sedona files 06 - enemy mine

by Christine Pope

  “Well, can you think of a better way to learn about human sexuality, if one has no access to the real thing?”

  He had a point. That is, I knew that the vast majority of pornographic materials didn’t exactly provide a realistic view of human sexual relations, but I supposed you could learn the basics from them, even if the real thing was very different in terms of nuance and emotional connection.

  “Not really,” I admitted. “Better that than on the street, I suppose.”

  Gideon shifted slightly so he was almost facing me. “This bothers you?”

  “No.” Was that the truth, though? He’d only watched those things for informational purposes. It wasn’t as if we’d been dating and he’d been secretly getting his rocks off on internet porn. “I get it. And…I suppose I’m glad. Being with you was amazing.”

  He leaned over and kissed me, lips warm against my cheek. A slow-burning fire roused in my belly, and I moved so we were really facing one another, mouths meeting, tongues touching. I started to wonder if we’d end up having sex there right in the back seat of the car, but then he pulled away.

  “We had better stop,” he said. “Or I’m not sure I will be responsible for my actions.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  A quick glance downward at the noticeable bulge in his jeans, and he shook his head. “It’s probably not a very good idea to walk into an eating establishment looking like this.”

  I couldn’t help chuckling. “True. Well, we’ve got a few minutes until we get there. Just think about something very unsexy so you’ll be socially acceptable.”

  He shook his head and looked out the window. “The best thing is for me to watch something other than you, because when I see you, I can’t help thinking about all the things I want to do to you.”

  Well, damn. A delicious shiver went over me, and I said, “Not helping. You’re getting me all hot and bothered, too.”

  “At least on you it doesn’t show.”

  True. I moved slightly so we weren’t sitting quite so close to one another, and he did the same. The rest of the drive passed in silence, which was probably just as well. Gideon and I didn’t seem to be too successful at sticking with safe topics of conversation and would only keep getting each other in trouble.

  When we pulled into the parking lot, it was only half full. Not that surprising, since it was almost three-thirty by then, in the no-man’s-land between lunch and dinner. We didn’t have any problem getting one of the more desirable seats out on the deck, where the murmur of the creek drifted up to us from many feet below.

  “It’s beautiful,” Gideon said, gazing past me to the vista of red rocks off to the east.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  It did make me feel better to know that we were so close to the creek, that it would protect us here just as it had back at the cottage. Yes, everyone said that Lir Shalan and his people wouldn’t make a move during the daylight hours, and they were probably right. The Reptilians had always worked in stealth, in darkness. But now that they were out in the open, were looked on as the people who’d saved the Mars mission astronauts, who knew what kind of maneuvers they might pull? They were certainly bold enough to be stealing women at an alarming rate.

  “I think I would like a glass of wine,” Gideon announced as he looked at the menu.

  “Really?” I said, amused. “What brought that on?”

  “It’s just that I’ve never tried it. Bourbon, yes, but people often drink wine with their meals, don’t they?”

  “Oh, yes,” I replied. “Some of them more than they should, probably.”

  “You don’t drink?”

  “It’s not that I don’t drink,” I told him, trying not to sound defensive. “It’s more that I need to keep things sort of locked down, so to speak, so I’m not constantly being inundated by other people’s thoughts. One glass of wine isn’t too much trouble, but anything more than that, and my control begins to slip.”

  “Ah.” He was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider what I’d just said. “But one glass is all right?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “Then have a glass with me now. Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”

  I supposed we should. He loved me, and I loved him. That knowledge didn’t fix the problem with the Reptilians, but it did do a lot to improve my overall outlook on life.

  The waitress came by and asked if we’d like anything to drink. I quickly glanced over the wine selections, then told her I’d like a glass of pinot grigio. Gideon ordered a malbec. After the waitress had left, I tilted an amused eyebrow at him and asked, “Why malbec?”

  “I liked the sound of the word.”

  I couldn’t help chuckling. Of all the reasons I’d heard for choosing a drink, that was a new one to me.

  Then I heard a familiar voice say, “Taryn?”

  I turned in my seat and saw the hostess leading Callista and Raphael out onto the deck. What in the world? That is, I knew that the two of them went out to eat almost every day, since Callista’s culinary skills were even more nonexistent than mine, but I didn’t really want to calculate the odds of us running into one another out of all of Sedona’s numerous restaurants.

  Her gaze fastened on Gideon, and she raised an eyebrow. He’d activated his disguise, of course, and so looked just as human as anyone else you might meet on the street, but I could tell that she’d realized who he was. Raphael’s gaze sharpened as well, and I guessed that they’d just shared one of their rapid nonvocal conversations.

  “How about we join you?” she asked then. “Do you mind?”

  “Um — ”

  “Of course you may join us,” Gideon said politely. Even though this was the first time he’d encountered the couple here in Sedona, he’d seen the two of them when Callista had been called in front of the Assembly to make her statement about the accidental death of a Reptilian soldier at her hands. So he knew exactly who he was inviting to sit down with us.

  Since Gideon and I had taken the seats closest to the railing when we first sat down, it was easy enough for Raphael and Callista to sit down in the vacant chairs next to us. The hostess looked a little puzzled, but only said that the waitress would be back to get their drink orders as well.

  “So,” Callista said, once we were all alone, “what brings you out this fine day?”

  “The same thing that brings you here,” I replied. “An overwhelming urge to avoid cooking.”

  She laughed. “Okay, true. We went to a gallery earlier — they had a new installation, and wine and cheese and all that stuff — and we sort of forgot about lunch. But we decided that wouldn’t be enough to hold us until dinner, and we were driving by here, so….” A quick darting look at me, then Gideon, as if she’d just guessed why we’d ventured out in search of food at such an odd hour. Her lips curved into a half-smile, and I knew she’d probably be calling me later to get all the details…not that I planned to kiss and tell. “Call it serendipity.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d call it that, but I didn’t say anything, only nodded. Then the waitress returned so she could get Callista’s and Raphael’s orders. They requested wine as well, and the waitress disappeared once again so she could get all our drinks at once.

  Since we were the only ones out on the deck, I figured it was safe enough to discuss topics I wouldn’t have broached if anyone else had been around. “So, a gallery installation?” I asked. “With everything that’s going on?”

  Callista’s lips thinned, but then she gave a philosophical shrug. “What do you think we should have been doing instead? My parents told me that Lance has a team working on Gideon’s device” — she inclined her head in his direction, and he nodded — “and everyone’s trying to get the word out as best they can. I guess I just don’t think there’s much else to be done.”

  Privately, I had to admit she was right. Again I had that sensation of missing something, however, as if voices were murmuring just out of earshot, saying things I shou
ld have been able to understand.

  I couldn’t reply to her remark right then, as the waitress came back with our drinks and asked what we wanted to order. None of us had really looked at the menu, but I more or less had it memorized anyway, and so ordered my favorite caprese sandwich, thus giving the other three time to peruse the offerings and make a quick decision. After we were left alone again, I looked across the table at Raphael, who met my gaze frankly, dark eyes knowing. He probably knew exactly what I was going to ask.

  “Why can’t we petition the Assembly and have them step in? What the Reptilians are doing has to be against the Assembly’s non-interference policies.”

  Raphael’s fingers wrapped around the stem of his wine glass, but he didn’t take a drink. “The Assembly doesn’t have jurisdiction here because Earth is not a member world.”

  I shot a questioning glance at Callista, and she only shrugged, as if deferring to his greater knowledge of the subject. “But the Reptilians are members,” I argued. “Shouldn’t that be enough to warrant some kind of intervention?”

  Next to me, Gideon shifted in his chair. Unlike Raphael, he did raise his glass and help himself to a sip. A flicker of his eyes, and then he nodded, apparently confirming something for himself. “Another reason why they cannot intervene is that the Reptilians’ actions are sanctioned by your government, or at least by elements within it. The situation may be horrible, and it may be ugly, but it does not meet their requirements for stepping in.”

  Raphael nodded. “Gideon is right. Your people elect their representatives to speak for them. If those representatives do something terrible, well, that is between them and those who elected them. The Assembly simply does not have the jurisdiction to go against the will of the people.”

  “I’m not sure it’s all our representatives,” I said, speaking slowly as I mulled over the situation, trying to put together a pattern from the little I did know. “In fact, I have a feeling that most of them don’t know anything about what’s going on. There’ve always been elements inside the government who work independently and without much — if any — oversight.”

  “Oh, God, not that whole ‘shadow government’ thing again,” Callista said sourly. For the first time, she sipped at her wine, as if she needed its taste to cleanse her palate of all the conspiracy-theory nonsense. “You sound like my dad.”

  “Or mine,” I said, refusing to get angry. For someone who was mostly alien, and who’d been surrounded by the reality of UFOs for her entire life, Callista could be kind of hard-headed sometimes. Or maybe it was just that she didn’t want to have to stop and think about the implications of what the existence of a shadow government might mean. “They both talk about it a lot. But they do that because it’s true. Just because something is far-fetched doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.”

  “And it is all true,” Gideon added. Callista’s eyebrows lifted, and Raphael settled back in his seat, expression frankly curious. “I know this because my fa — because Lir Shalan has had dealings with them.”

  “For how long?” I asked. The way he’d said it, this sounded like a long-standing relationship, not something that had only occurred in the aftermath of the Mars astronauts’ supposed “rescue.”

  “For as long as I can remember. There are many things that go on without being detected — or at least, not detected by the general public. The Reptilians were driven away from Sedona, but they did not leave this system.”

  “Well, obviously,” Callista remarked. “That Mars base looked pretty well established.”

  “There was that base, true,” Gideon said. “And also one on the dark side of your moon, which made meetings here on Earth easier to manage.”

  I wanted to ask more, since the possible existence of an alien base on the moon’s dark side was something that had been hotly debated in UFO circles for years. But the waitress appeared with our food then, and conversation had to be put on hold until after she’d left again.

  Gideon ignored his plate of roasted chicken, however, and went on, “The rescue of the Mars astronauts merely gave Lir Shalan the opportunity he needed to bring things more out in the open. What he needed next — the women who’ve been disappearing — was something that couldn’t be accomplished merely by means of the same back channels he’d been using for years. That would require more people to be brought into the conspiracy.”

  “And they went along with such a despicable plan, just like that?” Callista asked. Her own Roma-style pizza sat neglected in front of her as she stared across the table at him, challenge clear in her gaze.

  “I wouldn’t say it was ‘just like that,’” Gideon replied calmly. “But once they were convinced of the value of the technology the Reptilians would be providing, their doubts were pushed aside. It’s easier to overlook the lives of a few thousand when millions — or even billions — more are in the balance.”

  Time to ask the question that had been in the forefront of my mind ever since I’d learned of the Reptilians’ plan. “Just what kind of tech were they promised, anyway?”

  “Clean, renewable energy,” he said. “And beyond that, the principles behind our superluminal drives. There were many who thought it a fair exchange.”

  Yes, I supposed they would. We’d made a lot of advances in the last few decades, using the sun and the wind and the power of water to generate a larger percentage of the world’s energy. But we hadn’t given up entirely on fossil fuels, and all those other means of producing energy had their own drawbacks. So I didn’t doubt for a second that some of the people making decisions behind the scenes would have sold out their own mothers for access to an easy source of endless energy with none of the pitfalls of more conventional sources. Adding some kind of faster-than-light space travel to that was just putting the cherry on the cake.

  “Damn,” Callista said. She took a large swallow of wine, followed by another. I had a feeling she needed it to steady her nerves after Gideon’s revelation.

  “Damn, indeed.” Gideon picked up his fork and sampled some of the roasted squash on his plate. It seemed to meet his approval, because he nodded and speared another piece.

  “So that is the problem, Taryn,” Raphael said. “This is not the Assembly’s fight, even though any of its representatives would be the first to agree that what is happening here on Earth is a terrible tragedy. But I fear it is your — that is, our — tragedy.”

  “So it’s up to us to stop them.” I stared down at the sandwich on my plate, my appetite fleeing. Nevertheless, I made myself pick it up. If nothing else, I needed to find some way to replace some of the energy I’d used up earlier in my exertions with Gideon.

  I couldn’t really read Raphael, not the way I could most people, but you didn’t need to be a psychic to see the compassion on his perfect features. And I did appreciate that “our,” even if he’d had to correct himself as he was speaking. He’d chosen Callista, and he’d chosen to live here on Earth. That meant he was as bound up in its troubles as the rest of us, although the two of them did have an option that most of the rest of us didn’t. If things got bad enough, they could just…leave.

  They wouldn’t do such a thing, though. At least, I was fairly certain they wouldn’t. And I certainly didn’t have that option. Even if I did, I wouldn’t choose to exercise it. This was my home. I’d fight for it, no matter what it took.

  Down below, the creek rustled, water flowing swiftly over the smooth-worn stones of its bed. The conversation around me seemed to fade, as the sound of the rushing water filled my head, echoing with power, moving over and around me. It was such a tangible thing that I could almost feel it brushing against my skin, could almost see the energy flashing and swirling along its surface, like a million fireflies holding their own very special kind of dance.

  Through the rippling echoes of the water, I thought I vaguely heard Gideon’s voice. “Taryn. Taryn!”

  I blinked, and saw all three of my companions staring at me with various degrees of consternation in their expre
ssions. “What?”

  Gideon’s eyes were narrow with concern. “Is everything all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “You went all zone-y,” Callista said. “Like you were having a vision or something. Your eyes are still sort of glassy. What was it?”

  “I don’t — I don’t know,” I replied, reaching for my wine glass so I could take a bracing swallow, or at least as bracing as pinot grigio ever was. “I heard…something. But it’s all fading now.”

  “It wasn’t…it wasn’t him, was it?” Gideon asked, his voice pitched low. But Raphael caught the question anyway.

  “Who?”

  “Lir Shalan,” I said wearily. “We had sort of a run-in last night. But I’m fine. Anyway, it wasn’t him. He couldn’t do anything to reach me, not this close to the creek.” The creek. There it was again, that murmur in the background. I knew it had reached out to me, but again, I wasn’t smart or psychic enough to understand what it was trying to say.

  “A sort of run-in?” Callista demanded. “Do your parents know about that?”

  “No, and I’m not telling them. It was a stupid mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  She and Raphael exchanged a look. Again I got the impression that they were communicating without speaking aloud, but my psychic powers apparently weren’t the sort that was able to pick up their frequency unless they deliberately opened the channel, the way Callista had that one time.

  “Taryn escaped unscathed,” Gideon said, and I wanted to hug him for coming to my defense. “She saw no need to worry her parents unnecessarily, not when they have so many other things to occupy their minds.”

  “Hmm.” That was all Callista said. Her bright blue eyes were full of speculation, though, as if she was trying to decide if there was something more to my reticence beyond a simple desire to avoid freaking out my parents any more than they already were.

  There wasn’t, really. And that encounter had been a valuable one. It had told me that I wasn’t safe anywhere, that I had to be on my guard at all times. Not that I expected any trouble here; as I’d told Raphael earlier, we were too close to the creek for Lir Shalan to try anything, even if he was bold enough to have his minions make an attempt to snatch me during daylight hours, in a very public place.