by Darien Cox
Table of Contents
Title page
Trapped in Your Storm
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Trapped in Your Storm
The Village
Book Three
Darien Cox
Trapped in Your Storm
Copyright © 2016 by Darien Cox
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Cover Art © 2016 by Skyla Dawn Cameron
First Edition October 2016
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Chapter One
Elliot cautiously unraveled himself from the young male body sleeping beside him when he heard his phone. It wasn’t the buzz of a text or call, or the cuckoo bird jingle of his morning alarm, but a sharp dog bark indicating an alert from the internet. Someone online was talking about Singing Bear Village, and certain keywords associated with the conversation had triggered the alert. Since this had been happening with such frequency lately, Elliot didn’t bother to rush to check on it, instead taking his time to pull on a pair of sweats and a tee shirt.
Scrubbing his dark blond hair with his fingers, he frowned down at the young man in his bed. Shit, that’s right. I have to break up with him today.
Last night was the third time they’d slept together, and sadly, would have to be the last. Sad because Kip was beautiful and smart and passionate and looked like a young Tiger Woods. He was new to the village, using his recently-earned degree in Environmental Health and Safety to work for the Forests Department. Elliot had been drawn to Kip’s idealistic innocence. Like a vampire scoring a blood-fix, he’d enjoyed temporarily consuming a bit of Kip’s unfettered optimism about life—a stark contrast to his own cynicism.
While pleased he could still lure gorgeous young men like Kip to his bed now that he was in his thirties, Elliot didn’t want to hurt any of them. Though the possibility of hurting young men wasn’t usually an issue, because few of those he took to bed ever developed real feelings for him. Elliot had a reputation and made no secret of his sexual predilections. He liked younger men, preferably a bit smaller than his own medium frame, eager for someone to take control for a night and get them off without ties or complications. But most of his usual pickups were local villagers, already acquainted with Elliot to some degree, knowing him only as the guy who ran Village Radio and was rumored to be good in bed. But Kip was new to town. Elliot probably should have considered that.
Because last night, while he was gliding in and out of Kip’s firm body, the young man had held Elliot’s face tenderly in his hands and said things. That he was so glad he’d moved to the village because he got to meet Elliot. That he’d never been so intrigued by a man. That he wanted to get to know Elliot better. To know everything about him.
Sure, maybe it was just sex talk. But maybe it wasn’t. Either way, it could never happen. There was only a fistful of people in the world that truly knew Elliot, and he even kept a few secrets from them. Outside of his close-knit team of colleagues, he could never fully share himself with someone. Certainly not this sweet someone slumbering in his bed.
Maybe one day under the right circumstances he’d consider letting himself fall in love, as JT had managed to do, and more recently, Christian. But at this point he’d have to lie to any lover he took on, share only a small portion of himself, let them believe he was just the village DJ. If he ever did entertain the idea of something going deeper, it couldn’t be like that. It wouldn’t be fair to the other person. And thusly, he’d have to end things with Kip before they really got started—because Elliot was a disinformation agent tasked with keeping people like Kip in the dark.
While he didn’t know him that well, he knew Kip didn’t deserve to live in the dark. And he didn’t deserve Elliot’s knowledge of what was in the light either. Kip was young and optimistic—he didn’t need to know there was an underground alien installation beneath the mountain range visible from their serene lakeside village. He didn’t need to know about black budgets and threats to humanity and shady government subsets and people like Elliot who worked for them.
The same nagging thoughts that caused a bout of depression over the summer came back to him, tickling the edge of his mind. I can leave this job. I don’t have to do this forever. Maybe it’s time to find another life. Even as he had the thought, panic set in. It wasn’t that he was afraid to venture into another line of work. He still had a law degree, after all. But the thought of not seeing Nolan, JT, and Christian all the time…at this point, he couldn’t imagine it. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye just yet.
Elliot glanced at the windows. Not yet dawn. He decided to let Kip sleep in while he checked on work stuff, then maybe make him breakfast to soften the blow.
Leaving his bedroom, he gently closed the door and headed downstairs. He should have put socks on. October was cold in Singing Bear Village, and the floor felt frigid beneath Elliot’s bare feet. But he didn’t want to wake Kip just yet, so he suffered the chill. When he reached his private office, he punched in the door code and stepped inside, shutting it behind him. Sitting at the long rectangular console against the wall, he immediately saw a red light blinking on one of the monitors, and sighed. He rolled the chair over and was about to log in when his phone buzzed with a text from Nolan.
‘I’d like to head out at sunrise. Be at your house in a half-hour.’
Elliot chuckled. Nolan was always up at the crack of dawn, the regimented asshole. They were hiking up the mountain today for work, and Elliot was somewhat looking forward to it. While he loved JT and Christian in equal measure, spending the day with Nolan would be a quiet relief from hearing about the love lives of the others. Nolan was single and typically as grumpy as Elliot. Since Elliot would be
forced to dump a perfectly nice young man before he set out this morning, he wasn’t really up for spending time with JT and Christian with their springy steps and happy whistling and chatter about their boyfriends. Nolan’s military style soberness was definitely more suited to his current mood.
He texted Nolan back. ‘Make it an hour. I have to extricate someone from my bed.’
Nolan texted back. ‘Fine. I’ll get egg sandwiches from Joe’s. Be ready in an hour.’
Elliot’s finger hovered over the text window. He was about to tell Nolan to forgo getting him anything from Joe’s Diner, as he’d planned to make breakfast for Kip before breaking up with him. But the idea of slopping down an egg sandwich in Nolan’s truck on the way up to the mountain was preferable to dragging out what would be an awkward conversation with Kip over breakfast. So he set his phone down and logged onto the computer instead.
“God dammit,” he said when he traced the alert to the familiar conspiracy website But Now I See. He’d been tracking activity for the past month in the ‘Ghosts and Demons’ section. Toward the end of summer, a small group from New York City had decided to go off-trail hiking in the mountains edging Singing Bear Village, and as luck would have it, ended up on Bear Peak, camping up near the field. The fucking field he and his team had been warned to stay away from by the Whites, as their presence was interfering with the giant ships that stealthily entered the underground base there.
Ogden and the team had yet to figure out if the presence of humans on the field did something to physically interfere with the ships’ ability to sink through the ground and into their base, or if the Whites actually had a conscience and didn’t want to harm them on their way down. They had the ability to move through solid matter, after all, so what were a few biological life forms?
The activity in the online ghost forum had been started initially by that one group of hikers running their mouths. They’d claimed to have seen ‘blurry white things’ moving through the trees at night while they camped. Elliot knew exactly what they’d seen.
The Whites—presumably to prevent anyone from getting a real good look at them—moved extremely fast when they were out and about in the forest, appearing as blurry, misty forms.
Elliot frowned at the forum thread’s subject heading: ‘Ghosts in the forest outside Singing Bear Village!’
He supposed he should be relieved the hikers thought they were seeing ghosts rather than guessing the truth, but Elliot wanted to slap the Whites right in their weird long alien faces for being stupid. Sure, they were a highly advanced, technologically superior race, but when it came to dealing with humans, they did some dumb shit. He could only guess the Whites were flitting around topside because of the hikers’ presence and close proximity to the field. Perhaps they meant to scare the hikers off, but the tall white bozos had only made things worse. One thing the Whites did not understand about humans—if there was something spooky or dangerous, they’d not be deterred. They’d turn it into a damn sporting event. Clearly the Whites weren’t familiar with the steady diet of paranormal reality shows Americans gobbled down.
So since those first precocious hikers decided to share their scary experience in an online forum for paranormal enthusiasts, random others had traveled to Singing Bear Village, hoping to see something in the woods up on the mountain. And now there were more reports of ‘blurry white things’.
But if the Whites were annoyed at the increasing presence of hikers near the entrance to their base, why hadn’t Baz contacted Elliot and the rest of the team to help deal with it? They’d heard nothing from the hybrid ambassador since summertime. If the Whites had determined to deal with the problem themselves, they weren’t doing a very good job of it. He read the latest string of online postings.
‘If you camp up there you WILL see something!’
‘The trail is hard to find but it’s worth it. Ghosts in the woods that move through trees!’
‘I want to go camp up there and see ghosts but I’m afraid of bears.’
‘The bears won’t bother you if you don’t bother them, moron.’
‘Your the moran, bears will eat you.’
Elliot groaned and rubbed his eyes. The ghost hunters were a mere annoyance. It was the newest post that had his back up, however. He recognized the username, ‘DisclosureNow’ from the UFO segment of the site. This particular user seemed to have been following Elliot around online for the past couple months, even when he signed in under different user names. Each time Elliot, in his various personas, tried to debunk any alien lore related to Singing Bear Village, DisclosureNow would pop up to respond, usually telling him he was wrong and citing vague evidence that he knew better. Of course Elliot shouldn’t assume the poster was male, but he’d come to think of them as such.
And now the troll had apparently drifted away from the UFO portion of the site into the ghost forum to give his or her two cents, almost as though they’d been anticipating Elliot eventually showing up to counter the claims. His teeth clenched as he read the post.
DisclosureNow: ‘What you’re seeing in the Singing Bear mountains are not ghosts, they are aliens. Tall Whites. You’re playing with fire going up there.’
Stalky troll aside, this was all a potential nightmare for Elliot if he couldn’t divert the attention away from the village. Someone had to try and summon Baz soon to discuss this so he could tell the Whites to stop dicking around in the woods while hikers were there, that it was only encouraging them. If the activity ceased, eventually the conspiracy theorists would grow bored, and stop their visits to Singing Bear Village. Elliot hoped.
But to be safe, Nolan had worked with some of Ogden’s people to develop a series of new cameras to monitor the area. Today’s mission was to head up the mountain and place the cameras strategically in the trees near the field. They could monitor any interlopers that ventured up that far. Of course Ogden hoped the cameras might allow them to monitor the Whites comings and goings as well, if it worked. Thus far any equipment they tried to use, including cameras, became useless when faced with Whites’ technology. Photos of craft, on the rare occasion they weren’t cloaked, always came back as just a bunch of glowing squiggles, like random bursts of lightning. But the Whites themselves?
The only photo the team had of an actual White was a blurry, indecipherable form. If they could capture one of them moving on film, however, Ogden would probably come in his pants.
Elliot logged into But Now I See with his username ‘Skeptik4Now’ and typed a reply to the thread.
Skeptik4Now: ‘This is ridiculous. Mountains get misty at night, that’s all you’re seeing. I live in Singing Bear Village and I’m up on those trails all the time. No ghosts. No aliens. The only truth mentioned here is that the black bears won’t bother you. Sorry, people, it’s all bullshit. Stop wasting your time.’
Stretching back in his seat, Elliot cracked his knuckles. He checked the time and glanced at the closed door. No sounds indicating Kip was up yet, but Nolan would be here soon, so Elliot had to deal with the problem of getting rid of his current lover. He decided he’d make coffee and wake Kip up, give him ‘the speech’ and send him on his way before Nolan arrived.
The computer bleeped, and Elliot scowled when he saw a private message pop up above the ghost forum thread. His shoulders stiffened as he read it.
DisclosureNow: ‘I know who you are. I know what you’re doing. And it’s wrong.’
“Fucking fruitcake,” Elliot muttered as he typed a response. ‘And what exactly am I doing?’
DisclosureNow: ‘Covering up the truth about what’s in the mountains. Lying to people and trying to lead them off track.’
Elliot chuckled as he typed ‘Oh is that right? Whatever, man. Get a life.’
DisclosureNow: ‘I had a life. Government puppets like you took it from me. Expose yourself. Or I will.’
Elliot frowned. Though he switched up his usernames often, he was frequently accused of protesting too much, of being a disinformation plant—which
of course was exactly what he was. So he wasn’t too worried about the message. People online pretended to be in the know about aliens all the time, and those who posted on conspiracy forums were paranoid by nature. Thus far he’d not encountered a single one that actually knew anything remotely close to the truth.
He responded to the private message, ‘Seek professional help, you fucking freak.’
DisclosureNow: ‘Disclosure now! Reveal the truth to the public. You owe it to humanity. Stop being a puppet. You have no right to keep this to yourself. And the people you work for are monsters. Are you a monster too?’
Elliot chuckled. He’d met a thousand posers like this online. He decided to change up his ‘protest too much’ angle and play along instead. ‘Even if I was a government puppet and wanted to disclose the truth, who would believe one person? The public would simply write me off as a nutcase.’
He waited. Ten minutes passed with no reply, so he figured the troll had given up. He was about to shut the page down when a reply came through that chilled Elliot’s blood.
DisclosureNow: ‘But you’re not just one person. You and your three friends could come forward together.’
Elliot jumped in his seat when Kip knocked on the door. “Elliot? You in there?”
“Yeah, Kip. Hang on.” He typed quickly. ‘What three friends?’
The user ‘DisclosureNow’ had logged out. Elliot skimmed his profile. He could hear Kip still hovering outside the door. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen, Kip.”
“Okay.”
Elliot did an advanced search and was stunned to learn the posts were coming from somewhere right in Singing Bear Village. Digging deeper, he found the actual source. A computer in the science lab at the local middle school.
It’s probably a kid. Makes sense. Just a trolling, scheming little sixth-grader. But it wasn’t even dawn yet, the school wasn’t open. A teacher? A janitor? Someone who’d broken in? He’d find out. Either way, the ‘three friends’ comment could have been nothing, a coincidence. Shit, most people could name three friends they hung out with. It was highly unlikely this disclosure crackpot actually knew who Elliot was.