the positive side of this. "
Val chimed in, "It may be the reason that you've been able to quit smoking pot so easily. "
"Pardon me? Easily?" Theo wanted to jump off the couch and bitch-slap them both.
"Were you ever able to go this long before?"
"She could be right, Theo," Gabe said. "If this thing affects serotonin, it could affect other neurotransmitters. "
"Oh good," Theo said. "Let's open a detox clinic. We'll feed half of the patients to the monster and the other half will recover. I can't wait. "
"There's no need to be sarcastic," Gabe said. "We're just trying to help. "
"Help? Help with what? Bar fight? I can handle it. Skateboard theft? I'm on it. But my law enforcement experience hasn't prepared me for dealing with this. "
"That's true, Gabe," Val said. "Theo's little more than a rent-a-cop. Maybe we should call the sheriff or the FBI or the National Guard. "
"And tell them what?" Theo asked. Rent-a-cop? I'm not even that now, he thought.
"He has a point. " Gabe said. "We haven't seen anything. "
"That old Blues singer has," Val said.
Theo nodded. "We need to find him. Maybe he'll. . . "
"He's living with Estelle Boyet," Val said. "I have her address in my office. "
