Race the Darkness (5 page)

The EMT guy pulled the gurney from the back of the truck. A woman just as skeletal as Isleen lay in an awkward fetal position. Isleen's grandmother looked familiar. More familiar than Isleen.

The tuning-in slammed into the side of Xander's head.

“You family?” The EMT glanced at him and did a double take at the scars.
Whoa, buddy. What happened to your face?

“Struck by lightning. It's called a Lichtenberg figure,” Xander answered without thinking. And then it was like someone had hit his rewind button and he was a little boy again, looking up at the face of the woman who'd raised him. Until she walked out on him. On his father. “Son of a bitch. This is Gale.”

“You know her?” The EMT and Kent spoke in stereo.

“She's my dad's wife. My fucking stepmom.” Disbelief permeated his words. Reality shifted underneath his feet, but he didn't move, only watched Gale being wheeled into the ER. He now existed in a world where Isleen had been inside his head and she was Gale's granddaughter. Where was Shayla then, Isleen's mom?

An image of Shayla laughing while she babysat him burst into his mind. She'd been just eighteen when she and Gale left, not quite an adult. He tried to picture her as she would be now, a woman in her forties. Who had a daughter—Isleen. Total mind fuck.

“What is going on here?” No mistaking the anger in Kent's tone.

“I need to make a call, then I'll explain everything.” Xander held out his hand. “I need your phone.”

Kent slapped the phone into Xander's palm with the force of a bitch slap to the face.

Xander hoped the number to the main house hadn't changed since he was a kid.

“Stone residence,” Row answered on the first ring.

“Row, I need to talk to Dad. Now.” Silence on the other end of the line. “Row?”

“Sorry. My God, I never thought this day would come.” A hitched breath. She might be the housekeeper, but to the family and to him, she was a lot more.

He wasn't able to tune in over a phone line, but with Row, he didn't need to. “You're not standing there crying, are you? I need to talk to Dad. Now.” Over the line, he heard the patter of her feet on the floor.

“No, no. I'm on the way down to the Institute right now. Just a second. Hold on. Don't hang up. I'm in the hallway. Almost there.”

Jesus. She was running. Probably didn't want to blow the one time father and son were actually going to communicate.

“Alex. It's…a phone call for you. Important,” Row said.

Xander heard the shuffle of the phone being passed. “This is Dr. Stone.”

Decades of training in noncommunication captured Xander's tongue. And right now, he didn't have anger riding him as a motivator.

“Row, I don't think anyone is there.” Dad's voice went distant as if he had started to move the phone away from his face.

“Gale's in the hospital.” The words shot out of Xander's mouth at a volume louder than they should have. On the other end of the line, everything went quiet, except for the sound of Dad breathing into the mouthpiece.

“Where?”

“Prospectus, Ohio. There's another woman with her. A young woman.”

“Shayla?”

“No. Her name is Isleen. Gale's her grandmother. They're both in bad shape. Not sure either is going to make it. I don't know what happened, but they both appear to have been held hostage, beaten, tortured, and starved.”

“Oh God, Gale.” Anguish soaked each of his father's words. “I knew she was in danger. I could've kept her safe. Everything would've been fine if she'd just listened. Listened to the legend. Listened to me.” Dad exhaled, blowing into the phone and Xander's ear. “Why didn't she listen?”

The sincerity in Dad's voice shot a spike of panic through Xander's sternum. Like Dad really expected Xander to have an answer. What the fuck was he supposed to say?

“I'm on my way. Leaving right now.”

Dad hung up, but Xander stood with the phone pressed to his ear. Their twenty-five years of silence had just ended, and Dad hadn't even acknowledged it. Didn't surprise Xander, but there was no denying the sting of it. He handed the phone back to Kent and then clutched the side of his head—a preemptive gesture.

“Keep in mind I've got this bizarre hearing thing that shouldn't exist, and yet you know it's real.” The pain bulldozed into his brain.

“Oookaaaay.” Kent stretched the word out into one long syllable.

“Well, that's only the tip of the glacier.” He told Kent everything. Everything. About the woman's voice inside his head since the lightning strike, about how he'd always drowned it with booze, about how last night the Bastard in His Brain made him drive to the trailer.

Kent crossed his arms and gave him
that
look. “If this is the story you're going to stick with, you're screwed.”

Four days later…

She was dead.

Deceased.

Departed.

That was the only explanation for her surroundings.

Isleen stood in an intangible space of airy alabaster. Delicate fingers of fog swirled and swelled, coiling around her like a sweet caress. The air smelled of white lilacs, of carefree times. Here in this space, there were no walls to confine her, no doors to trap her, no one to hurt her—no pain, no hunger pangs, no muscle cramps, no soreness from the latest beating.

She had to be in heaven.

Her heart fluttered as delicate as a butterfly trapped in a mesh cage. Her breath glided in and out on wings of sound. She felt so gosh-darned small, but expansive at the same time. The strange sensation scared her until her brain produced a name for the feeling. Freedom.

Tears slicked her vision, then skimmed down her cheeks, riding the wave of her jawbone to slip and slide down her neck. Gran had told her about this. About happy tears. They had both cried rivers and lakes in that room, but Gran—until she lost her mind—always reminded Isleen that happy tears happened too. And that they were chemically different from sad tears.

Isleen could feel the difference. These tears were full of peace and grace. These tears cleansed the wounds Queen had made on her soul.

The air became a visible thing—wavering and morphing into color and texture, as if an artist was painting the environment one feature at a time. Splotches of white swelled into the palest of blues, then intensified, and suddenly the blue separated from the white into a pristine sky, perfectly spotted by cotton-ball clouds.

The atmosphere rippled and pulsed. Green smears speckled the ground, then sharpened and defined and became tall grass. White blossoms dotted the meadow, then some of them transformed into gold, some into vivid purple, and the grasses became fused with beautiful wildflowers. Small birds, some brown, some red, some strikingly yellow, flitted among the flowers. A winding path cut a swath through the meadow and made Isleen want to stroll along and just exist in perfect harmony with the beauty surrounding her. This place was her version of paradise, of heaven.

A cloud slid away from the sun, and the entire landscape went to hyper-vivid color.

Heat blasted the environment—startlingly unpleasant. Her pale skin burned underneath the glaring rays of the sun. For the first time, she noticed a carved wooden sign next to the meadow entrance.

Prospectus Prairie Park.

Something about that sign wasn't right. It was more than the way the wood had faded to an indistinguishable shade between brown and gray. If she were in heaven, why would the sign be in disrepair?

Expectation and anxiety staged an emotional upheaval. Gone were the feelings of bliss and rejuvenation. Her happy tears dried to salt crust. Malevolence crawled over her skin.

A woman jogged past Isleen, so close their arms brushed. Isleen flinched from the invasion of space. The woman appeared completely oblivious to having sideswiped another human being. She just kept jogging, her body slender of muscle and form. She carried herself in a graceful way that reminded Isleen of a ballet dancer. Her mahogany hair was tied up in a perky ponytail that swished over her shoulders like a pendulum. Like a countdown. Like a warning.

Inside Isleen's body, something shifted and changed, but she couldn't put an exact name on the sensation. Impending doom thundered through her blood vessels. She could taste menace in the air. She jogged after the woman. Only she didn't
want
to jog after the woman. She told her legs to stop moving, but they didn't listen.

An entity held dominance over her, trapping her inside the rind of her skin, forcing her to be a mere observer to what was happening to her body. She pushed against the prison of her own flesh with the only weapon she had—her mind. Nothing. Panic ticked down her spine one vertebra at a time and then knifed her in the guts.

Stop. Don't do this to me. Let me go. Let me out.
She screamed the words, but no sound came out and her body continued to run.

Breath sliced into her lungs, shot out, in and out, but oxygen seemed to be in short supply because she couldn't get enough. Her heart was a time bomb, ready to explode out of her chest from overexertion. Her legs wobbled, and a profound weariness smothered her. Still the thing at her controls continued to drive her. Sweat dripped into her eyes, stinging and making them water. But still her legs kept churning over the ground and the sun kept burning down.

The woman jogged over a fat culvert that served as a bridge for a dry streambed. A troll-like figure emerged from inside the massive pipe. His face was thickly bearded, his hair dirty and disheveled, and despite the distance, Isleen smelled his sweat and bad intentions.

He scrambled up out of the streambed and sprinted after the woman.

Watch out. Behind you.
The muscles in her throat strained to make noise, to scream, to warn the woman, but a stronger counterforce wouldn't permit a peep.

The man sprang at the woman, launching himself as if he were a jungle cat taking down prey. They fell. A short, sharp snap of pain and fear slipped from the woman, then ceased when her body hit the ground. He landed on top of her. Neither of them moved for a few ticks of the clock, then the man lifted himself and shifted until he sat on her back.

The woman yelled nonsensical sounds of anger and terror. Her arms beat at the ground; her hands rucked up handfuls of dead summer grass. Her feet kicked, but her toes only succeeded in slapping the ground. Her hips bucked up and thrashed, trying to fling the man off her back like an angry bull, but he was too heavy.

Isleen stopped next to them. Immobilized. Paralyzed. Helpless. Forced to watch the man withdraw a knife from a sheath on his waist. The blade was subtly curved, wickedly curved, and smeared with rust. Only it wasn't rust; it was dried blood. Dear God, who else had he killed?

She pushed against the confines of her body, strained, tensed, tried to react, tried to catch that hand holding the knife, but it was already too late. He punched the blade down into the woman's back. The unholy shriek of pain from the woman branded itself on Isleen's brain, burning deep into her memory where she'd never forget it.

He raised the knife, then punched it into the woman's back—again, again, again—in a series of thrusts so rapid Isleen couldn't count. The sound of steel to bone snapped loudly against the peaceful backdrop of birdsong. Slurping, wet sounds now accompanied each slam of blade to flesh.

The woman stopped screaming.

* * *

Xander jerked awake with a full-body shudder. Damn. The incessant noise of the hospital flooded his ears. Beeping and buzzing machines. Hundreds of conversations. The rattle and hum of the air conditioner. Christ. It hadn't seemed this loud until now. The sounds had been there, but somehow he'd forced them into the background. Now they were in the foreground, demanding his attention, depleting his hold on sanity, driving him closer and closer to a visit from the Bastard.

A streak of light snuck around the edges of the closed blinds, slashing across Isleen's empty hospital bed.

Empty.

Xander's heart went bucking bronco inside his chest. Where was she? He kicked to his feet and ran from the room. The hallway was empty except for Isleen in her hospital smock flashing her too-bony spine and creamy white ass to the world.

He darted back in the room, grabbed the blanket off the bed, and then raced after her, his boots clomping as loud as a Clydesdale's hooves against the tiled floor.

He didn't mean for it to happen, but his vision locked on the pale mounds of her ass, on the demarcation of each rib, on the expanse of all that ivory skin. He shouldn't be staring; he shouldn't be getting a monster rocket in his pants; and he shouldn't be thinking thoughts of—

What. Was. Wrong. With. Him. Especially when he could see the pale-pink outlines of so many scars that it hurt just looking at them.

She was only four days out of that torture trailer, three days free from death's grasp, and two days off the IVs and liquid food, and here he was, thinking about the ways he'd like to prime her pump. When had he become a goddamned pervert?

He caught up with her. “You're probably cold.” The words gushed out of his mouth, sounding as awkward as the front of his jeans felt. He draped the blanket over her shoulders, arranged and rearranged it until her backside was covered to her knees. The whole time, she never stopped moving, never acknowledged him, just kept heading down the hallway.

“Where are you going? I can have them bring up a meal. Or if you need the bathroom, it's back there.”

She turned into the small waiting area with its vending machines full of fake food. Row had saved him by hauling in as much home cooking as she could carry for Dad and him. She'd even gotten him a replacement cell phone and brought him clean clothes.

Isleen moved across the room and sat in a chair directly in front of a window, staring out at the main entrance three stories below them.

News vans from every channel in Ohio had staked out the parking lot. Reporters and cameramen milled around, waiting, always waiting for a hint, a glimpse, a morsel of information about the two women held hostage in that trailer. The media had gone manic over their story.

“Goddamned vultures. I'm going to close the blinds, don't want them to see you.” He pulled the cord, and the vertical blinds folded shut. She stared at the closed blinds, her face a blank slate, devoid of emotion and animation.

Shit. She was in shock. Didn't she have a right to be after everything she'd been through?

Her body seemed to be healing nicely, but her mind had stagnated. She ate when food was placed in front of her. She let the doctor examine her. But she never communicated. When Xander touched her, he felt more than actually witnessed her attention shifting from deep inside herself to him. After what she'd endured, she deserved any comfort he had the strength to give her.

He sat next to her and took her delicate hand in both of his oversized man hands. Over the past few days, he hadn't been able to resist touching her. Didn't know what that was about, only that it felt right to him and seemed to comfort her. A secret, crazy part of him thought his touch was the reason her body had been recovering so fast. But that was a thought his sanity couldn't afford to think.

“You're safe now. You're in the hospital. You're doing well. A little shaky at first. Your organs were failing, but now everything is functioning normally. The doctors can't explain your rapid recovery, but they are thinking of releasing you later today or tomorrow. They just wanted to see you up and around first.” He touched her chin lightly, guiding her face around so it was aimed at his. “I've been right here with you the entire time. And I'll be right here whenever you decide to talk to me.”

Part of him couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. When it came to her, his gonads had turned into nomads and taken off without him. Somehow, he was okay with that. Deep in his marrow, he meant what he said. He'd wait for her to come around. No matter how long it took.

He might've only met her four days ago, but she'd been inside his head for years, and somehow that made her intimately familiar. Not to mention that she'd waited all that time for him to find her and save her. The least he could do was offer the rest of his life as penance. If she needed time, he would give every second to her.

Her grip on his hand tightened, like she understood his words, but if she had, then why wasn't he tuning in to her? He focused on her, waited for anything in her expression to change, an opening for him to squeeze his way inside and help her heal.

Her room had been kept mostly dark due to her sensitivity to sunlight—being locked in darkness for an extended time had that effect on a person's optics. Here in the too-cheerful brightness of the waiting room, Xander drank in her features and let them imprint in his mind.

Her face had started to fill out, no longer seeming as skeletal as before. Her skin was no longer a shade of death, but a pale porcelain. Her hair amazed him—and everyone else. It was a near-perfect shade of white and had grown two inches in the four days she'd been in the hospital. Two inches. The doctors had no explanation for her hair's rapid growth rate. Not to mention her body's rapid healing rate. All her blood work just kept coming back impossibly normal.

There were so many things about her that defied explanation. She'd known his name. How? She'd been talking inside his head. How? He'd found her. How? The Bastard wasn't talking.

She stood, then tugged him by the hand like he was a reluctant toddler. She walked to the corner of the room and stared at the ninety-degree angle the two walls created.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
That kind of behavior gave a person a special invitation to a padded cell. “Isleen. Look at me. Snap out of this.” Authority dominated his tone. “You
will
look at me.” His voice went deeper, more forceful than he intended, the sound of it resonating through the space.

“What the—” Kent rushed in the room with that look on his face, the look he always wore in Xander's presence. “Don't speak to her like that.” Kent's tone didn't carry the weight Xander's had, but the guy's face had gone radiant red with anger.
You're such an asshole. Treating her like that when she can't defend herself. Someone needs to put you in your place. Me.
It'd feel like winning a championship to reacquaint you
with my fists.