Cross Waves, page 8
“It’s what I suspect. The energy used in the crystal we found in the vortex was Julia’s, and she wouldn’t have voluntarily let them store it in a crystal.”
“But the energy at the gem show was illusion energy. That’s not Percy’s talent.”
“No, it’s not.” Red light and green warred within Rolf’s aura.
“They’ve kidnapped someone else, haven’t they? Someone with illusion energy.”
Rolf grimaced. “Probably.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Stay here. Make supper. Recuperate. If I’m right, they’ll show up, and we’ll be ready for them.”
Rolf scooped spaghetti and meatballs onto two plates and set them on the table. All the while, he fought a terrible weight in his stomach. What would happen if he wasn’t able to protect Geneva? What if his plan incited the monster inside him? What if he got so out of control, he couldn’t stop from hurting her?
“Rolf.”
He came back to the present with a start. She must have been talking to him for some time. He pretended he’d been listening. “What?”
“I asked when you learned to cook like this?”
He shrugged, getting up. “Since I bought this place. There are no nearby restaurants. Water?” He held up a pitcher of ice water.
“Sure.”
He stood next to her and poured water in her glass and managed to resist the urge to bury his face in her soft hair. Instead, he set the pitcher down and took the seat across from her. What he didn’t say was how many times he wondered what it would be like to have her here. And here she was. But it was only temporary.
She twirled the final bite of spaghetti on her fork, closed her eyes, and savored it. “Mmm…homemade sauce. This is delicious.” Her eyes popped open before he could look away. “What’s for dessert?”
You. He took a breath. “You always did like your sweets. I think I can dig up some chocolate ice cream in the freezer. Will that work?”
She smiled, and the sight had him gripping his water glass. He set the glass down and went to dish the ice cream before he said or did something foolish. By the time he returned, Geneva had moved to the front window and was staring at something outside.
He set the ice cream on the table and went to look at what had her so fascinated. An elk had wandered from under the pine trees surrounding the house and stood in the driveway. Its giant rack was tilted back, and it looked at him as if it knew him.
“She’s staring at us. You don’t suppose our kidnappers figured out how to control animals, do you?”
He laughed. “It’s a he. Only males have antlers. And anything is possible, but I doubt it. There are a lot of elk in this area. They often wander close to the cabin.”
She turned suddenly, her chest lining up with his. Far too close. Power swirled inside him, a funnel cloud of desire. His mind automatically found an opening in her brain waves and latched on.
“What other animals do you see around here?”
Her eyes were soft with curiosity and excitement. A piece of hair curled slightly to frame her face. How he would love to brush it away. Her lips opened slightly, and he caught a glimpse of straight white teeth. If he leaned down just a little closer, and she tilted her head up ever so slightly, their lips would meet. He could almost feel their softness.
“Rolf?”
He cleared his throat. “Elk, mule deer, coyotes…the occasional black bear or mountain lion, if you’re lucky.”
She rolled her eyes, but it only made her look more adorable. “That sounds like my worst nightmare.”
Pink stained her cheeks, and he didn’t have to read her thoughts because he knew them. “I’ve been in your worst nightmare, and as I recall, there were no wild animals present. Unless you count the human kind.” He chuckled softly, and then he did reach out and touch the strand of hair that tempted him, moving it from her cheek.
Electricity arced between them, and the blanket dropped from around her shoulders.
“Rolf, I…” She placed a hand on his shoulder.
Their gazes locked. Step away. He should move. Now. It was the right thing to do. “What is it?”
“I’m going to find out if the elk is real.”
14
Trapped
Geneva used the distraction of the elk to fight her attraction to Rolf. She only planned to concentrate on its energy for a moment—just enough to verify it was a real animal and not some sort of illusion or dream image planted by Julia and Percy’s captors. But the moment she shut her eyes, the animal’s energy proved elusive, spiraling away from her the more she tried to chase it down.
Greens turned to blues, blues to grays, and grays grew light until they nearly disappeared. Follow me, follow me, follow me. The elk disappeared into the gray mist.
She and Rolf were children, running in a field of daisies. He handed her a bundle of flowers because he knew how she liked them.
“I’ll tell you my secret if you promise not to tell anyone else,” he said.
“I would never tell anything you told me.”
He hung his head as if he were embarrassed to meet her eyes.
“What’s wrong, Rolf?”
“My mom left us. My dad says she won’t be coming back.”
“Where did she go?”
“Florida. She has a boyfriend.”
He reached down and plucked a daisy, then removed its petals one by one. “She said she couldn’t take it anymore. She doesn’t like being around us. She wants to be around normal people.”
“I’m sorry, Rolf.”
He toed the grass with his foot. “She’s afraid of me.”
“What did you do?”
Rolf shrugged, looking up at the sky. The sun had disappeared behind dark clouds. “I don’t wanna talk about it. C’mon, there’s a bad storm coming. This way. To the woods.”
Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.
“We’re not supposed to go into the woods. If we go there, we’ll never come out again.”
But Rolf wasn’t listening. He took off running and disappeared into the darkness. She shouldn’t follow him into the woods. Her mother and father had warned her. But what choice did she have? She always followed Rolf. She followed him everywhere. She’d follow him to the end of time if she had to.
“Rolf, wait up. Please. I’m coming. Don’t leave me.”
Now she was running, running, running, clutching the bouquet of daisies and breathing hard. She couldn’t lose Rolf. He was everything to her. She paused at the edge of the woods to catch her breath and find her courage. There was no turning back now. She plunged into the darkness after him, but her foot struck a piece of wood, sending her backward, her bottom smacking the hard ground. In front of her, pieces of wood slammed into place, forming a giant barrier.
“No, no, no.” She got up and ran to the chunks of wood nailed together, striking them with her fists over and over and over until her hands stung. The wood didn’t budge. She couldn’t follow Rolf. He was in the dark woods, and he would never return. He was lost to her.
Tears streamed from her eyes, and she wiped them away and then looked at her hands in horror. They were covered in blood. She’d whacked the barrier so hard, her flesh was torn. She slumped to the ground and folded her head into her knees. She wouldn’t go back without Rolf, and she couldn’t move forward. She would stay here forever.
A sound reached her ears, almost a murmur. She ignored it at first. But it wouldn’t be ignored. It grew louder, building in intensity, almost like a person’s voice. She lifted her head and looked at the field of daisies. No one was there. No one could reach her. She was alone, and night was coming fast.
“Geneva.”
“Rolf?” She stood and peered at the barrier, but the sound hadn’t come from inside. No, it had come from far, far away. So far, it stretched beyond the field of daisies.
“Come back, Geneva. Please.”
Rolf sounded distressed. She turned and moved across the field, first walking then running toward the sound.
“But you ran into the woods?”
“Come back to me. Please.”
She fell on the slick grass, but she got up and kept running toward the sound of his voice. Then the grass ended, and there was an open chasm. Before she could stop herself, she stepped into it. Into nothingness.
Falling, falling, falling.
Her stomach curled into her lungs as a feeling of weightlessness took hold. She would land at the bottom of the chasm and die. There was no way back.
Strong arms snatched her mid-fall. “Open your eyes.”
Her mind obeyed, and she blinked, staring into Rolf’s hard face. His eyes were dark with a fierceness she couldn’t understand. His skin held a dull red cast before she realized she was seeing the energy inside him. He was consumed with worry, but he held it inside, keeping it from transferring to her.
“Don’t look down. Don’t look anywhere else. Stay focused on me.”
“How did you find me?”
Even as she asked the question she knew. She had gotten lost in the colors. They were in the landscape of her mind. Somehow Rolf had hacked into her brain and was guiding her back to consciousness. He had taken a tremendous risk for her. Any transfer of emotion and he’d be stranded in her mind with her. Unless someone found them in the remote cabin and woke them up, their physical bodies would waste away from starvation.
“Control your fear.”
The sharp sound of his voice snapped her to awareness of their dire situation. Automatically, she took a breath, calming her heartbeat.
“Look at me. Look only at me. Listen to the sound of my voice.”
She did as he asked, and they ascended at a crawl. Inch by precious inch. Sweat beaded on Rolf’s forehead. What tremendous control he must be exercising to move them forward. His eyes looked more black than blue. A vein stood out on his forehead. The grays grew sharper, bolder. Colors reached for her, first blues, then greens, then yellows. And then they landed on solid ground.
Rolf let out a groan and crushed her against his chest. At first, she thought her body was trembling uncontrollably before she realized the shaking was coming from Rolf. The buttons on his shirt pressed against her cheek. His body felt solid and warm.
She opened her eyes. He lay against the window of the cabin, cradling her in his arms like he’d never let go.
“You okay?”
He didn’t answer, and when she pushed against his arms, they didn’t budge. Her heart pounded furiously, and her lungs tightened. “Rolf, please, I can’t breathe.”
He moved slightly, enough for her to realize he was alive and could hear her. The shaking stopped, but he didn’t say anything. And honestly, after the hell they’d endured, it was comforting to be held. Heaven.
Thirty minutes passed, or maybe it was an hour before his arms loosened, and she could pull far enough away to look at him. A cloud of darkness seemed to shroud his body. His eyes looked stark and empty, and that scared her worse than anything.
“I’m sorry, Rolf. It’s never been this bad before. It happened so fast this time.”
“You don’t understand.” His voice sounded gravelly.
“I do. I got lost in the colors, and you had to hack into my mind to save me. You created the barrier that stopped me from going into the woods. You found me and brought me back, even though you could have been trapped. I…thank you.”
“The elk was an illusion, created for the sole purpose of attracting your attention. As soon as you opened yourself up, you were hit with dream energy. A double whammy. You didn’t stand a chance. It’s my fault. I should have thought of this.”
Rolf groaned, and the sound was both mournful and angry. He held his thumb and pointer finger together until there was only a narrow pinprick of light between them. “You were this close to slipping from my grasp and being lost forever. If that would have happened, I…”
“You would have died. You shouldn’t have gone in after me. It was too risky.”
“This isn’t about me.” His eyes were so dark blue, they could swallow her whole. “This is about you. You can’t use your talent again. Not until you get checked out. Not until we’re sure you’re okay. What happened tonight can never ever happen again.”
The truth was a bolt of lightning, striking the weakest part of her. Oh God. “You think I should go to Corvey.”
15
Truth
“It’s your choice whether you go to Corvey or not. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But if you decide not to go, then you must promise not to use your talent like that again.
Fear carved an icy pathway through her veins. “What about Julia? If I don’t track her, how will we ever find her?”
Rolf’s gaze caught hers, stubbornness etched in the hard lines of his face. “We’ll find another way.”
“The thought of stepping into Corvey again gives me the creeps.”
“You won’t go alone. It won’t be like when you were a child.”
Rolf still held her in his lap, but now she felt the awkwardness of their position. And her brain was beginning to function again. She grabbed his arms. The lamplight flickered, and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. “Rolf, whoever created the illusion of the elk planned to kidnap me. They must have some way of bringing me to consciousness like you did.”
“I don’t think they intended to send you into a coma.”
“You don’t understand. They’re probably outside now waiting for us to leave. They wouldn’t expect you to hack into my mind and save me. They’d think you do the logical thing and rush me to a government hospital. That’s when they planned to grab me and probably kill you.”
Rolf held her hands. “It’s okay. I took care of them.”
“How?”
“When you first went under, everything seemed normal, but something was off about the elk’s appearance, so I went outside to investigate. The animal disappeared when I approached, but there was someone there. They took off into the woods before I could get a good look at them. I found a crystal where the elk was standing.”
She expelled the breath she’d been holding. What Rolf didn’t say was he didn’t follow whoever it was because he worried about her. She’d ruined their plan to find Julia and Percy with her lack of control.
Rolf tilted her face until their eyes met. “It’s my fault, not yours. I knew you’d gotten lost in the colors before. I knew these kidnappers had the ability to create illusions using crystals. I should have understood what was happening and stayed with you. But I didn’t realize until I went outside and found the crystal. By then, it was…almost too late.”
His voice dropped, and she shivered, although she could swear the temperature in the room went up a notch. Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She was acting babyish. Rolf was probably growing tired of her.
He grimaced, and in one smooth motion, he lifted her in his arms and settled her on the couch, tucking an afghan around her. He sat next to her and pulled her into his arms, pressing her head next to his heart and stroking her hair. She could hear the steady thump of his heart. She must be worse off than she’d imagined, for him to hold her like this.
His voice rumbled under her ear. “Whoever this is knows too much about us. They have Julia. I suspect they interrogated her. They knew I had a place here. They knew about your talent.”
She should let him go, but it felt so good to be held and stroked like she was his. Like they were a real couple and not just partners who’d survived a traumatic event. Like he truly cared about her. “They used crystals.”
“Right. They created an illusion of the elk to lure you to use your talent to investigate the animal. Once you did, they were ready with a dream crystal.”
“But how did you know what was happening with me? That I was lost in a dream?”
Rolf shifted his weight under her. “I’m not sure. Instinct maybe. What is it?”
She pushed herself from his chest. Rolf was only being kind by holding her. And she was a fool to believe his touch meant anything more. “I’m okay now. You can let me up.”
His whole body stiffened. “I’d rather not.”
“You don’t have to play the gentleman.”
“For an off-the-chart talent, you don’t have a clue, do you?”
She studied his face and the normal green color surrounding his body. Her heartbeat kicked into overdrive. “What are you saying?”
The green color shifted and morphed into a royal purple—the color of passion. She managed a breath. The fierce look in his eyes was enough to have her coming apart in his arms.
His face descended until his lips were inches from hers. She could feel his breath on her face. Smell his sweat and piney aftershave. Automatically, she reached for him, her fingertips touching his cheek and the scrape of his five o’clock shadow. He kissed her palm, the heat sending shivers down her spine.
He groaned as if the sound was torn from some secret place inside him. “Geneva Erickson, I have wanted you for as long as I can remember. I have spent the past eight years doing whatever I had to do to keep you safe. But tonight, when a single breath or thought could have torn you from me… My God, I can’t do this any longer. I can’t protect you from me. I need you too damn much.”
“But…”
“But nothing.” His lips covered hers, warm and sensual and delicious, drowning out any protest. His tongue swept the roof of her mouth and her teeth. Energy raced along her nerve endings, tingling, burning, growing into a raging fire. She placed her hands around his neck and pulled him closer.
She kissed him with all the years of pent-up desire and frustration, reveling in the feel of his arms and inhaling his cool breath and the minty scent of him. White-hot power erupted from her hands and blasted toward the ceiling, nearly singeing the hair on the back of his head and causing her to pull back in alarm. He flinched, but she couldn’t take the time to apologize. She pushed herself from his arms, gasping. “I’ll hurt you.”
