“All right.” Michael turned toward me. “You try.”
“Me?” I shook my head. “Look, I’ve already said I’m no clairvoyant — ”
“And yet you saw Paul, were taken away so strongly that you lost almost fifteen minutes in the vision. You can do this.”
It must be nice to have such an unshakable faith. But he was right — I had done something similar, and less than an hour earlier. Maybe my proximity to Paul would help, would strengthen my inner eye and allow me to see even the things with which I didn’t have a direct connection.
Drawn by some instinct, I moved closer to the door but didn’t touch it. Instead, I stood there, only a few inches away from its metal surface, and thought of Paul, who was now so very close. I closed my eyes, and saw.
His cell was on this floor, at the far end of the level from the stairwell where we were currently hidden. I could feel his energy, sense it pulsing outward, so very different from the other men who populated the floor.
Men. That was using the term loosely, because although they looked human, it was their vibrations that seemed to be the source of the wrongness, as if the very air was offended by their existence. Whoever the original “donor” had been, he was good-looking enough…and yet seeing those regular features duplicated over and over seemed to distort them, twist them away from their original symmetry. And even in a high-security facility such as this, you’d think that men stationed on guard duty together would have some contact with one another, some sort of conversation. Not these; they were silent as if carved from stone, and yet I could feel their energy pulsing beneath the surface, darkly, vibrantly alive. I knew then that they were communicating, just not verbally. And if one of them knew something, then all of them would.
I swallowed. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“He’s there,” I told my two companions. “Other end of the floor…of course. There are ten of those hybrid guards on this level, and more on the floors directly above and below. I’m not sure how many. I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much, since ten are too many for us to deal with anyway. And if even one of them raises the alarm, then we’re done.”
“Any ideas?” Lance asked, and for once he didn’t sound mocking. Just worried.
Well, he must be worried if he was asking for tactical advice from me. Obviously a full frontal assault wasn’t going to work, since we weren’t armed, and even if we were, it wouldn’t have mattered much, since it was ten against three and I didn’t even know how to shoot a gun, let alone take out a bunch of trained soldiers enhanced with alien DNA.
What we did have, though, were three people with some highly unusual talents, talents that we could possibly put to use in this situation. Although I had sensed intelligence in the hybrids, I hadn’t sensed much in the way of individuation. Ants and bees weren’t known for having distinct personalities, and I thought that possibly the same sort of dynamic was at work here. If we could fool one of them, maybe we could fool them all.
I’d heard of psychics who were able to use the sheer power of their mind to fool others or coerce them into doing things they would never have contemplated if they’d been in full possession of their faculties. That was a very gray area in the paranormal world, and of course one I’d never done much in the way of investigating. My talents really didn’t lie in that direction, even if I’d had the inclination to abuse them in such a fashion. However, I didn’t have much compunction about using them on the hybrids. I wasn’t sure you could even count them as true people. Besides, I wasn’t going to try to make them jump off the building, or light themselves on fire, or even squawk like a chicken. No, I just wanted them all to be otherwise occupied for the next few minutes so they wouldn’t notice a prisoner being sneaked out right under their identical noses.
“I have no idea if this is going to work,” I said. “But I’m going to try to distract them. Just be ready.”
“Ready for what?” Lance asked. For once, I didn’t see anything in his face except worry. He was probably thinking I’d bitten off more than I could chew.
Well, I was feeling approximately the same way, but I knew I didn’t have much of a choice, since we hadn’t armed ourselves with knockout gas or Uzis.
It probably would have been better if I could have stayed behind and worked from the stairwell; it was always easier to concentrate when I was alone. However, since Paul probably didn’t know Michael and Lance from Adam — and because I knew I didn’t want to have to wait a second longer than necessary to see him again — I inched out in front of the two men and paused for a second, focusing on the oddly pulsing sensations from the hybrids who waited only a few yards away from us.
As I’d sensed earlier, there were ten of them. Two stood directly in front of the door to Paul’s cell. Three more were clustered in the center of the detention level, where I thought the elevators were located. A single guard waited at the far end of that floor — near a service elevator, from what I could tell. The other four were ranged up and down the corridor, one of them so close, I probably could have hit him with a well-placed softball throw.
But I wasn’t armed with a softball. All I had was my mind and my will and my need to have Paul returned to me.
I took a breath, then another. All I needed was a distraction, something to pull them away long enough that we could get to Paul’s cell. I had a flash then of the cell door, of the key card–operated lock next to it. Wonderful. All right, a distraction that would also make at least one of them drop his key card.
Thoughts were energy. Brain waves could be measured. Simple electrical pulses. The trick was making those pulses have an effect in the physical world.
As one, the hybrids’ walkie-talkies began squawking. “Code red! Code red! All units investigate possible intruder on Level Seven!”
Both Lance and Michael stared at me.
“What are you looking at?” I snapped. “This is only going to work until they figure out there’s nothing going on up on Level Seven.”
And in my mind’s eye I saw them converging on the elevator.
Key card, I thought, and that same inner eye showed me one of the guards stumbling, a piece of plastic falling from what should have a secure pocket of his jumpsuit. Perfect.
“Let’s go!”
I didn’t wait to see if the two men were following me. Time was wasting, and the elevator doors had just shut on the ten hybrids. Our window of opportunity had already begun to close.
Breaking into a run, I headed down the corridor to the spot where I knew Paul’s cell was located. A brief pause to bend down and pick up the dropped key card, and then it was on to the end of the hall, to the blank steel door with the card reader glowing red next to it.
One swipe, and the door opened. Of course it would. At that point, no one knew anything was wrong.
I burst in, closely followed by Lance and Michael, and saw Paul standing in front of his cot. The look of wariness on his face melted away into utter shock.
“Persephone? How — ” He looked past me to my two companions. “Who — ”
“We don’t have time for that,” I broke in. “These are friends.”
“Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker — I’m here to rescue you,” Lance said, with an evil grin.
“And we really don’t have time for that, either,” I snapped. And as much as I wanted to run to Paul and wrap my arms around him, I knew that would take up far too many precious seconds.
In fact, we were already running out of time. The low-level dissonance of the hybrids in the back of my mind shifted to sharp spikes of frustration and anger.
“They know they were sent on a wild-goose chase. We’ve got to go now!”
“Back to the stairs,” Michael said.
We all headed for the door and turned to go back in the direction we’d come. A wave of cold hit me, and I said, “No — they’re already coming back down the elevator. We’ll never get past in time.”
To my astonishment, Paul remarked, deadpan, “When you cam
e in here, didn’t you have a plan for getting out?”
“Call me the brains, and I’ll kick your ass,” I told Lance, whose gray eyes had taken on a glint I’d already begun to recognize. “To the service elevator.” And I pointed back along the corridor, past Paul’s now-empty cell.
“Do you know where it comes out?”
“No,” I admitted. “But it’s better than just standing here, right?”
“True.” He moved closer, took my hand in his. Just the feel of his fingers around mine was enough to reassure me that somehow we’d be able to get out of this mess. “Let’s go.”
We all jogged to the service elevator, which also had key card access. I swiped the card and, thank God, it worked. The four of us piled into the elevator. Some instinct told me to press the button for Level Three — I had no idea why, but my spider sense had done a pretty good job so far of keeping me alive, so I was going to follow its lead on this one.
The elevator ascended quickly. We were all silent, watching the red LED numbers flash as we moved from level to level. The unease and worry boiling off the three men was practically palpable. I knew all of us were wondering exactly when the hybrids would figure out where we had gone and would take steps to shut down the elevator so we’d be stranded mid-level, just waiting for them to come along and collect us all.
Miraculously, the elevator made it to Level Three without incident. The doors opened, and I saw we had entered an area that seemed to be some sort of motor pool; various black-painted Hummers and SUVs in a range of sizes filled the space.
“How did you — ” Paul began, then stopped. “Never mind. Which one?”
“Whatever’s closest,” Lance said, and jogged over to a glossy Suburban.
“Fair enough.”
We all began to follow him. A wash of cold went over me then, and I looked off to the left and saw a pair of blank-faced hybrid guards beginning to run toward us.
“Better hope the keys are in the ignition,” I called out.
At least there wasn’t any testosterone-fueled bickering over who was going to drive. Since Lance was in the lead, he headed to the driver’s seat, while Michael fell in beside him and Paul and I ran for the back seats.
No keys, though. Even as I fastened my seatbelt, I watched Lance slide under the steering column and pop off the protective plastic panel, then start mucking around with the wires he had exposed.
“They’re getting closer,” I said, trying not to sound too urgent.
“I know. I can feel the bastards, too.” A sputter, then a roar as the engine kicked over. Lance extricated himself from under the dash and slid into the driver’s seat in one fluid motion. I found myself wondering how many times he had done this sort of thing before.
The Suburban surged forward. I gripped the handle above me and shot Paul what I hoped was a reassuring smile. He actually grinned back, the black eye making the expression particularly rakish.
“Interesting friends you found.”
I could only lift my shoulders. Then I felt the smile fade from my lips as I saw two guards converging toward the hood of the SUV.
“Oh, my God, they’re right in fr — ” And then I stopped, because I both heard and felt a sickening crunch as Lance barreled all five thousand pounds of the SUV headlong into both men.
I’d seen those sorts of things in the movies, but I hadn’t been prepared for the wet thud of a human body hitting several tons of speeding steel, nor the way it would bounce up and off the hood, flying backward over the roof of the Suburban. A second series of thuds told me the other soldier had met the same fate as his companion. With an involuntary wince, I pressed close to Paul, and he reached out and held me as close as the restrictive shoulder belts would allow.
“Jesus, Lance,” I said.
“What does it matter? They’re not human.”
True, I knew that intellectually and emotionally, but my eyes were telling me that Lance had just cold-bloodedly run over two men.
“He’s right,” Paul said. His mouth looked very grim.
“You — you knew what they were?”
“Well, it’s sort of a giveaway when you see more than a dozen men with the same face.”
Despite myself, I smiled a little, then abruptly sobered as we approached the entrance to the motor pool, which was a huge steel door at least fifteen feet high, and apparently locked. Very locked.
“There’s got to be a remote,” Lance said. “Look in the glove compartment.”
Immediately, Michael opened the glovebox and started rooting around, but apparently turned up nothing. Well, no remote. He did find a pistol of some kind and removed it with an air of grim satisfaction.
“Nice,” Lance commented after a quick sideways glance at the pistol. “But I doubt it’s up to shooting holes in steel doors.”
At once, Michael reached up to the sun visor, but no remote was to be had there, either. Prickles of cold ran down my spine, and I turned in my seat to look out the back window. A squad of black-clad men poured out of the service elevator, heading in our direction. They could have been the ones we lured away from the detention level. Difficult to say, when they all looked the same.
Shit.
Then Michael pulled up the lid of the center console between the two front seats and pulled out a thin black box. “Got it.”
He pointed it at a device mounted to the cave’s stone wall next to the door, and miraculously, the thing began to roll up and out of our way. Sunlight hit us all full in the face, and I blinked. It was a little shocking to realize it was still the middle of the afternoon, after all the darkness inside the secret base.
Something ricocheted off the back of the Suburban, and barely a second later, the rear window exploded in a shower of glass particles.
“Down, get down!” Michael commanded, and Paul and I both huddled together, as flat against the seat cushions as we could make ourselves.
Would the seats really be protection against bullets? Somehow I doubted it, but our current position was still better than sitting upright so our heads could be blown apart like ripe melons by the hybrids’ assault rifles.
With a tremendous jolt, the SUV roared out of the entrance to the motor pool, and we began bouncing down a steep mountain road — well, path — as flying gravel shot out in every direction. For a second, I thought for sure we were going to drive straight over the edge of the switchback and flying out into the canyon below, but somehow Lance managed to wrestle the bulky vehicle so it was more or less in the middle of the road, descending at a rate of speed that at any other time would have had me screaming in protest. Right then, though, I was so glad Lance could manage a level of stunt driving I hadn’t seen since Paul busted us out of the Sheraton Universal’s parking garage that I happily kept my mouth shut.
The volley of bullets ceased abruptly. Of course, the hybrids wouldn’t waste their ammunition when we were so clearly out of range.
My relief was short-lived, however, because only a few seconds later, I heard an ominous thudding noise, and a shadow passed over the Suburban.
“Copter,” Michael said, and Lance gritted,
“Yeah, I know.”
The road in front of us erupted in dust and flying gravel as a line of machine gun fire etched the dirt. Lance swerved, one tire slipping off the narrow track, and then somehow he managed to keep the vehicle more or less hanging on as we dropped down another switchback.
“Guess they’re not too concerned about catching us alive,” Paul murmured.
I reached out and took his hand — no easy task, with us both crouched down against the seat. But I needed to feel him, needed to know he was there, even if we didn’t have much longer together. “Guess not.”
Because of our position, I couldn’t see as clearly as I wanted to. Another volley of bullets hit the ground just behind us, and then a sharp ping sounded just a few inches past my cheek, and a puff of dust came up from the upholstery as the projectile tore up the stuffing.
Paul’s ha
nd tightened around mine. “You all right?”
“Yes,” I managed, surprised I could still speak. “That was a little close.”
And then the ground seemed to drop out from beneath us. I let out a frightened little squeak and clung to Paul’s hand, listening as rocks bounced up and hit the sides of the Suburban, and what sounded like manzanita or juniper scraped along the sheet metal. Obviously Lance had given up on the road as being too exposed, even though I couldn’t see where he was heading.
An enormous jolt shuddered its way along the vehicle, and Lance swore.
“What?” I asked.
“Blew out the rear tire. Luckily, I don’t give a shit what happens to the axle. Hang on.”
If anything, our speed increased, Lance obviously trying to push what he could out of the Suburban before it broke down completely. I risked a quick peek upward and saw that we were barreling through a narrow canyon, its sandy floor broken up by more of the ubiquitous manzanita and juniper. Since the sun was now in our eyes, I guessed we were still heading westward, more or less in the direction of Dry Creek Road and the spot where we’d left Adam and Kiki.
Whether they were still there was anyone’s guess. The men or hybrids or whatever you wanted to call them who staffed the base had to have been surveilling the area. If we were really, really lucky, they’d dismiss the UFO Night Tours van as just another bunch of tourists. But if our luck ran out…well, I decided I’d worry about that when the time came.
The helicopter still hovered overhead, even though we were in enough cover now that it would be much more difficult to see us. From time to time, I heard staccato bursts of machine-gun fire, but it sounded almost petulant, as if whoever was operating the weapon was just taking potshots because he could and not because he actually had a bead on us. I supposed I should be grateful.
Incredibly, the Suburban slowed to a stop under a particularly large pine tree. Lance said, “Get out.”
“What?” Paul and I both demanded simultaneously.
Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest Page 69