“Well!” Lutz got up abruptly. “I know where I’m not welcome.”
“No, wait…” Casey looking confused, worried. “… um, ah, geez. What am I supposed to say? Beth didn’t really mean to offend you?” He sounded completely unsure.
Lutz laughed, grinning. “Just messing with ya. I just dropped by to say I’d be around. You just have to think about me and I’ll know you want to chat.”
“Okay…” Casey still didn’t sound sure, but then it wasn’t every day one found themselves talking to a ghost. “So, before you go… If you can just show up wherever, can you go spy on the bad guys for us?”
“No. Sorry.” Lutz shook his head. “Already tried. Can’t go anywhere I haven’t been, unless there’s someone I know there. We tend to haunt people, not places.” He raised a hand and snapped his fingers, disappearing.
“Yeah, cute, dude. The special effect wasn’t necessary.”
CHAPTER
28
Casey squinted at me. “So he’s just going to pop in whenever he feels like it?
“Of course not.” I reached across the table to pull one of the overfilled coffee cups my way. “He eavesdrops first, until he learns how to knock.”
“Okay, that makes me feel sooo much better.” He switched to the other side of the table from the mess. “So he can’t go find out what this…Maxa’xak is up to?
“Nope.” I sipped at the coffee, complimented by the array of flavored creamers room service sent up. “I’m not exactly sure why he can’t be released until I do it. It’s… disturbing. Bad enough I got him killed in the first place, but he might come in handy somewhere.”
“That is disturbing. Fighting an alien monster with a ghost.”
“Well, the Maxa’xak won’t expect it.” I shook my head. “What he can do remains to be seen. Eat. We have a meeting to go to.”
There was plenty to choose from off the breakfast cart. Casey ate with a ravenous gusto, while I nibbled. My mind kept going to the meeting as the minutes got closer.
Casey slurped down the last of the coffee. “I guess it’s time. You’ve switched the soldier back on.” He pushed away from the table. He’d always said I did that when it was time for me to head to base. “May I escort you, Capt. Castle?”
“You mean Delgado now. We’ll have to fix that when this is over.” I got up, taking one more bit from a biscuit. “Let’s go see what the plan is.”
The officer in me wanted to pat my hip for my Sig, but it was safely locked in the cabinet. Casey pressed his hand into the small of my back, urging me to go. He didn’t let up pushing me down the corridor and into the elevator, then down to PH3. A short ride, but my stomach knotted up. Casey must have felt my tension, his hand spreading out over my back. “You’ll be fine.”
“Yeah.” I tightened my shoulders. I was about to face a bunch of soldiers, but not the ones I was accustomed to. These were the Ci’in and the Kwia. A wave of memories flowed through me. These were warriors and I was their leader.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped out without Casey pushing or dragging me. There were more of my kind here. I could feel their energy and let it draw me across the penthouse lobby to a set of ornate doors. They opened before I reached them, Daniel and Frankie, bowed their heads to me. I stepped into the large board room.
It was a packed room. The energy of all the Ci’inkwia washed over me. I didn’t ask, just walked to the empty space at the head of the table. Joey waved Casey over to join him in the chairs circling the room. I stood there, staring into the faces of my kind as well as local tribal leaders high-ranked enough to be included in this battle. Lucky them.
“Shall we begin?”
They were ready. Yazzie’s tribe provided holographical maps of the mountains where the enemy camp was. Most of the mortal tribal leaders from the region were present, along with the four Elders. Next to my mother was a tribal leader from the Great Lakes Algonquians. Looking at him I could see where we got our mortal genetic material. It was their men and women who made us members of their tribe. If this was the last battle for us, it was fitting they be here.
After pointing out the location of the Maxa’xak, and showing the video, a basic attack plan was laid out. Every battle had the same anchor strategies. Using those guidelines, we divided into action teams.
We needed to get all our people in place at night, while the moon was still so large and bright. We knew the wash routes were going to be watched closely, and something had set off an alarm to let them know we’d reached the ridge over the encampment.
An old Cocopah leaned over the holographic display. “My people have hunted these mountains for centuries. We know paths no one else knows. Paths no one should follow.” He poked his finger into the hologram, where my photos had been merged to show the enemy installation. “My grandfather warned us to stay out of this area. Stories tell of ghosts miners who steal the souls of wanderers. We did not suspect the Maxa’xak. No waters flow there.”
“An understandable conclusion. We heard some of the same stories and explored a number of mines for possible underground water sources.” My father nodded towards my brothers. “We’ve explored Recluse Goatherder’s, Death Valley Scotty’s, Lost Dutchman and a dozen others, but none yielded the quantities of water needed for a Maxa’xak.”
One of the Kwia from California moved around the table to look into the hologram more closely. “Even with another ten thousand years we couldn’t search every nook and cranny on this continent.”
“Being the middle of a desert, we assumed the Tinajas would yield the same results, so we’ve been focusing on other
