Out of Reach (24 page)

"Thank God," I whisper, able to recognize
the physical stature of my guys anywhere. I remain silent in the
back of the cart, hoping to be forgotten in the chaos the sudden
appearance of the Wanderers has churned up. Through the wooden hole
I watch as the central rider raises his arm and along with it a
wall of sand. Pointing toward the caravan the sand rolls forward
like a wave, crashing down over the camp of men and animals,
effectively crushing everything in its path.

Self-preservation is a strong reflex and
it’s the only reason I manage to get my eyes closed before the sand
blows through the wagon, ripping the tarp clean off. Dazed as I am
I can still make out Kade's voice yelling in a foreign tongue.
Moments later hands are forcefully lifting me from the cart and
scared men begin to drag me through the sand, dropping me at Kade's
feet.

He squats down next to me, his gentle hands
holding me while someone cuts away my bonds. Fury to rival an
avenging angel burns in his eyes and he pulls me to my feet,
kissing me soundly in front of everyone. Cradling me in the crux of
his arm he screams at my kidnappers in what I assume is Arabic.
Cowering in the sand they quake, bowing to Kade and the other
Wanderers, wailing some gibberish I don't understand.

Satisfied, Kade swings up into his saddle,
clearly the master of this situation. Z lifts me carefully onto the
horse’s back behind Kade. Wrapping my arms around him I rest
against his mighty shoulders, too tired to keep my own head up.
Safe but completely shaken my humor surfaces to make light of the
uncomfortable turn of events.

"What happened to that rule about no public
displays of power?" I tease.

"Please, the likelihood of this ending up on
You Tube is nonexistent!" he barks out, heavy shoulders tense with
anger.

Chapter 32

I've been sitting in a half-awake state for
awhile. My body is ready to be awake but my mind wants to remain
blissfully disconnected and asleep. Finally I give up, force my
eyes to open and my mind to forgo its attempts to send me into
another REM cycle.

Lifting my head I see desert. Everywhere.
Hal is sitting behind the wheel following directions that must be
ingrained from years of coming here because there are no road
signs. Hell, there are no roads.

"I'm sorry," I squeak, throat dry, voice
cracking. Hal hands me a bottle of water but continues his silent
vigil. Thanking him I twist the cap off and chug the entire bottle,
surprised to find I'm still thirsty when I finish. Reading the
shock on my face Hal smiles.

"Get used to being thirsty," he tells me.
"This place is the recipe for dehydration."

Staring at him across the cab I wait, sure
that he has more than a few choice words for me. His eyes dart my
direction and he sighs.

"I'm not going to yell at you if that's what
you’re waiting for. I think you've more than learned your
lesson."

Letting my shoulders slump, I settle back in
my seat, trying to get comfortable. "How long have I been
asleep?"

“A couple hours; not long considering.”
Nodding I stare through the windshield. You know those questions
you just have to ask despite the fact you might not really want to
know the answer? Biting my lip I get ready to ask the one that's
been plaguing me.

"How long did it take you to find me?"

"Gwen, don't torture yourself about it," the
overly perceptive Hal tells me.

"Just answer the question," I snap
rudely.

"It cost us half a day."

"Half a day," I whisper, knowing since we
landed there are only two days left until the resealing.

"Gwen, unforeseen events like today’s are
why we gather ahead of schedule. We have plenty of time, it’s
fine." I have no response. I mean, really, what can I say, so we
ride together in silence for a time.

The terrain: it’s a desert and pretty much
looks the way National Geographic has always depicted.

The heat: well, the TV didn't do that
justice, but the rest is pretty accurate.

Traveling in the truck is tedious and we
make a lot of detours based on the landscape and the limitations of
our vehicle. Thankfully the cavalry is scouting ahead for the
safest route.

"Hal, did you fix my head? ‘Cause I don't
feel a knot."

"No, Kade did that. You had a nasty bump,
probably a concussion, but no internal damage as far as we could
tell."

"If it wasn't serious, why didn't he just
let me heal, the normal way I mean?"

“Ha!" Hal's short outburst surprises me.
"That guy breaks a lot of rules when it comes to you." Not picking
up on the tail end of his reply, I keep talking, questioning what I
do remember, still trying to connect the dots.

"He made a sandstorm, Hal, threw it right
down on top of the caravan. I've never seen anything like it, the
destruction was out of this world. Ugh," I groan gripping my
head.

"Are you hurt?!" Hal yells, voice full of
concern.

"No, it's just so hard to remember. Hal,
what happened?" Laughing with relief Hal visibly relaxes in his
seat.

"Cut yourself some slack, you were hit
pretty hard." I glare his direction, letting him know that his
patronizing is not helping.

"Geez, if looks could kill ... I'll tell you
what I know." Shaking his head, his face lights up with a lopsided
grin that I'm sure has had many a girl turning into a puddle at his
feet. His boyish charm and looks along with his wisdom and fatherly
demeanor make Hal immensely intriguing. "Realize I stayed with the
truck the entire time, so everything I'm about to tell you is
second hand." Cocking his head to the side, eyebrows raised, he
waits for my nod of understanding before continuing the tale.

"Z, who I might add seems attached to your
hip, noticed you were missing."

Covering a chuckle with my hand, I say,
"Yeah, I think that guy would follow me into the bathroom if he
could," I tell him.

"You'd only been out of my sight for twenty
minutes or so. Kade organized a search of the area immediately,
bypassing Adil's authority to do so I might add."

Smiling to myself I admit to him, "Kade's
always been my self-appointed hero." Looking at me like I must be
stupid or something, Hal continues.

"One of the women selling dried fruits and
nuts had seen where you'd gone. I got started driving while the
others split up into three groups to search. Kade came riding in
with you four or five hours later."

"I think you caught me when I got off the
horse," I interject, the fuzzy recollection coming back to me.

"That's right. We patched you up and threw
you in the cab."

As I drum my fingers on the armrest a memory
teases me but I can't quite pull the details into focus ...
something about swirling sand and being dragged.

"Oh my goodness!" I shout, surprising Hal,
who swerves unnecessarily.

"Don't do that," he tells me, annoyed.

"He kissed me,” I blurt out.

"Well, it's about time."

"Everyone was yelling, somebody pulled me
from the cart and dragged me through the sand. And then, and then
..." I pause, willing the rest of the memory to surface. "Kade was
above me, eyes fierce, glowing like an avenging angel."

"Oh crap, don't let the guys hear you say
that." Slapping Hal on the shoulder to get him to stop talking I
continue before I lose my train of thought completely.

"Somehow the ropes binding
me were gone, Kade pulled me up into his arms and kissed
me."
Whoa
, I
think to myself,
did that really
happen?
Wracking my brain I second guess
myself at first, but with every passing moment I can see that
detail more and more clearly.

"What did you say?" I ask Hal, caught off
guard by something.

"I said don't let the guys hear you
comparing them to angels. They won't like it. To us angels are the
bad guys, remember?"

"No, before that," I badger, searching for
the important piece of information I thought I’d heard. "You said
it's about time. Didn't you?"

No answer.

"Hal!" I bark, channeling my inner drill
sergeant.

"Aye, I did," he confesses.

"What did you mean by that?"

"You're a smart girl, you know what I meant.
The guy should have kissed you years ago."

And there it was, the answer to one of those
questions I might not want to know the answer to. Truth be told it
was a question I didn't even realize I was asking until it was too
late. Me and my big mouth.

It's amazing how quickly uncomfortable
topics can kill a conversation, and Hal had just thrown up the
mother of all roadblocks. Withdrawing into my own head I try to
pretend the last few minutes didn't happen.

It’s absurd. Kade is one of my oldest
friends, and well, I've got Ben. My Ben, who might be burnt to a
crisp any moment in that forest fire, stupid hero. I cut that line
of thinking short knowing thoughts of Ben will only bring on a
completely different set of anxieties that I refuse to acknowledge
right now.

Devoid of safe topics with which to occupy
myself I return to attempting to unravel what happened during my
captivity and rescue. Closing my eyes I take several deep breaths
and try to relax. I replay through the memories I do have, trying
to encourage new ones to surface and fill in the gaps. I've got
nothing from the time I was knocked out until I woke up in the back
of that wagon. Even the details of that ride are blurry as I faded
in and out of consciousness several times.

After several minutes of focusing I begin to
catch vague glimpses of the whole ordeal, but for the most part the
details are lost, buried somewhere in my subconscious. What I
recall with some clarity is being lowered off the horse into
thickly muscled arms, while another set of hands burrowed through
my hair examining my skull.

"There's no fracture, but she does have a
nasty bump," I remember Kade saying, followed by a warm tingly
sensation racing through my body like a current, lasting no more
than a split second, before leaving me cold again, but my head hurt
less. My body was loaded into the cab of the truck and I recall the
rumble of the diesel engine as it came to life. That’s it.

"Alright, I give up," I say coming to life
in my seat.

"Did I miss something?" Hal questions.

"I can't make myself remember what happened.
Even the things I do remember feel like an out of body experience,
like it was happening to someone else. I'm done forcing it to make
sense." Hal smiles indulgently.

"I'm just glad you're speaking to me again.
This is the worst commute imaginable."

Laughing I remind him, "You could be on a
horse."

"Touché."

"And I never stopped talking to you, for the
record." After executing a truly tricky maneuver between two sand
dunes, Hal pauses to look at me.

"You must have blacked out there for the
last twenty minutes then," he tells me.

"Har har," I bark sarcastically, letting him
know he's not that funny.

"Ok so tell me about this place." I open up
a new topic, hoping for answers to more of my questions.

"It's a sand pit."

"Not this," I whip my hand around indicating
the current scenery. “Where we're going."

"Essam. It's where it all began." Hal has my
attention now. I perk up at this new discovery and listen with rapt
attention.

"It's the site of the original sealing,
where the Wanderers were created, and has served as our
headquarters ever since."

"Wait, I thought headquarters was in
Utah."

"The Utah facility is fairly new." He
smiles. "Essam was our original headquarters and home to the Sylph
spheres we've collected over the millennium. I don't think any of
us could truly abandon it—there are too many memories here." Lost
in what I can only speculate is one of the said memories, I have to
ask my next question twice to get Hal's attention.

"If all the spheres are here, how’d my boss
get a hold of one?"

"I didn't say all the spheres were here,
just the ones we've located."

"But if all the spheres aren't here, how do
we seal them again?" I’m confused.

"Ahh, okay. A sphere doesn't have to be in
the immediate presence of the spell for it to work, although
proximity is important. Even together our power only extends so
far, thus the further a sphere is from the location the spell is
cast, the less effective the sealing is. That's why, over the
years, we've had rogue Sylph to deal with." Absorbing this new
information I ask the obvious.

"So if proximity is so important why do you
always come out here for the resealing?"

"We don't. We alternate between here and the
Utah facility. Moving the spheres is a time consuming, risky
endeavor so we've limited the spell to just those two
locations."

"Risky?" I inquire.

"At Essam, as well as in Utah, the spheres
are protected but airtight security is almost impossible in
transit."

"Oh," I reply seeing his meaning. "So, after
the resealing, how long will it be before the Sylph we missed get
out?" I ask, concerned.

"Don't fret,” Hal replies reading the
distress underlying my words. “There aren't many Sylph out there
these days. We've done our job well."

"Of that I have no doubt," I emphasize
smiling at him.

"The spell isn't a finite thing either. It
doesn't abruptly fail at the five hundred year mark, it wears off
gradually. If it isn't reinforced it continues to wane, eventually
weakening enough for the Sylph to overpower it and break free of
the sphere. It's important to note that just like humans some Sylph
are stronger than others; the weakest ones might never be able to
escape."

"Good to know," I say, processing everything
he’s said.