Flashback (11 page)

She couldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone else.

She started to run, pantingly, exhausted but making her legs work anyway, making them pump and drive, sending her up the slope. Running, she recognised where she was, and an intention fixed itself firmly in her mind. There would be no more pain, or loneliness, or numbing, nagging worry that she might again go into that black darkness.

“Dana!” David shouted. He was not far behind and gaining quickly. She was so tired. Her chest heaved and her face burned, and fire shot through her legs and chest. “Dana, for God’s sake! Stop a minute, let me talk to you—”

She shook her head, blindly. He must not catch her, must not stop her. It would be for the best.

“Dana, you’re not by yourself in this! Just stop a moment and let me catch up with you, please!” His ragged voice was closer, and she could hear him running now. He was not far behind and catching up, but she was getting to the clearing at the top of the slope. She heard his words and wondered very fleetingly at how he’d known how lonely she felt, and then she was racing across the clearing to the cliff that plunged forty feet to rough, deadly rock. It would be enough.

“Dana, my God, don’t do it!” David roared behind her, the bellow ripping out of him with the full force of his sudden, sharp, overwhelming realisation and stunned fear.

It cut through her own teeming emotions like a sharp knife, making her stumble as, not only the sound pierced her but the emotion itself, the fear knocking her over. But she’d picked herself up in an instant, and she could still make it if she pushed it and herself beyond the point of pain. She couldn’t live with herself, she just couldn’t.

At this point, her emotional crisis, the adrenalin flowing, her own awful decision—everything combined seemed to force her awareness into high gear. Her perception clicked over with an amazing rate of efficiency, recording every single instant of time, like frames from a movie, each movement, each gesture, each sound and sight being printed indelibly on her mind forever.

The sun was so very bright, and her legs quivered as she thrust up from the ground like a sprinter leaving the block, feet digging into the uneven ground for holds. The clearing seemed suddenly very small. Her chest heaved just one big, last breath and she held it. A drop of sweat had trickled into her mouth and she tasted salt. She had the mental image of something hugely powerful and incredibly fast being hurtled her way, at her back, and only looking back later could she realise that what she’d felt was David, bending all of his intellect and surging male body and screaming, protesting mind her way to halt her any way he could.

But for once in her life, Dana was so wrapped up in her emotions, she didn’t heed his mental protest and she ran, so physically exhausted at this point that she was barely jogging instead of the sprint she’d tried for. She was just that much ahead of him. She hurtled herself, and the ground dropped from underneath her. Everything whirled and shifted and spinned, as she left the edge of the cliff, and her body twisted as she went over the edge. And the sunlight was so bright and beautiful, and the deep green, wonderfully graceful pines swaying in the wind, and the blue in the sky with the white from the clouds, and the brown earth and the smell of summer. She was going to remember it all, no matter what followed this life, and it would be the very last thing she knew of this life, that wonderful, majestic, aching beauty of this world…

…Something latched on to her wrist cruelly hard, manacling her like a band of iron, jerking her body up tight from that free, graceful last fall. Her body stopped short. She screamed in pain, from the lancing stab from her tortured, torn shoulder muscles, from her bruised body as it slammed stunningly into the side of the cliff. Something dark obstructed her yellow summer sun: David’s head, hanging over the edge of the cliff, along with his long, tremendously strong arm and wrist and slim, quick, ruthless fingers. He was flat on his stomach, in one last ditch effort to stop her, and he’d somehow, incredibly, burst into that last moment of needed speed, throwing his body like a spear, leaping out full-length to snatch her wrist with an astonishing accuracy in aim.

Dana remembered thinking all that, as she hung between life and death, for several seconds just hanging in mid air, with the wind gusting behind her and cooling her, her shoulder practically torn from its socket, David’s harsh, sobbing breathing sounding nearly in her ear. She thought about how terribly thin her wrist was, after all, and how the chances of him grabbing her right at that moment had been astronomically low, and how now she would not be able to escape the pit.

She heard him and felt him fighting for control over his straining body, only a few seconds ticking by since she’d tried to jump to her death. He was a very strong man and she was a comparatively small girl, weighing little. But bearing her full weight in such an abrupt jerk must have been excruciating for him as well as for her, and it took him a few moments to gather himself to the effort of dragging her back to safety at the top.

She heard his breathing as he took a deep breath, and then his shoulder muscle flexed and he started to pull her back slowly, inch by sweating, straining inch, and Dana felt herself being lifted inexorably up.

Overwrought, sobbing, immersed in the only true death-wish she’d ever experienced in her life, Dana clawed at his fingers and wrists, kicking, convulsively against the cliff in an effort to get his hold to slip, drawing blood with her fingernails without realising, panting, “No, let me go! Let me drop! Please, just let me die!”

He snarled out, “Damn you, I will not! You aren’t going to smash yourself to death, I won’t have your blood on my conscience, too!”

She heard his strange words, the determination like iron that ran through his body, but he’d stopped pulling her up in spite of all the will in the world, for it was just impossible to drag her up when she struggled. His body weight was stretched out too far. They hung there, her wrist nearly broken by his white knuckled clamp on it. She had no feeling in that hand. “I won’t do it,” she gritted out, so exhausted and aching and so full of pain.

“Dana,” he panted, the hoarse sound not like him at all, something different and elemental, not a voice but a raspy whisper from the soul. It brought her head up and she stared into those dark eyes, now so desperate. Desperate for her sake. “I can’t bear to see you die, I can’t. I can’t bring you up. Your struggling. It’s too much. You want to die, you can die. But I’ll fall with you. I won’t be left behind.”

Eyes already dilated from the strain of her emotion, Dana stared up at him and she saw the utter seriousness and implacability in him. She felt it. He was totally prepared to do it.

She made some kind of whimper, she didn’t know what, and he suddenly shifted forward, bringing himself to the edge of the cliff, never lessening his grapple hold on her wrist. She felt herself shift downward a foot or so, a scraping slide against the rough jagged rock that lacerated her skin. “I swear,” he whispered, “I’ll do it.”

At that keen point between life and death, where both met at the edge of the two sides of the coin, there was an utter stillness.

Chapter Six

She flinched away at the thought of him dead, of that instant and vivid image of him broken and bleeding at the foot of the cliff, more so than she did at the thought of her own. “No,” she gasped out raggedly, the physical strain on her body making her go limp, her own voice a mere thread of sound. “No, don’t! I’ll come. Please, I’ll come.”

A moment, as David panted and gathered up his strength, and then he started to pull again, and it was so excruciatingly painful for her as she felt muscles scream and threaten to tear, the rock catching at her bare arm and scraping it until it bled. David’s harsh breathing and straining effort; and then she was grasping the top with her free hand; and then she was lying at the edge of the cliff, her hips and legs dangling; and then she was dragged totally back on to level ground.

Dana was suddenly crying as she fought for air, panting and gasping and shaking, the sobs uneven and a bare shudder of pitiful sound. David’s hands shifted from under her arms to clasp her convulsively close, and she crept her own arms up and around his strong, sweating neck. She trembled and shook, and sobbed into his chest, and his arms held her tight as he trembled and shook. His face was in her hair, his hands moving across her back spasmodically, his strong frame shuddering over and over. Dana didn’t know who was comforting whom. All she knew was that he was warm and real and immediate and caring, she felt that caring, and he knew how she’d felt and sympathised.

Her eyes were closed and her sobbing was dry, and she nuzzled him urgently in his neck, trying to hide her face in him and lose herself in him, and she felt his face moving in her hair and knew he was drowning his own sensations in her life, so imperiled a moment before and so safe now. Their entire heated bodies were intertwined and tangled as they sprawled on the hard ground, his legs hard and heavy against hers, his torso large and flat against her own chest, his hands thrust into the luxury of her long, thick, wind blown hair. His warm neck. She tasted his salt. Then her head was dragged back and his lips were brought to hers, shaking, fierce, clamping on her. He was drinking from her and slaking his fear and his thirst and his pent-up emotion, and she was kissing him back. Yet it wasn’t quite what she would have called kissing, in her own vague and romantic daydreams. Instead it was a biting, urgent, hurting, bruising reassurance of the other’s life and living and safety and need.

Dana felt the sun pound down on her head, warming her exposed, bleeding arms and neck and the curve of her cheek as it was turned up. She felt the warmth of David’s body as her skin melded to his, her arms thrown around him and holding him close, his own arms shuddering, crushing her, his weight half on her, half off. She could smell the pine and the grass and the summer aroma, mingled with David’s own masculine scent. She heard his harsh, ragged breathing and someone else’s—shocked to realise it was her own. A rock dug into her hip. Yellow light blinded her and she couldn’t see. The inside of his mouth was wet.

That was when the tears came, as he cradled her, and she let the drops fall hopelessly. Her own irreparably flawed person, the sweet breeze that delicately touched her heated skin, the man in front of her, now so gentle and caring, and that black, reeking pit she’d fallen into. It was worse than a prison. She was surrounded by the smells and sounds of freedom and sanity and goodness and healthiness, so that the knowledge of her own dark abnormality was more cruel than anything she’d ever imagined.

“Why didn’t you let me die?” she whispered. Her eyes were closed now, her face hidden in him, and he held her head with one hand, the other arm wrapped so tightly around, she didn’t think she could breathe, let alone move. His lips were moving over her forehead and temple, at the hairline, still reassuring himself of her living, hurting awareness.

“No. Oh, no.” It was spoken from the back of his throat, hoarsely.

“The gun,” she said, still shaking. “The gun.” His hands passed over her, pressed her hard to him.

“Dana, everything is all right, I swear it. You’re okay. You’re going to be fine, just fine. I’m so sorry. I am so terribly sorry—” The muttered words barely reached her consciousness. She realised how tightly she’d been holding him to her, and loosened her grip slightly. She didn’t think she could stand just yet.

She had to ask and didn’t want to hear the answer, and whispered, mouth trembling, “Did I hurt anyone?” The dull question had his head snapping up and he stared down at her, eyes widened, his head dark against that beautiful blue and white and yellow sky.

“You don’t remember, then?” he asked her incredulously. “You really don’t recall any of it?”

Her face broke up. “No! No, none of it. All I remember is standing against the wall behind the grocery store and seeing Mick come for me with his hands out as if he was going to grab at my neck. Then—then everything blanked out.” Her eyes, full of her fear and distress, pleaded mutely, as she asked stiffly, “What happened to me, David? Where did I go?”

She could see that he was at a loss, and he appeared to search for words. Then he abruptly pulled her into a sitting position, his arms still wound around her, hard muscle digging into her back. He sighed. “I think you have a lot to forgive me for, Dana. I think—” and his arms involuntarily tightened until she thought she would cry out from the pressure, “—I think that you somehow got tangled up in something that…came from me.” He paused, mouth open, trying to formulate words that just wouldn’t come.

She said, sensing his discomfort, “Like the nightmares.”

His head jerked. “Like the nightmares.” His eyes narrowed on her, unsurprised. “So you are aware of where they’re coming from, then. I might have known. I had hoped—Lord, you’re just something I’d never expected. I had thought that with a little more time, a little more discipline, I’d be able to control them, but it hasn’t worked well, has it?”

“David, do you have a scar on your stomach?” She leaned back against his arms comfortably, feeling the turbulent upheaval inside her subside.

He winced. “You caught that nightmare, then, did you? How sensitive are you to them?”

Her eyes fell and she looked at the top button of his shirt, undone against the brown tanned skin. “Just about as sensitive as I could get, I should think. Sometimes I have to check my stomach to make sure there isn’t a scar there. It’s—very disconcerting.”

“And have you been awakened by them?” He looked stunned and she couldn’t blame him. Even when one intellectually accepted the face of psychic phenomena, it was an emotional jolt to be confronted with it.