Race the Darkness (27 page)

Nothing happened. Not one goddamned thing. Tears burned in his sinuses and threatened to leak from his closed eyes. His breathing went shaky—hell, his whole body trembled. He wrapped his arms around himself to keep from rattling apart. He rocked in his seat like a nutjob. Okay, now he was going over the edge.

Everything went blessedly quiet.

No more engine humming, no more tires on the pavement. No more heartbeats from the men in the car. No more whoosh and suck of lungs working. His ears just stopped working. His muscles unclenched, and he melted against the seat. His mind went blessedly blank. He bobbed on a wave of nothingness. It fucking felt wonderful.

And then he remembered: The day he'd found Isleen, there'd been a blast of perfect silence too.

“Stop the car!” The absolute quiet vanished. In its place was control. Control of his hearing.

Kent slammed the brakes. Tires screeched against the pavement. Momentum pushed Xander against his seat belt. He braced his hand against the dashboard until the car stopped moving, then was out the door searching the landscape.

Cornfields on all sides except one. On his right was a bean field, and a mile beyond that, a snaking line of trees. A fencerow? A creek? Didn't matter what it was. His body hummed, pulled him in that direction like a magnet seeking its mate. “There.” He pointed straight across the field at the trees. “She's there.”

Only a minute ago, Xander's head had felt on the verge of exploding, his body spent, but all that had vanished. What remained was anticipation and worry and restrained rage that she'd been taken from him.

The guys all stood by their open car doors staring at him.

“That worked?” Kent didn't bother to hide his skepticism. “As in, really worked? Like she's really across the field? How could you know that?”

“It's their connection,” Dad answered for him. “There is a bond between them that defies definition.”

“Jesus.” Matt's tone wasn't merely doubting; it was downright pissy sounding. “Here we go again—you and your mystical connection shit.”

Kent ducked inside the car and got a pair of binoculars from the glove box. He looked down the road in front of them, then down the road behind them. “I don't see a way to get over to those trees. The closest road was a few miles back, meaning we'd end up backtracking, and even then I'm not sure we'd be able to get to that specific chunk of trees. I don't see any road turning off in front of us either.”

“I saw a shortcut. Everyone get in.” Xander rounded the hood of the car, heading for the driver's seat. Kent wasn't going to like his shortcut, but the guy could go fuck himself.

“You saw a road back there?” Kent got in the passenger seat. “I don't see anything, and I don't remember—”

Xander pedal-to-the-metaled it before they'd even closed their car doors. The engine roared and they shot forward. He cranked the wheel to the right. They slid, bounced, and plowed into the bean field.

“What are you doing?” Kent shouted.

“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”

The car fishtailed in the soft dirt, and he wrangled with the wheel until the tires found traction. And then they were sailing through a field of beans.

Kent had more to say, but his voice was drowned underneath the leafy green stalks slapping the car, sounding like a hundred pairs of shoes tumbling around a dryer. The noise sent Xander back to the day he'd found Isleen and that bitch driving his truck through the field. Here he was, about to find Isleen again.

He'd learned a lesson. Isleen wasn't going any farther than arm's length away from him. If he had to cuff her to him, he fucking would.

Dead ahead, the line of trees meandered through the landscape, the trees' heights contrasting sharply with the fields surrounding them. A quaint gravel road ran alongside the wood line. He hadn't seen that little lane until just now.

“You see that road?” he asked Kent.

In dawn's bittersweet light, it all appeared to be a picturesque scene. Something he'd expect to see on a calendar or a postcard. But there was something intangible—maybe the way the trees clawed toward the sky, maybe simple bad juju—that made the place bizarrely unappealing. A shiver ripped through Xander's entire body.

“There are cars parked among the trees.” Kent pointed. “I count…five. Shit. Best-case scenario, five men. Worst case, if every car was full, twenty-five.” Kent pulled his cell off the clip on his pants and hit a button. “This is Kent Knight with the BCI, badge number 5487, requesting backup and a bus to my current location.” He ended the call without giving them any more information. “This is one of those better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission situations.”

“Yep. I know the feeling.” Xander was actually starting to like the guy.

“We don't want to go in asses flapping in the wind, outnumbered and outgunned. So I need you all to listen to me. When I tell you to do something, do it. Don't fucking question me. We're going to pray like monks no one hears us coming. Pull out of the field over there.” Kent pointed to an area just past the last parked car. “And then we're going to hang back, evaluate the situation, and proceed accordingly. Everyone down with the plan?”

Dad and Matt voiced agreement. Xander mumbled something that could pass for yea or nay. Fuck Kent's plan. Xander had a plan of his own. Get to Isleen. Period. The end.

Kent kept talking, kept giving orders, but Xander tuned him out. All his attention zeroed in on a point through the trees. Her location. What had she been through this past week? Beatings and starvation like before? Or this time had things been worse? Nightmarish images from every horror movie he'd ever watched flashed through his mind. He clutched the steering wheel so hard he wouldn't have been surprised if it snapped in half.

Stop it. Stop thinking that way.
No matter what she'd been through, she was alive. She'd only been gone a week. Not the years she'd endured before. This couldn't be as bad. It couldn't. His heart didn't believe the lies his brain was trying to sell.

Even though they didn't have to travel more than a mile across the field, it felt like a small bit of forever until Xander let off the gas and pulled the car onto the gravel road next to the tree line. He rammed the car into park and then bolted from his seat, ignoring Kent's loud whispers for him to stop. What was the guy going to do? Shoot him? Not likely.

A pathway opened off the road, so he darted onto it and found himself sprinting through a serene copse of trees. The sun shot beams of light through the leaves, casting a warm golden glow over everything. Birds sang chipper songs. He heard the rush, gurgle, and slosh of water. He smelled moist earth, river water, and the terrible tang of blood.

Through the screen of trees, he saw everything. Its magnitude and severity so much worse than anything his imagination could have conjured up.

Time broke, giving Xander's mind space to take it all in. Memorize it. Relive the horror of it in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

A coffin-shaped box of black metal on the shore, lid open. She had been kept inside that steel prison. Beyond the box, sunshine dappled the water, casting a pink gossamer shimmer over Isleen's drowning body.

Four naked men held her. A fifth man cruelly shoved her face under the water.

Xander's stomach collided with his heart. Something inside him popped, the feeling similar to a pressure release, like the cork on his sanity had just blown. He stumbled and nearly went down, but caught himself and kept running toward her.

“Iisslleen!” He howled her name, the sound somewhere between wounded animal and feral dog.

The man with his hand over Isleen's face lifted his gaze. His eyes were cold and lacking a conscience. He raised a large knife in the air and still held her under the water. A ray of sun glinted off the bloody blade. “I command you to stop, or I will slay the Dragon with my sacred sword.”

Every cell inside him screamed to keep going. But he wouldn't make it to her in time to prevent that knife from piercing her flesh.

He stopped, his feet sliding in the soft mud at the river's edge. “You touch her with that blade, and there will be blood. I'll make all of you bleed.” He made eye contact with every goddamned one of them. Even the man who took her. Xander paused. In the morning light the man looked…fucking familiar.

The man nodded at him as if they'd just reached a private agreement. “Save her!” he yelled and then tackled the knife guy.

What the… He didn't have time to question. Needed to save Isleen, and he'd just been given the perfect opportunity.

Every ounce of worry, guilt, terror, and anger distilled into one primal emotion—rage. A white sheen slid over his vision. An electric zing slid from the top of his head down to the tips of his big toes. His skin prickled and twitched—the Bastard in His Brain. This time Xander didn't fight him. Instead, he unclipped the leash.

Go and destroy.

One moment Xander was on the bank, and the next he was in the river drawing back his arm. Fist connected with nose. Cartilage crunched. Blood gushed. The man screamed a sissy-girl sound and flew back into the water.

Xander felt a malicious smile twist his lips. That had felt fucking fine.

One down.

He turned on the next man. The pussy raised his hand to block his face.

“Lotta good that's going to do.” Xander served a thumper into the man's stomach so hard his knuckles brushed spine. The man's mouth formed a wide-open
O
, but he didn't make a sound.

Two down.

The last man let go of Isleen. Xander grabbed her limp body, pressing her against his side with one hand and keeping his other hand free. A quick jolt of cool healing passed from his body into hers.

The man clasped his hands in front of him as if in prayer. “Lord protect me.”

“The Lord ain't here, asshole.” Xander lunged forward and kicked. His foot slammed into the man's exposed testicles. The soft give of flesh and the soprano scream satisfied something in Xander's soul. It was gonna take a surgeon to remove the man's stones from his ass cavity.

In the shallows, the two other men continued to fight over the knife.
Let 'em fucking kill each other.

Not ten seconds had passed from the moment he'd hit the water to the moment he emerged with Isleen. Pale blue tinged her skin and lips. She'd lost weight, her bones protruding nearly as sharply as they had when he'd found her at the torture trailer. “I've got you. Everything's going to be all right.”

He laid Isleen on the bank, just as Kent, Matt, and Dad ran up. Xander didn't give two shits about anything except her.

He bent close, placing his ear against her chest. Nothing. No. Couldn't be nothing. She had to be alive. He was alive. She
had
to be alive. That was the rule, right? And then he heard her heart and lungs—so quiet they were like the whisper of butterfly wings. “Come on, baby. Wake up for me.”

He placed one hand over her heart and cupped her cheek with the other one. A soothing coolness began where his palms touched her and spread up his hand, arm, shoulder, and then throughout his body. The sensation began to sting and itch—so weirdly satisfying and pleasant. He was healing her.

“Xan—” Dad crouched down next to him. “Will you let me check her over? Do what I can for her? It might help in some way.”

“Okay.” It was the only word he could manage. The sensations in his body overwhelmed his speech center.

Dad picked up her wrist to try for a pulse, but froze. “This arm is broken.” His tone was graveyard somber. “I need to immobilize it.”

Xander felt like he was falling, flopping, and flailing through an endless abyss. He couldn't get air into his lungs; he couldn't feel his heart beating. A part of himself was dying. Seeing her like this, knowing that those men had kept her locked in a box and broken her arm.

He ripped his shirt over his head, tossed it to Dad, then placed his hands back on her. “Do something about her arm.”

Dad made a crude but stable splint using the material and a few sticks.

“Baby, come on. Wake up for me. You're safe now. I've got you.” He kept talking, going over and over some version of the same words. She was breathing more normally, her color better, but she hadn't awakened. Yet.

“Xander.” Matt laid a hand on Xander's back. “I think you need to let the experts take over.”

“She needs
me
.” He didn't have the energy to explain—again—the connection he and Isleen shared.

“It's been thirty minutes.”

Matt's words were a stop sign smacked upside Xander's head. He froze. Lifted his gaze, looked around for the first time. “What?” It seemed only minutes had passed. Cops were everywhere. The naked men all lay on their stomachs, hands cuffed behind their backs. Two paramedics stood off to the side, a gurney next to them.

“Xan—let them have her.” His uncle's voice was filled with compassion. “They'll take care of her. You can even ride with her to the hospital.”

“You don't understand. Isleen needs me. She doesn't need doctors or the hospital. She needs me.” He recognized how his words had to sound to everyone else. He just knew something they didn't know and wouldn't understand. “They're not taking her. You're not taking her. No one is taking her.”

Everyone on the scene paused and looked at him. Pity, sympathy, and sorrow on all their faces.

“What are you all looking at? She's going to be all right. She just needs time!” He yelled the words like a deranged psycho.

Some of them looked away, and some shook their heads. Some of the cops put their hands on their service weapons as if Xander were on the verge of needing to be taken down. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Fuck you all.” He gathered Isleen into his arms and stood. “Dad—” He spoke soft so only his father could hear him. “You've been a shit father. Haven't done a goddamned thing for me since the moment Gale left. And hey, I get it. But I need something from you right now. You have to keep everyone away.”

“I'll make sure you have all the time you need.” Dad turned to the crowd of people who stared at them. “I'm a doctor. Her vitals are stable, and I've field-dressed her injury.”

Xander walked away, headed toward the river, and followed a short path to a colossal sycamore. The tree was something from an epic movie. Its trunk immense, branches fanning out in all directions—some toward the water, some toward the sky, some dipping down offering shelter. Its bark was mottled white and tan. Giant gnarled roots hunched out of the ground. He settled in between those roots, the tree cradling him in the same way he cradled Isleen.

He shifted her around in his arms so she sat between his legs, her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly to him. The tingle and itch of healing pulsed through him. She was getting better. He could feel it. It was only a matter of
when
she'd wake up.

He rested his head against the top of hers. Her hair had dried and smelled of river and algae.

In front of them, the water swirled and eddied, slapping and rippling against the shore. A blue heron descended from the sky like a miniature flying dinosaur and landed in the shallows. The bird stalked through the water, his head tilting side to side, looking for a meal. Water bugs darted and glided over the surface like skiers on a slope.

She would wake up soon. She had to.

Unless she didn't
want
to wake up. After everything she'd been through, why would she seek out this life with all its pain? She'd been offered nothing but shit. Imprisoned in that torture trailer for years. Locked in that box. Starved. There had been five naked men. Five. Had they taken turns? Passed her from one to the other?

His mind conjured up horrors his heart couldn't take. His throat kicked open and he leaned away from her to gag, but a sob came out instead. His eyes stung; his vision went watery. Warmth sprinted down his cheeks. Tears. Fucking damn. He didn't cry. Hadn't cried when Gale left, when Dad rejected him, when he'd been struck by lightning, when he'd nearly gone crazy from all the noise. But this—confronting what she'd been through—hurt like a heart amputation.

He held her tight, buried his face in her neck, and wept.

He cried for everything she'd endured. She was so petite, so fragile, and yet she'd been forced to grow a steel spine. The worst she had suffered had only temporarily bent her, never breaking her. But even the strongest metal fractured after too much pressure. Was this her breaking point?

“If I could, I'd endure all your pain. Take it on myself.” He spoke between sobs, his words rushed and running together. “Willingly. Gladly. I never want you to be hurt, in pain, or suffering. I want to give you happiness and joy. I want to see you smile and hear you laugh.”

He started rocking—forward and back—with her. He was goddamned losing his shit and couldn't help it. “There's so much you've missed out on. So much I want to give you, so much I want to show you.” Everything in his mind gushed out of him in a torrent of longing. “There's a pond on the property where I used to swim as a kid. The fish would nibble my toes, and it felt so strange and funny at the same time. I know you'd love it.

“I want to show you Fearless and Bear's totem. I want to take you to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July. I want to spend Thanksgiving with you, eating and lounging on the couch watching football all day. I want to see you playing in the snow. I want to see you by the light of our Christmas tree. I just want you in my life. I want you happy.”

He cried until he had nothing left inside, and then he clung to her until he felt strong enough to lift his head from her neck.

Across the river, on the opposite shore, stood a doe and her speckled fawn. They froze as if sensing Xander watching them. The doe's ears flicked, searching for a warning sound, while the fawn bent to the water and drank.

“I wish you could see this. They're so beautiful,” he whispered, his voice hollow. Probably because he felt like his heart had been removed from his body.

“They are beautiful.” Her words were a breath of sound.

His empty chest bloomed a wild bouquet of hope and joy. He couldn't speak, couldn't move, just joined her in watching the deer on the opposite shore.

When they disappeared into the brush, she shifted against him, turning to see his face. “Am I dreaming?” She reached up, winced from the movement, and put her hand over his mouth. “No, don't tell me. I don't want to know.”

That was the first thing she'd said to him when he found her in the torture trailer. Did she believe good things could only happen in her dreams? The goddamned spigot behind his eyes opened, clouding his vision of her.

He gently tugged her hand from his mouth. “This is real. I'm real. You're real.” He scrubbed a hand over his eyes, not wanting tears to obscure his vision of her.

She moved her hand to his forehead, her face flickering in pain from the movement. She brushed his hair back to see the puckered scab. “I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I thought you were dead.”

“I would've been if it hadn't been for you.”

Emotions and memories blazed in her eyes, but they passed so quickly he couldn't grasp them.

“How bad do you hurt?”

“I feel like I've been hit by an ocean liner and have the flu.” A barely perceptible smile tipped the edges of her lips. “I've been worse.”

He wanted to ask her more, but couldn't find the words and wasn't certain he'd be able to handle what she had to say.

“Hey, I'm okay. Really.” She must've seen the concern on his face. “Nothing some sleep, some food, and some time with you won't heal.” She sounded sincere. She looked sincere. But something wasn't right.

He should be happy she'd survived relatively unscathed. But that itself was the problem. No one could go through what she'd been through and not be affected. He'd never been a poster boy for mental wellness, but he did know she should be reacting to what she'd been through. Hell, it hadn't even happened to him and he had reacted all over the place.

Was this what denial looked like? Could it masquerade as sanity?

“They need time alone.” Dad's voice carried from the opening of the path that led to the sycamore.

“He can't deny her medical care.” Kent was using his asshole voice. The guy might've toned down his asshole vibe for the ride here, but he was back to full power again.

Isleen could hear them arguing too. They weren't using their indoor voices.

“One of the nudes over there said they kept her in that box for six days. No food. No water. I'm not a fancy-ass doctor like you, but she needs medical care.”