in upstate New York?
Isabelle groaned again, glad that no one else was in
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the car to see her acting helpless and whiney. There was no
choice, she was simply going to have to change the tire
herself. She knew how, her brother and her father had done
it on more than one occasion and had made sure she knew
how to do it before she ever was even allowed to practice
driving but she carried, and paid for, her auto club card so
she wouldn't have to do it. At least, she thought, I don't
have to stand by the side of the road and wait for someone
to come along.
Pulling her sunglasses out of her dark and
annoyingly frizzy hair she placed them on her face. Time to
face the music. When this was over, she was really going to
take a nice weekend in a spa somewhere.
The air had gotten cooler outside but still not cold
enough to require a jacket and she was relieved about that.
She walked quickly to the trunk. The rain had held off too,
she realized. See Isabelle, lots of things to be grateful for,
she thought, trying to sound pleasant even though she was
the only one listening to her internal dialogue. She'd taken
two steps when she realized she hadn't put on her hazard
lights.
Quickly, she ran back to the driver side of the car
and pushed her emergency button to turn them on. There
was no incline on the road so she didn't have to worry
about the car rolling around on the road or worse, over her.
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Inwardly she tried to recite the instructions she had been
given over and over again about hubcaps, lug nuts, and
jacks.
She grinned at her feeling of know-how and got
down to the job of changing the tire. After a while, her
mind began to wander. She tried to imagine being married
and coming home to her husband at the end of the day to
tell him about this incident and laugh about this story. He
would be angry and upset about her cell phone not working
and maybe he would suggest to her that, given the fact that
she was hearing voices talking cryptically in her head, it
was time they take a romantic vacation together somewhere
quiet just the two of them. They would ask her mother to
watch the kids for a week…
Ah kids. She sighed deeply. To have kids, several of
them she hoped, would mean that they were actually having
sex and if she was having sex that would mean that she
would have to be married to her 'dream man' because
truthfully, and at thirty years old she had to admit to her
own delusions, she really only wanted to have sex with the
dark stranger who appeared in her dreams almost nightly.
Technically, he wasn't a stranger—she knew him
intimately on every possible level. They practically shared
one brain between the two of them. She could read his
thoughts and he cared for her as though she were the most
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precious thing he had ever laid eyes on in his entire life.
Without her, he wandered the world aimlessly. Her body
had been made for his body. There was just one little
problem—in her dreams she never learned his name. She
could never bring herself to ask him what it was. It was like
there was some sort of blockade that didn't allow her to
know that. She figured she wasn't alone in this. He never
asked her what she was called either. In dreamland, they
already knew each other.
Isabelle knew this was insane.
All evidence to the contrary, she was a fully
functioning adult who could stick two feet on the ground
and walk while she chewed gum. She tried to date,
unsuccessfully, since she was sixteen years old. High
school had been one teenage disaster after another with the
worst ending at her best friend's house in East Hampton
where they had all gone after prom to celebrate being
seniors.
Her father had to drive hours in traffic to come and
get her after she had literally pushed her prom date out of
the window of the hotel room she'd stayed in when his
inexperienced kisses had made her skin crawl with disgust.
He hadn't taken her protests very well and before she had
even known what she was doing, she had pushed him out of
the window. The room hadn't been very far up and he
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hadn't been injured, well not seriously anyway, but she had
been so horrified by her own behavior that she'd had to
leave the party.
Where had her need for such violence come from?
The little jerk had told everyone that he had scored that
night and that she was lousy at it, which had only added to
her mortification.
In college, she dated a little bit. There had never
been a problem meeting men who were interested in her,
she seemed to be a particular type that attracted certain
men. It helped that she'd never wanted to be a tiny-waisted
plastic doll and didn't mind that some guys thought she was
too curvy, or the fact that some men thought she wasn't
curvy enough. But after college things had gone awry.
She knew it was time to lose her virginity, most of
her friends had, and she started to feel left out of some sort
of sexually active club that she couldn't participate in.
Things had not gone as she had hoped. She just couldn't
seem to bear being touched by any of the guys, some of
them very good looking, who she tried to be intimate with.
Even counseling had not helped. No one could seem to find
an underlying reason for her total lack of sexual response to
any of the men she was involved with. It wasn't that she
was interested in women, clearly she preferred men, and
lately she'd been wondering if she was just a-sexual or if
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something had happened to her as a child to make her feel
this way.
She had not told her counselors about her secret
'dream man'. She wanted to but every time she thought to
open up about it she found herself unwilling, or better put,
unable, to share him with anyone. So she contented herself
with good friends and the love she had with her family plus
the pleasure she took from doing her work. But lately, it
hadn't been enough. She wanted babies. She wanted his
babies.
But he was just some sort of fantasy she had made
up to get her through her sexual issues and make her life
bearable.
Get up, Isabelle.
She blew a hair strand out of her eyes. There was
that voice again. Why was it telling her to get up? What
was going on? Isabelle put down her bolts and glanced
around. She was about halfway through changing her tire
and if she hurried she was pretty sure
she could still beat
the rain. The wind picked up again, matching her mood and
making her feel even more nervous.
There were no other cars around and to her right
stood a dark, ominous-looking forest that brought to mind
teenage horror movies where you just begged the heroine to
stay out of the woods, no matter the danger. Biting hard on
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her bottom lip, she realized suddenly how exposed she
really was. Anyone could be watching her. Anyone could
step out of the woods and grab her and she wouldn't be
aware that it was happening until it was too late to protect
herself.
Obeying the internal voice that didn't sound like her
own but that was clearly coming from inside her own head,
she stood up and tried to scan the area around her. Nothing
seemed amiss, however she couldn't see very well into the
woods around her.
Safety.
No, she answered her unknown voice, that is not the
word I would use to describe whatever is out there in those
woods.
In fact, the giant trees that stood before her blocking
her view of the distance ahead brought out vividly all of the
movies she shouldn't let herself watch at midnight.
As if conjured from her imagination, a man stepped
out of the woods in front of her. He was tall. That was the
only impression Isabelle let herself take of the man as she
took off running.
She didn't know what drove her forward. He hadn't
done anything threatening; maybe he had seen her and had
wanted to help her change her tire. It didn't matter because
she was running as if her life depended on it. To make
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matters worse, he hadn't uttered a word to her but he chased
after her and the faster she ran, the faster he did too.
Could she outrun someone of that size? He was
going to overtake her any second, she was sure of it and yet
she couldn't give up. Her breaths came in short gasps and
she cursed herself for not going to the gym more regularly.
The forest was as dense as she'd earlier imagined
and she had no idea where she was going except she felt
she was being pushed in a certain direction. Where she
would end up, she had no idea.
Branches, leaves, rocks, and giant tree trucks laid
out before her, snagging her shirt, cutting her face, and
covering her in dirt as she sprinted—not caring that she was
only going further and further into an unknown area. Her
breath came in and out of her lungs quickly and her legs
burned but she felt no compulsion to stop running.
He's there. He's waiting for you. It's time. Keep
running.
She didn't know who this he was but he had to be
better than whoever it was that silently chased her. So she
sprinted and hoped that her strange internal voice wasn't as
crazy as she was.
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Chapter Three
"Help!"
A woman's shout dashed through the trees, drawing
Kal's attention from internal speculation to a very real,
present danger heading their way. "Please help me. There is
some psychopath chasing me through the woods!" The
woman rammed right into the stunned Kal and he struggled
to keep her upright and keep his footing at the same time.
His senses told him the second person had dropped
back, he assumed, suddenly aware of the presence of the
other people. What was going on? This was not what he
had been prepared for. Fighting bad guys, yes, he had been
ready to do that and had done before.
Rescuing lost women being pursued by unknown
stalkers, this was something very different. Careful what
you wish for, he thought, remembering his earlier musings
about damsels in distress.
The other three men circled around him. They
might not have had his powers but none of them were
going to let this woman, whoever she was, get hurt by a
potential threat. Kal took a second to examine the
exhausted body he was currently keeping upright in his
arms. She was dark haired and small in stature with legs
that seemed to take up most of her body and curves in all
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the right places. Her shirt had slid off of one shoulder,
exposing a black bra strap underneath.
Her hands, which clutched onto his arms, had the
softest skin he had ever felt. It was the kind of softness you
expected to find on babies, not grown women out in the
woods who were also covered in mud and dirt. The eyes
that looked up at him were crystal blue. Her face was
stunning and there was simply no other way to describe it.
The word seemed to have been invented to describe her.
Her lips seemed to beg to be kissed, even covered in dirt as
they currently were. More than any of that, Kal would
swear an oath that he knew her from somewhere, although
he knew he had not met her before.
She belongs to you, and I leave her in your care,
Kal.
The thought came from nowhere and he quickly
pushed it away. Kal had no time for anything else that
could be construed as strange at that moment. She was not
his, she was human and she was, at the very least, pushing
every protective urge in his body. He had to be careful or
he might start howling at the sky.
"Whoever chased you has left."
Whispering, the woman jerked when she answered,
"How do you know?"
"Yeah, Kal" Doug shrugged. "How do you know?"
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"Didn't you guys hear him? He was making a
racket." Over the years, Kal had become an excellent liar.
He knew they'd never be able to tell now. "Anyway, that's
not important. What is your name, kiddo?" Kal put on a
smile. Women usually responded to his flirtations and at
the very least it would distract his friends from the blunder
he had just made in announcing the pursuer's departure.
The dark-haired beauty stared up at him a second,
trying to catch her breath. It was then Kal saw it in her
eyes. She had recognized him too. In his arms, he felt her
start to shake. After a moment, she pulled free of his
embrace and he felt strangely bereft.
Holding the woman had brought back a strange
memory for Kal and he wasn't sure where it had come
from. It felt like she had been stamped on his soul. His
mind flashed back to a time he couldn't pinpoint, a time
where he had been more aware of the sounds of voices than
the faces of the people who were speaking. Two women
and two men were having a conversation and to him they
seemed deeply troubled.
"I just don't think it's ever going to be safe; it was a
mistake to leave the group. I don't know what we can
all
hope to accomplish out here on our own." The female voice
that was speaking was dear to him and gave him a sense of
peace and wellbeing.
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"I agree." A second female voice that he was less
familiar with chimed in. "It's the children who are
important now. Our time has ended. It's our own fault."
Kal's eyes flew open and he caught the gaze of another
baby looking back at him. In those eyes he could see his
own hopes and fears echoed back at him, things no two
babies should ever have known but the two of them, he and
the female baby, were not normal infants and even if their
parents were still unaware of how different their children
were, the two babies staring at each other knew quite well.
He could even remember the time before he was born,
before he was conceived into his mother's body.
They were old souls and they had been sent here for
a reason. They had been born to fight a battle that raged
since the beginning of time and so far they were losing it.
Too small to tell the adults what they should be doing, they
were left only to stare at one another in silence, aching for
each other. She was his to care for in whatever plane of
existence they found themselves in. They'd always been
together.
He knew that she needed him like he needed her. He
was glad that their parents had all traveled together
because to be without her would have been to truly know
loneliness. Anything else he could abide but life without her
would be unbearable.
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"I'm Isabelle." She sounded cautious and it brought
him back to the present, to the woods, and the sight of her
crystal blue eyes staring at him. "Isabelle Listora. My car
got a flat about two miles from here and when I pulled over