by Lynne Murray
“It seems to be the opposite of yours,” I said. “Up until the day...um, my boss died, I was able to hold back. But when someone is attacking me it’s like a reflex, but I can feel energy leaving me and hitting them.”
“How does it feel when you stop holding back?”
“Relieved.”
Sophie laughed that irresistible burst of pleasure. I had to join in. I had expected her to be horrified. Instead she leaned forward in interest. “Do you know why do you feel relieved?”
“When people bully me. I just want them to stop. Sometimes that need overflows and they get hurt or die. Either way, they stop. I never touch them. I never touch anyone.
“Do you think you can kill by touching?”
“I don’t want to find out. Not touching someone is the only reason I haven’t been arrested. People know something was wrong, but how could I have done it?” I shrugged. “Impossible because I never touched them.”
Sophie smiled reassuringly. “So is it always an accident? Totally out of your control?”
“I don’t know. I do try to avoid conflict. But sometimes that backfires. Bullies see it as weakness. They get louder and sometimes hit me and I can’t concentrate on escaping. I fall into their rage.” I finally met her eyes.
“How does that work?”
“The momentum of their rage hits me and I follow it back to them. I can feel it racing to their heart.”
I thought back to that moment. Something inside me woke up and I could feel it thrilling through me. I was shaking, but not from fear. I didn’t tell her about the roaring in my ears, the vibrations on my skin.
“You don’t look scared. All of a sudden, you look strong.” Sophie sat back in her chair. “Why is that?”
“Because the bastards are finally going to leave me alone.” The words came out in something close to a growl.
“Okay.” She seemed to sense that there was more than that, but she didn’t press it. “Chad told me about the old man was yelling at you on Tuesday. What did you notice before he fell over?
“I couldn’t take his rage anymore. I really wanted to choke him to shut him up. The image of squeezing the blood vessels in his throat came to me. Once before when he was screaming at me, he clutched his chest and sat down. So I may have imagined squeezing the blood vessels...” I hesitated.
“Feel the blood pressure build till it peaks. Reach out and squeeze.” Fragments of the man’s voice. The advice was always brutal. The voice giving the commands scared me. But when I did connect with someone’s heart and begin to stop it, I felt strong and worse yet, elated, intoxicated by the power. That was truly terrifying.
Sophie sat silent, waiting for me to continue. I spent so much time trying not to hear the voices that I had never considered where they came from. Could it be a memory of my father? Were those my parents? I couldn’t remember their faces. I didn’t even know if my aunt was my mother or my father’s sister. She never spoke about our family. We were always on the edge of running away again that I was afraid of what she might answer.
Now it was too late to ask.
I must have been lost in thought for awhile, but Sophie’s voice finally broke through to me. “Wade said after you killed the Death Dealer, you shocked him back to life, like one of those electric shock things that jump start people’s hearts.”
“That’s what they say. Who knew I could be a human defibrillator?”
“And you had no idea you could do these things until you accidentally killed that man?”
“My aunt must have known something because she kept telling me not to engage with the bullies.” I hesitated. I’d never told anyone about the voices, the dreams. But Sophie made me feel safe to say anything. “I keep getting small scraps of memory. I think from when I was very young, a man’s voice told me to kill something, and a woman’s voice arguing with him. I think it may be my parents’ voices.”
“Your father was a Death Dealer and your mother a Seeker.”
“Wade told you that too?”
“It helps to know. Your aunt and grandfather had to have been Seekers too.”
“I have a picture of them. I’ll show you,” I said.
We took cups of tea into the front room and I ended up sitting in front of the roll top desk again.
I picked up the picture of my grandfather with my mother and aunt.
Sophie perched on the edge of the desk, leaning close to look at the picture.
“You were in the shower when they broke in?” Her eyes flitted to the hallway. “They must have heard the water running.”
“Yes.”
“But they didn’t go near you. They didn’t seem eager to attack you. Instead, they started breaking up furniture in here. They were looking for some kind of object, Angie, not a person. That’s got to be why they broke the desk.”
“Yes but what object?” I held the picture closer. I flinched back when my amulet rose on its chain, floating up toward the picture frame.
“Wow, do you see that?” I looked over to see Sophie was staring, wide-eyed at the amulet. “Have you ever seen one of the amulets do that?”
“No. Mine isn’t affected at all. But yours seems to be attracted to the picture frame,” Sophie said.
My amulet strained on its chain. “It’s like a magnet or something,”
I cautiously lifted the picture frame up and the amulet around my neck jumped forward to press against the picture frame. With an audible whirring sound, something inside the frame seemed to spin. Then a thin crack opened in the frame. I leaned back and tried to drop the frame, but it just hung from the amulet and then a fissure opened up the frame dropped to the floor. A flat, round piece of metal shed the last splinters of wood and emerged. It fastened itself to my amulet. It was the identical and shape as mine and the two flat disks hovered in the air at the end of the chain.
For a heartbeat, the disks were still. Then the one that had been hidden in the frame snapped onto the back of my own amulet with an audible click.
Sophie leaned forward to see it.
“It’s covered with marks,” she said. “A few marks show up on our amulets when we complete a mission, like it’s recording something. This one seems to be full.”
I put a hand on the chain and pulled. The two disks were stronger than I was. They didn’t move. They stayed floating at the end of the chain. Fear clutched my heart. I tried to pull up on the chain to slip it over my head. No luck. The disks seemed to have a mind of their own, hovering firmly in front of me unmoving, no matter how hard I pulled. I didn’t want to die strangled by my own necklace.
Suddenly a swirl of light rose up in a funnel from the disks. It bathed the walls in strange characters in unknown languages, twisting and changing. The fused disks and the chain around my neck heated up to the point where I feared they would burn me.
“I may need to cut the chain off. There’s a pair of cooking shears in the kitchen drawer next to the sink, Sophie, can you get them?”
She ran back down the hall. Just after she left, the lights went out and the chain went limp as the disks dropped to my chest. I screamed when I felt intense pressure just below my collar bone as if the amulets were branding me. Then nothing. No pain, no heat. I lifted the disk. The chain hung limp in my hand, once again inanimate. My amulet was stuck to the one that had emerged from the picture frame.
Sophie ran back into the room with shears in hand. “Did it hurt you?”
“It burned, but it stopped. Now...” I shook my head.
Sophie leaned close enough that I could smell her clove perfume. “It left a burn mark on your skin, but Angie—”
“What?”
“Look at your amulet, it’s crammed with writing now, just like the one from the picture frame”
I touched the mark under my amulet. It was slightly sore and the skin felt hot and rough like a burn scar. It didn’t hurt. “The two—” I held them up and turned them so she could see they had fused together.”
“Angie, the other
amulet is blank now.”
“I see.”
I took a deep breath and memories flooded through me.
I knew.
The massacre in the playroom. Lessons in killing. Then a sudden attack on me in an unguarded moment. My father’s pride and my mother’s fear for my safety. The knowledge stretched back before that. Less personal, more like lessons memorize, as if I was not the person who remembered. Yet hiding in my bedroom, the three men who found me, it all seemed as raw as if it had happened a moment ago.
“Angie,” Sophie’s voice came to me as if through a haze. “Angie, are you okay?”
“Kind of overwhelmed,” I said slowly.
This was the day I had dreamed about in unguarded moments.
Children’s toys, my toys. Myself hiding. Now I saw what I was hiding from. Saw myself lashing out at them. Three dead bodies. Adults, my adult mind compared them to Vole. These were assassins. They had attacked me. I had killed them.
A man’s face, sharp, brown eyes like my own, full of intelligence and sorrow. A long face with a knife blade of a nose that had more than one bump in it—somehow I knew that was because it had been broken more than once. My father.
A woman’s face next to him. Lighter brown eyes filled with tears, a heart-shaped face and a loving expression that I knew at once, even though I was just starting to remember times I’d seen it. My mother.
“You will take care of Angie,” my mother said to someone I couldn’t see. My aunt’s voice answered that she would.
“You are strong,” my father told me firmly. “You will survive.”
“And thrive,” my mother added.
Now I was crying. My father was proud. My mother worried. That was the last time I saw my parents. Somehow someone had blocked my memories of the day and everything that came before it.
I wondered if they were really dead.
An unfamiliar voice in my mind answered, “Yes.”
From a car wreck?
No.
Did the Death Dealers kill them?
Unknown, but suspected.
What about my aunt?
Unknown, insufficient data.
“I think my memory is coming back,” I told Sophie. And maybe someone else’s memory too.”
“Your grandfather’s?”
“Maybe. It’s confusing. I’m glad you saw all that too, Sophie. I wouldn’t know how to describe it, and I sure don’t know what it was or why it happened.”
I picked up the pieces of the broken frame and a card stuck next to the hollow where the Medallion had been stashed.
The doorbell rang and both of us jumped, the card fell to the floor unnoticed. We went down the hall to look. “Angie, Sophie, it’s me.” I looked through the peephole with my glasses on to make sure it really was him and not one of those Mindworms. It was Wade.
Chapter 23
“I leave you two alone for an hour and this is what happens,” Wade leaned close to examine the amulet I held out at the end of its chain.
“You sound like Chad,” Sophie said.
“Ouch.” He made a disgusted face, “That’s cold.” His tone indicated that he was joking, but it seemed like one of those jokes that reveal more than you intended.
The fused amulets showed no signs of levitating or heating up again, but I was glad Wade didn’t try to touch it, just in case.
“Lift it up, Angie, show him the mark underneath it,” Sophie said.
They both leaned forward to look. Normally I would have felt awkward and slightly thrilled at Wade leaning so close to me that I could feel his breath on my neck, but I was still numb with shock.
“You say it was in your grandfather’s desk?” Wade asked.
“It was hidden in a picture frame,” I said.
“I think it’s a Seeker Medallion, Wade said. “These things are the stuff of legends. I don’t know anyone who’s ever seen one. Maybe Feeney. How did you find it?”
“It found me,” I said.
“I saw it,” Sophie said. “Angie’s amulet rose up on its chain. It zoomed right over to the picture frame where the Medallion was hidden. The frame cracked and the Medallion jumped up and stuck to Angie’s. It started throwing out colors and strange shapes and heated up. It looks like it transferred all the symbols on it onto Angie’s amulet. Now her grandfather’s medallion looks blank.”
“You merged with the Medallion. I’ve heard of that happening, but never seen it.” Wade leaned so close I could smell the cedar and cypress. Probably his soap.
Wade stopped staring at my neck abruptly and lifted his gaze to meet mine. Inches from my face. He blinked. His luminous copper colored irises had a darker brown rim. I couldn’t look away.
I came close to making an “Eyes up here, buddy” joke, but now that I was looking into his eyes I didn’t want to away look away. Suddenly I felt very angry that he was staring at my neck—not that I wanted him to stare at my chest. Well, I was kind of divided on that idea, but I didn’t like being valued for a piece of jewelry on my neck.
“It made a burn mark it made on her neck.” Sophie clearly sensed the tension in the air, but she was as entranced by the Medallion as he was. “Um, Angie, do you mind showing Wade where it burned you?”
Grudgingly, I lifted the amulet. Wade leaned even closer as if he wanted to touch it.
Suddenly I had had enough. I sat back out of reach. “I think it unblocked my memory,” I said. “It’s all coming back to me. When I was five years old, I killed three attackers who came after me in my room at home. My parents sent me away with my aunt.”
“We think maybe the men who broke into the apartment were looking for her grandfather’s medallion,” Sophie said. “They smashed the roll top desk. Maybe it wasn’t an accident that they also broke the picture frame where the pendant was hidden.”
“It’s a good thing Grandmother frightened them off just then,” Wade kept his eyes on the Medallion, which was starting to irritate me. “The medallion has been hidden here and locked in the desk for how long?”
“At least since my grandfather died two years ago,” I said.
“And the break-in happened a few hours after you got the amulet,” Wade said. “Maybe your amulet somehow activated the Medallion,” Wade said.
I nodded, suddenly distracted by the card on the floor that I’d dropped when Wade rang the bell. I picked it up. A simple white business card, no graphics, not glossy but looking fresh off the press. It said “Feeney’s” and the Irving Street adress, no phone number or other information. Just simple letters as if it had been typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. I turned it over. On the back were two words in my grandfather’s tight, small handwriting. “Ask Feeney.”
“Do you think it can protect Angie if she stays here?” Sophie asked.
“All we know about it is so far is that it’s rare, it’s attached itself to Angie and it seems to attract bad guys.” Wade’s face grew grim. “We’ve beefed up security at the Station. Most of the people we had in protective custody are spread out among other safe houses. That means we can focus on figuring out how what this Medallion is and how to protect you and it. Would you be okay going back to the Station now, Angie?”
“What about you, Sophie?” I asked. “Are you safe?”
“Whoever these guys are, they’re after you and your medallion. I wouldn’t stay in this apartment right now because it’s been targeted. But Chad is home by now and we do both have a lot of experience and some nice weaponry from Joel over at the Armory. We’ll be okay.”
I showed Wade the card. “This was in the picture frame next to the Medallion. I want to go see Feeney before we go to Angel Island.”
Wade read the card and handed it back to me. “Sounds like a plan. “We’ll drop Sophie off at home and stop by Feeney’s on the way to the Station.”
It felt oddly cozy sitting next to Wade in his truck. My aunt had driven us throughout my childhood when we moved from place to place. I used her old Corolla to take my driver’s license t
est. Given the difficulty of parking in the city, we only used it for short trips to the grocery store. Aunt Bess had left it behind when she disappeared and it sat mostly undriven in the garage at Larry’s for months.
“So after you merged with the Medallion, you’re remembering your childhood?”
“It’s all coming back to me. Starting with killing three men who attacked me.” I stopped, still absorbing the memories that had been hidden so long.
Wade glanced at me. “You were a dangerous little kid.” I couldn’t tell if he was amused or admiring. He wasn’t horrified, as I’d half expected. “So this is what you did at five?”
“I’m getting back memories of a lot of training from my father on deadly arts. My father was impressed, but my mother was afraid. Until today I didn’t remember the time before my aunt took me. I only got flashes of the past. They must have blocked my memory.”
“I wish someone had blocked my memory,” Wade said.
I looked at him, briefly wondering whether he’d elaborate if I said nothing. But I couldn’t do that. “You and Chad had a rough childhood?”
“You could say that. Our mom—well, I guess you could say that she was an alien groupie. Seeing The X Files on TV didn’t help. She was convinced that aliens were abducting and impregnating her and she wasn’t shy about telling everyone about it. We did a lot of time in foster care.”
“Did you and Chad have abduction experiences?”
He made a face. “Thankfully, no.” Then he half-smiled. “Yesterday was a first for me. Looking back on what my mother said, it seemed to be a breeding experiment targeting fertile human females.”
“Did you believe her?
“We did when we were little. But the older we got, the more it seemed likely she was just crazy.” He hesitated. “I admit I tend to be skeptical and that may have almost got us killed. If I’d believed Dennis about the Rutban abductions, we might have stopped the Rutban way sooner.”
I wanted to ask when he found out the truth and joined the ETPA, but Wade pulled the truck into the alley next to Feeney’s, the spot that was always open.