Entranced (A PowerUp! Story) by Marie Harte Page B

springtime in the mountains. He judged it to be closer to fifty degrees, if that.
    “What the hell?” He watched Heather leafing through the book until she found the section she needed. Then she began reading, muttering under her breath. She frowned. She smiled. She frowned again.
    She lay on her belly on the ground and traced her fingers over the pages as she flipped them. Jack set down his backpack and joined her, keeping the gun at his side at the ready. His senses were screaming at him of impending danger, yet he couldn’t see anything. He heard nothing threatening. The unnatural stillness was broken only by Heather’s ramblings and the crinkling pages of Chronicles as she turned them.
    He sat by her side and stared down at a few hand-drawn pictures of a woman fellating a man, then having him do the same to her. Eventually the pair engaged in a sixty-nine, and Jack had more than a few ideas of his own. The pictures turned him on in a big way, especially since Heather pulled off her jacket and tugged at the neck of her sweater.
    “You okay?” he asked, hoping this place didn’t turn her into a raving lunatic. His entire being hummed, and the feeling of a thousand fingers tapping at his brain made him uncomfortable. Especially because the closer he drew to Heather, the harder that tapping hit him.
    Suddenly, he couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. He could only feel that rhythmic beat pulsing through him. He felt his gun drop and knew he’d passed out, even as he rose above his body.
    Holy shit. Am I astral projecting?
    Jack stared down at himself on his back while Heather remained oblivious, still muttering to herself as she poured over the book. What a pair. He glanced at the tree and felt it smiling at him. The damn thing was sentient.
    And it wasn’t of this earth.
    He recalled the first job his team had done for Owen, recovering a lost locket. The locket had belonged to Owen’s relatives, and according to Rory, Owen’s distant cousin and current keeper of the locket, history had claimed it had been crafted from a meteorite. Another not-of-this earth moment.
    Jack wondered if the two were connected. He believed in extrasensory perception, could acknowledge that mankind would continue to evolve and already had in spurts, considering his team was living proof of psychic phenomena. But aliens?
    The tree didn’t turn into a little green man, and it didn’t speak or suddenly grow feet and walk. But he sensed a presence, and Jack knew the thing needed something he couldn’t give it, but Heather could. He suddenly understood that the tree had seen him as a threat and pulled him out of his body. He tried, wanted to explain that he wouldn’t harm the thing, but he couldn’t talk. Hell, he still didn’t know how he could be floating above himself. Though a few members on the PowerUp! team had come into contact with astral projectors, he himself never had.
    He didn’t know what to do to convince the presence —for lack of a better word—that he meant it no ill will. And then he floated back down toward the ground until he was situated over his body. He jerked in a breath as his soul reconnected with his corporeal form and blinked as the disorientation left him.
    “I’m back,” he rasped, feeling his chest and reaching for the gun on the ground. He sat up and tucked the gun away, into the small of his back. “Heather?”
    She shook her head, and a tear leaked down her cheek. “I can’t see it. I don’t know what to do.”
    “Shh.” He took her into his arms and hugged her, rocking her like a small child. “It’s okay. We’ll find it. Relax.”
    Her distress continued until she began to worry him. She didn’t respond to his voice or touch, and her link to him was all over the place. One minute he felt her inside his mind, another she was gone, and then she was there, deep inside him where no one had been, ever . Like a part of him, and when she left, he was bereft, almost in tears.
    “What the hell,