CHAPTER 20
Reactions were immediate. The military scattered. Slinkie and I kept on running. We were running with the military, as a matter of fact. No one really needed to be told they needed to move or were going to be drowning in crap twice, at least, not if they had functioning brains.
Still running at top speed, I pulled Slinkie out of the group. I didn’t want us near enough to be grabbed once everyone felt far enough away to be safe. The sound of rending metal was louder, and then the sound of metal giving up the good fight came, followed quickly by a splooshing sound that was both gross and ominous.
We were on a street now, and I heard the familiar screeching of tires. “Don’t these guys ever stop?”
An even older and less impressive autofloater slid up next to us. “Get in,” the Governor snapped. I shoved Slinkie into the back seat and leapt in next to her. The Governor floored it and we took off. He had us airborne momentarily, though not up too high.
“They won’t have any trouble following us.”
“We go higher, this comes down. At least, that’s what the little old lady I took it from told me.”
“You stole this from a woman you consider old? Dear Herion gods, whoever they may be, how old could that be? Is she a mummy or an undead?”
“I could let you ask the Herion Military,” the Governor snarled.
“My jaw hurts. That bastard hit me.” Slinkie sounded furious. “I want to go back and kill him.”
“Already taken care of, Slink. I killed all four of them. No one touches you if you don’t want to be touched. Other than me, of course.” I massaged the back of her neck. “How’s your head feeling?”
“Okay.” She didn’t make a comment or tell me to stop or anything. She also wasn’t looking at me, around, or at the Governor. She was looking at her hands, which were folded in her lap.
I got worried. “Slinkie, you all right? Did they hurt you worse than I saw?”
She shook her head and then she started to cry. Slinkie didn’t like to cry. I’d only seen her do it a few times—those three times I’d gotten the dove look, when we’d lost Saladine, and a couple of others.
I put my arm around her and pulled her closer to me. “Slinkie, what else did they do to you?” I wondered if there was a way to kill them again. Figured not, but maybe I could find out who’d hired them and go kill those guys, too.
She buried her face in my chest and bawled. I hugged her and tried to figure out what to do. Some other girl, this was a great prelude to sex—comfort, reassure, head into the sack. But this was Slinkie. I didn’t want to miss what seemed like a golden opportunity, however, I also didn’t want to screw up.
I settled for standard operating procedures. Comfort and reassure, see if sex might be a possibility. I kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” She bawled more and clutched at me.
This was great. Or would have been, if I wasn’t actually starting to feel upset that she was so upset. I kissed her head again. Her hair smelled great, goon attack or no goon attack. Holding her felt great, too. Only her crying wasn’t great. I rocked her, hugged her more tightly, kissed her head some more, and stroked her hair. I could feel her start to relax.
“Alexander, do you happen to have a plan?” The Governor didn’t sound snappish. I assumed he didn’t want to say something that might cause Slinkie to start crying her eyes out again, since she was down from all out hysterics to my soufflé fell.
“Well, I have several plans. All of them center around us getting the hell out of Herion solar space as fast as possible. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to do that and stay alive, at least not yet.”
“They said they were going to hold me as a hostage until they could get you to do what they wanted,” Slinkie said. Her voice was muffled, because she hadn’t taken her face out of my chest. I didn’t mind and hoped she didn’t go back to completely normal too quickly.
“Did they say what it was they wanted?”
She shook her head. “No. I was too busy fighting to ask questions.”
“That’s okay, we’ll figure it out. I saw that one hit you.” Despite trying to sound calm, my voice came out in a snarl. “Did they hurt you more than that?” I really wanted to know how much mayhem and pain I was going to cause to whoever had given the order to pick Slinkie up.
She cuddled closer to me. I tried not to marvel at my luck. “No. Not much, anyway. Just the usual manhandling.”
“Manhandling?” Had their man hands handled parts of Slinkie I considered mine, albeit mine in the future? I really regretted the inability to kill someone more than once.
Slinkie took her face out of my chest. For a moment I thought my happy time was over, but she leaned her head back against me. “No, not intentionally.”
I wanted to ask if by “not intentionally” she meant they’d knocked up against her assets while she was kicking and hitting them, or if they’d followed in the Governor’s footsteps and gone for the cheap feels. But something told me this wouldn’t lead us down a good path and, besides, the Governor was right there.
“Well… okay. You want to go lie down?”
She looked up at me and gave me a sardonic look. “Smooth.”
“Not what I meant. You were hurt. I don’t know if you need to rest or are okay moving back into action.” I slid my fingers along her jaw. “You may be the toughest bird in the galaxy, but that bastard who hit you was twice your size.”
“You think I’m a tough bird?” She didn’t sound like she really believed me.
“I think you’re the greatest, Slinkie. You know that.”
“Oh, Nap. I was so scared. And I hate being scared. And you jumped on a moving ’floater to save me and….” Her eyes were wide, her lips were parted, and she had the dove look on her face.
I knew an invitation when I saw it. I bent to kiss her. Our lips were almost touching when the ’floater jerked and started to fall.
“Alexander, we have a problem!”