“Listen. My head is throbbing. I feel like dog shit. I can’t concentrate with everyone talking and having to listen to the thoughts. But I’m not going over the damned edge. Not yet anyway.”
Dad scooted forward and placed his hand on Xander’s shoulder. His grip was firm and fatherly, and goddamned if Xander didn’t almost melt. He wanted his dad to solve it all. Wanted him to fix it and make it all better. But he wasn’t a little boy anymore, and his father couldn’t fix this one.
“Xan, you can find her…” I wish I could tell you how. I wish I could offer you some guidance, but the link isn’t something that can be found with words or directions. It’s something inside you. “…the same way you found her before.”
The brain itch. The restlessness. Only his head hurt too bad to feel anything other than pain. And his body was too spent to feel restless.
He closed his eyes and thought back to the story of Fearless and Bear. Bear had called Fearless back from the ancestors by touching her and chanting her name. He couldn’t touch Isleen, but he could call to her. Maybe she’d answer. Yes. Maybe like before, he’d hear her inside his head.
Isleen. Isleen. Isleen. Her name was an incantation, a spell, begging her to hear him, to respond, to help him find her. Isleen. Isleen. Isleen. He thought back to his best memories of her. Being inside her and knowing she was his. Watching her stand up to Camille. That ornery smile she so rarely showed. Isleen. Isleen. Isleen. He called to her, pleaded with her to answer…
Nothing happened. Not one goddamned thing. Tears burned in his sinuses and threatened to leak from his closed eyes. His breathing went shaky—hell, his whole body trembled. He wrapped his arms around himself to keep from rattling apart. He rocked in his seat like a nutjob. Okay, now he was going over the edge.
Everything went blessedly quiet.
No more engine humming, no more tires on the pavement. No more heartbeats from the men in the car. No more whoosh and suck of lungs working. His ears just stopped working. His muscles unclenched, and he melted against the seat. His mind went blessedly blank. He bobbed on a wave of nothingness. It fucking felt wonderful.
And then he remembered: The day he’d found Isleen, there’d been a blast of perfect silence too.
“Stop the car!” The absolute quiet vanished. In its place was control. Control of his hearing.
Kent slammed the brakes. Tires screeched against the pavement. Momentum pushed Xander against his seat belt. He braced his hand against the dashboard until the car stopped moving, then was out the door searching the landscape.
Cornfields on all sides except one. On his right was a bean field, and a mile beyond that, a snaking line of trees. A fencerow? A creek? Didn’t matter what it was. His body hummed, pulled him in that direction like a magnet seeking its mate. “There.” He pointed straight across the field at the trees. “She’s there.”
Only a minute ago, Xander’s head had felt on the verge of exploding, his body spent, but all that had vanished. What remained was anticipation and worry and restrained rage that she’d been taken from him.
The guys all stood by their open car doors staring at him.
“That worked?” Kent didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “As in, really worked? Like she’s really across the field? How could you know that?”
“It’s their connection,” Dad answered for him. “There is a bond between them that defies definition.”
“Jesus.” Matt’s tone wasn’t merely doubting; it was downright pissy sounding. “Here we go again—you and your mystical connection shit.”
Kent ducked inside the car and got a pair of binoculars from the glove box. He looked down the road in front of them, then down the road behind them. “I don’t see a way to get over to those trees. The closest road was a few miles back, meaning we’d end up backtracking, and even then I’m not sure we’d be able to get to that specific chunk of trees. I don’t see any road turning off in front of us either.”
“I saw a shortcut. Everyone get in.” Xander rounded the hood of the car, heading for the driver’s seat. Kent wasn’t going to like his shortcut, but the guy could go fuck himself.
“You saw a road back there?” Kent got in the passenger seat. “I don’t see anything, and I don’t remember—”
Xander pedal-to-the-metaled it before they’d even closed their car doors. The engine roared and they shot forward. He cranked the wheel to the right. They slid, bounced, and plowed into the bean field.
“What are you doing?” Kent shouted.
“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
The car fishtailed in the soft dirt, and he wrangled with the wheel until the tires found traction. And then they were sailing through a field of beans.