Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest

by Christine Pope

  “Both hands on the wheel.”

  “They are!”

  For some reason, I had the urge to burst out laughing, the juxtaposition between her girlish excitement and Lance’s dour revelations was so extreme, but I managed to hold it in. I doubted Lance would be encouraged to continue if I began giggling uncontrollably.

  Still, I couldn’t really believe what he had just said. Sure, I knew aliens existed, and were plotting against us, but there were lines where the borders of complete insanity were crossed, and as far as I was concerned, we had just driven over one of them. “Really? This isn’t The X-Files.”

  “I’m well aware of that.” He sent me another one of those sideways irritated stares. “I’m telling you what I saw. And what I saw wasn’t human. The hybrids were just part of it.”

  “You saw…them?” Adam asked. Unlike his girlfriend, he had no need to watch the road, so he had turned around in his seat so he could more or less see the rest of us directly.

  “Sometimes. But even those occasional glimpses were enough to tell me they were involved, and heavily. Took me a while to figure out where all this could possibly be going down, and once I’d gotten what I thought was the truth, I knew I had to leave the program. Couldn’t risk my supervisors learning what I’d seen. I had to let them think I’d just burned out.” Another one of those shrugs, somehow eloquent in its resigned simplicity. “So I took off, but I kept researching what I could. And it became clear pretty fast that the times I’d seen aliens at the base were the times that correlated with high levels of UFO activity in the region. They can cover their tracks a lot of the time, but there are just too many eyes looking at the sky in this part of the world.”

  “Wow,” Kiki breathed, even though she’d apparently learned enough not to glance back. “So they’re holding Paul Oliver in a base full of aliens and hybrid clones?”

  “Probably.”

  “That is so cool.”

  I wished I shared her appraisal of the situation. About all I could hope for was that this happened to be one of the times when our little gray friends weren’t hanging around. Hordes of blank-faced clones were bad enough without tossing a bunch of aliens with unknown powers and abilities into the equation.

  “And we’re all just going to go barreling in there in our Scooby van and save the day?” I asked.

  For a minute, Lance didn’t say anything, but only stared past me, his gaze turned curiously inward. Then he smiled again, but this time the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “No. It’ll be just the three of us when the time comes — Michael, and me…and you.”

  My stomach dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of my feet — which were still covered in my Kohl’s flats and not hiking boots, unfortunately. But I made myself think of Paul, alone in that cell, with that inky bruise distorting his eye and the livid traces of another contusion painting his jaw, and I knew I didn’t have any choice.

  For Paul, I was willing to risk everything.

  The road ran out a few minutes later, and Kiki limped the van over to a hiding place behind a clump of scrubby juniper trees. I shoved my purse under my seat and hoped I’d be in a position to retrieve it when this was all over.

  Everyone climbed out of the van, and I could tell by Kiki’s furrowed brow that she was less than thrilled about being left behind.

  “Adam and I can help, you know. I’ve hiked these hills — I know what I’m doing!”

  “This isn’t just a hike, Kiki,” Lance said. For some reason, his tone sounded almost gentle. “Besides, what would I say to Kara if something happened to you?”

  “And what am I supposed to tell Kara if something happens to you?” she shot back.

  I never thought I’d see Lance looking embarrassed, but he did appear distinctly uncomfortable. “Hopefully, you won’t have tell her anything.”

  “Hmph.”

  It could have been my imagination, but I thought Adam, who hovered a few inches behind Kiki’s left shoulder, seemed almost relieved about being left behind. I guessed his enthusiasm for chasing UFOs didn’t extend to infiltrating underground bases staffed by human-alien hybrid soldiers.

  I couldn’t really blame him.

  Michael had been silent for some time. Now he stood a few paces away from the rest of us, watching the looming red rock cliffs with intent dark eyes, as if he saw something hidden there that the rest of us had overlooked. “I know the way.”

  “I figured you would,” Lance said.

  The older man didn’t smile, but only nodded. “Forty years of climbing these hills helps.”

  Of course, I didn’t have that sort of background. I didn’t think the few times I’d gone hiking in the Hollywood Hills with one of my exes counted as experience with this sort of expedition. I tried not to look down at my completely inadequate footwear, instead brought up the mental image of Paul in that cramped little cell.

  “Lead on, then,” I said, a little more heartily than I’d intended. I guessed I wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “You’re brave. That’s good.” And Michael turned and began moving.

  Brave? That was a laugh.

  Lance looked almost as if he was about to comment, but instead just shook his head and followed in Michael’s footsteps. I noticed how both men seemed to find a way to jog from scrub brush to scrub brush, effectively hiding their movements. I certainly wasn’t trained in the field, but at least they were giving me a good example to follow. I moved after them, then paused for a second to turn back toward Kiki and Adam.

  “Keep the motor running,” I said, and Kiki, who’d been looking rather sulky, flashed me a grin.

  “Aye-aye, captain.”

  The ground sloped upward at a somewhat alarming angle. I’d known we’d have some rough terrain to climb, but I hadn’t realized how quickly it would grow treacherous, how soon the relatively flat land where the road had ended would transform itself into rough slopes cut into gullies by years of rain and weather, how the rocks would give way under my feet, leaving me scrabbling toward the next semi-level spot before I lost my balance completely.

  True, I was making the climb in more or less practical flats and not a pair of Louboutin platform pumps, but it was all a matter of degree. Once or twice, Lance’s hand shot backward at the last moment before I slipped completely and went ass over teakettle; I couldn’t help noticing that both he and Michael wore heavy-treaded hiking boots, the sort of things my friends and I had derisively referred to as “waffle-stompers” back in our middle-school days. Still, I could see they were a necessity here, allowing the two men to find purchase in the scree, and I was definitely thankful for Lance’s helping hand.

  And all along, that sensation of cold seemed to work its way up my spine, a perception of some wrongness that plucked at the very molecules in the air. For all his insouciance, I could tell Lance felt it, too. His brow furrowed more than ever, and droplets of sweat that had nothing to do with the chilly day glistened across his brow. And Michael, who climbed as quietly and methodically as a machine, also appeared to be sensing it as well, because once or twice he stopped and thrust his chin upward, as if scenting the air, and then shook, for all the world like my shepherd-mix Elsie used to do back when I was a kid and she crossed a smell she didn’t like on her evening walk.

  For myself, I would have liked to say I was concentrating so hard on not falling off the side of the mountain that I didn’t have time to sense any bad vibrations or evil vapors or whatever you wanted to call them, but that was far from the truth. The day was cool but not cold, and I should have worked up a sweat with the way I was exerting myself. Instead, my hands trembled from a chill I couldn’t shake, and the back of my neck was a prickled mass of gooseflesh. The chill I’d sensed emanating from the hybrids back in Raymond’s lab seemed to be intensified tenfold now that I was in the heart of their territory. Whatever we were climbing toward, it was something that every sense in my body — including my sixth one — told me I should be trying to avoid at all costs.

&nbs
p; But the heart never listens to common sense, so I pressed on, ignoring the waves of cold flowing over me, the sensation that seemed to build as if an actual physical force pushed back against my every step.

  Michael paused and looked back at Lance and me. “You feel it?”

  Wordlessly, we both nodded.

  “They’re powerful.” Again, his chin went up, his profile craggy as the red rocks against the mottled spring sky. Incongruously, he grinned. “But so are we. This way.”

  He led us down a narrow little ravine dotted with wind-ravaged juniper, manzanita, and small pincushion cacti. It narrowed as we approached, and then the sky was blotted out as gnarled evergreens met overhead, effectively enclosing us in a living cave.

  “Hope you know where you’re going,” Lance commented, his breath sounding a little ragged. I didn’t know whether it was from exertion or from the oppressive atmosphere around us. Maybe both.

  “You can’t assault the front gates with only three soldiers,” Michael said. “And so — the back door.”

  And that’s just what it was — a metal door set into the hillside, halfway obscured by a particularly tenacious manzanita specimen that had taken up residence directly above its lintel.

  “And I suppose they’ve just left it unlocked,” Lance said, with a curl of the lip.

  “No need,” Michael replied, and looked over at me.

  “What?” I said, not sure what he was asking.

  “You must open it, Persephone.”

  I fought back the urge to laugh. “Um, Michael, I hate to break it to you, but I’m a psychic, not a Jedi Knight.”

  “I know that,” he said imperturbably. “And it doesn’t matter, as long as you believe in your need to free this man.”

  When he put it that way….

  I approached the door and stared at it for a long moment. It looked like something left over from a Cold War–era fallout shelter, with one of those metal wheels in the center that you’re supposed to turn to get the door to open. Only I knew it had to be locked from the inside. Who builds a top-secret base and leaves the back door open?

  Might as well humor Michael…not that I had any alternatives to present, besides going around to the front entrance — wherever that was — and inquiring whether they were done with Paul Oliver and if I could have him back, please?

  On that note….

  I reached out and grasped the wheel firmly at the nine and three o’clock positions, and tried to turn it. Predictably, nothing happened.

  It would have been better if Lance had laughed at me. As it was, I had to force myself to ignore his eyes boring into the back of my neck, as if willing me to fail.

  All right, fine. I tightened my fingers on the wheel again and tugged. Still nothing.

  Focus. I needed to focus. For a few seconds, I shut my eyes, bringing to my mind once again that vision of Paul in his cell, waiting with a sort of hopeless patience. And I thought of how much I wanted to hear his voice again, to feel his arms around me and the touch of his mouth against mine. How I was damned if I was going to let some stupid piece of metal stand between me and the man I loved.

  Loved. I really was in big trouble.

  Metal gave way with a horrifying screech, and the wheel began to turn. Startled, I lifted my hands, and Michael called out,

  “Don’t stop!”

  I clamped my fingers around the cold, rusted metal and turned. The ground beneath my feet seemed to shake, and the door slowly swung open — not by much, but enough to let the three of us squeeze past.

  “Well done.”

  I turned to look back at Michael. “How — what — ”

  “You don’t need to question what happened. I knew you could do it. Come — Paul is waiting for us.”

  He pushed past me and into the opening, followed by Lance, who smiled slightly and said, “Come on, Alice. Time to go down the rabbit hole,” before he disappeared into the side of the mountain as well.

  For just a second I hesitated. If anything, the flow of cold and ill will seemed to have increased once the door was open. But I’d just shown myself that I had gifts I didn’t even know I possessed. I’d have to pray they would come to my aid once again.

  I took a breath, and followed the two men into the darkness.

  Chapter Eleven

  At first, I couldn’t see anything. I blinked, eyes straining against the black around me. Then I tried to tell myself that the cool, silent darkness should be reassuring. After all, it would’ve been a lot worse if we’d stumbled into a main hallway populated by blank-faced hybrid guards.

  I bumped into something hard and lumpy and smelling vaguely of sweat. Lance’s voice snapped at me, “Watch it!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  Michael sounded infinitely more at ease. “Lance, we need you now. You saw this place. You know more of it than either Persephone or I.”

  I heard Lance expel a breath, followed by a faint scratching noise, as if he had eased his way along the wall a little ways and the zipper of his jacket had caught on the rock wall. “Give me a minute.”

  “Of course.”

  I wished I had some of Michael’s tranquility or, failing that, even slightly less jumpy nerves. The dark and the oppressive air around us probably had something to do with it, although it seemed that — for the moment — no one had detected our presence inside the base.

  The silence was almost absolute. If there was any activity at the facility, human or otherwise, it had to be a long way from where we now stood. Although that notion should have reassured me, instead it just reminded me that we’d only taken the first step, that we were still a long way from finding Paul or getting him out of here.

  Then I heard Lance say, in a low monotone unlike his usual speaking voice, “Ten levels. Five entrances — six, if you count this one, but no one uses it.” A long pause. “Detention areas are on the eighth level. There’s a bank of elevators north of here…two hundred yards.”

  “Elevators?” I demanded. He couldn’t be thinking of us just marching into an elevator and sailing down to the eighth level. Just because there weren’t any guards in evidence up in this forgotten corner didn’t mean the elevators wouldn’t be crawling with guards.

  “Shh,” said Michael.

  Lance took in a breath. “Stairs…fifty yards from here. Not used much.”

  “Now, that’s more like it,” I muttered. Maybe we could get in and out without anyone noticing us. Right. I was willing to believe there could be forgotten stairways tucked into unused corners of the base, but I sort of doubted the detention level would be unmanned. No, there were probably guards and security cameras and laser alarms and God knows what else.

  And that was only if we actually made it all the way down there without someone — or something — discovering us.

  “Show us,” Michael said, and I heard rather than saw Lance slip past the older man, going farther into the tunnel. “You next,” Michael added. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Fine by me. I wasn’t afraid to admit to a bit of cowardice. Besides if some alien-human hybrid got the jump on us from behind, Michael Lightfoot was far better suited to fighting him off than I would be. The man might have at least twenty years on me if not more, but he looked tough and solidly built, whereas I had never even mustered the energy to take the self-defense classes Ginger had advised I take — “a girl can never be too careful,” she’d told me, and I had to admit she was probably right. Then again, I sort of doubted she had envisioned the sort of mess I currently found myself in. More likely, she’d been thinking of fighting off purse snatchers in the parking garage at the Beverly Center.

  The tunnel or hallway or whatever it was sloped downward somewhat, but other than that, I had absolutely no idea which way we were going. Apparently, my bump of direction didn’t work so well underground.

  Luckily, I wasn’t the one in the lead, and Lance did seem to have some idea of where to go. After a few minutes, he stopped. “Here.” And I heard the creak of
a door opening, followed by a flood of light.

  All right, it was actually more of a trickle. But after the complete gloom through which we’d just been traveling, even the wan fluorescent lights in the stairwell seemed blinding. I blinked and followed Lance down the stairs, with Michael’s footfalls behind me impossibly soft, even though he wore heavy hiking boots and the steps were made of diamond-patterned steel, the sort of thing you saw sometimes on heavy-duty truck bumpers.

  I kept count as we descended, and so I knew when we hit the eighth level. The steps continued below us — of course, since Lance had said there were ten levels to the facility. And that was frightening in its own way, that something as big and as complex as this base had apparently been built right under the noses of the local population, with no one but the most extreme of the alien theorists and UFO chasers even guessing at its existence. How many layers existed in this conspiracy? How in the hell had I ever thought I could do something to stop it?

  As far as I knew, I didn’t say anything, but Michael laid a quick, reassuring hand on my wrist. “We only need to focus on the task at hand. The bigger picture can wait.”

  Great, I’m just surrounded by psychics. I managed a wan smile, though. Maybe that was exactly what this mission required — a group of three, each with his or her own skill set. I knew I couldn’t have gotten this far without Lance and Michael, and conversely, they wouldn’t be here without my help. After all, I was the one who had somehow managed to get us past the heavy door at the end of the canyon.

  “So what now?” I asked. “Because I’m pretty sure we can’t just open that door” — and I jerked a thumb toward a gray-painted structure that looked as if it might have worked at Fort Knox in a past life — “and go sailing in there.”

  “Lance?”

  He’d been standing near the doorway, head tilted to one side, eyes half-closed. “I’m not getting much. There’s someone — or something — out there, but I can’t get a grasp on it. I don’t think I ever saw this level, but only the upper ones where they do the research.”