Errant Angel

by Justine Davis

  She read the rest, without words, without any special power. Then he woke up and the truth flooded back. Bringing with it a morass of guilt he’d been carrying for years now. His dream was heaven; his hell was reality.

  “You didn’t kill him, Dalton. It was an accident.”

  He shook his head, denying the amelioration.

  “You couldn’t control the fact that someone else’s tire blew out.”

  He didn’t question her knowledge; he was too deep in his own pain. She eased up on the energy she was sending him; he was talking on his own now, and after keeping it bottled up for so long, she didn’t think he’d be able to stop.

  “I shouldn’t have tried it. There was no margin for error. Or accident.”

  “Dalton—”

  He turned on her then. “Don’t you get it? I believed what they said. ‘The hottest driver to come along in decades.’ ‘He doesn’t take chances, he makes them.’ ‘He’ll dominate racing for the next decade.’ I ate it up. I ate it up, and when I saw that hole, my ego took me right through it. I was Dalton MacKay, the greatest thing since the internal combustion engine, of course I could do it.”

  He stopped, his eyes closing as his breath came in labored pants.

  “I did it all right.” His voice was laced with self-condemnation. “I sent Mick right into that wall.”

  “Dalton, please, listen to me—”

  He wasn’t hearing her. The demons were loose, lashing at him. The walls were well and truly down now, and the flood couldn’t be stopped.

  “He was the only person who ever really believed in me, who ever looked at me and saw something good, not just a troublemaker, not just some kid who never even knew who his parents were. I never cared much about anything, until Mick came along and taught me about racing. He was the closest thing to a father I ever had. And I killed him.”

  Angie hesitated, searching for the right thing to do, to say. “So the other drivers said you were responsible for his death,” she said at last.

  Dalton grimaced, opening his eyes to look at her. “No. They didn’t. They all said it was a fluke, just a racing accident.”

  “Linda, then? She blamed you?”

  Something flashed in his eyes then, puzzlement at her knowledge, but the dam had been breached now, and the words kept coming.

  “No. That was the worst. She just kept telling me it wasn’t my fault. And that...I was the son she and Mick had never had. She’d lived thirty years around racing, she said. She knew accidents like that happened.”

  “But she abandoned you. Didn’t want anything to do with you.”

  “No!” His fists tightened until his knuckles were white. “She didn’t. She wouldn’t. She kept coming around, trying to talk to me. And his brother...even Mick’s father tried.”

  “But Dalton MacKay had set himself up as his own judge and jury,” she said softly.

  “Because I knew,” he said harshly. “I knew I only tried that move because I was an arrogant, conceited bastard who believed all his own publicity. And my ego cost Mick his life.”

  “And the only fair recompense was your own life. Of course, you couldn’t just commit suicide, that would be too easy. So you sentenced yourself to a living hell, alone, every day of your life an installment on a debt you can never repay.”

  His jaw clenched, and he lowered his gaze to his fists, staring at them.

  “Do you really think they want that, Dalton? That Mick’s family appreciates what you’re doing to yourself?”

  His fists tightened until Angie thought he must be drawing blood from his palms. When she spoke again, she couldn’t keep everything she’d come to feel for this man out of her voice. It was low and strained.

  “Did you ever stop to think, Dalton, that if what Linda told you was true, then she lost not only a husband, but a son that day?”

  His face went nearly as white as his knuckles. His breathing became louder, as if he was having to work for every breath. Anguish radiated from him, and Angie sensed the battle raging inside him. The dark and the light, the one he had consigned himself to, the other he thought he didn’t deserve.

  And suddenly it was too much for her. She couldn’t bear to see him like this, was terrified the dark would win. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down to her, concentrating as she had never concentrated in her life on easing his pain. Nothing else mattered right now, except that she couldn’t let this go on, couldn’t let him keep ripping at himself, cursing himself, loathing himself.

  He resisted at first, and she had to exert herself to build the shell of calm, of peace, around him. But she held on, murmuring soothing words she knew he wasn’t listening to, but that wasn’t important, only the sound was, only the sound and the tranquilizing softness, the gentle, warming, flowing current of serenity from her to him, reassuring, easing, cosseting, born of the love for him that she had only admitted to in this moment.

  Minutes passed as she fought for him, using every ounce of power she had, every method she’d ever been taught. She knew she had broken through when he sagged against her, clutching at her as if she were his only support, his only lifeline in a raging sea.

  “I loved him,” he choked out brokenly. “Damn it, Angie, I loved him.”

  “I know,” she whispered. She thought of the picture she’d seen and the look on Mick Graham’s face. The knowledge came to her suddenly, almost as if the bosses were back. She tightened her hold on Dalton’s shoulders. “And he knew, too, Dalton. He knew you loved him.”

  “I...never told him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He knew. I swear to you he knew.”

  He clung to her for several long, silent moments. She felt the turmoil in him gradually subside. And at last, with a final shiver as the riotous emotions retreated, he lifted himself up to look at her.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice taut.

  “I’m Angie,” she said simply.

  “What you did, just now...”

  “Dalton, don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Don’t ask how you did it? Don’t ask how you’ve done any of this? Don’t ask how you managed to dig your way past every barrier I could build? Don’t ask—”

  “Don’t ask questions I can’t answer.”

  He drew back from her a little on the narrow bed. His gaze flicked over their naked bodies, still pressed close together.

  “I’m sorry, Dalton. I really am. I know it’s awful of me, after...everything,” she said, “but I can’t. I just can’t.”

  He looked back at her face then, but only for a moment. His gaze slipped down her throat, then lower, then stopped. His brows furrowed as he stared at something. At first she thought it was her breasts, and felt her nipples begin to tighten involuntarily. But then she realized he was looking higher.

  And only then did she realize that, for the first time in days, the pendant was active. Not only active, but glowing, signaling her.

  Great timing, she muttered silently. Absolutely great.

  The pendant thrummed gently. Dalton’s eyes widened, and she hastily grabbed at it and sent, rather violently, Not now!

  Surprisingly they listened, and the thrumming subsided. She swiftly released it, and dared a glance at Dalton’s face. And knew instantly that the lying, the evasion, was all over.

  Already he had begun to withdraw from her, mentally and emotionally if not physically. It wouldn’t take him long to have those walls back up, higher and thicker this time, and she doubted if anyone would ever get in again.

  “Questions you can’t answer,” he muttered, his jaw tight.

  He reached out and touched the pendant, surprise flickering over his face the moment his skin came in contact with it.

  “It’s warm,” he murmured. “No, not just warm, it’s...it’s metal, but it feels...”

  “I know,” she said.

  The surprise vanished from his expression, the coolness returning. He flicked at the pendant with a finger. It swung on its chain and came to rest bac
kward against her skin. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward slightly.

  “’Sultana. April 27, 1865,’” he read off the polished back of the pendant. His gaze came back to her face, and he waited silently. Tensely. As if the rest of his life depended on what she did next. And she knew, perhaps better than he, that it was true.

  She couldn’t let it happen. It didn’t matter that she’d be wiped from his memory later, since it appeared the bosses were back. The only thing that mattered was this moment and the fact that the man she loved—Lord, the bosses weren’t going to like this—had poured his battered soul out to her, at a cost she couldn’t imagine, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t, let him wall himself back up again. Even if they erased his memory of her, those walls would be there if she didn’t do something about it. Now.

  She answered the easiest question first. “That’s the day she exploded. On a run between St. Louis and New Orleans.”

  If he was relieved that she had answered at all, it didn’t show. “An odd thing to want to commemorate.”

  “And odder still to wear it all the time?”

  He nodded, with no lessening of that tension.

  She took a breath, knowing how this was going to sound to him. But she had no choice.

  “I wear it,” she said, “because my family was wiped out in that explosion.”

  His brows furrowed. “I’m sorry. But not all of them, obviously. Somebody survived, because you’re here.”

  Her nerve failed her for a moment. Perhaps she was starting this at the wrong end.

  “Dalton, will you listen to a story?”

  He was still more than a little wary, and she couldn’t help thinking of that wounded wolf again, at the mouth of his den and scenting the air, wavering between taking the risk of stepping out into the sun, or retreating back into his dark, safe cave.

  “What kind of a story?”

  “The once-upon-a-time kind, I guess.”

  He looked doubtful, but he didn’t say no, and she took a quick breath and plunged ahead before he could.

  “A long, long time ago, a group of beings from a different place came across a world peopled by a developing race of creatures that they found very interesting. They stayed, initially simply to study these creatures, but they grew more and more fascinated as time went by. I think they were lonely, in a way. They saw great potential in these creatures, despite their primitiveness, and hoped that someday they would change, grow into something wonderful, perhaps even something similar to themselves. But then something would occur, some war or injustice, that made them think it would never happen.”

  He was listening, but she sensed his doubt was growing.

  “I know this sounds crazy—”

  “It sounds,” he said flatly, “like you’ve been reading a bit too much science fiction.”

  “I know, but wait. Please.”

  “Get on with it, then,” he said impatiently.

  “These beings...they had laws that forbade them from interfering themselves. So instead they began to recruit people, the people of the race they’d been studying for so long.”

  “Is there a point to this fairy tale? And what does it have to do with that—” he gestured at the steamboat pendant “—and you?”

  She sighed. “That day, when the Sultana blew up, there was a girl on board. She was seventeen, and traveling with her family.”

  Her voice tightened in spite of herself; Lord, was the old pain going to come back, too? She steadied herself and went on.

  “Her parents, and her two brothers. They were all on a lower deck, talking about the man who’d murdered President Lincoln being caught the day before. That’s when the explosion happened. They were all killed, before her eyes. The girl was badly hurt. She was dying, trapped on that lower deck as the boat went down.”

  “But she survived.”

  “Sort of.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m trying, Dalton. But this is hard. I’ve never told anyone this before. I’m breaking one of the primary rules by telling you.”

  He lapsed into silence then, waiting. After a moment she was able to go on.

  “This girl, she had...a vision. At least, that’s what she thought. She was in horrible pain, and the water was rising, and she knew she was about to die. And then a man appeared. He was dressed like a riverboat gambler, but he had the kindest eyes... He hadn’t been a passenger on the boat, and he wasn’t injured or even wet, but there he was. And he offered that girl a way out. A job, if she would agree to the conditions.”

  As if unwillingly, Dalton made the logical guess. “You’re saying he was one of those...recruiters?”

  “Yes. They wanted the girl to do the interfering they couldn’t do, according to their laws. To go where there was injustice, and make it right. To help those who’d never had their rightful chance. They would heal her, he said, and let her grow up a little first. And then they would give her the knowledge she needed. And the power to make things happen the right way.”

  “Angie—”

  “I know, it sounds wild, but please, let me finish. The girl agreed, she was hurting so much. She thought she was seeing things anyway, and her family was dead, so what did it matter if it was real or not? But the next thing she knew she was free of the wreckage. On the riverbank, looking back at it. And the pain was gone.”

  Dalton was silent, but she sensed he was, albeit unwillingly, being drawn into the story. That gave her hope; the Dalton she’d first met would have thrown her out by now.

  “She spent almost two months with them, learning the rules, and how to use the power they’d given her. Except that their time is different. That time equaled almost four years, back here.”

  “The rest of this story is so ridiculous I won’t even argue about that. What rules? What power?”

  “They gave her vision. Enhanced perception, I suppose. The power of will, and the capability of extending it to others, to plant ideas, or make things happen. The ability to understand people, who they are, why they do what they do, even those who are...very practiced at hiding themselves. And some other things I can’t quite explain.”

  Dalton went very still. “You mean, like reading thoughts? Like talking to someone when you’re not even here?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice went suddenly as harsh as it had been before she’d ever begun her story.

  “You mean, like invading minds?”

  “No!” She sat up as she told him urgently, “I don’t know what’s gone wrong, Dalton. It’s never happened to me before, never in all the years I’ve been doing this. The connection isn’t supposed to be like that, two-way, and it shouldn’t be involuntary, but it is, all I have to do is think about you, and God knows I do that often enough, and there it is. I don’t—”

  “You’re saying,” he interrupted her in a deadly quiet voice, “that you’re... What the hell are you saying? That you’re some reincarnation of that girl?”

  “No.” She once more steadied herself, and then, making herself hold his gaze, she said simply, “I am that girl.”

  Dalton swore, low and heartfelt. She ignored it.

  “I’ve been working for them ever since. The bosses sent me here to help Jimmy. That was all I was supposed to do. But you kept intruding. They told me to stay away from you, but I couldn’t get you out of my mind.”

  “Do you have any idea,” Dalton said slowly, “how totally insane this story sounds?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her. Then he shook his head. “If it wasn’t for the crazy way I’ve been feeling, and the way that necklace of yours started to glow... What is it, anyway?”

  “It’s my connection with the bosses. How I communicate with them.”

  “Right,” he said sourly. “Wouldn’t a wrist radio be easier?”

  “Maybe I’ll suggest it. But I want a fax, too,” she quipped feebly. “That way I won’t have to remember all their long-winded reports.”

  “Reports?”<
br />
  “Background on a mission. A briefing, I guess you’d call it.”

  His eyes widened. “Is that how you knew about Linda?” Before she could go on, he was pelting her with questions. “What else do you know? And how the hell did you find out? What are you, really, a reporter or something? Looking to dig up an old tragedy for a new story?”

  It was clear he wasn’t convinced. She was going to have to give him more.

  “No, Dalton,” she said softly. “I’m exactly what I told you I am. And I know more than any reporter could ever find out. I know about the trash can in the hospital bathroom. I know that you were named for the hospital and the street it was on. I know that you were adopted once, but the man lost his job and they had to send you back. I know that you once lived with a big, blond man who beat you until you were bruised all over. I know that you torture yourself over and over with a videotape of Mick’s crash—”

  He jerked away from her then, rolling off the bed to come shakily to his feet. His injured ankle made him stagger, but he backed away from her hastily nevertheless.

  “Nobody knows all that. Nobody.”

  “I know. I picked it up from you, that day at the café.” She sighed. “I honestly don’t know what’s gone wrong with me. Part of the procedure was to suppress my normal emotions. This work would be too hard, impossible in fact, if you felt things in the normal way. To learn to care, then have to leave, to go on endlessly, while those you’ve helped gradually die natural deaths.”

  He just stood there, staring at her, and Angie had to repress the need to go to him, to hold him, to touch him, to stroke that beautiful male body once again. She forced herself back to her explanation. The explanation he wasn’t believing.

  “Since I’ve been working for them I’ve never felt sorrow, or stress, or emotional pain. But the night I came to Three Oaks, I started feeling them all.” She met his stare levelly. “Starting with your anguish when you tried to write to Linda. That was the night I arrived.”

  She saw his belly muscles contract as if she’d struck him.

  “I wasn’t supposed to feel anything, Dalton. And then I met you, and all the rules went out the window.”