Why wasn’t she panicking? She panicked pretty easy these days. She could remember panicking when the UPS guy came by unexpectedly. Why wasn’t she panicking when someone she couldn’t remember inviting home was sitting on her couch watching her TV? But just knowing she’d ought to be freaking out couldn’t seem to make it happen. Daria felt only a distant concern. She also felt a little foolish, just standing there on the stairs and staring at the coat rack in the corner of the foyer.
There were bills on the floor by the front door. She remembered going out to the post office and getting bills. She’d dropped them on the floor. She hadn’t picked them up. Somehow, that was the most disturbing thing of all.
“Hello?” Daria called, her voice shaking.
She heard the rustle of a large body rising off the couch, as well as the lighter and perfectly-recognizable thump of Grendel jumping off a lap. The cat ran up to her, huge belly swaying, and pushed against her ankles, meowing excitedly. That only made her more uneasy; who was Grendel snuggling with down there?
“Hello?” she said again, gripping the stair-rail tightly in both hands.
Three heavy footfalls carried the unseen person across the carpet and then there was a click as he stepped off onto the hardwood. Boots? She couldn’t think of any boots that clicked, and it was too heavy a sound to be made by a lady in heels. Funny, it almost made her think of a dog.
“Lindaria Cleavon,” a man said. It was a low voice, concerned, with a strange accent. Very strange. “I do not think you are ready to be open.”
“Open?” she echoed, her floating mind momentarily flummoxed. She had a mental image of a neon sign sputtering on her forehead, like a restaurant, or a bar. The bar where she’d gotten so drunk, perhaps.
There was a pause. He said, “Eyes…open…” And in a firmer voice, “Return to the room of sleeping.”
“Awake,” Daria heard herself say. “You don’t think I’m ready to be awake. I should return to the bedroom.” Vertigo swept through her, graying her vision and freezing her blood. She had spent the whole night doing that. Correcting him. She came another two steps down towards his voice.
Why had he stopped just beyond the stairwell wall? Why hadn’t he come out where she could see him?
“Lindaria Cleavon!” Not just firm now, now he was warning her. “Return at once to the bedroom!”
She gripped the frame of the stairwell and navigated onto the last step, craning her neck around the wall to see him.
Even standing on the stair, he was taller than her. Their eyes were not quite level, and yes, his really were that stark, unblinking raptor-gold. His hair was black and way too long for a cop’s, growing well past his shoulders. He looked like he hadn’t seen a comb, bath, or bed in at least a week. Weird thing: there was a week’s worth of stubble everywhere on his jaw but on his chin. That was as smooth as her own.
Still, the overall impression she got was still ‘cop’. After a few puzzled seconds, she realized why. He was wearing some sort of vaguely-military-looking uniform. It was black with goldish trim, strangely shiny, and there were oval-shaped pips on his collar and to one side of his belt buckle. Only one thing spoiled this professional picture. He wore no shoes. He wore no socks either, which gave Daria a very good look at his three talon-tipped toes. That was what had made the clicking sound on her floors. He had talons on his toes. All three of his toes. All six, if you counted both feet.
‘I’m still drunk,’ Daria thought, studying the cop’s feet. ‘Or I’m high. I’m tripping out on acid or something. Or I’ve lost my mind.’
Could you just wake up one day and be crazy?
“Lindaria Cleavon,” the cop began, and took her firmly by the elbow. His hand had only three fingers, and some whopping big claws, and it was dry and warm and oddly thick-feeling. It also gave her the impression of phenomenal strength. “You are not ready to be awake.”
“Nobody calls me Lindaria anymore,” she said. “I’m Daria. Just Daria.”
Those brilliant, avian eyes closed and opened, like the shutter of a camera clicking on her words. “Daria,” he repeated. “You are not ready to be awake. Return at once—”
“You’re missing your show. Who are you?”
He had started to look around at the television, but at her question, he turned back and gave her a narrow stare. She got the feeling he’d already told her.
He placed one three-fingered hand over his chest—she was being way too calm about those fingers—and slowly said, “Tagen Pahnee,” and then regarded her with faint lines of concern between his inhuman eyes.
“What’s the matter with me? Did you get me high?” She felt no fear at the idea, only an indignant sort of curiosity.
The man, Tagen, frowned. Without answering, he stepped up and lifted her into his arms as easily as if she were a small child. He started up the stairs. “This is not the time for you to be awake,” he said. “You are going to make yourself sick.”
“I’ve already been sick,” she pointed out. She thought about it, and added, “I’m going to be sick again.”
Tagen stopped in the bedroom doorway and looked closely at her. “Now?”
“Oh yes.” She smiled at him. “Right now.”
Tagen executed a smart about-face and took her into the bathroom. No sooner had he set her on her feet than she was doubled over the sink again, retching sour bile.
He held her hair for her. Who was this guy?
Daria coughed, spat another stream of bilious froth into the sink, and staggered back a pace to sit on the side of the tub. She watched him rinse out the sink, thinking, ‘This is really going to bother me at some point very soon.’
The way his shirt/jacket/uniform moved over the bunching muscles of his broad back was hypnotic. The fabric, although black, had a luminescent quality. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anything like it, but the thought was beginning to lose its power to surprise her. She was starting to think she knew what was going on. She didn’t like it, and in fact, she really ought to be running screaming from the room if it were true, but she thought she was right all the same. She said, “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Ha.” Just that. As dry and flat as if it were written and not laughed out of him. “No, I am not.” Tagen turned back to her at last, looking long-suffering and pained with patience. “Now will you please return to the bedroom, Lin…Daria Cleavon?”
She felt a blush of heat between her legs and looked down to watch herself wet her pants. She hadn’t done that since she was eight. God, how very vaguely embarrassing.
Tagen sighed and soon his strong hands were pulling her to her feet and placing her inside the bathtub. He began to undress her.
As her shirt and jacket came away, fear finally flared up, dim and shaky perhaps, but there. She tried to push his hands away. “Cut it out.”
“I will not harm you,” he said, implacably stripping her to the waist. And then he was tugging at her jeans.
“No!” she screamed, and exploded in a slapping windmill of motion. “Let me go! Let go of me! Where am I? Don’t touch me! Dan! Dan!” She lost everything then, falling back into the wall and shrieking helplessness and horror.
Tagen caught her before she could fall. He held her firm, but did not fight her. His strength was god-like, impervious to her haphazard blows. He had only to wait for her to exhaust herself, and finally, she slumped against him, moaning and sick.
He patted her back with a perfunctory kind of comfort and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Mild, my ass.”