Fade (5 page)

He’d called me beautiful.

“Not really.”

“Not really what?” He frowned again.

Not really beautiful.
I’d always been pretty, but the last month hadn’t done much for my appearance. I’d lost weight, I was pale, and my eyes and nose were perpetually red. Grief wasn’t flattering. “Not really unusual,” I lied instead of getting into all of that. I didn’t need any more depressing thoughts, thank you very much.

“How so?”

“There are all kinds of paintings depicting a woman standing on high ground.” At least, I hoped so. The only one I could remember was the
Anasazi Noble Spirit Guardian,
which was more a spirit than a woman, but whatever.

“Oh.” He was quiet for a long minute, then, arching a brow as if he wasn’t sure whether I was telling the truth or teasing him, he asked, “Is that true?”

“Probably.” I smirked when he shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Men always seem to think women venture to high ground to be mysterious.” That was my theory, at least. Anytime a woman stood a little higher than a man, men got uncomfortable.

“And do you?”

“Venture to higher ground to be mysterious? Nope.” I bit my lip to hide a grin. “I usually dance naked around a bonfire when the mysterious urge strikes.”

He threw his head back and laughed.

The deep, silky sound sent a little arc of heat waving through my body.

“The way you say that, I could almost believe it. I’m Dace, by the way. Dace Matthews.” He held out a hand.

“I’m Arionna Jacobs,” I said, staring down at his extended hand. So far, nothing weird had happened, but now that he wasn’t snarling at me, I had a feeling touching him would be madness. I also had a feeling not touching him would be worse.

I bravely placed my hand into his.

The contact was brief, but the reaction instantaneous.

The flippant mood disappeared as soon as my hand touched his. Power, presence,
something
raced up my arm and slammed into me, knocking the breath out of me.

I swayed, and our eyes met as Dace’s thoughts whispered through mine. Shock, awe, confusion, and fear. Not of me or the inexplicable things happening between us, but of whatever had flooded into my mind with him. I still couldn’t catch enough of his thoughts to know what the thing was, but I did catch enough to know I’d been correct that day on the quad. The thing wasn’t human, and it terrified Dace.

I should have been terrified by that, but I wasn’t. I felt as whole and right as I had the first time Dace appeared in my mind.

Even through his fear, I knew he felt it, too. His eyes darkened, and his pupils widened.

He held my gaze, an absolutely predatory gleam in his eyes. Nothing human reflected in that look, but something complete male did. His desire brushed across my thoughts like a caress. He wanted me, wanted to claim me.

Something inside fluttered. Heat and desire wound their way through me like a silk sheath brushing across my skin. I was a virgin, but I
wanted
him to claim me.

The thing in him wanted it just as much.

The animal’s desire hummed across my mind and Dace’s like an echo of an echo. Somehow he pulled back that part of himself, but I wasn’t so sure he would be able to contain it. The creature wanted out.
Now.

I wanted him to let it out.

Dace hissed and jerked his hand from mine as if he’d been burned. He clenched his jaw, and his entire body tensed.

A muscle in his cheek twitched. Once, twice, three times.

The animal strained hard to get to me, growling audibly.

Dace’s fear lanced through my thoughts again, but I felt no fear at all.

For a second, I thought he would lose the internal battle of wills and the animal would come storming fully into my mind. For a second, I hoped he did lose that battle. I wanted to know who or what he was, and I had a feeling he’d never tell me on his own.

My first impression had been absolutely correct though: I
did
belong to him. I just wasn’t sure why, or how.

His shock rippled through me, and he blinked.

His thoughts vanished in an instant.

My head didn’t hurt this time, but I felt dazed by the sudden disappearance.

When I could think again, Dace still looked the same, but drastically different, too. The vitality and energy he exuded were gone. Even the green lights of his eyes were muted to an ordinary emerald color.

I took a step back, confused and alarmed at the change.

No one, and I do mean no one, can change so completely and so quickly.

My mind reeled. “What—?”

“I’ve got to go. Sorry I snapped at you earlier. Just be careful … please?” So much feeling nestled within the word; he actually seemed to plead with me to listen and agree on levels I hadn’t even known existed.

I wanted to promise to obey his request, but before I could follow through with the unfamiliar urge, he jogged back the way we’d come without another glance in my direction.

I stood there watching him as he faded into the trees, clueless again.

What happened? How? How did I feel? What did it mean?

I had no answers, save that for a minute, I hadn’t been alone in my mind. Dace had come rushing in, and he hadn’t come alone.

With the exception of Monday, I’d never felt anything so amazing.

The sense of relief rushing up overwhelmed me. I wasn’t crazy after all.

I might not have understood what that meant, but the confirmation sent relief shooting through me. Determination quickly followed. I had to find out more.

Had I heard his thoughts just once, maybe I could have believed I imagined the entire thing, but my imagination didn’t have near that much power. Besides, Dace’s voice sounded nothing like that growl. The way he spoke was low, dark … soft and rough at the same time. That possessive growl was something else altogether, and it was as instinctively familiar to me as Dace.

Rationally, I knew I should have been frightened, but I didn’t feel that way at all. For the first time in weeks, I felt optimistic. Like I could learn to deal with this new life, to accept it, and maybe even come to appreciate it.

That probably should have worried me, too.

Chapter Four

D
ad and I went to Cabot for a laptop on Saturday. We returned four hours later with a laptop, an all-in-one printer, and enough other equipment to set up a small business. I didn’t know what half the stuff did, but he seemed to think we’d need everything at some point, so I didn’t argue much. I did, however, try to convince him to at least let me pay for the iPod he insisted I needed.

“It’ll drown out the stuffy professors,” he joked.

I couldn’t convince him to let me pay for that either. I got the lunch tab away from him and paid for before he noticed though. He objected as soon as he figured out what I’d done, of course, but the damage was already done. I’d spent a whopping $27.38 on lunch.

We arrived back in town at one, unloaded our goodies, and then Dad headed over to the Inn to check in and see how things were going. I wasn’t sure if he and Melinda, the owner, were dating or not, but he spent a lot of time over there. Melinda didn’t seem to mind much. Dad was one of those people everyone loved. Not pushy or demanding, but quietly there to lend a hand.

I prowled around the house for a little while. Took my new laptop out of the box and set everything up on the desk. Without access to the network, my interest quickly fizzled. By three, I was bored out of my mind, and my thoughts quickly returned to Dace and our bizarre meeting.

My obsession with him had grown by leaps and bounds. He didn’t make any sense. Hell, nothing made any sense anymore.

Yet again, I tried to convince myself to forget about him, but I couldn’t. The fact that part of me, a big part, didn’t want to stop didn’t help the situation. I still hurt, but I felt better. Stronger. And I owed that to him, though I didn’t understand why. I knew I wasn’t obsessing because he made me feel better. I was obsessing because the things happening between us were unbelievable, yet still somehow felt as familiar to me as an old, worn blanket.

I didn’t understand a lot about the world. The Bermuda Triangle, people who swore they were abducted by aliens, psychics, serial killers, ghosts, Bigfoot … an endless list of unsolved mysteries existed. I knew that. I accepted it. But I’d never seen any of those things for myself, let alone felt them. So why now? Why here? Why
me
? I was just a girl. Just a sad, messed up girl. Nothing special about me at all.

Except, I wasn’t so sure that was true anymore. I felt as if some new road stretched before me, obscured in shadow, and ominous, but one I needed to travel anyway. Whatever lay at the end was important, vitally so, though I couldn’t say why.

I had to find Dace and demand an explanation for the bizarre things happening to me. About why he felt so familiar, about the thing inside him, how he could access my mind, about everything that had me recounting our meetings on an endless loop.

I didn’t
want
answers. I
needed
them.

I braided my hair Pocahontas fashion, added a headband, grabbed my coat, then jogged down the steps, on my way to the park within ten minutes, iPod in hand.

The weather had taken a plunge into frigid, but I didn’t mind. I got wrapped up in the music I’d downloaded from Dad’s computer, and before I knew it, the crumbling wall loomed to my left. A touch of disappointment hit when I realized Dace wasn’t there, but I didn’t let his absence deter me from my purpose.

I cleared a spot where I could sit with my back to the wall and keep the trail in sight, then settled in to wait him out. Call it instinct or whatever, but I knew he’d show sooner or later. I had music, a warm coat, a crumbling wall, and a list of questions that needed answering. I could wait.

Forty-five minutes later, there was still no sign of him.

I rested my head against the wall with my eyes closed, listening to the music and drifting. I still wasn’t sleeping much. When I lay down at night, my mind refused to shut off. Memories of my mom, questions about Dace, and a million other things which made sleep impossible came bubbling up from the depths of my mind.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was setting, and I wasn’t alone. A huge black Labrador laid three feet in front of me, his head tilted to one side as if trying to figure out what I was doing sleeping in the middle of the woods. A good question, I thought.

I pulled off the headphones. “Hi, boy. Where’d you come from?”

He raised his head to look at me and scooted forward a few inches on his belly. He stopped and whined.

“Well, come on,” I laughed, giving him permission to approach.

He bounded to my side in an instant, butting me with his head, demanding to be scratched.

I obliged, cooing and talking to him as his tail thumped happily on the ground. He didn’t have tags, but I wasn’t surprised. In small towns like Beebe, seeing dogs with tags tended to be more notable than seeing them running around untagged.

The dog flipped onto his back, and I dutifully scratched his stomach. Almost instantly, he jumped to his feet with a sharp whimper.

I jerked my hand back, thinking I’d hurt him somehow.

“What’s wrong, boy?”

He spun away from me and growled low in his throat, his eyes trained on a point in the shadows on the other side of the trail. I tried to look around him to see what had his attention, but I couldn’t see anything but shadows and undergrowth from my seat on the ground.

“What is it, boy?” I climbed to my feet.

My gaze landed on a solid gray wolf, half obscured by a massive tree on the other side of the trail. Unlike the animal I’d seen on the day of Mom’s funeral, this wasn’t the domesticated kind of wolf. This was the real deal. Big, gray, wild, and ferocious.

My heart stopped, then started racing.

The wolf stared in our direction, snarling at us. The warning sound coming from his throat screamed “I’m going to eat you” loud and clear. I suddenly understood what Little Red Riding Hood must have felt when she figured out her grandma wasn’t her grandma.

I was shaking in my boots.

I looked around for something, anything, to defend myself with as the dog alternated between excited barks and low, warning growls. A menacing enough sound so far as it went, but I kind of doubted the wolf thought so. He looked curiously un-intimidated as he snarled. As per Murphy’s Law of animal attacks, not a loose brick, rock, branch, or stick lay anywhere within grabbing distance.

I was so screwed.

The wolf paced forward.

The lab lowered his head and growled one long, continuous growl.

I held my breath.

The wolf looked at me and then at the dog and growled back. Unlike the dog’s, though, the wolf’s growl was actually scary. Warning bells sounded in the far reaches of my mind, but they started too late. Of course.

Between one quick, panicked breath in and one sharp exhalation out, the wolf charged toward us. Bits of leaves and mud flew up where his paws hit the ground.

The dog dove in front of me, snarling protectively.