He began to fade out, and Magda reached out for him. “Wait.” But he was gone. Magda popped out of The Program, her heart racing, her stomach tight with anxiety.
“God. Why couldn’t I just sit by the pool?”
“What is it? Emilia asked.
“The Anu are coming at dawn.”
Chapter 6
Magda banged on the front door of the farmhouse until Xavier opened it, shirtless and looking like some kind of dragon-shifter god with his rocker tattoos.
She took a sharp breath, remembering her encounter with Michael and the feeling of his hard body against hers.
“What is it, Magdalena? It’s after eleven. Everyone is sleeping.”
“Alert the dragons. The Anu are coming at dawn,” she said, brushing past him and into the front hall of the Victorian house. Paintings of California wilderness hung on the walls. Magda moved into the front parlor, furnished in antiques.
“I need to speak with Circe,” she said, crossing her arms and sitting on the couch.
“What is it, Magda?” a female voice said from the hall. Circe stood in her bathrobe, tall and slender with long auburn hair trailing down her back.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I got a message from Michael, a member of the Council of the Seventh House. He told me the Anu are coming. I was able to contact Cassie, but they won’t get here in time. The Anu will attack at dawn.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Circe asked, sitting beside her on the couch. Xavier moved into the room and lit a fire in the fireplace, filling the room with toasty warmth.
“I was embarrassed. I thought it was my subconscious mind playing tricks on me.”
“Why would you think that?” Circe said, looking around the room nervously.
“He was gorgeous. And… we kissed. I couldn’t believe a member of the legendary council would kiss me…”
“Interesting. Why do you believe it is real now?”
“He told me to contact Cassie. And I did. She said she was coming back. I should have told you. I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I’ve never had this kind of responsibility before.”
“It’s all right, Magda. We understand,” Circe said. The older woman had a great deal more experience and wisdom behind her, and Magda was grateful to have someone to talk to.
“I’ll alert the dragons. But we should evacuate. Without Cassie… we can’t defend against a full-blown attack,” Xavier said.
“We shouldn’t have let her go,” said Circe, looking up at her husband, the dragon shifter and leader of New San Diego.
“Can anyone stand in Cassie’s way? Not even Rafe can talk her out of liberating a dome. There’s no time to worry about that now. We need to get the people on buses and get them out of here.”
Xavier went upstairs and woke the dragons who lived up there, and then all five men went outside. Magda watched as he woke the rest of the dragons and arranged for buses to take the populace out of the compound. There were three hundred people living in New San Diego. Xavier already had five large Greyhound buses parked along the highway, ready for this kind of thing.
People were woken in the night. Young women carrying babies walked bleary-eyed to the buses while angry shifters packed supplies.
Xavier strode back to the farmhouse where Magda and Circe were helping to direct the transportation of food supplies into the buses.
“I’m sorry,” Magda said as he passed into the house.
“This isn’t your fault. Best-case scenario is, it’s a false alarm. If it is, no one will blame you. The buses are leaving in thirty minutes. Sunrise is in two hours. I want you on the bus. Only fighters are staying.”
“I can help,” she protested, but he cut her off.
“Magda, you’ve done what you can. As leader of this compound, I thank you. But you have to go. Try to contact Cassie again. Circe hasn’t had any luck. The dragons will meet up with the buses later.”
“Where are we going?” Magda asked as he began walking away with a group of dragons.
“North. Along the coast. We have some old friends who owe us a favor. Go pack your things. Make sure Emilia has her shit together, would you? That girl would rather get burned to a crisp than leave her workroom.”
Xavier walked away, and Circe followed him as the dragons and witches met in the dining room of the farmhouse. Magda was just a messenger. She wasn’t part of the council that was made up of senior shifters, Circe’s coven, and Cassie. Magda hurried to the engineering workshop and found Emilia throwing computer parts and electronic components into a metal box. Brigid stood in the corner with her arms crossed, her pale face irritated.
“Xavier sent me to make sure you get on the bus,” Magda said, standing in the doorway.
“Can’t you see she’s busy?” Brigid snapped.
“Can I help?”
“No, no. Don’t touch anything. I have to figure out what to bring. I’m trying to focus. There’s too much.” Emilia frantically went between her shelves and workbench and the box, placing things into divided compartments.
“Just hurry, okay? Xavier says we’re leaving in half an hour.”
She backed out of the door as Brigid glared at her. Magda rolled her eyes and turned toward her mobile home. Hundreds of people milled through the narrow streets between the tents that populated the entire front yard of the farm. Panicked voices rang out through the crisp air as shifters, witches, and dome kids tried to make sense of the sudden evacuation.
People had bundles in their arms and backpacks on their backs. A child cried in a dark corner while frantic adults tried to pack enough supplies.
Magda ran over to the child and picked her up. She recognized the girl, Lily, from the dome. Only six years old, she’d been a baby when the world fell.
“Are you okay, sweetie? Where are your foster parents?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said, crying.
“Don’t worry. I’ll help you find them.”
Magda set Lily down and took her hand. They walked through the chaos of the camp. Just as they passed, an open fire sparked and leapt onto a pile of strewn-out blankets. Magda jumped away with the little girl, gasping.
The flames lapped against a canvas tent and licked away at the fabric, consuming the entire tent in seconds. It jumped to a plastic tent beside it and melted the tent to the ground. The fire continued to fly from tent to tent until the yard was a confusion in fire and smoke.
One of the dragons jumped into the air as people ran from the flames. The dragon sprayed water over the flames, but it was too late; most of the tents and half the mobile homes were already charred or burned to the ground.
“Everyone on the buses. Now!” Xavier shouted from the porch of the farmhouse. Bodies surged toward the road. Magda pulled Lily along with her through the flood of people. The press of bodies crushed them as Magda and the child pushed toward one of the open doors.
“Calm down, everyone. We have time,” Circe called over the din. But no one listened. The little girl’s fingers began to slip from Magda’s hand. She gasped and grabbed the child, pulling her up onto her hip.
Finally, they made it to the entrance of the bus and climbed on. They found two seats near the back and sat down in the big, comfortable chairs. People shouted and mothers tried to quiet their babies as the bus door swung closed. The driver was an older shifter, a mountain lion who worked in the gardens.
The line of buses began to move out toward the highway. Magda watched the farm as they left it behind. A hand tapped her shoulder, and Magda turned to see who it was.
“I’m glad you kept your mini helmet on. Do you still have the terminal?” Emilia asked. Leave it to Emilia to be worried about one of her little inventions in the middle of a meltdown.
“Yeah, it’s in my pocket,” she assured the young wolf shifter.
“Good. Take care of it. I wasn’t able to bring the heavier equipment. Your skill with The Program might come in handy—wherever it is we’re going.”
C
hapter 7
A bright flash tore across the sky as dawn broke over southern California. The streaking sound of laser bombs blasted and shook the ground. Magda held Lily’s hand tightly as the convoy navigated around Los Angeles, headed north.
“Do you think they’ll make it?” Lily asked, her shoulders tucked inside Magda’s arm.
“Yeah. Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”
But Magda couldn’t shake the deepening sense of dread sinking in her stomach. Michael’s warning had been true. There were only a dozen dragons defending the compound. Even with Xavier’s acid fire, they would be severely outgunned. Cassie was supposed to be here. Her energy blasts could take an Anu craft right out of the air. The dragons could only play mop-up.
Cassie would be liberating the Denver dome right now, totally clueless to the fact that the one mixed-population stronghold in the west was being decimated. Magda tried to relax, but her stomach was doing cartwheels, making it harder to lie to the little girl sitting next to her.
“I’m going to take a short nap, okay, Lily? I’ll wake back up in a few minutes. Are you going to be all right?”
“Just don’t leave me.”
Magda sighed and pressed the on button on her mobile terminal. After a few deep breaths, she relaxed enough to let the world begin to warp. For a moment, she saw reality superimposed with her starting room in The Program. And then, she was there.
Looking around her bedroom, she smiled and lay back on her bed. It felt so good to be somewhere comfortable, normal. But she had work to do. She couldn’t just spend all day lazing about in her old room.
Magda sat up and went to the door. Outside, she stepped into an alpine landscape. A dusting of snow littered the ground. Magda crunched through the frosty underbrush and into a clearing. In the distance, she could see a highway. She thought hard of her friend, pulling her energy toward her with all her focus.
Once she made it to the road, she looked up and down the winding concrete. There was no sign of anyone or anything. The last time she had tried to contact Cassie, it had been so easy. But she had been flying high from the conversation with Michael. Perhaps he had helped her somehow.
As soon as she thought of Michael, he appeared across the two-lane highway. He wore blue jeans and tan-colored hiking boots and a parka. His shoulder-length blonde hair glistened in the cool, pale sunlight. His eyes shone brightly as he stood with his hands on his hips. A faint smile curved on his lips, giving the impression that he had some kind of secret.
He crossed the highway, his eyes locked on hers. Magda took a step back, her heart slamming against her chest. A member of the Council of the Seventh House was walking across the narrow highway in Colorado directly toward her. The fact that this was The Program—or the fourth dimension or the astral realm or whatever you wanted to call it—really didn’t make any difference. Her reality was that this gorgeous, six-foot-five, broad-shouldered, violet-eyed blonde demigod was walking straight for her.
“Where’s Cassie?” she asked, her voice quivering.
“You only have to call her,” he said. “Just as you called me.”
“I thought I did,” she said, gazing up into his perfect face that looked as if it had been chiseled out of marble.
“And so you have.”
Michael turned his gaze down the highway, and Magda followed it. About two miles down the road, Magda could see the headlights of a Greyhound bus stretching out over the blacktop.
“Have the Anu destroyed the compound?” she asked, her gaze turning back to his beautiful face.
“Mostly. It isn’t safe for anyone to go back there. Those who escaped will meet you later. Continue north. You will receive further instructions when you arrive.”
“Why are you helping me?” she asked. The bus was nearly upon them.
He moved into her, opened his arms, and drew her against him. “I didn’t intend for this to happen,” he said.
“For what to happen?” She felt her knees go weak as he held her close to his marvelous rock-solid body. His arms enfolded her like the universe, wrapping around her and keeping her warm and safe from all worries and all troubles that she could ever know.
“That I should desire you so,” he said, whispering into her ear. He ran his hands down her body and picked her up off the ground, raising her petite form off her feet effortlessly into his strong, capable arms. Her breath hitched. Her heart slammed. Her body gushed and moistened as her lips parted. He crushed his mouth against hers, his tongue flicking between her lips. She let out a moan, her entire body stiff and rigid with desire. What was happening? This couldn’t be real.
He set her down and looked up the highway just as the bus approached. “I have to go now. But we’ll see each other again, my darling, my little one. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I won’t stop.”
What was he talking about? He held her hand as he walked away and then suddenly disappeared into nothingness. Snapping out of her shock, she began to wave her arms in front of the bus, praying Cassie would see her astral body from the side of the highway. The bus barreled past, a gust of wind blowing hard against her astral body. Damn. She didn’t see her. But then the bus screeched to a halt, and the door slid open. Cassie ran out, her eyes wide and questioning.
“Magda, what are you doing here? Is everything all right?”
“No. The attack came early. We had only the dragons to defend us. Xavier evacuated the compound. We’re all riding buses north now. I don’t know what happened to the dragons or Circe, but most of us are safe. Xavier told us to go north. That’s all he told us. Go north. There are friends there, friends that owe him a favor.”
“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry,” Cassie said. She bit her lip and drew her eyebrows together, her face etched with deep concern.
“Did you get the kids out of the dome?” Magda asked.
“We did. There were only about a hundred kids. All the older kids were gone. There weren’t any pregnant girls there, either. We found more experiments done on the older boys. Magda, I’m sorry. I know they used your brother in a hybridization experiment. I don’t think that it’s going well for them. I don’t think it’s working.”
“Fuck those sick bastards,” Magda said, a tear streaking down her face. The Anu had taken her brother just a few short months before Cassie had come to liberate the children from the LA dome. It wasn’t until Cassie and Rafe broke into the experimentation rooms that they found out what had happened to the older boys. The Anu were hybridizing fetuses by breeding with teenage girls. But they wanted to accelerate the process and were doing genetic experiments with teenage boys. So far, all of those experiments had failed, causing the deaths of countless young men, her brother included.
“We’ll meet you wherever you’re headed,” Cassie said, her eyes wide with compassion as she locked her gaze on Magda.
“All he said was north. I think we’re headed somewhere along the coast. But unless Xavier catches up with us, we are lost.”
“Just head for the coastal redwood forests up around northern Mendocino. You know what I’m talking about? I know Xavier and Circe spent some time up there when they went to consult a dryad. That’s your best bet. If nothing else, you can take cover in the forest. We’ll head to the same location. Stay in touch. We have no other way of finding each other. I tried to contact Circe this morning, but I couldn’t find her.”
“She said the same thing about you. She tried to contact you over the last couple of days but couldn’t.”
“I’ve been really busy and distracted with liberating the dome. That might be the reason. If she’s in a battle, fighting off Anu ships, with the dragons, that might be why we can’t get ahold of her. It’s hard to meditate when you’re in the middle of a war zone.”
Unlike Magda, who had the help of technology in the virtual reality simulator that was The Program, Circe and Cassie both accessed the fourth dimension through meditation, or whatever other metaphysical practices those two did.
“I
’ll try to get in touch with Circe. Emilia made me a mobile terminal and headset. Now that I’m getting the hang of using The Program for communication, it seems pretty reliable.”
“Good. Let me know what you find. Hopefully, once things calm down, she and I can contact each other again. But it’s good to know that we have you as well. I know it’s tough taking on all this responsibility. I felt exactly the same way when the hologram of my mother helped me out of the dome and told me I had some kind of mission. I was like, ‘Hey, man, I’m just a kid. What the hell am I supposed to do?’ But this is our world now, Magda. It’s our responsibility. You’ve been given a gift. The Council of the Seventh House contacted you. Do you know how rare that is?”
“Yeah, pretty rare,” Magda said, her voice shaking. She didn’t want to mention the fact that a member of the Council of the Seventh House had just tongue-kissed her, and she’d liked it, a lot.
Chapter 8
Magda woke from The Program with a start, drawing a sharp breath, her body jolted. Lily groaned beside her. The little girl yawned and blinked her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?” Magda asked.
“It’s okay,” the girl whispered, instantly falling back asleep.
Outside the window, Magda could see that the driver had turned west again after rounding Los Angeles. They were driving along the coast, on the impossibly narrow, treacherous highway that hugged the ocean all the way up the California coastline. Magda groaned. They would be like sitting ducks on this highway. They could be seen from a hundred miles away in every direction except east.
Magda found a pile of blankets under the seat and rolled one up to put under Lily’s head. With the little girl comfortable, Magda stood up and carefully made her way to the front of the bus.
“Why are we on this highway?” she asked, irritation obvious in her voice.
“I’m just following the leader. We were told to go north along the coast. Xavier didn’t say what route to take. But I figure we’re as safe out here as anywhere. Plus, less people, less chance of zombies. We’ll be under cover of the forest pretty soon. But then we have to drive through San Francisco, and that can be a bitch, believe me. Last time I heard, there were zombies all over the place.”