sedona files 05 - falling angels

by Christine Pope

  A scream of denial burst from my throat, and, without thinking, I gathered up the energy I’d been using to protect us — to no avail, apparently — and thrust it outward the same way I’d seen Raphael do, in a shocking flare of light and pressure, fueled by my anger that they’d hurt one of our own. The Reptilian who’d shot Logan went down, and the ones near him, who’d begun to stir as well, also were flattened.

  I didn’t waste any more time on them, however. Instead, I went straight to Logan, just as my mother did the same thing, abandoning the astronaut she’d just rescued so she could kneel on the floor next to the wounded man.

  He wasn’t bleeding exactly, but had a huge area of smoking, blackened flesh where the pulse from the alien’s gun had penetrated, burning the fabric of his jumpsuit entirely away. His eyes were shut, his face moist and pale.

  “It’s bad,” my mother said.

  For some reason, I couldn’t look at her. I could only stare down at Logan, willing him to be okay. He had to be okay. He and Grace had been through so much together. I didn’t want to think about what she would do if she lost him. It would destroy her.

  Raphael, shockingly, didn’t seem all that worried. “We’ll get him to the ship. The medical bay will take care of it.”

  Considering everything I’d seen on that ship so far, I guessed he wasn’t exaggerating about its medical facilities. We still had to get Logan there, though.

  “Well, I think it’s time you beamed us up, then,” I snapped.

  A frown pulled at Raphael’s brows, but he didn’t answer me, instead telling the two astronauts, who were staring at the rest of us in shock, “Move closer to them. We need to all be transferred in a group.”

  I doubted that they had any idea what he was talking about. Luckily, though, they did as he said, limping over to us. I noticed that their feet were bare, and wondered what the hell the Reptilians had done with the women’s shoes.

  Not that it probably mattered all that much. The important thing was that they were with us, crowding around Logan’s limp form, Raphael only a step or two behind them.

  As he moved, though, I thought I saw one of the Reptilians stir, the ominous glint of metal in his hand. A gun, pointed at Raphael. For a split-second, I wondered why the alien would be aiming at him when I was the one who’d just knocked them all off their feet. But then I realized that of course they’d prefer to avoid harming me. With Raphael out of the way, there would be only women left.

  I didn’t stop to think. I just pushed myself to my feet and reached out and grabbed him by the arm, yanking him toward the rest of us. As my hand closed around his wrist, a tingling warmth moved up my arm, a rush of —

  No, that wasn’t possible. Because what I experienced right then was the sort of need that seemed to cramp my entire body with its intensity. For the space between one heartbeat and the next, all I could think of was Raphael — the strength of the arm beneath my fingertips, the warmth of his flesh. The lab, the women we’d rescued, the Reptilians, my mother…all of that was washed away, replaced only by him.

  His dark eyes met mine, despairing. Behind that despair, however, was a certain resignation. He’d known this moment would come, and had dreaded it.

  And then I didn’t have time to think anymore, because once again the white light came up and surrounded us, blazing through our bodies, taking us away from the Reptilians and their base.

  But it couldn’t burn away the knowledge of what I’d just seen.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I heard my father’s voice, saying, “What happened?”

  I shook away the tingling after-effects of the energy-jump, but it wasn’t so easy to shake off the way I’d reacted to Raphael’s touch. Somehow the jump had separated us, thank God; he was standing a few feet away when the real world solidified around me.

  Or maybe he’d done that on purpose as soon as he reached the bridge of his ship.

  Logan lay on the floor, my father kneeling next to him. The two women we’d just saved from the Reptilians looked on, still a little wavery. Well, I supposed they could be excused for feeling somewhat off after being taken captive by aliens and then suddenly whisked away by a beam of light right before they were due to suffer a fate worse than death.

  “I’ll take him to the medi-bay,” Raphael said. He wasn’t looking at me. Just as well, because I needed a chance to recover from what I’d just experienced.

  My father nodded, then handed Raphael the opal stone in its silvery housing. As soon as Raphael had it in his hand, he bent over Logan, the two of them disappearing in a flash of white light.

  “Is someone going to tell us what the hell is going on?” came a man’s voice, and I looked up to see Commander Cruz approaching, the other three men in his crew directly behind him. As they came closer, both Alexis Cheng and Marta Levin appeared visibly relieved, stepping away from us so they could be with the rest of their fellow astronauts.

  Judging by Cruz’s angry tone, I got the feeling that my father hadn’t spent the time alone with them here giving them a briefing. He got to his feet and faced them, but not before sending both my mother and me a quick, appraising look, as if he wanted to make sure that we hadn’t suffered any harm while down at the aliens’ base.

  I was glad he didn’t have time for more than that one swift glance, though, because I really didn’t want him to take a close look at my face. Right then I was feeling more than a little shell-shocked. My body still seemed to thrum with the resonance of Raphael’s touch.

  “You’re safe,” my father said, his voice as soothing and friendly as only he could make it. I’d be lying if I said that particular tone hadn’t driven me nuts a few times during high school, but it seemed to be having the desired effect right now. Commander Cruz didn’t back away, but something in the tense set of his jaw seemed to relax slightly. “I know this is a lot to take in,” my father went on. “But please believe we only have the safety of you and your crew in mind. As soon as our own crew-member is stabilized, we’ll return you to your ship and make sure you’re headed safely home.”

  “That’s not possible,” Leung — whose first name I recalled right then was Troy — protested. “We weren’t set to go home for six more months. The positions of the planets are all wrong. We won’t have a window until those six months have passed.”

  “It’s not a problem,” my father replied. “It will be taken care of.”

  A long silence, during which the members of the Mars mission crew gave one another some very pointed looks. Even Alexis Cheng and Marta Levin looked disconcerted. I could tell that whatever the Reptilians had given them was wearing off, because the two women’s eyes grew clearer and sharper with every passing second, which meant they probably intended to start asking questions at any moment as well.

  Then Gonzalo Cruz asked, “Who are you people?”

  “Friends,” my mother told him.

  Cruz shook his head and opened his mouth to reply, but was forestalled by Raphael’s reappearance. At least this time he walked onto the bridge — or whatever it was — more or less normally, rather than appearing in a flash of light. The men and women facing him didn’t look particularly reassured, however.

  Ignoring them, he addressed his first words to my parents and me. “Logan is resting, and is out of danger. He will need to remain in the pod for some twenty-four of your hours for the healing process to be complete.”

  Relief rushed through me, although I still wasn’t looking forward to telling Grace what had happened to her lover. Not that my parents would even allow me to take on that task. Yes, Grace and I were cousins, but they were her aunt and uncle, and Logan had been wounded on their watch.

  Then Raphael turned toward the assembled group from the Mars mission. I was glad he did so, because that meant he was looking at them and not me. All the same, it was harder than I thought it would be to direct my attention anywhere other than his rear end in that form-fitting jumpsuit.

  “We are friends,” he said. “Unfortunately
, I cannot say more than that. You’ve all had a narrow escape, but you will return safely to your home world.”

  Marta Levin stepped forward then. I’d never been that good at guessing people’s ages, partially because my own parents were so damn ageless-looking, but I thought she might be in her late thirties, attractive and fair-haired and now beginning to return to a self-assurance that in most cases was probably second nature to her. “And who were they?” she asked, with a small tilt of her head toward the reddish disk of Mars that filled the view-screens.

  “Enemies,” Raphael said shortly. “That is all you need to know.” His eyes narrowed as he appeared to take in the way the third male crew-member, the one whose name I still couldn’t recall, although he had an American flag patch on his jumpsuit, glanced away and seemed overly interested in a single point on the shining metal floor. “But I would hazard a guess that some of you know more than you wish to reveal.”

  Commander Cruz flickered a suspicious glance at his compatriot. “Anything you want to tell us, McKenzie?”

  The other crewman, who looked to be about the same age as Marta Levin, shook his head. “I have nothing to say, sir.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I suppose you can work that out amongst yourselves,” Raphael said. “In the meantime, we do need to make sure you get safely on your way.” His hand went to the stone at his belt, and before any of us had time to blink or do much of anything else, all of the Mars mission crew had disappeared in another of those flashes of white light.

  “What the hell?” I demanded before I could stop myself.

  Raphael turned back toward us. The merest flicker of those dark eyes toward me, and then he said, tone casual, “It was time they were sent on their way. We could give them no more explanations — or rather, it would have been a waste of time to have done so, considering I have made sure that they would have no recollection of what happened to them after the Reptilians attacked.”

  “Just like that?” my mother asked. She sounded skeptical.

  “Just like that,” he replied. “You may ask your husband to explain the mechanics of the procedure once you are home, but I find such explanations tedious. It’s enough to know that they will all find themselves returned to their own ship, heading back to Earth on a trajectory that will get them there in approximately three months’ time.”

  My eyebrows lifted, even as I pushed down my annoyance at his refusal to explain how he’d altered the astronauts’ memories. “I thought it was a six-month trip.”

  “I may have made some adjustments to make their journey more efficient.”

  I didn’t know why that should have surprised me. After all, the Mars mission might have had some of the world’s greatest minds behind it, but even they weren’t any real match for a civilization thousands of years ahead of them.

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was continuing to engage with Raphael, when really it would have been safer for me to keep my mouth shut until I could get away and process what that micro-burst of desire actually meant. Maybe I just wanted to reassure myself that I could hold it together around him and not arouse my parents’ suspicions. “So somehow you managed to do all that in the blink of an eye, so to speak. What’s to keep the Reptilians from attacking the Mars crew as they travel home?”

  That question made both my parents send questioning glances in Raphael’s direction. Apparently, they’d been wondering the same thing.

  However, he didn’t appear at all disturbed by my query. With no change in inflection, he replied, “The Reptilians attacked Alexis Cheng and her companion because they encroached on the Reptilian base in Planitia Utopia. If her team had landed in a different location, they would most likely have been left to carry out their mission unmolested.”

  “So you’re saying it’s their fault?”

  “Not at all. I am by no means an apologist for the Reptilians. However, they prefer to work in secret whenever possible, and therefore an open attack on your people’s spaceship — unless the Reptilians have no other choice — is not in their best interests.”

  “They weren’t being that secretive back when I had to force them out of Sedona,” my mother said then, her tone sour. A few strands of pale hair, the same shade as mine, had begun to work themselves out of their braid and fall around her face.

  “Actually, they were.” A slight smile touched Raphael’s lips, and I had to force myself not to stare at his mouth, had to keep myself from wondering what those lips would feel like pressed against mine. “I am not saying that they didn’t plan to come out into the open, once they had the upper hand by securing Sedona’s energies for their own use, but until that happened, they did their very best to make sure no one else knew of their existence.”

  My mother crossed her arms. “Their presence there wasn’t that big a secret.”

  To my surprise, it was my father who spoke then, not Raphael. “It wasn’t a big secret to you, or to your sister and Lance and to some of the other members of your MUFON group. But think about how one of your neighbors would have reacted if you’d turned to them while you were in line at the grocery store and asked for their opinion about the alien base hidden out in Secret Canyon.”

  “Okay,” she said, grinning but shaking her head at the same time. “I get it. I would have loved to have seen Mrs. Martinez’s reaction to that one. She already thought I was half-crazy anyway.”

  “So you see,” Raphael put in, “the aliens made their move on Mars because their hand was more or less forced, but I very much doubt they will interfere further.” He stopped then, appearing to decide whether or not he should say anything else. I thought I saw the faintest lift of his shoulders before he added, “If they do, they know they will have to answer to the Assembly.”

  “Because that’s always stopped them in the past,” my father remarked, tone dry as an Arizona desert.

  “Perhaps not, but I know my presence with the rescue party will have given them some pause.”

  I could see his point. For whatever reason, Raphael and this “Assembly” he represented seemed to have changed their tune when it came to interfering in human affairs, and so seeing him in their base on Mars had to have been something of a shock for the Reptilians. Maybe that was enough to make those hostile aliens think twice about any kind of retaliation. One could hope, anyway.

  We all fell silent then. By that point, Mars was long gone from the view-screens. The star field shifted around us, but I had no idea how fast we must be traveling, only that it was fast enough to get us home in less than a couple of hours.

  I let out a sigh, but a small one that no one else would be able to notice. Raphael had said Logan was on the mend, but I knew we still had a rough few hours ahead of us.

  Going home wasn’t going to be easy.

  * * *

  “Where is he?” Grace demanded as soon as we appeared in the family room at my Aunt Kara’s house. Everyone was still congregated there, and as my eyes strayed to the old-fashioned wooden clock on the mantel, I realized that only a little more than three hours had passed since we left. It was now a hair after midnight. Strange how your life could change in such a short amount of time.

  Raphael said calmly, “He was injured. But he is healing now in the medi-bay on board my ship. He — ”

  “Take me to him,” she cut in. Her blue eyes flashed. I knew when my cousin Grace got that look on her face, you might as well give in then and there.

  But apparently Raphael hadn’t gotten that particular memo. “He is resting. He will not know you are there. It is better for you to wait until the healing process is complete, and then he will be able to rejoin you here in Sedona.”

  “I don’t care. I want to see him now. Got it?”

  “Might as well do as she says,” my Uncle Lance drawled. He’d been sitting next to my aunt on one of the couches, but he got up then. “Unless you think standing here and arguing about it is easier than just letting her see the man.”

  For a few seconds, Ra
phael hesitated, his gaze sweeping the room. But he had to have realized that everyone was pretty firmly on Grace’s side — the Olivers looked concerned, my cousin Kelsey almost eager, as if she knew that all the exciting things happened to everyone else, and so she might as well just sit back and watch the show. And of course my aunt and uncle were going to side with their daughter.

  “Very well,” Raphael said at last. To his credit, he sounded only slightly grudging. “If it is your wish to sit there and watch him sleep for the next twenty-two of your hours, so be it.”

  “It is my wish.”

  “Well, then.”

  He came up to her, and without saying anything else, laid his hand on the opal jewel at his hip. The two of them immediately vanished, and a collective gasp swept through the room, even though everyone there had to have seen Raphael and my parents and me do more or less the same thing only a few hours earlier. I got the distinct impression that he’d initiated such a precipitous departure because he was annoyed with Grace and didn’t intend to give her the courtesy of any kind of mental preparation.

  With the two of them gone, everyone more or less pounced on my parents.

  “What happened?”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Are the astronauts safe?”

  My father held up a hand. “Yes, they’re safe. They’re on their way home.”

  “That’s not possible,” both Paul and Michael Oliver said at more or less the same time. Trust the two scientists to seize on the impossibility of my father’s reply.

  My parents exchanged a weary smile. “It’s possible if you’re dealing with a highly advanced civilization,” my mother told them. “Not that I pretend to understand any of it myself. But hasn’t there been anything on the news?”

  It was Paul’s turn to offer a tired smile. “Of course there hasn’t. If what you say is true, and Raphael and his people have somehow managed to work it so the astronauts can come back entirely off-schedule and not run out of fuel, then I have a feeling that the spin doctors are in the process of coming up with some sort of plausible story that can deflect the inevitable questions. Which won’t be easy.”