This imposing stranger wasn’t tall, perhaps only six feet or so, but his shoulders were broad enough to strain at his rough flannel shirt. His hips were narrow, and his thighs, tightly encased in his jeans, were muscled and thick. Moisture clung to his dark hair and seemed to shimmer, creating the impression of a dark liquid halo.
This had to be him, Melanie thought wildly; everything about him exuded dark mystery and raw sensuality. He was more spirit than man, a wild black stallion, a lone timber wolf, a clap of thunder on a cloudless night. He gave the impression of absolute power.
She had to know if he was, indeed, Teo Sandoval, the man she’d needed so desperately. She unveiled her mind a notch and reached out to him when he paused, stopping at the side of the building. His eyes seemingly took in the entire scene at a glance.
His mind was questing so—reading all—she couldn’t get through, and dropped her guard another notch.
He said nothing as most of the people tried explaining what had happened at the same time. He turned his gaze finally, and with cool appraisal, to Melanie.
She felt a moment’s pure shock as her gaze linked with his, as his mind tried to probe hers. It was a rare enough occurrence, to actually lock eyes with someone, but it wasn’t the rarity of it that triggered an inner quaking in Melanie. An elemental sexuality seemed to transmit from the stranger like the coldest of mountain winds and, at the same time, like the heat of a cliff’s edge baked too long by a summer sun. She knew instinctively this man was like no one she had ever known before, and she couldn’t seem to think clearly enough to decide whether that boded well or ill.
Lines from the files on him she’d read chased through her mind, incoherent, fleeting. After the fiasco, after his demolishing an entire wing of the PRI when they had pushed him too hard, after he had escaped their clutches, one psychiatrist had written of him: He’s a man of extreme conscience. I don’t know whether Teo Sandoval should be condemned or praised. But at all costs, he should be left alone.
If not for Chris, at that moment Melanie would gladly have turned and left the man alone, abandoned her quest for his help, because, linked with his gaze, for a single, shattering moment she had felt as though they were the only two people on earth. She shivered, feeling totally and wholly exposed. Then she felt him strengthen the probe to her mind, as though ready to rifle through her thoughts, glean every drop of knowledge about her. She swiftly clamped her mind closed, slamming the door on her thoughts, her soul. That slam seemed to echo inside her and it somehow hurt.
Though he didn’t so much as flinch, some instinctive knowledge told her that she wasn’t the only one affected by their exchange. Something about it had shocked him, as well. She had the oddest notion that for a single flicker of time she had been looking into the man’s very soul. She had caught a glimpse of a well of anger and loneliness trapped inside him. An aloneness so extreme that it seemed far removed from any mere lack of human companionship, to the point of being another emotion altogether, one that would make others cringe in terror.
She didn’t have the sensation of reading the man’s thoughts, there was no tingling awareness of any sort of telepathy or mind transference; she knew that feeling all too well. This was more simply and starkly a case of knowing some facet of his innermost feelings. Nothing anyone said could have persuaded her that she was wrong at that moment. What she’d seen, what she’d felt, was an intimacy as strong and bonding as the marriage of night and day, as sharp and poignant as a final farewell.
Something flashed in the man’s eyes and as abruptly as he’d pulled her into the depths of his gaze, she felt released, or more accurately, thrown aside. She had shut her mind to him, but now, brusquely, he was wholly closed to her, as well. He was once again a stranger, and all she could see in his unusual eyes was her own reflection. She shuddered in relief.
He turned from her then and, without having to ask anyone to clear the way, walked through the group that parted for him as they might have for a god…or a monster in their midst. He drew a deep breath, shook his hands out to the side of his body like a fighter preparing for the ring, then slowly knelt over the wheezing mechanic.
It wasn’t until she saw him kneel that Melanie realized he wasn’t carrying that extension of every country doctor’s arm—the medical kit. He had come to aid this mechanic with no more than his bare hands. Or, Melanie thought a little wildly, with his pale, hypnotic eyes.
He was the one. He had to be. Teo Sandoval, a telekinetic whose powers had been strong enough to frighten the PRI, perhaps the only man on earth who could help her save her son from their designs.
Behind him, around him, the odd collection of assistants and relatives made the index finger-over-thumb sign against evil despite their avid gazes. Melanie saw with some sense of irony that now that he wasn’t looking directly at them, all strained to see everything this unusual man might do.
To Melanie’s wonder, then consternation, he appeared to do nothing at all. Then he gently pulled away the mechanic’s bloodied shirt, exposing the ravaged, lacerated chest. Melanie bit her lip to keep from groaning in horror.
El Rayo then raised both hands over the man’s chest and flexed his shoulders as if steeling himself against a great ordeal. A multivoiced sigh rippled through the anxious crowd. As if that were a signal of sorts, El Rayo lowered his rock-steady hands to lay them directly on the man’s bloody chest. Again Melanie had to hold in a cry of instinctive protest.
Though his back was to her, she could see a shudder seize him and shake him as violently as though he were caught in a tornado. A moan escaped the mechanic’s wife and her baby whimpered once, then all were silent again. Even the winged denizens of the forest seemed to be holding their breaths.
Unconsciously, Melanie had drawn closer, and now took another step forward, as much to see better as to offer whatever assistance she might have to give. Pablo’s arm shot out to restrain her. A work-roughened hand encircled her wrist.
“No, señora,” he whispered. “Wait.”
“What is he doing?” she asked, and though she had only breathed the question, she was shushed by the older woman flanking the mechanic’s wife.
“Wait,” the attendant said again, and turned his gaze back to the tableau at their feet.
As if rigidly locked in a battle as ancient as the mountains themselves, the stranger beneath her seemed frozen over the dying mechanic. Ignoring both rain and the people crowded near him, his concentration was solely and absolutely on the man under his hands.
Melanie had the disorienting feeling that she had experienced the merest hint of that concentration just seconds earlier when they had locked gazes. And a dim part of her wondered what his hands would feel like against her skin, and if that deliberation of mind and soul would accompany his touch. She shook her head as though the movement would rid her mind of such unusual imagery.
From the reaction of the crowd, and from the rumors she’d heard, read about, back in Pennsylvania, Melanie half expected thunderbolts to shoot from the rain-heavy sky or for the ghost clouds to come snatch the mechanic and his odd healer from their midst. But in actuality the rain only continued to fall softly and silently, the ground grew muddier, and the people standing around got wetter and colder.
Somehow, to Melanie, this seemingly prosaic attitude of Mother Nature’s only strengthened the illusion of magic that was transpiring before her very eyes. A contrast, nature’s indifferent energy versus that of the man at her feet. She felt as though she were watching a play that had been written in the Dark Ages, but was seeing it unfold in another country, another time.
And in watching this bizarre spectacle wholly at odds with all she had known to be true before, Melanie trembled. Could it be true? Could this man really heal with his touch? She suspected—no, she knew—he would, if by no other means than sheer force of will.
The thought sobered her. And made her hopeful for the first time in six months. Could Chris ever learn to harness his talents for good, for tremendo
us good, instead of making his toys dance, and instead of the sorts of goals the PRI had in store for him?
She dimly pondered what she was witnessing: an old-fashioned, often disputed healing. Even as she realized the implications of this “healing,” she wondered, almost in anger, what, if it was true, this man was doing in the backwoods of nowhere. Why hide such a gift? If he was indeed such a healer, he should be out in the world helping millions, hundreds of millions.
She remembered the notes on his telekinetic abilities, remarks recorded when Teo Sandoval had been only some nineteen years old and as wild and furious as a trapped mountain creature. And then she remembered the detailed description of his destruction of one entire wing of the PRI. That he hadn’t killed anyone had been a miracle in and of itself. The PRI scientists had termed him “untrainable,” “irredeemable,” a barbarian with untold powers. When he’d fled the institute, no one had tried to stop him. Nor had they done anything to stop the annuity the PRI had established for his father and his heirs when he essentially sold Teo to the PRI almost fifteen years ago. As Tom had tried doing with Chris.
But with such powers, such a tremendous gift for healing, how could Teo Sandoval remain at the edge of nowhere, allowing pain and misery to exist in the world, when by a touch he could alleviate so much?
More than that, he should be out in the world helping children like Chris learn to live with their unusual gifts. Keeping them safe from being exploited as he had been. Would she be able to persuade him to help her? To protect her son and teach him how to live with his double-edged gifts?
She felt that sense of helpless anger coalesce into determination. How dare he linger at the edge of oblivion when the PRI was threatening to take her son away, tear him from her against her will, shunt him away into some frightening institution simply because he was different…and then try to use his unusual talents for their own desires? This man, if he was indeed Teo Sandoval, had endured a similar childhood. How dare he ignore other children like him?
Time seemed to stop and the entire universe seemed to focus on this one small portion of land, man and hope. El Rayo’s beautiful hands, broad-palmed with long, narrow, tapered fingers, seemed to lay upon the mechanic’s chest, or to hover above it for hours, though Melanie found out later that the entire scenario had lasted a mere quarter turn of the clock.
Suddenly she felt a difference in the quality of the air. The low clouds continued to spray a fine mist upon the silent onlookers, the still mechanic and the dark healer, but a new element had been added, or perhaps subtracted. The air all but crackled with electricity, smelled heavily of ozone—as if lightning had struck the ground they stood on.
She could feel the tension rippling through the rough hand around her wrist, and she half suspected the man who held her had forgotten he was doing so. He, like everyone else, was watching, waiting, probably crossing his fingers for a seeming miracle or, like some of the others, against evil.
Then El Rayo gave a sigh, strangely like a groan of pain, and reeled up and backward from the mechanic. His moan was echoed by the crowd, but no one moved to assist the staggering healer. He turned blindly, stumbling over something, nearly falling, slipping on the sodden clay soil that comprised the earth in the New Mexico mountains.
Shocked by his pallor, by the blue rimming his full lips, Melanie ignored the now surrounded mechanic and involuntarily cried out and tried to reach for him. Again the hand on her wrist held her back.
“No, señora. You must not,” Pablo murmured. Not “you should not,” but, “you must not.”
“Let me go!” Melanie cried, snapping her arm away from her would-be rescuer. “He needs help!”
Unaware she was calling out in Spanish, she didn’t understand the look of amazement the attendant turned on her. Or was it something else? Something to do with her wanting to help the “healer”?
“No one can help El Rayo, señora,” he said. “I have tried for many years. It’s no use.” His voice sounded as sad as his face looked, but did he mean the man was beyond help, or that he would not allow another to lend aid?
A cry from the mechanic’s wife snared everyone’s attention and Melanie turned to see the mechanic slowly pulling himself up to his elbows. “Doro?” he asked in a sleepy voice. “What happened, Doro? Why—?”
Everyone pushed to answer him, to assist him, and in the brief distraction, Pablo released Melanie’s wrist. Without further thought, she lunged for the strange healer before he pitched into a thick scrub oak.
Wrapping her arms around his body, she eased him back against her, though his weight pulled them both to the ground. A tremendous shudder worked through his body and he half turned, instinctively seeking the comfort of her arms.
He might be weak but his gaze was as sharp as it had been earlier. And whatever residue there was of his lightning touch seemed to ripple and eddy against her skin, making the hairs on her arms rise. She felt her heartbeat accelerating and knew by the tension on his face that he could hear it, feel it throbbing against his cheek.
She told herself she was holding him as she might a child, but knew this was a patent lie. This man inspired a riot of sensation in her, but none of it was the least motherly in nature. Her mouth felt dry, her fingers against his face trembled.
His lips parted, his eyes glittered at her, a cold distance bridging an anger she couldn’t fathom.
“No one touches me,” he said harshly in English, his deep baritone rough, the words as ambiguous as the man himself. Did he mean that no one had? Or did he mean that no one should?
When she didn’t move, didn’t release him, one of his hands raised to wipe the moisture from her face. Was the moisture a product of the mist, or had she been crying? She didn’t know and with his fingers lightly tracing the curve of her cheek, she couldn’t have begun to guess.
Her heart all but thundered in her chest and she felt a strange languor seeping through her body. Was he hypnotizing her? Was his touch making her feel things she’d never even imagined, let alone experienced?
His silence and intensity frightened her. Dear God, she thought in desperation, what kind of a man was he?
“Don’t you know, señora, that one touch from me can kill?”
CHAPTER TWO
When Melanie had shaken the attendant’s hand from her arm, when she’d run to try to stem El Rayo’s fall, she’d acted out of pure impulse. He’d needed help, she had responded. But this was no pathetic, wounded man. He was all but admitting he could kill her with a single touch. And his hand upon her cheek made the message all that much more ominous.
She wanted to say something, anything, to deflect the conflicting signals in his stormy gaze. But all she could think was, He is the one. She was holding a man whose single glance could destroy an entire two-story building, had her arms wrapped around a force that could maim as easily as he apparently healed.
This was the man she’d been looking for, desperate to find, and now he was not so obliquely threatening her.
But had it been a threat or a simple statement of fact? Something told her instinctively that nothing short of total exhaustion would ever have allowed him to lie so still in her arms. Everything about her first impression of him attested to that single fact. He was a man who stood alone, apart from the rest, needing and wanting no one.
The line from the psychiatrist’s report teased her again. But at all costs, he should be left alone. Not advice, not a casual reference, but a dire warning.
However, his weight, his face against the swell of her breast, his warm breath teasing her through the thin material of her wet blouse made her certain the psychiatrist had other meanings in mind. He should be left alone. Oh, yes. He most certainly should be left alone. To touch him was to dance on the edge of a high cliff without a parachute. To feel his fingers on one’s face was to know the searing heat of a volcano and the icy plunge into a glacier lake.
Melanie swallowed heavily. She had to ask for his help now, at this moment, while his powers
were at least moderately on the wane, while his internal batteries were obviously somewhat depleted. This might be her only chance because she knew from the way the townspeople had averted his gaze, had avoided hers, that they would be unlikely to aid her in finding him again. He was their mystery, their El Rayo. A miracle man of this magnitude wasn’t likely to be a subject of much discussion, and certainly wouldn’t be offered to an outsider.
“Please…” she began, only to trail off at an increase in the volume coming from the group to their left. With a great effort, she dragged her gaze from El Rayo, the man she believed—knew—to be Teo Sandoval.
Over the bulk of his shoulder she could see the crowd around the mechanic. To her further shock, the young, bloodied man was being assisted to his feet. Whatever protest she might have uttered died on her lips as the man grinned crookedly and patted his own chest. At that moment all knowledge of her Spanish eluded her and she was never certain afterward what was spoken, but watched, in wonder, as the mechanic gently hugged his openly sobbing wife and baby.
Like the others, she had seen the mechanic’s chest, had heard the gurgle of expiration from his damaged lungs. She’d heard the so-called death rattle often enough in her lifetime to have recognized it here. There had been no doubt that he would die. She’d felt it, had seen it in all the faces of the people anxiously crowding around.
She looked back down at the man in her arms with a combination of awe and fear. She knew now why the townspeople had stood back from him, had avoided his skypale eyes. She was more than a little afraid of him herself. But like the villagers in this small mountain community, she needed him.
Sharing the Darkness Page 2
