Natural Instincts (3 page)

What the hell had just happened? It sounded like when I’d seen the guy on the table—Jon—and he’d seen me, some ancient tradition had gotten triggered. Hal had said that the lightning I’d seen meant it had “taken.” Whatever that meant. Jon hadn’t seemed to care. As long as he didn’t see me again, then he could just leave and nothing would happen? No, that wasn’t right. As long as he didn’t see me,
I
would be all right. The damage, or whatever, had already been done to him.

I drew a deep breath, replaying the conversation in my mind. I stopped on the part where Jon had said,
I don’t have time for love or any of that shit. I don’t give a damn if some ancient tradition got triggered or not. It doesn’t matter to me. Some disembodied face behind a windshield is not going to make any difference to my personal life, which I don’t even want to have, ever!

Love? His personal life? What was that supposed to mean? Was he implying that somehow he’d fallen in love with me last night?

He won’t be affected unless we meet again, and I’m leaving right now.

He thought I would fall in love with him if we met again?

That was utterly ridiculous, for a lot of reasons. In the first place, I was totally done with having relationships, and in the second, I was straight. I had nothing against gays, but I was most definitely not one. Whatever was going on, at least both Jon and I were on the same page.

I let the rest of the scene play in my memory. Jon’s last words were as chilling as when I’d first heard them.
Sometimes it takes everything I’ve got to hold things together. Believe me, I’ve got no time for anything but trying to keep alive.

I shivered and rubbed my frozen hands together. The one thing I was trying hard not to remember was how Jon’s voice had felt inside me. While he’d been speaking, I’d been mesmerized, totally captivated. I’d never felt anything like that before. And as much as I denied it, I wanted to feel it again.
Damn!
There was no logic to explain this.

Therefore, as I’d always believed, it couldn’t be real. Those two brothers were both crazy. Hal especially—I’d gotten the feeling that he kind of thought this might not be a bad thing, once he’d accepted the idea. He’d liked me, which was stupid since I’d known him for all of three minutes.

Another deep breath helped me refocus. What mattered now was whether the brothers knew I’d heard their conversation. I’d been really quiet. The room they’d been in didn’t have any windows facing the way I’d run. Clearly they hadn’t known I’d come back. Since it had been ten minutes already and they hadn’t come after me, I was probably safe.

Safe from what, I had no idea. What would they do if they knew I knew? On the other hand, what did I really know? This whole thing was too fucking weird. I remembered the fury on Jon’s face last night. Yeah, he’d known then that something had happened. He just hadn’t told his brother, probably hoping I wouldn’t say anything. He must be seriously pissed at me now. Especially since it looked like he was leaving for five days because of me, taking time off from whatever it was he did that was so important.

Maybe I should leave. But if I pulled out now, they’d know that I’d heard them. And they had my address on the form.

Damn.
Should I stay and pretend everything was fine?

I firmly squashed the part of me that really,
really
wanted to stay in case I got to hear Jon’s voice again.

No flash of insight came. This was not like the stock market. Didn’t I have enough problems without this? The longer I sat, the worse my stress got. If they were watching me and I didn’t start setting up my tent, they were going to know something was up. Whatever I did next, I had to look calm, cool, and collected.

The sudden appearance of a rainbow took the decision from me.
Shit, shit, shit!
I rubbed my eyes, but it didn’t go away. It started flashing across my vision in jagged lines like a lightning bolt, pulsing in time to my heartbeat. The stress had acted as a trigger. A couple of times a year, I paid the price for having a brain that functioned like a computer. It randomly crashed. At least, that’s what it felt like to me. The doctors said my spells were caused by trauma left from my childhood injury, much like a seizure disorder. I was on medication that helped some, but it wasn’t perfect.

In any case, driving in the immediate future was no longer an option.

Pitch the tent.
I did not want to go through a spell cramped in the backseat of my car if I didn’t have to. I’d done that several times when I’d been triggered on the road and had to pull over. If I hurried, I’d probably have time.

I raced to my car, opened the back hatch, and pulled out the blue nylon bag that contained tent, waterproof fly, poles, stakes, and ground cloth. I’d watched the saleswoman in a camping store pitch it in under five minutes. Of course, she’d done it many times and hadn’t had a flashing rainbow to look through or a man in a black cloak mad at her.

Fortunately my brain was still working well enough that I was able to recall the steps she’d shown me. I chose a level spot on the left side of the site—close to the bushes but with a view of the water—spread out the ground cloth, unfolded the tent on it, and then started putting together the three poles. Without even consciously thinking about it, I slid them through the narrow sleeves sewn into what was going to become the top of the tent. When all three were in place, I clipped one end of each pole into the metal fasteners at the corners of the tent, and then worked the long center pole farther and farther through its sleeve until the tent arched up from the ground. Quickly I clipped the center pole into place, then did the same for the other two that formed a big
X
from corner to corner. All the piles of fabric turned into a perfect light blue dome that was about as tall as I was. Without pausing to admire it, I threw the rainproof fly over it and clipped it in place. I’d stake it later.

My head was starting to pound as I dashed back to the car. I was running out of time. I grabbed the duffle bag that contained my air mattress and battery-operated pump. It took another few precious minutes to spread the mattress inside the tent and inflate it, and a couple more to get my sleeping bags unzipped and laid on top. I’d bought two identical ones
—
one to go under me, one to go over me, because just the thought of being confined inside one narrow one was too much to contemplate. Then I tossed my duffle bag of clothes inside, followed by my pillow, and I was set.

The world was starting to fade as I zipped the door closed behind me. The screen windows were open, but the fly kept anyone from being able to see in. I found my bottle of pills in a pocket in my duffle and got one swallowed before the warning rainbow gave a final pulse and disappeared. The drug would help the headache afterward. It would do nothing to prevent the blanket of darkness that fell over me. I curled into a ball, heard myself make a little whimpering noise, and remembered nothing more.

I
FELT
terrible. Absolutely terrible. So terrible that, if Jon had been sitting at my table ready to kill me for whatever I’d done, I would have told him to hurry up and get on with it—he’d be doing me a favor. Thank God it was getting dark out—just the twilight pierced my brain like a knife. I grabbed a change of clothes, a towel, and my pouch with toiletries, crawled out of my tent, and staggered off in the direction of the bathhouse.

Fortunately the place was empty again. The brightness inside made me throw up as soon as I went in. Not that there was anything in my stomach, which was good. As soon as I was done, I groped my way with my eyes shut into the dimmer shower area, stripped, stuck a couple of quarters into a little box, turned a dial, and then stood under the blessed relief of warm water. I had to put in two more quarters before I even had the energy to soap up and wash my sweaty hair. It took two more to rinse off, and then I just stood there under the hottest temperature the water got and let it work the cramps out of my neck and back.

Every inch of me still hurt when I finally stepped out and reached for my towel. What a nightmare. I was so fucked. What had I been thinking to even imagine I could handle a camping trip? I needed to go home, back to my routine and my job and the people who left me alone. Vacations weren’t for the likes of me. I was a magnet for disaster, and the things that happened to me kept getting worse and worse. I needed to give up trying to think I might have a chance at a regular life, despite what the therapist said.

I dressed in clean cargo shorts and a loose, dark green T-shirt, gathered up my stuff, and stepped into the main bathroom area just as the outside door closed behind someone. I froze for a second. Whoever had been in here had been so quiet I hadn’t known he was there. And the timing was so perfect. If I’d felt better, I’d have dashed across the room and yanked the door open to see who it was. But any sharp movement was going to set me vomiting again, and to be honest, I didn’t really fucking care. If Jon was getting off on watching me through the crack in the shower stall door, that was his crazy. I was so done with this whole stupid mess.

In the mirror my face hadn’t improved since the last time I’d looked at it. My eyes were sunken and had dark shadows beneath them. My pupils were huge. My skin looked sickly pale. Great. Maybe I was turning into a vampire. Wouldn’t it be rich if that was what all this was about? I could play the role pretty easily, the way I looked. All I needed was a black cloak like Jon’s. With a sigh I combed out my hair and then recaptured it in a ponytail. Shaving would take too much effort. I did brush my teeth, and that made me feel somewhat better. Now I needed something to drink. Preferably something with caffeine.

There was no one outside except for a few kids playing on a swing set nearby. They didn’t pay any attention to the scruffy guy walking unsteadily by, rubbing his aching neck. I met a young couple holding hands dreamily. They said hello to me, and I managed to nod back without falling down. They were so wrapped up in each other that I didn’t think they’d even remember seeing me in five minutes. I shivered a little. I’d been in love like that once, and that was why I couldn’t even deal with the thought of being confined in a sleeping bag. I’d been damned lucky to get out of love alive.

So why did I shiver when I remembered how hearing Jon’s voice had sent tendrils of—something—deep down into my soul?

Caffeine. As soon as I reached my site, I went for the cooler. Fortunately I found a cola floating near the surface, so I didn’t need to stick a hand down into the ice water. It tasted really good. I drank half of it just standing there. I was dehydrated. As soon as it hit my stomach, I realized I was also hungry. I had a piece of steak I’d been planning on grilling on my little gas grill, but no way was I up to dealing with that. So I quickly made myself a roast beef sandwich from the cold meat I’d brought, adding cheese and lettuce. Grabbing another cola and a napkin, I walked down to the water. There was a perfect rock for sitting on right at the lake’s edge, beside my little strip of sand. I kicked my sneakers off and sat, testing the water with a toe. It was pleasantly warm. I let both feet dangle in.

Ah. This was better.

I ate slowly, going easy on my delicate stomach, and watched the leftover reds of the sunset fade from the sky as it got fully dark. My site was at the widest point of the lake, which was hardly more than a pond, but I wasn’t going to quibble over names. It was maybe half a mile across and stretched about that far in both directions, narrowing to two rounded coves. Trees lined it without a break, save for the main beach off to my right, where I could see the promised boats waiting. In the middle was an island, grassy on one end, brushy on the other, with several pine trees in the middle. As I watched, a loon swam out from behind it, a low, dark shape in the darker water. His wake made a silent
V
behind him.

Ah! Something clenched inside my heart. A loon, a real, live loon! Today wasn’t a total disaster after all.

I gazed at the bird, feeling a sense of mystery, of power, as though I was seeing something very old. I couldn’t tell its gender since male and female loons looked alike to humans, but this one felt male to me somehow.

He paused and looked across the water right at my site. He was so big! Far larger than any duck I’d ever seen and more sharply angled where ducks were round. He was
wild
—no loon would ever dive for breadcrumbs in a park. Never. In the dim light, I couldn’t see any details, just a flash of white on his front in contrast to his dark back. I wished he’d call; something about their voices had always haunted me. I’d only heard him once last night, assuming it had been him. His mate might be sitting on a nest at the water’s edge on the island.

My memory supplied the facts I’d read in a field guide as I gazed at him. Loons had to nest right on the shoreline because they couldn’t walk on land the way ducks did; their legs were too far back on their bodies to balance their large breasts. Nor could they take to the air from land, or from a body of water much smaller than this one. Like an airplane, they needed a runway. In the air, they could reach seventy miles an hour, and in the water, they could dive to a depth of two hundred feet. They could stay down for ninety seconds, helped by the fact that their bones were solid, unlike most birds, who had hollow bones. They could live to be thirty years old, and they were monogamous.

I rubbed my aching eyes, glad my brain was working again. That was a good thing.

Even as I watched, this one dove and vanished below the surface without sound.

A moment later I heard the grating of a boat being launched from the beach. I turned. Sitting in a rowboat was a dark-haired man in khakis. Hal? I wasn’t sure, but it could be him.

Focusing made my eyes ache worse. I put aside the rest of my sandwich, drew my feet out of the water, crossed my legs, and rested my elbows on my knees. Then I bent forward and covered my eyes with my hands. After a spell that had lasted all day, I knew I’d be feeling tenuous for another twenty-four hours or so. I also knew I’d sleep like a rock tonight, despite not having been exactly conscious for hours. And if I hadn’t taken that pill, I’d be in way worse misery now.