Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(85)

He bent close, placing his ear against her chest. Nothing. No. Couldn’t be nothing. She had to be alive. He was alive. She had to be alive. That was the rule, right? And then he heard her heart and lungs—so quiet they were like the whisper of butterfly wings. “Come on, baby. Wake up for me.”

He placed one hand over her heart and cupped her cheek with the other one. A soothing coolness began where his palms touched her and spread up his hand, arm, shoulder, and then throughout his body. The sensation began to sting and itch—so weirdly satisfying and pleasant. He was healing her.

“Xan—” Dad crouched down next to him. “Will you let me check her over? Do what I can for her? It might help in some way.”

“Okay.” It was the only word he could manage. The sensations in his body overwhelmed his speech center.

Dad picked up her wrist to try for a pulse, but froze. “This arm is broken.” His tone was graveyard somber. “I need to immobilize it.”

Xander felt like he was falling, flopping, and flailing through an endless abyss. He couldn’t get air into his lungs; he couldn’t feel his heart beating. A part of himself was dying. Seeing her like this, knowing that those men had kept her locked in a box and broken her arm.

He ripped his shirt over his head, tossed it to Dad, then placed his hands back on her. “Do something about her arm.”

Dad made a crude but stable splint using the material and a few sticks.

“Baby, come on. Wake up for me. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.” He kept talking, going over and over some version of the same words. She was breathing more normally, her color better, but she hadn’t awakened. Yet.

“Xander.” Matt laid a hand on Xander’s back. “I think you need to let the experts take over.”

“She needs me.” He didn’t have the energy to explain—again—the connection he and Isleen shared.

“It’s been thirty minutes.”

Matt’s words were a stop sign smacked upside Xander’s head. He froze. Lifted his gaze, looked around for the first time. “What?” It seemed only minutes had passed. Cops were everywhere. The naked men all lay on their stomachs, hands cuffed behind their backs. Two paramedics stood off to the side, a gurney next to them.

“Xan—let them have her.” His uncle’s voice was filled with compassion. “They’ll take care of her. You can even ride with her to the hospital.”

“You don’t understand. Isleen needs me. She doesn’t need doctors or the hospital. She needs me.” He recognized how his words had to sound to everyone else. He just knew something they didn’t know and wouldn’t understand. “They’re not taking her. You’re not taking her. No one is taking her.”

Everyone on the scene paused and looked at him. Pity, sympathy, and sorrow on all their faces.

“What are you all looking at? She’s going to be all right. She just needs time!” He yelled the words like a deranged psycho.

Some of them looked away, and some shook their heads. Some of the cops put their hands on their service weapons as if Xander were on the verge of needing to be taken down. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Fuck you all.” He gathered Isleen into his arms and stood. “Dad—” He spoke soft so only his father could hear him. “You’ve been a shit father. Haven’t done a goddamned thing for me since the moment Gale left. And hey, I get it. But I need something from you right now. You have to keep everyone away.”

“I’ll make sure you have all the time you need.” Dad turned to the crowd of people who stared at them. “I’m a doctor. Her vitals are stable, and I’ve field-dressed her injury.”

Xander walked away, headed toward the river, and followed a short path to a colossal sycamore. The tree was something from an epic movie. Its trunk immense, branches fanning out in all directions—some toward the water, some toward the sky, some dipping down offering shelter. Its bark was mottled white and tan. Giant gnarled roots hunched out of the ground. He settled in between those roots, the tree cradling him in the same way he cradled Isleen.

He shifted her around in his arms so she sat between his legs, her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly to him. The tingle and itch of healing pulsed through him. She was getting better. He could feel it. It was only a matter of when she’d wake up.

He rested his head against the top of hers. Her hair had dried and smelled of river and algae.

In front of them, the water swirled and eddied, slapping and rippling against the shore. A blue heron descended from the sky like a miniature flying dinosaur and landed in the shallows. The bird stalked through the water, his head tilting side to side, looking for a meal. Water bugs darted and glided over the surface like skiers on a slope.

She would wake up soon. She had to.

Unless she didn’t want to wake up. After everything she’d been through, why would she seek out this life with all its pain? She’d been offered nothing but shit. Imprisoned in that torture trailer for years. Locked in that box. Starved. There had been five naked men. Five. Had they taken turns? Passed her from one to the other?

His mind conjured up horrors his heart couldn’t take. His throat kicked open and he leaned away from her to gag, but a sob came out instead. His eyes stung; his vision went watery. Warmth sprinted down his cheeks. Tears. Fucking damn. He didn’t cry. Hadn’t cried when Gale left, when Dad rejected him, when he’d been struck by lightning, when he’d nearly gone crazy from all the noise. But this—confronting what she’d been through—hurt like a heart amputation.