to change the tire a man appeared out of nowhere and
started in my direction. I just had the feeling that I was in
trouble, that he was going to try to grab me. So I ran,
stupidly, into the woods and thank God I heard you guys or
I swear I'd be dead."
"Take a good deep breath," Kal instructed out loud .
Do as I say, he silently commanded her. "I'm Kal and this
is Nathan, Doug, and James. We're here on a
fishing/camping/pretending we're still in college guys'
weekend and we will help you. Don't worry."
"Did you just tell me to do as you said?" Isabelle
questioned, looking at his friends but fortunately they just
looked confused. "Are you serious? I appreciate the help
but I'm not a helpless female. If one of you would loan me
your cell phone, I'll call the police. I left mine in the car
because I didn't know I was about to be jumped and it said
it was out of range."
She'd actually heard that? Out loud? How was that
possible? Kal swallowed hard into his throat. Doug was
getting out his cell phone. Was it possible? Had he just
stumbled onto one of his kind? And if that was true then the
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person who chased her was not really gone, just waiting till
he could get her alone. Isabelle Listora was in way more
danger than she could possibly imagine. They had searched
for more than twenty years for their missing brethren and
had he actually found her just by chance in the woods?
Nothing about this was making Kal feel at all at ease.
"Here's an idea." Putting his hand out, he flipped the
top of the phone down thereby stopping her from using
Doug's cellular. No one that she could call was going to be
able to protect her from what was after her and he knew
from personal experience that involving the human
authorities often made things much worse. "Let's all walk
back to your car. It will be easier for the police to find us
and maybe we can spot the guy and give them a
description." And maybe his head would spin in a circle
while he sang show tunes. When had he gotten so
proficient at lying?
"Thanks," Isabelle responded, her voice a tad
warmer but her demeanor still reserved and her eyes
terrified. "I'm sorry. I'm not used to feeling helpless or
pursued like that. I especially didn't expect that to happen
while I was out here in the middle of nowhere changing a
car tire. Wouldn't it have been useful if I could have called
one of those tire changing services and then I could have
just stayed in my car and all of you wouldn't now be
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bothered with some random woman destroying your
vacation and making you protect her from some crazy
rapist?"
"Let's just get you safe." Kal led the group with one
hand on Isabelle's arm, back through the woods. His friends
were used to following his lead when he was like this. It
was natural, as if they instinctively knew he was in charge
even without his having to control their minds. "We weren't
catching that many fish anyway and we're really just a
bunch of wannabe woodsmen." This earned him some
chuckles from his friends and strong denials to the contrary.
Kal was pleased his distraction had worked. He
didn't want anyone focused on the fact that he had
heightened his senses and was now scanning their
surroundings to see if anyone was around or watching
them. He didn't catch even an inkling of anyone else and it
put him on edge. Nervousness was not an emotion that he
generally possessed and he would be glad when he could
send it on its way.
"Veli," he silently called, " I think I've found
someone." Quickly he relayed the whole scene to the man
who was the closest thing to a parent he'd ever had. He
hated talking to him but given the circumstances he didn't
see that he had any choice.
"Keep her safe Kal, until I can get there," Veli
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replied immediately, taking on Isabelle as his responsibility
and once again reminding Kal about just how little faith
Veli had in his abilities. Veli was probably right, he would
probably screw this up just like he screwed up everything
else and once again everyone would be able to say 'I told
you so.'
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Chapter Four
Isabelle used her walk in the woods to collect her
thoughts and take some deep breaths. She couldn't believe
the series of events that had just taken place. She supposed
she shouldn't be surprised with all the strange things that
had been happening. Hearing voices and strange dreams
aside, weird things always happened to her.
It was easy to pretend that these incidents were
nothing when she was going through her day-to-day routine
and acting normal but the truth was they weren't, not at all.
The first time she could remember was when she was
twelve years old and she had sworn the old lady next door
had visited her bedroom for a nice chat, only to find out
later that the woman had died around midnight. Or maybe
it was reminiscent from when she had concentrated really
hard and could have sworn she was responsible for moving
the car that had rolled on top of her grandfather's leg and
then healing her grandfather with her hands.
These incidents had been easily explained away at
the time. Her mother had insisted Isabelle had coincidently
dreamed of the old woman the night before and that she
had imagined she was responsible for the car moving off of
her grandfather. Anytime Isabelle tried to protest about this,
her mother would respond to her with one of her trademark
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statements.
"Strange things happen every day, Isabelle. What
makes you think you're any weirder than anybody else?"
But Isabelle had always felt different, as if she
didn't quite belong where she was.
Her parents had claimed that it was all nonsense.
Her mother liked to use words like eccentric and unique
when describing her daughter and her father said that she
was one of a kind and there was no one else in the world
like her. When she was little, her older brother would just
laugh and claim that of course she was weird—they had,
after all, found her during a thunderstorm her in the
backyard. But her mother had told her not to worry about
that, older brothers sometimes said mean things when they
teased their sisters. Somehow that brotherly form of teasing
had never gotten funny to her and she hadn't missed the
stern way that her mother had lectured her brother in
hushed voices and how he had never mentioned that
particular joke aga
in. She had secretly spent the whole rest
of her adolescence wondering if she was an alien.
Today's events were making her question that again.
She didn't know why the voice had told her to run at
that very moment but she was thrilled that she had known
she had to get out of there at that very instant. Her legs still
burned, an indication she really had to be better about
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getting to the gym but she didn't feel tired and she had
known that if she could beat her pursuer then help would be
waiting for her. As if she just had to get to those men by the
creek. The voice had stated that she had to get to him. Had
it meant Kal? Or one of the other men that she was walking
with?
Isabelle shook her head. She was pretty sure it had
meant Kal. He had taken charge as soon as she had seen
him and she knew right away that the others would defer to
him.
Isabelle quickly pulled a strand of her dirty, tangled,
dark hair behind her ears and looked up at the man leading
her through the woods. His name was Kal but she would
have called him something else, something more personal.
She would have called him the man from her dreams.
It was a good thing he couldn't read her mind
because she was having rather unladylike, and given the
circumstances inappropriate, thoughts about the dark
stranger helping her out of her current predicament. So
what that she had seen his near double about a million
times over the years whenever she first closed her eyes at
night? He was always laughing with her and touching her,
making her feel safe and secure. She knew when she was
with him that she was the only woman in the entire world
that he could or would ever find desirable.
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What did it mean that he actually existed? Was he
the man she had been dreaming about or had she somehow
seen him before and placed him in her dreams? Was he the
same guy? Did he know who she was?
She knew every contour of his face. He had black
hair, very similar to hers and a face that looked like it had
seen more worries than most people his age even though it
was still smooth and unlined. The eyes were haunted even
though they pretended to be jovial. No one should have
eyes that were that hidden. The windows to his soul held
the look of a person who was totally in control all of the
time. She wondered if he ever smiled or did he just pretend
to?
High cheekbones lined his deep dark brown eyes
and whiskers finished his face, giving him a certain
western, rustic appeal, as if he had just stepped out of some
cowboy movie where he had met someone at noon with his
pistols drawn. She had gotten a good feel of his body when
she had tumbled out of the woods and ran into him. She
knew that under his flannel shirt and jeans was the hard,
muscular, and perfectly-put-together body of a real man.
Not that she had felt the chests of so many men that she
could really do any kind of comparison, but she had the
feeling that Kal would look really extraordinary with his
shirt off.
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Shaking her head, she cleared her throat. She wasn't
the type to swoon over some dumb embodiment of male
beauty just because she had been a little roughhoused by a
psychopath. It was time to get control of herself. There had
to be a psychological name for this kind of thing and she
was going to ask her friend Jeanne about it when she got
home. It wasn't every day that the guy from your dreams,
who you would have sworn you invented to fulfill a latent
sexual need, popped up in real life as your savior in the
woods.
And she could have sworn that he had told her to do
as he said even though everyone had acted like she was
confused. Everything about it was putting her on edge.
How had she known they were down by the river? It wasn't
like they were playing loud music and carrying on.
This thought had to be stopped midway as they
reached her car. Had they really traveled two miles? How
much time had passed and why hadn't she noticed it? She
hated to admit to herself that it had been because the dark
stranger had been touching her arm.
Everything was just as she had left it. No sign
anywhere of the man who had attacked her. She was sure
the police were just going to see a hysterical woman. But
Kal, he claimed he had heard the man chasing her, even
though the others had not. Add that to the list of strange
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things related to the hunk standing beside her.
"Looks like that weather stopped," Doug remarked,
looking at the sky. "That's fortuitous."
She thought she saw Kal wince a little.
Kal shrugged but if it was possible Isabelle would
swear he looked even more guarded.
"So where are you from, Ms. Listora? Are you close
to home? Should we call your husband or boyfriend to
come pick you up?"
In her life, Isabelle had never seen anyone fish for
information so blatantly. If the situation had been different,
she would have asked him if he needed a pole.
"I'm not from anywhere around here." Isabelle
looked down, surprised by how difficult she found it to use
her voice. "It's been a really strange week for me. First, I
got a phone call that there was a child out here that was
being forcibly kept out of school. I work for the state as a
social worker. My boss informed me that the state was
tapped out of resources and they needed me to come four
hours out of my way to investigate the situation. I wasn't
going to argue if there was a child in danger so I drove out
to the house that they had told me about to see the child's
parents. Only it was abandoned so I got back in the car to
come home, blew a flat, and well, you know the rest of the
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story."
Isabelle wasn't usually so forthcoming with
information about herself, having had a sense from the time
she was a small child that she needed to protect herself but
she had to admit that she was nervous, and even though she
should feel safer now, she was getting more and more
nervous by the minute. She couldn't seem to help herself
from rambling on.
* * * *
Kal didn't like this situation one bit. It seemed
obvious to him that she had been lured out here to the
woods to be alone in order to be slaughtered. The Evil that
had incarnated on the same day that the Outsiders were
born, or the Really Bad Dude as Kal had called him as a
child, had obviously targeted her as one of them.
&nb
sp; But it seemed that Isabelle didn't know what she
was, which put her in even more danger. Outsiders who
were trained in their ways, even ones without much of an
offensive power, always turned around to fight. Veli would
have beaten them if they hadn't. Even the women had to
know how to defend themselves and slaughter evil. It had
nearly killed Charma to do so and Kal had always silently
wondered if empaths shouldn't be exempt from that rule.
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But Veli was the only one with previous knowledge of their
people so he had to assume that he knew what he was
doing.
How had the bad guys found her if she hadn't been
using her powers? Kal would bet anything that the danger
hadn't passed and only through some unknown luck had she
avoided being destroyed at the abandoned house in the
woods. His stomach started to twist and the back of his
neck to sweat.
Once again, he knew something was coming.
It was time to be a little proactive and stop treating
this girl with kid gloves. For a moment, he let his gaze
travel her body and had to restrain his hands from reaching
out to touch her. She didn't belong to him but she was
going to listen to him, whether she wanted to or not. He
was obviously going to have to have to take control of this
girl's life, and get her to Veli, even if he had to act like a
caveman to do it. Charma and Marina had certainly told
him that he could be caveman-esque on occasion.
As if on cue, a police motorcycle appeared down
the road. Nathan ran out, waving his hands to ask it to stop.
Kal could see the scene unfolding before him but felt
powerless to stop it. It was a terrible situation and one he'd
faced before. There were times when he was left with the
horrendous sensation of being stuck within his powers.