Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest

by Christine Pope

  “We have, as much as we can,” Otto replied. His gaze seemed shuttered for a moment, and he went on, “This is not our world, Persephone, and we try to avoid interfering when we can. But when the balance is upset — when other powers in the universe attempt to manipulate things to their own ends — then we will step in. Just a little, and only when no other methods will work. We saw in you a fulcrum, a tipping point. There is a power in you that can change all things.”

  Oh, great, more of that “chosen one” crap. I shook my head. “Otto, I’m just a mediocre psychic. I wouldn’t exactly call me a game-changer.”

  His expression did not change — or maybe because his features were so perfect, I had a more difficult time getting a read on him than I would with someone else. And of course, I could decipher nothing of his emotions. I guessed a being such as he wouldn’t have too much trouble blocking himself off when necessary.

  “You call yourself mediocre because your strengths lie elsewhere than in merely telling fortunes for people with more money than sense. Did you ever wonder why I was your only spirit guide, when many of the other psychics you encountered were in contact with a variety of entities?”

  Only a few hundred times. Mentioning that, however, would probably make it sound as if I was blaming him for my shortcomings. “I just figured it was because I wasn’t a very good psychic.”

  For some reason, I had thought that comment might make him chuckle a bit — the Otto I had known before would have — but he only shook his head. “No, it was because we knew we had to shelter you, keep you away from outside influences. Not all of those on the other planes can be trusted to keep their own counsel, and we knew you had to be protected against this day, so you could follow the path that would lead you to where you are now.”

  “And yet you still keep saying I have free will,” I retorted. “Seems like you did everything in your power to make sure I ended up right here, right now.”

  “No, that’s not it at all.” For the first time, I noticed a shift in his expression, a creasing of the level, expressive brows. “We can see trends, and we can see the most likely flow of temporal events. But every second relies on input from you — or any other living being. Because you are who you are, it seemed more likely than not that you would come to this place. But there was always also a chance that you’d say the hell with it and run off to hide in Mexico.”

  His tone sounded almost rueful, and I fought back a smile. “Okay, so I’m here because I want to be. I find that difficult to believe, but the last few days have been so insane that I’m willing to roll with it. So what next?”

  “You save the world.”

  I’ll get right on that, I wanted to say, but Otto’s expression showed he was not joking. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  He stepped toward me, reached out, and laid one long, pale hand against my forehead. “You trust what’s in here,” he replied. With his other hand, he touched me lightly against my chest, his hand centered over my heart. “And in here. Think of all you have to live for.”

  And then I was falling, dropping out of that bright cloud and back into my body. Flesh surrounded me, closing in on all sides, my heart thundering and the blood thrumming in my veins. Even though my eyes were shut, I saw Paul’s face clearly, every line and shadow as if it were reflected in a mirror, from the bruise around his left eye to the dark traces of stubble along his jaw.

  I had to save him.

  Save myself.

  Save them all.

  The white light returned, but instead of ascending with it, I breathed it in and sent it along every twisting vein and artery, the heatless energy surging over the nano-driven alien virus and swallowing it as if it had never been. No trace left, and I opened my eyes into Raymond Lampson’s altered face.

  He stared at me, still smiling, but the smile began to fade as I rose. The aliens were telepaths, I knew now, who sensed without speaking who was one of theirs and who was still human.

  Human…and possessing a power they had always feared.

  Without thinking, I raised my hand and smacked the palm flat against his forehead, just like a preacher in one of those cheesy revival shows. I didn’t cry out “Heal!” — but I might as well have.

  Raymond stumbled backward, both hands going to his head. A screech that didn’t sound as if it could have emerged from a human throat tore out of him, a keening wail that ripped at my eardrums. And then he collapsed, falling in a heap like a marionette that had just had its strings cut.

  The hybrid guards surged forward, moving toward me. They, unfortunately, were not possessed; their wrongness had been bred into them. I knew I couldn’t defeat them the way I had the alien entity living inside Raymond’s body.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to. Paul lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the legs of the guard nearest him, bringing the hybrid to his knees. So fast I didn’t see exactly how it had happened, he pulled the service revolver out of the guard’s holster and shot him neatly in the back of the head. The other guard reached for his own gun, but Paul popped off another bullet, which went directly into the hybrid’s hand. Human enough to wince, the guard lost a precious second, and that was all it took. His body fell on top of his fallen comrade’s.

  The agent who had been standing behind me launched himself at Paul, but I stuck out a foot and he stumbled, losing his balance even as he scrabbled for the gun tucked into his belt. Paul didn’t even blink, but got off another shot, and the man went down as well.

  “Wow,” I said, as I shakily surveyed the carnage. “I didn’t know you were a crack shot, too.”

  He tucked the gun into his belt, then reached up to tear away the duct tape from his mouth. “You grow up on a ranch shooting cans off fences, you get pretty good.” His expression sobered as he stared across the dead men at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Never been better,” I said cheerfully.

  “But he — you — that is — ”

  “I know.” I reached up to the place on my neck where Raymond had hit me with the syringe, but there wasn’t even a sore spot. “Let’s just say that didn’t work out quite as they’d planned.”

  “I’ll say.” Paul glanced from me to Raymond’s prone form. “What did you do to him?”

  “Same thing I did to myself — call it clearing out the plumbing. He should come around in a little bit.”

  Since I thought I’d better be sure, I crossed the few steps to the spot where Raymond lay, then knelt down next to him and carefully turned him over. His glassy eyes stared up at the rock ceiling overhead.

  “Raymond? Raymond!”

  Nothing. I peered down at him and hoped the situation wouldn’t require me giving him mouth-to-mouth.

  But then I saw his eyelids flutter and his eyes snapped open, staring straight up at me. “Wha — what happened?”

  “The Persephone O’Brien version of an exorcism,” Paul said, coming to stand next to me. “How do you feel?”

  Raymond appeared to consider. “Hung over.”

  “Could be worse.” Paul reached out a hand, and after a few seconds of hesitation, Raymond took it and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet.

  Once upright, he stood rooted in place, blinking blearily at the dead guards and the dead agent on the floor. “Where am I?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked. Maybe once he’d been under the control of the alien intelligence, his own consciousness had been completely submerged.

  Blinking again, he frowned, as if trying to remember. “The lab…the sample…accidentally splashed some on my skin. Then….” He lifted his shoulders. “Where are we?”

  “Secret Canyon, just outside Sedona, Arizona,” I told him. “And a few hundred feet below it.”

  A silence as he appeared to take that in. Then an improbable smile spread across his face. “Cool.”

  “If you say so.” I turned to Paul. “What next?”

  “I should probably be asking you that question.”

 
I supposed he had a point. “Key cards,” I said, and went over to the dead guards and rifled their pockets, then took the card off the agent as well, just in case he had a higher security clearance than they did.

  “Right, for the elevators,” Paul said, the approval clear in his tone.

  If only it was that easy. Because the realization came to me as I looked up into his face that I had only taken the first step. True, I had freed him and released Raymond and even managed to save my own skin, but there were so many more still in jeopardy.

  “We need to stop them altogether,” I said. “If we don’t, then they’ll just keep taking over more people. The plot has to stop here.”

  “Okay.” Paul didn’t appear overly fazed by my words, but he did frown slightly. “Any idea how exactly we’re supposed to do that?”

  I realized then that I did. Whether the insight had been beamed down to me from Otto and his cohorts, or whether it had bubbled up from the same unknown well of power within me that had released Raymond, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was whether it would work.

  Turning back toward Raymond, I asked, “Do you have any idea what happened to Jeff?”

  “‘Jeff’?” Raymond echoed. He scratched the thinning hair at the back of his head. “Did they bring Jeff here, too?”

  I had to hope they did. “We need Jeff for this to work. Unless either of you is good at hacking computers.”

  Both Paul and Raymond shook their heads. I guess that was a little bit much to ask for. After all, Paul could drive like a fiend and shoot like James Bond…and could probably do differential equations in his head. I guessed I shouldn’t press my luck.

  “Wait,” Paul said, and went back to the agent, this time going to the inside breast pocket of his jacket. I always tended to forget those things existed. He pulled out something that looked a little bit like a miniature tablet computer. “We’re in luck.”

  “You think the information we need might be on there?”

  “Only one way to find out.” He pushed a button, then grinned a little as a login screen appeared. “Thank God for biometric security.” And he pressed the dead agent’s thumb against the screen.

  At once, it flickered into life, showing what looked like a series of file folders. Paul appeared to scan them quickly, pushing one, then another. On the third try he said, “Got it — Jeff appears to be up on the detention level. Guess we’ll have to go fetch him.”

  While I wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of having to retrieve Jeff Makowski from the same security area I’d just broken Paul out of less than forty-eight hours earlier, I also knew we needed him. Besides, having that previous victory under my belt could only help, right?

  “Let’s get going,” I said. Odd pricklings at the edges of my consciousness told me that other aliens were on the move elsewhere in the facility. Maybe they’d felt the forcible ejection of one of their own from Raymond’s body. At any rate, it would probably be a good idea if we were long gone by the time they came to investigate.

  “Got it.”

  The three of us went back to the elevator, where I swiped one of the key cards I’d taken off a hybrid. At least the reader glowed green and allowed us to push the button for Level Eight. So far so good.

  Something had been bothering me, though. Since he was currently locked up, I guessed that Jeff must not have been infected by the alien virus, although he’d managed a fairly good impression of someone stoned out of his mind when I had last seen him at Lampson Labs. So what exactly had happened to him? Obviously, Raymond wasn’t much use as a source of information. I had to hope that Jeff would provide more illumination if and when we were able to free him.

  I didn’t know whether the guards on the detention level were the same ones — minus the couple Lance & Co. had taken out — who’d been watching over things when we freed Paul, but I guessed I’d have to try something different this time. What, I wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe my revival-preacher trick wouldn’t work on the hybrids to pull the alien influences out of their bodies, but possibly it could knock them out for a little while.

  When the doors opened, though, I didn’t have time to decide, because Paul moved out in one clean rush, a gun in each hand, blasting away at the hybrids before they even had a chance to react. Four of them down, and that seemed to clear the hallway. Maybe they didn’t have a lot of spares.

  “Hurry,” Paul said. “Cell five.”

  Déjà vu all over again, except this time it was Jeff Makowski’s less-than-lovely face blinking back at me as I opened the cell door. He stared at me, then glanced past my shoulder to Paul and Raymond. “What the — no, you need to get away from him!”

  “It’s all right,” I told him in the most reassuring tones I could muster. “He’s all better now. But you need to move it.”

  At least Jeff knew when to keep his mouth shut. He rose hastily, and we hurried down the corridor and on into the stairwell.

  “We need to access the mainframe,” I said, once we were all safely inside. “They do have a mainframe here, right?”

  “I don’t — ” Paul broke off and started rummaging around in the little tablet computer. “Yes — Level Four.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  As we hurried toward the stairwell, I turned toward Jeff. “They never infected you.”

  “No,” he said shortly.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Raymond getting infected was an accident. I almost got the impression that they didn’t want to waste any of it on me.” His jaw tightened under its scruffy three-day growth of beard.

  “But back at the lab — you were acting like you were on something.”

  “Yeah, because one of the hybrids injected me with something — not the virus, obviously — almost as soon as they arrived. I could barely remember my own name.” His expression darkened. “Once they had you, they tossed me in the back of one of their trucks and brought me here. They kept pumping me full of crap, asking me questions.” The first expression of genuine concern I’d yet seen from him flitted across his face. “Is…is everyone in L.A. okay? I seem to remember telling them things….”

  That was one answer I didn’t have. I didn’t know what had happened to Justin and Troy. Best-case scenario was that the agents had just left them alone once they realized Paul and I had already fled the restaurant in Santa Monica, but that might be wishful thinking.

  Since I didn’t know what to say, I only shook my head. Jeff’s mouth tightened, but he remained silent as we entered the stairwell.

  Despite the white light that had powered my healing from the alien virus, pounding up six flights of stairs after everything I’d already been through that day wasn’t exactly a picnic. But I didn’t want to show Paul that I was flagging, and I tried to tell myself it could have been worse. They could have kept the computers on Level One. Besides, Raymond Lampson didn’t seem to be in very good shape, either. His gasping breaths echoed off the metal stairwells, and when I glanced back at him over my shoulder, his face was pasty and gleaming with sweat. I had no idea whether he was suffering the after-effects of the alien infection, or was simply out of shape. It really didn’t matter one way or another; we had to keep going.

  When we reached the landing for Level Four, Paul opened the door a crack and peeked out, then let it close. “No good,” he said. “That hallway is filled with people.”

  Damn. If this whole escapade had been a movie, I suppose we would have just stolen the uniforms off the dead guards and sneaked past that way, but it’s really hard to impersonate a clone, and even tougher when said clone’s uniform is covered with blood and has bullet holes the size of meatballs both front and back. No, it looked as if we were going to have to rely on those powers Otto had referred to — and hope he hadn’t just been blowing sunshine up my ass.

  “Where’s the mainframe on this level?” I asked.

  “Looks like it’s straight down this hallway, and then down another corridor where it Ts at the end
.” Paul lowered the tablet, brows drawing together. “Just exactly what did you have in mind, Persephone?”

  “Oh, just another of my Jedi mind tricks,” I replied, as he continued to frown and Raymond and Jeff traded a mystified glance. “Hey, the worst that’ll happen is that we’ll all end up back in one of those cells.”

  Paul looked dubious. “That’s not exactly reassuring.”

  “Just follow my lead — and don’t say a word.”

  I opened the door, and took a breath. Concentrate, I told myself.

  The people in the corridor ahead were a mix of hybrid soldiers, men and women in white lab coats, and dark-suited government types like the nameless agent we’d left dead in a heap on the floor of the conference room on Level Ten. That made it a little easier; if they’d all been hybrids or even regular soldiers, we’d be a lot more difficult to camouflage.

  As it was, I focused on making it seem as if we were just another group of white-coated lab techs or scientists, on our way to the area where the mainframes were kept. I could practically feel Paul’s incredulous gaze on the back of my neck as I stepped out of the stairwell and into the hallway, but at least neither he nor Jeff nor Raymond said anything.

  It was harder than I’d thought it would be, like exercising a muscle you’d never used before. Inwardly, I saw the four of us in our nonexistent disguises, and I focused on projecting that image outward into the minds of those who passed us by. Although I wanted nothing more than to break into a run so I could limit the time required to maintain the illusion, I knew that was the worst possible thing I could do. Instead, I moved forward calmly at a purposeful but not hurried pace.

  The three men trailed along behind me, like ducklings following their mother to water. Difficult as Raymond and Jeff could be, they were not stupid, and they caught on very quickly that the best thing to do was to walk down that hallway as if they had every right to be there.