Race the Darkness (6 page)

Where was the slam upside the head? Xander waited for the pain. Nothing. “Say something to me.” He spoke the words to Kent, but didn't take his gaze from Isleen.

“You're an asshole.”
A sludge-eating loser who thinks he's better than everyone else because his family has money and he has an ability the BCI needs. The way you treat Camille like she's your personal whore makes you the lowest…

What was going on? He still tuned in; he just didn't get the pain. Not that he was complaining. And when he was with her, the noises that would normally overwhelm him seemed so insubstantial.
When he was with her
. What was it about being with her that affected his hearing?

Isleen swayed on her feet. He snagged her by the arms, and a cool zing of energy tingled through his hands. Suddenly, he couldn't tell where his grip ended and she began. It was as if they had melded together. An ugly urge came upon him. The urge to shake her. Hard. And he did. One quick jerk that had her head flopping around on her neck. “Isleen. Snap out of it. Look at me.” That weird force sounded in his voice again.

“You're hurting her.” Kent tried to pry one of Xander's hands from her arm, but nothing could separate them. Xander had become an extension of her and couldn't be torn away.

Her eyes transformed from unseeing and unaware to full frontal clarity, their color an expansive sea of clear aquamarine, but underneath the surface, shadows of dark and dangerous things swam. “Xander?”

His heart went hot-air ballooning inside his chest. “You remember me.”

Only a foot of space separated them, but she threw herself against him so hard he rocked back half a step. Her arms cinched around him, holding him tighter than he'd ever been held. He returned the favor. Didn't he fucking enjoy that? She fit into his hard angles like the final piece of a puzzle.

Through the thin blanket, he felt the protrusion of her spine and the ripple of each rib. He was intensely aware of her breasts mashed against his chest and the sharp points of her hip bones framing his happy place. It was more than bad timing that his happy place decided to grow ecstatic.
Christ.

“He wouldn't stop stabbing her.” Her voice bore the sound of prolonged suffering. “Blood was everywhere. Everywhere. On me. And I couldn't move. I couldn't make him stop. I couldn't even scream.” Her body pulsated with fear, and Mr. Happy finally wised up and let some blood flow back into his brain.

“The things you've been forced to see. The things you've been through. I can't imagine. But, baby, it's over now. No one will ever hurt you again. That woman is dead. The trailer is destroyed. You are here with me. Safe.”

“How did I get here? I don't remember.”

“You were barely alive when a deputy sheriff found us and drove us to the hospital. You've been here for four days.”

“No, I mean how did I get here from the park?”

“Huh?” The word popped out, making him sound like an imbecile.

“Just now. How did I get here from the park?”

He searched her eyes, expecting to see a crazy gaze aimed back at him, but her aquamarine depths were clear and lucid. “You've been here in the hospital for the past four days. I've been with you the whole time.”

“No. I was just at Prospectus Prairie Park.”

He spared a glance at Kent. The guy's eyes narrowed on Isleen; then he yanked his buzzing phone off his belt and read a message on the screen.
Really? She wakes up for the first time, and this is Kent's reaction?

“Baby, you've been here with me. You've been sleeping a lot over the past days, pretty out of it. Then ten minutes ago, you got out of bed and walked down the hallway to this waiting room. I followed you. Put this blanket over you.” He tugged the ends tighter across her front. “You were… You were all lights-are-on-but-no-one-is-home. And then you just snapped out of it.”

Isleen had started shaking her head halfway through his speech. “Just now, I was at Prospectus Prairie Park. A woman was jogging, and a man crawled out of a culvert and stabbed her over and over. He wouldn't stop. I couldn't move. I tried.” Her chin trembled, and her face scrunched into a grimace. “My head…” She grabbed her forehead with both of her hands. Her face went from hale and hearty to gray. “I don't fee…” Her eyes rolled back, her legs folded, and she collapsed. Xander caught her before she met the floor and swung her way-too-bony body up into his arms.

Kent was beyond useless. He stared at his phone as if the next winning Powerball numbers were being revealed to him.

“Nurse! I need a nurse!” Xander yelled as he jogged back down the hallway to Isleen's room.

“What happened?” The nurse assigned to Isleen rushed after him, huffing and wheezing as if she were running a marathon.

“She was up, walking around. Talking. Said her head hurt and then passed out.” Xander settled Isleen into her bed.

You're so sweet, the way you haven't left her all this time. Wish my Kelly could find someone as devoted. I bet she'd even be able to overlook your face if you treated her half as good as you're treating this girl.

Xander held his breath while the nurse took Isleen's blood pressure, listened to her pulse, and checked her pupils. “Everything seems normal. If she doesn't wake up in a few minutes, let me know and I'll call the doctor.”

As if waiting for the cue, Isleen's eyes fluttered open and locked on Xander again.

“Baby, you okay?” he asked.

“I'm so cold and…” Her teeth chattered and a rash of goose bumps sprang out across her flesh, reaching up her neck and around the edges of her face. Damn. He didn't know goose bumps could do that. “And tired. I'm so tired.”

“Here. You'll warm up in a moment.” The nurse placed another blanket over Isleen. “You need to take things a little slower. Now, if you need anything else, you let me know. It's nice seeing you talking.” The nurse rubbed Isleen's leg and then left the room, brushing by Kent, who was leaning against the doorjamb.

“Dude. We need to talk. Now.” Kent's tone grabbed Xander's attention. The guy pointed to his cell phone.

No way was Xander going to leave Isleen. He glanced down at her. She had already drifted off.

“This can't wait.” Kent's tone crossed the border from demanding into confrontational territory.

Great. Isleen didn't need to witness him and Kent going at it—and that's what was about to happen. He gave Isleen a final glance, then walked out of her room, heading toward the waiting area they'd just left.

The pain slammed into his head so unexpectedly that he gasped and grabbed his temple. All the noises he hadn't noticed only moments before traffic-jammed inside his ears. What was going on with his hearing? All this time, days sitting at Isleen's bedside, the sounds hadn't bugged him as much as they did right now. Isleen was the key to a door he hadn't known existed.

He's hiding something. Or protecting her. Something is going on.

Inside the still-empty waiting room, Xander pivoted to face Kent. “I don't know what's got your big boys in a twist, but—”

“This.” Kent shoved his phone in front of Xander's face. “I
just
got this message from one of the local guys.”

Officer Decker:
Female vic. Mid-twenties. Stabbed to death. Prospectus Prairie Park. Since you're in the neighborhood, you boys want in on this?

Sunshine peeked through the closed blinds of the Dragon's hospital room, casting a divine golden glow around the space—a sign of the Lord's approval. But still, dread weighed heavily on King's shoulders, making each footstep to the bed a burden. He fingered the gold cross in his pants pocket, rubbing his thumb over the warm metal.

Chosen One's words came to him:
It is much the same for all who've been asked to complete such a task. We are here but to serve the Lord, not to question.

“Lord, wrap me in your grace, protect me with your virtue, grant me your strength.” King spoke the words at near-normal volume. Verbalizations carried more power than silent prayer. Though he'd dictated every moment of the Dragon's captivity, he hadn't actually
seen
her since he'd taken her—couldn't risk falling victim to her devilry. Only Queen—may his sister's soul be resting with the Lord—had been immune.

King remembered how the Dragon had looked back then, all platinum hair and big, baby-doll eyes too beautiful to be normal.

He stared down at the frail figure in the bed. Even now, her features carried a beguiling innocence. He could never allow himself to forget what he'd been taught: True evil never came with a warning; it masqueraded as beauty and grace.

“Why didn't you just die?” It had been his responsibility to eliminate the Dragon, but he'd been weak in his faith. So weak. He hadn't been able to bear the idea of murder. And if the Lord commanded thou shalt not kill, how was King to reconcile that with the Lord ordering him to kill? That paradox had been an infinite source of anguish. He'd spent days on his knees, praying—begging—for an answer, but the Lord had always remained silent, further testing King's faith.

So King had just contained the Dragon, temporarily keeping the world safe from her influence.

He spoke around the sob wanting to escape the confines of his throat. He needed to make a final confession before he fulfilled his duty. “I prayed—oh, I prayed—that the wrongness inside you was separate from your soul. I prayed it would vanish under the weight of your suffering body. I had you starved to deprive the evil. I had you beaten to make your body a hostile environment. I had you drained of blood to weaken evil's power. Nothing worked.”

He licked his thumb and pressed it to the center of her forehead. Her skin was hellfire, burning through his flesh. He hissed a breath but forced himself to trace a cross.

She didn't move, didn't awaken, but her power blazed underneath his finger.

Sweat burst from his pores. “If only you hadn't left your prison…”

He slipped one hand underneath her head—and red-hot agony nearly buckled his knees. His palm smoked, and the scent of his burning flesh singed his nose. He didn't let her go. He pulled out the pillow and, with excruciating tenderness, settled her head back against the mattress. Tears watered his vision and then spilled down his cheeks. Guilt clogged in his throat, making it difficult to speak. “I never wanted you to end this way.”

Sweat dripped from his temples and down his forehead, and mingled with his tears in a baptism of salt. He tightened his grip on the pillow, arranged it over her face. A moan slipped from his lips as he pressed the material down. “Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.” He sobbed the words, not knowing if they were for her or the Lord.

Her body gave a jolt and her arms raised, batting at him. He lay across the pillow, using his weight to suffocate the Dragon. She kicked and banged against the mattress. Muffled grunts of distress and panic filtered from underneath the pillow to mingle with the sounds of his own grief and guilt.

King had stood vigil at many a deathbed. It was part of his job as the hospital's chaplain. Over time, he'd learned that humans exited the world in different ways. Some screamed, some cried, some begged for life, some begged for death, some slipped away silently. No matter how a person died, they all shared one miraculous moment. At the moment when the body transitioned, the atmosphere—the veil separating humanity from the divine—parted and the Lord stepped in to escort his celestial creation to heaven.

Finally, her limbs went limp. King's body warmed, and he became aroused as he waited for the Lord to appear. A mini-eternity passed. Why was it taking so long? He lifted himself from her. The pillow still covered her face, her shoulders.

“Lord, please, please, please.” His rib cage clamped tight, suffocating his breathing and squeezing his heart. “Lord, I have followed your will. Why are you forsaking me?”

An answer floated into his mind. The Dragon didn't deserve the Lord's grace. Relief washed away the fear in his heart. The Lord wasn't mad at him. The Lord was punishing the Dragon.

King lifted the pillow from her face. Even in death, she sustained an unnatural allure. As he rearranged her head on the pillow, touching her no longer burned. He retrieved the small golden cross from his pocket and placed it in the center of her forehead.

Later, much later, he'd find her body in the morgue and finish the last rites.

The confusion of hospital noises clogged Xander's ears, and the relentless thumping inside his head distracted him from the thread of thought he should be following. He pressed his palms against his ears to muffle the turbulence and focused his eyes on the words displayed on the phone screen Kent still held in front of his face.

Officer Decker:
Female vic. Mid-twenties. Stabbed to death. Prospectus Prairie Park.

Kent yanked the phone out of Xander's range of vision, but the words still blazed in bold type on his retinas, pulsing like flashing neon lights with each beat inside his head.

Add what Isleen had said earlier to this message, and it was clear. During her captivity, she had been forced to witness a murder. How had she survived, not only physically, but mentally? The things she'd endured were enough to snap a spine made of steel vertebrae.

Kent shoved the phone back into Xander's face.

Kent:
Estimated TOD?

Officer Decker:
Late morning

Xander read the lines. Twice. A question formed, one he didn't want to ask, but couldn't not ask. “When did you get these texts?”

“Five. Minutes. Ago.”

Good, old-fashioned, concrete logic rebelled against Kent's words. “Dude, I think your Officer Decker is funnin' with the big, bad BCI guy.”

Kent's expression was as serious as grave gravel. No joke. No laugh. No humor. “He's legit. More legit than you'll ever be.”
He's gone through the academy, knows protocol, respects the job and his fellow officers.

“Ssshhiitt…” Xander couldn't find another word to sum up the situation.

“Yeah. Now tell me the goddamned truth. Who visited her? Did she leave the hospital?”
No way she could've known about this otherwise.

“No one visited her. Does she look like she's been out visiting the local flora and fauna? Dressed in a hospital smock? With all the reporters out there? Use your oh-so-superior smarts.”

“Then you”—Kent jammed a finger at Xander—“toss me an explanation that fits.”
You're wanting me to buy shit that stinks.

“Truth is fucking truth. She hasn't talked to anyone. She hasn't left the hospital. Maybe Queen told her that the murder was
going
to happen. You're the fancy BCI guy. You figure it—” Xander's brain went squirmy inside the cap of his skull, the brain itch. It felt like someone had opened his skull, taken out his thinking tool, rolled it around in a patch of poison ivy, then reinstalled it in his head.

He shook his head hard enough, violent enough, long enough to give himself the adult version of shaken baby syndrome. After his head stilled on his shoulders, his eyes hadn't gotten the memo because they continued to ping-pong around their sockets.

Kent was still talking. Xander's head was still pounding. And still, the itch devoured everything with its unrelenting, unnerving, insatiable sensation. Xander's center of gravity warped the waiting room, transforming it into a fun house of distorted, disorienting images rushing at him from the walls and floor.

Against the imminent sensory overload, one thought dominated his mind—
get to Isleen
. He went with it, lurching away from his conversation with Kent without a good-bye, a kiss-my-ass, or a fuck-you.

In the hallway, his vision narrowed to a laser beam of focus on Isleen's door. Each step toward her room systematically eased the itch in his brain and faded the pain of the frequency connection until he stood outside her room—no brain itch, no pain. He had returned to a level of functioning that was better than his baseline. It had to do with her. Something about her affected the frequency connection and did something to him. But how? Why?

He pushed through the doorway—and froze solid as a glacier. Went as cold as one too.

Her mussed covers dangled off the bed, pooling on the floor. Her smock was tangled up on her bare thighs, her legs sprawled akimbo. Not even that image horrified him as much as what lay on her forehead. A cross, only it wasn't shaped the same as a Christian cross. It was squared off and sitting at an angle like a golden X-marks-the-spot. There was something wrathful and wrong about that piece of metal touching her. He ran for her and flung the offensive cross off her, sending it hurling across the room to bang into the wall and clatter to the floor. The silence that followed was deadly. His mind whirled through too many thoughts.

Someone had been in her room.

Someone was sending a message—but Xander wasn't fluent in the language of wonky crosses.

Someone had hurt her, and now she sounded dead. There was no thumping of heart pumping, no soft rasping of breath being inhaled and exhaled, no whooshing of lungs expanding and contracting. He couldn't trust his ears. They'd been fucking up from the moment he parked outside the torture trailer and heard nothing. But his eyes didn't lie. Her normally pale complexion had turned cadaverous, like she'd sidled up to death and was making cozy.

“No.” Denial's favorite word flowed out of his mouth. “No. No. No.” A scalding hot knife sliced open his heart—at least that's what it felt like—and cold fingers of dread reached in and squeezed the organ. “No, no, no, no, no, no.” She couldn't be… No, he couldn't even think the word. Not after everything she'd been through. Not when her health had bounced back. Not when she had a chance at a new life. Not when he'd been just down the hallway, dealing with that fucktard instead of protecting her.

“Isleen, wake up. Right now.” He shook her shoulder. Nothing. Shook her harder. The fist around his heart tightened, but he didn't care. Nothing mattered except her. He pressed his fingers against her neck, closed his eyes, and concentrated on finding the pitter-patter of her pulse, but…he wasn't in the right spot. He repositioned his hand. Waited. Nothing. He grabbed her cold face in his hand and yelled, “You have to open your eyes for me.”

As if his words were a Simon-says of magical proportion, her eyes popped open. The cold grip on his heart vanished, and relief warmed him from the top of his head to the tips of his big toes. She was alive. As long as she was living and breathing, everything else was whipped cream and cherries.

She gasped and sucked in a breath so violent her torso thrust off the mattress. “Don't. No. Stop.” Her arms and legs went wild, flailing in all directions. Her hand caught him alongside his scarred cheek. A sensuous zing raced throughout the network of his scars and down his neck, his shoulder, his torso, passing only inches from his happy place, before finally ending where the line of scars ended—on his calf.
Damn.
The sensation was a combination between a jolt of electricity and an orgasm. Never felt something like that before. Wanted to feel it again. And again. That response was the definition of bad timing.

“Isleen. It's me.” He grabbed her arms and pushed her back against the bed, pinning her upper body, but her legs still kicked. He pushed his face in close and touched her nose with his. “Baby. It's me. Xander. Look at
me
.”

Nightmare shadows swam in her eyes, then submerged, and she came back to him, her gaze lucid but tainted with terror. Her chin trembled. “Queen? I think she tried to hurt me again. I couldn't breathe.”

He didn't move, just stared straight at her and hoped his message hit a bull's-eye through the heart of her fear. “That bitch is dead.” Just speaking about Queen forced his facial muscles into a near-animalistic snarl that peeled his lips back over his teeth like a rabid raccoon. “Has been from the day I found you.”

She assessed him, her gaze roaming between his eyes and his mouth and back again. “You're sure?” Doubt quivered her chin.

“I saw it happen. She was in my truck when it exploded. Kent said the largest piece they found of her was—” Not telling her about the nipple with ring still attached. That was an image no one should have to endure. “—only a few inches in size.” He eased the pressure on her arms. “I think you had a nightmare.” The lie tasted pungent in his mouth and his scars burned, but it was the only explanation he was going to give her. No way would he scare her with speculation and suspicion that someone had tried to harm her. She had lived through enough terror in that trailer, and he was going to make damned certain nothing hurt her ever again, and that her life from here on out was a fear-free zone.

He released her arms and sat next her. She scooted into him, burrowing so close she was practically in his lap.
Oh, hell, why not?
He pulled her fully in to him and closed his arms around her. She was so damned tiny and fragile it was like hugging spun glass.

“I feel like I'm going from nightmare to nightmare and don't know what's real anymore.” She spoke against his chest. “What's wrong with me?”

He leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “Nothing, baby. Nothing that time won't heal.” For the first time since he woke up with supercharged hearing, he actually wished he could connect with her frequency and hear her thoughts. Not for himself, but for her. The urge, the desire to be inside her head to slay her fears, was a visceral need vibrating through his heart.

“Gran used to say that when we got out of there, we'd need time to heal from everything we'd been through. She said the world had kept going without us, and we'd be behind and have to work extra hard to catch up and be normal again.”

“Your gran sounds like a smart lady.” Xander owed himself a high five for that one.

Isleen's body went still as porcelain, but her heart overcompensated—
duh-dum, duh-dum
. The cadence was fast, the kind of fast that strolled along with fear. He flashed through their conversation, but couldn't fathom the reason.

“What's wrong?” he asked, tightening his hold on her. Whatever it was, he was gonna make it go away.

She swallowed, the sound verging on humorously loud, but nothing about this situation was funny. “I'm scared to ask. Afraid of the answer. Xander—”

God.
The way his name rolled off her tongue captured him. Utterly and completely. If he was being honest, she'd owned him from the moment he had found her. The pisser was he didn't mind. Hadn't minded one moment of sitting next to her hospital bed, hadn't minded watching over her while she slept.

“—I'm so tired of being afraid.”

Reality check. All his pink-pansy thoughts needed to be filed in the not-now-and-maybe-not-ever bin. More than just her body needed to heal. Her mind needed to mend. Part of that process was going to be adjusting and assimilating to her new reality. The hardest part was going to be packing up the past and placing it on a shelf in the back of her mind.

“Whatever it is, just ask. No matter the answer, I'll be right here with you.”

Isleen wrapped both her arms around his waist, gripping him like she was either bracing for a blow or worried about being pulled away. “Gran?” Her voice was a whisper of sound that no one except him would've been able to hear. “Is she… Is she…”

“She's alive.” Goddamn it. He should've thought to tell her first thing. Showed how much he knew about dealing with people—zero, zip, and zilch.

She ripped out of his embrace and aimed her gaze at him. “Really?” Hope charged through her—a visible entity squaring her shoulders and making her sit up straighter, bolder. Her features transformed from soft and scared to triumphant survivor. She was stunning. Radiant. Magnificent. All the words of beauty he could possibly think up. He'd do anything and everything to keep her looking this way.

“Really. Gale is stable. She's got some serious cuts and bruises, but nothing is broken. The major concern seems to be her cognitive deterioration. She's not talking. But then you haven't talked until today. So maybe…” He owed a two-ton-sized thank-you to Row for not being able to mind her own business or keep her mouth shut. Otherwise, Xander wouldn't have known anything about Gale's progress
.

Sadness washed away some of Isleen's brilliance as she spoke. “She hasn't been right for a long time. At first, she couldn't remember the names of basic things like food, or colors, or my name. Then she couldn't remember things that had just happened. Then she couldn't remember me, or where we were. Those times were a blessing, an escape from our reality. The most horrible thing, the thing that hurt beyond everything else, was when she'd suddenly remember everything. Every—” Her voice choked off, her eyes clenched shut as if trying to not see the horrors replaying in her mind.

Words of comfort seemed shallow and hollow compared to the magnitude of what she'd survived. He said the one word, the only word that seemed to make sense to him and packed it full of compassion and support and caring. “Isleen. Oh, Isleen.”

She snuggled against his chest, and he concentrated on the sensation of simply holding her. Of how her fragility made him feel strong, how her smallness made him feel large, how her touching him made him feel alive.

He'd never held a woman just to hold her. With Camille, it was about fucking—getting her off, getting himself off, and getting the hell out of there.

Bile frothed inside his stomach, threatening to roil up his esophagus. It was perverse to touch Isleen with thoughts of Camille in his head.

He forced his thoughts in a safer direction. There were so many sounds in a place like this, but just as it had been over the past days, they were in background, not all cramming into his ears and demanding his attention at the same time. Here with Isleen, he had control of what he heard, of whether to attend to it or not. And fuck—he didn't tune in with her. Not at all. What the hell did that mean? Was she some sort of antidote to his hyper-hearing? Were they making a weird trade-off—his protection for control over supercharged hearing? As long as she was happy with the trade, he was ecstatic.