He shook his head, not refuting her but unable to accept her argument. “But how could he know that? How could he know even what a…movie theater…was?”
“I don’t know,” Daria said. “But I know Hillmark is only thirty miles from here. The TV says they only found the bodies an hour ago. Your guy might still be in the area.”
“And you will take me there?”
She blinked rapidly, seeming surprised. “Of course,” she said.
“You are not afraid?”
She laughed at him. “I’m terrified. Are you coming or not?”
Tagen stepped forward and pulled her against him, feeling her hands come up and grip at his back, feeling the tension in her small body. She was terrified. And she was still going with him. “Thank you,” he said, stroking down the soft fall of her hair. He squeezed her lightly and stood away, taking up his supply pack. “Lead me.”
She went ahead of him down the stairs and out the door. There she paused and came back. She moved past Tagen to the kitchen and brought down two tins of the cat’s food. Grendel was there at his dish in an instant, miawing anxiously as she filled it. She touched the animal’s head as he dove in, and then she came away again.
“Leave the door open, Tagen,” she said, as she moved past him and outside again. “Just in case, you know, I don’t come back. For a while.”
His brave human.
Tagen left the door ajar and followed her down the groundcar. She stared straight ahead as she strapped herself down and her eyes were dry. In her face, he saw the looming possibility of danger, of death, but he also saw a determination to face it.
“I could not do this without you,” Tagen said as she ignited the engine. It hurt him to admit it, but it was truth and truth was all he had to give her in exchange for what she did now. “It is you, not I, who is saving your Earth.”
“I know I should care about that,” she said, pulling the car around and onto the path that led to the road. “But I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person, not one, that I can honestly say I want to save. I’m sure they’re out there. I’m sure there’s millions of shiny happy people who deserve to be safe and happy for their whole lives, but I’ve never met them. I meet people like Traynor Polidori. That’s who I meet. And I don’t really want to think too hard about the fact that I’m saving them, if you don’t mind.”
Tagen watched the trees flow by outside his window. “I wish that you were not doing this for me,” he said.
He caught the startled, hurt look she gave him in the reflection of his window.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I do not deserve such devotion.” He rested his hand on his supply pack, imagining he could feel the burning of the dermisprayer within, still loaded with the mild sedative with which he had robbed her of choice. “I am the thief of your peace. I am putting you into this danger.”
“I…” She said nothing for a long time, only drove along the dark and empty streets. “I like you,” she finished finally. “I’m doing this because it needs to be done, and because you’re the only one who could make me do it.”
“I regret that.”
“You know,” she said dryly, “sometimes you say the most amazing, romantic and overwhelming things a girl could imagine. This isn’t one of those times, Tagen.”
He smiled a little in spite of himself. “I suppose that it is not,” he admitted. “But I am Jotan. We do not put our females into danger. They are precious even when we do not love them. I feel that I am betraying you.”
“Are there women in the army on your planet?” Daria asked, with that same infernal logic he had just known she would use.
Tagen sighed. “Yes.”
“Do you let them fly around in ships looking for bad guys? Do they get into gunfights and get shot?”
“Yes.” He glanced at her. “The difference being, they have chosen that life.”
“And I’m choosing this.”
“It is not the same.”
“It’s the closest I’m ever going to come to doing anything worthwhile with my life,” Daria said.
Silence, for a very long time.
“I am appalled that you would believe that,” he said at last.
“You had it right when you called me a throw-away person,” she countered, as swiftly and ably as if they sparred with blades and not with words. “I’ve been hiding from the world for years. The only one who’ll miss me when I’m gone is Grendel, and he’ll only miss me long enough to find a new home. I’m pointless, Tagen. I’m a worthless, pointless person. Helping you is the one thing I’ve ever done that gives my life any purpose at all. Don’t argue with me. You know it’s true, too.”
“I know,” he said, “that it is not. I have met many humans in my time. Perhaps hundreds. There is not one of them with half your strength of will. I was wrong to call you what I did that day.”
“You’re only saying that because I’m sleeping with you now.”
He did not answer that. “Our past does not define us unless we allow it to do so,” he said instead. “The circumstances of years ago should never force you into a role you have not wished for yourself.”
“Uh huh. Tell me again why you joined the army.”
Tagen looked at her sharply and then gave over to a grudging smile. “A hit,” he said. “A well-aimed hit. I could always trust to you for that.”
She winced and drove in silence for several minutes. “Sorry.”
He waved that away.
“You deserved to find a nicer person,” she continued glumly.
“Nice,” Tagen echoed, tasting the word as if it were alien fruit. “Daria, my friend, I have no use for a nice human. I found instead a clever one, a brave one. A passionate one.” He let his hand squeeze her knee briefly. “Niceness is a quality often at odds with sincerity. I have the human I desire and no, I do not deserve her, but I am grateful she has accepted me regardless.”
“Is that your way of saying I’m a bitch but you don’t mind?”
“No, it is my way of saying I prefer wit and honesty to empty politeness. If I had a wish to change you, it would be that you could see your value.”
“I wish I could, too.” Daria’s voice was low and sorrowful. Her eyes remained fixed on the road. “Because I believe you, Tagen. I have to believe you. But I just can’t see it.”
The lights of a human town were shining in the distance. Tagen could see the red and blue flash of police presence already. The sight was a sobering one, a reminder that their problems paled beside the fact of E’Var culling for Vahst among the innocents of this world.
“Do you know the way to this…movie theater…where the dead were found?” Tagen asked.
“Yeah, but they’re not going to let us in to look around,” Daria said, with a feigned brightness and nonchalance that left her previous words firmly behind them. “I thought we’d just drive through—”
“No. I have questions to be answered. It would be a grim thing to follow along this road seeking E’Var and then to learn the human police had the true killer already imprisoned. For all that we know, the humans within were burned to death or shot.”
Daria sent him several fleeting and uneasy glances. “How were you planning on finding out?”
“The same way I have done once before.” Tagen tapped his claws on the top of his supply pack. “Find me a human who seems to know something.”
Daria parked down the street, squinting ahead at a parking lot filled with media cars and lawmen. A great throng of on-lookers milled anxiously at the perimeter as several uniformed men answered the shouted concerns of the news crews. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I can see a guy talking to some reporters who looks like he knows what’s going on. But you can’t just walk up and start talking to him.”