From the Ashes

by Dale Mayer

  “That’s getting beyond freaky,” Rowan said. “But then again, your father was loopy.”

  “He was. But what are the chances that somebody has lived here all their life and is just like him? Particularly when considering that my family line is here. What if Father has a cousin or brother or somebody, whether acknowledged or not acknowledged. Maybe my father was directing me to come back here so Father could return here. I know that was something he wanted but for some reason couldn’t. I mean, the fact is, I am here now, which means he is here and his father …”

  She nodded as she saw she had their full attention. “I have to ask. Does your grandmother know how to fire a weapon?”

  Rowan stiffened.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think anybody’s free and clear here. Your grandmother doesn’t like me. She is in tune with this energy stuff. She’s old enough to have learned a lot, and, like she just said, she would never expect you to kill anyone. Who we are looking for is not somebody who could do such a deed but could be affected by somebody else or forced or manipulated into doing that deed.”

  “By that definition a lot of people in town are possibles,” he said, glaring at her.

  “Exactly. We need a list of names, and we need to know who and why,” Grayse suggested. “With a list we’d have to find a way to whittle it down to just a few.”

  “For example, Irene’s husband? Was Irene chosen because of what she had done? Was your father chosen too? He was against the suicide season, so was it proof the suicide season was something he couldn’t control? What about Theo and Haro?”

  “Who knows?” Rowan said in frustration. “My head is spinning.”

  The door to the chief’s hospital room opened, and the doctor stepped out into the hall. “Your father has gone to sleep for now. The checkup showed absolutely nothing wrong. When he wakes up again, I’ll have one of my colleagues come take a look at him and assess his mental state. After that, you can probably pick him up and take him home.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Rowan said sincerely and reached out to shake the doctor’s hand. “Thank you very much for the care you’ve given him.”

  “I’ve been looking after him,” the doctor said, “but something else helped him to wake up. And that something, just maybe, was the two of you. Sometimes miracles happen.” He smiled, and they watched him walk down the hall.

  Phoenix muttered under her breath, “I have to admit, for a moment, I was afraid that was a joint premonition. And that your dad wasn’t really awake.”

  Rowan chuckled. “I did too. That’s why I was holding on to him tight while we were in there.”

  Grayse laughed. “You’ll learn the signs of what’s real, what’s not real, what’s a prelude, and what’s not. You learned to act very fast with me.”

  “We did,” Phoenix said. “Even then, we weren’t sure. Now it feels like there’ll be some confrontation with whoever is doing this, and it’ll take all three of us to figure out the energy behind it all.”

  “You brought Rowan’s father back, so that’s a start,” Grayse said. “Like you said, there could be some of your family here.” He turned to look at Rowan. “Can you check that out?”

  “I already had one of the deputies working on it before we left for the US. I haven’t heard any results yet though.”

  “You need to check out that deputy and make sure he’s not part of the family line and going to bury it.”

  Rowan laughed. “No, he’s not. He is related to Irene’s husband, however. But that’s a different story.”

  “That’s the thing about a small town. Everybody is related to everybody, aren’t they?”

  Phoenix and Rowan nodded. They slowly walked out of the hospital, stood on the front steps and took several deep breaths.

  Phoenix could feel her body easing back, feeling the energy buzz from having used it. She looked at Grayse. “I forgot that buzz when I used to pull energy and use it for a purpose, that little weird buzz afterward.”

  He tilted his head. “You’re surrounded by energy right now. Maybe shut it down, so you’re not attracting entities.”

  She closed in her mind, envisioning a vacuum sealer hooking onto her big toe and sucking on all the energy, so it was tight against her body. The look on Rowan’s face was priceless.

  Rowan laughed. “I don’t know what you just did, but you brought in your aura to the nearest tiny little channel I’ve ever seen.”

  She explained her visual, and he started to laugh.

  “That’s not bad,” Grayse said. “Now you need to create a visual so something slides along the edge of your body and off again so it doesn’t stick to you. Then it’ll be interesting to see what happens around town.”

  “What do you mean?” Rowan demanded. “Are you saying these energies attached to her will find somebody else to attach to?”

  “Possibly. But it’s her father and grandfather I see.”

  Just then a vehicle arrived in the parking lot, and Rowan watched his grandmother hop out of the car and come toward them.

  “I heard your father is awake.” She had a determined look on her face. “Is that true?”

  He nodded. “Yes, he is. He’s doing fine. He’s talking. He can move. He’s still in a bit of pain and a bit weak, but there’s a good chance he can come home today or tomorrow.”

  She stared at him. “You didn’t think to tell me that on the phone? You asked me all those strange questions, but you don’t even let me know that your father is awake?”

  He shrugged. “Sorry. I was overcome at the time. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  She glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”

  “It’s been a tough few days.”

  She nodded. “I’ll see your father,” she said and turned to walk away.

  As she did, Grayse grabbed her hand gently. “No,” he said. “You won’t.”

  She glared at him, shook her hand free and said, “And just who are you to stop me?”

  Following her instincts, Phoenix stepped in front of her and said, “Not until you shed that energy.”

  Manru straightened up and said, “You are dangerous.”

  Phoenix nodded slowly. “To you, I am, yes.”

  Rowan stepped forward. “Hey. What’s going on here?”

  “Look at her back,” Phoenix said.

  Rowan walked around his grandmother, looked at Phoenix and motioned at his grandmother.

  “You have the sight. You have all kinds of abilities. Yet you don’t recognize the energy your grandmother is carrying?” Grayse asked him curiously.

  Manru just raised her chin in defiance as she glared at the three of them.

  “Oh, you do know about the energy you’re carrying?” Phoenix asked. “And you’re quite happy to carry it? How does that work?”

  “He’s righting the wrongs of the world. Fixing the things that can’t be fixed any other way.” She glared at Phoenix. “You’re an energy worker too. You know how wrong everything in life is. How much the cops …” She shot a disparaging look at Rowan. “How little they do.”

  Rowan stared at his grandmother as if he had been kicked in the gut. “You’re behind this? You’re behind the shooting of my father?”

  “He’s responsible for my daughter’s death,” she said in a monotone, her voice losing all its inflection.

  Phoenix gasped softly as she studied the older woman in front of her and saw an older man superimposed over the top of her face. Was that the energy she carried?

  “Why should I care about him?” Manru said. “He never cared about her.”

  “That’s not true!” Rowan cried out. “She died of cancer. What was he supposed to do? He can’t fight a war against a disease like that.”

  “But neither would he let her visit a healer I knew,” she said, her tone flat. “We could have gone to the US. American healers could have helped her. He wouldn’t let her. He stopped us. He wasn’t just saying no, he was actively not allowing her to come. I tried to get her to
leave him. I tried to get her to leave all of you so she could live, but she wouldn’t do it. My only daughter, and she died because he was so blinded, so black-and-white he couldn’t believe in anything better than himself.”

  “Dad might very well be a blockheaded fool, but he’s very good at what he does,” Rowan said defensively. He was still reeling from his grandmother’s tirade. “And Mom never once told me that she wanted to go. I would have told her to go, or I’d have gone with her.”

  “She wouldn’t because she didn’t want to leave you. You could have helped her,” his grandmother snapped. “But, no, you were too busy in your little oh-so-important position. Always following in your father’s footsteps.”

  “And you’ve hated him all this time? Hated me?” Rowan asked faintly, his shock and pain evident. “What about the other people? What about Irene?”

  His grandmother shook her head, her voice returning to normal, yet sounding incredibly tired, as if that other energy had stepped back, and now she was free to speak. “You don’t understand even now. I loved my daughter. But her death, well, it was too much for her father. He’d been gone a lot already at this point. We’d traveled together and apart, but he wasn’t here when she died. Our son died a long time ago. Your grandfather had taken off then, wandering the world, doing anything he could to try to atone for not being at his son’s side—to protect him. He offered sacrifices to the Elders that they’d keep him safe. But he was losing it. He couldn’t be left alone. He wasn’t safe to those around him. He had only one choice to keep doing his life’s work …”

  “He committed suicide, and you carried his spirit with you all this time, didn’t you?” Grayse stared at her in fascination.

  Manru nodded slowly. “That is correct. My husband—he and I, we—have continued the work but knew we couldn’t go on for much longer. But we go on for as long as we can—sometimes offering sacrificial souls to the Elders to keep them alive, and others are victims to keep our own souls alive. We needed to set these wrongs back to rights. Like Irene. It was an abomination that she should live while our son and our daughter should die. We had to correct this.”

  Phoenix didn’t know what to say, but she could clearly see the double energies in the physical space of Manru’s body. How sad that their grief sent them on this path.

  “I already knew about Irene killing her child,” Manru continued. “All who died in the suicide season were worthless. They all had a guilty conscience about something. They were all criminals who shouldn’t be allowed to walk this earth. If the goodness and light of my children couldn’t exist, then neither should their darkness.”

  “What is it that needs to be done?” Phoenix asked.

  “You’re not too afraid,” Manru said, turning to look at Phoenix. “You watched them all die around you in the cult fire. You were totally okay to walk away and use their energy as you needed to, weren’t you?”

  “You’re okay to be their tool? To help commit these crimes?” Rowan asked.

  “I didn’t commit any crime.” Manru sneered at her grandson. “I didn’t shoot your father. In practice, he shot himself,” she said with a laugh. “Not my fault he’s so weak he can be easily manipulated. I didn’t shoot you either,” she said to Phoenix. “The geologist, Haro Rahaun, did. But he had killed an infant over twenty years ago. His own child! He abused him so badly that he died. So, using him to kill you was not a problem. But then, of course, it was pretty easy to have him realize what he’d done and then walk to the edge and throw himself into the lava pit. I didn’t want him to shoot Rowan though. That would have brought too much attention to these acts. Still, the Elders weren’t happy with me.” Manru turned toward Phoenix. “I told them you were dangerous, tried to show them. … but they wanted you anyway.”

  “They want her?” Rowan stepped forward. “What are you talking about?”

  Phoenix stared at Manru. “I’m the sacrifice, aren’t I? This is my father’s energy. It’s his ancestral energy here,” she said. She shifted her purse to the other side of her shoulder, the small box in it weighing heavy. “That’s why I’m a living sacrifice. Because they know I have their energy, and the Elders figure they can take it and feed on it and become stronger and live through me. Have you considered the fact you are also aging, and they’ll need someone younger to replace you?”

  “They already have the younger one picked out,” Manru replied. “Yet I’m not done. I can go until I’m one hundred years old with them. I don’t age as fast. But you”—Manru glared at Phoenix—“didn’t want it. You kept fighting them on it.”

  “Them? Why them?” Grayse asked. “How is it you carry more than one energy?”

  Manru turned to look at him. “They’re connected of course. It’s Phoenix’s father and her grandfather, but he’s also my old lover,” she said. “He took his own life, and Phoenix’s father and uncle died in that compound. But one lay undiscovered for so long. Now his soul is free.” She faced Phoenix. “But they weren’t quite normal. They were special. They were my lover’s sons. By another woman. That woman was the local witch way back when. I’m over eighty, so we’re talking fifty-plus years ago. It was a different time, and she was a very strong seer. And both of those men were her sons. My lover died, and I vowed to keep him alive in the only way I could. Only I was young and didn’t understand. His sons carried his soul for me. When your grandfather and I fell in love, I was determined to learn more, so I was ready for my lover’s time in need. Now we both serve the same Elders. Thank you for bringing the last bits of them home. They are so much stronger together.”

  They all stood, transfixed on Manru.

  “That’s why I was under the influence of my father so strongly after revisiting the compound this week. Bits of his energy and his father’s energy were stuck in that bomb shelter with his son. But, when we opened it, we released his soul and his energy, and, of course, I was there for him. For all three of them …”

  “The witch gave birth late in life, and, through you, her talents live on. They feel you are perfect because, without your physical body, they can then move that energy from their ancestors on to the next host.”

  “Who’s the host?” Rowan demanded.

  “She’s been chosen already. She just doesn’t know it yet. She can’t host yet. She’s too young.”

  “How do we stop that choice?” Grayse asked.

  Manru laughed. “You can’t stop this. But I can fix it. I want them to choose someone else, and only one way will that happen.”

  Rowan gave his grandmother a shake. “Stop this. You need to step out of this fog you’re in. Realize these energies are dangerous!” he snapped at her.

  “Only to sinners,” she whispered. She turned to look at Phoenix. “I told my lover that you weren’t worthy. But no one believes me. But, if you’re dead, they’ll be forced to join with me until we can find someone better …” She pulled out a small handgun and pointed it directly against Phoenix’s chest.

  Phoenix stared at the possessed woman with a gun. Phoenix was already drawing layers of energy in tight, like an elastic band, an almost trampoline effect. “I’m sorry, but, if you pull that trigger, it’ll kill you, not me.” She layered herself tighter with energy deep underneath the physical plane where the gun was tied in the same elastic aura.

  Manru laughed, almost hysterical. “No, you’re the one who doesn’t understand. You aren’t the Chosen One. You can’t be. You’re not good enough. I’ve seen into your soul. Seen what you’ve done. What you plan to do. … You already brought Rowan’s father back. I can’t have you undoing all my work. Healing people,” she spat out. “So many more need killing.” And she pulled the trigger.

  Manru’s body crumpled to the ground in front of them, a bullet hole in her chest, blood spreading across her body.

  Rowan crouched at her side, a hand at her neck, and turned to look up at Phoenix. “She’s dead,” he said, almost dazed.

  She nodded. “I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. But
it was necessary.” She pulled her energy in around herself, then reached out a hand and spread protective energy around Rowan. “Protect yourselves. The energies she carried are looking to survive. They need a host. A source to live yet again.”

  Rowan stood, his face thinning as he pulled his own energy in close and slammed the door to any spirit looking to take over.

  She looked over at Grayse and asked, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  Phoenix placed a hand on each man and stepped forward into the energy that swarmed angrily at her feet. Her father and his brother and the remnants of their father and all the other generations before latched on to the energy tighter and firmer, growing as a big mountain on her back. Manru’s energy and that of her husband, both raw, less tamed, less used to this form, swirled in agitation. Instinctively she knew they’d learn quickly.

  She turned to look at both men. “In my purse is that box. Please take it out. But don’t let go of my hands.”

  Rowan reached inside her purse with his free hand and pulled out the box. He laid it at Phoenix’s feet. Grayse used his energy to open it, with her help. She placed her feet on either side of the box, holding it steady. She whispered to her father and his father and even to her uncle—all those energies from her family line who were here now, surrounding them all. “I’m here. I understand what you want of me. The energy is here—right here. You need it. Reach for it …”

  Creating a clear and defined vision, she mentally created a vacuum, pulling from the base of the box, sucking up all the energy circling her own aura. In her mind she could feel an inner strength, and, using it, she cried out to the energies of her ancestors, “You will heed my orders and reach for the energy. … Now!”

  As she did so, she reached out mentally and pulled the familiar but foreign energies closer to the heavy suction, pulling them into the box.

  “Now,” she cried out.

  Grayse used his energy to snap the lid closed and then to seal it shut.