Always

by Jude Deveraux

  Jack smiled. “Think I could meet her someday?”

  “As long as I don’t have to go with you.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You and I, little sister, are a therapist’s dream.” At the library door he stopped. “Let’s do it in here. Ready?”

  “I hope so.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “IF YOU START CRYING AGAIN, I’LL…” JACK SAID under his breath to Darci.

  “I am not crying. I just got a little misty, that’s all. And besides, what would you do to me?” She glared at him.

  “Nothing,” he said, checking his rifle yet again. Concealed in his black clothing were three handguns, two knives, four round throwing disks that Darci called “ninja things,” and a vial of poison. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, just because you’re wearing a black leotard. You don’t look bad. If you weren’t like a sister to me, that is.” Grinning, he slipped another knife into a concealed pocket of his loose trousers.

  “I’m not upset about that, it’s just the memories that wearing a catsuit bring back to me. I bought mine when I was with Adam the first time. I wore it into the tunnels that first night. That all seems so very long ago now.”

  “Come on, buck up,” Jack said. “You looked into this and you said it would be all right.”

  “I can’t see the future. If I could, I’d look ahead and see how I find Adam, then I’d go get him.”

  “That’s my girl! Not if, but how. So, now, dry your eyes and let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m not sure we should do this,” Darci said. “Maybe Greg and the FBI should handle it.”

  “We’ve been through this enough,” Jack said. They’d spent yesterday afternoon and into the night with Darci putting herself into trances to see what she could concerning the whereabouts of John Barrett Hallbrooke. Jack had given her everything he could find that his father had touched so she could feel the items and see what she could.

  “Safe,” was the main word that she came up with. His father was safe. Finally, they’d begun looking at what was around Hallbrooke in her visions. It was confusing because Darci’s visions often showed where he’d been in the past. She’d touch an item on his desk and know that he’d liked or not liked the person who had given him the gift.

  “He’s rich but people outdo themselves in trying to give him expensive gifts,” Jack said as he picked up an eighteen-carat-gold paperweight. By 10:00 P.M. they gave up on the office and went into his bedroom to try to find something personal, but they found nothing. At midnight they went up to the attic and found a trunk full of old photos.

  Darci held some pictures of Jack as a young man up against his face and compared them. “Big change,” she said. “Did they have to use a jackhammer to get rid of that nose?”

  “By the time the steering wheel smashed it flat it was easy to remove the pieces.”

  She held the photo tightly. “I can feel the anger in you back then, and I can almost see Millie’s angry spirit hovering over you.”

  Jack didn’t say anything, but she knew how glad he was to be rid of that spirit.

  Darci held up another photo. “This is your mother, isn’t it? She was very pretty.”

  Jack had seen few photos of his mother and knew little about her. Although he’d asked his father many times, he’d never received any answers. “So this is where you tell me that he loved her and my father’s coldness is from his misery at her death.”

  “No,” Darci said. “As far as I can tell, your father was born cold. Displays of emotions disgust him. I think he feels emotions, but he didn’t feel any love for your mother.”

  “So why’d he marry her?”

  “To procreate himself, of course. Continue the species.”

  Jack laughed. “Failed there, didn’t he? He got me instead.”

  “I don’t think he feels that he failed,” Darci said softly.

  “What about my mother?”

  “Money. All she wanted was money. She was much colder than your father. Truly cold. She resented every penny your father gave to anyone besides her.” She looked at Jack. “I think you were lucky that the mother you knew was Greg’s mother.”

  Jack took a photo and looked at it. His beautiful socialite mother. She’d died in a swimming accident when he was only three. “How did she die? I was never told the details.”

  “Drunk,” Darci said. “With two lovers. She jumped into the swimming pool, but it had been emptied for the spring cleaning. She broke her neck.”

  “Ah,” Jack said and put the photos down. It was probably much better that he didn’t remember her, and hadn’t grown up near her.

  At 3:00 A.M. they at last got a break. They’d been going through Jack’s father’s filing cabinets. Everything was meticulously organized, all of it boring and predictable.

  “No receipts for objects believed to be magic,” Jack said as he tossed aside a folder with a single piece of paper in it.

  When a little charge went up Darci’s arm, she reached for the folder, but she didn’t open it. “This is where your father is.”

  “Yeah?” he said, opening the folder. Inside was a deed of ownership to a house about a hundred miles from where they were. “I know this place! I’ve been there. I went with Greg and his parents when we were eight.” He looked at her. “You’re sure he’s here? He owns this, so I doubt if the kidnappers would have taken him there.”

  Darci put her hand on Jack’s arm. “I think we should tell the FBI where your father is and let them go get him.”

  “This isn’t the place the FBI knows about? Where the ransom drop is?”

  “No. I can’t feel that it is. I think they believe he’s in another state. I’m not sure about that, though. I got all I could from Greg’s glass, but he didn’t know much.”

  “If I tell the FBI, they’ll go in with a dozen men and helicopters and my father will end up dead. I’m going in to get him myself. Alone.”

  “Without me?” Darci asked innocently.

  “That’s right. Without you.”

  “And how do you plan to leave me behind?” She stared at him for a moment, then Jack sneezed.

  When he was on his twelfth sneeze, he said, “You don’t play fair.”

  “Never have, never will. Let’s get some sleep and tomorrow—”

  “By tomorrow night my father will be dead,” Jack said, blowing his nose. “Whoever has him is going to get the money today and kill him tonight. And, no, don’t try to find that out psychically. I’ve worked on cases like this for years and I know what happens.”

  Darci sat back on the floor and looked up at Jack. She’d felt a lot of things that she hadn’t told him about. The main thing was that Jack needed to do this. He needed to find his father if he was to heal old wounds. And he also needed Darci. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but she could tell that he needed her to make it all happen.

  In the end, Jack had his way and they started getting dressed. It would be the foggy light of dawn by the time they got there, so Jack had them both dress in black. They’d rummaged in Chrissy’s room and found a black one-piece leotard that Darci could wear.

  Jack had been unprepared when Darci looked at herself in the mirror and started crying. While he was dressing and loading himself with weapons, she sniffled and talked about Adam and their life together.

  He got her into the car, with a cooler full of food in the back, and he drove while Darci talked. After the first few minutes he managed to direct her away from her wondrous life with Adam Montgomery and onto what happened when she’d helped the actor Lincoln Aimes find his son.

  What interested Jack was that she could read Aimes’s mind when she touched him. Since he’d met Darci they’d had no time to explore what could be done between the two of them. Irrationally, Jack felt a wave of jealousy over Aimes and Darci.

  “Aimes’s son can heal?” Jack asked in wonder.

  “Yes. I think he has more
ability than he knows about, but he’s learning. He lives in East Mesopotamia, Georgia, with his grandfather, and Linc visits him often. I think there’s a young lady there who Linc likes. She’s not impressed with his beauty or his success.”

  “What else does he have?” Jack asked snidely.

  “Kindness. And he wants to make the world a better place to live.”

  Jack didn’t say anything for a while, but a small idea entered his head. Maybe if he and Darci found the missing piece and put it in that base, maybe if what Devlin had said was true and Darci could change history, maybe she’d want some help. Maybe he and Darci, and maybe this Aimes character, could work something out. Helping people, something like that.

  “What are you thinking about so hard?” Darci asked.

  “What will you do with your life if you don’t find your husband?”

  “I refuse to think of that,” Darci said, looking out the car window for a moment, then she looked back at Jack. “I think I need to stay home with the girls. I need to quit running all over the world.”

  “Not to mention throughout history.”

  “Right,” Darci said softly, turning away.

  Jack slammed on the brakes, then backed up. “This is the road I want. I don’t want to use the paved road or they’ll hear us.”

  It was still night and Darci dreaded trying to walk through the woods in the dark. Jack pulled the car off the overgrown dirt road, parked it, then piled long branches on top of it. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never see the car.

  Getting out, Darci immediately knew that there were people near them. Not too near and she couldn’t tell how many, but there were people, hiding and waiting for something. For them? Or for the FBI?

  She put her finger to her lips for Jack not to speak, then she pantomimed that there were people near and pointed in their direction. Jack shaped a house with his hands and pointed the same way as the people. She nodded in understanding.

  Crouching, Jack started down the old roadway, Darci close behind him. Over the leotard, she had on one of Chrissy’s jackets, the sleeves rolled up. It was big, bulky, and cumbersome.

  It seemed to take them forever to go the mile or so before they could see the roof of the cabin. The sun seemed to be trying to make up its mind whether or not it wanted to show itself. When the first drops of rain hit Darci’s face, she knew that the sun was going to retreat to somewhere warm.

  Jack, gun drawn, motioned her to move beside him. Seeming to be oblivious to the rain that was starting to come down harder, he flattened himself against a muddy bank. When Darci hesitated, he threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled her down beside him. She managed to keep her face out of the mud, but her chin sank into the oozy mass.

  Jack motioned for her to tell him where the men were. She knew they were men by the feel of them. There were at least four of them and they weren’t evil, but they were out to do harm. She felt that the men were very excited and were looking forward to whatever was coming.

  Putting her mouth close to Jack’s ear, she whispered, “It’s you they want.”

  Nodding, Jack motioned for her to stay down while he went up the bank alone. He meant for her to stay safely behind the hill.

  She shook her head vigorously and clutched onto his jacket, forcing him to get back down. She pointed to a tree at the top of the bank. She would sit there and use her mind to help him. She motioned that she’d paralyze them. She watched Jack as he seemed to try to decide if paralyzing men was considered fair play or not.

  She glared at him, letting him know that she could always keep him from going after the men.

  Jack gave her a little smile, then crawled up the hill on his belly. After he made sure that he saw no one, he motioned for Darci to come up. He helped settle her under the tree, even to dumping wet leaves over the lower half of her body. When he felt that she was camouflaged enough, he started to leave, then turned back and looked at her.

  On impulse, he kissed her forehead, then he turned and disappeared into the rain.

  Darci drew up her knees to her chest and concentrated, using her mind to find the other men who were out there. One of them knew that Jack was near and was beginning to move toward him. How she wished she could warn him!

  Concentrating, she tried to stop the man who was going after Jack. At the same time, she tried to paralyze the men who were much farther away, but the distance was hindering her.

  And this time, she had no help.

  In spite of herself, the vision of years ago, when she’d killed the witch and her cohorts, came back to her. The more Darci concentrated, the more she seemed to be transported back to that night. She’d never told anyone, but what she’d done that night was to use the energy of the captive children. Later, everyone had told her what a saint she’d been to put the children to sleep so they saw nothing of what happened, but that hadn’t been what Darci had done. She’d taken the energy of the children, their fear, their loneliness, their yearning for the comfort of people who loved them, and she’d added it to her own powers.

  In Darci’s mind it had been those children who’d killed the witch and the others. The children had so wanted their freedom, had so wanted to live that they’d allowed Darci to take their auras from them. They had allowed Darci to take their anger and hatred and fear, and blend it with her own powers, until Darci was in possession of a ball of rage and fear that could have killed a thousand people.

  That night when she’d started, when she realized that she could take the energy she saw around the children and use it, it was as though spirits that were trapped in the tunnels began to wake up. Darci had been blinded by what was going on. Her eyes couldn’t see, but her mind had seen and felt a thousand spirits running toward her. They flew through the air, gathering, crawling, floating. They’d filled that room until there was nothing but the energy of spirits.

  The witch had known. The three others, merely peons to do her bidding, felt nothing, but the witch had felt it all. “You think you can defeat me,” she’d cried. “I have beaten you before and I will do so again.”

  Her words, meant to intimidate, had the opposite effect. The energy—black, angry energy—increased. Darci had been weakened physically by what was being done to her. And her mind wasn’t at its peak, either, for she’d been told that Adam was dead. Somehow, with some magic object, no doubt, the witch had been able to cut Adam off from Darci so she couldn’t feel him. When she’d been led into the chamber, she hadn’t cared whether she came out alive or not. It had seemed that her whole life had been such a struggle that she was no longer willing to continue. With Adam, she’d seen what life could be, but if he were taken from her, she’d return to being alone.

  It had been the children who’d revived her. A cage full of them. Like little animals, all heaped up together, most of them too young to speak. They couldn’t speak, but they could feel, and the cloud of black and red auras above them told of their rage and their tears.

  Darci was pulled past the cage and she saw the colors around the children and thought, If they don’t give up, I won’t, either.

  She’d told Jack that she didn’t know what she could do, but when the chips were down, she’d found out what she could accomplish. When Linc had been killed, she’d used a holy object and the love of two people long dead to bring him back to life.

  And in the tunnels she’d found that she could take other people’s energy—their very souls—and, with their permission, use it.

  That night she’d been able to speak to the children with her mind. Maybe it was because they were so young and so newly arrived from being with God, but they heard her and, one by one, they’d sent her their anger. And as each child parted with the energy that kept him alive, he fell down into a coma, and Darci knew that if she died, so would they. People cannot live long without their life forces.

  But Darci didn’t die. She gathered the energy from the children who still had bodies, and she accepted the energy from those people the witch had
killed before, and she turned it all against the witch.

  Her three henchmen had been easy to defeat, but the witch had never so much as blinked as they fell at her feet, their brains gone. It had taken more, it had taken all Darci had and more to bring that woman down—and after a while Darci knew she was losing. She could feel the life being drained from her as the hatred of hundreds used her body to send their rage to the witch.

  It was at the end, when Darci knew that she could hold out no longer that, suddenly, everything stopped. In an instant, she found herself outside her body. She could see herself standing there, glaring at the witch and the witch glaring back—and she could see that evil was winning. The absolutely pure evil in the woman was feeding on the good in Darci—and the woman was winning.

  But as Darci stood there, bewildered, looking at herself, she felt a warmth to her right and turned to see a bright light. She put her arm up to shield her eyes, but when the warmth increased, she lowered her arm and smiled. There in that light was such a lovely-feeling life. It was what she was sure heaven felt like.

  Opening her eyes, blinking, she looked into the handsome face of a man with dark, curly hair. She didn’t know how, but she knew who he was: Saint Michael, the archangel who ruled the earth. He was dressed like a Roman soldier, with chest armor and a leather skirt that showed his strong legs.

  “We are pleased with you,” he said. “And you will be rewarded.”

  Darci just stood there staring at him and smiling. He had a wonderful feeling about him and she hoped he would welcome her into heaven when she got there.

  “Not now,” he said softly. “I will see you here later. For now we have something for you to do.”

  He smiled at her again, then he was gone, and Darci was back in her own body. Her head hurt and her body was giving out, but she knew then that she was going to win. The sure knowledge that she could not fail gave her new energy. She doubled her concentration. There was no more holding back, no more thinking that she had no right to take a human life.

  She smiled at the witch, then she took a step back, and she let the others come into her fully. She let their hate and fear take over her body completely, and that anger went from her into the witch.