by JG Faherty
“I was planning to,” she said, “because I had no reason to stay. My practice was destroyed. You…you were gone…” Her throat tightened and tears welled in her eyes. She turned away, ashamed at showing how much he’d hurt her.
“Hey.” John stood up and approached her. He stopped a few feet away, close enough that she could smell him, feel his warmth against her back, but distant enough that he wasn’t invading her space.
“I never said I was going anywhere. I said I needed time to think about things. To clear my head. A lot of shit went down in that place, Leah, shit you don’t know about. I saw things…”
“I think I have a pretty good idea of what you saw.” She turned back to face him. “Me. Dead and floating in the air. Killing people, right?”
John’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. “Wait. You said you didn’t remember anything that happened after you cured me.”
“I didn’t. I still don’t.”
“Then how… Jesus Christ, did it happen again? Are you all right?”
Leah shrugged. As much as she trusted John—even now, even after he’d let her down, just walked right the hell out on her, she still trusted him—she didn’t feel comfortable telling him about the events at the clinic.
“Let’s just say a man named Del won’t be a problem anymore.”
A strange look came over John’s face, a look that made her regret saying anything at all. Sadness? Fear?
Disappointment.
He doesn’t know I was attacked. He thinks I killed a man for revenge.
Not that she could be faulted, even if that’s what she had done. But she was still human enough not to go all vigilante on people. John should have known that.
Why? The last time he saw you, you were a one-woman death squad. It’s amazing he’s even here talking to you.
That made her stop and think. Why had he come over, instead of just calling? And if their positions were reversed, would she have been able to go anywhere near him? A supernatural monster that could suck the life out of people?
The truth was, his being there with her, after everything he’d seen, showed that he wasn’t afraid, that he still trusted her with his life.
“I’m not a killer,” she said. It sounded lame, even to her own ears.
“I didn’t say you were.” His dark eyes bore into her, silently telling her he wanted to believe her but she wasn’t giving him any reason to.
“He showed up at the clinic. I…I’d been cleaning all day, getting it ready to…you know, because I planned on…” Leah paused, feeling guilty and trapped by the lie she was spinning and afraid her dishonesty was already obvious.
“Running away,” John supplied, but there was no malice or accusation in his voice.
“Yes. Running away. I admit it. He and his men…they surprised me there. He grabbed me and…” She took a deep breath before continuing. The words might not be truthful, but the emotions behind them were, and she hoped that sold the story to him. “And it just happened. The Power rose up, only this time I was aware of everything. All the different ways I could kill him. What I looked like. But it was under my control. My thoughts were my own. I was planning on just scaring him but then he shot me and the Power responded. It was automatic, just like when I Cure someone.”
John stared at her for a moment, and she shriveled inside.
He knows I’m lying! He’s a cop for God’s sake.
What would she do if he demanded the truth?
But he didn’t. Instead, his expression slowly softened.
“Automatic or not, it was self-defense. That’s different than murder. You shouldn’t feel like you did anything wrong. Except…what did you do with the body?”
This time the lie came easier.
“I drove it twenty miles out of town and tossed it in the river. It was all dried up, like a mummy—”
“I remember what they look like.”
“So no one will be able to connect it to me.”
There was another moment of silence, a space of heartbeats in which Leah felt sure John was analyzing her. Listening to the lie detector in his head.
“That must have been awful. Why didn’t you call me?”
“Call you?” All her worries vanished, driven away by a sudden rush of righteous anger. “Call you? You walked out on me! Said you weren’t sure if we could ever be together. Said you needed ‘time to think’.” She added finger quotes to emphasize the words. “Left me high and dry in the hospital after telling me I’d used some kind of mental superpower to kill a couple dozen people. Is any of this ringing a bell?”
She would have gone on, but he stood up and shouted over her words.
“Hey! Who’s the one who isn’t remembering everything? You’re the one who planned on killing herself before I talked you out of it. You’re the one who ran away from me at the hotel. You’re the one who’s still planning on running away to God knows where. All of which I’m supposed to not get pissed about. In the meantime, in the past couple of weeks I’ve been shot and poisoned more times than I can count, kidnapped three different times, and I had to lie to the police—my own friends, some of them—about everything that happened. I had to quit my job because everyone there thinks I’m some kind of hero and I couldn’t go to work every day living that kind of lie. And on top of all that, the woman I fell in love with suddenly develops the power to turn people into corn husks without even touching them. But if I say I need a few days to think about things, I’m the jerk who abandoned you?”
He stopped, his face red, his hair out of place on his forehead.
Leah took a step back. Not out of fear—never once during his tirade had she felt threatened, worried about physical violence—but out of amazement. She’d never seen him lose control of his emotions like that, not even when people were threatening to kill him.
All those things he mentioned, they were because of me. Yes, I Cured him. Even brought him back from the dead. But if he’d never met me, none of this would’ve happened.
If he’d never met me he’d have died in that McDonald’s.
It was all too confusing! The what-ifs, the maybes. One thing was clear, though.
She’d acted like a selfish bitch. Again. After promising not to do it. All he’d asked for was a few days, and she’d been unable to wait because his need for time away had come when she felt he should be standing by her. Supporting her.
And yet, despite how she had acted, was still acting, he’d said he…
Loved her.
“You love me?”
John rolled his eyes, eyes that mirrored the warmth of the gentle smile he gave her.
“I’ve always loved you. I just had to make sure the other stuff—your powers, my getting killed—wouldn’t get in the way of that love. I needed to think hard about committing to you so that down the road I didn’t end up hurting you.”
Staring into his dark-chocolate gaze, all the things she wanted to say fell apart, got jammed in her throat like logs in a river.
Instead of speaking, she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms.
He held her tight, and nothing in the world ever felt so good.
Part Three
Into the Future
All great changes are preceded by chaos.
—Deepak Chopra
Chapter One
To Leah, opening her eyes the next morning wasn’t just waking up, it was being born all over again. A new beginning. A second chance at life.
An emotional and psychological resurrection.
The sun angled in through the window over the bed, draping the sheets and floor with a warm, yellow blanket. The pastoral sounds of birdsong, buzzing insects and lawnmowers created the suburban version of white noise. John continued to sleep peacefully next to her and she considered just rolling over and snuggling next to him. However, her bladder was
telling her that wasn’t going to be a comfortable option and the rest of her body was craving a cup of coffee. Preferably in the kitchen, with the windows open and the paper on the table.
She glanced at John once more, reluctant to do anything that might disturb the perfect serenity of the morning, and then gave in to the inevitable. Besides, Marsh’s men would be there soon to begin work on the alarm system, which meant she had to be up and dressed.
And tell John at least part of the truth.
She’d already decided what to say. Thinking about it had kept her awake long after they’d finished their lovemaking and John had drifted off, one arm around her and his breathing a comforting lullaby behind her head.
“He came by the house. Apologized. Offered me money and safety. This time I took him up on his offers because of what you told me last time.”
Putting it that way would not only keep John in the dark about what happened at the clinic, but also give him no leg to stand on if he tried to argue her out of accepting the money and help.
Most important was keeping her meltdown—or blow up?—at the clinic a secret. The cover-up was bad enough. But her gut feelings told her that now was not the right time to tell him not only how many people she’d killed, but that there was a part of her—the dark part, she now recognized—that’d enjoyed it.
That last fact was something she was still trying to wrap her head around. She had enjoyed killing Del and others, in a masochistic, vindictive sort of way. The way you might feel as you stomped a bunch of ants in your kitchen or punched the kid who’d just knocked down your little brother. There’d been no remorse afterward—although that fact, in itself, had made her feel a little guilty. As of yet there was also no desire to repeat the act, no yearning to suck the life from someone. So she was hoping it wasn’t a Power that would become addictive.
Curing people never was, either. It was just something that I could do, and I was happy to do it because it made the animals, and their owners, feel better.
She was hoping the Kill Power was the same as her Cure Power: just a tool to be used when necessary. One she prayed wouldn’t be necessary any longer.
As Leah poured water into the brew pot, a nasty thought still haunted her, the same one that had haunted her at night while she’d tried to sleep.
All your life you’ve been subtly stealing the life-force energy from the people around you to fuel your ability to Cure yourself and others. Where are you getting the Power to Kill?
And what will it mean in the long term for John?
An hour later, after sharing the paper and the single bagel Leah had in the house, John finished his second cup of coffee and leaned back in his chair.
“So what’s on the agenda for today? Finish cleaning the clinic and get ready to reopen? Or is today a rest-and-relax day?”
They’d spoken the previous night about Leah coming to the decision that despite everything that had happened, she wasn’t going to leave Rocky Point. Getting John back in her life just made that choice more definite. Since he wasn’t working, he’d offered to help her with any cleaning or repairs that needed to be done before reopening.
Leah hesitated before answering. What if Marsh’s men hadn’t finished their own cleanup yet? And even if they had, would John’s police-trained eyes pick up any subtle clues left behind? A poorly patched bullet hole in a wall? A droplet of blood under a chair?
A chiming of bells sounded before she could answer. Damn! The security specialists are here. A welcome distraction from John’s offer to help, but it also meant it was time to tell him about her and Leonard Marsh.
“I’ll get it,” she said, rising from the table. She’d let the men get started and explain everything to John upstairs while they got dressed for the day. Or maybe on the way to the bank to deposit Marsh’s checks.
When she opened the door, a muscular man with piercing blue eyes and a crew cut stood there smiling at her. Leah paused with the door half-open. It wasn’t the same person Marsh had said would be handling her home security.
“Hello. Can I—?”
His hand rose up and she had just enough time to notice he held a small, dark object. She felt something like a bee sting on her arm.
Then everything disappeared.
Leah’s return to consciousness was not a pleasant one. Her head throbbed, her thoughts were fuzzy and disjointed, and each movement created waves of nausea that sent the ceiling tiles spinning. She tried closing her eyes and counting to fifty, but when she opened them nothing had changed. She felt off-kilter, like she’d had too much to drink and was trying to balance in an elevator.
Drugged. I’ve been drugged. I don’t take drugs. Why would someone drug me?
“Leah? Can you hear me?”
A familiar voice. Someone she knew.
Of course it’s someone you know. That’s what familiar means!
Leah glanced to her left. A man stood several feet away. She recognized him.
John. His name is…John. He’s my boyfriend, I think. Why is he just standing there?
She stood up, only just then noticing that she’d been reclining on a metal cot. The room wobbled and the floor tilted downwards. Leah stumbled but didn’t fall as she took two steps forward. After a break to catch her breath, she took two more. Then two more. Slowly, concentrating hard on putting each foot down, she made her way to where John still stood looking at her.
“Leah, be careful. Don’t—”
Something hard struck her in the face and arm just as she reached John. She grabbed at him for support but her hand smashed into the same invisible barrier.
“What…?” She placed her hands against it. Cool. Smooth. Solid.
“Leah?”
It came to her. Glass. The room had glass walls around it.
That’s silly. Why make walls out of glass?
“Leah? Are you all right?”
John again. Still talking. Repeating himself over and over. Like a rabbit.
No. Not a rabbit. That doesn’t make sense!
She looked at him. He was frowning.
“John. You’re not a rabbit.”
His frown deepened. Why? Had she said something to make him angry? She tried to think. He’d said something. How are you all Leah, right?
That didn’t make sense. There was only one of her.
Oh! He must be drugged too.
“John. Did they drug you too?” She spoke slowly so he’d understand.
It worked. His frown disappeared. He shook his head.
“No, I guess they only drugged you. But that explains a lot. You should go sit down and rest.”
“Okay.” Rest sounded good. She was sleepy. She lowered herself to the floor. Placed her head on her arms.
Maybe I’ll feel better when I wake up.
Four men watched Leah DeGarmo fall asleep. Three of them wore green uniforms; the other a tailored black suit. The youngest of the soldiers, a red-haired man in his twenties with the triple stripes of a sergeant on his shoulders, sat in front of a series of computer consoles. The other two, one bearing the twin bars of a captain and the other with the single star of a brigadier general, stood behind the sergeant with the man in the suit, their eyes on the largest of the three computer screens.
“The dose is too high,” the man in the suit said.
“I’m not sure we should go lower,” replied the captain. “According to Marsh’s report, she has the ability to heal herself rapidly. If we reduce the concentration of the sedative she’s breathing, we risk her being able to activate her powers.”
The general’s eyes never left the screen as he considered the words of the two other men. Finally, he spoke.
“Sergeant, how quickly can you raise the sedative concentration to where she is incapacitated?”
The sergeant tapped a red button. “If I hit the emergency switch, I
can flood the room with enough gas to knock her out in fifteen seconds.”
The general nodded once.
“Good enough. Lower her dosage fifteen percent. I want her aware enough so she can converse coherently, but woozy enough that you wouldn’t want her handing you a hot cup of coffee.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant entered a change on the keyboard.
“Sir…?” The captain let his question hang in the air.
“Fifteen seconds,” the general said. “Even if she manages to overcome the sedatives, there’s no way she can do any damage before she’s out cold. You’ve read the reports. Seen the pictures. The moment you sense anything going wrong, see her eyes start to change or whatever, just give us the signal and we’ll take care of the rest.”
The man in the black suit cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since they’d entered the room.
“I’ll leave you to it. General, I want a report on my desk first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.” The general snapped off a salute as the man turned and exited the room. Then he turned to the captain.
“Let’s grab a coffee. I want to go over the script once more before she wakes up.”
Chapter Two
Leah said nothing as the man in the military uniform entered her room. He wore a clear plastic mask over his nose and mouth, with circular filters on either side.
She’d woken up on the floor about a half hour earlier—it was hard to tell without any clocks and with her thoughts still fuzzy—and for a moment thought she’d dreamed of talking with John through a glass wall. Then she’d realized she really was in the room from her dreams, but someone had lowered a metal panel on the other side of the glass—which turned out to be some kind of clear plastic, actually.
Feeling much less nauseated than before, she’d gotten up and inspected her cell. Approximately fifteen by fifteen, with a cot bolted to the wall. Other than that, there was a toilet in the back (which she used as soon as she saw it) and two folding chairs.