Page 36 of The Alien Who Saved Christmas

Christmas Eve Morning

“We need to talk, Chief Pryce.”

Sullivan Pryce paused at his secretary’s desk, shooting her a surprised look.

Randa Goldrush was a pragmatic and distant woman, who barely spoke three words a day to him.

She never wanted to talk. It was one of the reasons he’d hired her.

When it came to screening résumés, he looked for buzzwords like “practically mute” and “antisocial.” The last thing he wanted was some cheerful employee who brought him cupcakes on his birthday or wanted to carpool.

“Talk?” He repeated warily. “About what?”

“You said to let you know if I heard any interesting rumors. Well, I have.”

Sullivan’s mood zoomed upward. “Rumors about the Elementals?”

He also liked job candidates who could help him gather information on the mutant Cult of what-the-fuck-evers who’d infiltrated his town.

That had been a huge factor in hiring Randa.

He’d been understandably skeptical when she’d first applied for the job, but she’d turned out to be a tireless worker, with no interest in socializing and no love for the rest of her kind.

She and Sullivan got along great .

A few months before, the so-called “Elementals” had shown up in Mayport Beach, Florida.

As the chief of police, Sullivan had suspected they were up to no good, even before he’d known they were a mutant Cult of what-the-fuck-evers.

Since then, he’d arrested them for countless crimes, watched them perform impossible feats, been stalked by them, insulted by them, and kissed by one of them.

Also, there was a twelve-hour period of Sullivan’s life that he couldn’t account for, and he knew they somehow were responsible.

Several weeks before, he’d been walking home through the park.

The next thing he knew, it was morning, and he was waking up face down on his front lawn.

The only clues he had as to where he’d been were slightly frostbitten fingers and a strange-looking gun tucked in his waistband.

Even those clues were weird, since there was ordinarily very little chance of frostbite in South Florida, and the gun was like nothing he’d ever seen.

And Sullivan had seen a lot of guns in his life.

Obviously, something Cult-y had happened.

Since he’d never blacked out or lost time befor e, he could only assume that the Elementals had somehow roofied him. All he wanted for Christmas was the whole gaggle of them booted out of town. He just wasn’t sure how to achieve that goal. Not legally, anyway.

No matter how aggravated he got, Sullivan wasn’t about to break the law to see them gone.

He believed in justice. He took his job seriously, and he followed the rules.

Sure, he had a videotape of them just appearing out of thin air and unprovable speculation that they were involved in a beheading or two, but none of that was going to hold up in court.

He needed to find a legitimate, not-weird reason to evict the bastards from Mayport Beach.

The first logical step was to learn all he could about them. If he was going to fight those freaks, he’d need information. Randa knew all the details of their bullshit backstory, and she was willing to answer his questions in clear and matter-of-fact ways. It was one of her best qualities.

Randa was an “Elemental,” but her own kind seemed to hate her. To Sullivan, that was the best possible reference she could have. Tall and too thin, with the face of a debutant and clothing straight out of Amish Vogue , Randa was the only “Elemental” he trusted.

Well, no. That wasn’t exactly true.

Sullivan didn’t trust anyone.

But Randa was at least pleasant and predictable. She was one of the few female mutants who never hit on him, she kept to herself, and she typed eighty words a minute. In short, weirdo or not, she was one hell of a receptionist.

Now, she eyed him with sad concern. Randa was always sad.

She was one of those people who’d obviously fallen apart at some point and never fully recovered.

She’d patched up the pieces, but she was still fragile along every crack-line.

By this point, she seemed to have resigned herself to never fully healing.

Randa didn’t mope about it or try to hide it, she just endured. Sullivan respected that about her.

After he ran the other weirdoes out of Mayport, Randa could stay. She was a nice kid, who just needed a break.

“The rumors are about you .” She explained in her quiet voice. “Rumors about the Happiness box.”

“The what box?”

“The Happiness box.” She repeated. “If you have it, you need to give it to Job, of the Earth House immediately. It’s very important. You can’t imagine the destruction it will cause if it falls into the wrong hands.”

Sullivan stared at her and gave up on deciphering that gibberish.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.

” That wasn’t unusual, though. She might be Employee of the Month, but Randa was still a Cult member.

Half of everything she said was straight out of a “Dungeons & Dragons” manual. “What is a Happiness box?”

Her eyebrows tugged together like she was confused by the question. Or confused that he would need to ask the question. “It’s one of the Tablets of Fate, of course.”

“Yeeeaaaaaah.” He drew out the word in a humoring tone. Well, that just cleared everything right up. “Like… from that videogame?”

“No, the Tablets are real . They’re very powerful, and people seem to think you have one. There are rumors everywhere.”

Sullivan was still drawing a blank. “Well, the rumors are wrong. I don’t have one, so ‘people’ are out of luck.

” Dismissing the whole nutty conversation, he started for the door.

“You want tacos for lunch? The stand by the pier is making red and green tortilla shells in honor of Christmas Eve. I’ll bring you back some. ”

“No one is going to believe you don’t have the Happiness box, though.” Randa called, ignoring the question. “They’re going to come looking for you, Chief Pryce.”

Sullivan didn’t want to hurt Randa’s feelings by rolling his eyes, but it was hard to resist. “Well, if they show up, tell them I’ll be at the pier.” The Cult was always loitering down there, so it was the ideal place to stake them out. He headed out into the sunshine.

The best part about living in Florida was the balmy temperatures.

Even at Christmas, it was eighty degrees.

Mayport Beach was a small oasis of bungalows and palm trees, situated on the Gulf of Mexico.

Sullivan had grown up in the sleepy town.

He loved the place, especially now, during the holidays.

Every December, there were twinkling lights and plastic flamingoes in Santa hats on every street.

As ridiculous and tacky as they were, the decorations reminded him of his grandparents and the only happy memories of his childhood.

Of course, thanks to the Cult, thinking about his grandparents also reminded him of the fact that his grandfather was supposedly an incognito Elemental.

And that Sullivan shared his extraterrestrial DNA.

And that all the Cult women wanted to mate with him to perpetuate their creepy species or something.

Jesus, it was bad enough they were mutants, but did they have to be insane mutants?

Sullivan wanted to talk to his cousin about the otherworldly visitors, but Melanie was engaged to one of the freaks.

Whatever was happening, she undoubtedly knew waaaay more about it than Sullivan did, and she wasn’t sharing.

Clearly, he couldn’t trust her to tell him anything useful.

She was on their side. So fine. He’d figure out a way to get rid of the Cult on his own.

Mayport Beach paid him to protect its citizens and, while it wasn’t explicitly stated in the charter, he was pretty sure that mandate included teleporting mutants.

Crossing the street, Sullivan headed for the beach. He could see the shiny gold star on top of the Christmas tree as he drew closer to the pier. The town put it up every year, decorating it with be-glittered seashells and brightly painted wooden fish.

The fifteen-foot pine drew Cult members like moths to a porch light.

They seemed fascinated with it. Apparently, they didn’t have Christmas on Krypton, because they were always trying to figure out what the tree “meant.” He counted six of them just standing around, staring up at it like it was an inscrutable painting.

Two even had their heads tilted as if they were viewing it in a gallery, their arms crossed over their chests and their eyes narrowed in deep concentration.

It was too bad he planned to see them all long gone before springtime. They’d probably love the annual performance art exhibition that Mayportians creatively entitled: “The Easter Egg Hunt.”

Sullivan’s eyes automatically checked faces, hoping to spot the one Cult member he wanted to see. Dark hair, and hazel eyes and a face like Sofia Loren. She always looked like his deepest, most hopeless fantasies come to life.

Teja.

For some reason he couldn’t fathom, Teja seemed even more fixated on him than the rest of the mutants. A few weeks ago, she’d shown up at his house and bluntly told him they should have sex. Other Cult women suggested that too, but Teja was the only one who’d ever gotten him to agree.

Even after Teja explained that she could never have any feelings for him and that it was just about sex…

Even knowing she couldn’t possibly be attracted to someone with a gigantic scar on his face…

Even realizing it was all some kind of Cult-y trick to get past his defenses…

Sullivan had still been helpless to resist. He would’ve accepted any caveats to have her.