At first Chris had been intrigued at the full sharing of thoughts, but he’d soon become readjusted to having his mother with him again. That was when he’d begun asking for Teo, and asking to make the loud noise. He projected a few perplexing images at her, pinecones bursting into flame, Teo’s lightning, rocks rolling down a cloud bank, but she’d ignored the images, concentrating on getting them as far away from Teo as was possible.
Car stop, Chris offered.
“No,” she said aloud, but he only shot her a “no” look himself and projected the concept again. Car stop.
“I can’t stop the car, honey. The bad men are nearby. They’re looking for us. We have to go.”
He projected an image of Teo making men in white coats dance on the air as Chris did his toys. And then that perplexing image of rocks rolling down a cloud bank came again. Melanie shook her head. “They would hurt Teo,” she said aloud.
Dead plant…Teo?
The imagery was grizzly and chillingly apt. Yes, she answered sadly.
Chris hadn’t spoken after that, only stared at the gathering clouds outside the windshield of the Buick. They rounded yet another curve in this seemingly endless strip of hairpin turns.
And what she saw ahead of them made her heart leap in horror.
Teo had taken the shortcut to the back of his uncle’s gas station. He was at the back door in less than fifteen minutes and through it and into the small apartment Pablo used in less than one.
Pablo was in the act of pouring a cup of coffee when Teo burst into the room. If Teo hadn’t been so angry, so furious, he might have smiled at the picture of terror Pablo presented when he caught sight of his nephew in the narrow doorway.
“Where is she?” Teo asked coldly, quietly.
Pablo hadn’t lowered the coffeepot; he continued to stare at Teo as if he were the devil and not his own blood that had walked in that door. All the while he stared, he was pouring coffee onto the cabinet, the floor.
“Where is she?” Teo demanded again, faster, harder. He took a step into the room.
“I d-don’t know wh-where she is, Teo,” Pablo said.
“Don’t dare call me by my name, Uncle. You have no right to use it. What did you tell her yesterday?” What did you say to her that made her lie to me last night, steal away like a thief this morning?
He thought he saw a measure of relief cross Pablo’s face at his question, though nothing relieved the pallor brought on by his sneer at his relative’s title, the shock fanned by his sudden appearance after fifteen long years.
“What did you tell her?” Teo asked again. Upon not receiving a reply, without mercy, he hammered his way through the imperfect block and straight into his uncle’s confused mind. With no care whatsoever, he trampled across feelings, guilts and fears. Without speed, without deliberate softening of the patterns, he pummeled Pablo’s mind like an overzealous baker might punch bread.
He searched through the muck that made up Pablo Sandoval’s mind, uncaring that this was the man who had taught him how to fish, who had taken him for long walks in the woods, who had given him his first bow and arrow set, only remembering that this was the man who had wronged him once long ago, and again only the day before. Now.
He caught a line or two…He’ll protect us— Melanie’s voice. Spoken yesterday, or two weeks ago? When? Pablo’s voice, Tell him you don’t love him… He will let you go, then.
He paused, his heart beating erratically now, because she hadn’t told him that. Pablo was right; had she told him she didn’t love him, couldn’t do so, no power on earth, and certainly none he possessed, would have kept her there. Instead she had written a note of goodbye…and said she did love him.
Slower, with a little more care, he continued his search. He felt staggered by the contradictions, the conflicting thoughts. Love…betrayal…forgive me, Teo… Run, señora, and take your boy with you… They will kill him if you stay…you stay and Teo dies…Angelina never should have married Ernesto, that drunken coward…Teo was like my own son…Teo burned my mind that day long ago…. Help me, God… Stop, you’re hurting me, Teo…Teo!
Teo pulled back, lessening his furious mental hold, his mental trampling of Pablo’s already damaged psyche. He found he was shaking, as much from the rage that had propelled him down the mountainside as from confusion over what he’d discovered in his foray into the wilds of Pablo’s mind.
To his shock, perhaps his horror, he’d discovered that while his uncle certainly felt tremendous guilt in the role he’d played in betraying Teo, the deepest emotion he had felt toward Teo all these years was more akin to sympathy. Pity.
He half lifted his hand as though he would strike his uncle. He felt the energy coursing through him. He tossed a bolt of lightning to the sky in swift reprisal, rough demonstration.
“Don’t pity me, old man,” he snapped.
Pablo stared at him a moment, then straightened slowly. His eyes were as dark as the coffee spilled upon the cabinet beside him, and as liquid. “I don’t pity you now, niño. You have made yourself this way, not me. All I feel for you is sadness.”
Teo knew this wasn’t the whole truth; Pablo also felt a tremendous amount of fear…deservedly so. “You dared to interfere in my life again, Uncle,” Teo growled at him.
Pablo shook his head but didn’t lower his gaze, didn’t look away in the fear that shook his body. “What life, Teo? Answer me that, if you can.”
“My life!”
“Again, I ask you…what life? The great El Rayo, who grants the villagers a glimpse of his wonderful power? Accepting food and clothing from the poor because they fear you too much to just knock on your door to say thank you?”
“Stop this!” Teo yelled, and sent another burst of energy to the skies directly above Pablo’s home. A tremendous clap of thunder followed, making Pablo flinch backward and nearly slip in the coffee. But his eyes never left Teo’s.
“That woman, she cares for you enough that she would rather leave you than see you hurt. She wants to save you. As I do. But you, all you think of is revenge. All you care about is finding her for your sake. All you care about is beating down the old man who betrayed you all those years ago. Poor Teo, poor El Rayo.”
Teo threw a bolt of pure energy directly at Pablo. As his uncle yelled and leapt sideways, Teo angrily deflected it, sending it crashing into the wall above Pablo’s Formica-topped cabinet. The wall shook and burst into flame, then seemed to melt, the old adobe mud and stucco dripping molten lavalike mud from a hole roughly the size of a basketball.
He told himself he hadn’t stopped the energy from striking Pablo out of any misguided sense of familial recognition, out of any long-buried loyalty. He’d stopped it only because he still didn’t know what he needed to know… where Melanie was, where she’d taken Chris.
But as he watched his uncle’s face go from pallid to ashen, he found it bothered him more than he might have guessed to actually talk with his uncle, face-to-face, alone again after all these years. And he found he couldn’t ignore what he’d plundered during that foray into the man’s mind.
He had loved this man once. Had almost worshiped him. Pablo had been the uncle who had not only taught him how to fish, but how to carve the intricate carvings on his pieces of wood. He had listened to his nephew’s thoughts, and though unable to do much more than send a disjointed image or two, he had never made Teo feel self-conscious about his gifts whenever he was with him. Which had been almost daily.
He’d given Teo his interest in the wild creatures of the forest, and in the unique world of books. All Teo knew of loving came from this man. As did a great body of his knowledge of betrayal.
“Just tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you find out?”
Ruthlessly shoving such memories away, Teo again plundered his uncle’s thoughts. His lack of care, his deliberate heavy-handedness drove Pablo to his knees, crying out in pain, grabbing his head on either side of his eyes.
“W
here is she?” he demanded.
“Stop, Teo! I don’t know where she is! She’s gone!” She had to go, to save her son…to save you. The PRI won’t care about you now. Just the boy. Let her go. Let me go.
“How did you get her to leave?” Teo demanded aloud as he thought the question at Pablo, hard enough to make the older man moan before answering.
“I told her—Ah-h-h, stop this, Teo, I beg you…. I told her—”
Teo leapt past the web of lies Pablo had already constructed in his mind to account for the whereabouts of Melanie Daniels and her son Chris. Then he seized one and dragged it to the surface of Pablo’s terrified mind. He studied it from all angles, listened to it with all senses. This one was the truth. This was how he’d persuaded her to flee Teo’s home. If you don’t leave, they will kill him. Teo. They will kill Teo.
It was what he had told her, this was the fulcrum Pablo had used to pry Melanie from his home.
“How could you have told her such a thing?” Teo asked. He didn’t ask it in anger. If he’d thought about it, he would have said he asked in a dull puzzlement. But it went deeper than that, it pierced the very core of his confusion about Pablo, about Melanie, about society as a whole.
Perhaps what he really wanted to know was why Pablo had told her that the PRI would kill him to get to Chris. And why, believing it, Melanie would take Chris out into almost certain danger rather than let it happen. A possible answer to this last question formed in his mind, but he didn’t dare consider it, couldn’t believe it could possibly be true.
Pablo didn’t answer, only moaned, rocking forward, still holding his head.
“Uncle,” he said, and this time the word wasn’t a denigration, wasn’t used as a sword. “Why would you tell her such a thing? You know it isn’t true.”
“But she…didn’t,” Pablo gasped.
“You wanted her to leave me…. ” Teo said. He felt stunned, saddened, betrayed anew.
“No. No, I wanted you to fight for her,” Pablo said. “I wanted you to be a man again, not a god.”
For a full second Teo couldn’t even think. He couldn’t begin to comprehend the magnitude of what Pablo had done. Fifteen years ago he had felt the same way, watching his uncle stare at him through tear-filled eyes as the men holding Teo had jabbed him yet again with a drug-filled needle.
“You didn’t,” he said, stunned into neutrality. “You couldn’t have.”
“I had to,” Pablo said.
“Why?” He was so stunned that he didn’t think to reach into his uncle’s mind for the answer this time. He lifted him from the ground and shook him. “Damn it! Tell me why!”
“To save you,” Pablo said, his feet dangling some five inches above the ground, his eyes wild with fear, his hands twitching uselessly at his sides.
Teo only stared at him as the realization of what his uncle had done sank in. As the realization of what Melanie had done began to seep through. “You fool. You incredible fool. My God, do you know what you’ve done?”
“You’re here!” Pablo said, as though that were all in the world that could matter on this morning of disaster.
“¡Tío!” Teo screamed at him as he released and flung him away, letting him drop to the floor. How long had it been since he used the Spanish diminutive for uncle? He knew, but didn’t care. “Don’t you understand? You sent her into danger. Danger, Pablo. The PRI intends to kill her, Tío. She knows this. They will do anything to get their hands on Chris. If they find her, they will kill her.”
“Oh, Dios,” Pablo moaned. “I didn’t know this, I swear. I only thought that if she left, you would follow her. I saw the way you looked at her that day with Demo…I saw, you understand. It was the first time I have ever seen you look that way. And you let her stay. She never came back down the mountain. I thought, if she left…for you…you would see that you could have a life. That she loved you enough, you see? That you could finally trust somebody again.”
And strangely, though his heart thundered in fear for Melanie and Chris, and for all that his blood seemed to be boiling with the energy that seared through him, Teo found he couldn’t hate the pathetic man groveling on the floor before him.
Pablo had been wrong, very wrong, but he’d brought Teo one truth: Melanie did indeed love him.
On the heels of that truth, he found another. He loved her, too. Really loved her. He didn’t just want her, and he didn’t just need her. Nor did he love her as a mere extension of his long lost dreams of having a wife and a family. No, he loved her for herself, as herself. As a beautiful, vibrant woman who had graced the world with a remarkable child, a woman who wasn’t afraid of the talents and gifts hidden in either the child or himself.
It was then he knew a shame so deep that it nearly made his knees buckle as he thought of how he’d treated her all along, testing her at every juncture, frightening her, ignoring her, teasing her. Commanding her. Aching for her, but using her nonetheless. Doing this all though he’d known, instinctively, that she was the one woman in all the world for him.
And he’d done this all because he couldn’t believe that for Teo Sandoval, man of power, lonely man of the mountain, things could possibly go right. Because he’d been unable to accept the notion that Melanie might really want him for himself, want him not just as a protector but as a lover, as a surrogate father for her child, as someone she might want to talk with, to be with throughout her life. And, perhaps most damning of all, he’d convinced himself that he didn’t dare trust her.
And she had left the mountain, facing certain terror, certain danger, all because she loved him, wanted to spare him.
Making him moan out loud was the realization of the torture she must have endured the night before. When she’d cried, asked him to stay the night with her, had sobbed against his shoulder, she had known she would be leaving him…for his sake.
Oh, God, he could hardly bear the pain of knowing what she’d done for him.
Please, God, let me find her in time. The prayer rang through his mind and his soul, because he knew with absolute certainty that he couldn’t live without her. Couldn’t live without her love, without her son. She wasn’t a part of the dream, she was the dream.
He stared down at the weak man on the floor before him, the man he had once loved, who even now had thought to help him in his own twisted way.
I love you came a momentary clear projection from Pablo’s chaotic thoughts. The same words Melanie had used in both the note and the dream. I love you.
Teo had long since loosed the mental hold on his uncle, and now he reached out and took Pablo by the arm, drawing him to his feet. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find blood on his uncle’s face, broken vessels upon his cheeks, but aside from his extreme pallor, there was no sign of physical distress.
“I need your help, Uncle,” Teo said.
Pablo’s eyes raised to his, sudden liquid blurring them, making them huge in surprise, in hope. “Anything, niño.”
“You have to drive your truck. I don’t have a license anymore, and I will have to be looking for them.”
Pablo immediately dove a hand into his coffee-stained pants and drew out a key ring. “Let’s go.”
They climbed into Pablo’s old Chevy pickup and Teo didn’t even notice the heavy clang of the metal doors slamming closed. His mind was already questing, searching the highways, skimming the mountainsides.
He felt impaled on the seat as a single blast of thought burst into his mind. Teo!
Melanie. He reached for the strand of psychic energy, slipped, missed. She was too far away. He couldn’t grasp her, couldn’t hold her. Melanie? He tried sending out to her in response, but still couldn’t find her, couldn’t feel her thoughts.
But what he’d felt had sent a knife through his heart, slicing him to ribbons. Don’t let it be too late, he begged.
“Teo…?” his uncle asked nervously, concern edging his voice.
He frowned heavily, concentrating, trying to reconnect with that single, col
d, terrified strand of thought. He turned his head left, then right…and caught a fragrance of her, a nuance of her rich tone.
“Toward Tierra Amarillo,” Teo said, then repeated it louder, more surely. He hadn’t found them, but he could feel a trace of Chris’s mind, and the smell of Melanie’s rental Buick, which he’d cleaned so perfectly the first night she’d arrived so that she could leave the next morning. He wished now that he’d simply demolished the thing.
“She’ll be all right,” Pablo muttered, throwing the pickup into gear. Revving the motor, he jerked it onto the narrow two-lane highway.
Teo looked at the dark thunderhead gathering in the sky, the thick ghost clouds creeping down the mountains. An owl flew overhead and Teo’s neck rippled with superstitous reaction. The hairs on his neck raised in an almost superstitious premonition.
A part of him wanted to tell his uncle that if she wasn’t all right, if anything had happened to her, he would tear Pablo limb from limb and throw him to the mountain lions. But, in truth, he couldn’t have done that, nor would he want to. Because if anything had happened to Melanie and Chris…nothing in this life would matter. Nothing at all.
At Melanie’s gasp of horror, Chris struggled to sit up higher, see over the dashboard, but the seatbelt held him restrained. She automatically applied the brakes, stretching a hand out to protect her son. Safe, she tried to project. But all she could think was trapped, doomed, lost.
Off, off, off! Chris projected, but to her shock, not at her. She felt the imagery, felt his touch, but also felt something whoosh by her, saw the air inside the car begin to shimmer. Suddenly Chris’s child-proof safety harness snapped free, belt ends dangling in the air. Chris paid no attention to this remarkable feat. He stretched up to sit on his knees, using the dashboard as a support.
“Car stop,” Chris said, pointing.
“Yes,” she affirmed dully, understanding what he’d been trying to tell her now. She had assumed she’d known all there was to know about Chris’s gifts, about his multilayered talents. But he’d stretched those talents with Teo. He had known what lay ahead, at least a mile back, he had known what lay in wait. And had tried to warn her.
Sharing the Darkness Page 21