Season of Strangers (8 page)

“I like the…perfume…you're wearing,” he said, testing the word on his tongue.

“It's Michael Kors. Your father bought it for me last year for my birthday. It's expensive, but it's definitely my favorite.”

“Mine, too,” he said, inhaling deeply. There were no vile smells on Toril, not like the ones he'd noticed in the hospital, or those drifting up from the gutter he had whiffed as he'd slid into the car. But there was also nothing like the soft sweet fragrance of Michael Kors, either. He liked the way it mingled with Julie's own special scent, giving her a softly feminine fragrance all her own.

The small car hummed along. Val settled back in the seat, stretching his long legs out as best he could. Outside the window, the landscape of Beverly Hills slid past in a blur of sound and color. Automobiles of every design and hue crammed the streets to overflowing. People crowded along the sidewalks, hurrying to destinations he couldn't begin to guess. Buildings rose up from the pavement, their storefronts shaded by bright canvas awnings, the windows glowing with vibrant signs made of…
neon
…yes, that was the word.

“We're almost there,” Julie said, turning the car off Wilshire onto Oakhurst Drive. Just past Burton Way, she slowed the engine, turned, and pulled off the road, stopping in front of the heavy metal fence that enclosed the parking garage. “I found this with your clothes.”

She held up a small square box Patrick's memory said opened the door to the underground parking. “One of your lady friends must have come by and picked it up along with the rest of your things.”

The woman called Anna, he recalled. A tall, slenderly built blond female who had come to see him several times in the hospital. She had kissed him, he recalled, not an unpleasant sensation, but when she had reached beneath the covers to stroke his sex, he'd nearly had a second heart attack.

Patrick's memory had kicked in, enlightening him on their recent acquaintance—and the fact the woman was a great deal of the reason that, aside from the part of Patrick that Val had absorbed, the living, reasoning essence of Patrick Donovan was gone.

Still, the transformation was not as he'd expected. With each passing hour, he felt a subtle shifting, a reaching out, a melding of consciousness as new information, more of Patrick's being was fully absorbed. He had expected to be solidly in control, less vulnerable to the thoughts Patrick once had, the emotions he had experienced.

Instead it was if he and Patrick had merged, begun to form a third, distinctly different being. It frightened him. Made him worry what residue those changes might leave inside him.

Fear
. Val could taste it in his mouth.

It was an emotion unknown to the people of Toril.

“B
ut I don't want to come out for the weekend, Julie. I'd rather stay here.”

“Come on, honey,” Julie coaxed her sister over the phone, “it's my birthday. Babs is coming for dinner on Saturday night. Owen's in town. He's promised he'll stop by. We'll have ourselves a party.”

“I-I don't know….”

Julie rubbed her temple, trying to ignore the headache that had built behind her eyes. “Come on, Laura, please? The weather's going to be clear. We can lie out in the cove and no one will bother us. You can tell me how your sessions with Dr. Heraldson are going.”

“He wants to hypnotize me.”

“So?”

“I don't want him to, Julie.”

“Why not?”

“I-I don't know. I just don't like the idea.”

Julie took a steadying breath and slowly released it. “We'll talk about it when you get here.”

“It'll be too late by then. Tomorrow's my appointment.”

“Well…if Dr. Heraldson thinks it's a good idea, maybe you should do it.”

“I suppose so. I guess it couldn't hurt.” A pause on the phone. “I'd forgotten it was your birthday.”

“Does that mean you'll come?”

“Of course I will.”

“Great. Can I count on seeing you Friday night? We could go out for a bite of dinner.”

“I can't, I've got a date. I'll drive out Saturday afternoon.”

A date, Julie thought, praying it wasn't with that no-good Jimmy Osborn. Her head throbbed even harder. “I guess if that's the best you can do, it'll have to be good enough. I've got a couple of properties to show on Saturday morning. If I'm not home when you get here, you know where to find the extra key.”

They both said goodbye and Julie rang off thinking about Laura. She was worried about her, but then as Babs had said, she usually was. Walking into the bathroom, she opened the medicine cabinet and searched the shelves, looking for the plastic bottle of painkillers Dr. Marsh had prescribed for her migraines. This one was shaping up to be a doozie.

Her hand shook as she pried off the lid and dumped a couple of capsules into her palm. A third fell out. For a moment she was tempted, then she thought of Patrick's drug abuse and where it had finally landed him, and slid the third pill back into the bottle.

Thirty minutes later, the medicine had still not kicked in. Pain shot into her skull as the phone beside the bed began to ring. She reached over and lifted the receiver.

“Julie? It's Patrick.”

The headache was getting so bad it was starting to upset her stomach. She dampened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, thinking she might throw up. “Hello, Patrick. How are you feeling?” It had been a week since Patrick's release from the hospital. He had been taking it easy, as the doctors suggested, surprisingly circumspect for Patrick.

“Better than I have a right to. That's why I'm calling. I'm down at the office. I thought you'd be in. I figured you might want to go over the Rabinoff file.”

“I'm afraid I'm not feeling well, Patrick. But the escrow's all set to close. I don't think there'll be any more unforeseen problems.”

“You're sick?” He sounded suddenly worried. “What's the matter with you?”

“Another one of my headaches. This one's pretty bad and nothing seems to help. I took some of the pills Dr. Marsh prescribed, but—”

“I'm coming over. I'll be there in just a few minutes. Lie down and take it easy till I get there.”

“Patrick—you can't drive all the way out here. You probably shouldn't be driving at all. Besides, there's nothing you can do the doctor hasn't already done.”

“Maybe there is. I have hidden talents you wouldn't believe. Besides, you helped me, didn't you? I owe you one.” He hung up the receiver before Julie could say any more.

Val knew what was wrong with Julie Ferris. Her resistance to their scanners had been painful and immediate. The brutal headaches that followed were not unexpected, since they had occurred in subjects like Julie before. But the vicious assaults had lasted far longer than they had predicted, perhaps because, unlike the others, she had been taken aboard a second time.

Val felt a shot of guilt, a feeling he had never really known. When he'd made the difficult decision to bring the older sibling back aboard, he had known there might be complications. He wished he could explain, reassure her that the headaches would soon disappear. But he wasn't exactly certain that would happen. It was one of the things he'd been sent here to observe. Grabbing his coat off the wooden valet in the corner of his office, he started for the door.

In the meantime, he knew the cause and what to do to treat them. At least he could ease some of her pain.

Shoving open the office door, he walked down the sidewalk toward the pudgy young man in front of Spago's who parked Patrick's car, and handed him a couple of dollar bills. He had driven the shiny black Porsche for the first time that morning—an antique mode of transportation he found fascinating. He was grateful Patrick knew how to handle the car and had enjoyed every second behind the wheel.

Patrick was a very good driver, he had discovered, with what seemed a natural ability to handle the vehicle on the route through Laurel Canyon. Later he had cruised Mulholland Drive.

All along the way, a fierce blue sky curved above him, brightened by clouds so white and incredibly lovely it made him feel funny inside. At the top of the hill he'd parked the car for a while and simply stared out over the landscape. Wildflowers in vivid purple and saffron gold, poppies in scorching red-orange. A large brown bird, a goshawk, his memory recalled, spiraled down off the mountain, coasting on the currents of the wind.

Afterward, he jotted down the experience in the journal he was keeping, filling the pages with words written in Patrick's bold hand. It was the only way he could think of to capture the unfamiliar feelings, the subtle nuances of his thoughts. He had been making reports to his superiors, of course, communicating with the
Ansor
team through normal space channels.

But there was just no Torillian way to describe what was actually going on.

The journal would have to do that. When he returned to the ship, the pages could be scanned, translated by computer into words and images far more detailed than his logical, straightforward mind could manage.

Val tipped the valet for the second time that day, vowing to start parking the car himself in the office parking lot, then slid into the deep red leather seat of the softly purring sports car. He stepped on the gas, relaxed his mind, and let Patrick's well-honed driving skills take over. He knew the way to Julie's house and the fastest way to get there. Avoiding as much of the traffic as he could, he pulled onto Pacific Coast Highway and roared along the beach to Julie's batten-board, ranch-style beach house.

He spotted it clinging to the side of a cliff, a two-car garage on the bottom, forming a two-story structure, the walls of the house draped with shocking-pink azaleas. If he hadn't been so worried, he might have smiled.

Instead he parked the car in the driveway, knocked on the door, and a few minutes later, Julie Ferris let him in.

“This is silly, Patrick. You shouldn't have come.”

But she looked so pale he was glad he had. He felt responsible for what was happening to her.
Was
responsible. There was just no way around it. Still, science was all-important. The
Ansor's
mission was all-important.

And yet when he looked at Julie, he wished there could have been some other way.

“Why don't you lie down on the couch?” he said gently. “I give a great massage. Why don't we see if it will help?”

“I don't know, Patrick….”

“Come on, Julie, please. Do it for me?”

A hint of uncertainty appeared in her face. She had always been wary of Patrick and yet they were friends of a sort. “All right. What have I got to lose?”

A few minutes later, she was lying on her stomach on the sofa, her pale blue terry-cloth robe covering her primly from neck to ankle. Val knelt beside her, began to massage her shoulders.

“I must be crazy,” she mumbled when his hands moved a little bit lower, kneading the muscles across her back. “If you try anything, Patrick, I swear I'll never forgive you.”

He flushed a little at that. Partly because he had begun to like the feel of her small woman's body beneath his hands and partly because the heavy male part of his anatomy was coming to life again.

Val swore something Patrick would have said. “I promise my intentions are completely aboveboard.”

“They'd better be.”

He continued his deep massage, working upward again, toward the muscles in her neck, reaching the area at the base of her skull that had been his objective from the start. His fingers sifted through her hair. He couldn't believe how soft and silky it felt, while at the same time it was bouncy and vibrant, shimmering with life and substance.

Her skin was soft and smooth to the touch. When he had seen her that night onboard the ship, he had never noticed the satiny texture. But Patrick must have noticed it at least a hundred times, and because he had, now, so did he.

His hand shook, felt a little unsteady. The blood pumping through him seemed to thicken, pool low in his belly. He forced himself to ignore it.

Beneath his hands, a tiny vessel throbbed under an obscure layer of flesh. He searched it out, applied a gentle pressure, and felt the tension begin to ebb from Julie's body.

“Better?” he asked, feeling a little more in control.

She made a purring sound and nodded. “I can't believe how much.”

He continued to work on the vessel, knowing exactly how much blood to let flow and when to cut back.

Julie's body relaxed even more. “How on Earth did you learn to do that?”

It wasn't on Earth,
he thought. But he just smiled and didn't say it. “I'm just glad it's working.”

“Uhmmm, it's working, all right. My headache is almost gone.” She yawned hugely and her eyes drifted closed. Her breathing smoothed out, grew deeper. A few minutes later, she was asleep.

Val eased away from her, oddly reluctant to leave. He crossed the room to a serape-draped chair several paces away and sat down to watch her, taking advantage of the chance to study her unobserved. He made mental notes of her posture, the way she curled up in the robe like some small warm-blooded animal. He studied her breathing, watched the way it caused a strand of dark red hair to float beside her ear.

He assessed her small feet and hands, the soft pink polish on her fingernails and toes. He knew what she looked like beneath the robe, but he tried very hard not to think of it. When he did, his stomach muscles tightened and he started to grow hard again. Eventually he drew out the journal, began to use Patrick's words as well as his own impressions to describe what he'd learned—and how watching her sleep made him feel.

He wasn't at all happy with that discovery. He felt warm all over, somewhat sexually aroused, and precariously close to losing some of his precious control. Since control was the thing he needed most, he vowed to be more careful in the future.

In the end, he left Julie a note on the rough-hewn bleached pine coffee table in front of the sofa, then let himself out, pushing the button on the doorknob to lock it behind him. All the way home he wondered if his reactions to Julie belonged wholly to Patrick—or if some part of them could have belonged to him.

 

Brian Heraldson, Doctor of Psychiatry, sat behind the desk in his walnut-paneled, book-lined office on Galey Avenue in Westwood. He leaned back in his chair, his long fingers steepled in front of him, his thick brown eyebrows drawn together in a frown. Brian was thirty-five years old, divorced three years ago, over it now but wary of relationships that involved any form of commitment. His practice was everything—employer, friend, mistress—and he was good at what he did.

He was open, objective and concerned. To him psychiatry wasn't just a job. It was a guideline of how to live and a deep responsibility. And so he pondered his newest patient, Laura Maxine Ferris. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

He was uncomfortable thinking of that. It was highly unethical to become involved with a patient. And he staunchly believed in those ethics. He wouldn't allow the physical attraction he felt for Laura to stop him from giving her the help she so desperately needed.

Unconsciously, Brian stroked his neatly trimmed beard. He had grown it ten years ago, when he had first gone into practice. It had made him look older, more mature, gave his patients more confidence in his ability to help them. Since that time, he had grown so used to his bearded appearance, he couldn't imagine how he would look without it. He wondered if Laura Ferris was attracted to men who wore beards, then prayed most sincerely that she wasn't.