Chapter
Herbie flew down the mountain, so fast she thought he might fall apart. Kady had never seen him go above fifty, but they were doing ninety miles an hour trying to get away from the TFO.
She took a turn like a Formula One driver, which she was not. But the steering wheel easily gliding through her hands and Herbie floated around the bends in the road and over the rocks and dirt.
Maybe her alien bear man was using a special power to help them escape. Good, because they could use all the help in the universe. If the TFO was after them, they were totally screwed.
She’d read the conspiracy theories, from Area 51 to the ancient aliens of Nazca. But, that’s all they have ever been, fun to think about, but not reality.
But then again, she thought the same about aliens up until a few hours ago.
Kady glanced over at Black. He had transformed back into a man, a man who was bleeding all over the place.
“We have to get you to a hospital. No, wait scratch that. We need to get somewhere with Internet, so I can watch a YouTube video or something to figure out how do first aid on bullet wounds.”
There was a video for everything on YouTube. At the very least there would be an episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
She glanced down at the towel, that had somehow stayed on her body through all that, and wished for a Wal-Mart.
“No. Keep going. Put as much terrain between them and us as you can. I’ll be fine. When we find a safe place, you can use your powers to heal where my bear has not.”
They hit Devils Gulch Road and evening traffic buzzed by. Okay, two cars drove by but an old red pickup going ninety would stick out. They would be less conspicuous if she went the speed limit. But, they’d need to find a place to hide quick.
Black sunk deeper into the bench seat, looking less golden and more pale by the second. “Why did you not tell me you were a witch?”
Loosing blood or no, there was no reason to get assholey. “Hey. Don’t be calling me names. I just saved your ass. Again.”
Three big dark SUVs with tinted windows passed them going toward her home and the crash site. The longer they stayed out in the open, the more chance someone was going to spot them and capture them and probe them.
Kady did not want to be probed. Unless it was by Black’s tongue. What, wait, whoa. No. That must be the adrenaline talking. Yeah, yeah, the complete and total attraction to a bear-shifting, alpha male, alien was because of a hormone.
“Is witch a derogatory term in your culture? What do women who can manipulate the world around them with their will call themselves? Your powers are far beyond anything the I have seen on my homeworld.”
“What powers? The power of an LCD projector and high-speed internet?” The closer to town they got, the more rubber-necking tourists they encountered. They passed at least five cars pulled over to the side of the road. Usually people stopped to stare and take pictures of the wildlife that wandered around the town down from the sanctuary of Rocky Mountain National Park. These gawkers were all focused on the billows of smoke and line of emergency vehicles speeding up the mountain.
Kady glanced over at Black and found him frowning at her. Not like he was mad, but like he couldn’t figure her out. That was not a first.
“Stop staring at me like that and help me find a place we can hide both us and Herbie.”
He did not stop staring. “I know of a place we will be safe, but it is not nearby.”
“I’ll take anything at the moment. Unless you mean your home planet. I don’t think we have enough gas for that.” Although, for being an ancient truck, Herbie got excellent gas mileage.
Black pointed toward the south. “No. Do you know how to get to New Mexico?”
“Oh, my god. Are you taking me to Area 51? Is your mother ship there?” She’d always wanted to go to New Mexico.
“I don’t know any area by that designation, and my mother does not have a ship, she has, had a farm. We need to get to a place called Magic, New Mexico. There are more of your kind there and my team is waiting for me.”
Her kind? Like plump nerdy girls who didn’t much like people and preferred to live in sci-fi and fantasy worlds on TV and in books? The only place she’d ever been that had people like her was ComicCon.
“We need someplace closer than New Mexico. You’re wounded and Herbie isn’t exactly inconspicuous.” Maybe they could get lost in the traffic in Denver. But, first they had to get there.
“We should head in that direction. Do you have any friends we could take refuge with?”
Friends were not her strong suit. She’d been better off on her own, up in the woods, in her tiny house.
That was probably now swarming with TFO agents who were examining every bit of her pathetic life.
“Not really.” Kady glanced over at Black, expecting to see that disdain everyone who was cooler than she was got when she had to admit her shortcomings.
He looked decidedly ungolden. His injuries were taking a toll on him. “Can you call your team and have them come get you?”
He shook his head. “My communicator is likely still in the remains of my ship.”
Her cell phone was back in the remains of her tiny house. Damn. “Won’t they come to rescue you?”
“No. The mission they are on is more important that one man. Which is why we must get to New Mexico.”
Once they got past the lake, she got on US 34 to head down the mountain. But, that road was only two lanes, and there were not a lot of options to get off if the TFO showed up.
Which they did, right then and there.
One of the big dark SUVs they’d seen earlier drove up behind them and rammed her bumper. “Holy crap. They’re going to kill us.”
There were only trees, a cliff, and the steep slope of a mountain on either side of the road. If they tried to run her off, she and Black would either end up Thelma and Louis-ing off the cliff or crashing through the trees. Black had already done that once today.
“Go, Kady, go. I will try to find a way to defend us.” Black opened the glove box and found Herbie’s service records, a box of breath mints, an aux cord, and nothing else.
He crumpled the papers and tossed them out the window. One stuck to the SUVs windshield, but their wipers took care of that instantly.
The TFO bad guys gunned it and pulled up next to her, then plowed into the side of Herbie, making her swerve onto the shoulder.
“I suggest you call upon the Universe to help us.”
“I don’t think the law of attraction works like that.”
“Do it, Kady. Say your spell.”
The SUV rammed them again.
What the hell. “Dear sweet Universe, help us not die and get away from the bad guys.”
They took the next turn, screeching around the corner and straight into a thick bank of fog. Kady couldn’t see a thing, but she knew the cliff edge was to their left and the forest was to the right.
She’d rather end up smashed into a tree than smashed into the canyon floor a trillion feet below them.
She jerked the steering wheel to the right and Herbie flew into the ditch, into the trees and down a small incline. Kady did the best she could to steer. Trees branches slapped the windows and they bumped over the rocks and other terrain. The ground below them dipped and she lost all control of the truck floating through the air. Please don’t let them have gone over the cliff.
One minute they were bouncing off trees, and the next they were at a complete stand still.
Kady breathed in and out. It was all she could muster for a moment. How had they stopped? They hadn’t crashed. They’d simply stopped moving forward. Maybe they had plowed into a tree and were dead now.
“Kady, are you okay? Are you injured.” Black was breathing as fast as she was, but he seemed unharmed too.
“I’m fine, I think. Unless we died in a fiery crash and don’t know it yet.”
Black pointed out the window. The fog bank lifted, leaving as suddenly as it had rolled in. “I think not, unless your afterlife is a green field surrounded by large metal boxes.”
In front of them, a small serene meadow sat dotted with tiny houses made from shipping containers. Behind them was a forest of thick trees, none of which seemed disturbed by their violent entry.
How? What?
A small person, like really short and stocky with a long white beard, popped out the front door of one of the houses. If Kady were less PC, she’d have said he was a garden gnome minus his hat.
She couldn’t hear him, but he was waving his arms and yelling across the field at them. Then a second small person, a woman wearing a yellow dress and an apron came out and starting yelling at the man.
“Do you know these gnomes?” Black asked.
She smacked him on the arm. “Don’t call them that. They’re little people.”
“The little people are approaching. We should ask them for shelter.” He opened the door and got out of Herbie.
She followed him out, but only to stop him. “Wait, they don’t look very friendly.”
“We will be able to evade the TFO with them. Come, mah wah.” Black took her hand and led her across the field.
“You,” the man pointed at Kady, “what do you think you’re doing coming in on a cloud and invading our garden?”
The woman tsked. “Now, dear. Don’t make the pretty witch and her bear mad. I’m sure if they needed to break through our wards there is a good reason.”
The little woman said some foreign sounding words, waved her hand in the air, and a quick buzz, like a bee flying by shot over their heads. “There, that fixes that.”
Black put his body between the little people and Kady. Like he had when the TFO had been firing at her. Both times this strange tingling happened below her breastbone.
“We require your assistance,” Black said.
Great, way to get on the angry little man’s good side. She might not have all that many social skills, but at least she could apologize and start them off on a better foot.
“Sorry, we couldn’t see where we were going in all that fog. We didn’t mean to invade or break your, uh, wards.” Whatever those were. Kady glanced at Black’s wounds, her own towel dress and then to the woman, hoping for some empathy. “But, we were run off the road and we could really use your help.”
“Oh, yes. Come, come, we’ll put you in the house Sigar just completed.” She indicated they should follow her and walked toward one of the containers. “It’s on order for another witch so the interior should be the right size for the two of you.”
Maybe Kady had bonked her head in the crash down the mountain because these people were saying some things she couldn’t wrap her mind around. Another witch?
The man stomped his foot. “Margreth, you always do this. We are not doing anything for these people. They broke into our garden, trouble is following them, and I have to ship that house tomorrow.”
Margreth tsked him again and then bopped him on the nose. “Shush yourself, Sigar. Everything will be fine. The bear needs our help and you can still ship your beautiful house tomorrow.”
Sigar seemed to like to get his nose bopped and the compliment because he rolled his eyes and pretended to still be mad, but there was an unmistakable grin on his face.
“Will your broom be okay in the grass?” Margreth indicated to Herbie and then led them to one of the containers.
“My truck? Sure. The grass is fine.”
The house had been painted a beautiful light blue on top with grass and trees to blend in with the scenery below, a whole bay of windows had been added, and it even had a covered porch. It was bigger, and much nicer than Kady’s tiny house. A stylized graphic of a garden gnome had been stamped on the door of the shipping container tiny house. Under it were the words Gnome Sweet Home, Inc.
“Oh. You’re Sigar Gunderson of Gnome Sweet Home? I looked at buying one of your tiny houses earlier this year.”
Sigar harrumphed. “Why didn’t you then?”
“Well, to be honest, you were a bit out of my price range.” By about fifty grand.
“You could have asked for the magical people discount, dear.” Margreth waved her hands in front of entryway and the door popped open.
Cool, motion sensors. “Uh, I didn’t know that was a thing. I’m not really into magic.”
The Gundersons and Black stared at her.
“What? Do I have something on my face? Are there branches in my hair?” She wiped at her face and patted her head. Had her towel slipped?
She yanked on the terry cloth and made sure it was still in place.
Margreth and Black exchanged a look. The kind that people who know something you don’t, give each other. Black shook his head.
“She doesn’t know?” Margreth asked.
“Know what?” This was why she didn’t like to be around people. Even with an alien and two people who resembled garden gnomes she still felt like an outsider.
“I don’t think she does,” Black replied.
“I’m right here. What don’t I know?”
Sigar walked inside the house and they all followed him. No one said a word.
Kady could feel the heat rising up her neck and chest. They were all staring at her and she wanted to find a hole to climb into.
Sigar crossed his arms. “But she broke our wards and created that cloud you floated in on. She’s powerful. How can she not know?”
Kady swallowed, twice. “Please tell me what you think I don’t know.
Margreth smiled in the way a grandmother who is about to give out presents did. “My dear, a powerful magic lives inside of you. You used it to enter our garden which is protected so non-magical folk can’t find it. You’re traveling with a bear in man form, a familiar and a broom.”
None of this made any sense. Aliens she could buy into. But magic, like the kind out of Hogwarts? No way. That was true fantasy, kind of like love and happy ever afters for geeky chubby girls who wore glasses and grew up in foster care.
Some people believed in both. Kady wasn’t one of them.
She shook her head.
Margreth, Sigar, and Black all nodded theirs.
She looked at Black, searching his face. He wasn’t laughing at her, none of them were. In fact, his gaze had both heat and honesty there.
He reached out taking her shoulders and pulled her into his arms. “Kady,” he brushed his lips across hers and cupped her cheek in his hand.” My sweet mah wah, you are a powerful magic-wielding witch.”