He looked sharply around, and then down at her again. “What is it?”
“Tagen, look!”
There were too many people, too much to see. Tagen gripped her hand a little tighter, aiming his eyes in the direction of her stare, and tried to see what she saw.
He saw the purple hair first. Purple hair, just as the lawman had described, a color so astounding that for a moment, it was all Tagen could see. And then he saw the man walking beside her, a man that stood head and shoulders above her. A man in a long coat and head-cover, the only man so attired on such a hot day.
“Is it him?” Daria asked. She clutched at his arm, her little claws digging painfully at him. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
Big man and two women, one of them with purple hair, the other blonde.
“Cover your ears,” Tagen said. He had no idea what the range for his neural stunner might be in the open like this, and there were hundreds of humans all around him, but he could not open fire with a plasma gun into this crowd. Likewise, he could not follow along behind the three forever, and if E’Var turned and saw him, there would be carnage. Tagen had one chance, one alone, to catch his prisoner by surprise.
He reached into his jacket and took his neural stunner in one hand, his plasma gun in the other.
Daria paled, her eyes flashing wildly around at the crowd. “You can’t mean it!” she hissed. “There’s people everywhere!”
“Cover your ears,” he told her again.
“Tagen!”
His temper slipped and he bent close to her ear and snarled, “I have no time, woman, obey me!”
Clap went her hands on her ears. Her eyes were pleading.
Tagen raised the stunner over the crowd and pushed the trigger. He saw the pulse belch out from the device, a colorless distortion of sound that struck like a hammer inside his head and left a nauseating echo, but he was Jotan and it passed. The humans, for which the device had been developed, dropped in waves all around him, leaving a sea of prone bodies in a perfect ring. He heard Daria cry out, the sound rapidly eclipsed by screaming as the surrounding humans reacted to the sudden incapacitation of so many of their kind.
The two humans walking aside of the coated man fell with the rest of them, but the man merely staggered, and that was it, that was E’Var. Tagen had just time enough to register this, not even time to raise his plasma gun, and then E’Var was gone, darting around the side of the nearest booth in a snap of black coat without even glancing to see where the attack had come from.
But the booth was isolated from the bank of them. E’Var could not flee unseen, he could only hide. A live capture was not out of the realm of possibility.
“Prisoner!” Tagen shouted in Jotan. He had to shout to be heard. The humans were running, streaming past him in a blind panic, even trampling their own fallen in their desperation to escape. “I arrest you, Kanetus E’Var. Surrender yourself!”
His words seemed to be the catalyst that freed Daria from her shocked paralysis. She uncovered her ears and shot forward in a blur, dropping to her knees and touching her hand to exposed throats. “What did you do to them?” she asked shrilly.
E’Var glanced around the side of the booth, giving Tagen a glimpse of shoulder, a plane of cheek, and a lock of dark blonde hair. He was gone again before Tagen could get off a shot.
“Is that one yours?” E’Var’s voice was untouched by tension. He sounded as easy as if they were talking over bottles of ul. And he spoke in N’Glish, bringing Daria’s head up in a quick jerk.
Tagen grit his teeth, his arm steady and his finger heavy on the trigger of his plasma gun. He hated even that E’Var was thinking about Daria. “Surrender!” he shouted again, stubbornly speaking Jotan.
“She’s cute,” E’Var continued. “I could fuck that all day, I think.”
Daria blanched and crawled back to Tagen’s side. He stepped in front of her instinctively.
“When I’ve killed you,” E’Var called evenly, “I’m going to take your ichuta’a. I’m going to fuck her until she bleeds out before I crush her skull and turn her into Vahst. She’ll probably die screaming your name.”
E’Var moved, flashing black from one booth to another, and Tagen blasted futilely at his shadow. Hot plasma took out a half-circle of his new hiding place, but there was no cry of pain to indicate a hit. Moreover, Tagen realized that the prisoner’s flight had brought him closer, not further away. He was not fleeing, but angling for…what? A better line of attack? Tagen’s gun remained aimed and ready; his empty hand found Daria’s side and moved her toward the cover of some empty booths.
“I hear something, don’t I?” E’Var asked from his new, nearer cover.
Tagen cocked his head. He heard only human chatter and it took a second or two to decipher.
“—there’s like, dozens of dead people!” “—at the Fair!” “Some crazy guy—” “Terrorist!”
Tagen frowned.
“I hope you have friends in Earth’s police force,” E’Var called. “It isn’t me they’ll be coming for.”
Tagen glanced behind him and saw several humans speaking into transmitters. A scraping sound brought his gaze around fast, in time to see E’Var dragging his purple-haired female behind the booth by her ankle. Tagen aimed without thinking, but had no shot for E’Var and hesitated to kill the human. The unconscious female was swept out of sight and Tagen heard E’Var growling at her in tones anyone might mistake for concern.
“You have but one chance, prisoner,” Tagen warned, and steeled himself resolutely. “I am prepared to kill your hostage.”
Anger entered E’Var’s voice for the first time. “The fuck you say!”
There was a flat snapping sound and Daria suddenly grunted and fell into a drop-sitting position. She looked up at him, her eyes round with surprise, and then down at her lap, where blood bloomed over her thigh.
“Shit,” E’Var snarled, and a human’s gun skittered away from the booth where he hid. “Do you hear that?”
Sirens.
“You can still come and get me,” E’Var invited. “I’m not even armed any more. Easy pickings, as the humans say. Leave your ichuta’a and take me. She’ll be arrested, of course. We’re surrounded by humans who saw her stand by you after you dropped these people. She’ll be imprisoned before the day is out. They kill prisoners here.”
“I’ll be okay,” Daria said. Both her hands were pressed to her thigh and blood welled between her fingers. “Get him, Tagen!”
“Yes, Tagen, get me. Or shoot me. Or something. Like they say here, shit or get off the pot.”
Tagen could hear the engines of the police now. He had only seconds to act.
Tagen holstered his weapons and grabbed Daria, pulling her into his arms. He sensed movement at the corner of his eyes and spun around. He watched E’Var run for the woods, knocking humans aside with his claws in sprays of blood. The purple-haired human was over his shoulder, her arms swaying limply.
“Stay where you are! This is a citizen’s arrest!”
Tagen turned furiously into the voice and punched, sending the human who had dared to confront him into a booth and over the counter with his teeth spilling down the front of his shirt.
“That’s police brutality,” Daria remarked. She sounded strained.
Tagen moved her to his shoulder and drew his stunner. He sent another pulse out through the closing crowd, and Daria slumped, suddenly heavy. Tagen stepped forward through the fallen, seized the blonde female who had been walking with E’Var and hauled her awkwardly onto his other shoulder. He ran.