The Druid Gene Read online

  They’d been together for three years. But if this was how he handled something serious, by brooding and keeping his distance, then she’d been wasting her time. It didn’t matter how good their relationship was in the day-to-day if she couldn’t count on him in a crisis.

  She should have known. There was no one in the world she could count on aside from her dad. She was better off alone.

  She stopped at the ladder, pressed her forehead into it and held on for dear life, trying to breathe evenly, to stop the spiraling thoughts before she completely lost it. She was hyperventilating and it seemed impossible to stop. She felt doomed. The best relationship of her life was over. She was alone again. All she wanted was to curl up in a ball until the pain subsided and she could be numb. But first she had to get out of there.

  She stuck the small flashlight between her teeth and put her foot on the first rung, testing the stability of the ladder. She’d just heaved herself up when she felt his hands on her.

  They didn’t pull on her or demand anything. They were gentle, a warm, comforting weight, instantly quelling her momentum. She pulled the flashlight from her mouth and froze, waiting, desperately wanting it all to be made right.

  “Darcy,” he said quietly. “If you really want to go now, give me a minute to pack up so I can come with you. It’s not safe to go alone after dark.”

  “Adam—” It was all she could get out. She was turning into his arms without conscious thought. It wasn’t giving in, she told herself, it was just giving him a chance. It had been rash to assume she knew what he was thinking, impulsive to walk away because her stupid feelings were hurt. She had to stop doing things like that if she was going to hang on to him—if she was going to be a good doctor. She had to learn to take a minute and think first, to give people the opportunity to explain.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “I flipped out. You must be scared. I’m here for you.” He held her in a big bear hug. Her feet didn’t touch the ground. She wrapped her legs around him, clinging to him for dear life.

  She managed to choke out, “I don’t know what it is.” And she let go of a deep, wracking sob.

  “I know, baby.” He walked back to the campsite with her in his arms and sat down with her on his lap. He rocked her and listened as she poured out more details about what happened, most of it incoherent, mixed with sobs and tears and snot. It was embarrassing and cathartic. She’d never broken down in front of him like that before. She’d always been as solid as stone.

  He gave her the bandana that’d been wrapped around his neck most of the day. It was still moist from his sweat and smelled salty and musky, like him. Somehow, it didn’t seem gross at all. It seemed kind of wonderful. When she’d finally let out all of the built-up stress, she used the bandana to mop herself up. She felt limp and exhausted and a little uneasy about being so vulnerable with him. That wasn’t her way.

  When she was finally able to quiet down, she slipped off his lap with a watery laugh to find somewhere nearby to relieve herself. When she returned, she found he’d brought out the rest of the sleeping gear and laid it out on the ground in front of the tent. He was busily messing with the zippers on both of the sleeping bags, joining his bag to hers to make one larger one.

  “I haven’t noticed any animal activity down here. I think we’ll be safe enough to sleep in the open. It’s still early. We can look at the stars for a while before we go to sleep. We can leave at first light, if you want. It’ll be safer.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, smiling weakly. “I’d like that.”

  They curled up together, with her head on his chest and one arm thrown over him, hugging him tight. His heart thumped slow and steady, lulling her into a light doze.

  “Do you think you’ll tell your mom?”

  She inhaled sharply at the sound of his voice. But she didn’t have to think about the answer. “Invite all the crazy to come home to roost? No, thank you.”

  “She might know someone who could help.”

  Darcy snorted. “Some witch doctor? Or an exorcist?”

  He squeezed her arm gently. “What if I asked a tribal elder or the diyin?”

  She went rigid. The thought of telling someone else was so scary. But he was right—the People might know more about it. Maybe it had happened before. “It depends on what you say. I guess if you’re careful. I don’t want to get drawn into something weird.”

  He rubbed his cheek against hers and kissed the top of her head. “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  He was quiet for a long while. She started to drift, then startled when he spoke again, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. “I’m going to touch those stones in the morning, Darcy.”

  A surge of panic gripped her. “No, Adam. You’re not.”

  They argued for a while but she couldn’t get him to agree to leave the stones alone. Eventually they just stopped talking about it. He cuddled her and murmured against her hair that it would be okay, that he’d help her figure it all out.

  She felt safe in his arms. She wasn’t alone. He was there for her. This would pass and they would be okay, more than okay. The silence lengthened until she finally relaxed and slept.

  5

  Something woke Darcy from a deep sleep.

  She’d been dreaming about something that seemed important, but she couldn’t remember what that was. Possibly it was something frightening after the stress of the day before. Surely that was why her heart was pounding and why she felt frozen, afraid to move or breathe.

  She waited, listening. A cool breeze ruffled her hair, bringing with it the fleeting sound of crunching steps over the stone near the top of the gorge, as well as hissing and something rhythmically clacking together. She didn’t know what it was and that bothered her. Something told her that the sounds were some kind of large animal vocalizations, but she couldn’t put her finger on what kind of animals they might be.

  The sounds came and went with the caprice of the wind. They played tricks on her mind. She could almost believe the animals were speaking two different languages to each other, one comprised of low-pitched hissing tones, the other of clicks and clacks.

  It was surreal. She felt suddenly cold and more than a little frightened. She shrank down and prayed she was dreaming, though it seemed far too real to be a dream.

  Adam had said there was no evidence of any animals in the area and she had trusted that he knew what he was talking about. She was aware that there were plenty of snakes, birds, lizards, and scorpions in the Sonoran Desert, but she sensed that these things that she was listening to, whatever they were, were much larger than that.

  They were coming closer. It almost seemed like they were arguing. She would hear the low hiss, it would rise in volume—its tone becoming more belligerent—and then it would be cut off by the staccato clacking. Perhaps the two animals were having some kind of territorial dispute.

  She went through a mental checklist of all the kinds of desert wildlife she knew of, trying to pinpoint what it might be. She needed to figure out if it was a threat or if it could be ignored.

  It wasn’t a bobcat or a coyote. They wouldn’t make those kinds of sounds. Predators would be nearly silent and solitary. They certainly wouldn’t have a prolonged interaction with another animal. It could be a mule deer or a javelina, just stumbling around up there, looking for food in the scrub, maybe. But somehow that didn’t seem plausible either.

  She moved slowly, deliberately, until her lips were touching Adam’s ear and her hand was on his chest. She jostled him and whispered, “Adam!”

  He shifted and turned his head, one eye peering at her. His lips smacked together like there was a bad taste in his mouth. “What?” he asked, full baritone.

  She shushed him harshly and then strained to listen for any sign that he’d been heard.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, a little more quietly.

  “There’s something up there. Something big. Listen.”

  He grunted and rolled onto his back.
“I don’t hear anything.”

  She didn’t either. Had they gone away or were they listening now, too?

  After a few minutes, he sighed and went for the zipper.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m awake. I’m going to pee. Is that okay?”

  She felt silly all of a sudden. She was acting like a hysterical person. She didn’t need him to protect her. It was probably part wild animals, part distortion of sound on the wind, part dark-night childish fears with a hefty dose of imagination fueling the paranoia she was feeling.

  Adam didn’t wait for an answer. He peeled back the zipper and crawled out. A rush of cold air snuck into the bag as he staggered away with a flashlight. She patted the bag down around her and huddled on her side with the bag pulled up to her nose.

  Then she saw the dark outline of something large skimming the rim of the gorge with its nose pointed toward the center, blotting out the stars. Nearly silent, it seemed bigger than a helicopter, but triangular in shape. She couldn’t see a lot of detail in the faint light of just a partial moon, but it didn’t look like any kind of vehicle she’d ever seen before.

  The nose of the ship swung around and pointed at her. It hesitated for a moment and didn’t continue its arc around the top of the canyon. It zipped to a new location, moving like a hummingbird, until it was very close, hovering ten feet above the floor of the gorge near the waterfall’s pool, the nose of the ship still pointed in her direction. Then it slowly lowered and touched the stone with only a whisper of sound.

  She hadn’t made any conscious decision, hadn’t even felt herself move, but she had scrambled out of the sleeping bag and found herself standing with her back to the cliff face.

  They were trapped. The ship had just landed between them and the ladder that, as far as she knew, was the only way out of the gorge.

  She couldn’t take her eyes from it. She backed up slowly, her hand gliding over the rough, gritty wall. She realized she was mumbling Adam’s name over and over again like a terrorized child and stopped. She turned her head for a second to call for him a little louder.

  The light from a flashlight blinded her and she panicked as it was almost certainly revealing their location to whatever was inside that ship. “Turn that off!” she demanded.

  Adam emerged from the scrub nearby and sidled up to her. “Oh, sorry. What’s up, babe? Did you lose your flashlight?”

  “No, we’ve got a problem. Look.” She pointed at the ship and he saw it for the first time.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered. “What do you think that is? Some kind of secret government airplane?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it knows we’re here. We need to hide or find another way out. Now.”

  “What? They’re probably just doing some kind of military exercise. Maybe they’ve got a malfunction or something. They might need some help. They probably can’t get cell signal out here either.”

  “No, Adam, no. It was looking for us.”

  “Darcy, we have permission to be here. This is reservation land. They’re the ones that are going to get in trouble.”

  A section of the ship came away with a white puff of powder that drifted in the moonlight. The section slowly lowered to the stone. It was a ramp. Two figures appeared. In the dim light, it was hard to make out more than silhouettes. One was tall and slim with arms that were disproportionately long and thin. The other was very short, clearly not human. It was some kind of animal.

  She felt horror growing inside her, rooting her with disbelief to the spot where she stood, as she fought to understand what she was seeing and hearing. The low hissing tones and the clacks had come from that pair. That was loud and clear now.

  The second creature began to descend the ramp, revealing that it was every bit as big as the first, that it just moved low to the ground…on multiple legs. From that distance in the dim light, she couldn’t tell how many. It seemed like six or maybe eight.

  Adam grabbed her arm and pulled her into the scrub. They ran, fueled by blind terror. Pungent limbs tore at her clothing and hair as she followed Adam around the perimeter of the gorge. He stopped periodically to scan the cliff face for another possible exit route carved into the stone. But there wasn’t one. Without rock-climbing equipment, she didn’t see any possible way out except for the ladder.

  The hisses and clacks grew louder, reverberating off the rock with ominous overtones. Sometimes the strange utterances morphed into angry shouts that sounded bizarrely like Italian, Portuguese, or some other romance language.

  Darcy looked to Adam. He spoke Spanish, but he showed no sign of recognizing anything they were saying. They darted through open spaces toward the cover of the scrub until they reached the pool. The dull roar of the waterfall muted most of the sounds that the visitors were making.

  Adam sent her a questioning look. She nodded. The waterfall would hide them and muffle any sounds they might make. It was also the last hiding place between them, the ship, and the ladder.

  They ducked under the cold sluice, drenched instantly. There was a small hollow behind the falls, but the depression wasn’t deep enough to protect them from the constant, chilling spray. Water dripped from her hair and ran down her nose, stealing all her warmth. She was covered in gooseflesh and shivering. Adam wrapped his arms around her and put his chin on top of her head.

  He put his mouth to her ear. “Let’s wait just another couple of minutes, then make a dash for the ladder. Hopefully they’ll be on the other side of the canyon by then and won’t even see us.”

  She met his eyes and nodded once. He held her gaze, a disquieted, perplexed look on his face. She knew what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing. The world had changed overnight. Reality was far different from what they’d thought. One hike in the desert had just changed their lives forever.

  She wondered if the two events were related. Had the blue light under her skin summoned these strangers here? Was this somehow her fault? If she hadn’t touched the stack of stones, would they be sleeping peacefully now under the stars? Or was the world just a crazy, surreal place? Once you stepped away from the safety in numbers that civilization provided, were you exposed and vulnerable to any number of insane possibilities?

  Or was she just unlucky? Had all her mother’s silly new-age stuff marked her as a target? Had a childhood surrounded by too many crystals channeled some kind of negative voodoo energy?

  Adam moved, interrupting her increasingly paranoid thoughts. He gripped her, shoving her back in the niche, and edged slowly to the other side of the falls. She could barely see him. Without his warmth, she began to shudder violently. Her fingers and toes were numb and thick like blocks of wood.

  He stood in the water. She didn’t know how he could see anything, but he must have. He came back for her and they dashed through the falls together, heading for the cover of a desert ironwood tree with saguaro cactus growing up through its limbs. She recoiled as the cactus pricked her shoulder through her sopping-wet clothes. They huddled there for a minute, listening. She couldn’t hear anything but the waterfall.

  They locked eyes and came to a silent agreement. He jerked his head, indicating she should go first. She took off at a dead sprint, intending to skirt the black, hulking ship and head straight for the ladder and escape.

  She pulled up short, almost immediately. Adam barreled into her from behind, knocking her to her knees. She scrambled to her feet, backing into him.

  Directly in front of her, moonlight glinted off the carapace of a segmented body. It was reared up on hinged, sticklike hind legs, bristling with hairs. Its forelegs terminated in pincers which held a long, metallic stick, fluidly following Darcy’s every movement. It made a chittering, clacking sound. Its eyes were dark, glittering, multifaceted protuberances, completely inhuman in every respect.

  She turned, her heart pounding in her throat. The enormous insect’s companion had come through the falls behind them and held a similar instrument under its arm. It wasn’t hu
man either. It was hard to make out, but it moved unnaturally—its limbs flowed as though it didn’t have joints and there was something on its head that looked almost leafy. It was the one making the disturbing low susurrations.

  With one alien to each side and the wall of the canyon behind them, there was nowhere to go except into the pool. She turned to grab Adam, but she was too late. The stick the tall alien held made contact with Adam’s side. A blinding ray of white light emanated from the device, enveloping him. His eyes rolled back as he crumpled to the ground.

  She screamed his name and reached for him to break his fall. Her fingers were glowing.

  Something touched her back. All her muscles seized up painfully, and she realized she was engulfed in a similar beam of light from behind.

  She was falling, too.

  6

  Darcy woke, bathed in a warm, blinding light. She was too disoriented to discern whether it was the same light that had knocked her out or something new. She had no sense of time passing—a second might have gone by since she fell unconscious in the gorge or it might have been days or weeks.

  She blinked and squinted to clear her blurry vision, but that didn’t work. There was something thick and waxy coating her eyes, and they weren’t doing what she wanted them to. She tried to bring her hands to her face to wipe it away, but couldn’t.

  A cold wave of panic washed over her. Her body was immobilized and felt numb. A scream rose in her throat, aching to be released, but it was held there—the muscles refused to budge. There was something lodged there. It was impossible to swallow. She wanted to cough, but couldn’t. She felt grateful that she could breathe at all.

  She was pretty sure she’d been chemically sedated, but that it was wearing off. She was experiencing anesthetic awareness. She wasn’t supposed to be awake. Someone was doing something to her, surgically, without her consent.