sedona files - books one to three

by Christine Pope

  “You were…involved?”

  “No.”

  Grayson’s expression brightened a little, and Kara spoke quickly, not wanting to feed him any false hope. “That is, we weren’t. I — wanted to. But — ”

  “But?”

  “But I didn’t ever think there would be anything between us. So I tried really hard not to think about him that way.”

  “And I was…what? The consolation prize?”

  She wondered how he, a hybrid grown by aliens in a lab, could even know what a consolation prize was. Then again, how had he known how to repair the Indian, or to kiss her, or…

  That line of thought was dangerous. Kara pushed it away. “No, of course not. I was attracted to you. We had a wonderful time together. I thought things could be really good between us. But…” And she let the words trail off, because she didn’t know how to say it without it sounding dreadful, without intimating that yes, he was her second choice, since the wish of her heart had been denied her.

  “But you loved him first.” To her surprise, there was no condemnation in those words. Grayson had spoken them slowly, thoughtfully, as if turning over the concept in his mind, trying to familiarize himself with it.

  No point in trying to deny it. “Yes. I’ve loved him for a very long time. I just didn’t think he felt the same way.”

  “So what changed?”

  “He stopped trying to run away from it, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know why. We haven’t had much of a chance to discuss it. But I wanted you to know that what’s changed between you and me isn’t because of what — of who — you are. It’s because of what’s between Lance and me.”

  Silence again, as Grayson appeared to absorb this statement. Then he said, “Thank you, Kara.”

  Startled, she stared down at him. “For what?”

  “For being honest. For treating me like a person.”

  “You are a person,” she said softly. “You’re a wonderful person.”

  His mouth tightened. Abruptly, he stood. “They’re here. Guess we’d better go in.”

  And he moved to the French doors that separated the little arbor from the living room and went inside.

  Kara hesitated, then squared her shoulders and followed him into the house.

  * * *

  Lance tried to ignore the pang of jealousy that went through him as he saw Grayson come in from the patio, followed immediately by Kara. Did the guy have to look quite so much like an underwear model?

  But her gaze caught his, and she smiled slightly and nodded, as if to tell him it was all right. Obviously whatever she’d told Grayson hadn’t been good news for the hybrid; he looked as if someone had just stolen his dog.

  But Lance didn’t have much time to think about the hybrid’s feelings, because Persephone and Paul were urging everyone to come into the dining room. Michael, who as usual had hitched a ride with Lance, looked from Kara to him and back again, then nodded, as if confirming something he’d already suspected.

  They arranged themselves around the dining room table, Paul at the head and Persephone at his right, with Michael taking the seat at the foot. Somehow Kara ended up across from Lance, with Grayson next to her. Lance wasn’t too thrilled with that arrangement, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. There were two seats remaining, one on his left and the other on Kara’s right, presumably for whenever Jeff and Kiki showed up.

  Persephone, playing hostess, had a grouping of pitchers on the sideboard for everyone. “There’s iced tea and water and lemonade,” she said. “I suggested a pitcher of margaritas, but Paul voted me down.” She shot a mock-angry glare in Paul’s direction, and he just grinned.

  “I figured this was going to be tough enough without getting sauced into the bargain.”

  “True. So let me get your drink orders before we get started.”

  That took up a few minutes, with Paul and Michael opting for lemonade, and Lance and Kara taking iced tea, and Grayson murmuring that he just wanted water. Then everyone settled back in with their respective drinks, and an uneasy silence fell.

  Lance was willing to wait it out. This had been Paul and Persephone’s idea, so let them take the lead. And it seemed they’d come to the same conclusion, because once they’d exchanged a glance, Persephone nodded, as if giving Paul the go-ahead to get things started.

  “Okay, then,” he said, after taking a drink of his iced tea and looked briefly regretful that he’d denied Persephone her margaritas, “we figured the best thing to do would be for all of us to sit down and try to hash out exactly what’s been going on, try to get everyone more or less up to date. Maybe then we can begin to decide on our next course of action. Kara, why don’t you go first?”

  She started, and for a second her deep blue eyes met Lance’s, wide and more than a little worried. Obviously she hadn’t expected to be called on the carpet first. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring nod. What he really wanted was to be the one sitting next to her, so he could take her hand in his and lend her some of his strength, but that wasn’t going to happen. Besides, the group already had enough to talk about as it was; he really didn’t feel like going into the change in his and Kara’s relationship. That would be out in the open soon enough, if he knew anything about how this group operated, but that didn’t mean he had to push it.

  After fortifying herself with a sip of iced tea, Kara said, “Well, I was out walking Gort last Wednesday…” From there she explained how she’d come home and found Grayson lying in her living room, how she’d revived him and given him a place to stay, tried to help him recover some of his memories. She didn’t go into a huge amount of detail — obviously she didn’t want give too many particulars as to how her relationship with Grayson had progressed — but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.

  As she finished her little speech, Persephone stepped in right away, as if she could feel all of Kara’s embarrassment, her continuing worry that she’d been a fool to take in Grayson the way she had. “Something’s been bothering me — ”

  “Just something?” Lance drawled, and Persephone shot him an irritated look even as Paul appeared to smother a grin.

  “One thing in particular.” She turned toward Grayson. “Your eyes.”

  “My what?” he replied, obviously startled. That was probably one of the last things he’d thought she would mention.

  “It’s been nagging at me, but it hit me this morning, when I could see you in clearer light. Your eyes are green.”

  He hitched his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable being the center of attention. “So?”

  “All the hybrids’ eyes were dark. I remember that very clearly. So if Grayson is supposedly genetically identical to all those other hybrids, how can his eyes be a different color?”

  Good question. Kara frowned as she appeared to ponder the question, while Paul leaned back in his seat a little, tapping his chin. All he needed was his beloved tweed sport coat, and he could have been back in a university office somewhere, pondering a particularly thorny question some grad student had just posed him. But, for better or worse, Paul’s days as a professor were long gone.

  Michael had been quiet this whole time, absorbing everything everyone had said, but he sat up a little straighter and remarked, “I think it’s something you did to him, Persephone.”

  “I — what?” The psychic glanced from Grayson to Michael, and then over at Paul, as if seeking some reassurance from her husband that Michael didn’t know what he was talking about. “How could I change the color of someone’s eyes? Well, without just handing him a pair of colored contacts or something, that is.”

  Not even a blink. “How could you wipe out an entire base full of hybrids and infected humans? If someone had asked you before it happened whether you were capable of something like that, you would have said no. And you would have been wrong.”

  Another one of those uncomfortable silences fell. Grayson was frowning, as if trying to process what Michael had said. Now
he looked like a perturbed underwear model, and once again Lance found himself wishing that he’d figured out a way to sit next to Kara, instead of her being in the chair beside that — well, whatever he was.

  In the middle of this the doorbell rang, and everyone started. Well, the Olivers and Kara and Grayson jumped a little. It would take a lot more than that to unsettle Lance, and Michael remained stoic as always, as if he had been expecting the doorbell to ring all along.

  Who knows — maybe he had.

  Persephone glanced at her watch. “I’ll bet that’s Kiki and Jeff. Let me go let them in.”

  She got up and hurried away from the table, leaving the rest of them to wait. A little smile touched Kara’s lips as she apparently heard Kiki’s breathless voice from the hallway: “Hope we haven’t missed too much. Jeff dragged me into the van at, like, five-thirty or something, and I hope you have something with caffeine in it — ”

  Persephone assured her that she did as the trio entered the dining room, Jeff lagging a little bit behind. Something about the hacker looked different to Lance, and he scowled a little, trying to figure out what it was. Different haircut? He appeared as if he’d actually shaved, but it was something more than that. Oh, well. Jeff Makowski’s personal grooming habits really weren’t the issue of the day.

  Kiki helped herself to some tea, and Jeff got water, before they took their respective seats. The hacker plunked himself down on Lance’s left, while Kiki pulled out the chair next to her sister. “Okay,” she announced, “we’re here. So what did we miss?”

  Lance replied, “You mean besides your sister’s houseguest turning out to be a hybrid soldier from the base in Secret Canyon?”

  Even as Kiki’s cornflower-blue eyes — a few shades lighter than Kara’s — opened wide, Persephone said hastily, “That’s the main gist of it. But until a short time ago he didn’t remember anything of who he was or where he came from, so we’re trying to figure out how that could have happened.”

  Michael folded his hands on the tabletop. Even a quarter-century after losing his wife, he still wore a plain silver band on his left ring finger. “It was Persephone.”

  Everyone’s head swiveled toward the psychic, and Lance, who had sparred with her on more than one occasion, couldn’t help feeling a slight stab of pity for the woman. She looked both perplexed and embarrassed, as if caught in some transgression she really couldn’t explain.

  “Care to elaborate?” Paul leaned forward, eyes keen. In that moment he looked far more like a scientist on the trail of some tantalizing piece of evidence than a man trying to defend his wife.

  Michael appeared serene and untroubled, as if he were conducting one of his medicine wheel ceremonies instead of explaining how one slight woman could single-handedly knock out a whole base full of hybrid soldiers and alien-possessed humans. “Well, not Persephone completely, but the force of Gaia working through her.”

  Trust Michael to come up with some mumbo-jumbo New Age–sounding explanation. Lance tried not to snort and was only partway successful, instead producing a sickly sounding cough, which he tried to hide by drinking some more iced tea. Kara lifted an eyebrow at him but said nothing, while Kiki’s mouth dropped open a little. Next to him, Jeff breathed something that sounded suspiciously like “bullshit,” but the word didn’t come out loud enough for anyone to call him on it.

  “Gaia working through me,” Persephone said, her tone flat.

  “It may sound crazy, but I think that’s exactly what happened. You felt it when you came here, down by the creek. Our world senses these intruders, doesn’t want them here any more than we do. So she used Persephone as a conduit.”

  From across the table Kara shot Lance a quick “do you really believe this stuff?” sort of look. He felt his mouth twitch slightly in reply, but he tried to keep his expression impassive. Michael had some kooky ideas, true. That didn’t mean his instincts weren’t scarily accurate most of the time.

  “And so when I channeled this energy, it…what? Changed Grayson’s eye color, just for shits and grins?”

  That was one thing about Persephone — she didn’t hold back. At the moment she was staring at Michael with her arms crossed, eyebrows slightly raised.

  “I doubt that was the real reason.” The shaman unclasped his hands and spread them wide, as if to indicate that he understood her disbelief. “There must have been something about Grayson, some small difference, that made him react to the energy differently.”

  “A sport,” Paul murmured absently.

  Kiki turned toward him. “A what?”

  “An organism markedly different from its parents, or, in this case, the stock it came from.”

  Persephone made a throat-clearing noise, and Paul added quickly, “I mean, the stock he came from.”

  Grayson shrugged, looking as if he was past caring which words people used to describe him. For a second or two, Lance almost felt sorry for the guy. It wasn’t his fault he’d been grown in a lab.

  “So because Grayson is different somehow from the other hybrids…” Persephone began.

  “…The rush of power that came from you — or from Gaia — didn’t affect him the same way,” Paul finished. He glanced over at Michael, as if for confirmation.

  Michael nodded. “I can’t speculate on exactly how it happened. But something allowed him to survive that blast of power, and at the same time wiped his memories clean.”

  For the first time Grayson spoke. His brow was knotted. He looked as if he was trying to digest what had just been said. “Maybe that’s true. I still don’t remember a lot. But when my memories were wiped — why didn’t I lose everything? Or, more specifically, why is it I know how to ride a motorcycle, or jet a carburetor — or hell, even talk and tie my shoes?”

  That was a good one. Everyone looked over at Michael, who regarded them all with that same imperturbable expression. Talk about your great stone face…

  “I can’t say for sure. Maybe something about that same blast of power opened his mind to the world around him, let him absorb knowledge that he’d never been exposed to during his time at the Secret Canyon base. He became a conduit as well, but for human experience instead of the earth mother’s power. I don’t know. Only the mother knows, and she’s not telling me.”

  Next to Lance, Jeff moved abruptly in his chair, as if made uneasy by all this talk of earth mothers and powers and conduits. Lance couldn’t really blame him; even though he’d had his own experiences with what some people might call extra-sensory abilities, he’d never had much use for all the talk of earth spirits and vortexes and channels that drifted around Sedona like the cottonwood fluff blown on the town’s air currents. But something weird had happened, and since Michael was the only one who seemed able to put together any kind of a theory, Lance would go with it for now. It didn’t change the fact that aliens still occupied the base in Secret Canyon…and that they were probably still looking for their one lost soldier.

  “Fine and good,” he said, and everyone looked in his direction. All the swiveling heads reminded Lance of spectators at a tennis match. “But unless the earth mother is going to butt in again and drop a tactical nuke on Secret Canyon or something, we’re the ones who have to figure out what to do next. Ideas?”

  The silence that followed this pronouncement would have been absolute if it weren’t for the soft hum of the A/C in the background. Lance hadn’t expected much, but still it was a little disconcerting to have them all staring at him as if he was supposed to be the one to come up with the plan to save everyone’s asses.

  “We should do some reconnoitering — “ Kiki began, and he sent her a quelling look.

  “In what, the Scooby van? I don’t think so. They’re watching all of us.”

  “Not just the aliens, either,” Kara put in. “Let’s not forget our friendly neighborhood men in black. I bumped into one of them again today on the way over here.”

  “You what?” Lance demanded, his tone sharper than he had intended. “Were you
going to mention this any time soon?”

  “I am mentioning it. Besides, he didn’t have much to say. Still, it’s pretty clear they’re watching my comings and goings…and if they’re watching me, they’re most likely watching the rest of you, too.”

  No one bothered to deny it. Kiki looked as if she wanted to, but after getting the stink-eye from Jeff she shut her mouth without saying anything.

  “But not me,” Grayson said.

  Kara shifted in her seat, an expression of dawning consternation spreading across her features as she seemed to process what he’d meant by that statement. “Oh, no, you don’t — ”

  He ignored her, saying, “They’re looking for me, true, but they don’t know where I am. If you can get me inside, what am I then? Just another one of a hundred men who look just like me.”

  Everyone was silent, apparently processing Grayson’s offer. It did make sense, but Lance wasn’t about to voice his agreement, not when Kara might think he had a vested interest in making sure the hybrid was safely out of the way.

  Finally Paul spoke. “I guess Grayson is going to need some contact lenses after all….”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  They couldn’t be serious. They couldn’t really be thinking of letting Grayson walk back into that place, into a base filled with inimical alien presences, back to the creatures who’d been hunting him for months.

  Her mouth was dry. Kara made herself drink some of her tea before she said, “This is nuts, and you know it.”

  Grayson wouldn’t look at her. His gaze seemed to be fixed on something outside the French doors as he said, “Well, it’s probably the last place where they’d be looking for me.”

  “He’s right,” Jeff put in. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone slipped right into a place like that because the bad guys were so busy looking for threats elsewhere.”

  Kara’s gaze went to Lance, but he was wearing his poker face, and she knew she wouldn’t get any help from that quarter. He was probably kicking himself for not being the one to think up the insane scheme.