Sharing the Darkness

by Marilyn Tracy

  She didn’t really have a concrete plan of action in mind, only escape and sparing Teo’s life. Like so many had in the late sixties and early seventies, she figured she would try the route to Canada and hope for anonymity, hope that the short time with Teo’s brand of psychic training had been enough to allow Chris some protection, and if not that completely, had at least gained some obscurity. Strength enough, perhaps, to continue to elude the determined PRI scientists. Certainly, Chris was changed.

  So was she. Irrevocably. Inalterably.

  As it had from the moment she’d first read it, the line from the PRI file raced through her mind. I don’t know whether Teo Sandoval should be condemned or praised. But at all costs, he should be left alone. She hadn’t left him alone, and she had fallen in love. And he had changed her entire life, her love, her heart.

  Yes, she was changed. Even one week ago she might have hesitated leaving this mountain, might have blurted out Pablo’s discovery to Teo, begged him to do something, anything to save Chris, save her, and hopefully do so without hurting himself. But she was different now, and if the difference came from loving him, she was the better for it.

  She would survive the trek to Canada, she would make a home for herself and Chris, and try not to think about Teo, try to believe that she could find a life without him. And if the PRI traced them there, they would go elsewhere. There was an entire world lying out there; surely somewhere in it was a place for a mother and child to hide.

  And if they were lonely, at least running now would spare Teo. She tried telling herself that it would be enough to know he would still be in the world, still be alive. But she wasn’t sure that anything other than being locked in his arms, his lips pressed to hers, would ever be enough.

  “Make loud noise now, Mommy?” Chris asked.

  “No,” she said absently, not sure what he was talking about. “Now we have to be very quiet.”

  “Wake Teo up,” he commanded.

  “No.” More firmly this time.

  She looked around the huge living room, memorizing it, taking in the spaciousness, the incredible attention to detail, folding it into her heart. What had once frightened her, what had repelled her, now soothed, even drew her. Amazing home…amazing man. Man of her heart, mystery of her soul.

  She crept across the living room, edging toward the door leading out of the main quarters. She gave one last glance at the semidark room. In this light the room appeared much as it had in her dream. Was this an integral part of her nightmare? Gray eyes, gray room…broken heart?

  Tears welled in her eyes when they reached the closed door to the kitchen. In there, he had kissed her for the second time, had scared her with his place-setting theatrics, and had fed a small mountain fox with her son. And there, on the island bar, lay the note she had felt compelled to leave him. The note explaining why she had to go.

  She felt she owed him an explanation, owed him a reason. But most of all, she owed him the knowledge that the PRI henchmen would be looking for her here. And that he was in danger from them. And that she was leaving… because she couldn’t bring them down on him a second time, because she believed the men that served the PRI didn’t believe in second chances. And, alone in the kitchen, tears running down her face, she’d added a final line to this final note. I love you.

  There was no explanation of that line, no elaboration. Just the three words, the most important three words in life. Or in separation. The most terrible three words in all the earth when one was leaving.

  She traversed the black corridor by instinct alone, her mind on the first time she’d entered it, her heart on the phantom that had kissed her there in the dark. I knew even then, she thought, but the realization had stayed within the confines of her own barricaded mind.

  “Toys, Mommy?” Chris asked.

  “Shh. Wait till we get to the car,” she whispered, remembering how the tunnel served as an echo chamber. She remembered everything. Too well.

  Tears threatened again and she fought them back with nothing other than sheer determination. She had to get Chris away from here, for both his sake and for Teo’s.

  “Ride in the car?” Chris asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Go to town?”

  “No,” she said, then added, “Sort of, honey. But definitely going, anyway.”

  “Mommy kiss Teo,” Chris said about the time they reached the heavy front doors.

  “Yes,” she said again, wondering how much he might have glimpsed through her short drop of guard, how much he might have seen through Teo.

  “Make loud noise now?” Chris asked, apparently not interested in pursuing Mommy-kissing-Teo.

  “Not now,” she said. “Later.” She wrestled with the huge doors while trying to maintain her grip on her son and her handbag. She hadn’t bothered with her suitcases; clothes, a few personal items, things like that didn’t matter now. She was leaving behind the only thing in the world that mattered to her besides Chris—Teo.

  When she finally wrenched the heavy doors open, she paused. Although the reasons for her departure were of the noblest, were the purest of reasons, she suddenly felt again that she was betraying Teo, leaving him, letting the PRI swarm around him once more. She had led them to him, and she was sneaking away from him when he needed her most. Suddenly she felt she was abandoning him just as she’d broken through that fiercely held reticence. Was she doing the right thing?

  Pablo had betrayed Teo once, years before. Could he be doing the same thing to her? Getting her to run out into the night, straight into the arms of the PRI?

  No. His pain had been genuine, his fears wise. She had to get Chris out of there and hope that Teo would be safe. Please, God, keep him safe. Keep us all safe. But somehow, as if reading her lines of destiny from a far and totally emotionless plane of existence, she felt her prayers were too late. Far, far too late.

  As she pushed the large doors closed, she opened her mind and stretched to Teo’s sleeping form. She lightly rested her mental touch against his dreaming mind, stiffening against the incredibly enticing feel of his thoughts, his rich, broad thinking.

  Farewell…I love you, Teo.

  She pulled back before he could wake and find her in the very act of doing the opposite of what he’d so tenderly, so passionately asked the night before. She was leaving, for all their sakes. But why did it feel as if she were being incredibly foolish, utterly selfish? And why couldn’t she stop crying?

  Without the rain, by the early morning light, the trek down the mountain was much easier than it had been by stormy night. Despite the tears that blurred her vision.

  That night her heart had been filled with desperation, with the need to persuade Teo to take them in. Now her heart was filled with despair at the idea of leaving him, and fueling her steps was worry—hard, stark worry. Would they survive the next few hours? Would Teo understand her departure? Would he see it as a betrayal of his honest admission, his heartfelt request the night before, his demand that she stay with him?

  Just let them get far enough away from him so that they would all be safe, she repeated over and over, a litany against whatever was to come.

  “Car, Mommy,” Chris said, pointing to her car. The rented Buick was no longer wedged to the bumpers in mud. It was sitting alongside the narrow track, nose pointed down the mountain to freedom. She hadn’t left it that way. She’d left it mired in mud, stalled. And in the weeks she’d been with Teo she hadn’t once considered the time ticking on the rental clock. The world had ceased to matter while she’d been with him.

  The world scarcely mattered now. The only things that mattered were Chris and Teo, the two strongest telekinetics in the known world…and the two most vulnerable.

  She stared at the car, motionless as she hadn’t been since Pablo had left Teo’s home the day before. The righted car pointed to—what?—Teo’s having straightened it, fixing it the night she’d arrived, hoping it would make it easier for her to leave? Couldn’t it have been Pablo, doing so to e
xpidite her departure? Or was it the PRI arranging her neat exit—straight into their clutches?

  She had the feeling that if Teo knew she was leaving, the car not only wouldn’t start, but it might actually fly away and crash into a pile of rocks somewhere. And if Pablo had done it, he surely wouldn’t have stripped the car of mud, of muck. Nor would the PRI.

  The car was ready for them because of Teo. He had done it. He had prepared it. But when? How long ago? The night she’d come? The night in the rain, the night he was so angry at their intrusion into his life? The morning his eyes had begged her to leave and she had wondered why he’d needed her to go away?

  She knew the reason now. She felt she understood almost everything. He had wanted her to leave because she threatened his very existence. She could have placed his entire life in jeopardy just by coming here. She could challenge his solitude, make him wake up, make him want things he’d thought himself inured to. That was what the please-leave look in his eyes had meant.

  But she had ignored him. The memory brought fresh tears to her eyes. She had insisted that she stay, had even agreed to his less-than-ridiculous bargain.

  Oh, he had tried to get her to leave. He had done everything but demand she get out of his life, and had sent thunderbolts to punctuate his need for her to go. But she had insisted, accepted his terms, his demands, his qualms and, in doing so, had placed him…and her son…in grave danger.

  What have I done? she wondered. And on the heels of that thought, What should I do now?

  She knew, instinctively, that Teo would never accept her reasons for fleeing this mountain. He would never understand her need to know he was safe, immune from the PRI.

  As if that were an answer, Melanie started forward, spurred on.

  She slid behind the wheel after depositing Chris in the front seat and fastening his safety belt. She fished the keys from her handbag, didn’t care that her hands were shaking so badly that she had difficulty holding the single car key. But she did think about Teo taking her hands in his, holding them, kissing away the trembling, kissing away her tears. Oh, dear God, she thought.

  The car sputtered to life and after only letting it warm up a moment, Melanie released the emergency brake and shifted the car into gear. With each revolution of the wheels, Melanie’s heart grew heavier and heavier. By the time they reached the turn-off, tears were again streaming down her face. She turned left, instead of right—the way she’d come a scant two weeks before.

  It felt like a lifetime ago.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Teo stretched and opened his eyes abruptly, realizing immediately where he was, who should be beside him but wasn’t.

  “Melanie?” he called softly. When she didn’t answer, he told himself not to worry, that she was only in another part of the house and couldn’t hear him. He would have to get her to trust him enough to lower that damnable guard in her mind. He ached to feel her thoughts touch his again.

  He’d dreamed of her doing just that, a touch like a kiss, a melding of thoughts, connections that spelled great tenderness, love and something else. Something that had made him long to reach for her, hold her close to him, comfort her…console himself. He frowned, sitting up. The something else had been a goodbye.

  He remembered it clearly now. Farewell…I love you. He sent his mind questing for young Chris. And didn’t find him. Was he dancing his toys? Was that why he was blocking Teo’s touch? He stepped up the call, making it a summons. Still no response.

  He stretched his thoughts outward, questing them, searching them out in his home. But couldn’t conjure an image of them anywhere. A shaft of pure panic needled his heart, and he felt a jab of undiluted rage that he immediately tried to squelch.

  She couldn’t have lied to me. She couldn’t have.

  But what he meant was, of course she had lied to him; didn’t everyone lie eventually? Wasn’t betrayal a natural step in the evolution of a relationship? It certainly had been in his case. So, while he might fight the notion of lying, he’d been expecting it all along. And what he really felt was sick to his very heart.

  He swung his legs from the bed and jerked on a pair of pants. Not bothering to dress any more than that, he strode from his bedroom, searching for the pair he had dared to allow to go to sleep, believing they could be the family he’d finally given up hoping for.

  “Melanie?” he called from the cloud-gray living room. At the lack of an answer, he checked Chris’s room. Not there, either. He narrowed his eyes at the rumpled quilt, the silent room, the lack of a miniature hooded parka and little shoes. He touched the cradle and felt the blankets not cold, but not warm, either.

  She wouldn’t have gone. Not after last night. Not now.

  But his heart knew otherwise. Of course she had gone. Instead of six months, she had given him two weeks. Instead of a dream, a future, she’d given him another taste of bitterness to add to his lifetime supply of betrayals.

  In the deepest part of himself, he’d known she wouldn’t stay. He had known it wouldn’t happen. Even as he had cried her name and called for her to stay with him, even at the moment of truly wanting the dream to blossom into reality, he had known, truly known it wouldn’t ever happen.

  Energy rippled across his shoulders, down his arms, and he flicked the residue to the skies. Several small jagged-edged bolts of lightning cut through the sky, separating his home from the mountains across it.

  But why had she left now? Now, when he so wanted her to stay? Could he be wrong?

  Were they out on the mountain somewhere? Didn’t Melanie know it could be dangerous? What if the PRI’s hit men had managed to trace them and found them out there all alone? Mentally blocked or not, Melanie was essentially defenseless and Chris’s new capabilities were as unstable as any new form of learning would be to a three-year-old child.

  He waved open the door to the kitchen, walked through to the washroom. Not there, nor in the kitchen. He was on his way to the deck, to check the fencing, the steps leading around to the side of the mountain, when he saw the note lying on the island bar. It was scarcely larger than one of the Spanish tiles.

  He stared at it for several seconds as if he might ignore it, go on with the search for his newfound family, for some semblance of the peace he’d felt in his dreams, in the moments before drifting to sleep with Melanie curled to his body, locked in his arms the night before.

  He knew with absolute certainty, with heart-stopping clarity, that the note, the words inked on white paper, meant the end of the dream. And if he picked it up, read it, the words would make the ending all the more real, the more desperately final.

  He began to shake and threw off the excess energy, scarcely clearing it from the deck before the thunder cracked with a ricochet effect.

  Finally, quelling the waves of denial that coursed through him, he snatched the small piece of paper from the bar. He had to read it twice before he understood even a small portion of what Melanie had tried to tell him. And a third time before the psychic impressions she’d left behind coalesced and took shape.

  She had left him; he understood that. Hell, he’d expected it all along…until last night. But she’d said her leaving was for his sake. What kind of a fool did she think he was?

  But as he held the note, another image crept into his mind. His uncle. Pablo had told her something. Done something. Her leaving was Pablo’s doing. After fifteen long years, he had finally found himself on the edge of happiness…and once again his uncle had betrayed him.

  And Melanie, too. Whatever motives she might have had, whatever she might have believed from Pablo’s twisted mind, she had stolen the best part of Teo in her departure. She had taken Chris and she had taken the dream. Like a thief, she had plundered his heart, his hope of a future, the night spent in her arms. She had left while he’d slept. She had asked him to stay with her and left him when he did.

  I love you. She’d said it in his dream, penned it on this damnable note. How could she leave him, then? How could she say s
he loved him and then go? How could she tell him so…and then go? If she hadn’t…if she hadn’t told him, he might never have known, might never have had to face the fact that he might love her, as well.

  A primal, animal-like groan escaped him. “N0!” he yelled as he held the note out from him and sent some of his rage at it. It burst into flame and dropped to the ground in a pirouetting spiral of fire.

  If Pablo didn’t tell him where she went, that would be his fate, as well.

  He didn’t dare think what he would do to Melanie. All he knew was that he would find her because he’d be damned if he would be cheated of a single day of his promised six months. And he’d be double damned if he ever begged her for anything again.

  He smiled as the lightning snapped down the abyss, and if the smile on his lips felt evil, angry, that was all right. He felt that way, too.

  Melanie had driven some twenty miles up the narrow road leading away from Loco Suerte. She’d been lost when she stumbled across it; she was even more lost now. When she had come to New Mexico, driven into these dark, prime examples of why early settlers had designated the entire range the Rocky Mountains, she had been tired, nearly despairing of finding Teo Sandoval, the only man who could possibly help her.

  Now she was lost in them once again, tired, dried tracks of tears staining her cheeks, and in despair over leaving him, the only man who had brought her to life. She glanced over at Chris. He was sullenly staring up through the window at the sky. She had snapped at him only moments earlier when he’d asked for what seemed the hundredth time if he could make the loud noise.

  That she had immediately regretted her brief flare of temper, and had apologized as swiftly, didn’t seem to matter to Chris. He’d told her in no uncertain terms that he wanted Teo.

  “Go home to Teo,” he’d said. Now! he’d commanded her mentally.

  When they had achieved some five miles from the turn-off, she’d cautiously lowered her barriers. She couldn’t feel Teo, and resisted the impulse to send her mind questing for him. Nor could she detect any sign of the PRI, although every pore seemed to absorb a sense of danger all around her, all around Chris.