sedona files - books one to three

by Christine Pope

  Then I grabbed my suitcase and hurried out the door.

  Michael’s old El Camino was slow to start, and I worried whether we were going to end up having to call a cab to get us to Sinagua Plaza or something. But eventually it coughed and turned over, and he backed out of the driveway with care, as if worried that going over a bump too fast would knock loose a vital piece of wiring and strand us on the road on the way to uptown.

  Saturday afternoons were always busy along the main drag, and today was no exception. We pulled into the structure behind Sinagua with barely five minutes to spare, and caught up with Lance in front of the Crystal Vortex shop. He looked annoyed, which I supposed he had every right to be.

  All he said, though, was, “Let’s go,” and picked up his own rucksack and hurried down the street toward the Jeep tour company’s storefront.

  If the driver was a little surprised to see the three of us appear with various bags and suitcases in hand, he didn’t show it. He was probably about four or five years older than I was, but I didn’t know him. Not all the tour guides were locals. With a quick grin he showed us where to stow our bags so they wouldn’t get in the way of the other passengers — the Jeep seated six — and then started up the vehicle and headed us back out west, toward Boynton Canyon and the Enchantment Resort.

  As we drove, I could feel the pressure building all around me, almost like the one and only time I went up in a jet and could not get my ears to pop, no matter what I did. And of course I couldn’t let any of what I was feeling show in my expression. No, I had to pretend to ooh and ah over local sights I’d seen a thousand times before, all while gripping the seat cushion beneath me and praying that I wouldn’t get sick.

  At last we made it to the Enchantment Resort, where we all got off. Normally the tour stopped here for a brief spell so people could stretch their legs and get a drink or whatever before driving back into town, but this was our final destination. The tour guide did look startled when we said we were going to be staying, but Lance just made a brief comment about taking another tour bus into town earlier today, and the guide let it drop. Sedona was the sort of place where you had to learn to roll with the punches.

  Check-in went smoothly enough, with Michael and me hanging back while Lance took care of the paperwork. The “rooms” at the resort weren’t really rooms, but small suites in freestanding buildings. Ours was at the edge of the property — by design, I was sure. And if the bellhop thought that Lance, Michael, and I made an odd group to be sharing one of the suites, well, he kept his thoughts to himself as he accepted the folded twenty Lance handed him.

  “So,” I said, after Lance shut the door behind the bellhop, and we were alone again. “What now?”

  “We wait,” he replied.

  “I’ve been doing an awful lot of that today,” I told him, and he shrugged.

  “Well, get ready to do some more. Earliest we should head out is around two-thirty. We’ll get some room service in a while. If you can sleep, that might be a good idea.”

  I didn’t think that was a good idea at all. Some of the pressure on my head had eased as I became acclimated to the mounting negative energies in the canyon, but that didn’t mean I was going to risk sleeping here. Not after what had happened the night before.

  Lance pulled out a bulky-looking device that turned out to be a satellite phone. “No regular cell reception back here,” he explained. “I have this so Paul can keep in touch. He’s running point. I want him and Persephone and Kara and the baby to go to Michael’s where it’s safer.”

  That made sense. Although if the worst did happen, how long could the sheltering strength of the creek protect any of them?

  I didn’t say that, though. I sort of nodded and picked up the room service menu, scanning the offerings, wondering if I’d be able to choke any of them down past the mounting queasiness within me. Michael settled himself in a chair, pulled a book out of his duffel bag, and perched a pair of cheap dollar-store reading glasses on his nose. I almost laughed, the sight was so incongruous, but then I realized he was reading the Bible, and I sobered up real fast.

  Lance took the satellite phone into the bathroom with him and shut the door. Most likely he wanted some privacy so he could talk to Kara without being overheard, but for some reason his actions still annoyed me. Shouldn’t we be out here making plans? Or maybe he knew exactly what he wanted to do, and just expected us to follow orders when the time came.

  Following orders might not be so bad. At least that way I wouldn’t have to think.

  I climbed onto one of the beds and took the TV remote from the nightstand. Michael looked up briefly as I started flipping through the channels, and I almost thought he was going to tell me to turn the TV off again. Then he gave the smallest of nods, as if understanding that I needed the sound from the television the same way he needed the words of the book he held.

  For comfort…for strength…for something to blot out the echoing, fearful voices inside our heads.

  At length Lance came out from the bathroom, and shot a contemptuous glance at the TV. I sucked in a breath, readying myself for an argument with him over whether it should be on or not, but he only picked up the room service menu from where I’d dropped it at the foot of the bed and scanned it briefly.

  “Have you picked out something? Because we might as well call it in.”

  I hadn’t, but I took the menu from him anyway. “Chicken sandwich,” I said listlessly, since it seemed the most likely to stay put in my stomach where I needed it.

  Lance’s gaze sharpened at my tone, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Same for me,” Michael put in, and returned his attention to his book.

  And that was that. Lance made the call, and we waited some more. Rather, I waited, staring at the TV with the sound lowered so Lance could have a lengthy convo with Paul about standing by, and how to follow the creek down through Red Rock Crossing if necessary, to some sort of hidey spot Lance knew about but I’d never heard of. I didn’t bother to tell him that was all an exercise in futility. If we failed, everyone else would be dead almost immediately.

  The food came and I choked it down, wishing we’d ordered some wine, knowing that wasn’t a good idea at all. And then I actually did doze, slipping in and out of the upper ranges of sleep, jerking awake whenever I felt myself beginning to go too deep. Michael did sleep, still sitting up in his chair, Bible spread open across his chest. I wondered which chapter he’d been reading, and what it meant to him.

  Then I felt Lance’s hand on my ankle, and my eyes flew open, fleeing the hazy edges of slumber.

  “It’s time,” he said quietly.

  My heart began to pound in my chest, but I nodded and pushed myself off the bed. Michael set down his Bible and reached for his heavy sheepskin coat, buttoning it up, settling a multicolored scarf worthy of Doctor Who around his neck.

  I went and pulled on my boots, which I had discarded earlier, and got my own coat and scarf. All this I did numbly, almost without thinking. It was probably better if I didn’t think too hard. Finally I got out my blue knitted cap and jammed it on my head, just as Lance pulled a pair of 9mm pistols out of his rucksack and stowed them away on his person.

  “You really think guns are going to help?” I asked.

  He didn’t look at me as he slipped several spare clips into his coat pockets. “Never hurts to be prepared. It might be enough to slow them down. Sometimes seconds can make all the difference.”

  Maybe that was true. I’d never been in combat; he had.

  Without replying, I pulled on my gloves. For some reason I grabbed my wallet out of my purse and jammed it in my back pocket. Stupid, of course. It wasn’t as if the aliens were going to check my I.D.

  They already knew who I was.

  None of us said anything as we slipped out the door and headed across the resort’s grounds. The pathways were set off by low-slung landscape lights, and we followed these for a ways. I realized Lance wasn’t heading back toward the front
gate, where there was a guard on duty, presumably twenty-four/seven. No, we were taking a roundabout route to the northeast, and eventually through what looked to be a service gate. It was locked, but Lance pulled out a set of lock picks and quietly and efficiently had the lock off the gate in less than two minutes.

  Despite myself, I was impressed, and vowed to wheedle him into showing me how to do that…if, of course, we were around after tonight to even worry about picking locks.

  The moon was still out, casting a light bright enough that it was easier than I’d thought it would be to pick our way over the rough ground, around junipers and patches of manzanita and cactus, to avoid the larger rocks, although here and there I slipped on scree and found myself very, very glad that my boots had such a sturdy tread. And all the while we were edging closer to the vortex.

  I could feel it as we approached, its energies sparking and sizzling. Mixed, though, just like the vortex at Cathedral Rock, currents swirling around one another in patterns as elegant and complex as a twisting helix of DNA.

  Lance made a chopping motion with one hand, apparently indicating for Michael and me to huddle behind a particularly large boulder as he slipped, insubstantial and fleeting as a moon shadow, from shrub to shrub, maintaining his cover with a skill I knew I’d never be able to match. I held my breath, clinging to Michael’s hand, waiting for the inevitable confrontation.

  And waiting, and waiting…

  And then I realized something was horribly, terribly wrong, just as Lance stopped in the center of the knoll that was supposed to be the nexus of the vortex energy. No one came to confront him, or seize him.

  The aliens weren’t here.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Michael and I emerged from our hiding place and went to stand next to Lance. Even as I did so, I wondered if it were some kind of trap, if the aliens were still hiding because they didn’t care about Lance — I was the one they wanted.

  But even as I paused a foot or so away from Lance and gazed around in bewilderment, I somehow knew that was not the case. This place was deserted.

  “What the hell?” Lance looked from side to side angrily, as if the aliens had somehow let him down by not being where they were supposed to be.

  Even Michael, the usually imperturbable, frowned, then stared up at the sky. Clouds were beginning to drift into the area, hiding the stars, making the scene around me somehow more indistinct, more surreal.

  The icy night air made itself felt then, finding its way past my warm wool coat, the scarf I had wound around my throat, my fuzzy hat. Or maybe the chills going up and down my spine had nothing to do with the temperature outside.

  How could I have been so wrong? This was the vortex closest to the aliens’ base. This was supposed to be where they would make their move. I knew they couldn’t have abandoned their plans. Everything I had seen and felt told me this was the place, the night, the time.

  Or almost the time. We’d given ourselves a little padding; I pushed up my coat sleeve so I could squint at my watch in the uncertain starlight. Two minutes after four. Twelve minutes until the apocalypse.

  “Talk to me, Kirsten,” Lance said, the words gritting themselves past clenched teeth. He was wound up very, very tight.

  Not that I could blame him.

  “I don’t get it,” I replied, my tone wild, breathy. “This is the vortex next to their base. They should be here. It’s the safest place for them to work, so they don’t reveal themselves…” And my sentence trailed off as a sudden, horrible idea came to me.

  “What is it?” Michael asked. “What are you thinking?”

  The words came pouring out of me, as if prompted by a sense of intuition I didn’t even know I had. “We — I — just assumed the aliens would come here, because all this time they’ve worked so hard to conceal themselves, to make sure as few people as possible knew anything about them or what they’ve been doing here. But it’s make-or-break time tonight. They don’t care if anyone sees them, because in their minds they’re going to wipe out the entire population. So they’re not going to go for the safest place — they’re going to go to the most powerful place.” And I faltered then, recalling what Martin had said to me only a few days earlier.

  Courthouse Butte is the strongest vortex in Sedona…

  Oh, my God.

  I swallowed, fighting the dryness in my throat. “I know where they are.”

  “Where?” Lance demanded, eyes piercing silver in the moonlight.

  “C-Courthouse.”

  He didn’t blink, but he did say, distinctly and viciously, “Fuck.”

  I knew exactly how he felt. Courthouse Butte was approximately eight miles from where we now stood. Even if we were in the parking lot of Enchantment and not stuck out on a hillside about a half-hour’s walk from the resort’s boundary, there was no way we could drive all the way back through town and reach the butte in time, let alone climb up it to reach the vortex. No one climbed to the top of that formation; it was too difficult.

  We’d lost.

  Maybe this would have been the time to fall to my knees, scream at the universe for its capriciousness, tear my hair and sob. For some reason, though, all I could do was stand there and stare at Lance and Michael, at the fury on the face of one, the resignation on the face of the other. My whole body was still, freezing, calm. If someone had touched me in that moment, I would have shattered into a million pieces of ice.

  And then it seemed as if the moon was falling on us, a white glow bathing the knoll where we stood, illuminating Lance’s strained features, Michael’s dark, sad eyes. Which wasn’t right, because there was no moon on this, the darkest night my world had ever seen.

  Out of that glow stepped a figure in flowing black robes.

  No.

  My eyes adjusted, and I saw Martin standing there, his long wool overcoat blowing in the wind. Blue eyes caught mine, and held.

  “There’s still time,” he said.

  I could only stare at him, not sure I believed what I saw. Not the manner of his arrival — I knew he wasn’t human, so the concept of him materializing out of a pool of nonexistent moonlight didn’t seem that strange. But the fact that he was there at all.

  “Kirsten.” His voice was firm, calm. “We have to go. Now.”

  The words tore themselves from me. “You left! Where were you?”

  Lips tightening, he said, “We don’t have time for this now. Please. We must go.” His gaze flickered past me to Lance and Michael, who were staring at him as if they couldn’t believe the evidence of their eyes. “All of us.”

  And I realized he was right — we didn’t have time. The recriminations would have to wait. “But how?”

  In answer he extended his hands. I took the right, while, coming to him almost in a daze, Lance and Michael gripped his left. Light enveloped us. I shut my eyes, worried that the brilliant glare would blind me, and Boynton Canyon disappeared, pulling away in a rush of wind stronger than anything I had ever felt before.

  My feet hit rock, and I stumbled. I opened my eyes, and saw that we stood on the windswept heights of Courthouse Butte. Thunder rumbled off to my left, coming closer. Wilder, stronger than the approaching storm were the vertical columns of energy all around me, shimmering in the night air, something about them feeling somehow wrong, the edges of their luminosity shading red, not white-gold, the way every other upflow vortex I’d ever experienced had been.

  We weren’t alone.

  I barely had time to register the shapes of our enemies, a blotch of darker black against the Stygian skies. Barely had time to see the glow of red eyes focusing on me before I felt the piercing edge of his will running through me, baleful and inhuman as the stare of a dragon.

  A scream tore itself from my lips, and at the same time the energies of the vortex were somehow warped and twisted, hurled at me like Zeus’s lightning bolt of old. From somewhere I heard Michael shout, “No!” even as he threw himself in front of me, pushing me to the cold, rocky ground, the red-ting
ed light enveloping him, tossing him backward like a rag doll, his large body falling limp and lifeless, dark eyes glassy and empty.

  Martin’s voice then, urgent. Shield yourself, Kirsten! Now!

  And through my agony and sorrow I reached inward to summon the white-gold light that had sheltered me before, pulling it around me, not like a blanket this time, but as a shield, armor to defend me from my attackers. Just in time, because the alien leader threw another of those energy bolts at me, only to have it bounce off my cocoon of golden light, dispersing harmlessly to all sides.

  No words then, just a sense of Martin’s approval, his encouragement. I pushed myself to my feet, choking back tears, forcing myself not to look at the body of the man who was the closest thing to an uncle I’d ever had.

  A snarl, and the ranks of the aliens began moving toward us, obviously intending to do by physical force what their leader hadn’t accomplished by using the vortex against me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lance pull out a pistol and fire, dropping one alien soldier, then another, calmly picking them off like targets lined up at the range. At first I wondered why they weren’t shooting back with whatever weapons they had, but then I realized the golden light bathed Lance as well, and Martin, too, and somehow I knew the aliens were shooting, but their bullets or energy bolts or whatever they used weren’t making it through the shield I’d created.

  They’re trying to distract you, Martin breathed into my mind. The time has come. You have to stop him.

  And I felt it then, a sensation almost as if the world had stopped to catch its breath, and I realized the solstice was upon us, the tipping point at which the planet balanced before falling back toward the light. I knew it was in the darkness of this moment that the alien leader would make his move.

  I had to stop him, but I hesitated, looking at Lance, looking at how the light I’d conjured was somehow protecting him. If I left, moved to stop my foe, wouldn’t I be leaving him vulnerable?