Refresh

by Suzanne Steele

  She did, however, feel the moment when her spirit left her body.

  Rain looked up at her husband, blinking in surprise to see him standing next to her. Blaze’s essence had joined Rain a short distance from the wreckage and remained at her side as they looked down at the twisted metal. As she looked from his luminous face to the mortal carnage visible with their jeep and back again, she couldn’t help but notice the way the bodies reached for each other, even in death.

  Blaze watched her carefully, gauging her reaction to the whirlwind of events unfolding around them. He pulled her into an embrace that made her feel like she was somehow inside him; as if all of him were truly wrapped around her. As she struggled to make sense of the scene before her, her husband’s steady presence made her feel safer than she ever had before. But how could they be standing together, impassively observing their bodies lying prone in the mangled wreckage that was all that was left of their car? How could it be that they were together, even as the rain pelted their lifeless bodies, still belted securely into the jeep’s front seats?

  The scene was surreal: the jeep’s crumpled engine hissed as it spewed a steady flow of smoke and steam into the rain-soaked night. The rain continued to fall, but they weren’t getting wet. In fact, even though the rain was coming down in sheets all around them, it seemed far away somehow. It was as if they were watching an epic movie on the big screen, instead of standing in a downpour as they struggled to come to grips with their new reality: death.

  A piercing light descended on the area. Instinctively, Rain raised her hand to shield her eyes from the blinding light, only to realize she didn’t need to. She slowly lowered her hand. The light didn’t bother her eyes at all.

  Revealed within the soothing aura was a woman with long, pale hair. She seemed to glow with a light from within as she hovered over the two lifeless bodies. She looked up and fixed her gaze on Blaze. Rain glanced up at her husband and froze. She had expected him to appear wary or even fearful in response to the woman’s attention, but instead his eyes were soft and tender. What the hell?

  “You wish to keep what you have taken. You have asked much,” the mysterious specter declared. Her voice was beautifully modulated and serene, but her lips hadn’t moved.

  “Not too much, I hope.”

  At the sound of her husband’s voice, Rain turned her eyes toward him. She blinked hard and shook her head, marveling at how clear his voice was…even though he hadn’t opened his mouth to speak.

  Was she able to read minds now?! Did Blaze know this…creature? This ghost? And what were they talking about anyway? It was at that instant that Rain realized the torrential downpour wasn’t touching the woman; she was dry as a bone. What was going on?!

  “All will be revealed in its own time.” The woman removed a clear crystal from beneath her white cloak. It was the size of a softball, but irregular in shape. She held the crystal aloft in both hands, then turned her eyes toward Rain’s conscious mind where she still stood wrapped in her husband’s arms. As she spoke, the specter’s eyes became heavy-lidded and glittered strangely. “The clear crystal is for one whose soul must be refreshed to face what lies ahead.”

  She reached out a hand into the wreckage and caressed the bloody gash on Rain’s forehead, then used her other hand to bring the crystal to Rain’s lifeless body. She pressed the stone directly over the heart with the flat of her hand. Then she leaned her head back, sending her white hair cascading down her back.

  The light that surrounded the woman began to quiver and pulse, as if suffused with energy. A low, steady hum could be heard over the chaos of the storm. She cried out as a clear, luminous liquid gushed from the area the crystal had touched. Rain gasped, taking in a deep breath of lifegiving air.

  The apparition straightened, retrieved a black crystal from the folds of her cloak, and held it high. “And now, the black crystal. For one whose soul is tormented and dark, the black crystal will seal the darkness within.” She turned her eyes toward Blaze, the intensity of her gaze tempered by an inexplicable warmth that Rain saw reflected in her husband’s eyes. “But your darkness will not disappear; it will serve its own higher purpose. The darkness will remain because it is necessary so that you may recognize and know your own kind. The great darkness will be brought out into the light. Balance must be restored.”

  She leaned in toward Blaze’s body where his lifeless torso was twisted awkwardly against the steering wheel. An acrid scent surged into the air and smoke began to seep from under the car’s mangled hood. Undeterred, she placed the black crystal over the area of Blaze’s heart. Flames leapt from his chest briefly and he gasped, bending at the waist and coughing desperately, much as a drowning victim would.

  Now with a crystal in each hand, she reached out toward Blaze and Rain where they stood wrapped around each other off to the side of the crash site. Her voice was steely and strong as she declared, “Now may fire and water come together, for the good of this world and the world beyond.”

  An ominous groan rumbled from the jeep’s engine in the instant before it exploded. Flames swirled around the apparition’s glowing form and licked at the bottom of the white cloak, but she seemed to take no notice. “Whether as a burning ember or cleansing rain, the two shall come together as one, and their union will be for all eternity; for the darkness and the light have been reborn,” she said, dipping her chin to look down at the two bodies being consumed by the inferno, “and the past is no more.”

  She let the two crystals fall from her hands. As the stones tumbled into the flames, Rain watched as a fireball burst from the wreckage and came straight at them. In the next instant, they were engulfed in heat and Rain felt her body and spirit reconnect with a jolt that left her dizzy.

  Awareness of her physical self returned slowly. She clung to Blaze as she fought to regain her bearings. She could feel his arms around her and his warm breath on her cheek, and knew she was safe.

  Rain opened her eyes. The woman in the white cloak was gone. There was no acrid stench, no fire, no gutted metal frame, no blood–and no charred bodies. There was only rain and more rain, falling in a steady deluge. The sound of the raindrops pounding the soft-top of the jeep was almost deafening. Rain reached up absently to check that she was still wearing her seatbelt. She was.

  It was as if the wreck had never happened. Had she imagined the whole thing?

  She turned to Blaze, a hundred questions ready to tumble from her lips, but she stopped short at the solemn, knowing expression on his face. No confusion. No trepidation. No alarm. Just a serene, almost resigned expression. She clutched his arm, needing to feel his hard, muscled strength beneath her fingers to know this was real, that she was still real. As she opened her mouth to speak, something moved in her peripheral vision. Someone had stepped out of the shadows to stand in front of the car. A woman. The same young woman she had seen on her run.

  She stood in front of the jeep, dry from head to toe despite the pouring rain. But she was a mess. Her clothes were filthy, her hair matted, her skin streaked with dirt. But her eyes–her eyes were what drew Rain’s attention the most. They held such sadness. Hopelessness. No words were spoken, but Rain knew what the woman wanted from her.

  Rain closed her eyes and started getting sensory impressions that made no sense; disjointed, blurry images and sounds and even sensations. There had been cold, and pain, and fear. And then there had been nothing as the blurry images receded and faded to black.

  Blaze watched the emotions flit across Rain’s face and did his best to follow along with the emotions and sensory overload that had overtaken her. Neither of them questioned how they knew this woman’s plight; they just knew. No words needed to be spoken to give them an understanding of her dark circumstances, and the knowledge roused their sense of justice.

  “She was kidnapped,” Rain said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s like I can see it. A dark, dank place. What an awful place.”

  “It was filthy there,” B
laze heard himself say softly, not noticing how Rain’s head whipped up in response to his description. He could see it, too: her vision of the dark place that weighed so heavily on this woman’s soul.

  Rain filled in the rest. “She wants to fight back. But she can’t do it alone.”

  “There are others,” Blaze murmured.

  “Yes! Whoever this monster is, he’s taken other women. He’s collecting them. Oh, Blaze.” Her voice broke as she covered her face with her hands and wept.

  He unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned in to pull her closer to him. The bedraggled woman was still there, watching them stoically. As he made eye contact with her, the way forward with his wife became clear: they needed to heed this apparition’s appearance and do what they could to help. He nodded and spoke the words that he knew would set the stage for an unprecedented, epic battle between good and evil: “We will. We’ll help. I swear it.”

  That must have been all the apparition needed to send her on her way. Blaze watched her slip away toward the woods, in the direction of the water that held so many secrets and, perhaps, more than its fair share of bodies that had never been recovered. When she approached the edge of the woods, she simply disappeared.

  For the first time in all her years of having the visions and dreams, Rain was frightened by what she had seen. Even more than that, she found it unnerving that Blaze had seen this one with her.

  “What’s happening, Blaze?” Rain asked, her voice frantic as she struggled to control her panicked breathing? “Did you see it, too? The wreck. The fire. Us…being consumed by the flames. We should be dead. We’re supposed to be dead!”

  “Of course, I saw it. I was right there with you. I’m with you now.” He took her face in his hands and leveled her with a piercing look as he stated emphatically, “And we are right where we are supposed to be: together. Whatever’s happening around us is just noise, baby. We’re together. I know you’re struggling to understand. I have so much to tell you when the time is right. For now, just know that it’s going to be alright, all of it. Now, breathe, baby. Just breathe and let’s go home.”

  Rain placed her hands over his and closed her eyes, concentrating on her breath, focusing on moving air in and out of her lungs. Feeling his warm skin against hers grounded her. She knew he was right; they would face whatever was to come, together. She didn’t know if the wreck and the injuries had been real, but she knew the bond they shared and the vision they had seen together certainly were. In the midst of the chaos, there was clarity: there would be no more thoughts of divorce. They had just experienced something incredible together; something that surpassed time and space and could only be explained within the realm of the supernatural.

  She let out a long, satisfying breath and opened her eyes. “I love you, Blaze. I’ve always loved you. But something’s happened tonight that I just don’t understand. Not yet. But if you’re truly able to see the things I can see…the horror that people endure because of the evil in others…then I’m sorry for anything I may have done that somehow brought you into this. It isn’t easy to see and hear things that you might not be able to do anything about. You’re going to have days when you’ll think you’re going crazy because of the voices in your head. They’ll seek you out, just like they do me. Just like she did. I’m so sorry, baby.”

  He tilted his head to the side as he looked down at her. “Look at you, so worried about me after what you just went through. I’ve never stopped loving you, even when I was letting my ‘inner asshole’ rule the day while I kept my distance. No more. You’re my wife.” He slid his hands to her shoulders and gently shook her for emphasis. “This is what’s real. Us.” He pulled her in tight against him, closing his eyes. He pressed his hand to the back of her head and tucked her face against his neck. “Whatever happened tonight, I promise you, will only make us stronger.”

  When he opened his eyes, he looked over her shoulder at the point where the apparition had disappeared into the woods, and thought to himself, “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need it.”

  Chapter Five

  This time when Electra woke up she was much more coherent, but still could only remember bits and pieces about her abduction. And she’d had more strange dreams, full of rain and flames and death. She knew she had been abducted after interacting with a woman who was also being held here, which made no sense. Why would the woman help her captor, only to be returned to the holding cell? Stockholm syndrome, maybe?

  Electra had learned about Stockholm syndrome in a Psychology class. She wanted to go into social work. She wanted to make a difference. But after this experience–if she survived–she just might be changing her major to Criminology. That way, she could devote her life to ridding the world of this brand of evil. The groggy, loosely-assembled thought made her want to laugh–not out of amusement but from a sick sense of horror, like something out of a Stephen King novel, horror-filled yet so realistic. Perhaps King was right: monsters really do come in the form of man. That’s why Electra wanted to see this guy. She wanted to know what she was dealing with.

  “It was me.”

  “What?” Electra mumbled as she looked around to find the source of the soft, feminine voice.

  “I’m so sorry. He used me to get you into the van. I hate myself for it, I really do. I should have been stronger, but when he put the barrel of that gun in my mouth and told me I had to help him, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I don’t know what else you could have done. It’s okay. So we’re all U of L students, right?” The other woman nodded, sweeping a long, black braid over her shoulder. “What’s your major?” Electra asked.

  “Nursing. Some fucking nurse I’d make.” The woman’s face crumpled and she began sobbing. She was pretty with Asian features and distinctive, bee-stung lips.

  “What’s your name?” Electra asked.

  The woman sniffled, wiping the back of her hand over her snotty nose. “Amy. Amy Ryan. I mean it. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Electra knew that if the women hoped to survive, they were going to have to work together. The bastard who had kidnapped them would love nothing more than to have them at odds against each other. Electra was going to have to think like a killer and not like a woman who had been betrayed by another. Amy might feel bad about what she’d done, but she owed Electra nothing; the survival instinct went far deeper than even the worst betrayal.

  “I’m not upset with you,” Electra assured her as she sat up and scrubbed her hands across her face in an effort to fully wake up. “Don’t you see? That’s probably what he wants, to set us against each other. You’ve got to stop worrying about that. It’s over and done. We’ve got to figure out how to get out of here. Now, how long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two or three weeks.”

  “Has he said anything that would give you a hint about why he’s collecting women?”

  “No. When he threatens us he tells us he’s killed before, and I believe him.”

  “I do too.” It didn’t take Electra being there to know the man was a psychopath. If he was bold enough to kidnap multiple women he was crazy enough to kill. And he liked to brag about it, apparently. “Look, we’ve got to work together if we’re going to survive. There’s five of us. If we can get him in here with us, we can overpower him.”

  “The son of a bitch barely feeds us enough to keep us alive,” one of the women said. She leaned against the wall, sullenly picking at a fingernail with her hair hanging over her face. She looked like she’d already given up.

  “What’s your name?” Electra asked. Might as well get acquainted and see what strengths these women could bring to bear against their captor.

  The woman looked up through her brunette bangs and pushed a pair of glasses up on her nose. “I’m the first one he got. He caught me coming through the garage parking lot at school. He jumped out from behind a concrete pillar like some kind of ghost. I swear, I never saw him until he was on me. I mean, I’m assuming it was him
; I didn’t really get a good look at him before he had a hood over my head and I was shoved into the trunk of a car. It was weird; like, he wasn’t there and then he was. When I finally saw him, I had expected him to be bigger. He’d felt bigger.” She shrugged. “The evil that surrounds the guy is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. He’s not much to look at, pretty average. But sometimes it’s like evil has wrapped itself around him like a cloak. Just pure evil. Oh, my name’s Dee Winters.” She said it like it was an afterthought. The woman seemed a little disoriented, as if she’d been existing in her own little world.

  Electra repeated her question in the hopes of getting a better answer. “Has he said why he’s doing this?”

  “No. He’s not exactly big on conversation.”

  Electra and Amy exchanged a grim look before Electra commented, “We may never know why he’s doing this, and maybe the reason doesn’t even matter. One thing’s for sure, though: if we don’t get out of here, we’re all as good as dead.”

  Chapter Six

  Blaze’s hands were warm on her body. The sensations his touch evoked were beyond anything Rain had ever experienced. Sex with Blaze had always been good, sure, but this? Extraordinary. Mind-blowing. Damn near incapacitating.

  He had her pressed up against the bedroom wall as his hands and mouth devoured her. He had been on her from the moment they walked through the front door after their supernatural encounter earlier that night. They had barely made it up the stairs in their hurry to shed their clothes and touch each other, needing to reconnect and remind each other that they were very much alive–despite events to the contrary.

  Something profound had happened to them tonight, and the way she experienced her world was forever changed. Blaze’s ragged breathing against her skin, every lingering caress, every sensuous stroke of his fingertips left a trail of fire on her skin. Their physical attraction had somehow been heightened to an extraordinary level, making sexual arousal an intense experience that threatened to overwhelm her senses.