Читать книгу Sharing The Darkness - Marilyn Tracy - Страница 7

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.

She wished she could believe that with him so spent in her arms there was nothing to fear from him, but as if that crew of yesteryear PRI scientists surrounded her, she could sense their doubt, feel their nervousness, hear their murmurs of awe. Was it the influence of the local people, happy that their Demo lived but wary of the man who healed him, or was it something she discerned about him all on her own?

She wished she could feel empathy for him, alone with his gift, but only felt a wary sympathy instead. Something about him, locked anew in his glittering gaze, the dark liquid halo of hair touching her, made Melanie feel that she had dived into a crystal-clear lake and discovered, too late, that it was truly crystal, not water at all. There was something terribly sharp and hard about him, no matter how helpless he might now appear.

He studied her for all the world as if she were the anomaly, as if she were the cause of the commotion beyond them.

“You’re very foolish, señora,” he said.

She agreed with him absolutely. But desperation bred foolishness…and heroics. And she didn’t believe he was calling her silly or inept, but was speaking from dark knowledge, from some untold need to warn her away.

She heard someone ask another how she could be touching El Rayo. Until that moment she hadn’t stopped to truly consider what she’d witnessed. Not one person had touched him, most had even avoided his gaze. He had touched the mechanic, not the other way around. Was this what the attendant had meant when he’d uttered, “You must not,” and held her away from the reeling Teo Sandoval?

On some dim level, not overriding the mesmerizing quality of his gaze but augmenting it somehow, she was half aware of the looks of awe the townspeople were leveling at her. Had none of them ever touched the man? She wanted to open her mind again, catch reasons, rationales, but the power of the man in her arms kept her from lowering that guard.

“Please…” she said again, but wasn’t certain what she was asking of him now. She was too conscious of his warm face against her wet blouse, his hand dropping from her own overwarm cheeks.

She thought of Chris, of how his own father had shrunk away from him in fear, of how baby-sitters had fled the house in terror, of how even the scientists at the PRI had touched Chris only when wearing lead-lined gloves. She had been the only one who wasn’t afraid of Chris, had been the only one to openly give him the small assurances that he was lovable and loved.

Was this man in her arms only a taller, adult version of her son? Perhaps once, long ago. But no longer. Melanie shivered in recognition of the differences. Teo Sandoval was nothing like Chris. Her son had yet to enter life, this man had slammed the door on the outside world. Her son’s tiny fingers made objects dance in the air, this man’s touch either cured or destroyed. Shining light or utter darkness, both sides warred inside this man’s soul. Pray God, Chris never knew such contrasts.

She tried calling on whatever mild powers she herself possessed to reach into the future and see the outcome of this meeting, but with her mind so firmly closed to the man in her arms, her inner crystal ball remained cloudy, indistinct. Then his eyes narrowed in part suspicion, part confusion and she recognized him from her dreams, the same dreams that had led her to this misty mountain and to this man. She recognized his face from the PRI photographs and from her nightmares, the ones that left her choking on tears, the sound of her own screams ringing in her ears.

As if hating what he was seeing, he turned his face abruptly, pressing tightly against her breasts. His hand gripped her shoulder in a rough, nearly painful grip. As vulnerable as he might seem, drained by this unusual healing, Melanie didn’t consider him an object of pity. His power, the strange magic within him, might be quiescent, but she knew it was a momentary, fleeting circumstance. It would be back. And when it came, it would be strong enough to demolish his surroundings…or save a man’s life.

He opened his eyes and met hers. Again she had the fleeting impression of a lone timber wolf. And like the lone wolf, the message in his eyes was definitive. I stand alone…that which comes near me comes in peril.

No gratitude radiated from his eyes, no measure of relief. The only thing she could read was raw distrust. There were other things there, as well, but they were darker, rougher, too frightening to contemplate.

He shivered as if fevered, and suddenly, as if by virtue of having moved, his energy sources seemed replenished. Now his body felt overwarm against hers, making her uncomfortably aware of the intimacy of their embrace. His eyes never wavered from hers and this added to her unease. He wasn’t searching her eyes or her face for answers, was instead staring at her in complete rejection.

For a moment she had the fanciful notion that he stared at her as a creature of the wild would. A creature that was trapped in the piercing beam of a pair of headlights, with an almost weary acceptance of doom, of a fate gone so far awry as to announce certain death. She wished she didn’t recognize the look, but she did. She’d seen it in the mirror of yet another cheap hotel room just this morning. She’d seen it yesterday, last week, a month ago, and all too often since the first day Chris had made the toys on the windowsill dance for his dumbfounded parents.

But Teo Sandoval wasn’t like Chris. Shaking her head slightly to rid herself of the mere thought, Melanie took a shaky breath. His eyelids lowered slightly, dangerously, and any thought she’d had of any similarity vanished. He didn’t look trapped, only supremely cautious and prepared. Deadly.

He didn’t move, didn’t so much as shift, but she was suddenly wholly conscious of the fact that the only thing preventing him from rising to his feet were her two arms wrapped around him. But she couldn’t seem to let him go. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, she did; her arms were numb, as though they’d fallen asleep, though she knew that had to be impossible. What was he doing to her? Or was she doing something to herself, the need she harbored for his help making certain that she wouldn’t let him slip away?

He slowly raised a dark, strong hand. The palms of his hands were broad, and the fingers long and tapered, marred by large, slightly irregular knuckles. They could have been the hands of a sculptor…or a murderer, she didn’t care. All she knew was that they held the power of the universe in them. She’d seen the photographs of the destruction he’d caused with a single wave of those hands. And now she’d seen evidence of that power with her own eyes, she was captivated…and terrified of what his touch would do to her.

She willed herself to push away from him, to pull back, but couldn’t seem to move. Somehow she could sense the violent emotion in him, and it frightened her. Then, just as she thought she’d cry out, his hand reached for her. But instead of touching her face again, as she’d more than half expected, he lifted a wet strand of her hair. He caressed the strand with his fingers, as if memorizing its texture, staring at it as if it were some great enigma.

Her heart was pounding so loudly, so furiously, she was certain he would be able to hear it, if not feel it.

He studied her hair, almost as though mesmerized by it, then slowly transferred his gaze to her own widely opened eyes. Then he gave a rather sharp tug to the hair in his grasp.

“You are very foolish, señora,” he repeated. His voice was still slightly raspy, and Melanie suspected the reason why. The harshness had nothing to do with a lack of language skills but was, rather, because he seldom spoke.

Something in his tone, in his rough touch sent a spark of fire through her. Again she had the sensation that the two of them seemed to be alone on this hillside, far away from all humanity. She was suddenly and deeply aware of this strange man’s sheer masculinity and, by contrast, her own femininity. Her lips parted in wonder at the feeling. How long had it been since she’d felt anything like this? More than a year? More than two or three, perhaps. Since Chris had been born probably, and possibly even before that.

Part of her wanted to reach up and cover this healer’s hand with her own. Growing inside of her was a desire for affirmation, need to show him she understood a want he hadn’t voiced. But before she could speak, his hand dropped her hair and came to rest on his chest. Melanie swallowed, tasting an odd disappointment. Such raw power he held in those lax fingers, yet all he’d done was touch her face, hold a single, wet lock of her hair—

“Let me go,” he said. Though his voice was nearly a whisper, the command was as sharp and clear as a clarion.

Slowly, almost painfully, she unlocked her arms, setting him free. She refused to meet his eyes. To do so was to drown in his abject aloneness, that cold, crystalline rejection. To linger there was to willingly submit to what she knew was his double-edged power—the gift of life or the capability of total destruction.

But he remained motionless, didn’t pull away from her. And now that she was no longer holding him, the intimacy of their positions seemed all the greater, for his head still pressed against her breasts, his body still curved against hers.

As if in rescue, she heard the distant whine of sirens. It was probably the sheriff and ambulance the abuelito had called earlier, which raised another set of questions. Would Teo Sandoval stay long enough to hear her request? After meeting his eyes, touching him, did she even dare ask it of him now?

“Quickly, El Rayo…you must go now,” Pablo said. “The sheriff comes. People. You have to go now. Johnny’s only a mile from here, maybe less. If you don’t wish them to see you, you have to hurry. ¡Andale!”

The other man motioned for Teo to rise, but made no move to help him. In fact, he kept his eyes studiously averted. Melanie saw a look of pure hatred cross Teo Sandoval’s face and recoiled from it even though it wasn’t directed at her but at the attendant who had spoken.

His muscles rippled and contracted and Melanie bit her lip against the visceral reaction the motion inspired in her. She saw Teo give Pablo a cold, measured look that seemed to contain some dreadful message, and shivered inwardly. She hoped she would never live to receive such a baleful glare.

“Let him go, señora. It’s no favor to keep him here,” Pablo continued. Melanie’s brow furrowed. Even to her still dazed mind, the man no longer had the look of a backward, poverty-stricken gas station owner, but instead seemed to have something of Teo Sandoval’s strong, potentially threatening aura about him.

“I’m not stopping him,” Melanie said, and even to herself her voice sounded hoarse and taut with tension. She allowed her hands to slide away from him, to the cold, wet ground where the mud felt slimy and slick after the roughness of his shirt, the warmth of his body.

In a swift, powerful stretch, Teo silently pushed to his feet and, after a moment’s hesitation and a slight sway to the right, turned as though to leave. For a dismaying moment Melanie thought he would disappear without a word, and wondered if perhaps the man was like an idiot savant, capable of incredible feats but not “fully there.” The PRI files hadn’t indicated anything like that, and yet the scientists had deemed him a barbarian. Her mind hotly denied the idiot savant possibility, and without conscious decision, she called out in protest.

“Teo!”

He stopped as if shot, and turned back to look down at her. Though she felt none of that soul-shattering connection that had gripped her earlier, she was all too aware of an inordinant amount of relief at the look of wariness, of cold intelligence, in his eyes. She found herself holding her breath.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was still rough and scratchy. And this, too, inexplicably served to ease her confused mind. He wasn’t wholly recovered, and therefore had to be human, after all. His eyes darkened as he waited for her answer.

She told him her name and he nodded slowly, as if he had expected her to say Melanie Daniels.

Pablo muttered something, but trailed off when Teo turned his silver-blue gaze in his direction. The attendant shrugged and looked away uncomfortably, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Teo’s eyes were narrowed as he switched his gaze back to her. “How do you know my name?”

Melanie could see a wealth of wariness on his face and noted that his entire frame seemed a testimonial to that tension. She knew, by his question, that her earlier suspicions that he didn’t wish to be found were accurate. Teo Sandoval. The one man who could possibly help her son. This was him. Until this moment she hadn’t let herself truly believe it. But it was true. She’d found him. He had to help her, but instinctively she knew she would have to tread very carefully.

He was still waiting for an answer to his terse question. Melanie drew a shallow breath. Was he telepathic, as well? Her mind was closed to him, certainly—she had been able to close it at will since childhood, even though it opened alarmingly easily in sleep—so he couldn’t be reading her thoughts. But was it possible that he could read deeper than mere surface thoughts, perhaps pluck the truth from her subconscious?

“I—I heard about you. I read about you in the f-files at the Psionic Research Institute.”

If she’d expected him to look shocked or even recoil in some exaggerated rendition of horror, she would have been disappointed; he did neither. He merely stared at her with the cold flat expression she was coming to associate with him.

“I need your help,” she said finally.

Something flickered in his eyes at that, but his facial features didn’t shift an iota.

“My son…he…”

“I help no one,” Teo rasped.

“But…the mechanic?”

Teo waved a hand dismissively, but didn’t try to correct his obvious falsehood or to explain away the contradiction.

“Please…” she murmured, staring up at him, blinking away the sudden sting in her eyes. “You have to help me.” She wasn’t surprised that her voice sounded as hoarse as his.

“No.”

“I can pay. I’ll pay you anything,” she said, knowing even as she said it that it wouldn’t help, wouldn’t matter. The amount of money he’d gained control of years ago, money in an account established by the PRI, was enough for anyone’s needs. More than that, however, was the fact that anyone able to survive in the wilds of the New Mexico mountains—alone—for so long couldn’t have much interest in material objects.

Something flickered in his gaze. “If you know what’s good for you, señora, you’ll leave now. Women don’t travel alone in these mountains,” he said softly, his tone far from kindly.

“Please…I’ll pay anything,” she repeated desperately, hoping the words could be heard over the painful pounding of her heart. She tried pushing to her feet, but her hands only slid in the mud and she merely scooted forward an inch or two.

“Señora,” he said, a dangerous light now in his eyes. “Your money means nothing to me.”

The silence left in the wake of his words was torn by the shrill pulse of the sirens’ screams. Melanie jumped and automatically turned to watch the arrival of a brown Bronco bearing a sheriff’s silver star on the side panel. It whipped into the muddy gas station lanes. Not twenty yards behind the Bronco was a large, white ambulance with red lights whirling angrily in the gathering afternoon dusk.

She turned back and was too late: Teo Sandoval—El Rayo—was gone, having disappeared as thoroughly as if he’d never been there. She frantically sought his solid figure among the shadows of the surrounding forest, but saw nothing save pine boughs, sodden scrub oak and dark, dark shimmers of raindrops winking at her as though in amusement.

The unmistakable sound of tires losing their grip in mud called her attention and she turned just in time to see the sheriff’s mud-spattered unit spin across the gas station driveway. By yet another miracle on this peculiar day, the unit avoided slamming into anything, but did serve as a sharp reminder that she’d left her son alone in the car. With a single backward glance toward the seemingly empty woods, she awkwardly pushed to her feet and made her way to Chris.

In the pandemonium that reigned upon the sheriff’s arrival, and the ambulance driver’s frantic attempt to avoid collision with the sheriff’s Bronco, Melanie realized that Teo Sandoval had been allowed to fade from sight. Amid the explanations of why the sheriff had been called—a call Pablo now said apologetically had proved unnecessary—Melanie noticed that no one mentioned El Rayo. It was as if he didn’t exist.

She listened to all the explanations and the carefully worded evasions, and with one eye on Chris—who, thankfully, was now asleep and therefore unable to maintain his dancing game—searched the woods across the road for any sign of the most powerful telekinetic on record.

She wouldn’t betray El Rayo by asking the voluble townspeople about him in front of the sheriff, but she intended to stay where she was until she could ask where the healer had gone. She also preferred to be the one to approach the villagers rather than have any of them get close enough to the car that they might wake Chris and witness his amazing bag of tricks.

Wiping as much mud as possible from her clothing and hands, she waited quietly until the furor had lessened somewhat. Then, with one last reassuring glance at her son, she walked around the building.

Despite the gathering darkness, the evening shadows, Teo could see the woman clearly. He watched her round the corner and rejoin the fringe of the group surrounding Demo. She was covered in mud and her hair was sodden from the rain. But there was nothing amusing about her. Nothing at all.

His gaze remained on her, and he willed her to look his way, to find him in the shadows. He’d seen her looking before, trying, squinting her remarkable eyes against the mist, questing for him. Though he’d felt the shock of her gaze sweeping the branches beside him, around him, seemingly right at him, she hadn’t spotted him, had stared through him as though he were invisible. Her gaze had merely traveled on, taking in the oak, the red and shriveled leaves, the wet shadows surrounding him.

Why couldn’t he read her? Why couldn’t he hear this woman’s thoughts, feel her wants, needs, and the thousand other confused little memories, impressions and dreams that seemed to bombard him from everyone else in the world?

Without even trying, he could “hear” everyone standing around Pablo’s gas station. Demo was filled with pride over being the object of everyone’s attention. Tempering that pride was a heavy dose of relief, not that he had survived the car falling on him, but that he had lived through El Rayo’s touch of lightning. Doro, his wife, was thinking of the pot of frijoles she’d left on the stove when the men had first called that Demo had been hurt. Were the beans burned? Did they need salt, more chili? The baby’s diapers were wet and his nose itched. Jaime was wondering who the new señora was and if she would talk about Teo, about what she had seen. And then there was Pablo, the hardest to read of all of them. His thoughts were half closed, gifts like Teo’s twisting the thoughts into chaos. Pablo was hoping, as he always did, that he would live long enough to be forgiven an afternoon’s trip many, many years ago.

But Teo couldn’t read her at all. Not even a glimmer of her mind was revealed to him. It both frightened and intrigued him, because, for a startlingly clear moment, he had been reaching for her thoughts. Then she had shut him out. He’d felt a distinctive mental slam. It still echoed inside him. Yet before she had slammed the door on his probing, for a few charged seconds he’d seen something in her that he’d never encountered before.

An intangible something, almost like a daydream. And it rocked him to his core, for that intangible something had seemed all too like a promise of hope or connection. But he knew all too well that promises only led to despair and pain—

He shook his head in anger. Damn this woman. Who was she? What did she want? The only other time he’d felt blocked from someone’s thoughts had been at the PRI, and then only because the men in the lab coats had stood behind leaded glass and lead-lined doors. But there hadn’t been any intangibles there, only fear, hatred, need and furious control.

She had touched him. She had held him in her arms, moved the hair on his brow, smoothed the rain from his cheeks. Her fingers had been warm and soft, not healing hands such as his were, yet oddly remedial in their very presence.

Why had she helped him? Was it because she didn’t know his terrible curse? But she had to have known. She had called him by his name. His name. How long had it been since he had been held, even in sympathy? How long had it been since he had heard his name upon a woman’s lips?

She had said something about the PRI. She seemed afraid of it. She had damn good reason to be; if the PRI wanted her, they would succeed. Or had he misunderstood…and she was from the PRI?

He wanted to scream out in anger, lash out in denial. No. It couldn’t be. Yet, wasn’t he weak from the healing? He might have been too weakened from the healing to recognize all the dangers today. He fought the rage building in his lungs, the pain boiling in his heart.

God, he thought, and then stopped. No amount of prayer would help him. It never had, it never would.

He cursed her silently for ever coming to Loco Suerte. She was too damn beautiful and, though he knew nothing more of her than her name, and perhaps a measure of her desperation, he was too attracted to her. She’d stripped him naked not only with her gentle embrace, but by the very fact that she’d touched him at all. He ached for more and, though he knew it was irrational, hated her for that, for making him want her…for making him remember that for him there was to be no touching, no love, no life. Ever.

A host of questions clamored in his mind like the raucous calls of piñon jays in winter, and slowly answers coalesced. She wasn’t from the PRI, but she wanted him to help her son. She would pay anything, she’d said, but he’d told her to leave. And he’d meant it. It was far too dangerous for her to stay. Too dangerous for him.

His thoughts turned to her son and his gaze followed their direction. The child was no more than a babe and was asleep, dreaming of his mother and a host of simple, nothing thoughts.

As if recognizing the intrusive stranger even in his dreams, the small child sat up suddenly and, standing on tiptoe, peered through the rain-streaked rear window. Unlike his mother, the boy located Teo easily. Honey-brown eyes, totally unlike his mother’s deep green, stared from a baby’s rounded features. They were old beyond his years, yet the child still remained an innocent. A small hand raised and fingers waggled in Teo’s direction.

Unconsciously, Teo smiled in response. The simple gesture felt foreign on his lips, crooked somehow. He felt something shift deep inside him, a shaft of pain that somehow transcended the pain he felt whenever he healed or even the joy of making the universe move to his will.

Watch.

He heard the child’s clear command. The smile faded from Teo’s lips as the unfamiliar touch settled in his mind, possibly in his soul. It was cool and light against his senses, but clear nonetheless, and knowing. The boy had known he could talk with him, mind to mind. How?

Watch me!

The little fingers wiggled again, but this time Teo knew it was no wave, but another command. Various objects in the car—a pen, a comb, a red ball, some kind of little man doll and other things—suddenly began to bob around the back seat.

The shaft of pain that had shot through him earlier returned, except this time it twisted, driving the hurt deeper, wrenching at him. The boy was like him, could have been a blond version of himself at that age. The child, her child, was another of the damned.

Then, like his mother’s had before him, the child’s mind suddenly closed to Teo, and a barrier he couldn’t penetrate was welded across the small head.

It was then he understood exactly what the woman wanted of him. And he knew he could help her, but knew he wouldn’t dare. If he spent any time at all with the child, with the mother, he would not survive. Some small, locked away part of him would finally die, because even a moment in their company and he would surely be overwhelmed by painful memories, longing for things he couldn’t have. He would be reminded of far too many broken promises and shattered dreams.

He pressed a question to the boy, but the child didn’t respond. Teo understood the boy like he couldn’t the mother. The child was concentrating on making things “dance” and while he did so, he was blocked to all other influences. He, too, had done that once. But only as a small child.

He could remember the peace, the sense of blessed quiet that came with that kind of focused thought, and longed for it still.

Two people who could block him in one day? Yet, weren’t they mother and child?

He heard her tension-stretched voice in his mind, “I’ll pay anything.” What if—

He angrily lashed out at the sodden scrub oak before him. He couldn’t afford to finish the thought. Wondering was for fools and innocents. He’d made his path, and damn her for making him even doubt the certainty of his need to be alone.

She shouldn’t have asked him. She shouldn’t have come here with her satin-soft hair and her green eyes that brimmed with tears and pain. And she shouldn’t have brought that child who even now made his world spin with no more effort than another little boy might send a small top careening across a linoleum floor.

Yet a part of him wanted to say yes to her plea. That part wanted to tell her that he would help her, would help the boy. And another part hated her for making him feel this foreign and long, long buried want.

He was right to deny her cry for help. He didn’t need to add any grief to his life; he deserved his hard-won peace. He deserved the solitude he’d fought to achieve. A child such as he had once been, a woman who wasn’t afraid to touch him…both would conspire to shatter that peace, to erode his fragile hold on control.

He could feel that control slipping now, could feel the electricity building in him, aching for release. His heart beat too fast, his chest rose and fell with each ragged, shallow breath he took. His fingers still felt the silk of her hair, his nostrils conjured her scent, and his body trembled with the need to hold the power inside him. Damn her.

“No,” he murmured roughly, denying the need within. But the electricity didn’t subside, it only gathered strength.

With a growl of rage, he turned and crashed into the woods, needing to get as far and as fast away from the woman and her son as he possibly could.

A branch struck his cheek and he cursed softly, groaning in a mixture of anger, hurt and sharp, anguished want. The sky above him exploded in lightning, answering his pain. Blue and jagged, the bolt rent the sky, suffusing his face, reflecting, he knew, the fury in his eyes.

The crack of thunder that followed nearly deafened him, but he didn’t slow his raging race up the mountain. Then another streak of fire shot across the sky, followed by another deafening clap of thunder. His chest heaved and he shook with the effort to keep his emotions under control. But the storm raging around and above him was proof that he’d failed.

The sheriff, Johnny someone, turned to Melanie with an expression that told her clearly he considered her at fault for having been on the scene of an accident in his district.

“Did you see the car fall on Demo Aguilar?”

She felt rather than heard the collective holding of breaths.

“No, I was beside my car. I only heard it fall. Heard him scream. Then everything happened so fast,” she said casually.

She could tell the townspeople suffered the tension of waiting for her to expose what had really happened, to reveal the presence of one healer—destroyer—named El Rayo, who carried the force of lightning in his hands. They hadn’t helped him, but neither did they want the sheriff to know he had been there. She didn’t have to ask why; she knew the answer. Teo wanted it that way.

“She was buying gas when the Chevy fell off her jack onto Demo,” the elder of the two checker players said.

“The Chevy was on your jack?” Johnny asked, his bushy eyebrows pushing upward.

“No, no, Señor Sheriff,” Pablo corrected. “It was the jack of Demo’s, but she broke.”

Melanie looked at the attendant with new respect. This broken, ignorant speech routine was an act. She’d heard him speaking perfectly understandable English just a few minutes’ earlier.

“The car, she fell on Demo. We thought he was dead. That was when we called you. But the car, she didn’t kill him. No. See for yourself. We lifted it off him. Now he is fine!”

The crowd murmured assent and pushed Demo forward to show the sheriff the faint remains of his once near-fatal wounds. Melanie was struck by how adroitly Pablo had turned the sheriff’s attention from her. The townspeople obviously wanted no mention of El Rayo to reach the sheriff’s ears. If it weren’t for the warning she could read in almost every pair of eyes, she might have wondered if she hadn’t imagined the entire episode.

But it had been real. And what she had seen in Teo’s eyes and had felt in his touch had also been real. Too disturbingly real. If they didn’t want her to talk about him, she would play along, but they couldn’t stop her from talking to him.

The sheriff wrapped up his futile investigation a few minutes’ later and departed into the early night amid much good-natured assistance from the men in the crowd, who helped him extricate his vehicle from the mud.

Melanie was about to ask Pablo for help regarding locating Teo Sandoval when she happened to catch a glimpse of her son in the back seat of her rented Buick. His entire entourage of movable objects was bouncing around the interior of the car like a mobile without strings, like leaves snared by a whirlwind.

She ran to the car and tried opening the back door. It was locked. She called to Chris, but he didn’t hear her; he never did when he played this way. Another thing to thank the PRI for, she thought as she wrenched open the driver’s door and lunged over the back seat to grab his shoulder. He started and turned, a sunny smile lighting his lips. Objects fell like heavy rain, clattering on the dash, the seats, the steering wheel.

“Chris, honey. Please don’t dance anything for a minute, okay? Try very hard. Listen to me. People are here. Don’t dance. Okay?”

Chris shook his head solemnly. “No dance.”

“That’s right. No dance.”

She backed out of the car, keeping a finger pointed at Chris to reinforce her point. She knew the gesture was largely in vain, for like any three-year-old, memory was only a vague dream and soon he would be lured into the delight of making the items move once more. As always, she knew she could punish him to make him remember to refrain from making things dance, but that seemed the ultimate of cruelties, to punish a child for what came most naturally. It would have been like punishing Mozart for writing a symphony or Einstein for fiddling with physics.

She quickly surveyed the group rounding the gas station corner. They were looking at her curiously, but not with undue questions; they had apparently only seen her race for her car and were now watching her with anticipation for her next unusual move.

All except Pablo. He had seen Chris, had seen the bobbing objects. She recognized the fact in his wide, fearful eyes, in the hand hidden behind his back, no doubt making the finger-and-thumb sign against evil.

“No dance, Chris,” she murmured, still holding her finger up in the air. “Don’t you dare dance now.”

Suddenly lightning rent the blackening sky, blinding her, turning the universe into a jagged gash of blue and red. A monstrous clap of thunder followed before she could even catch her breath. As if the sky itself were angry, huge drops of water pummeled the ground and the people standing numbly in the already sodden driveway of Loco Suerte’s gas station.

When Melanie’s eyes cleared, she saw that as one, the group had huddled together and were now swiftly clearing the area. Within seconds, for the first time since the metal-crunching crash, the place seemed as deserted as when Melanie had first arrived. Again, except for the gas station attendant.

He remained where he’d been before the lightning and thunder. His eyes were on the inside of her car. On Chris.

“You have to help me,” she said urgently.

He turned his eyes toward her. She couldn’t quite read the expression on his face, but instinctively knew it wasn’t unpleasant or even fearful. If anything, she thought she detected sorrow there. She lowered her guard a notch and found she was right. But she didn’t dare relax her protective walls long enough to probe deeply into the reasons for the sorrow. Teo Sandoval was out there somewhere, and she was all too likely to unconsciously seek and link with his mind. And this would be too dangerous now, he’d read the strange feelings she was already harboring about him.

“Just tell me where I can find him,” she said. When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Teo Sandoval, can help me with my—”

“He’s like Teo was,” Pablo interupted quietly, lifting his chin in the direction of the car, and the child inside. “When he was a boy, Teo was like that. God, how I remember.”

Whatever it was he remembered, it wasn’t pleasant, nor was it a comfortable memory. As if Teo were there now, and angry over being discussed, the sky again exploded in light and sound.

“Then you can see I need his help,” Melanie said. She felt tears welling in her eyes. The sudden thunderstorm was frightening and she’d come too far, been searching too long. She felt she had no reserves left. “Please, tell me how to find him. Please help me.”

The attendant looked over his shoulder at the dark, rain-drenched woods, and then back to her. Even through the rain she could sense his indecision, his worry.

“I won’t tell anyone about him,” she said urgently.

“I wasn’t thinking that, señora,” he said.

“Please…”

“Those people that took Teo all that time ago. They hurt him badly, I think. He never talks about it.”

“They are the same people that want my son,” Melanie said quickly, holding back a sob.

“Are they following you?” he asked quietly.

Melanie suddenly realized where his questions were leading. “No,” she said. It was a half lie. They were following her, but according to her prescient dreams, they hadn’t found her yet.

Pablo looked at her for a long moment, perhaps attempting to weigh her words for their truth.

She added urgently, “They want my son. They want to use him, just like they did Teo.” Even to herself, her voice sounded desperate, confused. She took a deep breath and added fervently, “But Chris is only a baby.”

“He’ll refuse you,” Pablo said flatly.

“But he knows what those scientists will do to Chris,” Melanie blurted out, as if by convincing this man, she could persuade Teo Sandoval.

“Perhaps that’s why he’ll refuse,” the attendant answered obliquely. “The niño will remind him. Of too many things.”

“But he can’t just let them take Chris from me. He, of all people, knows what will happen,” she protested.

Pablo looked back at the car, his dark eyes penetrating the even darker interior. He looked more miserable than ever. Melanie held her breath as he studied Chris.

Finally he sighed heavily, muttered something in Spanish beneath his breath, and said, “Go one mile down the highway—” he jutted his chin in the direction Melanie had originally been heading “—and then turn left onto the dirt road. You won’t be able to go all the way in that car. You will have to walk. You and…your child.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.” She swiftly strapped Chris into the back seat, and locked and shut the back door. She had turned and already started to get into the car when she remembered that she hadn’t yet paid him for the gasoline. Dragging her purse over, she started to pull out some dollar bills.

The attendant waved her offering away and stepped back beneath the canting portal. “De nada,” he said, then added in English, “For nothing. You touched him. For that, I think I would pay you.”

“Thank you—” Melanie began, but Pablo held up one mud-and grease-stained hand.

“Trust me, señora, you should not thank me.”

Melanie, too dazed by the day’s events, the furious storm overhead, and with the end of her quest in sight, only put the car in gear and steered to the narrow highway.

When she glanced into the rearview mirror, she saw Chris and his dancing toys. And beyond him, standing in the furious rain, the gas station attendant. He was back there, watching her slow progress up the mountain.

Just before she rounded a curve that would cut him from view, she saw him cross himself and look up at the flashes of lightning zigzagging across the night sky.

Was he praying that Teo Sandoval wouldn’t enact retribution on him for telling her how to find him?

Or was he praying for her?