Fragile Darkness (9 page)

Like a church with no walls, the stumpy remains of hundreds of trees ambled across the field. I could go there and be alone, spread out the quilt my mother once wrapped me in, and lay on my back, watching the clouds parade along the front range.

It was my special place, my special time, and when I closed my eyes, I could be one with those clouds, drifting against the horizon.

Hovering there all over again, formless, aimless, the faint edges of memory played against the fringes of my mind. I could see him, more silhouette than form, could feel him running, shouting …

I always find you.

For a long, content heartbeat, I wrapped myself in the familiar cocoon of memory. Or was it a dream? I wasn't sure. Music drifted, the tinkling of a piano and a rich, velvety baritone from somewhere unseen, singing about wise men and rivers flowing.

Meant to be …

For the first time in weeks, the darkness didn't push any closer.

Take my hand …

Everything slowed, faded. I tried to stay there, not wanting to move, not wanting the moment to end, not even when I heard the voice.

Especially when I heard the voice.

“Just rest.”

Content, I pulled the cocoon closer.

“That's it.” The words were quiet, gentle, and with them warmth drifted against the side of my face.
“You're safe now.”

Dream, I realized. This was all a dream, beautiful and perfect, the silken threads of the unreal spun around the sharp, painful edges from before.

But when I opened my eyes, he was still there, sitting beside me on the edge of a bed I'd never seen, in a room with walls of woodland green and a dream catcher so big it had to be at least ten times the size of the tattoo peeking out from the sleeve of his T-shirt.

He leaned toward me, the sweep of dark hair falling like black silk against the line of his cheekbone, a stark contrast to the soft fullness of his bottom lip. He had a hand to my arm, two fingers pressed against the inside of my wrist.

His eyes were closed.

“Dylan,”
I whispered, and when his eyes shot open, and the burnished silver flashed against mine, something inside me exhaled. “It was you,” I realized. He was the one who'd followed me in the woods, who'd called to me, helped me.

Everything crashed in on me, disorientation giving way to a breath of longing so strong there was nothing else, just us, like we'd been before,
like I'd dreamed,
and the hugeness of everything that lingered between us.

Touch him. It was all I could think. Touch him, feel his skin, the warmth and strength, the way they could penetrate.
Heal.
He'd done that before, the first time we met.

I wanted that now, I wanted that again.

I lifted my hand, not sure why it felt so heavy, and slid a finger along the line of his jaw.

He held himself so, so still, looking at me with the oddest clash in his eyes, of tenderness and violence and restraint.

Around me, the strange room kept zooming in and out of focus, glittering bright and fading fast, as if I was looking through a malfunctioning camera lens. Everything but Dylan.

“You're really here,” I whispered, reaching for him, reaching without thinking, pushing up and wrapping my arms around him, holding on as tightly as I could.

Heat blasted me, radiating from his body to mine and driving away the cold I'd lived with so long I barely noticed it anymore. Touching him was like absorbing sunshine, and I pressed myself closer, needing that, the sunshine.
Him.

The warmth of his breath feathered against my neck. His chest expanded against mine. And then with a rough breath his arms were around me, too, circling my body and holding me close, one hand along my back and the other tangled in my hair.

I closed my eyes as somewhere inside started to hurt.

But then I needed to see, not just the room around us, but him. I pulled back, leaving one hand on his shoulder as I lifted the other to his jaw. Looking up, I saw him, his eyes, burning like scorched silver diamonds.

Memory slipped against that empty place inside me, the place that wanted to feel again, feel the warmth.
Feel him.
I pushed up without thinking, lifting my mouth to his. It was slow and tentative, aching, like brushing against fragile glass, knowing that if you moved too fast or turned the wrong way, the perfection would shatter.

But nothing shattered. Nothing went away.

He held himself soldier still, like he didn't trust himself to move, didn't know what would happen if he did. His heart slammed against mine, and with each slam, more places inside of me started to fire. I hovered there in the moment, absorbing it,
needing
it.

Needing him.

He tensed, tried to pull away, but then with another rough breath between us, surrender came.

It was an odd word, surrender, like giving up or quitting, but there was neither in the way his hands found my face, strong yet gentle, sliding back the damp sticky hair and holding me there, holding me as if he thought if he let go, if he pulled back, I would be the one who vanished.

As if
he
was the one afraid.

Thoughts tried to form. Hazy fragments rushed around inside me, softly at first, sharper with each slam of my heart. But nothing made sense, not with the urgency swirling through me, consuming everything. There was only Dylan, and the dizzying sanctuary of being back in his arms.

Dream, I told myself. I wanted this to all be a dream, something without boundaries or sharp edges. Dreams played over and over, forever. They could be returned to, didn't have to end. They could linger, heal. Like aimless clouds, they weren't connected to before or after. They just
were
.

I pulled him closer—

He ripped away, pushing as far back from me as he could, hovering there with his arms like steel rods on either side of my face, his hands pressed against the pillow, his eyes on fire.

I'd never seen him look like that, not even the night he pulled me from the burning church.

I lifted a finger to my mouth, swollen now, my lips moist.

“You've never kissed me like that,” I murmured, confused. “Like it hurt.”

The silver of his eyes glittered. “Yeah,” he said. “I have.”

My eyes stung. I looked away fast, looked away because I had to. Because the sharp edges of memory came slicing back, and I realized, for a few minutes there, I'd forgotten. I'd been so caught up in the moment, I'd forgotten what happened the last time we were together. Not at the party, but
before.

I pulled back, slowly taking in the room again, the pine chest of drawers and the matching nightstands, each with an urn-shaped ceramic lamp with a wide shade of bright white. A bundle of herbs sat next to one, with a wispy stream of smoke curling into the air. A single white votive flickered from the other.

The bed was big and tall, shaped like a sleigh, the mattress hard but the quilt thick and warm. A picture sat on the dresser, of an old man and a young boy with rugged mountains in the background.

Not a hotel, I realized with a strong throb at the back of my head. Wincing, I lifted my hand to the damp tangles of my hair, matted with mud and what felt like a twig.

It all started coming back, vague, fuzzy images, the crushing fusion of the party and the sensation of spinning, the glowing door and the realization that something was wrong, the run through the woods.

Then nothing.

Until here.

Now.

With him.

“Where are we?” I asked, trying to fill in the blanks.

Dylan eased back, his movements contained, as if holding on crazy tight, because if he didn't, if he let go for even a second, everything would spin away.

“My dad's house.” He hesitated, something dark and dangerous glittering into his eyes. “He found you in the flower bed.”

 

NINE

Everything shifted. The sudden sway rocked through me like the room had become a boat adrift on the ocean, not in a storm, but the steady onslaught of wave after wave.

“He what?” I must have misunderstood.

Dylan looked away, toward the window, for a long moment before answering. “The dogs started barking—”

Rottweilers, I remembered, big and fierce.

“Dad was checking on them when he heard the doorbell. By the time he got to the front, the car was already leaving.”

I sat there, my fingers curled in a death grip against the beautiful old quilt in countless shades of rose.

“You were curled in the pansies beside my mom's Virgin Mary statue.”

His voice, all scraped bare, chilled me as much as the words. My breath started coming faster, choppy-like, as I scrambled for memory to match what he said.

“You looked like you were sleeping,” he said, more quietly now. “Or gone.”

The room blurred. Because of my head, I realized, lifting a hand to the dull throb of pain at my forehead.

“That's when he called me,” he said, and then his hand was there, too, slipping against mine with soft, gentle pressure. “Is this where it hurts?”

The calming scent of sage drifted from the bundle smoldering on the bedside table. I nodded, not feeling anything then but the warmth of Dylan's fingertips as I concentrated on breathing.

Everything inside me started to race, the holes in my memory gaping bigger by the second.

“Your heart's on fire.” His hand was lower now, no longer against my face, but pressed at the base of my throat. “All your pulses are.”

“
All
my pulses?”

“Something my grandfather taught me,” he murmured. “That's what I was doing when you woke up. Checking your energy.”

Because he could, I realized, and without thinking about it, my eyes found the dream catcher tatted against his bicep, the one I'd run my finger along before. Dylan Fourcade was only a few years older than me, but he knew things I could only imagine, as if he'd lived twice as long as the rest of us.

Because the Navajo in him was strong.

But even with his touch, even with his steadiness, everything inside me kept racing. The clock across the room read 11:13. We'd arrived at the party around 7:30. Maybe I'd spent an hour there.

That left two and a half unaccounted for.

“I don't understand,” I said, barely recognizing the scrape of my own voice. “Why can't I remember anything? It's all like some bizarre
Alice in Wonderland
dream.”

His mouth twitched, like a smile wanted to form but he wouldn't let it. “Seems more like Goldilocks to me,” he muttered darkly, because we both knew there was nothing funny about it.

“I thought you were there,” I admitted, staring at him as if answers might magically appear between us. “At the party. I thought you followed me into the woods.”

His chest rose, fell. “No.”

“But…” The horror of it all pushed in.
Someone else had been there, someone I couldn't remember.
“Who would do that? Who would bring me here, to
your dad
?”

Why?

“Who else was there?” he asked.

The room wobbled again. “Grace,” I said, and then my heart kicked. “Oh, my God, Grace.”

“I've talked to her,” he said, sliding my phone from the other side of the lamp. “She was texting you. I told her you were here.”

I sat there clenching the quilt as he told me about their conversation.

“She told me
everything,
” he said quietly. All motionless he rattled off everything he knew now, about the almost-vision at the Greenwood party and Kendall and Will and why I'd gone to the second party. About the darkness we'd picked up there. “She was looking for you when she heard two guys laughing about getting rid of the prophet.”

The room tilted all over again.

“And I need to know what you had to drink,” he said flatly, but the darkness in his eyes burned through me. “Or what you took.”

“What I took?” I pulled back, my mind racing. “I didn't take
anything.
” The question hurt. “Just water.”

He crowded in on me again, pulling the covers from my body. “Water didn't do this to you.”

Numbly I slid my hand along the tear at the knee of my favorite jeans, to the dark, coppery smear against the stark white of his sheets, part mud, part blood.
Mine.
I shifted, seeing for the first time the deep gash curving up from the arch of my right foot—a gash that should have bled still. But didn't. Already the skin was beginning to heal, leaving only a faint warmth in place of pain.

“Trinity.” His voice rasped quieter, gentler. “I need you to tell me everything you remember.”

“I'm trying.”
I stared at the dream catcher on the wall, drawing my knees tight to my chest. “I thought a vision was forming,” I said, telling him about the dizziness and how everything had spun, how I'd run, trying to get outside, away from the craziness of the party. That I'd thought a vision was coming.

“It's happened before,” I told him. “Last fall Chase and I got separated in the Quarter. I was looking for him in an old courtyard, but everything flashed, and then it was like I was in some other place, seeing stuff from a long time ago.” A grandfather clock and the pink velvet couch, a black mirror.

“I thought it was real, but then…” The memory chilled. “LaSalle showed up and we went back inside, and the room was empty.” And it had been for a long time.

The silver of Dylan's eyes went crazy dark.

“I think he was toying with us even then.” I had no proof, not the physical, tangible kind, but I didn't need it. “I think he was following us, that he separated me from Chase to see what would happen.”

“And you thought that's what was happening tonight?” Dylan asked “A vision?”