by Anna Elias
Liam waited.
“They all look alike to me.” Her nostrils flared. “One boy’s father owned a car dealership that flew this huge American flag, like that somehow made him or his business more patriotic. When they were arrested, the boys said they were proud they ‘got rid of another raghead in the name of God and country.’” A lump rose in her throat. “Are they Earth Children, too?”
Liam never blinked. “All souls are sacred, Avani, born pure and free from judgment or hate. But as they grow older and become more flesh than spirit, that light dims. Many become blinded by the human fears and beliefs of those around them. And that blindness, along with the evil it creates, can only be changed from within.”
Avani stared at the floor, squeezing the bag. “We have to be saved from ourselves?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
She took several deep breaths, but the pain was hard to remove. Had it happened from something more normal, like a car accident or heart attack, her father’s young death would have been easier to accept. But being stabbed to death by raw hatred born out of ignorance, nationalism, bigotry, and pride was unconscionable. Avani curled her hands into fists and struggled to resurrect the joy she’d felt from her father’s freed soul, or from the woman she’d just met at her aunt’s house.
“It works, Avani. People can emerge, even from the darkest corners.”
She restored the wrinkled pretzel bag to its hook.
Liam extended a hand. “We need your decision.”
The old woman’s voice echoed again: Wherever you are, whoever you’re with, and wherever it leads, that’s the journey. You’ll never be alone.
Avani drew another big breath. The air near Liam filled with an aroma of rich earth and pine-scented forests that eased her fears. She might have started life in Texas, and continued it in Northern California, but her new home was Sam’s homeless shelter in Reno.
She took Liam’s hand and his touch ignited every sense. The air smelled of pine trees and rich black earth and she knew the Vessels Program was her true north. Emerald light filled the air around them, and a choppy wind swirled her body into his, spinning them faster and faster until they disappeared.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE ROGUE
Matheus’s carry-on dragged like a funeral dirge over the short fibers of concourse carpet, and his harsh, labored wheezing caused those in front to move out of his way. He arrived at his gate with five minutes to spare and staggered to the men’s bathroom.
A man at the sink took one fearful look and left without drying his hands. Matheus checked himself in the mirror, repulsed to see how much his once-strong body had unraveled. Healthy brown skin had paled to a sickly gray; his soft, jet-black hair now bristled coarse as a boar’s; his white teeth had yellowed, and dark circles bloomed beneath cold, dead eyes.
Matheus’s throbbing head threatened to burst.
Inside, the Rogue grinned. This living corpse had two more days, three at most. That was more than enough time to reach San Francisco, kill the woman, and end this journey once and for all.
What little was left of Matheus struggled to resist, but the Rogue moved him like a puppet, washing his hands and drying them on a paper towel. He screwed a smile onto his sallow face and walked out.
The first leg of his flight, from Rio to Dallas/Ft. Worth had been uneventful. The Rogue had purchased a first-class seat with fewer people to bother him. The price had exhausted Matheus’s savings, but he wouldn’t live long enough to miss it.
The Rogue walked to the gate for the final first-class leg, and a kind attendant asked if he felt all right. Her words were routine, but he could tell her experience ran deep, and that she sensed something wrong.
“Organ transplant,” he rasped. It was not entirely untrue, and the explanation seemed to satisfy.
The attendant smiled, scanned his boarding pass, and offered a complimentary headset for the movie. Their hands touched, and a current jolted along his fingers. The attendant blushed and apologized for the static her shoes must have created on the carpet. The Rogue nodded and limped down the jetway toward the plane.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SAM
The cafeteria was empty except for the six people sitting in back. Sam’s metal folding chair squeaked against the hard floor as he leaned back. Liam sat next to him; calmly sipping iced tea while simultaneously showering Sam with invisible waves of strength and support
Sam studied the faces across from him. “I’m glad you all chose to return.”
Tal toyed with her coffee cup.
Avani nibbled a bite of chocolate cake.
Link picked at his napkin. He’d dyed his short brown hair black and capped the broken tooth, but even the new blue contacts couldn’t hide the worry clouding his eyes. “I’m sure people have seen me here. No matter how often I change my looks, someone will recognize me and call for the reward. Cops will come crawling all over this place.” He glanced at Tal. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“They’ll have a hard time finding you in the field,” Liam replied.
“But what if they do? What if they take me in or shoot me and the spirit inside gets trapped?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Sam replied. “But right now, consider this Program your ‘get out of jail free’ card until you’re free from jail.”
Link sighed. “All right then. Count me in.”
The knot in Sam’s stomach eased slightly. “Ladies?”
“You know my answer,” Doc said without hesitation.
Avani smiled. “Me, too.”
All eyes shifted to Tal.
TAL
She ran a finger around the rim of her cup a long moment before lifting her eyes to meet Sam’s. She drilled him with a steely gaze “You drive a hard bargain, Sam Fullerton. Become a Vessel or go brainless, nothing in between, no other option. Except for the one I tried to take in the beginning, but you didn’t let me finish.”
“The Creator does not make mistakes, Tal,” Liam said quietly. “Every life has a purpose. This Program will help you find yours.”
Angry tears welled. “My son burned alive at age four. What purpose did he have?”
Liam leaned in. “Some people are given long lives meant to touch, serve, and inspire those around them.”
He reminded Tal of her favorite college professor: kind but firm and never flustered when the class tested or teased. He simply answered their questions. And he was almost always right.
“Other lives are cut short, often violently, to make needed change in the world.” Liam paused. “And there are those who live only long enough to share one or two things before they go. In Darden’s case, he taught you love.”
Tal jerked as if punched by his words. The fork trembled in her hand. “But what if you’re wrong?”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“I mean ...” Tal swallowed. “What if I see him again and what if ... he blames me?”
A sob tore loose from somewhere deep in Tal, and years of guilt and grief poured out. She rocked back and forth, crying so hard she couldn’t breathe.
Eva wrapped her arms around Tal and held her. “My twins died at birth. Stillborn. The doctor in me knows they couldn’t be saved, but the mother in me lives every day with what if.”
Tal’s sobbing ebbed slightly, and she looked up through the flood of tears. “But don’t you ever feel guilty?”
Eva shook her head. “No need. We did all we could. And I love them to this day.”
“Blame and guilt don’t exist on the other side,” Liam said. “Love there is too pure.”
Tal scowled at him, anger punching through her grief. “I can’t accept that.”
“He’s right.”
She spun to Avani. “How would you know?” She didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but she didn’t correct herself, either.
“I was five when I saw my father die,” Avani said, nonplussed by Tal’s ire. “A violent ha
te crime stole his life, but when his soul rose, it was peaceful. Loving. Happy.”
Tal gaped. She had felt the same when Jake had died in her arms and she’d witnessed his pearly spirit depart. She’d even felt it from Owen and Darden’s burning car. She’d justified both experiences as some crazy, psycho coping mechanism. But—if what Avani said about her father was true, and if what Tal felt from Jake was true—then it must be true for a child ripped away from the mother who adored him. Tal dried her tears. The anger receded, taking much of her grief with it. “Thanks.”
Avani smiled and slipped her hair from her ponytail. She quickly gathered it, fixed the stray ends and tucked it back into the band. The movement was rote, simple, comforting, even. It was an unrelated gesture that, knowingly or not, also served to take the edge off an emotional situation. Like something Liam would do. Tal looked between the two with a pang of jealousy.
Though Liam was significantly higher up the spiritual ladder, the comfort Avani inspired in talking about her father, the anger she’d released after losing him—especially to such violence—revealed an enlightenment Tal hadn’t thought possible in people. Except for Darden. And maybe Jake.
Tal suddenly understood how this Vessels business could open that door even further—even in her. Awaken the elusive eternal that she’d tried to find in a self-focused, angry, far-too-human way with the Klaw blade against her wrists. She took a breath and felt more space in her body. Less grief and bitterness, and more confidence—even in this unknown. “Okay. I’ll give this Vessels thing a go.”
Sam sat up. A big smile curled his lips.
The others cheered.
“I have one last question.”
Sam’s smile dimmed.
“If broken, lost, and suffering are requirements for us to become Vessels, what horrible thing happened in your life to put you in charge?”
The muscles in Sam’s jaw tightened. He looked away, as if harboring a secret he could not share, then lifted his gaze. “In due time,” he said. “Meanwhile, you three need to get your tattoos.”
“Tattoo?” Avani cringed.
“The mark,” Sam said. “How the spirits will know you.”
“It opens their access to you, as well,” Liam added.
“I hate bloody tattoos,” Eva said, jerking upright. “I have no skills in applying them. None at all.”
Sam pulled up Link’s sleeve to reveal the inked angel flowing around his forearm. Tal Doc, and Avani marveled at the detail in her wings and hair, the features of her lifelike face.
Sam handed Link the leather pouch. “From what I understand, you’ll know what to do.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TAL
Tal fidgeted atop the steel-framed table while Link assessed the new tattoo gun. Eva sat at her desk in the corner, mending a tear in Link’s shirt with surgical precision. Night had fallen outside, and blinds covered the room’s one window.
“This shouldn’t hurt much,” Link said, opening Sam’s leather pouch. “Since I have the right tools.”
Tal stared at the angel. “You inked that with prison tools?”
“Did some for the guards, too.” He sniffed the powder, wrinkling his nose at the bitter, earthy smell.
Tal did, too. “Thank God we don’t have to eat that.”
Link laughed and opened a small reservoir made from a pill bottle. “They gave me real equipment later on, but in the beginning, I had a rubber band, a plastic ballpoint pen shaft, a pearl eraser, and the motor from some ancient cassette tape player an old guard brought in.”
“Careful. I remember cassette players.”
“I actually used them,” Doc added.
“Sorry.” He smiled.
“What did you use for a needle?” Doc asked.
“Broken guitar string.”
She and Tal both cringed.
“Works better than you’d think.”
Tal studied the laser-like concentration in Link’s eyes as he poured the silky powder into the small bottle and attached that reservoir to the tattoo gun. He had obviously improvised a way to use the special powder in lieu of ink for the tattoos. She studied the angel around his arm and imagined the fortitude it had taken to ink something that intricate and painful with such primitive tools. And he’d done it to himself. No wonder Sam had put him in charge.
Link put the powder aside and poured rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball. He cleaned the skin around Tal’s lower leg, just above her left ankle.
“How do you know it goes there?”
“I don’t.” He shrugged. “But my fingers knew the minute I touched the powder.”
Doc swiveled in the chair. “Hope there’s no chance of infection.”
“Infection?” Tal jerked up.
Link eased her back down on the table.
“Sure hope you know what to draw.”
He swung the light closer and touched the needle to her skin. “Me, too.”
Within seconds she yelped and yanked away. “It burns.” She sat upright to inspect.
“Burns? Tattoos hurt, but they don’t normally ...”
“I know a burn when I feel it, Picasso,” she snapped, still nervous about this whole Vessels idea.
“Whoa.” Link’s eyes widened. “I’ve never seen that before.”
Eva put down the shirt and joined them. All three watched as shimmery blue and purple streaks branched from Link’s tattooed dot. The streaks stained a small patch of skin before stopping.
“It looks like a birthmark.” Tal’s voice cracked.
“Perhaps we should wait for Sam,” Doc cautioned.
“No.” Tal straightened her leg and lay back down. She’d come this far. “Let’s do it.”
Eva retrieved two wooden tongue depressors and handed both to Tal. “For the pain.”
Tal bit down.
Link continued, rendering a shiny, vine-like design around the base of Tal’s leg. A few moments later, he paused to watch more ink seep in on its own. “It’s weird. The powder is, like, telling my hand what to draw.”
“Such an unusual color,” Doc noted.
“Colors,” Tal corrected, popping out the tongue depressors and sitting up to study the intricate blue, purple, and green tendrils weaving together above her ankle. The spectrum of rich jewel tones swirled within the vines and their lustrous sheen made her skin glisten. A sharp ache in Tal’s lungs reminded her to breathe.
“It’s like pearl paint on a car,” Link said.
“How does it feel?” Doc asked.
Tal hesitated. “The burning’s gone and ...” She brushed her fingers over the mark. “Crazy as it sounds, the thing feels like it belongs.”
Link shuddered.
“One Seed Juniper,” Avani said, sniffing the air as she entered. “At least part of it.”
Tal shifted. “One seed what?”
Avani smelled the open pouch. “An evergreen tree that grows in the high mesas. Navajo women used it as a mordant for weaving blankets. Ashes from the green needles made a wash that fixed the dye to the yarn. Permanently.”
“There’s no covering this tat when we’re done,” Link said, touching the gun to Tal’s skin again.
She lay back down. “We’ll never be done with it. Unless we want to go mindless.”
“My mother made blankets.” Avani rubbed some of the fine powder between her fingers. “She used one-seed juniper with wild plum to weave the ‘Spirit Outlets.’”
“Spirit outlet?” Link and Tal both asked.
“A thin, almost invisible thread running from the bottom center to one edge. It honored the Spider Woman.”
“Spidey had a wife?” Link teased.
“They believed she existed before creation and taught women how to weave. She was the reason they could remember their blanket designs, no matter how intricate, without drawing them out.”
Tal furrowed her brow. “Ankles seem like an odd place for these spirits to come and go.”
“Oh my God.” Avani put down the ba
g and lifted Tal’s foot, eyeing the design for the first time. “I’ve seen this before, on the lady I met in Texas. The part above her shoe looked just like this.” She traced the delicate swirls with a finger. “And look.” She continued along interconnected vines wrapping the front of Tal’s leg. “Hidden letters. S-O-S?”
“I didn’t do those.” Link tensed. “Those letters weren’t there before.”
Doc put a hand on his shoulder.
Tal’s pulse quickened. “Save our Ship?” she joked, only half-kidding.
“Save our Souls,” Avani suggested.
“That’s a Y,” Liam corrected as he and Sam entered. “S-O-b-Y.”
He gently lifted Tal’s leg, careful to bend her knee for support. His warm hands pulsed with an odd, faint current as he traced along the concealed letters. “Serve–Others–before–Yourself.”
“Where’s the ‘B’?” Tal asked, still leery of the crazy magic behind all of this.
Eva steadied a hand on her shoulder, too, and leaned into the collective huddle.
“Here.” Liam pointed to a small space between two connected loops. The letters were hard to discern, but the lowercase “b” was just visible inside the tendrils.
“Whoa,” Link replied. “This thing just keeps adding stuff on its own.”
“Will it stop?” Tal’s pulse raced as she pictured the intricate design covering her body like some Maori warrior.
Sam pointed. “I think it already has.”
The powder had assimilated as if born there, and the vines shimmered—iridescent, captivating, and seemingly complete, a dense band around the base of Tal’s leg.
“Where did you see this?” Liam asked Avani.
He must have been listening before he and Sam had entered the room. Or he’d read her thoughts. Either way, it was creepy Spirit Guard stuff Tal wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to.
“On the lady who bought my aunt and uncle’s old house.” Avani paused. “She had to be eighty-years-old. Maybe eighty-five.”