She leaped at Talco, gaining speed and force to take him out. Luck was with him. His Taser fired into her chest at the last second, instantly dropping her to the floor. She’d never been tasered before. It was a new lesson in pain. She hit the carpet jerking in extreme agony, all her nerve endings firing. Her muscles seized up tight as 50,000 volts screamed through her nervous system. Talco kept the Taser engaged non-stop until one of the cops yelled, “Enough! She’s toast already!”

Immobile on the floor, but still conscious, she caught a quick breath, and slammed up into Talco, throwing him across the room to smash against the wall. She was three feet from the door when the detectives hit her simultaneously in the back with both their Tasers.

They held the juice to her non-stop while Talco recovered and joined them for the combined effect of three different electric charges hitting her in unison. The white-hot pain of electric shock blotted out her world.

* * * *

Aaron stood on the roof of the apartment building he called home, looking out over the city, breathing in the aromatic night air. He recalled that first night, when Michelle forced him to jump. He’d resisted her at every step, but the changes she brought to his life couldn’t be undone. He wouldn’t have it any other way, for better or worse, he was committed to making this work out between them. That’s when it hit him.

A jolt of intense NEED from Michelle smacked his psyche, knocking him to the ground with its power. He heard her scream as though she were standing next to him. His being was possessed with the overpowering compulsion to reach Michelle NOW. She was about twenty miles away on the third floor of a hotel.

He was up and running in an instant, rapid fire. He hit the edge of the building and jumped with every last ounce of strength, flying across to the other building. He hit the ground running and kept on going, leaping from rooftop to rooftop until he reached a building extending ten stories above his level. Without pause he turned and barreled towards the main street, flowing in the direction of the hotel. He leapt down from the roof to a lower corner store and then down onto the street.

His mind raced through scenarios, imagining what could be wrong, galvanized with fear for her wellbeing. With his mind opened wide to their bond, he felt the blinding agony of excruciating electric shock. He staggered, going down on all fours in a haze of pain. He was dizzy, nauseous, it was too much. He couldn’t help her and share her pain at the same time. He reeled his mind back from Michelle and blocked himself into his mental vault.

With a clear head and a renewed sense of urgency, he jumped up and raced down the street, picking up speed, leaping across intersections, careening off moving vehicles. He vaulted off parked cars and dodged left and right as he negotiated the obstacles in the streets and sidewalks. In his urgency, he moved heedless of who might witness him and remark on such super-human displays of speed.

* * * *

Michelle awoke to throbbing waves of pain lashing across her entire body. Every limb, all her fingers and toes, every single hair on her head, every molecule in her body, radiated nauseating pain. She heard cursing in Brooklyn accents interspersed with Talco’s exclamations in a mixture of Spanish and English, then the click-snap of Taser cartridges reloaded. Time to drag her sorry ass off the floor and do something.

She suddenly spun on the ground kicking out in all directions. She was lucky enough to catch someone in the knee, knocking him down. With a target acquired, she kicked out again, hard in his groin. She scrambled up and over his body to grasp his weapon. As she turned toward the other cop, Taser in hand, the fat bastard had his gun drawn. He fired three shots point blank, piercing her right shoulder, and throwing her against the wall where she slumped to the floor.

She lay there in shock and disbelief, bleeding out all her precious blood onto the hotel carpet. She was closer to death than she’d been in decades. She reached out to Aaron with a desperate psychic cry, screaming with all her consciousness for him to save her life. A few seconds everything faded to black.

* * * *

Vertigo punched him viciously. He stumbled to a halt, falling in a tumble across the sidewalk as the psychic backlash hit him with a tsunami of Michelle’s desperation tearing through his mind. The force of her desperate need delved deep into his psyche, unhinging logic and reason. A primeval consciousness took over Aaron’s mind and a massive adrenaline high slammed him into extreme overdrive.

He screamed into the night, a blood curdling sound of bottomless rage. He rocketed down the street, a blur of movement. The unchained Predator knew instinctively there were too many obstacles on the street, too many people with their complications. He leaped to the side of the nearest building, bounding upward to catch the lip of the brick at each window, defying gravity and gaining momentum. Reaching the top in seconds, he leaped across to the next building’s roof, soaring from building to building, a streak of black lightning across the skyline. The Predator preferred the high ground for strategic hunting advantage and a better view of the target.

The Predator reached the Ramada Inn within moments. He sailed through the window of an unoccupied third floor room. He landed in the center of the room, flowing with his momentum. He smashed through the door into the hallway and barreled towards Room 322.

* * * *

CHAPTER 21

Talco knew a mess when he saw one. “I’m fuckin’ outta here! I don’t know what kinda drugs that bitch is on, and I don’t care. I’m not getting dragged into a homicide investigation. You’re on your own!” Stepping into the hallway, he came face to face with a demon from hell sent to collect his due. He had waited a moment too long to make his exit, and the time had come to answer for his sins. The last conscious thought echoing through Talco’s mind was the beginnings of the Our Father prayer. He never made it past who art in heaven.

* * * *

The Predator read Talco’s shock and anxiety at having witnessed Michelle’s execution. He could see the gruesome image in Talco’s mind as he made the grave mistake of stepping directly into the Predator’s path. He plowed right through the man, hitting Talco with a crushing blow to his chest, slamming him into the wall at the end of the hallway. He rendered the unconscious in one move.

As he tore the door off the hinges to Room 322, the Predator read the detective’s minds revealing their premeditated attack on Michelle. Their scheme had unraveled fast. They were forced to shoot her here in the hotel instead of disposing of her in the back alley as planned.

The detectives must die.

There would be none of the mercy given to Talco. Moving in slow motion, they telegraphed their intent to draw down on him with their firearms. He moved wicked fast, smashing Oberman in the chest. Oberman sailed through the air backward, exploding the sliding glass door and flying over the balcony into the parking lot below. It happened so fast that to the unaided human eye it seemed the Predator teleported into place where Oberman was standing.

The Predator slipped into position as though filling Oberman’s vacuum. In a sweeping arc of his claws, he swiped the flesh from Konowicz’s throat like a hot knife carving through butter.

The Predator latched onto the gaping wound, guzzling down Konowicz’s life blood as it sprayed and gushed from his body. He drank his fill, engorging himself until there was no fluid left to consume. He flung the limp, lifeless sack of flesh to the ground and retrieved Michelle’s blood-soaked body cradling her to his chest.

He had dispatched all three men in under five seconds flat, threats neutralized. The stench of blood was overpowering, calling him to feed. All that adrenaline, all that bottomless rage and power, and now what? He burned to kill, to rend and tear flesh, to crush bones, to devour the cattle herding in the streets below. He could smell, hear, and taste their idle flesh there at the edge of his senses as they went about their meaningless pursuits. It would be all too easy. No one could stop him from feasting on their bloated, fattened bodies.

A more urgent instinct begged his attention. His master lay in his arms helpless. He smelled and sensed her impending death. She needed sanctuary. She had been wounded to the very limits of her miraculous healing capacity and perhaps beyond. Holding Michelle securely in his arms, he fled to seek a refuge against the coming daylight.

* * * *

Michelle’s basest survival instincts brought her awake to the smell of blood. Her body’s primal need for precious life-giving blood to regenerate and heal overwhelmed all other conscious thought. She sensed the blood and flesh wrapped around her, and tore into it with ravenous hunger. The flesh fought her. It was too strong, too powerful, denying her the blood that she needed so badly. She instinctively knew she could force it into submission with her words. In her overwhelming need, without cognizance of her actions, Michelle commanded, “Be Still!”

She tore into the flesh and drank deeply from its jugular vein.

* * * *

Michelle awoke in an abandoned building, her arms and legs intimately wrapped around Aaron, who lie on his back beneath her. Her face was buried in his neck. They were both covered in icky-sticky caked blood. She could not recall any details beyond the gunshots fired in the hotel room. Her thirst was intense, but she fought the urge to bite him. She was unsure of his condition. Upon further inspection she saw his ragged clothing hung in tattered shreds. He looked as though he’d been to Hell and back again, fought off a pack of wild animals. Much the worse for it.

She was very sore. Her chest, ribs, shoulder, collar bone, neck, back, and basically her whole upper body ached and throbbed in pain. Her clothes looked like Aaron’s––shredded. She must’ve fought someone with a blade. Her gunshot wounds were mostly healed. The scabs flaked loose to reveal the pinkish marks of freshly-healed skin beneath the caked blood. And there were marks revealing recent wounds of some other kind. She couldn’t recall having fought with anyone besides the detectives, no one with a blade that would do this kind of damage. A thought came to her then, but she dismissed it immediately.

Aaron would never attack her.

With the growing intensity of her hunger, her senses magnified to encompass the surrounding area and streets outside. She smelled the ripe bodily stench of unwashed vagrants. She arose and fed ungracefully from the two squatters living in the upper levels of the abandoned building. They were both dazed and stupefied from the raw force of her animalistic feeding. She left them where they lay, still alive, and returned to Aaron.