by Gloria Craw
“In rare instances, a dewing will be born without the ability to join a human’s mind. They have all of our other abilities. In fact, their essence energy is often exceptionally strong. But when it comes to a human’s mind…they can’t connect. Dewing without joining pass a special energy to their children. It’s as if the child’s joining is stronger because the parent wasn’t able to use theirs.”
I thought about what she said and what it meant to me. “So, if I was a normal dewing, one who had been raised in a dewing family instead of a human one, my joining would be super strong?” I asked.
“Given the talent you probably inherited from your mother, and the latent energy you got from your father, yes.”
“Too bad I got messed up being raised in a human family, right?”
“It remains to be seen how messed up you are,” she replied with a kind smile. “All the raw talent and ability is in you. We just need to show you how to use it.”
I looked at the names of my parents again, and then turned a few more pages in the book. The writing stopped halfway down one of them. The pages behind it were blank, because the Laurels had been murdered. There were no other names to put in the book. My hands trembled as I thought about it. Katherine took them in hers. “It tells only a part of your story,” she whispered.
“It’s so awful. Even the children and babies were killed. I can feel all of the hope that died here.”
“It’s not a hopeless story,” she insisted. “There is much to mourn, but the story isn’t finished. There’s still one name in the book…yours.”
“Who filled in these dates?” I asked, pointing to what I assumed were the most recent deaths.
“Probably the last person alive from your clan,” Katherine replied.
Ian came in. “Are you sure the man who left the book with Lillian wasn’t a Laurel like me?”
“Lillian has issues,” he said, “but she can feel vibrations just fine. That guy didn’t have one. She’s sure he was human.”
“Why would a human have this book?”
Ian made a bowl of cereal for himself and took the seat opposite me. “One of your clan must have given it to him before they died.”
“Then there’s a human out there who knows about us,” I said. “He had a tattoo that looks like the embossing on the cover of this book.”
“Maybe he just liked the design,” Katherine suggested. “A Laurel could have used their joining to convince him to get the book to you at a particular point in the future. The human could have had this book for years, waiting to pass it off. If the design appealed to him, he might have had a tattoo artist copy it.”
It was a plausible explanation for the tattoo, but the implications behind it made me angry. “For this book to reach me now, there had to be a Laurel out there who knew about me when I was younger. That means they knew I was in the foster-care system. They could have gotten me out. Why didn’t they get me out?”
Ian leaned in to look me in the eyes. “I can’t imagine what growing up was like for you, Alison, but Sebastian was hunting your clan down. If you’d been with a Laurel, no matter who it was, you would have been killed, too. Your clan was trying to protect you.”
Logically, he was right, but seeing the book in front of me brought up all of my old abandonment issues. I closed it.
Spencer came in bright eyed and ready to work. He stopped short when he felt the glum atmosphere in the room. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
I didn’t want to explain, so I put on a happy-to-see-you smile and said, “What’s the plan today?”
Like a drill sergeant, Spencer handed out orders, and we went to work moving all the furniture off the big rug in the living room. Spencer said it would be less painful for me to land on the rug than the tile floor beneath it, and no one wanted me to knock myself out if I fell on the furniture. From this, I inferred I would be falling a lot.
My first lesson was self-defense, aka controlling the boiling energy under my skin.
When Spencer and I took up positions standing across from each other on the rug, he said, “Brandy told me you heated up when you sensed Nikki last night. The heat you felt is typical of what happens during a fight between two dewing. We don’t do it a lot these days, but there was a time when we did. When we fight, our energy or essence comes to the surface. We concentrate this energy and then project it out at our opponent. The strength of the projection doesn’t correlate to the strength of the body, so you may face someone much larger than yourself and have no trouble fighting them off. Similarly, you could fight someone a lot smaller and find yourself in big trouble.”
“The heat was under my skin,” I said. “How do I concentrate it, let alone…project it?”
“You have control over the energy during a fight, just like you have control over it when you use your joining. Feel the energy under your skin; let it build in you until there’s no more room. When you do that, it’s concentrated and your mind can control it. From that point, you can use the energy as a weapon or a shield.”
“Uh…that sound complicated.”
“How do babies learn to walk?” Spencer asked me. “They learn by trying and failing until they understand how to do it. Eventually their muscles take over, and they don’t think about how they’re doing it anymore. This lesson will be unpleasant. You will fail before you succeed, and it will hurt. But pain is a great teacher. It will help you master the skills you need faster than anything else.”
Though I wasn’t thrilled, I didn’t have much of a choice.
“When you feel the attack, gather your energy,” Spencer said, moving behind me. “Let it build through you, and then push it out at your attacker.”
“Kind of like punching someone?” I asked.
“Yes, kind of like punching someone. The important thing to remember is that you can be killed if your mind energy is crushed. Most of the time our physical bodies will regenerate, but our minds won’t. In a fight to the death, your opponent will make you feel pain all over your body, hoping you will turn enough protective energy away from your mind so he can reach in and crush it.”
“Okay,” I said, trying not to shrink from the idea. “Regardless of the pain I feel, I have to keep energy around my mind.”
“Exactly,” Spencer said. “If you were ever to get into a fight to the death, your opponent would have to mortally wound you as well as crush your mind. We call the two together a finishing.”
I remembered seeing Ian break the tiger’s neck before their mind war. “I understand,” I said.
He motioned for Katherine to join us. She walked toward me, and I tried to see her as a threat instead of a really nice supermodel.
“I’m going to access your human thought patterns and help you as much as I can,” Spencer explained from behind me. “Katherine is going to attack.”
“I hate this,” Katherine muttered.
Brandy shot me a thumbs-up from across the room. Ian didn’t look as optimistic.
The minute Katherine attacked, I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. This feeling was quickly followed by a gentle pushing in my mind, which I assumed came from Spencer. The pushing made me firm up the energy around the middle part of my body. At the same time, I struggled to keep constant energy around my mind. Just as I was able to push back enough to equalize the pressure around my stomach, Katherine kicked me in the back. As I fought to equalize the pressure around my back, she kicked me in the shins.
I collapsed to the floor with a moan.
Katherine fell to the rug next to me and started smoothing the hair away from my face. “Alison, are you all right?” she asked.
“Fine,” I replied, rolling onto my back.
“You can’t coddle her,” Spencer said. “You have to keep up the attack.”
She looked up at him with her eyes burning. “I can’t do this, Spencer. It’s like fighting a child. I’ll help you with what you plan tomorrow, but I simply can’t do this part.”
“Okay,�
� Spencer agreed. “Brandy needs to save what energy she’s got, so I guess it’s up to you, Ian.”
Ian put his hands up in protest.
“I can’t help her and attack her at the same time,” Spencer said. “You know as well as I do, this has to be done. She won’t be able to protect herself if she doesn’t learn.”
“It’s not a kindness to leave me the way I am, Ian,” I said from the floor. “You know it isn’t.”
He walked forward and helped me up. Then he took Katherine’s place in front of me, and the process began again. Each time I successfully pushed the antagonistic energy away, it moved to a new place. Every now and then, I felt Ian take a jab at my mind to make sure I hadn’t let my energy drop there.
The energy beneath my skin generated heat as it worked and in reaction, my skin beaded with sweat. I could feel heat coming off Ian, too. The light hair at his neck slowly darkened with sweat and his face flushed. I had to work ten times harder than he did, so my face was probably tomato red the entire time. I burned like a furnace as he mentally kicked the crap out of me.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, Spencer called for a break. Ian’s essence drew back from me, and I stood swaying in the middle of the rug. He gathered me in a hug, letting me lean against him. “I need to sit down,” I said against his chest. Then I slipped through his arms like I was covered in butter and landed on my butt. “This is fine,” I muttered.
Katherine brought us both a bottle of water. I gulped mine down and asked for more.
She kindly refilled it for me and then answered the intercom ringing in the kitchen. “Lillian’s here,” she said to everyone.
I was on my second refill when Lillian walked into the room. She looked awful. Her normal helmet hairstyle was flattened in places and sticking up in others. Under the light jacket she was wearing, her purple shirt was buttoned wrong. She’d spilled something on it, too. She came toward me and, getting to her knees, pulled me to her bony chest. It was very uncomfortable. “I should never have left you alone,” she said into my hair.
I appreciated her concern and would have said so, but the room had started to spin around me. Fighting nausea, I closed my eyes tight. I don’t know when she let me go, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up on one of the sofas. The house was cool and mostly empty except for Ian. He was sitting on the rug a few feet from me, playing a game on the Xbox. I reached out to touch his shoulder and he turned to me. “You’re awake,” he said.
“Yes, how long was I out?”
“About an hour.”
“Man, I felt terribly motion sick. I thought I was going to throw up.”
“You will throw up eventually,” he said. “Everyone does.”
“You went through this, too, then?”
He paused the game. “It wasn’t exactly like what you’re experiencing. I knew what I was getting into, and I had more time to get used to it. It’s a biological process as much as anything else. We burn incredible amounts of energy when we fight, and we burn more when the rebound hits us. There’s a lot to it and the body can only take so much. I threw up a couple times before I figured out how to handle it.”
I smiled at him. “I can’t imagine your mother puking. She’s too elegant for it.”
He smiled, too. “She may be the one exception.”
“Who taught you to do it?” I asked.
He looked back to the game. “Because of the Laurel massacre, my dad wanted me to learn early. He had Jack start teaching me when I was five.”
“That’s really young, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ian replied with a haunted look in his eyes. “I understand my dad’s reasoning now, but at the time, it seemed…cruel. Fortunately, Jack was a patient teacher. He tried to make certain parts of it into a game. But the true nature of essence fighting is ugly, and you can’t hide that.” He shrugged. “You do what you have to.”
I could see he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so I changed the subject. “Where is everyone?”
“Out to dinner. There’s not much food left in the fridge.”
I stretched and then thought about school for the first time. “We’ve got to finish our poetry presentation,” I said. “I added a few things when I looked it over at the Shadow Box, but there’s still more to do. We haven’t had a lot of time to work on it.”
“I’ll put the graphics together tomorrow while you’re getting the other half of your training.”
“The part where everyone jumps into my mind?”
“Yep.”
“I’m a little worried about mind kissing your dad.”
Ian’s bright eyes met mine. “It won’t be the same,” he warned. “And my parents don’t know I did it like that. I’d rather not have to explain it to them, okay?”
“Are you asking me to lie, Mr. Honesty? I thought you didn’t do that.”
“I’m not asking you to lie. Just don’t bring it up.”
“You’ll owe me,” I said.
“You’d think saving your life and doing the majority of our project would make us a little closer to even.”
The others came in carrying Chinese takeout, and when Katherine set things on the table, Ian and I hurried toward it like starved animals. After we ate, Lillian volunteered to do the mental kicking, which came as a relief to Ian. Any remorse she might have felt about leaving me alone at the store had faded. She didn’t hold back or cut me any breaks. She believed in tough love and beat me a lot harder than Ian had done.
Like Spencer said, pain was a great teacher. The harder Lillian kicked me, the better my reaction time got. In a relatively short period, I was relying less on Spencer’s direction and more on my own instincts of self-defense. By the end of the tutorial, I was able to counteract her pummeling and keep the energy level around my mind intact without any outside assistance.
It was a big accomplishment, and everyone was pleased. Especially me. When Spencer announced that my training was over for the day, I fell to the rug again. The rebound was making the room go into hyperdrive rotation. My stomach lurched. I tried to get up and run for the bathroom but didn’t make it. I puked Chinese food all over Brandy’s new rug.
Even emptying my stomach didn’t help the sickness. I curled into a ball of misery. Spencer picked me up and carried me to my room. “You’ll feel better tomorrow,” he insisted before leaving me on the bed.
I didn’t want to go to bed sweaty and stinking of vomit, so I got up and made my unsteady way to the bathroom. I started the water and let the tub fill around me. After scrubbing myself thoroughly, I put my pajamas on and went back to bed.
With the covers pulled up to my chin, I started going through some kind of reverse heating. Before my bath, it felt like I had fire under my skin. Now I couldn’t stop shivering. My teeth were chattering when Ian let himself into my room.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
I nodded and he said, “It happens that way.”
Then he lay down on the bed and curled up behind me. He put his arm around my waist and pulled me tight against him. He yawned. “It only lasts a couple hours,” he said.
I fell asleep almost immediately.
Chapter Eighteen
I was alone the next morning. I could feel the reassuring hum of Ian’s energy somewhere nearby, but at heart, I felt lost. I yearned for the comforts of home. I wanted to eat seven-grain organic cereal and runny tofu lasagna. I wanted to spend a few hours playing video games with Alex and then scratch my lazy old dog behind the ears.
With a lonely feeling, I stumbled toward the Laurel book on top of the dresser. I clutched it to my chest and I climbed back in bed. I breathed in the musty smell of the pages before running my index finger over the names and dates on them. In a pathetic attempt to bond with my biological parents, I let my fingers rest on the names of Grace and Saul Laurel. Closing my eyes, I concentrated, hoping for some feeling of connection with them. When I opened my eyes again, they automatically focused in on the other name on the p
age.
Somewhere in the space around me I heard a voice say, “Jillian Laurel.”
Startled, I looked up from the book. Of course, there was no one else in the room with me. I slammed the book closed.
“Are you awake, Alison?” Katherine asked just outside my door.
“Yes,” I replied.
She opened the door. “I wanted to see how you’re doing this morning.”
“I’ve been better,” I replied honestly.
She came gracefully into the room and sat on edge of the bed. “You were a real trouper yesterday. I’m sorry we can’t go easier on you.”
“I don’t want you to go easy on me. I’ve accepted that pain and the rebound will be part of the learning process.” Then, remembering my bout of motion sickness, I said, “I’m sorry about your rug, though.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she replied, taking my hand. “You look sad this morning.”
“I’ve only been gone a couple of days, but I miss home.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I shouldn’t even call it home.”
“Why is that?” she asked gently.
“My first memory is of walking through a big door into a room where a new foster family was waiting for me. The curtains were red, and the carpet was brown. I remember exactly what everyone was wearing. I remember it smelled like cigarette smoke. I remember thinking, these people aren’t going to love me, but I went to them anyway. Just like I did when it came to all of the others. I liked Mr. and Mrs. Greenspan the best,” I said reminiscently. “They had two older children of their own, and they seemed to really like me, too. I wanted to stay with them, but they didn’t keep me. After that, something inside me died.
“When the McKyes came along a year later, I was just a shell of a child. It took two years of their patience and love for me to come to trust them. And when the walls I’d built came down, I was finally happy. But it didn’t last. After meeting the dewing in the park, I crawled back into the half life I’d lived before. For their safety, I can’t be Alison McKye forever. I’ll be all alone again without a steady place to call home.”