Race the Darkness (4 page)

Only sound existed for Xander.

Heartbeats.

Two of them.

His beating rapidly, Isleen's catching only every third beat.

The whisper of their mingled breaths made a song—a rhythm only Xander was able to hear. He couldn't feel or see anything, but he wasn't freaked. It felt like they were in an odd sort of suspension, where only peace and grass-smoking hippies could thrive. A thought floated across his mind.

We should be dead. But we aren't. Our hearts are beating. We're breathing.

The rest of Xander's senses came back online in a rush of color and texture and sensation. He lifted his head, realizing he had buried his face against the span of skin where Isleen's neck sloped into her shoulder—an oddly intimate place for his nose and mouth. He found himself kneeling, knees on the grass, with Isleen crushed to him, her chest mashed against his. The way he held her was no sweet romantic gesture; it was determination to keep her with him. Keep her safe.

Overgrown weeds grew unimpeded toward the sky, and giant dandelions pocked the yard with their pretty color. On three sides of him, all Xander could see were cornfields.

Waves of malicious intent lapped at his back. He didn't need to twist around to know the trailer and his truck were behind him.

How had they gotten here? His memory provided no answers. One moment the trailer had exploded around them, the next they had been suspended in the weird place where only sound existed, and somehow here they were.

Flawless, fresh sunshine warmed his skin. God, just to be out of the darkness and despair of the trailer was a miracle. But now the extent of Isleen's misery was spotlighted. Every bone protruded against her translucent skin. Her eyelids were lavender; her lips nearly the same color. Wounds covered her entire body—some almost healed, some beginning to heal, and some heartbreakingly fresh. A meager stream of blood oozed from the gash in her side.

Underneath all the suffering, Xander saw something he recognized, something familiar, something he couldn't place and would have to ponder in order to understand.

The truck's ignition wheezed, chugged, and then caught. The roar of it rammed tension up his spine. He turned in time to see the vehicle bounce and jolt, trying to break free from the room it had plowed into. A small pile of debris was the only thing standing between them and a head-on collision.

No way had the grandmother survived. His thoughts shifted into hyperdrive, searching for options to keep him and Isleen alive. He wasn't the type to turn pussy and run. He was the type who enjoyed a good ass stomping. Didn't matter if he was the victor or the loser—either way was more satisfying than walking away with a limp dick. His hope sputtered and stalled. There were no options. But there was nothing to do. No way to fight. Here, in this situation, when he had to think about more than himself, the only fucking choice was to run.

With Isleen still pinned to his chest, he sprinted toward the cover of the cornfield. Maybe he could lose the bitch in the hundreds of acres.

The stalks weren't even as tall as he was and yet they stood as a formidable guard, blocking his entry into the field. He fought through the first row of corn, through another, and another—bashing, smashing, using his body and Isleen's to penetrate the field. The coarse leaves sliced at his face, his neck, his arms, leaving stinging cuts in their wake. He couldn't tolerate the thought of what they must be doing to Isleen's naked skin.

He glanced through the leaves, back to the yard. The truck broke free from the trailer and shot directly for where they had entered the field. Of course, it came right for them; he'd carved a nice path to their location.

He hunched over and changed direction, turning left to follow the row instead of going against it. The space wasn't wide enough for him, and certainly not for both of them. He ran in an awkward sidestepping motion.

The truck hit the corn in the spot they'd vacated less than ten seconds ago. For one fist-pumping moment, it sounded like the bitch was going to drive around in the middle of the field searching for them, but then the banging of stalks against the truck grille turned in their direction and got closer and closer as if she knew exactly where they were.

Xander bashed back through the sentry rows into the yard and sprinted toward the trailer. If he could just get to the structure and hide inside, maybe the bitch would think they were still in the field. The angry growl of the engine was suddenly, inexplicably, obscenely close. The truck jumped out of the field no more than fifty feet behind him.

They weren't going to make it.

Not unless he suddenly sprouted blue tights and a red cape. The hope of escape morphed into despair and resignation and finally reckless pissed-off-ness. No fucking way was he going to die running. He stopped, turned, and faced the truck barreling toward them. The tires ate up the ground at an indecent rate. He clutched Isleen tighter to his chest. For her sake, he wanted it to be a quick death. No more lingering. No more pain.

That thought infuriated him. None of this was right. They shouldn't be on the verge of death. Again.

The truck kept coming—now twenty-five feet away.

Everything slowed, happening as if through the quicksand of time. A white dandelion floaty meandered on the breeze directly between them and the truck. His heart no longer ran a staccato rhythm.
Duh…dum.
Pause.
Duh…dum.
Pause.

His life didn't flash before his eyes. The future did. Isleen's future. In an ethereal dream beyond time, her skin was gilded by firelight, her eyes devoid of sadness and fear, her body whole and healthy. She smiled, an expression so full of warmth and tenderness and undiluted joy that it plunked itself down inside his heart and wouldn't leave.

He ached to create that kind of smile on her face, but their lives were over. It all could've gone so differently if he'd only listened to her, believed in her, found her years before now.

The air changed, displaced by the truck only a few feet from them. Heat from the engine blasted his face, smelling of burning oil, gasoline, and a scent reminiscent of popped corn. He locked eyes with the bitch. Her pudgy lips ripped back over her teeth in a snarling scream.

Xander knew anger—his best friends were fury and rage—but the look on the bitch's face went beyond mere anger all the way to unholy.

The truck imploded.

The sound was supersonic, a resonation that rippled through his skin and muscle to rattle his bones and shake the earth underneath his feet. Metal and glass and fire shot outward, skyward, backward, in a near-perfect arc of destruction. Flaming debris rained around them.

He stood there holding Isleen, watching it happen, not believing the message his eyes sent to his brain.

“What the…?” The last of the truck parts hit the ground. The pieces burned. That's all that was left—pieces. Nothing touched
them
, like they resided under an invisible dome of protection.

He glanced down at Isleen for an answer, but she was unconscious, her head lolling so limply on her neck it looked as if he was carrying a corpse.

* * *

The buzzing and drilling of unrelenting noise—conversations, beeping machines, TV, the rumble of the overworked AC—all threatened to shatter Xander's two-fisted grip on sanity. He sat in the emergency room waiting area, elbows on knees, hands cupped over his ears to filter out some of the chaos. The only consolation was that no one spoke to him. Tuning in on top of everything else would be a formal invitation for the Bastard to make a guest appearance.

The day had already gone to shit, but Xander didn't need the lowlight to be the Bastard going on an angry rampage that ended with him either in jail or in a hospital room recovering from bashing his face through a concrete wall. Been there. Done that. Twice. He didn't want to see what kind of charm the third time would offer.

It'd been four hours since the officer who'd found them had rushed them to the emergency room. Xander had tried listening in only to the conversations about Isleen, but trying to filter out all the noise to follow one thread was exhausting and overwhelming. The only thing he knew for sure—she could just as easily live as die.

His heart twinged at the thought. Isleen and the word
die
shouldn't be in the same dictionary. She deserved to live. He
needed
her to live. To have a life. A good life. One that made up for everything she'd endured. One that made him feel less guilty about drowning her pleas for help with alcohol and denial.

Across from Xander, a haggard mother tried to keep a grip on her writhing, squirming toddler. Twin braids of snot drizzled from the kid's nose. He sucked in his top lip, slurping up the mucus. The kid looked right at Xander's scars, then opened his mouth and coughed a wet snapping sound so full of phlegm that Xander cringed. God, he could practically feel the brat's germs splatting on his skin.

He looked around for another place to sit. A lone man holding a pink plastic bucket sat in the other section of seats. Xander stood to move to that area, but the man burped and belched and then barfed in the bucket. He wasn't a quiet barfer, and if the stench was any indication, it was coming out of more than one orifice.

Fucking goddamned public places. The man continued to vomit. The toddler started screaming. Xander's grip on himself slipped. A buzz of electricity sparked underneath his skin. The edges of his vision went white. That shit about seeing red was just that—shit. He saw white. He needed to get out of here. Now. Right now. The Bastard was on the verge of ballistic.

Xander sprinted through the maze of seats for the outside doors.

“…taking you to a scene in rural Prospectus. We don't have all the information, but we do know that two women were being held captive inside this trailer.”

Xander's attention snapped to the TV and the wide shot of the trailer with its demolished back end, the debris of what used to be his truck, and the destroyed cornfield. Local law enforcement officers and BCI guys roamed the property, some examining evidence, others taking photos. He stopped sharp as if he'd hit a pane of glass.

His heart shifted into a higher gear. How had they survived? No matter how many times he replayed it in his mind, he didn't have an answer.

“It appears the women had been held for quite some time. Police officials say they are still piecing together what happened.”

Nothing fascinated the masses more than stories of cruelty and violence. A media frenzy was about to erupt, and Isleen was going to be in the middle of it.

“This is Dwight Swineforth, the farmer who owns the fields around the trailer. Mr. Swineforth, did you see anything that would indicate what was happening inside?”

The camera panned to a grizzled farmer dressed in cutoff coveralls, work boots, and a baseball hat. The guy had to be pushing eighty, yet looked like a nerdy kid whose mamma still dressed him.
“Nothing. I mean, I never saw no one. When I'd be plowin', harvestin', or drivin' by checkin' the crops, I never saw a thing. Only reason I know'd someone still lived there was because sometimes there'd be a car in the driveway.”

The white at the edges of Xander's vision spread, engulfing more of his sight. He jogged through the doors to the outside.

Even though it was only late morning, humidity soaked the air, instantly dampening his clothing and moistening his skin. It was a relief from the noise. Oh, he could still hear it all, but now he was a layer removed. His vision returned to normal.

What a goddamned mess. The deputy who'd brought them to the emergency room had questioned him, but not as thoroughly as a detective would, or as Kent would when he got here. Xander's story had been far-fetched but plausible. He'd been lost, stopped to get directions, saw something wasn't right, and found Isleen and her grandmother. Any pig with half a brain would see through that shit shine.

Speaking of pork, Kent's oh-no-I'm-not-compensating-for-anything huge truck pulled into the lot. Xander sat on a bench in the shade of the entrance area and waited for Kent to take his sweet-ass time to park and stroll over.

Xander sucked in a slow breath. Held it. Waited for the slam of pain.

“You ready to give the real story? I've been out there. And I don't buy what you're trying to sell.”

Bam.
Xander flinched and then clamped his eyes closed for a few seconds too long to be normal before popping them back open. “Not my problem.” He stared straight ahead. The goddamned pounding in his head had decided to pair up with his heartbeat to make a rhythm and a counter rhythm. The cadence might've been catchy if it wasn't rocking out inside his body.

“Gonna be your problem if you get arrested for murder. Right now, all that's left of that woman are pieces. The largest one I saw was a nipple—nipple ring still attached.”

“Fucking Christ, man. Keep that shit to yourself. You didn't see her. You don't know how that image just burned a hole through my frontal lobe.” Xander rubbed his thumping temple. “Media's already gone live with the story. You'll need to get someone here to protect Isleen's privacy.”

“And you're gonna need a lawyer if you don't talk to me. No truck randomly explodes like that. There's a crater four feet deep in the yard. Your little tale about being lost? Sell it to someone else. Your truck had a navigation system and so does your phone.”

An ambulance, lights flashing, but no siren blaring drove past where they sat to the ER entrance.

Kent gestured toward it. “They're bringing in the old lady. She was still alive.”

Xander's jaw slowly sank open, and he struggled to assimilate that little knowledge bomb. “Whoa… She was in that back room. It was obliterated. I didn't think she'd survived, or I would've looked for her.” He stood and headed toward the ambulance, pulled by curiosity and maybe a little guilt that he hadn't focused more on finding Isleen's grandmother.