I sank my fangs into his flesh. His blood spurted into my mouth, a delicious male nectar flavored with testosterone and adrenaline from his terror.

I pumped enzymes to hasten the healing process and hide my marks. Then I stopped the other enzymes that deadened pain. I’d kill him the way Carmen would have, al dente.

Goodman howled in agony. He wrestled to get free. His face and neck became livid and red. The tendons pressed against the inside of his throat. His hands clutched my side and his boots thumped against my shins.

I let him go and he crumbled to the floor, grasping his throat. He retched and convulsed. Drool seeped between his teeth, over his lower lip, and down his chin. Pain surged through his aura, the penumbra becoming as turbulent as waves in a storm.

He dropped to his side, still retching. His eyes bugged out from their sockets, big as peeled eggs. Blood dribbled from his ears and tear ducts. His legs kicked and his back arched. His aura flashed and dimmed, fading until it disappeared. His corpse lay with his limbs splayed in a death dance.

Goodman was dead, yet I felt empty, unsatisfied. Another death on my slate and what had I accomplished? My friend Carmen was still on her way to another solar system.

I grabbed a desk and hurled it against the computers.

“Where is she?” I screamed at no one. I seized another desk and continued my rampage through the lab, wrecking as much as I could to vent my fury.

I was wasting time. I returned to the freight elevator and looked down to the floor below, where Clayborn lived. I’d go there and interrogate him, provided Jolie hadn’t ripped him to pieces already.

I smelled a different odor from the burned explosive in the lab. This smell came from below. Was the annex on fire?

I leaned forward and caught the elevator cables. I shimmied down one floor to the next door. The smell grew stronger. I swung from the cable and balanced on the ledge below the elevator door.

I felt heat coming from the metal door. There was a fire. I had to find Clayborn.

I jabbed my talons through the door. Smoke jetted past my fingers. I sawed a gap wide enough for me to use both hands and tear the door in two.

Heat and smoke rolled over me. I started to panic. I had to act fast or I’d lose any way of ever finding Carmen. I dropped to the floor, where the air was clearer.

I shouted, “Jolie.”

“Felix,” she answered from inside the smoke-filled room, “he’s coming your way. Get him.”

Before I could think to ask whom, Clayborn rushed from the smoke, bent over in a stooped sprint, those big clown feet of his propelling him with amazing speed. He clasped a ray gun in his right hand.

I pushed from the floor and clotheslined him. His neck folded over my arm and those Bozo feet of his arced through the air. The gun clattered across the floor and down the elevator shaft. Clayborn landed on his back, and his head smacked the hard floor.

Jolie appeared through the smoke and crouched beside Clayborn. “The little fucker shot at me with the ray gun, missed, and started the fire. Now that we’ve got him, let’s rescue Carmen.”

I didn’t move.

Jolie looked at me. “What’s the matter?”

It was hard to admit my failure. “Carmen’s gone.”

Jolie remained stone-faced. “What do you mean?”

The next admission was even harder. “She’s been taken from Earth. She’s in outer space somewhere.”

Jolie’s aura blazed as bright as hot, glowing metal. She wrapped her talons around Clayborn’s neck. “Where is she? Tell me or I’ll gut you like a fish.”

Clayborn struggled for breath. He gasped. “There’s nothing you can do for her now.”

Jolie tightened her grip. “You better hope not.”

The fire gained on us. We didn’t have much time.

I peeled her fingers loose. “We better get moving.”

“What about him?”

“We’ll take him with us. He wouldn’t let himself get stranded here without a way to get home.”

Jolie jumped and tore a light fixture from the ceiling. She grasped the wire dangling from the hole and cut a length of about six feet using her talons.

“Here, bind him with this.” Jolie handed the wire to me.

Clayborn remained dazed and docile from the blow against the concrete floor. His black eyes bulged from their sockets. A corona of pain flared around his yellow aura.

I looped one end of the copper wire around his skinny neck and twisted the wire tight. I wrapped the rest of the wire around his torso, cinching his arms against his chest, and trussed him like a pot roast. I picked Clayborn up and tucked him under my arm. He weighed the same as a medium-sized dog.

I returned to the elevator, paused at the threshold, and planned my jump.

Clayborn started to moan.

“Shut up,” Jolie hissed. She tore a swatch from his pants cuff and stuffed the cloth into his mouth.

Flames roared in the room behind us.

I bounded against the opposite wall and zigzagged up the elevator structure to the access hatch I’d torn loose.

We emerged on the roof through the column of smoke pumping out the elevator shaft. Jolie and I coughed to clear our throats. Clayborn gagged and squirmed against me.

Jolie punched him in the head. “I told you to shut up.”

We stepped away from the smoke and crouched on the roof.

Guards shouted in a frenzied chorus. Red and amber lights flashed across the resort. Alarms and claxons blared like wounded animals. Trucks and carts raced over the grounds in carnival-like pandemonium.

“Felix, if your intent was to confuse them, good job.” Jolie dug a cell phone from her hip pocket. She glanced at the phone briefly. “That was Antoine. He’s almost here.”

Jolie lifted her head toward the west. The chopping noise of rotor blades approached.

Low above the trees raced the dark, humpbacked silhouette of a Blackhawk helicopter, showing no lights and with an orange aura behind the controls. Antoine.

“He’s not going to stop.” Jolie rubbed her hands together and flexed her legs.

I noticed the radio masts behind us. I’d forgotten to mention that hazard. Hopefully, Antoine had spotted them.

The helicopter roared over the resort like a specter. I got ready.

“You go left, I’ll go right,” Jolie ordered.

The Blackhawk rocked and altered its course for us. I aimed my jump for one of the main wheels hanging from the struts on either side of the fuselage.

The helicopter lifted its nose to decelerate. I adjusted my hold on Clayborn and kept him tight under my right arm. The helicopter rushed for us, as big and noisy as a locomotive tumbling off its tracks.

The wheel swung toward me. My legs snapped straight and propelled me through the air.

The tire slammed against my chest, and for an instant I panicked and thought I was going to bounce off. My left hand grasped the oleo strut and I swung my leg to sit on top of the tire. Jolie clung safely to the other wheel.

Clipped radio masts and a couple of dish antennas went whirling below us. I guess Antoine hadn’t seen them.

The helicopter dipped its nose and sped toward the Atlantic. We banked north over the sheen of the metallic water. Behind us we left the resort in shambles and chaos. Flames and smoke swirled from the annex. Dozens of flashing emergency lights clustered around the hotel. Spotlights knifed across the grounds and the walls of the buildings.

Jolie squatted in the cargo hold of the helicopter, her hair tangled by the wind. She shouted over the deafening racket: “Let me take Clayborn.”

I handed the alien to her and I climbed in.

I expected the Spartan interior of a military helicopter. This one had the upholstered seats of a limousine. I kept the cargo doors open to air out the smoke. I took the center seat behind the cockpit and strapped in.