Uninvited: A Paranormal Urban Fantasy Novel (The Dark Skies Trilogy Book Two) (4 page)

F
itz tenses up
. “C’mon, Tanaka. What’s the reading? Do I need to get these kids out of here?”

Tanaka looks up, his face blank. ”There are no readings. At all. Nothing.”

"How do you mean?" Fitz doesn’t understand.

“There’s barely a trace reading of radiation in here," he continues. “My meters are entirely clear."

"How could that be?" I ask.

"I don't know," Tanaka replies. “It’s like there was only a small amount of radiation back near the door.”

“Maybe it was meant to discourage us from entering,” O’Malley suggests.

“Who would do that?” Simmons asks. “And why?”

“Someone who wants to keep people out." Fitz is already advancing down the cement hallway, his strange alien weapon at the ready. “Tanaka, keep an eye on those readings, and let me know if they change.”

As our group creeps forward, the heavy silence feels strangely eerie. Stale air permeates everything around us like we've cracked open a tomb that's been undisturbed for centuries.

"Hey, pal." Ruby slides up next to me and slips her hand in mine. Glancing at her nervous smile, I realize I've never seen her look afraid.

"Hey, buddy." I squeeze her hand and offer a little reassuring smile.

“I’m expecting the lizard-man to jump out at any second,” she whispers.

I quietly laugh, but honestly, I’m half-expecting the same thing.

Leading the way, Simmons holds the glowing tablet, reading the schematics. "Looks like at the end of the next hallway, we should reach storage area alpha, the largest of the containment storage areas. It's where the least contaminated waste was supposedly kept."

“Do you think it’s still there?” Chad asks, nervously.

“There’s no indication that it’s been removed,” Simmons replies.

“Still no radiation,” Tanaka reports as we head toward the storage areas.

When Fitz and his guys push open the unlocked doors to vast storage area alpha, there are exactly zero drums filled with waste. No metal containers of any type. “This is weird.”

Instead, we stand gaping at row after row of army cots. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

“Beds?" Ruby says. “Again?”

Fitz turns to Ruby. “You’ve seen something like this before?”

“When Sunglasses guy and his crew took us to the underground government facility, they had an area just like this. Except smaller. Way smaller.

Fitz’s eyes flick over to his team, then back to us. His expression remains somber. If he knows something, he's not telling.

“This must be the old fallout shelter?" Simmons offers.

“Except everything is brand new,” O’Malley adds.

He’s right. Each cot is covered with what looks like brand new sheets, a pillow, and a gray wooly blanket.

Standing in the dim gloom at the front of the group, Fitz peers across a vast empty area. When he turns around, he isn't smiling. "I don't like it. It’s too open. We’ll be sitting ducks out there.”

“Do we have another choice?“ O’Malley inquires, his big weapon at the ready. “This is the only way to the forward area. It’s getting close to midnight.”

“We’re out of options, sir,” Tanaka adds.

Quiet as church mice, our group creeps along the perimeter of the huge room. It’s like a cross between the world’s biggest summer camp cabin and a mausoleum.

As we approach the front entrance, O’Malley and Tanaka, who have taken the lead as the point men, spot a pair of security guards in dark suits a hundred yards in front of us.

Our group hangs back, and Fitz listens though the comm headsets. Before the suits know what happened, O’Malley and Tanaka have immobilized them. When the area has been secured, we continue advancing.

By the time we reach O’Malley and Tanaka, they’ve changed into the dark suits the guards were wearing.

“Nice job, men,” Fitz nods.

"Who are all those creepy black suits anyway?" Chad quietly asks Fitz. "Are they really working for the government? Our government?”

"They are," Fitz nods solemnly. "They’ve infiltrated a faction of the Immigration Department."

"Immigration!" I laugh. "Is that a joke? There’s a whole bunch of aliens filling out paperwork to move to this planet?"

“They’re called Horlocks, and they've long since gone rogue,” Fitz replies, not laughing at my joke. “The government can't control them. No one can. They're humans that are now under the control of the Draconian and the Greys. They wear sunglasses all the time because they've been physically altered.”

"Sunglasses guy,” I mutter as the pieces fall together.

Fitz nods. "We think he's the local ringleader. At last count, there were at least half a dozen Horlocks under his command here in Ocean Grove. Probably more by now.“

I have more questions, like how exactly are the Horlocks altered and why can’t the government control them, but Fitz turns to strategize with the rest of his team for the ambush. The plan is to take down the alien craft as it approaches causing enough of a diversion to grab my uncle and retreat.

“What about us?” I ask after everyone else has been given an assignment except me, Ruby and Chad.

“You three stay back here, out of the way and don’t get yourselves killed,” he says as he starts to walk away.

“C’mon!” I protest. “You can’t bring us all the way out here and then leave us out of everything.”

“We want to help.” Chad backs me up.

Without warning, the whole building begins to shake. Then, the entire roof of the facility rises, like the flat top of the mountain is the lid of a metal soup can being curled open. What’s even more incredible is that the whole area is the size of a square city block.

Chad grabs my arm with one hand and points to the sky with the other hand. “Astrid, look!”

From the inky darkness above us, an enormous alien spaceship has begun to slowly descend.

I glance at my watch to see that it’s exactly midnight.

W
ith the entire
roof of the building now standing perpendicular to the ground, one ginormous landing pad has been created. It’s an incredible sight.

From where we stand down on the ground, the massive spaceship almost looks magical with twinkling fairy-like lights visible.

But as it descends, coming closer, we get a better sense of what a terrifying warship it really is, with a rough and spiked exterior, similar to dark reptilian skin. There’s not a smooth surface anywhere.

Powerful engines thrust into reverse, slowing the landing. The massive engines shoot flames one hundred feet long down toward us, superheating the air.

“Whoa.” Ruby grabs my arm. “I don’t like this.”

I don’t either. But there’s no turning back now. Somehow, we have to stop them before they take my uncle.

Everyone is so focused on watching the massive alien ship that we almost don’t notice that out on the western horizon, a caravan of ten, maybe twelve, black SUVs has appeared, kicking up a sandstorm of dust as they approach.

“Horlocks visible,” crackles a voice through the comm unit.

In one of those SUVs is my uncle.

They’ve timed this handoff with exact precision. The deafening noise from the alien ship has made normal conversation impossible. But through our earpieces, I can hear the team evaluate the situation.

“If I’m not mistaken, that’s a Draconian A Class W.X. transport unit,” Tanaka states.

“Impossible,” Fitz replies. “They haven’t come this far into our quadrant. One has never been positively identified in our solar system.”

“Man-o-man, that sure looks like the description of a small Draconian clipper.”

“Small” is the word that I bump on. The spaceship descending toward us happens to be the size of a large aircraft carrier.

“Dammit, I don’t think we can take that down,” Fitz says.

“No,” O’Malley’s gruff voice breaks through. “But we might be able to do enough damage to cause a diversion.”

My earpiece crackles as Simmons’ voice comes through. “We have eyes on the prize. He’s in the second car.”

“Okay people,” Fitz’s voice says. “We are a go! Repeat - we are a go!”

The timing for the handoff couldn’t be more perfect. The spaceship silently touches down just as the line of SUVs pulls in. The black suits, like ants in the night, pour out of the vehicles.

Chad takes my hand in his. “Are you ready?”

The only think I can think to say is, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

We watch
as Sunglasses and two additional agents lead my uncle to the base of the walkway. He’s in his blue alien form.

I struggle to get a good look at my Uncle Conrad. Even from this distance, I can see that his eyes are swollen, and his cheeks are bruised like someone beat him up. Metal shackles bind his hands and feet.

A primal anger rises from deep inside of me.
I can’t stand to see him this way.

Two Draconians appear from inside the ship. Neither of them is the oversized Crimson Lord, the evil leader of the Draconian race. But they have a similar otherworldly predatorily face including a scaled forehead rising to a peaked skull along with graduated dark greenish-yellow reptilian skin.

The Horlocks are about to hand my uncle over to the two Draconians. We don't have much time. I'm getting really, really nervous. We can’t miss our window of opportunity to rescue him.

“Why isn't Fitz doing something?” I asked Chad.

“Give him a second,” Chad says, trying to calm me down, but he can’t hide the fact that he sounds equally uncertain. “He’ll do something soon.”

As if on cue, the clear high notes of what sounds like a bird singing rings out across the dark canyon. When my uncle hears this, he drops to the ground and curls into a ball. The bird call was a signal.

Sunglasses’ head snap around, wondering if something is happening. Then a fierce explosion rocks everything within a hundred yards.

Even from where we are, Chad and I are knocked on our butts. Ruby slams back against the wall, and we hear a sickening thump.

“Ruby! Are you
okay?” I ask, realizing the sound we heard was her head hitting the wall.

She looks woozy as she rubs the back of her skull. “I’m… I’m okay.”

Clearly, she’s not.

Smoke canisters are launched into the group of suits, and the air fills with a blinding gray cloud.

Fitz's team leaps into action.

“It feels like they planned for something like this,” Chad says with wide eyes. “I was watching your uncle, and it seemed like he was expecting this. When he heard the bird call, he jumped into action.”

It crosses my mind that my uncle and Fitz may have had a contingency plan in place, in case anything like this ever happened.

From our vantage point, we can't see what's going on down in the canyon. Chaos has erupted. There's a lot of yelling and the sound of fighting.

A moment later, Fitz emerges out of the gray smoke, running towards us. He's got my uncle propped up on his shoulder.

“He rescued him!” Ruby says.

At first, I'm filled with joy, but then I see the strange alien dagger sticking out of my uncle’s chest.

“He's been stabbed,” I cry out.

As Fitz hurries towards us, assisting my uncle, he whistles again. A different bird call. A different signal.

“Get him out of here. Back to the door where we came in,” Fitz says, easing my uncle down, and heading back into the chaos. “Go! We’ll be right behind you.”

Suddenly, a second explosion pounds the area as the rest of Fitz’s team retreats.

“Come on, Uncle Conrad,” I say, kneeling close to him. “We have to move.”

Together, Chad and I retrace our steps. Ruby, suffering from the blow to her head, struggles to keep up with us. Our progress is slow, but we don’t stop.

“We’re almost there.” Chad urges us on. Out the secret back door, we’re heading up the path we came in on.

Just as it looks like we’re going to get away and make it safely back to the caravan, a hand grabs me from behind. I feel BrightSky, still tethered across my back, ripped away from my body.

Turning, I come face to face with Sunglasses. “Evening, Princess.”

I move to retrieve my sword. I’ll fight him hand to hand if I have to. But I’m too late as a semi-circle of six other black suits flank him, pointing their weapons at us.

Sunglasses grins. “Need to be more careful with this beautiful sword. Gosh, it’s awful pretty.”

“Give that back,” I demand.

“Sorry,” he sneers. “You may have him, but as long as I have this, you can’t open the Stargate and slip from my grasp. Again.”

Fury wells up inside me, without another thought, I surge forward. He is not taking my sword. Sunglasses is surprised by my attack.

My elbow comes up, knocking his ever-present raybans off. His head snaps back, but he recovers more quickly than seems humanly possible. Unfortunately, he stumbles but doesn’t drop BrightSky.

His face turns back to me - without the glasses - and I see his eyes and gasp.

His eyes have no colored irises surround by white. There’s no color at all. They’re totally black. Like slick stones from a muddy river.

It’s unnerving.

Sunglasses turns to go. The suits are retreating. They're giving up, at least for now. They’ve lost my uncle, but they have my sword.

When Sunglasses looks back toward us, he’s again wearing shades. He must keep an extra pair in his pocket. If I had coal black eyes, I would too.

Fitz returns with his team behind him. He sees Sunglasses holding BrightSky.
“Leave it!” Fitz yells to me, sensing that I want to go after it again. “It’s not worth the risk.”

“No!” Chad replies, bolting toward the Horlocks. “She can’t lose her sword.”

“Chad!” I cry. “Don’t!!”

When Sunglasses sees him coming, he stops and a smile creases his face. It’s like he’s daring Chad to come closer, daring him to try to rescue my sword.

But Chad surprises the man with a wicked fast punch to the gut. Sunglasses crumples over as Chad yanks BrightSky away from him.

But an instant before Chad can get back to us, a dozen more suits materialize from the smoke.

Chad is outnumbered. And cornered.

Realizing this, he yells to me. “Astrid, catch!” Then he hurls my sword in the air.

Unafraid, I move toward the deadly spinning sword. If I don’t catch it just right, I’ll be impaled by my own deadly sharp weapon.

Yet, somehow, I’m not afraid. I reach out and the hilt sails gracefully into my hand. He did it! He saved my sword.

I turn my eyes back to him and see that Chad is furiously fighting back, but there are just too many of them. He’s no match for the sea of black suits who quickly swallow him up.

“Chad!!!” I scream.

“Astrid!” Chad yells as they drag him away. “Astrid!!”

My heart pounds wildly, and I’m ready to run after him, but Fitz stops me with a firm hand around my arm. “No, Astrid! We have to go.”

“We can't leave Chad here,” I argue, watching the Horlocks take him away.

“I’m sorry, but he's lost to you now.” Fitz tries to pull me in the other direction.

“How can you say that!” I refused to budge as Chad slowly disappears into the smoke and my heart crumbles.

“Astrid, even if I wanted to go back, it's too late. There’s too many of them.”

I know he’s right. We’re outnumbered 10 to 1. Chad gambled and lost.

Tanaka appears by my side, helping me move my uncle up the path, to the waiting helicopter.

A few minutes later, the helicopter takes off, and I see a trail of dust rising into the sky as a stream of police cars speed toward the chaos.

I’m heartsick knowing that we left Chad behind.

My uncle weakly takes my hand. He can’t speak, but I feel a faint squeeze, like he’s trying to reassure me that everything will be okay.

As we fly off to the west, fly to safety, I silently wonder if he’s right.