Burning Darkness

by Jaime Rush

  She dug her fingernails into her palms. Pain. Comfort. Familiar.

  “It’s just that my father used to have sex right there in the living room with Connie,” she said. “Other people did, too. I used to think sex was dirty, sleazy, because it was something you did anywhere. There was nothing sacred about it.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it. The guy who almost raped you, did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head hard again. “I hurt him. I slashed him with a razor blade.”

  “You hang a lot of weight on being protected. You thought you loved a guy because he stood up for you at a bar. Fonda, help me understand.”

  She curled her hands around the sheets. “Why do you want to understand me? Why is that so important to you?” First the reason she’d cut herself, and now this.

  He released a long breath, his eyebrows furrowed. “Damned if I know. Probably because you’re the most fascinating, vexing, frustrating dichotomy of a woman I’ve ever known. Definitely because you mean something to me.”

  She heard those whispered words echoing in her head: I love you. Even though she wasn’t positive he’d said them, they pressed against her heart. She wanted to hear them, and she was scared to death to hear them. Hell, she didn’t even understand herself.

  He said, “When I mentioned the guy who tried to rape you, your body stiffened, your face tensed, and it was like you stopped breathing. Tell me what happened that night.”

  “I don’t want to relive it. Why would you make me do that?”

  He leaned even closer and his voice got soft. “Because I think you need to.”

  She took a deep breath, looking to the side. “He was a good friend of my father’s. He brought over drugs, helped him out at times, got him a job once. He’d always been nice to me, though. Brought me little gifts, asked me how school was. He paid attention to me, listened, and made me feel . . . comfortable. Special.”

  “That’s what predators do. They target kids who need attention and love, and seduce them.”

  She could see that now. When Eric waited for her to continue, she pushed on. “One time he came over and I was alone. I didn’t even think about it when he walked in and said he’d wait. I was sitting on the couch doing homework. He sat next to me and turned on the television.”

  She was back in that dingy apartment, the fabric on the couch so worn she could see the foam beneath it. Smell of stale cigarettes. Coffee table scarred, always a mirror and a razor blade and a few granules of powder left on the surface. She usually blew them away.

  “He put his hand around my shoulder and told me I looked sad. Just a simple touch, safe, comforting. I melted against him. Nobody had touched me in so long, not a hug or kiss good-night. All I remember next is him trying to pull down my shorts, me kicking and screaming . . .”

  Eric’s fingers wrapped around her arm, squeezing gently. “Something happened between those two things.”

  “No. Nothing happened.”

  A memory nudged at her. Like a cockroach, it peered out from a dark crack and scurried back.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head, slowly, and then stopped when the memory peered out again. She looked past Eric, deep in her mind. “He touched my breast. Just a graze, and I thought he’d done it on accident. Then he kissed me. He said I was so beautiful, and he’d wanted me for so long, and for a few seconds . . .” Her mouth slackened. “I ignored the rest because he wanted me. He pushed me back on the sofa and said he wanted to make me feel good, like I’d never felt before. I hardly ever felt good, and so I let him . . .”

  Her eyes widened as that last frame of the buried memory snapped into place. “He pulled down my pants and put his mouth down there. And it did feel good.” Her eyes watered at the shame, and her hands curled into the sheets again. “I let him do it, though I didn’t come. Then he pushed his pants down and said it was his turn, and I knew it was all wrong, that I’d done wrong, and he was mad and that’s when he tried to rape me.”

  Eric pulled her into his arms and she clung to him, the waves of shame rolling over her.

  “You were only a kid then. You were a kid hungry for affection, and he was a predator who lured you in.”

  Her voice squeaked when she said, “But I let him. And it felt good. It was my fault.”

  “You didn’t know any better. Sick bastard used your need. Don’t let him steal anything more from you.” He stroked her back. “You were innocent, baby. Just an innocent. Let it out. It’s okay.”

  That’s when she realized she was crying, softly, but he must have felt her body heaving, the tears dripping onto his back.

  Those horrible memories had been living inside her all these years, like a cancer, tainting her life. The shame turned to violation, to grief, and then to release, and through it all he held her. No one had ever held her like this other than as a prelude to sex. He held her tight, whispering, “Let it out, little girl, just let it out.”

  After several minutes she felt as though she were impinging on him, putting him through too much. It was too weird, this comforting.

  She backed up and wiped her face. “I want you to do it.”

  “Do . . . ?”

  She gestured to the vee between her legs.

  “Now?”

  “Yes. If you’re up for it.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight: I’m always up for it. But you’re not ready.”

  “Yes, I am.” She lay down and spread her legs. “Please.” A challenge for herself, to move past it.

  He kissed down the tender insides of her thighs, easing her in, moving his mouth over her stomach and then closer. She recognized the feeling now, the fear of being touched there and the shame of enjoying it. So she could get over it, right? Because she felt aroused, oh yes.

  He stopped and came to a sitting position.

  She sat up, too. “What’s wrong?”

  He wasn’t in the mood anymore. Well, of course, she couldn’t blame him. Or maybe he was turned off now that he knew the truth.

  “You’re clenching your thigh with your hand so hard, you’re leaving marks.”

  She saw the red crescents on her pale skin. “Pain. It comforts me, and makes feeling safe.” She put her forehead in her palm. “I’m so screwed up.”

  He pulled her hand away, tipping her chin up so she had no choice but to face him. “You’re not screwed up. You’ve just got issues. We’ve all got issues. I’ve got an idea, and I must be crazy to even suggest it, but here it is. You still trust me?”

  “With my life.”

  He took a breath at that, and she saw something in his eyes soften. “I’m proposing a test for both of us. We touch each other everywhere but the erotic places. No sex. Not until you’re ready to see that it’s not just sex and not until you’re begging me to go down on you. When I do, you’re going to spread your legs wide and move against my mouth desperate and hungry, because I’m making you feel so good you’re losing your mind. And you won’t be impaling yourself.”

  She laughed at that last bit, but the rest? “Well, you’re pretty darned sure of yourself.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I’m good.” Not cocky, but definitely sure of himself. She felt a stirring down there despite her misgivings. He touched her cheek. “If I can do this test—and it’ll be excruciating—then you can do it.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay. When do we start?”

  “Later today.” He pulled her down to the bed and into his arms. “Now we sleep. It’s going to be a long night.”

  She was facing him, and she reached out and touched his face the way he did hers sometimes. “Why are you putting us through this? You could write me off as damaged goods, leave it at that.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? No, you don’t. Because you’re worth it, Fonda. Because you’re worth fighting psychotic creeps and having an aching hard-on so I can break through that wall you hide behind. You’re worth all of that and more.”

  She closed her eyes, because they were tearing up
. His words filled her with hope and pain and everything that came with love. She knew, absolutely for sure, that she did not love him because he’d saved her. She loved him because he was Eric Aruda.

  With her fingers still grazing his face, she let her body relax. She listened to his breathing as it became deep and steady. He’d almost died twice in the last twenty-four hours. She synchronized her breathing with his and felt as though she were rising and falling on the ocean.

  If she took all the times of her life that she was brave, walking the mean streets, dealing with Westerfield, and put them together, she wasn’t sure she had enough courage to tell Eric how she felt. Or risk her heart. But she was willing to take the first step.

  Chapter 23

  Eric’s phone rang, a space-age chirp, and he shot straight out of sleep. Sleep. He’d actually dropped off into glorious sleep with dreams and everything. The afternoon sun slanted through a crack between the drapes. He grabbed the phone off the dresser, where he’d plugged it in to charge.

  “Yeah,” he whispered, hoping not to disturb Fonda. Which didn’t matter, he saw. She was sitting up, her eyes wide.

  “It’s Amy. Are you near a television?”

  “I can be. Hold on.” He clicked the remote and sat on the edge of the bed. “What am I looking for?”

  Fonda scooted up next to him, leaning close to hear. He put the call on speaker phone.

  “Any major channel, the President is talking about the economy.”

  He flipped through a few channels and found one with the President standing at the podium. “What am I looking for? I’m assuming you don’t have a sudden interest in what’s going on in the real world.”

  “I wish. No, look at the man on the President’s left, in the back. Vice President Bishop, right?”

  A good-looking man barely in his fifties stood erect, his hands loosely crossed in front of him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Eric, he’s got the Offspring glow.”

  “Like the woman at the cult?”

  “No. His is more powerful. Even more than ours.”

  He stared at Bishop, the golden boy of politics, poised to run for President in the next election, when the President’s second term would end.

  “Bishop’s too old to be an Offspring,” he said. “Like our buddy Westerfield.”

  Fonda looked at Eric, touching his arm. “What’s Bishop’s first name?”

  “Mike? No, wait a minute. Malcolm.”

  Her face went a shade paler. “No way. No freaking way.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Have Amy look him up on the Internet, find out everything she can about him. Like if he has a brother named Neil.”

  “I heard her,” Amy said. “I’ll call you right back.”

  He stared at Bishop, trying to see a family resemblance. “They could be related.”

  The President fielded questions from the press, and finally the phone rang again. “You’re right,” Amy said. “He has a brother named Neil. They were orphans, parents died in a car wreck when they were young, you probably know the heart-tugging story. You want to fill me in?”

  “Are you ready for this? The people after us? The friggin’ Vice President of the United States. And his brother.”

  “No shit. Wait, Lucas just handed me something else he printed off from the Internet . . . Back in the mid-eighties, around the time that Darkwell was starting his program, Malcolm was a colonel in the Army. I’ll bet he was somehow involved in BLUE EYES, one of the two dangerous people Cyrus warned me about. He and Neil must have been ingesting Blue Moon, too.”

  Fonda leaned against Eric’s arm. “No wonder they want us out of here. Malcolm Bishop can’t take a chance of anyone finding out what he was involved in.”

  They sat in silence, digesting all that for a moment.

  Finally, Eric said to Amy, “On a brighter subject, tell Lucas he doesn’t have to worry about Sayre anymore.” He filled her in on recent events.

  “Do you want to tell him yourself?”

  “No, you do it. It might help, good news coming from you.”

  “It’s okay between us. Thanks to what Fonda said to Lucas.”

  That baffled him. “What’d she say?”

  “When she was desperately trying to help you, weighing whether to give you the antidote . . . Lucas saw what I went through. He sensed how much she cared about you, and the agony of making that decision. She helped him to understand.”

  He smiled at Fonda, and she gave him a sweet smile. He focused on the call again. “What’s going on there?”

  “We’re still waiting, but the guys are getting antsy. They’re talking about going up and taking out the officers. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Thank goodness we’ve got supplies, but pretty soon we’ll have to break into all of that preserved food. Who knows what that’ll taste like?”

  “Hang in there. Now we know who’s after us. Getting to the veep will be impossible. But we know where Neil’s going to be tomorrow. I plan to get rid of that son of a bitch once and for all.”

  “Please be careful, both of you.”

  He signed off. Fonda was watching the closing of the press conference, a somber look on her face. “How are we supposed to win against someone that powerful?”

  “The good thing is that he’s got to be careful. He can’t come after us himself, not unless he brings his Secret Service people along. I don’t think they’d cover for him killing two people without provocation.”

  “We don’t know what his abilities are.”

  “No. But if he were more powerful than Neil, we’d be dead.” He touched her chin. “Let’s get something to eat, go over our plan. Then we’ll come back and do some touching.”

  He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. He must be crazy, he thought. Crazy in love. Yeah, because as much as he craved sex, he wanted much more from her. He wanted all of her. He knew she wasn’t ready to hear any of that yet, though, and he didn’t want to scare her away. They would take it slow, and it would kill him, but in the end it would be worth it.

  Petra started to crack her knuckles and then stopped, even though Eric wasn’t there to get on her case about it. She missed him, and she missed being outside and feeling safe. Knowing who their enemy was didn’t help, not one tiny bit.

  Everyone sat in the large living area talking about the implications, but it all became a buzz in her head. Four days of being trapped down there was getting to them. Some were talking explosives, but the others didn’t want to give away their position.

  “I’m going to lie down,” she said, heading to her room. She’d gotten very little sleep lately.

  She drifted into sleep quickly, dreaming of Lucas, and the men they’d seen on their security monitors, explosions, and . . . Cheveyo.

  He stood in a void, his dark brown hair brushing the shoulders of his leather jacket, his blue-gray eyes intense as they took her in. He held out his hand to her, and she felt herself floating toward him.

  “Cheveyo.”

  He had protected them by putting a psychic shield over their shelter, and he’d saved her life.

  He pulled her close and ran his fingers along her hairline. “Yaponcha.”

  “The Hopi wind god.”

  He smiled. “You remembered.”

  They’d come up with a code word so she would know it was him and not an imposter. “I remember everything about you, the way you kissed me, and especially the way you keep telling me you can’t be with me.” Despite the special connection he said they had, which just about drove her crazy.

  His expression grew dark, and he kept his hands on her face like he didn’t want to let go of her because he was going to lose her forever. She could be imagining it, of course. She did tend toward the dramatic.

  “Like Lucas, I get flashes of images from the future, though not painful. I usually see maybe a day ahead. I saw a man shooting you, but before I could warn you, you’d already gone to the shelter. So it changed the future. I saw the m
en watching this place and put the shield back up. Someone has been trying to break down my shield. Someone very powerful.”

  “It’s the Vice President and his brother.” She told him everything they’d learned, surprised he didn’t already know. He seemed to know a lot more than they did. “They’re not Offspring. We figure they ingested Blue Moon like Wallace did.”

  He shook his head. “They are Blue Moon.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Right now that’s not important.” His expression darkened. “I saw another vision. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but my visions have never been wrong. I see you all dead.”

  Dread washed over her like black oil. “How?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re all in the shelter.”

  “They’re going to get in! We have to go on the offensive.”

  He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. “I’ve gone through scenarios where I tell you to evacuate, and it’s no better. You’re gunned down as you come out. I’ve made a plan to go there and take out the men, but they take me out, and you all still die.”

  She fell against him, clutching him. “What do we do?”

  He put his hands over hers, pressing them against his chest. “I don’t see how it happens, only the aftermath.” His beautiful face was rigid, taut with anger and frustration. “The door is still closed. I don’t understand it, but it’s as though a ghost gets in and shoots you all. I don’t see anyone else, only all of you dead. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I’m scared. Where am I? Where do I die?”

  “You’re hiding in the range, behind the buckets you use as targets. Whoever the bastard is, he finds you. Find a better place to hide.” He pulled her close, his hands on her face, and kissed her. Even in the wake of those terrible words, the feel of his mouth on hers filled her. The fierceness of his kiss filled her with hope—and fear. A last kiss. A kiss goodbye.