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

by Christine Pope

  “There’s good cover from here almost all the way back to the road. Follow the dry creek bed, and you’ll be all right.”

  “What about you?” I asked, although I thought I already knew the answer.

  “Oh, Michael and I will draw them off. They’re looking for a black SUV, right?”

  For a few seconds, I didn’t say anything. Logically, splitting up in such a way was the best thing to do. But leaving Lance and Michael still seemed like a horrible betrayal. “What am I supposed to tell Kiki?”

  “Tell her I’ll see her and her sister back at the shop in time for cocktails. Now get going.”

  I sat up and looked from him to Michael, who watched me with grave dark eyes. “It’s time for you to go on ahead. You know this.”

  Yes, I did, but that didn’t make the situation any better. “See you back at the ranch.”

  He smiled. “You bet.”

  Then I reached down and unfastened my seatbelt, and slid out of the back seat. Paul did the same, hiding in the shadow of the Suburban for as long as he could. We met up at the back of the vehicle, which more or less looked like Swiss cheese. He glanced at me, and I nodded.

  Running then, running from scrub bush to scrub bush, sliding on the scattered rocks in the creek bed. I didn’t even glance back when I heard the Suburban’s engine roar and the lumbering SUV take off in the opposite direction from where we were headed. At one point, Paul reached out to take my hand after I slipped on a particularly nasty patch of scree, and with his firm grip to guide me, the way did seem a little easier after that.

  Still, my shoulders kept hunching, my body tense from thinking that at any moment a squad of hybrids would show up and shoot us right in the back. But I kept running, feet pounding at the rough ground in my completely impractical shoes. How they managed to stay on my feet, I had no idea.

  Finally, after what seemed like two or three hours had passed but was probably more like twenty minutes, we struggled our way up out of the creek bed and saw the black shape of a vehicle only a hundred yards or so ahead of us. For a second, my heart seemed to lodge itself in my throat, and then I realized it was the UFO Night Tours van, not one of the secret base’s black-painted SUVs.

  We hurried forward then, and I saw Kiki start upward from where she had been leaning against the rear quarter-panel of the van and move toward us.

  “Persephone!” Her gaze shifted to Paul. “Dr. Oliver! Can I just say what a huge fan — ”

  “Um, can that wait until later?” I asked. “I think we need to get out of here. Now.”

  She seemed to catch herself, and then looked past Paul and me to the empty expanse of scrub and rock. “Where are Lance and Michael?”

  “Creating a diversion. Lance said to tell you he’d be back in time for cocktails.”

  At first, I was afraid she was going to argue or ask more questions, but then she nodded and jogged over to the driver’s side door. Paul and I climbed in the back; it seemed Adam had been dozing in the front seat, but he snapped awake as soon as Kiki slammed her door.

  “Wha — ” he began, but Kiki said,

  “Later.”

  She turned the van around and pointed us to the south and west on Dry Creek Road, heading back toward civilization. After a minute or two, the rattle of gravel under the van’s tires gave way to the smooth rumble of asphalt, and I let out a sigh of relief and leaned my head back against the worn upholstery.

  It appeared — at least for the moment — that we had actually managed to escape.

  Chapter Twelve

  My relief lasted for exactly ten seconds. That ominous thudding sound filled my ears again, and I called out, “Helicopter!” just as another line of bullets bit into the road a few feet ahead of us.

  “Yeah, kinda figured that out!” Kiki shouted back. The van swerved to the left, then over to the right. She continued, “We just need to hang on for a minute more. We’re almost back to civilization — after the next cross street, it’s all houses all the way back to 89A. No way they can continue their pursuit with that many witnesses around.”

  Apparently, the occupants of the helicopter had figured out the same thing, because another volley of bullets broke up the asphalt only a yard or so in front of us. I smelled the acrid scent of heated tar and spent creosote as we blew through the cloud of smoke.

  The van continued to slalom back and forth. I was no expert, but Kara and Kiki had to have installed some pretty impressive modifications to the vehicle’s suspension, because there was no way a Dodge Ram van had ever been designed for that sort of maneuvering. We careened all the way to the right, the van tipping slightly, and I reached out to take Paul’s hand. If we were going to perish on this stretch of lonely road, I wanted to at least die while feeling a little less alone.

  That proved not to be necessary, because in the next second, we came up on a stop sign and blew through it, and then to either side of us, the walls of newish-looking developments lined Dry Creek Road, leaving the scrub of the desert behind. The sound of the helicopter above didn’t decrease, but the shooting had stopped. I pressed my face against the window and slanted a glance upward. I saw the helicopter a hundred feet or so above us, matching our pace.

  “Bastards are going to follow us wherever we go,” Kiki called back over her shoulder. “Time to go to Plan B.”

  She reached down to her center console and picked up the handset to a CB radio. “Magellan, this is Phobos. We have a Code Red. Repeat, Code Red.”

  The CB crackled to life. A man’s voice with a definite Texas twang said, “Copy that, Phobos. What is your status?”

  “We have a MIB bird in active pursuit. Need immediate evac.”

  I felt like commenting that Kiki had watched Black Hawk Down one too many times but decided it wouldn’t be exactly tactful, given the circumstances. Besides, it appeared that her time playing alien hunter had at least prepared her for this situation.

  “Phobos, use diversionary plan Liquid Gold. Backup will be waiting.”

  “Copy that, Magellan. Thanks.”

  Next to me, Paul glanced over, and all I could do was shrug. I had no idea what Liquid Gold meant, or who this Magellan was. Clearly, though, he was a friend of Kiki’s, and if he had a plan for getting us out of here, I wasn’t going to argue with it.

  The sound of the helicopter seemed a little less deafening, and I risked another look out the window. At first, I couldn’t see our pursuers at all; I had to unroll the window and stick my head out before I could see that they had risen another few hundred feet and were following from at least fifty yards behind us. Still….

  “Isn’t someone still going to notice a helicopter flying over their development?”

  “Not really,” Adam put in, as Kiki rolled through a truly spectacular California stop at the next four-way intersection, pausing so briefly it wasn’t really a pause at all, but only a beat or two where the van barely moved. “There are helicopter tours of Sedona going on all the time. They’re supposed to stay away from the residential areas as much as possible, but not everyone toes the line. No one’s going going to give it a second thought.”

  Great. The back of my neck prickled in anticipation of another volley of bullets, as I thought maybe our pursuers in the helicopter would get just a little bit impatient and decide to start shooting anyway. Oddly, though, I sensed none of the cold associated with the hybrids. Whoever was up in that helicopter was as human as we were.

  We stopped at the light where Dry Creek Road ran into 89A. I noticed that Kiki was turning left, heading back up into town. Surely she wasn’t going to take us back to the UFO Depot, was she? That didn’t seem like a very good idea to me.

  I should have known better. We hadn’t been on the main road all that long before she turned again, this time into another residential area of older but still well-maintained homes on large lots, most of the houses in some form of the Southwest adobe style, with carefully xeriscaped front yards. I guessed the water rationing here in Sedona would make t
he limitations back in L.A. look like a joke.

  The van made another turn, and I wondered if Kiki was trying to lose the helicopter altogether. If that was the case, she wasn’t having much luck, as I could still hear the thrumming sound of the chopper’s blades as it hung in the sky above us like some overgrown, horribly determined wasp.

  We pulled past a wooden sign that told us we were entering a state park. It was my turn to glance over at Paul, but he appeared just as mystified as I was. A minute later, I thought I understood at least part of Kiki’s stratagem; as we pulled to a stop next to a ranger’s booth so she could flash some sort of pass at the young woman manning the kiosk, the delicate green of tall cottonwood trees blotted out the sky above us. To the helicopter, which would have had to ascend even more to avoid the greenery, we were now more or less invisible.

  Kiki drove past people unloading kids and dogs from the backs of their SUVs, or hauling picnic equipment out of the trunks of their cars. She found an empty space at the edge of one lane and pulled into it.

  “Might as well get out and stretch our legs,” she said, then turned off the engine and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

  “‘Stretch our legs’?” Paul echoed, sounding incredulous. I couldn’t blame him — he sounded about the way I felt.

  “Magellan will be here in a minute or two. And those helicopters can’t see us — even if they’re watching on infrared, how’re they going to be able to tell which signatures are ours?”

  She had a point. The parking lot had its share of vans, and most of the vans had several people in them. Who was to say which one was ours?

  Besides, getting out of the van and grabbing a bit of fresh air while I could seemed like a great idea.

  I undid my seatbelt, reached under the seat to retrieve my purse, and then slid open the door to the passenger area, with Paul following me just a second or two later. A fresh breeze caught at my hair. Beyond the sounds of people laughing and talking, I heard the soothing rustle of moving water and somehow found myself drawn eastward, through the parking lot, and on past a stand of trees.

  The creek was wide at that season, full of snow melt from the high country. It chattered over the stones, catching sparks of stray sunlight. Overhead, the cottonwood trees sheltered me from prying eyes. At the edges of my hearing, the helicopter droned away, but somehow it seemed as insignificant as the buzz of a fly against a screen. Somehow, I knew I was safe here.

  Despite everything, a sensation of soothing warmth wrapped itself around me. The light shifted to green and gold, flickering with energy. This was what we were trying to save…our planet, our people. We had done so much to destroy it ourselves, and yet I knew it wanted to protect us, to surround us in its healing energies. I drank them in, letting the peace and the light and the calm, flowing strength of the water move through me.

  Even though my eyes were shut, I knew the second that Paul had come to stand next to me.

  I asked, “Do you feel it?”

  A silence, during which I sensed him watching the water as well, breathing the air, clean and untainted by factories or six lanes of rush-hour traffic. “This may sound crazy — but I think I do.”

  I opened my eyes and blinked against the dazzling diamond-bright flashes of sunlight on the water. Then I turned to Paul, body humming with all the energy I’d just absorbed. “I’m ready for the next stage.”

  “And what is that?”

  With a smile, I replied, “I don’t know — I just know I can handle it. We, actually.”

  His hazel eyes were almost pure green in the reflection of the cottonwoods’ leaves. “You sound a lot more confident than I am. There’s still a helicopter circling up there.”

  “I know.” What I didn’t know was how much time we had. But I wanted to use what little breathing space we did have for something useful. “Did they question you? The hybrids?”

  “No. They’re not much for talk. But there was someone else — some kind of agent, I guess. Human. He was inquisitive enough.” A muscle tightened in Paul’s jaw, and he glanced away from me, over toward the stream.

  That sounded ominous. So there really were humans in league with the aliens. Some part of me had wanted to deny that such a thing could be true, but Paul had been there, had seen it for himself.

  I opened my mouth to reply, then paused, still adjusting to the heightened awareness the surroundings seemed to have brought out in me. Another presence, a friendly one, had entered the parking lot. “He’s here.”

  “He who?”

  “Magellan.”

  And I turned and made my way back to the parking lot. Kiki and Adam had left the van and now stood next to a tall gray-haired man who had just gotten out of a shiny silver Mercedes station wagon. He turned toward Paul and me as we approached.

  “This is my cargo?” he asked.

  Kiki said, “Dr. Oliver, Persephone, this is Matt Forrest. He’s going to get you out of here.”

  Matt Forrest extended a hand, and Paul shook it. “Thanks for the rescue, Mr. Forrest.”

  “Call me Matt,” he replied, in the Texas drawl I recognized from the CB exchange just a short while earlier. “Happy to oblige. But we’d best get going — don’t want to keep our friends in the sky waiting too long.” He had keen blue eyes bracketed by deep lines, the eyes of a man who’d spent a good deal of his life looking into the distance. He addressed Kiki next. “You know what to do.”

  “Yeah.” She turned to Paul and me. “You can trust Matt. I just wish — I just wish I could go, too. And Dr. Oliver — ”

  “Paul.”

  “Paul.” To my surprise, she flushed a little and said, “Well, Kara and I would have loved to have you come to the shop. We — ”

  “Hey,” I said. “We’re not going away forever. Besides,” I added, “my car’s still in your shop’s parking lot. Keep an eye on it for me, could you?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Absolutely!”

  Adam said, “We should probably go, Kiki.”

  “Right. I know.” She gave an awkward little wave, then headed back toward the van.

  “We’ll give them a minute,” Matt Forrest said. “Want to make sure that helicopter goes with them.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that very much. “What, we’re just going to let them be decoys?”

  “You didn’t seem to have much of a problem letting those other two men do the same thing,” Paul pointed out.

  “I know, but Kiki and Adam are just kids — ”

  “They’ll be all right,” Matt said. “Kiki’s got a good head on her shoulders. Besides, all she’s going to do is drive the van back to the store. The MIBs know that Kara and Kiki are always out poking around. They’ll decide they were following the van for no good reason.”

  “You hope,” I returned, although truthfully, I didn’t get any negative sensations from contemplating Kiki and Adam going back to the store. Surely if that was a terrible idea, it would have felt wrong to me.

  “I know.” He lifted his head and watched the shimmering leaves of the cottonwoods overhead. “They’re gone. Time for us to get going just in case they decide to circle back.”

  Since I couldn’t really argue with that, I just nodded. It made more sense for Paul to ride shotgun, since he was definitely the taller of the two of us, so he got in the front seat while I climbed into the back behind him. I wondered if we were going to be heading straight out of town, and which route Matt planned to take. Incredibly, I was starting to feel hungry. Or maybe it wasn’t so incredible; I’d been running around like a madwoman, and it had been almost seven hours since breakfast.

  Then again, I knew I could go a lot longer than seven hours without food if I had to, and of course the important thing was to get out of town and back to Los Angeles. Now that I had Paul back, I knew we had to complete our unfinished business there.

  Matt started the Mercedes and moved out of the parking lot, then turned down the same road Kiki had used to get us here. At the next intersection, thou
gh, he turned left, heading south and west. I didn’t recognize any of the streets he was taking. From what I could tell, he was purposely using side streets through residential areas, keeping off the main drag. Eventually, though, he turned onto a larger street I saw was called Airport Road, and began climbing higher.

  “So where exactly are we going?” I inquired.

  “Airport,” he replied. “Safest way to get you out of here is fly you out. They’ll be watching the roads.”

  “Your plane?” Paul asked.

  “Yep. I do a bit of ferry service when the need arises. Can you reach in the glovebox there, get out the placard for me?”

  I watched as Paul opened the glove compartment and extracted a piece of card stock, which Matt took from him and deposited on the dashboard near the driver’s-side corner of the windshield.

  To my surprise, there were pedestrians suddenly all around us, moving from a parking lot higher up the bluff down to a promontory on the west side of the mesa, where a scenic overlook was located.

  I must have made a questioning sound, because Matt said, “Everybody comes here. They say there’s a vortex. Don’t know about that, but the views are pretty incredible. Too bad we’ll miss sunset, but them’s the breaks, I guess.”

  Vortex. That would explain the rapidly building sense of pressure deep within my breast, as if something contained inside me wanted to burst out. It was a very different energy from what I had felt by the creek, but no less powerful for all that. I’d read about the vortexes, of course, but reading about them was far different from experiencing them for myself. At the moment, it seemed as if I had absorbed enough power to take on a squad of hybrids single-handed — not that I really wanted to try.

  “Where’re we going?” Matt asked.

  I made a surprised sound, and he grinned.

  “We try to say as little as possible over open channels. Now, I can’t fly you to Paris — ’less you’re going to Paris, Texas — but I should be able to get you where you’re going. But I got to gas up first. So how far are we going?”

  “Los Angeles,” Paul said promptly, eliciting another one of those grins.