Chapter 2-1
2075 Words
Chapter TwoDr. Lena Verglas pushed her glasses back up her sweaty nose and swore about the relentless heat. Her parents had reported getting sixteen inches of snow in New Hampshire last night. The air conditioner was barely working in the van she’d been forced to accept when her reserved compact had not been available as promised.
“It’s the holidays,” the man at the rental agency told her by way of excuse. She wanted to blame the rental guy for her sweaty misery. That was way better than accepting responsibility for the literal hot mess she’d created for herself by hitting the road the moment she’d gotten final grades submitted for her classes.
She didn’t have to do this—not technically. She could just include a list of potential locations in her grant. So why wasn’t she flying home to snowy New Hampshire for a normal Christmas like a sane rational woman facing a month’s break?
“Because you’ve turned into a greedy, fame-seeking ho,” Lena said firmly, answering her thoughts aloud.
Yes, she could have planned better. Yes, she’d left hastily.
But her chances of getting the grant would probably be doubled if she could truthfully include a tentative agreement.
She’d make this work—somehow. She always did.
She definitely wasn’t going to let driving this gas guzzling van discourage her… nor was she going to let any other obstacle get in her way. Lena thought of herself as academically tough. She was a Professor of Climate Studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. If she wanted her “snow dome” theory of survival to be taken seriously for the biggest impact, her research would have to be done in a desert climate where snow rarely happened.
Recent weather research kept pointing to the hottest, driest area in New Mexico being near a little town in the middle of the desert called Magic.
Dedicated to her goal of getting the Podunk town to agree to host the dome, Lena was grudgingly on the tiny road heading toward it now, as fast as the speed limit allowed.
If things went well, maybe she’d make it home for New Year’s.
Or not.
She certainly wasn’t going to miss her sister’s nagging annual lecture about her ‘thirty-five-year-old barren womb’ and unmarried state. Her studies had led to too much comfort food and too little time for dating. None of that bothered her half as much as it did her family. Lots of women didn’t do real relationships until they were past forty these days. She had bigger things to do than diet herself down to a dating size for a bunch of men who weren’t interesting enough to live with.
No, what bothered the normally sassy, self-confident version of herself were her colleagues tormenting her with the rumors about there being more strange things than just incredibly hot weather happening in Magic. Everyone at the college knew she was far too scientific-minded to let their jokes about UFO sightings change her mind, but nothing kept their ridicule from bugging her.
Now all those n***d guys in the middle of the road up ahead? Okay, they had Lena questioning her sanity—at least a little. Mirages in the desert usually involved water. What the hell were five n***d guys doing in the middle of the road?
Lena slowed the van and stared out at quite the assortment of eight-pack abs and impressive man sticks hanging proudly. Seeing the five of them definitely eclipsed her memories of that one time she’d played with a set of hunky twins during her graduate work. Granted, her current s*x life was pathetically laughable, but that was still no reason to let a bunch of handsome hunks with impressive junk scramble her brain. She needed to stop daydreaming about the ‘good old days’ and focus more on reality.
“Girl, get your mind out of the gutter and back on your science business,” Lena said as she wrenched her gaze away from them.
A towering and very handsome blond with a great smile held up his hands in a sign of peace as he slowly moved toward her side of the vehicle. Like every other woman who hadn’t had s*x in over a year would have done, Lena grinned as she braked to a stop to keep from hitting the n***d dummy.
Not being a complete fool, Lena fished her pepper spray out of her purse and tucked the tiny container into her palm before rolling down her window to see what n***d Hunk #1 had to say.
“Greetings. Can you tell us how far we are from the location of Magic, New Mexico? We are not yet familiar with your planet and have left our navigation instruments behind with our clothes. We did not anticipate arriving somewhere other than our intended location when we passed through the portal.”
Lena looked him up and down before glancing at the other four who all smiled and waved at her. They’d all passed through a portal alright—probably the door of some local mental facility if she had to make a guess.
Since they spoke politely in stilted English, it could be they were foreigners who were visiting. She was no jet-setter, but Lena knew not all countries were as prudish as the US of A. Seeing no man sticks pointing north reassured her, so Lena smiled back and waved while she pondered what to do.
Stopping to help a bunch of strange men—no matter how hot they were—was a pretty idiotic action for a woman traveling alone.
Hand on her pepper spray, her gaze returned to Hunky Blondie #1 still standing patiently by her door. She got no bad vibes from him at all, and he seemed to just genuinely be asking for her help. She couldn’t just drive away and leave them all to sunburn themselves out in the middle of the desert, could she? The temperature had to be above a hundred already.
“What’s your name?” Lena demanded.
“Mars—at your service,” he said, bowing his head.
“Like the planet?”
He looked confused, but then one of the others shouted something to him. Lena didn’t hear the words well enough to understand, but Mars nodded in gratitude.
“Yes. Like the planet,” Mars concurred, never losing his smile.
“Tell me something, Mars. Are you guys members of a gay nudist colony or something?”
Mars held up a finger. “Please allow me to check with my companions before I respond to your query. I do not wish to tell you an untruth.”
Lena chuckled at the weirdly formal response, especially from a man who was n***d. She watched Mars’s bitable a*s shift with his movements as he quickly walked back to his friends.
Maybe she was being judgmental. Guys she’d dated in the past had told her it was one of her worst flaws. Maybe the n***d men were simply Swedish or some other culture where men liked their junk to swing in the breeze.
Like perfect Nordic stereotypes, all five men were tall, muscled, and had some variation of blond hair. In fact, they were so fair-skinned their skin nearly gleamed silver in the sunshine.
Still… nothing about their appearance in any way explained how they came to be walking through the desert without any protection from the sun. Lena could only imagine how painful a sunburned Johnson would be. Feeling sympathy for the crazy nutbags, she found herself hoping they hadn’t been out in the sun long enough for that to happen.
Mars was gone for a full two minutes doing his consulting thing. She could hear all five men debating with each other in some kind of language unfamiliar to her ears. Tired of melting while she waited, Lena rolled up the van window to conserve all the cool she could.
When Mars finally came back, Lena grinned and rolled down the window again. Mars was all but smirking. This ought to be good, she thought, returning his smile.
“Our consensus is that we are definitely a colony of nude men. None of us could agree about whether our positive attitudes qualified us to be considered gay. Please forgive me for giving you an incomplete answer.”
Lena burst out laughing. This was too much nuttiness to take seriously. “Okay. Well, this is your lucky day, Mars. I’m heading to Magic myself. Luckily, I’m driving a rental van and don’t care what you five get on the seats. Go get your n***d buddies and hop in. I’ve got just enough seats for the five of you.”
Smiling his gratitude, Mars bowed low and hustled back to his group.
Lena laughed and imagined the story she was going to get out of this adventure. She doubted anyone would believe her without a picture, but she was not taking a selfie with five n***d guys. She would never risk her career over nothing more than a good laugh.
Calix knew he had no one to blame for his situation except himself. He could have stayed in the dragon military. He could have, but instead, he’d come running to his cousin Theo’s hometown of Podunk Ville, New Mexico—which Theo made him properly call Magic—so he could help his cousin keep the peace there.
After spending the early morning rounding up a missing werewolf teenager who’d gone wild with his first shift, his bossy Sheriff cousin had then sent him out to settle a stupid dispute over cows. Being hungry was never a good state for a dragon to be in, but at least the dispute about ownership had ended quickly when Calix had threatened to eat the cow they were arguing over.
His threat had solved the disagreement, but it had unfortunately not gotten him any food. Calix was planning to take care of that oversight just as soon as he reported to Theo. He was heading into the Sheriff’s office when a giant white van pulled up out front.
Bracing himself to be polite to the human he instantly smelled inside it, Calix muttered under his breath as he watched a mocha-colored female climb out of the driver’s seat and slam the door.
When she was about three feet away, his dragon suddenly reared up inside him as wild as the teenage werewolf he’d wrestled earlier. Why in the world did his dragon want to make an appearance? And his forehead now hurt.
He reached up under the brim of his deputy’s hat and rubbed the small horn he found protruding through his skin. The tiny horn had come a few times before, but lately, it had been getting bigger. It was the reason he now kept his hat on so much. Well, that and some of Magic’s elderly residents thought he was turning into a demon.
Sheriff Theo was his older cousin by a few months. Theo had gone through his last dragon shift transition over a year ago. Theo had warned Calix that the horn was a sign it was going to start happening to him soon. The reality was a lot more inconvenient.
Down, he ordered his beast, when it reared up again as she came closer. The human female was a stranger, but that didn’t automatically make her dangerous. Like many of her kind, the female wore glasses to correct her imperfect vision, but Calix could see a twinkle of amusement in her chocolate eyes as she watched him. He wasn’t in any way afraid of her and wondered why his dragon had reacted like it had?
The woman looked soft all over and definitely nothing like the men in black. After spending a whole summer and most of the fall working as Magic’s deputy, Calix had seen those meddling government agents far more than he’d expected to in his time here. More than anything else he’d been doing, dealing with the harassing visits from the men in black had shown Calix exactly why Theo had wanted another dragon to protect the town.
“Hello, Sheriff.”
“Deputy,” Calix corrected quickly, hoping like hell Theo hadn’t heard her with his dragon hearing. His cousin didn’t like people calling anyone sheriff but him.
“Deputy. Right. Okay.” Lena drew in a breath. “Where’s your local mental health facility? I believe I found some escapees from it on my drive here.”
“Escapees?” Calix repeated, his dragon horn aching when his brows rose. Magic was a town full of every kind of paranormal on Earth, and now it had aliens as well. He wanted to laugh at what the woman had said but figured the human female would get mad at him for it.
His dragon roared to get his attention again. Shut up! Calix barked the order in his head as he willed his beast to submit to his control. He could barely hear the woman talking over his dragon snorting and roaring. His inner beast had never done that before, and it was beyond annoying. He was going to have to remember to take time to eat in the future. He wasn’t at his best when he was hungry.
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