Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(16)

Her room had been kept mostly dark due to her sensitivity to sunlight—being locked in darkness for an extended time had that effect on a person’s optics. Here in the too-cheerful brightness of the waiting room, Xander drank in her features and let them imprint in his mind.

Her face had started to fill out, no longer seeming as skeletal as before. Her skin was no longer a shade of death, but a pale porcelain. Her hair amazed him—and everyone else. It was a near-perfect shade of white and had grown two inches in the four days she’d been in the hospital. Two inches. The doctors had no explanation for her hair’s rapid growth rate. Not to mention her body’s rapid healing rate. All her blood work just kept coming back impossibly normal.

There were so many things about her that defied explanation. She’d known his name. How? She’d been talking inside his head. How? He’d found her. How? The Bastard wasn’t talking.

She stood, then tugged him by the hand like he was a reluctant toddler. She walked to the corner of the room and stared at the ninety-degree angle the two walls created.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. That kind of behavior gave a person a special invitation to a padded cell. “Isleen. Look at me. Snap out of this.” Authority dominated his tone. “You will look at me.” His voice went deeper, more forceful than he intended, the sound of it resonating through the space.

“What the—” Kent rushed in the room with that look on his face, the look he always wore in Xander’s presence. “Don’t speak to her like that.” Kent’s tone didn’t carry the weight Xander’s had, but the guy’s face had gone radiant red with anger. You’re such an asshole. Treating her like that when she can’t defend herself. Someone needs to put you in your place. Me. It’d feel like winning a championship to reacquaint you with my fists.

Where was the slam upside the head? Xander waited for the pain. Nothing. “Say something to me.” He spoke the words to Kent, but didn’t take his gaze from Isleen.

“You’re an asshole.” A sludge-eating loser who thinks he’s better than everyone else because his family has money and he has an ability the BCI needs. The way you treat Camille like she’s your personal whore makes you the lowest…

What was going on? He still tuned in; he just didn’t get the pain. Not that he was complaining. And when he was with her, the noises that would normally overwhelm him seemed so insubstantial. When he was with her. What was it about being with her that affected his hearing?

Isleen swayed on her feet. He snagged her by the arms, and a cool zing of energy tingled through his hands. Suddenly, he couldn’t tell where his grip ended and she began. It was as if they had melded together. An ugly urge came upon him. The urge to shake her. Hard. And he did. One quick jerk that had her head flopping around on her neck. “Isleen. Snap out of it. Look at me.” That weird force sounded in his voice again.

“You’re hurting her.” Kent tried to pry one of Xander’s hands from her arm, but nothing could separate them. Xander had become an extension of her and couldn’t be torn away.

Her eyes transformed from unseeing and unaware to full frontal clarity, their color an expansive sea of clear aquamarine, but underneath the surface, shadows of dark and dangerous things swam. “Xander?”

His heart went hot-air ballooning inside his chest. “You remember me.”

Only a foot of space separated them, but she threw herself against him so hard he rocked back half a step. Her arms cinched around him, holding him tighter than he’d ever been held. He returned the favor. Didn’t he fucking enjoy that? She fit into his hard angles like the final piece of a puzzle.

Through the thin blanket, he felt the protrusion of her spine and the ripple of each rib. He was intensely aware of her breasts mashed against his chest and the sharp points of her hip bones framing his happy place. It was more than bad timing that his happy place decided to grow ecstatic. Christ.

“He wouldn’t stop stabbing her.” Her voice bore the sound of prolonged suffering. “Blood was everywhere. Everywhere. On me. And I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make him stop. I couldn’t even scream.” Her body pulsated with fear, and Mr. Happy finally wised up and let some blood flow back into his brain.

“The things you’ve been forced to see. The things you’ve been through. I can’t imagine. But, baby, it’s over now. No one will ever hurt you again. That woman is dead. The trailer is destroyed. You are here with me. Safe.”

“How did I get here? I don’t remember.”

“You were barely alive when a deputy sheriff found us and drove us to the hospital. You’ve been here for four days.”

“No, I mean how did I get here from the park?”

“Huh?” The word popped out, making him sound like an imbecile.

“Just now. How did I get here from the park?”

He searched her eyes, expecting to see a crazy gaze aimed back at him, but her aquamarine depths were clear and lucid. “You’ve been here in the hospital for the past four days. I’ve been with you the whole time.”

“No. I was just at Prospectus Prairie Park.”

He spared a glance at Kent. The guy’s eyes narrowed on Isleen; then he yanked his buzzing phone off his belt and read a message on the screen. Really? She wakes up for the first time, and this is Kent’s reaction?