Winds of Change

by Christine Pope

  “What — ?” she began, then stopped there, mouth open as if frozen in place.

  Actually, that’s exactly what she was…frozen. I blinked, realizing that either Angela or Connor — or maybe the two of them working together — had put some kind of whammy on her. Was there anything they couldn’t do?

  “I figured you didn’t want to waste time on chitchat,” Connor said, then sent a quick glance toward the group assembled in the multipurpose unit. Dr. Woodrow and Dr. Keegan had begun to move forward, and the test subjects were following, obviously drawn to see what was going on in the reception area just outside the room.

  “Can you neutralize the other two doctors?” Lenz asked. “The two men in front.”

  At once, they came to a dead halt. Matthew was immediately behind Dr. Woodrow and bumped into him. Under normal circumstances, Woodrow probably would have stumbled forward, but because he was magically held in place, it was Matthew who staggered backward like someone who’d just walked into a wall.

  “What the hell?” he exclaimed.

  Lenz smiled thinly. “It’s a good thing we’re both on the same side now,” he said to my brother and his wife. “Or I would very much have liked to have you two in the program.”

  “No, thanks,” Connor replied, while Angela’s mouth curled slightly in amusement.

  I looked over at Randall Lenz, glad that Jake still held my hand — and that he didn’t seem inclined at the moment to instigate any more violence. Actually, Jake’s expression was almost thoughtful, as if he was still trying to figure out what Lenz’s end game might be.

  To tell the truth, I was wondering the same thing. Yes, I’d been there to see the wonder awaken in his face as he realized he’d made that candle come to life with nothing more than the power of his mind…but I’d also spent the past few weeks doing my best to evade his pursuit. I still couldn’t quite believe he was willing to walk away from the work that had consumed his life for the past few years.

  “Everyone,” Lenz said, raising his voice slightly, “I’m going to take you to the van now. You’re being moved to a secure location.”

  “That’s what Dr. Richards told us,” Ethan said as he and Natalie approached, everyone else grouped uneasily behind them. His gaze strayed to the doctor, still frozen unnaturally in place, mouth open to utter a word she’d never finish. “Do we want to know what’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Agent Lenz replied. “For the moment, the important thing is to get you out of here.”

  “Where are you taking us?” Natalie asked. I noticed how she held Ethan’s hand, hanging on to him in much the same way that I clung to Jake.

  For a second or two, Lenz was silent. He looked over at Connor, brows slightly lifted, and Connor gave him a nod, as if confirming that he would be able to provide sanctuary for the fugitives.

  “Someplace safe,” Agent Lenz said at length. “Someplace where you can start over.”

  Dead silence. Matthew pushed his way forward, expression almost belligerent. “You’re letting us go?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Lenz said. “I’m afraid you can’t go back to your lives, but….”

  Connor spoke then. “But you can start a new one with us…with other people like you.”

  Ethan and Natalie looked at each other. Voice wondering, he said, “Other people like us? How many are there?”

  “More than you ever knew,” I told him, a smile of my own touching my lips. How generous of Connor to offer to take them all in — but I understood then that he would never turn away a witch or warlock in need. Maybe in time, we’d be able to figure out whose clans all of the Daedalus Project test subjects belonged to, but in the meantime, they’d be able to make a home in Flagstaff.

  Just as Jake and I would.

  The dawning wonder in their faces awoke a cautious joy in my heart. Yes, we would take them away from here, and give them back the lives that Dr. Richards and her team had stolen.

  As for Randall Lenz…well, he would have to figure out for himself where to go from here. He hadn’t just burned this particular bridge; he’d blown it up with a few pounds of C4.

  But I somehow knew that he, just like the rest of these orphaned witches, would always have a home with the Wilcoxes…if he wanted it.

  My fingers tightened on Jake’s, even as I smiled at the group of people who would soon be our neighbors.

  “Let’s go home,” I said.

  Epilogue

  When something like the Daedalus Project fell apart, it was with little fanfare. A program so terribly secret needed to be kept secret, even if it might have flamed out like a test rocket entering the atmosphere at the wrong angle.

  Having allies such as Connor and Angela Wilcox had proved to be very handy. Not only had they facilitated the removal of all the test subjects to Flagstaff and its environs, putting them up in various properties owned by Wilcox witches and warlocks in the area, but a little judicious meddling with the memories of Dr. Richards and her team had made it so they remembered absolutely nothing of the events of the night in question. And since Jake Wilcox’s brother Jeremy had doctored all the security footage so there was absolutely no record of the events which had transpired that evening, not even the best forensic analysts could find the smoking gun to prove gross negligence had been involved.

  It was as though all those test subjects had disappeared into thin air.

  There had been multiple inquiries, of course. But because everyone on the team’s stories were so full of holes, or contradicted one another completely, the investigative body overseeing the probe came to the conclusion that the entire thing had been a ridiculous boondoggle that involved the waste of many millions of taxpayer dollars. Dr. Richards and her immediate team were dismissed, and the other analysts and agents and guards reassigned to other postings.

  Randall Lenz wished he could have put in a good word for Dawson, but since he was now a pariah, he knew doing so would have hurt her situation more than it helped. No, better to let her skills speak for themselves, and when he heard she’d been sent to work in the Homeland Security office in New York, he felt reassured that she’d landed on her feet.

  As for himself….

  Property in Alexandria was always at a premium, and he sold his home for nearly thirty thousand over the asking price. He had few connections there, and so he didn’t have to worry about severing too many personal ties, although his mother was clearly worried about the sudden collapse of his career and his subsequent decision to leave the area.

  “But what are you going to do?” she asked during their last phone call, just the night before he planned to leave. It was a question she’d asked multiple times, and his answer hadn’t changed.

  “Travel,” he said vaguely. “Reassess. I’ll keep in touch.”

  Which he would, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to tell her anything substantive. Still, phone calls and emails to his mother would let her know he was alive and healthy, which had to count for something. After all, if he made a promise, he kept it.

  What he absolutely couldn’t do was tell her he would be heading west to Flagstaff. Connor had offered him sanctuary there, and Lenz had decided to take the man up on his offer. Maybe at some point he’d decide to seek out his own witch clan — the Van Horns or whoever else they might be — but for the moment, he wanted to come to terms with this new and unexpected side of himself. No worries about anyone in the government tracing him there, thanks to Jeremy Wilcox and the efficient way he’d made sure that every mention of Flagstaff and the Wilcoxes had been thoroughly erased from the agency’s servers.

  Now Randall Lenz stood in the driveway of the house that was no longer his, taking it in one last time, absorbing the significance of the “sold” banner that had been placed over the “for sale” sign out front. To be honest, it had never truly felt like home. But it had been a good investment; he certainly had a decent cushion to rest on while he decided what to do with the rest of his life.

 
In the meantime, he’d do what so many other Americans had done throughout the nation’s history.

  He would head west.

  Spreading trees shielded us from the worst of the late July heat. I wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and dark sunglasses, but their true purpose was to conceal my face, rather than protect me from the blazing desert sun.

  Jake waited a few feet off as I took the bouquet of yellow roses — my mother’s favorite — and went to lay them on her grave. The headstone the people of Kanab had put up to mark the gravesite was simple, just a plain rectangle of smooth granite inscribed with that dates of her birth and death — and mine, too, since everyone believed I’d perished in the gas explosion at our house as well — but I thought my mother wouldn’t have wanted anything ornate. She never had been much into fuss.

  Tears pricked my eyes, but I breathed in and forced them back. Maybe it would have been all right to let them flow, there of all places, and yet I didn’t want to attract any attention to myself. The cemetery was nearly empty, thanks to the oppressive heat, but I didn’t see the need to take any chances.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured, although right then, I didn’t quite know what I was sorry for. That my mother’s life had been cut short…that she wasn’t there to see me find the match of my soul, to know everything had turned out all right in the end.

  That I’d somehow found forgiveness in my heart for the man who had taken her from me.

  Probably a little of all of those things, and more.

  I lingered at the grave for a long moment, staring down at the cheery yellow of the flowers against the cool grayish tones of the granite and the deep green of the grass under my feet. I gave myself time to hold that picture in my mind and engrave it in my memory, since I had a feeling I would never come back there. Randall Lenz had assured Connor that there was no way I or any of the other test subjects could ever be traced to Flagstaff, but I still didn’t see the point in taking unnecessary risks.

  Just in case.

  Besides, from that point on, I wanted to look forward to a bright future, not back to a painful past.

  Even with the shade the trees provided, the heat was getting to be too much. I murmured, “Goodbye,” then made myself turn away from the grave and walk back over to Jake.

  His fingers twined themselves with mine, strong, reassuring…welcome. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice gentle, concerned.

  “I’m fine,” I told him.

  Because it was Jake, he didn’t press me. Hand in hand, we walked back to his white Wrangler, which we’d left parked on the street. After we’d gotten back to Flagstaff, I’d urged him to buy another Gladiator, but he only shook his head and told me he didn’t think that was a good idea. The vehicle was just too distinctive.

  Like me, he was being cautious these days.

  We got in the Wrangler, and he cranked the A/C to maximum. A rush of cool, welcome air flowed over me, and I leaned against the back of the seat as he pulled away from the curb, pointing us back to Highway 89 and the route home.

  Silence for a few moments. Then he asked again, “You okay?”

  I pulled in a breath. The desert landscape flashed by the car windows, and off in the distance, thunderheads reared in the east, gaining strength with the growing heat of the day. They might cross our path during the journey home, but I knew I had nothing to fear from them, even though those clouds could release rain so intense, we wouldn’t be able to see more than a few yards ahead.

  If that time came, I’d urge the clouds to move on so we could pass into the sunshine, into the light.

  I reached over and touched Jake’s hand, and marveled again at the strength in his fingers, how just his lightest touch could make me want him with an intensity I could never have imagined just a few short months earlier.

  We were going home, together. In the end, that was all that mattered.

  “Yes, Jake,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  The End

  The Witches of Wheeler Park series will continue with Jeremy’s story in Mind Games, releasing in September 2020.

  Also by Christine Pope

  THE WITCHES OF WHEELER PARK

  (Paranormal romance)

  Storm Born

  Thunder Road

  Winds of Change

  Mind Games (September 2020)

  PROJECT DEMON HUNTERS*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Unquiet Souls

  Unbound Spirits

  Unholy Ground

  Unseen Voices

  Unmarked Graves

  Unbroken Vows

  THE DEVIL YOU KNOW*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Sympathy for the Devil

  Charmed, I’m Sure

  A Wing and a Prayer

  THE WITCHES OF CANYON ROAD*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Hidden Gifts

  Darker Paths

  Mysterious Ways

  A Canyon Road Christmas

  Demon Born

  An Ill Wind

  Higher Ground

  Haunted Hearts

  Books 1-3 of this series are also available in an omnibus edition at a special boxed set price!

  THE WITCHES OF CLEOPATRA HILL*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Darkangel

  Darknight

  Darkmoon

  Sympathetic Magic

  Protector

  Spellbound

  A Cleopatra Hill Christmas

  Impractical Magic

  Strange Magic

  The Arrangement

  Defender

  Bad Blood

  Deep Magic

  Darktide

  Books 1-3 and Books 4-6 of this series are also available in two separate omnibus editions at special boxed set prices. Chronicles of Cleopatra Hill includes the series’ two “back in time” novellas, Bad Blood and The Arrangement.

  Or get the entire series in one enormous, specially priced boxed set! (Not available on Amazon.)

  THE DJINN WARS*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Chosen

  Taken

  Fallen

  Broken

  Forsaken

  Forbidden

  Awoken

  Illuminated

  Stolen

  Forgotten

  Driven

  Unspoken

  Books 1-3 and Books 4-6 of this series are also available in two separate omnibus editions at special boxed set prices!

  Or get the entire series in one enormous, specially priced boxed set! (Not available on Amazon.)

  THE WATCHERS TRILOGY*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Falling Dark

  Dead of Night

  Rising Dawn

  The Watchers Trilogy is also available in a specially priced boxed set!

  THE SEDONA FILES*

  (Paranormal Romance)

  Bad Vibrations

  Desert Hearts

  Angel Fire

  Star Crossed

  Falling Angels

  Enemy Mine

  Get the first three books of this series in an omnibus edition, or read the complete six-book series in one super-low-priced boxed set!

  TALES OF THE LATTER KINGDOMS*

  (Fantasy Romance)

  All Fall Down

  Dragon Rose

  Binding Spell

  Ashes of Roses

  One Thousand Nights

  Threads of Gold

  The Wolf of Harrow Hall

  Moon Dance

  The Song of the Thrush

  Books 1-3 and Books 4-6 of this series are also available in two separate omnibus editions at special boxed set prices.

  THE GAIAN CONSORTIUM SERIES*

  (Science Fiction Romance)

  Beast (free prequel novella)

  Blood Will Tell

  Breath of Life

  The Gaia Gambit

  The Mandala Maneuver

  The Titan Trap

  The Zhore Deception

  The Refuge
e Ruse

  Books 1-3 of this series are also available in an omnibus edition at a special boxed set price!

  STANDALONE TITLES

  Hearts on Fire

  Taking Dictation

  Night Music

  Golden Heart

  * Indicates a completed series

  About the Author

  USA Today bestselling author Christine Pope has been writing stories ever since she commandeered her family’s Smith-Corona typewriter back in grade school. Her work includes paranormal romance, fantasy romance, and science fiction/space opera romance. She makes her home in Arizona’s beautiful Verde Valley.

  Don’t miss out on any of Christine’s new releases — sign up for her newsletter today!

  Christine Pope on the Web:

  www.christinepope.com