Race the Darkness

by Abbie Roads

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Get in here. This isn’t something we want to advertise.” Xander stepped back from the door, and she moved fluidly with his body like they were one person, not two. Xander motioned toward the chair across from the couch. “You can come in, but this doesn’t mean we’re square. It means Isleen needs information about what’s happening to her.”

  “I’ll help any way I can.” Alex stepped inside Xander’s cabin, his gaze taking in all the surroundings while he moved to the chair Xander still pointed at. “You’ve really fixed this place up. Never thought it could look so quaint and cozy.” Alex was worming his way in via her. And she was going to let him as long he didn’t hurt Xander or her ever again.

  “One topic only. The dreams.” Xander’s voice held no room for argument.

  She and Xander moved toward the couch. They walked as if they were a long-married couple engrained in each other’s manners and ways. It felt so real and right to be close to him like this. “And there is no question about her dreams.”

  They settled on the couch, and she told his father about her dreams of Simon Smith and William Goodspeed. And Xander explained his interviews with the two men. His father asked a few clarifying questions, but never once indicated any disbelief.

  The thing no one mentioned was her dream of Gran. Just as well. She wasn’t certain she could speak about it anyway.

  “If this is a recurrent pattern, do you realize the implications?” Alex aimed his question at her. Her mind conjured no implications beyond the horror of it all. “Lives that could be saved. Simply from a dream. Do you know how revolutionary that would be? And if I can document—”

  “She’s not your guinea pig or your favorite new toy.”

  “That’s not my intention.” Alex spoke directly to her. “Gale and I founded the Ohio Institute of Oneirology.”

  “Oh—what?” Isleen asked.

  “Oneirology. We were pioneers in the field of dream research. We were the first to theorize that dreams were more than just a waste product of the brain. That they could be essential to cognitive functioning, creativity, mental health, and even psychic phenomenon. Did you know Gale was a sleep-talker?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice brightened, thinking about Gran. “She was always that way.”

  “She was also skilled at mutual dreaming. She could enter another person’s dream—without them even knowing—and observe.”

  Isleen felt her eyes grow weirdly wide. “That’s a real thing? Are you serious?” If Gran could enter another person’s dreams… The things she dreamed about with Xander were not things she wanted her grandmother to see.

  “Very. Her ability was incredibly fascinating. We were able to document her experience in the dream and compare it with the person who had the dream. It blew people’s minds. Either that or they cried hoax and claimed we weren’t conducting proper scientific studies. The one downfall to Gale’s mutual dreaming was that after every dream, she had a seizure. Have you had a seizure after one of these dreams?”

  Alex was asking her, but Xander answered. “She’s never had what I’d call a seizure. When it happened in the hospital, she passed out for a few minutes, then came to and was cold and sleepy. When it happened here, she got the headache, but then it went away, then she got sleepy and cold again. The night Gale…” Xander didn’t need to say it. “She passed out that night.”

  Fuzzy, fringe-of-her-mind memories matched up to Xander’s words.

  “Seizures come in varying forms. During a precognitive dream, your brain is doing double duty. It’s guiding you through the cycles of sleep and operating as normal, but on a different plane of reality.”

  “Different plane of reality? What does that mean?” Isleen asked.

  “The reason precognitive dreams are so hard to prove is because that different plane of reality only exists inside you. It’s not something any test can measure or any scientist can observe. Only you can access it and learn from it. Your physical body remains here, but your mind is operating in two places at the same time. When you wake up, the brain can’t handle the overload and shorts out—a seizure.”

  She stared into Alex’s eyes, looking for even the slightest hint of humor, the joke, the punch line. Because if this wasn’t a joke, then he was serious and she was going to have to decide if he was crazy smart or just plain crazy.

  “The seizure is the price for being psychic.”

  Now she was leaning toward just plain crazy. “I’m not psychic.”

  “During your waking hours, you are correct. But in the midst of a precognitive dream, you are being given access to insider information about another reality—which makes you psychic.”

  Xander nodded his head as if he were receiving great understanding. “You’ve seen the interrogations. This is real.”

  “You’ll need to spend a few nights at the Institute so we can measure and record your brain activity during the dream cycles. It would be groundbreaking to record a precog dream.”

  “Is there a way to cure it?” she asked, her voice soft and steady.

  “Cure it? Why would you want to make it go away? You have a powerful gift.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a gift. The things I’ve seen…” She trailed off, not wanting to access those particular memories.

  “An innocent little boy, his mother, and a woman just doing her job are alive today because of that dream you had. Would you trade their lives just so you didn’t have to experience that bad dream? How many other lives could your dreams save?”

  That was a direct hit on her morality center. There was another way to look at her dreams. They weren’t just horrible things she had to witness. They were important—a means to save people. No way would she trade lives for the ability to not dream. She could never be so selfish.

  “Do you remember the story of Fearless and Bear?” Alex asked.

  Their story was the only part of yesterday that didn’t ache when she thought about it. “I remember.”

  “I suspect you and Xander are a modern version of them.” He tossed that little bomb out there. Its detonation was quiet, but she felt the shock wave of it rock both her and Xander.

  “You said it was your story.” Xander’s words were evenly spaced and perfectly clipped.

  “It should have been. But now it’s yours to finish.” Alex’s face was all sober expression, and the way he sat in the chair leaning forward conveyed his earnestness. Isleen glanced at Xander, who bobbed his head as if Alex’s words struck a deep truth.

  “You believe this?” Incredulity pushed her tone into the squeak range.

  Xander turned his gaze to her, grim honesty shining in his eyes. “It makes sense. You see the similarities, right?”

  The parallels between her and Fearless lined up nearly perfectly. Fearless had been kidnapped by the Bad Ones. Isleen had Queen. Bear had found and saved Fearless. Isleen had Xander. Fearless discovered she was gifted with dream sight. Isleen had precognitive dreams.

  What about hard facts and truth? They had proof her dreams could save lives—okay, she could buy in to that. But the story of Fearless and Bear was fiction. Oh, she wanted to believe it, only because she wanted Xander to be her destiny. But wanting a thing didn’t make it happen.

  “You wanna know the real kick in the ass?” Xander nabbed her hand. “The totem Bear carving sits on top of the next hill over. That fucking close this entire time, and I never really knew what it was until yesterday.”

  “I want to go see it sometime.”

  “I know. Me too. Kinda takes on a whole new meaning now.” His words were filled with unquestioning belief in this.

  Alex cleared his throat. “When Gale left—”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Time to leave. I don’t want to hear—”

  “Alexander. Patrick. Stone.” Alex’s tone was loud, sharp, and overflowing with angry father. “You will let me
say this. And then I’ll leave and you can go back to hating me.” He didn’t wait for Xander’s agreement, just kept talking, although lowering his volume. “Gale left because she didn’t believe. She swore something bad would happen to me if she stayed. When she left… I almost don’t have words to describe what happened to me. I left too. I was gone. But not gone. I couldn’t think clearly or see clearly or feel anything. Nothing made sense or computed right, except for work. The only clarity I could find was in my research. Maybe because it was the only link I had to Gale.

  “It wasn’t until…” His voice warbled, high and low. “Until…she…died that I finally broke free from the prison I’d been locked inside all that time. Free to feel all the guilt, anger, and, my God, the regret.” He aimed tortured eyes at Xander. “I know everything I missed. I know I wasn’t there as a father, a mentor. I wasn’t there for all the small wonderful moments of your childhood, and I especially wasn’t there when you almost”—his voice faltered—“died. I will carry that responsibility and remorse for the rest of my life.”

  In the silence following Alex’s speech, no one moved. Her heart turned puffy soft with compassion toward both of these men who needed each other so badly, but the distance of time and pain separated them.

  Alex nodded his head once, stood, and waited as if he expected Xander to say something, but when the quiet continued, he headed toward the door. He paused, hand on the door handle. “It would’ve been more merciful if someone had just shot me in the head and put me out of my misery.” He opened the door and looked back at Isleen, pinning her immobile with the intense sadness of his gaze. “Don’t you ever do to him what Gale did to me.”

  * * *

  If Isleen responded to Dad’s parting words, Xander couldn’t hear it. He was lost inside his own thoughts. If this thing between him and Isleen was similar to what Dad claimed to have had with Gale, that granted Isleen the ability to annihilate him. To turn him into the same person as his father. That Xander had let himself go down this road—refusing to listen to Matt’s warnings—made him fifty kinds of stupid.

  Shit fucking goddamn. Matt had been right all along. Wouldn’t the guy just about get wood from being able to say told you so?

  Xander forced himself to his feet, fighting the physical urge to be close to her. He refused to look at her and fall under her alluring spell. Oh, but his body wanted her, and yet his mind knew the consequences. He needed time to think, time to figure things out, time alone.

  “I got some work to do.” Liar, liar, tighty-whities on fire. He walked to the front door. “I’ll have Hopkins walk you back to the main house.” He opened the door and peered out at the BCI guy stationed on his porch. “Hopkins, see that she gets back to the main house.”

  “Will do.” The guy nodded one of those professionally curt nods, then looked beyond Xander to the interior of the cabin. Hopkins’ eyes softened, his facial features melting into a soft, slightly girlish look of pure compassion and sympathy. He glanced at Xander and his expression went terminal, as if Xander were a hot, steaming pile of fresh dog shit mashed into the grooves of his brand-new tennis shoes. What the fuck was that about?

  Xander flipped on the listening switch. From habit, he tensed, waiting for the first thump from the frequency connection opening, but Hopkins thoughts glided into his ears on a wave of no-pain.

  After everything she’s been through, you do this. Dick.

  “Do what?” Xander asked, more than a little attitude in his tone. What was it with every guy—except his father and Matt—always acting like he wasn’t treating Isleen right? He’d never hurt her.

  Hopkins ignored him and held out his hand. “Miss Isleen, don’t worry. I’ll see that you get there safe. No one will hurt you. I promise. There’s no need to cry.”

  She was crying? Xander whipped around so fast he nearly ass-planted on the floor. She stood in front of the couch, chin quivering, tears slicking her cheeks. “I can’t go there, yet. Gran… It was the last place… I don’t think I can face it. Is there someplace else I can go? Someplace that’s not here or there.” She might be crying, but her words were strong, spoken in a quiet voice that carried latent power and neatly sliced through his bullshit. Jesus fucking Christ.

  Hopkins was right. After everything she’d been through, Xander had been about to abandon her on Dad’s doorstep. Total dick move.

  He slammed the door without even looking at Hopkins and started across the room, but she held up her hand in the universal sign for stop. He obeyed.

  She stood up straighter, lifted her chin, and looked him square in the eye. “I am tired of being the victim. I’m tired of feeling like everything happens to me and I don’t have control over any of it. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to feel obligated to take care of me.” She used the palms of her hands to wipe the residual wetness off her cheeks. “I am going to cry. I can’t seem to help it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t handle things or that I’m weak. It just means I need to feel things.”

  “I know you’re not weak. A weak person wouldn’t have survived what you did. A weak person wouldn’t be telling me to step off for wanting to baby her too much.”

  “I’m not telling you to step off. I enjoy—” She looked straight ahead at where his heart resided in his chest. The organ seemed to sense her gaze and pumped a little harder as if flexing and showing off its muscularity. “It’s just that I don’t want you to feel forced to take care of poor wittle Isween.” She spoke her last words in a pouty-child tone.

  “Baby, I don’t look at you like poor wittle Isleen.” He mimicked her tone. Her lips twitched and ticked up by degrees until a full-on smile blazed out at him. “I look at you like a woman who’s been through shit and then got shit on again, and has just walked out of the shit pile, but some of the stink is lingering.”

  She giggled, the sound a symphony to his ears. “Are you saying I stink?”

  “I’m saying it might be awhile until you find your new normal. I know what it’s like to have normal destroyed. After the lightning strike, I was lost and adrift and desperate to adapt.”

  She came to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tight. Holy fuck, she felt so perfect, so destined, so inevitable. There was no resisting her. That’s what scared the shit out of him.

  “Why did you really want me to leave?” She spoke against the fabric of his shirt, the heat of her breath a caress. “What do you feel about the Fearless and Bear thing? About us? And what about Camille?”

  And damn. She’d just shoved the elephant in the room into his arms. His choices were to keep quiet and lug the bastard around or answer her questions and set it down. He stepped back from her, needing the distance to formulate coherent thought. He ran a hand through his hair, then scratched the top of his head—pure delay tactic. Jesus. Was he really this much of a coward? Not normally.

  The temperature seemed to be ratcheting higher and higher until it felt like he stood on the outer ring of hell—only it wasn’t his AC suddenly taking a dump, it was his own damned wimpiness at having to talk about his feelings.

  Might as well answer the easiest question first. “Camille is a non-issue. We fucked. That’s it. There was never a relationship. No matter what she or her fucktard of a brother say.”

  Isleen narrowed her eyes at him, like he might not be telling her the truth. “Kent said you’ve been with her a decade.”

  “We’ve fucked for a decade. She never made any relationship demands. On the surface, she seemed fine with our arrangement, but I heard her thoughts—knew she wanted more, and I knew I’d never give it to her. It makes me an asshole for not stopping it when she wanted more. I own that.”

  “Is that what you’re doing with me? Just wanting a fuck? How do I know you’re not going to get tired of me at some point, dump me like a dirty diaper, and move on to someone else?”

  The wrongness of her words knocked him bac
k a step. “I would never do that to you.”

  “Did you say the same thing to Camille? That you’d never do that to her?” Her face wore an odd expression of both suspicion and longing to trust him.

  “With my history, you’ve got no reason to believe me, but I would never do that to you. With you, everything is different. I’m different.” And here his feelings were, lining up and getting ready to shoot out of his mouth. “The Fearless and Bear thing feels right in a way that isn’t based on logic but resides somewhere on the level of gut feeling and instinct. I don’t know how I feel about that. I enjoy touching you. I want to be close to you. I feel something for you that I’ve never felt for another woman. I want more of you. I want all of you.” He hoped she got what he meant. “But if it means, in the end, that I’ll turn out like Dad? No way. I’d rather walk away right now while I am still me.”

  She listened to every word he said, never blinking, never looking away, just focusing all her attention on him. Wasn’t being the object of her focus sexy as hell? She made him feel seen and heard in a way he’d never experienced.

  “So you’d rather hurt me than be hurt.” Her voice carried a concrete certainty.

  “No.” Her very words were abhorrent to his ears. “God, no. I’d never hurt you.”

  “What do you think is going to happen to me if you walk away and leave me like Gran left your Dad?”

  “Hadn’t thought about it like that.” The idea of her being like his dad had been—and it being his fault—made his heart almost rupture.

  “Maybe we need to think about it like that. If we both have the power to kill each other’s souls, then we need to figure out how to trust each other.”

  Trust. When had he ever trusted anyone besides Roweena? She’d been the only person in his life who’d never let him down or cast him off like yesterday’s dirty underwear.