Coalescence (Camden Investigations Book 1) (22 page)

Gurgling
noises competed with the fireworks. Iris dismissed them at first, too
enraptured with the horizon that gave intermittent birth to constructs she had
only observed in fiction movies.

Purple,
midnight blue, and forest green were some of the predominant colors trading
place with the azure norm of the daytime Arizona sky. How could this be? How
could two events, both day and night exist? What’s more, Iris asked herself,
how could this region’s past be coexisting with its present? The gurgling
noises continued, and they were accompanied by the snap of breaking branches.
Then, one horrific scream enveloped Iris. She had no choice but to break her
gaze.

When she
turned, the stupendous had become appalling.

H
E
RAN
, his legs were working properly now. But it was obvious what
was transpiring in the canyon. And he was late!

He shook his
fist at the ever-changing sky.
How could you have let this happen? Why
didn’t you apprise me? If I could have alerted the Partner’s ship, I could have
advised them to fire their weapon. Before this . . . happened!

Minutes
earlier, it all sounded so simple to Jack. He could simply disengage whatever
those bastard kids had installed. But this wasn’t like pushing a few buttons on
your laptop. How could he ever get this to disengage? It was awe inspiring and
awful at the same time. The beauty of the sky reached down into Jack’s dark
being and evoked memories of happier times. They were long ago. But they were
happy, nonetheless. He pictured his family. Sometime in the past, long before
he went to work for the
Organization
, Jack had been happy—without
an incentive or purpose. A tear welled up in his eye. He ran cursing at the
skies, shaking his fist at the
Organization
and crying over his severed
tie with his family all in the same instant.

S
HE
TOOK
a
quick
head count. All accounted for, but DJ! The others had instinctively formed a
defensive perimeter around what Iris’s mind could only interpret to be a
king-sized lizard. Possibly, her overworked mind deduced, the being had been
recreated, reconstituted, or regenerated by their intervention.

Yet how
would that explain DJ’s disappearance? Iris stared into Darian’s face for an
answer. But the young man was sheet white. If he seemed frail and wobbly
before, that status had just been bumped up to critical status.

Did DJ run
at the sight of the beast? Iris had an open distance of sight. No apparent sign
of desertion. She still would have been in plain view. Now the worse outcome:
ravaged or eaten? Did reptiles eat meat? It wasn’t something she could recall
from Science 101.

Okay, where
is the blood? She may be off against a rock. Possibly bleeding from
injury . . .

She heard
her Dad’s voice again. “
Don’t worry, I’m coming.
”

“
You’re
coming?
”
she answered with a question. How could this be possible?
She had never conversed telepathically with her father before. In fact, he
tried to his damned best to dismiss the very fact she possessed this ability
because of his confidentiality agreement with the
Organization
.

The beast
rose on his haunches. It surveyed them all, but Iris especially. She surveyed
back.

The creature
possessed perfect diamond-shaped eye sockets, with some strange tuft of god
knows what on its head. It would have been cute if it had been tiny and posed
inside the glass tank of a pet shop. But it loomed large with mesh-like skin,
dots of black checkering over a lime field of green. The mouth was most
lizard-like, especially when a salmon-pink tongue flickered in and out. And its
skinny arms almost gave you a false sense of relief, until you surveyed its
Eagle-like appendages. Which were worse? The claws or the suction cupped under
sides?

But what was
more maddening than where this creature came from and its potential for damage
was the fact DJ was gone.

J
ACK
SEEMED
to know right where to run. How could he have missed it?
Even if he had not surveyed the site prior, the galactic circus taking place in
the outer left portion of the Pueblo Bonito was a sight to behold.

Flickering
lightning charges lit up and darkened the ancient stone stage as if strobe
lights. And if that wasn’t enough, the wall that helped conceal Jack only hours
ago, had been transformed into what appeared to be the largest version of
Windows Jack had ever seen.

As he pushed
himself deeper into the pueblo, Jack realized he could stop taking cover behind
jagged walls. The investigators were up to their eyeballs in trouble. If the
stage hadn’t already been set with strobe lights and ever-growing vegetation,
Jack would have rubbed his eyes. But what he saw in the not too far distance
gave him hope to complete his mission.

The
staggering creature was leverage. It had to be one of the Reptilians; the enemy
of the Greys. He really didn’t like or dislike the green being. But if he could
somehow capture it alive, he could offer it up to the Greys. They would surely
see his ingenuity. They would wonder why they put up with the
Organization
’s
shortcomings for so long. With the reptile, the dial, and a decimated power
station, Jack began to believe again—in himself. Gone were the misty
memories of Mom and Dad. They could have never prepped him for such a glorified
life, not with all tuition in the universe.

He would
take advantage of the hysteria, work his way up and behind the creature.

D
AN
DABBED
at the wetness at the back of his head. He was woozy but
alive.

His first
thought: deactivate the chip. At this point, it was the only means to find his
daughters, and he already was on the
Organization
’s shit list to worry
about protocol. Jack had too much of a lead on him. Maybe, if he could just
speak to them, he could give them courage and hope to hang on.

Dan was too
far away to realize the once serene Pueblo Bonito had become the cosmos’s
circus.

He attempted
communication. He could only reach Iris it seemed. Her mind resonated with
confusion. Worse, it rang with disbelief. He jettisoned his hat. Then he ran
for his daughters’ lives as best as he could with a swooning head.

J
ACK
WAS
in the favor of the heavens again, it seemed. He smiled and
nearly dance-skipped his way behind the giant, thrashing reptile. No one had
opposed him so far. Maybe this stupid being would go down without a fight. The
degree of shock the young investigators could stand would determine how much of
an effort it would take to subdue them and retrieve the object. But first
things first . . .

Jack lobbed
a stone to gain its attention. It turned on him, instinctively and foolishly.
Now, it no longer mattered if the investigators saw him or not. They were too
dazed and disoriented to turn any attack on him. Their instinct, as humans,
would be to distance themselves away from the non-human.

Now, all
Jack had to do was trick the others into aiding him.

“Come on,
guys. Give me a hand. Let’s capture this thing.” He almost snickered with
disbelief at his own lie. “I’ll give you a big reward.”

He lobbed a
second rock at the creature. It made some perverted infant sound. It didn’t
sound at all scary to Jack.

Jack was way
too involved with his grand future to notice Iris had changed positions. Now
behind Jack’s back, she lobbed a rock at him.

“Leave us
alone! We’ll handle this!” she screamed.

He answered,
“You need my help. Why don’t we work together and put this thing down? Come on!
Don’t be a bitch!”

Iris heard
her father’s voice in her head again. It seemed so perverted, so unlikely, yet
maybe she was being given a message. There was no time to respond to the voice
in her head. The man in the black attire was waving his hands at the reptile.
She doubted his sincerity. If he didn’t mean to harm it, he would capture it
and certainly torture it for some sick purpose. Only the being he was
threatening wasn’t what he thought it was . . .

“No! You’re
not going to do anything to my
sister
or to anyone else!”

Jack turned
to face her for an instant, pointing to his holstered weapon. “Yeah, and who’s
going to stop me! And just what the fuck do you mean, by your
sister
?”

Iris didn’t
know how she was sure, but she was. The reptile was somehow her half sister DJ.
And whoever even fantasized for one lonely moment that she would allow any harm
to come to her team, to her family, was sorely mistaken.

“I’ll give
you one more warning! Get away from my
sister
!”

Iris wasn’t
certain of the outcome, however. He did have a gun. But there was no way in
hell—or Chaco Canyon, for that matter—she was going to live with
survivor’s guilt. She should have stood up for Ron a long time ago. She’d been
given a second chance, it seemed, and she was going to take it, even if it spelled
the end of her existence.

C
HOKED
WITH
anger, Jack couldn’t resist belittling the small girl with
glasses one more time. “Why don’t you get a new pair of specs? Can’t you see
that this fucker is
not
your
sister
?”

As he
taunted Iris, the Reptilian took its cue. Its clawed appendages wracked their
way down the spine of Jack to his blood curdling screams of realization.

As Jack
moaned and hissed, he reached for his weapon.

“All right,
I’ll put an end to you first . . . then you won’t have to watch
your sister . . .”

He never
completed his sentence. Jack staggered.

M
ITCHELL
FLEW
across like a linebacker, tackling Jack and his bloodied
backside. They fell off the ledge. The creature bored over them. Its tongue
flickered in and out.

Iris
observed in horror. No matter how much drive or will she had in her, it might
be impossible to stop the unthinkable.

She knew the
creature was DJ. But did the creature know it was DJ?

“Mitch!” she
screamed. “Get out of there!”

Evan, who
was nearest, grabbed his friend, who fortunately had rolled on top of Jack.

As soon
Mitch and Evan stumbled away, the creature leapt.

It landed on
Jack or so Iris thought. She couldn’t quite see, the jut of ledge obstructing
her view. Sucking sounds followed. Wet and disturbing. Iris listened to Jack’s
final muffled screams.

Then she
nearly jumped out of her skin. Jack’s decapitated head popped back onto the
ledge. It smiled at her, a sick and final grin. As if he understood he was the
butt of the universe’s grandest joke.

What
transpired next paled in comparison to Jack’s mutilated ass.

The reptile
was no longer a concern. It laid behind the ledge, wrapped in a fetal position.
As if it knew what was coming. It’s end.

The sight of her sister froze Iris in her tracks and
despite the fact an attacker had been vanquished, a bigger problem loomed. She
could see the failure looming all over the canyon. A malfunction had taken the
dial offline with its power source. Moss began to recede and wither. The
magnificent lights and accompanying holographs dissipated. And Iris’s hope to
save Mitchell and her family waned: Big Time.

DJ’
S
SCREAMS
echoed across the pueblo still checkered in flickering
light. No longer emitting a reptilian bleat, the yelling had swelled into angry
human emotion frothing from DJ like a pot coming to boil. The acrid canyon
seemed to swallow it though along with the remaining remnants that proved an
ancient city had once thrived here. The final hints of indigo and purple had
faded to a noncommittal white light that gave the brown canyon its alien
illumination. Sort of like a lone porch light. Everything else had powered
down. The pueblo was inanimate once more, and to Iris, it no longer had any
capacity to care about the shocked and confused woman it had transformed to a
beast moments earlier.

Iris was
less concerned with laser theatrics at the moment. She was the first to notice
DJ’s return. She was back to being human, albeit a naked one. Now DJ had
something else to scream about.

“
Aaaaahhh!
Aaaahhh
!” DJ attempted to shield herself with her arms. It was
futile. There wasn’t a stitch of clothing about her. Arms could conceal breasts
but not much more. Iris scanned the immediate vicinity but no apparel of any
kind hung from jutted rock or lay upon sand trampled from prints by earlier
excitement.
Did her shifting zap the clothing into thin air?

Iris felt an
arm impede her path to her sister. It belonged to Mitchell.

“Hey, what
are you doing? Can’t you see she needs me?” She yelled at Mitchell, but Iris’s
voice was distant, indirect. Her eyes were focused hard on her sister, possibly
hoping to see whatever had been responsible for her change. But like the lights
and holographic architecture it had all dissipated. Iris had grabbed Mitchell
by the wrist in the interim. With angry resolve she flipped his arm out of her
path. “I’m helping my sister.”

Evan
intervened. “Guys, I think she’s okay. It seems to have been triggered from our
actions.” He scrubbed a hand across the stubble on his cheek. “I just don’t
know why it didn’t affect anyone else.”

Gavin
emerged from the cauldron with the blanket they had used to wrap the dial.
“Could the dial be responsible for something . . . like that?”

 
Iris frowned at Gavin’s less than
sympathetic word choice. She recalled her earlier experience with the time
slip. It had occurred on a smaller scale, but no one had changed form.
Although
DJ had not been with the team on that occasion.

DJ jumped
when Iris hugged her. “It’s okay.” She kissed the top of DJ’s head. “You’re
back with us now. You’re okay.” She took the blanket from Gavin and wrapped it
across her sister’s shoulders. DJ simply looked like an ordinary young woman,
not the monster she had been moments before covered in blood. The shift back to
human form had left her naked and vulnerable but not bloodied. It was as if the
change had never occurred. But Iris knew somewhere inside of DJ, there was
serious scars.

Iris caught
Kassidy’s indiscernible grumbling from behind her. She was not close enough to
hear what Kassidy had told Rachel, but was certain what the tone implied.

Iris pointed
a finger in the air. Without making eye contact with anyone but DJ, Iris said,
“I hope we’re not going to have a problem. This is my sister.
Whatever . . . happened was not her choice.”

Iris stared
a moment longer into DJ’s eyes. “You don’t remember what happened, do you?”

DJ nodded
from side to side. “I do remember. How could I forget?”

Iris hugged
her. “You were protecting us. I . . . should have been
protecting
you
.”

DJ smiled
and a tear welled in her eye. “You did. I was there with you, every moment.
But . . .” Her eyes dropped to the ground. “I felt like I was
observing it from someplace else. It doesn’t make sense. It’s sort of like when
I’m channeling. I don’t necessarily feel in tune with the spirit, but I’m with
them—in that moment, in that place, wherever that is.”

Iris rubbed
a hand across her back. “Come on, people. Let’s find her clothes. They’ve got
to be around here somewhere . . .” Her voice trailed off. Her
eyes locked onto the decapitated corpse. The remains of what was once a strong,
capable man laid there. DJ, or her reptilian inner being, had permanently
dismissed him with ease.
What had Mitchell told her? The reptilians were
fighting the good fight against oppressors. In my dream vision, I had a premonition
one of them walked among us. But how could I have been so blind? She was
 . . .
is
 . . .
my very own sister—albeit a half
sister.
That distinction had now become paramount. Believing her sister’s
varied genetic makeup to be on
her
side didn’t make swallowing this new
revelation any easier.

“Hey, I’ve
got a shoe!” Darian’s scream echoed throughout the pueblo. He ran it over to
his girlfriend. As soon as he did, Gavin confirmed he had found the other. He
too raced it over to DJ. Iris observed both men. They didn’t have to say it
outright. Despite what had just happened they cared for DJ,
the woman
.
In that instant they weren’t afraid of the beast she had become or the fact she
was almost naked.
They see her vulnerability. They just want to make her
whole again, like I do.

Iris doused
her anger and allowed a smirk to wash over her. “Hey, guys. This is great. But
we can’t let her stroll around in the desert with just shoes.”

Kassidy
interrupted. “Although I’m sure the guys would love it.”

For Iris,
Kassidy’s offhand remark meant her friend had apologized. Kassidy was no longer
concerned DJ would transform again, and if she did, maybe Kassidy believed the
teams could handle it. Iris had observed this mannerism before. Kassidy had
shown up late for one too many investigations from tangoing the night away with
Jose Cuervo
. She would state upon her tidy arrival: “Guys, I won’t be
late again. Jose and me, we’re divorcing.” The apology was never direct but
implied.

Iris
reflected on that moment in time. Her entire outlook of her investigations was
now skewed. She had been naïve and possibly misinterpreted case data on more
than a few occasions. If anyone should be apologizing, maybe it should be her.
What
else did I miss? My sister might have been created by someone like Galloway. It
was the only answer. No one else had had their DNA reassembled. Possibly, they
were part of some resistance. And Mitch’s question about her stepmom having an
affair made a sickening sense. Were the clues to this always here but I had missed
them, or maybe refused to see them?

If true,
what Galloway had shown them was real. The images her subconscious interpreted,
they actually freaking existed. They weren’t illusion. Aliens existed, despite
her father’s claims. Galloway’s world really had been decimated. What’s more,
everything the alien ghost had warned about regarding the plague had to be
true. It set Iris’s heartbeat to overload.

Damn it.
We’ve got to get the dial back online or whatever it needs to function. But can
we?
Iris’s mind flashed to her conversation with Evan in her
bath.
This man’s too smart to be defeated. He has to make this happen. He
will make this happen.
Sweat trickled down Iris’s back.
He has to
because I can’t let Mitchell die.

She had to
speed things up, put the process back on course. For that to happen, she had to
get her sister clothed and as far away from the dial and its power source as
possible. Iris didn’t believe she was capable to suggest such a thing, but she
had to, for the sake of the others.

“Help me
strip his clothing off.” She tugged on one of the headless man’s legs. Evan
pulled on the other.

“It’s
probably going to be a bit baggy, but it will do.” Iris dangled the charcoal
suit in front of her sister.

“I tore his
head off, now I’m supposed to steal his clothes?” DJ pursed her lips in a pout.

Iris focused
on a psychic connection with DJ but found none. She had to interpret her
sister’s even tone and childish gesture to mean one thing:
DJ was mentally
capable of dealing with this.

Darian threw
an arm around DJ. “I promise we’ll visit Victoria’s Secret
when this is
all over.”

Kassidy
groaned and rolled her eyes. “Oh, the sacrifices you men make for us.”

“But is this
all going to be over? And will we still be around when it is?” DJ was mumbling.
Iris gripped her hand and answered. “You will. We will. But you’re part in this
is over right now.” She nodded toward Darian. “Your nice boyfriend is going to
take you back to the camper. We will work on reconnecting the dial. This will
work. This has to work. But you need to be kind of . . .” Iris
winced. “Out of range when it does.”

“I
understand but you don’t. My mother was in contact with some kind of alien
before she met dad. It’s not what you think. Dad is my father. But my mother
revealed to me her relations with a man named Stephen changed her, on the
inside. She began having lucid dreams of aliens. And then this man revealed his
true nature. They split apart and Mom married Dad. But because this man changed
her, I became changed via her altered DNA. I know how fucking crazy this
sounds. It’s why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. But now I know for sure.
For good or for bad, I am part alien. But I’m still your sister, no matter
what.”

“I should
have known somehow. I am sorry your mom didn’t think enough of me to tell me.”

“Don’t feel
that way. Mom only told me in ghost form. She couldn’t face the whole truth
either.”

Iris
grimaced. “I’m always here for you, Sis. Remember that.”

Darian
mimicked a Victorian dressing screen shielding DJ while she slipped into Jack’s
suit. “Uh. You weren’t kidding about baggy,” DJ frowned.

Darian
assisted, rolling up what was left of the torn sleeves and pant legs. “No
problem too big.” Iris imagined Darian attending to his sick aunt. She felt
relieved her sister would be in caring hands while she reattempted to light the
desert. Yes, no matter what, DJ was her sister. No further definitions needed.

THE WAIT
stretched for eternity, no time slip needed.

“I think
they’re out of range. I can’t even see them.” Gavin redirected his binoculars
to the opposite road. While he did, Evan said, “Then we should try to reconnect
the object. Maybe it just needs a reboot.”

Still
training his gaze through the binoculars, Gavin waved a hand. “No. Wait a
minute. Someone or something is coming from the other road. Whatever it is,
it’s coming at a pretty good clip.”

Mitchell
scowled. Iris grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”

She eyed the
gun they had taken from the intruder’s body. It rested on a rock. She felt it
was imperative she discourage Mitchell from taking it.

“Why
shouldn’t I? It’s got to be loaded. That bastard wasn’t here for anything but
harm, Iris. And that’s why I am in total agreement with you. Whatever your
sister did, whatever she
was,
was done out of self-preservation. It was
justified justice, if you ask me. I just feel terrible I didn’t give it to
Darian. Who knows who else is out there?”

Iris shook
her head. “It could be campers. We can’t alert anyone of what we’re
doing
here.
Grabbing a gun will sure as sunshine raise suspicions.”

Mitchell stared
toward the dot that was growing bigger by the minute. “I hear you. I just don’t
want to be caught . . .”

She cut him
off. “Shit, I know who it is.”

Mitchell
grabbed Iris about the waist. “Well, could you enlighten the rest of us?”

“I should
have known. I forgot in all the excitement. I heard his voice but that was in
the middle of the fight. It’s . . . it’s my dad.”

Mitchell’s
inquisitive look segued from doubt to anger. He pointed a hand at the dot. “I
want to know how he’s involved.” He kicked some sand. “I want to know how he’s
involved in what just happened.”

Mitchell
walked a figure eight and raised his hand again. “And how are you hearing him?
You never told me you shared a psychic connection with him. Although,” he
paused to place his hands on his hips, “it would all make sense. He probably
didn’t need to snoop via phone, Iris. He could have heard everything he needed
from you!”

“That’s
impossible. I would be aware. I have never shared a thought with him prior to
today. I know it.”

“Is that
so?” Mitchell stare bored into her. His hands were still riding on his hips.

“If you’ll
take a breath, I’ll explain how this works. When I read DJ, or she reads me, we
instantly know. It’s like when you get a messaging ping on your phone.”

Evan
intervened. “Whoever that is, he shouldn’t be privy to that.” He pointed at the
object now immersed in a blanket.

“What do you
expect me to do?” Iris asked him.

“Shield your
thoughts, I don’t know. You’re the psychic.”

“Hey,”
Kassidy said, charging toward Evan, “you need to take a breath and back off a
step. She grabbed him about the wrist. “And if you play your cards
right . . .” Her sudden grin invited Evan to mirror her
response.