Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(84)

Dad and Matt voiced agreement. Xander mumbled something that could pass for yea or nay. Fuck Kent’s plan. Xander had a plan of his own. Get to Isleen. Period. The end.

Kent kept talking, kept giving orders, but Xander tuned him out. All his attention zeroed in on a point through the trees. Her location. What had she been through this past week? Beatings and starvation like before? Or this time had things been worse? Nightmarish images from every horror movie he’d ever watched flashed through his mind. He clutched the steering wheel so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if it snapped in half.

Stop it. Stop thinking that way. No matter what she’d been through, she was alive. She’d only been gone a week. Not the years she’d endured before. This couldn’t be as bad. It couldn’t. His heart didn’t believe the lies his brain was trying to sell.

Even though they didn’t have to travel more than a mile across the field, it felt like a small bit of forever until Xander let off the gas and pulled the car onto the gravel road next to the tree line. He rammed the car into park and then bolted from his seat, ignoring Kent’s loud whispers for him to stop. What was the guy going to do? Shoot him? Not likely.

A pathway opened off the road, so he darted onto it and found himself sprinting through a serene copse of trees. The sun shot beams of light through the leaves, casting a warm golden glow over everything. Birds sang chipper songs. He heard the rush, gurgle, and slosh of water. He smelled moist earth, river water, and the terrible tang of blood.

Through the screen of trees, he saw everything. Its magnitude and severity so much worse than anything his imagination could have conjured up.





Chapter 23


Time broke, giving Xander’s mind space to take it all in. Memorize it. Relive the horror of it in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

A coffin-shaped box of black metal on the shore, lid open. She had been kept inside that steel prison. Beyond the box, sunshine dappled the water, casting a pink gossamer shimmer over Isleen’s drowning body.

Four naked men held her. A fifth man cruelly shoved her face under the water.

Xander’s stomach collided with his heart. Something inside him popped, the feeling similar to a pressure release, like the cork on his sanity had just blown. He stumbled and nearly went down, but caught himself and kept running toward her.

“Iisslleen!” He howled her name, the sound somewhere between wounded animal and feral dog.

The man with his hand over Isleen’s face lifted his gaze. His eyes were cold and lacking a conscience. He raised a large knife in the air and still held her under the water. A ray of sun glinted off the bloody blade. “I command you to stop, or I will slay the Dragon with my sacred sword.”

Every cell inside him screamed to keep going. But he wouldn’t make it to her in time to prevent that knife from piercing her flesh.

He stopped, his feet sliding in the soft mud at the river’s edge. “You touch her with that blade, and there will be blood. I’ll make all of you bleed.” He made eye contact with every goddamned one of them. Even the man who took her. Xander paused. In the morning light the man looked…fucking familiar.

The man nodded at him as if they’d just reached a private agreement. “Save her!” he yelled and then tackled the knife guy.

What the… He didn’t have time to question. Needed to save Isleen, and he’d just been given the perfect opportunity.

Every ounce of worry, guilt, terror, and anger distilled into one primal emotion—rage. A white sheen slid over his vision. An electric zing slid from the top of his head down to the tips of his big toes. His skin prickled and twitched—the Bastard in His Brain. This time Xander didn’t fight him. Instead, he unclipped the leash.

Go and destroy.

One moment Xander was on the bank, and the next he was in the river drawing back his arm. Fist connected with nose. Cartilage crunched. Blood gushed. The man screamed a sissy-girl sound and flew back into the water.

Xander felt a malicious smile twist his lips. That had felt fucking fine.

One down.

He turned on the next man. The pussy raised his hand to block his face.

“Lotta good that’s going to do.” Xander served a thumper into the man’s stomach so hard his knuckles brushed spine. The man’s mouth formed a wide-open O, but he didn’t make a sound.

Two down.

The last man let go of Isleen. Xander grabbed her limp body, pressing her against his side with one hand and keeping his other hand free. A quick jolt of cool healing passed from his body into hers.

The man clasped his hands in front of him as if in prayer. “Lord protect me.”

“The Lord ain’t here, asshole.” Xander lunged forward and kicked. His foot slammed into the man’s exposed testicles. The soft give of flesh and the soprano scream satisfied something in Xander’s soul. It was gonna take a surgeon to remove the man’s stones from his ass cavity.

In the shallows, the two other men continued to fight over the knife. Let ’em fucking kill each other.

Not ten seconds had passed from the moment he’d hit the water to the moment he emerged with Isleen. Pale blue tinged her skin and lips. She’d lost weight, her bones protruding nearly as sharply as they had when he’d found her at the torture trailer. “I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be all right.”

He laid Isleen on the bank, just as Kent, Matt, and Dad ran up. Xander didn’t give two shits about anything except her.