When he looked up, she felt nearly assaulted by the man’s need to tell someone all the horrible things he’d done in his life, and when his mouth worked, she thought he might free the one thing he was obviously certain would damn him for all eternity. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear whatever it might be.
“Señora.”
“Yes?” Was he never going to explain why he was there? Why had he pounded on the door so furiously?
“I am Teo’s uncle,” he said. And because of his tone, his pleading look, she wanted to lower her guard again, to understand what he was trying to tell her. The line from the book played through her mind, accompanied by the burning look of hatred that Teo had leveled at him that first afternoon.
Because he was here on this morning when the dreams wouldn’t fade, when his pounding had mingled with the thunder outside and frightened her, she wanted to tell him to go away, to leave them alone. Even with her guard raised, she had the feeling that whatever he wanted to tell her would change her life completely.
But she kept the guard firmly in place, and the questions that would have flooded through her upon its release. This man was Teo’s uncle? She remembered the photograph, the man who looked like him. Had that been Teo’s father? The one who had sold his only son all those years ago?
But this man was the one who had sent her to Teo, told her how to find him. She remembered how he’d crossed himself as she’d driven out of sight and how she’d wondered if he was praying for her safety or his own. Now she wondered if he hadn’t been praying for something else altogether.
“¿Señora? Is he here?” he asked in a husky, conspiratorial whisper.
“Why?”
“Because I have to talk to you. I need to tell you something very important. But I don’t wish him to know I was here.”
Melanie felt a frission of fear snake down her back. The presentment of danger echoed again. The voice in her dream, the one who called for her to come/leave quickly…it had been Pablo Sandoval’s voice. Teo’s uncle, however impossible that might seem.
“Do you want to come in?” she said, decided finally.
The look of horror on his face would have been comical had the house belonged to anyone else. “No! Señora, he must not know I was here! It’s bad enough the way things are, but for me to go inside his house…I think he would kill me. And, for the things I did to him, I would deserve it. You understand?”
Melanie didn’t understand and wanted to protest this assumption that Teo would kill anyone, but couldn’t in all honesty. She didn’t know Teo Sandoval well enough to know what he might or might not do. All she knew of him had been gleaned from the PRI files, files depicting him as the most terrifying man of power in all of history. A man of extreme conscience. A man to be left alone.
And yet, what she’d learned of him in watching him with Chris, in knowing him from lying in his arms, the heat radiating from his body, drawing every bit of sustenance from his lips, those things had no place in understanding the destructive side of Teo.
“We can talk out here. It won’t take long,” Pablo said. He looked at her expectantly, as if she was supposed to give some formulaic response. She didn’t know what it might be and remained silent.
He nodded, but she still didn’t know what he expected of her and so again kept quiet.
Finally he stepped a pace closer and said in a deep, rough tone, “Señora, you have to go away.”
“What?” She slipped back a step.
“You must take your son and leave. ¡Rápidamente!”
“But why?” Melanie asked, stalling, not wanting to know, afraid she understood the reason all too well.
His next words confirmed her worst fears.
“The institute men have been in Loco Suerte, looking for you. It won’t be long until they find you here.”
He had seen Chris in the car that afternoon. He was Teo’s uncle. He would know what the PRI was all about, what they were after. He had directed her to Teo’s door, hadn’t he? Was this warning an atonement for some past misdeed? Or was he simply warning her because he knew what they had once done to Teo?
“Thank you for telling me,” she said, involuntarily crossing her breasts with her hand as though the outside force could still the too rapid heartbeat, quell the tidal wave of fear that washed through her.
He was right, she thought, she had to run. And now. But then she remembered the simple terms of Teo’s strange bargain. I will protect him from the PRI.
“Teo will protect Chris,” she said somewhat defiantly, almost as if trying to convince herself.
Instead of running a hand through his thick, still-black hair as anyone nervously trying to convey a point might do, he only looked down at the grease-stained hat in his hand, and cranked the brim a half turn to the right. He looked back up, his dark eyes meeting hers with a glittering intensity. For the first time she recognized Teo in him. She felt her breath catch anew.
“You don’t understand, señora. I know he will try to save you, to save your son. But, I ask you, who will protect Teo? They took him once. Don’t you see? If they want your niño badly enough to come here looking for him, do you think they will let a man who already scares them stand in their way?”
“But they can’t harm Teo,” she murmured, afraid of the meaning in his words, the intensity in his gaze. “No one can get close enough to him to hurt him.”
Was this, in some way, the essential element that held Teo apart from others, the one thing that made her unable or unwilling to totally give herself to him? A man who couldn’t be hurt was a man capable of inflicting great pain on others.
But Teo had been hurt in his life. Deeper hurts than some people would be able to imagine, she thought. She amended her earlier comment. “No one could hurt him now, at any rate.”
Pablo looked at her, sadly. His lips twisted bitterly, with a pain she could all too easily imagine. He said slowly, emphatically, “They can kill him, señora. They can simply kill him.”
Melanie felt a chill wash from her shoulders to her calves. “No,” she said. Her single negative came out like a full-blown statement of fact. But her heart begged the question.
He seemed to sense her uncertainty for he pressed on. “I know what they are like! Don’t you think I’ve had to live with that memory for all my days, every day for the last fifteen years?”
“But—”
“There aren’t any arguments, señora! I lied to Teo, took him to the men who paid Ernesto for him. I stood there and watched as they poked needles in his arms and listened as he cried my name out loud. I know what they did to him. I know how they hurt him. He has never been the same, señora. He knows they cannot take him now…he can be of no use to them the way he is.”
She said urgently, “You’re right. He knows this. They know it. They can’t use him. They don’t dare try.”
He advanced a step, all but spitting the words at her as he said, “Exactly, señora! Now, they have no choice. They cannot use him, he will not let them get close. But they want your boy. And Teo is in their way. So…they will kill him. If you don’t leave, they will kill him.”
“Why are you…telling me this?” Melanie asked. She felt as if her throat was closing around her breathing, choking her.
“Because I sent you here. Leading them right to him! Again. Don’t you understand, señora? I have betrayed my own blood. He trusted me and I betrayed him. I once handed Teo to the men who used him, no matter for what motives, for what reasons. And now, again, I have brought him to them. Through you. Please, señora, leave now. Go away. I will tell the men you left, I’ll point them in the wrong direction. Even if they try their tricks on me, they would understand nothing. But please, don’t make me betray him twice!”
Melanie felt her mind was reeling. Suddenly she understood so much about Teo, so much about his past. It wasn’t a matter of having to delve into his mind, it was a matter of putting one piece of the puzzle next to another and coming up with the whole.
&
nbsp; This man, Teo’s uncle, had been instrumental in betraying Teo Sandoval to the PRI, had been the one who had helped turn Teo into the dark man he was today, who had helped steal the dreams of his youth from him. And, for the first time since she’d run from the PRI, she understood what she, too, had asked of him. Not just his protection, but an end to his seclusion.
“He wouldn’t believe I didn’t drive them to him again, leave him to that nightmare. He was only a boy, a starry-eyed young man who believed that he could control the power in his hands by working with wood. You’ve seen his house, the way he builds, the beauty he creates. He does this with his hands, señora, not with his magic.
“When Ernesto told me that we would be rich beyond our dreams, I didn’t care. You understand? I didn’t care about the money. I believed the institute would teach Teo things, give him an education, take him from the mountains, let him lead a normal life,” Pablo said.
He stepped back then, turned and stared at the rock escarpment on the far side of the abyss. “He did that, you know. When Angelina died. When no one but me came to the funeral because everyone was afraid of the witch. But he was already changed by then. He was different. Because of me.”
When he finally turned his gaze back to hers, his eyes seemed flat, dulled by self-realization, glazed with a pain that had been too long endured. He said, “Do you see? I told myself he would have a better life, señora, but I lied. I knew what they would do. In my heart—” he slapped his chest with his battered hat “—here. I knew. And I took him to them anyway.”
Melanie pulled back from him in sick distaste as she realized the role he’d played, the part he’d acted so perfectly, so perfidiously. Like Tom, Pablo and Teo’s father had sold the young Teo, had disregarded the human being, had seen only the opportunity. Poor Pinocchio, she thought, trying to envision the younger version of Teo, the betrayed young man with the power of gods in his hands. What had they wrought between them, the PRI, Teo’s father, this broken excuse for an uncle?
Like Tom, Teo’s father might have sold the young Teo to the PRI, but it had been Pablo—and she understood Teo’s underlined, obscure reference about his long-damned relatives now—who had transported the boy to the hell he was forced to occupy. This Pablo had been the one to promise good things, even as he had broken those promises, broken the boy who’d believed in them.
She had only been concerned that they not find her son, that Teo protect them, train Chris to be like him, and therefore to become invincible. But she had forgotten the most basic truth of all: the men at the PRI had taken Teo once, they could do it again. But Pablo was right; they didn’t want him now, couldn’t use him as they would use Chris.
So, knowing them well, it only followed that they would simply have to eradicate him, as they had planned to do to her. That way two of the PRI’s most pressing problems would be solved in one fell swoop. The most dangerous man to the PRI would be eliminated and so would any remaining obstacle to their obtaining young Chris Daniels.
And it would all be her fault.
Her head swam in confusion, her heart thundered in attempts at denial. Of all things, she would never have wanted Teo Sandoval to come to any harm. And, now more than ever, she couldn’t bear the thought.
“You mustn’t tell him I was here,” Pablo said again. “He won’t believe me if I tell him I only wanted to help. He hates me now. Perhaps rightfully so. But you must save him, señora. You’re the only one who can.”
Melanie held on to her mental blockade by the merest thread of willpower. Everything in her wanted to reach out to Teo and Chris, assure herself again of their safety.
And now, when she felt—knew—it was too late, she wanted to tell Teo of her confusion about him, of how she wanted and needed him, and yes, even feared him, almost as much as she feared what he produced in her.
Oh, God. Pablo was right; she couldn’t bring the PRI into Teo’s home.
“I can’t just leave without some kind of explanation,” she said feebly, then added, thinking of the terms of their bargain, “He won’t believe me, anyway.”
Pablo looked away, up at the mountains for a moment, then back at her for an even longer time. He seemed to be studying her, perhaps trying to read her mind as his nephew could do.
Finally he said, “Tell him that you don’t love him, señora. He will let you go, then.”
Melanie couldn’t help the instinctive cry of protest that rose to her lips, even escaped them. She swallowed heavily and started to tell Pablo that love had nothing to do with the bargain she and Teo had struck, but the words stuck in her mouth as her heart remembered the long nights spent in each other’s arms, the look of tenderness on his face when he played with her son, the confusion she felt for him, about him. And, perhaps strongest of all, her reaction to the realization that the PRI might kill Teo.
Dear God, was she falling in love with Teo Sandoval? If she hadn’t been told to tell him she wasn’t, would she ever have realized she might be? That it was too late, that she already did love him, perhaps had for days without even knowing it?
“Or tell him you hate the mountain and have to go back to civilization. Tell him anything. But go. By tomorrow morning. I’ll do everything to keep them away until tomorrow night. But I heard one of them say more were coming then. And these are psychics, like Teo. Like your son. Maybe like you and me. But they will come here then. And they will let nothing get in their way. We both know that, señora. I will try and block them from seeing which way you travel. Everyone will try to help. But you must go.”
He hesitated, then met her eyes directly. “Or Teo dies.”
With his last, definitively harsh statement, Pablo turned and began loping across the left side of the clearing, onto the rough track, then disappeared over the edge of the mountain.
Melanie watched him go, leaden, feeling as if he’d taken her heart with him. How could the sun still shine so brightly? How could the clearing meadow be green and dotted with blue asters and Indian paintbrush? How could the sky be clear and the breezes cool when everything inside her felt dead?
She turned to go back inside the house when a movement off to her right caught her eye. Teo, she thought, and without intending to, jolted free a crack in her guard.
A blast of multilayered emotions, flavored with his rich, dark tone, whorled into her mind, sprinkling anger, joy, triumph, despair, confusion and longing across her own too beleaguered thoughts. With a tremendous effort, she shoved the gates closed again, and clung to the porch railing for support she sorely needed. He’d never know how difficult it was to close him out now. Now that she understood she had brought him into danger, now that she knew she would be leaving him.
But perhaps, most of all, because she understood that she didn’t want to leave now. Didn’t want to leave, ever.
He set Chris down halfway across the clearing and Melanie felt a brush of the dream’s presentment. Run, Chris! she wanted to cry, but held her tongue. The sky was still light and cloudless. No red ball took up most of Chris’s hands. Nothing in white shimmered at her left and no knife blade or needle reflected the lightning that wasn’t flaring in the sky.
“Mommy! We runned! You heart talked and we runned to you!”
His face was filled with simple joy, baby-face dirty with his journey on the mountain, eyes bright with delight at seeing her.
“Teo carried me and we runned. He danced the ground!”
Tears welled in her eyes as she scooped him up and held him tightly to her chest, burying her face against the soft warmth of his hair, drinking in his little-boy scent. The choices were too sharp—her son’s future, Teo’s safety. Neither were certain, both were nebulous. But if she stayed with Teo, told him about the PRI, he would want a battle, and with them having nothing to lose, they would win. And with what he had already taught Chris, they had a slim chance of escaping them again.
She heard Teo’s approach, but didn’t raise her eyes to meet his. She couldn’t. She knew too much, felt too much no
w. And she was raw after her conversation with Pablo, her realization of how she’d endangered him forefront in her mind, along with the terrifying understanding of how she’d come to feel for him, what she’d come to feel.
She couldn’t gaze at him now, knowing what she did. He would read her fear, her love, her decision to leave him. A sob rose in her chest, fought for release. She hugged Chris even tighter, felt him patting her back in baby slaps.
Scalding, hot tears burned her cheeks, seared her throat. My God, she thought, they had mingled their minds, just for a moment or two, but having touched, she was certain the imprint would remain forever. A part of her would now and always be searching to find that rare and glorious connection again.
And she had to leave. Tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest. A pain deeper than any she’d ever known before coursed through her, tearing her apart. And the worst part of the pain was caused when she understood that he would never know how much she wanted to stay.
Teo lit a fire in the huge fireplace. His hands were shaking, he thought, and not for the first time discovered he had no power to control his own body. He could mend the broken ribs, the punctured lungs in Demo Aguilar, he could make a mountain crumble and fall into the abyss, he could destroy an entire building with one glance, but he couldn’t suppress his own anxiety, couldn’t stem the trembling in his own hands.
What had Pablo said to Melanie?
Whatever it was, she hadn’t spoken to him since they’d come back inside the caves. She was blocked to him, as always, but he felt a difference in her now, almost as though he could feel her struggle to maintain that barrier.
When he asked her point-blank, she only shook her head, not looking at him. And when he’d pressed the question, she’d finally mumbled something about his wanting to make certain she’d found the mountain all right, that she wasn’t lost in the mountains somewhere.
“After two weeks?” Teo had said sarcastically.
“He came as a kindness,” she’d snapped then, and left the room.
Sharing the Darkness Page 17
