sedona files 06 - enemy mine

by Christine Pope

  “Good news,” I told him as I opened the door and stepped out into the little hallway that separated the reading room from the break area at the back of the shop. “I was able to get the rest of the weekend off, so we have plenty of time.”

  He shot me a curious look. “Time for what?”

  “Lots of things, I hope. But there’s something we need to do first.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I need to take you to where I’m staying.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was a gamble, and I knew that. Here I was staying at the cottage so the creek’s energies could protect me from the aliens, and yet I planned to take one of them there with me now.

  All right, Gideon wasn’t exactly an alien. He was…something different. Unique. And I wanted to do everything I could to persuade him that it was far better for him to embrace his human side, to experience all the wonderful things his existence so far had deprived him of.

  He did look around from side to side, frankly curious, as I led him from the store and to the parking garage so I could retrieve my car. I had no idea where the Reptilians had dropped him off, so to speak, but clearly he hadn’t had much experience with observing humans in their native habitat.

  “They all look so cheerful,” he said, as if that observation surprised him.

  “Well, they are mostly here on vacation,” I pointed out. “They’re supposed to be enjoying themselves.” I glanced up at him, still somewhat unnerved by the change in his appearance, although I knew it had been necessary. Even in airy-fairy Sedona, someone walking around with greenish skin was bound to attract attention. “And some of them aren’t as cheerful as they look.”

  That was the problem with crowds; people tended to broadcast unintentionally, and I could get bombarded from all sides. I’d had enough practice by that point to tune most of it out, but things still got through occasionally.

  Gideon sent me a quizzical look, and I tilted my head very slightly toward a dark-haired couple who’d paused to look in a shop window.

  “Those two? They had a huge fight this morning and are trying to decide whether to cut their vacation short. That woman?” I glanced very briefly at a woman in her forties who’d stopped to consult something on her phone. “She’s afraid she has cancer, is waiting for the test results to come back. She came here to soak up some healing energies.”

  “It must be difficult for you,” he said quietly as we crossed the driveway that led into the parking structure. “Do you try to avoid crowds?”

  “Not really. My mother taught me how to deal with it. Sometimes the pressure can be difficult, but I’d rather feel other people’s pain than try to hide from the world.”

  In silence, he reached out and took my hand. His fingers felt warmer now, possibly because of our walk in the sunlight. The bright light didn’t seem to bother him, which seemed to mean that his eyes were more human than Reptilian, despite their color. And I couldn’t prevent the thrill that went through me at his touch, but I tried to seem calm as we walked, fingers interlaced, down to the level where I’d left my car.

  Gideon didn’t seem to have any problem getting in or negotiating the seatbelt, which made me think he must have spent a good amount of time studying our technology and customs. As we left the parking structure, I noticed his gaze was fixed on the people who thronged the sidewalks in Sedona’s uptown district, rather than on the red rocks that had brought them there in the first place.

  It was the same way on the drive to the cottage — he looked at the other cars, at the people who stood on the sidewalks, at the businesses we passed. But he didn’t seem all that interested in the astonishing natural beauty of the landscape which surrounded the town. Were people and their artifacts really that much more intriguing to him?

  We pulled off the main highway and into the quiet neighborhood where the house was located. As we drew closer, I could see his hand wrap around the seatbelt and grip it tightly.

  “What is that?” he whispered, face pale under its faux tan.

  I didn’t have to ask what he meant. “It’s the creek,” I said. “It’s what’s been protecting me.”

  “It’s very strong.” His jaw clenched, and I saw how the muscles in his neck stood out.

  “I know. But it won’t hurt you.”

  I had to hope that was true.

  The car pulled into the garage and shut itself off, and we both got out. Gideon followed me inside the cottage, gazing around with some curiosity.

  “So this is what a home looks like?”

  “It’s what this house looks like,” I said. “There’s a lot of variation. And no one actually lives here full-time. It’s kind of a guest house.”

  “Because of that?” he asked, looking past me to where the creek lay, although it wasn’t visible from where we stood.

  “No. We all love the creek. No one lives here full-time because it belongs to Kara Rinehart and Kirsten Jones, and they have their own — much bigger — houses elsewhere in Sedona. They let this one out for people to use when they come here to visit.”

  We’d gone through the living room and had stopped in the kitchen. Gideon kept shooting those wary glances in the direction of the creek, and I realized we needed to go ahead and get this over with. Either my hunch would be correct, or this would turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes I’d ever made.

  “Come outside with me?” I asked.

  A look of something close to terror passed over his features. “Why?”

  “Because I think it will help. I need you to trust me, Gideon. Please.”

  He hesitated, reluctance obvious in every inch of his body. I turned away from the back door and came close to him.

  “Do you think I would do anything that would hurt you?”

  “No,” he said at once, then added, “That is, I haven’t seen you exhibit the sort of behavior that would indicate you enjoy seeing others suffer.”

  Well, that’s something, I thought wryly. His dark eyes met mine, and I realized he needed to be himself for this. Wholly himself.

  “We’re alone,” I said softly. “You don’t need that.” And I pointed at the leather wristband he wore, the one that seemed to be the source of his altered appearance.

  “You don’t like me like this?”

  “I like you as you. I understand the need for the disguise when you’re out in public, but — ”

  His fingers found the center button on the wristband and pushed it. Immediately, the Gideon I knew stood there, his deep ruby eyes locked on mine.

  My breath caught. There was something about the contrast between his alien appearance and the ordinary clothes he wore that made him all the more striking.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Much better.” The words sounded somewhat strangled, but at least I was able to force them out. I laid my hand on the doorknob and turned it. “Let’s go down to the creek.”

  His brows pulled together, but he didn’t protest. I wondered what the creek felt like to him. Something inimical that should be avoided? He’d reacted negatively to it at first, although now he seemed more curious than anything else as I led him down the back steps and across the patio. The sun slanted down from above, warm and gentle, although the breeze was fairly cool. It ruffled Gideon’s crisp dark hair, and something about the way it waved in the breeze made me wish I had the courage to run my fingers through it.

  I didn’t, of course. The creek chattered at us through the trees, the sound of the water growing closer and closer. An enormous yellow butterfly fluttered across the path and disappeared into the woods, and I felt rather than saw Gideon’s amazement at the sight.

  And then there was the creek, slipping over the smooth stones of its bed, the water dancing and flashing in the sunlight. If anything, it seemed even more full than the day before, the warming temperatures melting more of the snow on the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff so the water here could run high and fast.

  “There it is,” I said, quite unnecessarily
.

  Gideon stopped a few feet from the bank. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hadn’t been expecting that.”

  Our eyes met for a moment. The fear was receding, replaced by something I didn’t quite recognize. Wonder? Awe?

  “Why is it so powerful?” he asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. I mean, we all believe it has something to do with the vortexes, but even the people who are experts in vortex energy don’t know for sure why Oak Creek itself has such strength. Maybe because it draws from all of the other vortexes as it passes through town?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “We’ve studied the vortexes, but we’re not sure we understand them. They are a phenomenon unique to this world, this place.”

  As he spoke, he was drawing closer and closer to the water. Or maybe it was drawing him toward it. I didn’t know, but it was fascinating to watch, almost as if he had no real control over his actions, was being compelled to draw near.

  He paused on the bank, head up into the sunlight. It glinted off his near-black hair, and made his skin seem even more greenish in hue. Or maybe that was only a reflection from all the cottonwoods with their new green leaves.

  Then he was bending down, pulling at the laces on his tennis shoes. He kicked one off, then the other, before removing his socks and stuffing them inside.

  “Gideon,” I said, “what are you doing?”

  But I thought I knew.

  He stepped out into the swirling water, and I couldn’t help wincing, because I knew just how cold it was. A tremor went through him, followed by another. He bent down and dipped one hand into the water, letting it flow between his fingers.

  I stood on the bank, knowing that I shouldn’t speak, or interfere. I needed to let him do this.

  He lifted his hand from the water and looked at the droplets glittering on his fingers. And then he turned and looked at me, and I saw tears gleaming in his eyes, diamond-bright as the creek water on his hand.

  “Taryn,” he said. His voice was a broken whisper, one I could barely hear above the rushing water.

  “I’m here.” I wanted to wade out to him, but I forced myself to stay where I was. Unlike Gideon, I had no need to make my peace with Sedona. It was my home. It was a part of me.

  “The things I’ve done….” he began, then shook his head.

  It couldn’t possibly be that bad, I thought, but then, did I really know for sure? He’d had a life before we met, a life more or less ruled over by Lir Shalan. The Reptilian leader wasn’t exactly a shining paragon of moral rectitude.

  “You can change that,” I said.

  “Can I?”

  I held out my hand. “Let me show you.”

  We sat on the couch in the living room. Gideon had dried his feet off and replaced his shoes and socks, but he still looked shaken.

  There had been some bottled iced tea in the care package my mother sent over with me, and so I’d poured two glasses for Gideon and myself. He picked up his glass and drank, although I could tell by the expression on his face that he wasn’t overly thrilled by the taste.

  “Do you want to tell me?” I asked softly.

  “No,” he said. “Because then you will think the worst of me. But I must be prepared for that.”

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “I won’t. I promise.”

  “Better not to promise things before you know the truth,” he said, his tone a warning.

  I tilted my head at him. “Just tell me.”

  “We were — we are — taking your women.”

  “I know that,” I said calmly.

  The ruby eyes widened before he did his best to cover his shock. “You know?”

  “My parents told me. Remember, they’re part of a large network of people who share anything that seems out of the ordinary. So when the stories started up, the news ran through the grapevine pretty quickly.”

  He settled back against the sofa cushions, clearly attempting to figure out what to say next. “Is it common knowledge?”

  “No. As far as we can tell, the media and the government are doing all they can to suppress the information.” I shifted on the couch, then tucked one leg under the other so I could face him directly. “Is there anything you want to tell me about that?”

  “It is part of the agreement.”

  “What agreement?”

  “The agreement we made with the governments of your world.” He drank some more of his iced tea. This time, he barely grimaced. “We offered some of our technology, but in exchange we asked for a number of your women.”

  “But…why?” Even as I asked the question, I had to wonder how close to the truth Callista’s hypothesis about clones would turn out to be.

  He didn’t answer right away. The iced tea glass went around and around in his hands as he turned it while staring down into the pale brown liquid inside. At last he said, “Because our race is failing.”

  “Failing? Failing how?”

  With a sigh, he reached over and set down the glass, then turned back toward me. “It is a long story.”

  “I have time.”

  An improbable smile touched his mouth. “I suppose you do.” He stopped then, looking up at the beamed ceiling and over at the fireplace before his gaze returned to me. “Will anyone be stopping by to check on you?” he asked. “I’d rather not face your family right away, if that can be avoided.”

  “It’s fine,” I told him. “They all think I’m at work. I texted my mother to let her know I was okay, and I need to do that again around the time they’d be expecting me to be home, but that’s hours from now.”

  He nodded and seemed to relax slightly. Then he said, picking up the earlier thread of our conversation, “For generations my race has used cloning to keep its bloodlines pure.”

  Ha, I thought. Callista’s going to be thrilled she was right.

  “And for generations, everything was fine,” Gideon went on. “But then something went wrong. We were unable to clone our females.”

  Part of me wanted to interrupt him, to point out that it wasn’t entirely accurate for him to keep saying “we” and “our” when he was half human. But I had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate that sort of observation, so I remained silent.

  “Why would you need them, if you were reproducing by cloning anyway?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  Gideon’s shoulders lifted, but I didn’t believe the negligence of that shrug, not for a second. “Sometimes genetic anomalies would occur. When that happened, the bloodline in question would be terminated, and a new one begun. Naturally, we needed to combine male and female genetic material for that to occur, for us to create new life.”

  I didn’t think there was anything natural about it at all, but I only nodded.

  “And so when a bloodline was corrupted, without the necessary female biological material to create a replacement, we could do nothing except close it down, and we would have no one to replace those who were lost. That was when the first hybridization attempts were made, with races from subject worlds. But those experiments were all failures.”

  “You did well with your hybrids here,” I pointed out. More than well, if Logan was an example of the Reptilians’ genetic experiments. He looked completely human. Well, the epitome of human, anyway — handsome, strong, intelligent.

  “Yes, because of the human genetic material we used. It is extremely malleable and adaptable, more so than anything else we’ve found in the galaxy. But those hybrids were designed to be indistinguishable from humans. They did very little to help with our own particular problem of vanishing bloodlines.”

  “And so you decided to leave the laboratory out of the equation and reproduce the old-fashioned way.” I tried to make the comment in as neutral a way as possible, but I knew I wasn’t very successful. The image of Elizabeth D’Onofrio haunted me. She’d looked so pretty and bright, and she’d been taken and used by a monster.

  Gideon didn’t quite wince, but I could see the way
his shoulders stiffened. “Yes. With varying success, as I told you before.”

  Something was bothering me, but I didn’t know if I had the courage to ask. But I recalled how he’d looked, standing there in the creek, grief and remorse as clear on his face as the bright sunshine above us. He was being honest with me now, so I needed to be brave and not shy away from the hard questions.

  “I don’t understand, though,” I began, and paused as I tried to figure out the best way to ask the question. He tilted his head, waiting for me to go on. “If you were reproducing with cloning, why the” — I hesitated, then forced myself to go on — “why the sex? You’d think your people would just take what they needed from human women to create little test tube babies.”

  “You misunderstand,” Gideon said, apparently not offended at all. “We reproduced by cloning to ensure the purity of our race. That did not mean we — I mean they — did not engage in sexual activity purely for pleasure’s sake.”

  His sage-green skin took on the slightly deeper hue I’d come to recognize as his form of flushing, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. Well, I’d gotten the distinct impression earlier that he was just as inexperienced as I, so I figured the embarrassment was natural enough.

  “And when you ran out of your own women….”

  He looked away. “Yes. We — they — that is, they do find human women sexually appealing.”

  Well, there it was, stated far more baldly than I’d expected. I couldn’t say I was surprised, not after some of the things Kirsten had said, not after the stories I’d found circulating on the internet, stories I was sure my parents would have rather I’d not known about.

  And the one persistent rumor, rigorously debunked on more than one occasion and yet which refused to die, that sex with a Reptilian could be a transcendent experience.

  Personally, I’d just as soon never find out.

  With a half-Reptilian, however….

  To break the awkward silence that fell after that particular revelation, I let out a not very convincing chuckle and said, “Should I be flattered on behalf of human women everywhere?”