Her beloved appeared, walking toward her, the puncture wounds on his neck had healed, and his deep brown eyes were filled with sorrow.
She had learned from Mara of how powerful spirits could inhabit the bodies of the recently dead, and of souls who refused to leave. This figure in front of her, so alive, had to be one or the other because she'd seen Vanse's body emptied of his spirit earlier that day. She made the sign of the Mother at the ghost or demon to ward it off, but it only came nearer.
"Please, don't be scared. I don't know how, but this is me and I am here."
She stared up at the apparition. If this was Vanse, lingering on this plane because of her, she could make him listen. "Vanse, you must go. You know you cannot stay. You'll bring great sadness to your parents if they cannot send you to the ancestors in the proper way."
Voices shouted in the distance.
"I am so sorry," he said.
The creature resembling her love stood so close she could see his mouth move as he spoke. She wasn't afraid and reached out, placing her palm on his chest. Her touch told her the truth, he had no heartbeat. Yet it was strange how the heat from his body warmed her. Whether this was Vanse or not, she knew this spirit meant her no harm.
"You are always mine. Promise me you will never give yourself to another."
She longed so much to believe. "Tell me what happened."
He gripped her arm, his fingers digging in hard. "Promise me!"
"I promise. Please let me go. You're hurting me."
He released his hold. Anxious voices called her name.
"Forgive me," the spirit said.
She gazed into his eyes as he bent toward her, and thought she would drown in the grief she saw there. He kissed her. She wondered how spirit lips could feel so real. He pressed harder, silencing her short, sharp cry of disbelief as he slid a knife under her ribs into her heart, and her life bled out
Chapter Seven: Changing Sky
Tatya's plans for the morning included performing a cleansing ritual on Aunt Lil. Unlike the restricted hours of the public wards, on private wards, once the doctors finished their rounds, visitors could drop in. This afternoon she'd go out to the rez to see Changing Sky.
She rechecked the small cardboard box on the kitchen table, making certain she had everything she required for the ceremony: two sage bracelets, a spray bottle, her freshly-cleansed crystals, her kachina doll, sacred feathers and a small drum.
She sipped her cappuccino, sighing appreciatively. The coffee tasted perfect. Vamp or not, no one made an early morning brew equal to Sean's. She glanced out the window. Sean had nearly finished weeding the largest of the herb plots. Sensing her attention, he looked up, and she waved, raising her cup to him. She still had a lot of unanswered questions. Like how did they stay out in daylight and not burn to piles of ash? Maybe her assumptions were wrong; it sure didn't match what she thought she knew about vampires. But she'd have to admit that, even at college, when other students thought it daring to visit the vampire bars, she'd stayed well away, avoiding any contact with them. Now, she was making up for the gap in her education. She could see one vampire patrolling the far end of the plot and was aware the other two guarded the front of the property.
Tatya massaged her forehead. Last night's dream had left her with a faint headache that even the coffee hadn't eased, and her lower left side, just under her ribs, was sore. She'd not fallen or banged herself against anything since Vanse's blood had healed her. She lifted her top. No bruises. Odd.
Of the dream, she could only bring to mind disparate images; the sea, a beach, and a younger girl who was her sister. The last intrigued her because Tatya was an only child. Changing Sky had taught her how to interpret dreams—but to do that, you had to have full recall. After her recent encounters, it would be a relief to talk with Changing Sky.
Tatya shied away from thinking of either Angelus or Vanse because when she did, she experienced a premonitory tingle warning the connections were active. Last night, she had noticed the more she thought about them, the stronger the link. Not thinking of either of them wasn't easy. Her thoughts kept circling back to Vanse, so she distracted herself with lists of herbs and their healing properties, planting and harvesting times—anything to busy her mind. As if she didn't have enough problems in her life. Hopefully, Changing Sky would help her break the bond.
She knocked on the window to get Sean's attention.
"Time to go." She gestured at an imaginary watch on her wrist.
Minutes later, with Sean in the passenger seat, holding her box as if it were fragile glass, and the other three vamps following in their car, they set off for St. Raphael’s. She point blank refused to let anyone other than Sean sit in her truck; nor was she willing to relinquish her independence to him and by implication to Vanse, by relying on anyone else other than herself for transport. Besides, the prospect of squishing into a car with four vamps gave her the heebie-jeebies.
“How come you vampires drive when you can move superfast?”
“To start with, can you imagine how freaked out people would be? And have you seen Vanse’s vehicle?”
“No.”
“You’re in for a treat.”
They drove for about ten minutes before the memory of the dream hit her. The images were so intense she pulled over to the side of the road.
"Tat? Are you all right? What is it?" Sean was all sympathy as she rested her forehead on the steering wheel.
"Give me a minute. I had the weirdest dream last night, and it came flooding back."
Faint smells of sage and incense filled the car.
"Vanse and Angelus were in it."
"You know my opinion on all that stuff, and that's not changed."
Prior to his turning, Sean had regarded many of her beliefs with skepticism. Dream interpretation being one idea he took a more empirical attitude toward, even though now he could now verify more things existed in the world than he'd ever dreamed possible.
"In the dream, Vanse and I were in love!"
"Well, there you go. That proves my take on these things. Admit it, he saved your life, and this dream shows your subconscious accepting that, whether your conscious mind likes it or not."
"But he wasn't a vamp, he was human."
"That's just your mind rationalizing what happened."
"But I can't remember the end. I get to a certain part," she looked out the window so Sean wouldn't see the sudden rush of heat to her cheeks, "and the dream stops. That's it. There isn't any more." She started the car. "I'm going over to the rez this afternoon."
"Vanse won't like that. You're aware we can't enter the rez."
Tatya snorted. "Vanse won't like that, eh? Well, you tell Vanse to take what he doesn't like and stuff it where the sun don't shine! That reminds me, how come you're walking around in the daylight? I thought your lot burned up if you went out other than at night?"
"Yes. Most do, but Vanse learned how to survive in the sunlight, and he passes on that ability to everyone he turns. You can appreciate why he doesn't broadcast the fact."
"Yeah. 'Cause it gives him a greater advantage when he's looking for prey."
"No. He doesn't want to create panic and fear."
"Let's give him the compassionate vamp of the year award then, shall we?"
"You don't know him the way I do, Tatya."
She remembered the golden chain linking her to the vampire, the emotions she'd felt before he'd cut their connection. "Yeah, sure he's a saint. But I don't want to know him the way you do, Sean. Please, I don't want to talk about him. He's in my head enough as it is. I have to prepare myself for healing."
"I'm sorry, Tat."
She knew he meant it.
He reached out to touch her arm but withdrew as she flinched, unable to stop her reaction. "Me, too."
They drove in silence for the rest of the journey.
"Aunt Lil!" Her aunt was awake, sitting up with the top section of the hospital bed raised. Her face lit up as her niece e
ntered the room. Tatya rushed over, depositing her box on the chair.
"I'm fine, I'm fine."
They hugged and Tatya held Aunt Lil tight, glad to see the medical staff had removed the intravenous drip and other attachments wired to various parts of her aunt's upper body. She lowered her shields, her gaze critical as she inspected her. Aunt Lil's auric haze was denser, and the greenish-yellow band close to her skin had faded. Hints of her usual turquoise were returning. Most crucial, no gray stains. Good.
"That handsome young doctor says I'm on the mend."
"Handsome young doctor?" It couldn't be Dr. Mellior; he was pushing forty-five, if he was lucky.
"Yes, that nice Dr. Mellior." She eyed her niece. "You could consider him at least."
Tatya uttered a noncommittal grunt. "I'll be doing a healing for you. Is that okay?"
Patients did better if they took part in their own recovery.
"Oh, Tatya. I'd love that. But you won't be able to light any incense or candles. Half the nursing staff will be in here dowsing you with fire extinguishers or rolling you in blankets or whatever."
The first time Tatya had performed a healing ceremony for a patient in St. Raphael’s, her carefully crafted smudge stick set off the smoke detector. The nursing staff had not been happy. She’d proposed using scented candles. No, too much of a fire hazard they informed her. Eventually, they agreed to let her use a spray bottle containing a few drops of essential oil in water, as long as the scent wasn’t too overpowering for hospital sensitivities.
Tatya burst out laughing. No one ever made her feel so cheerful and able to forget her worries the way Aunt Lil did. "Don't worry, I have this sorted. Voilà!” She picked up a spray bottle and squirted a fine mist into the air. “This works just as well.”
Her aunt sniffed and smiled.
Tatya took the rest of the items out of the box, laying them on the side table. Before starting, she checked the protective wards she'd put around Aunt Lil's room, adding another layer. As before, barriers other than her own were in place, although now she recognized it was Vanse who had reinforced her safeguards. She didn't begrudge her aunt the extra protection, but as far as she was concerned, everything he did was suspect.
"Okay, you ready?"
"Whenever you are, dear." Aunt Lil closed her eyes and lay back.
Tatya concentrated on her breathing for a few minutes, accessed her power, and picked up the spray bottle. "Be gone, be gone, be gone," she chanted under her breath, spraying small squirts of mist into the air.
Aunt Lil breathed in the purifying fragrance, her eyelids closing.
With the space cleansed, Tatya scanned the room for unwelcome presences. Satisfied no spirits from the recently departed lingered, she set up her crystals, one in each corner of the room, and wedged her kachina doll just behind the pillow above Aunt Lil's head. Strictly speaking, she should start by standing behind Aunt Lil but as moving the hospital bed wasn't possible, she stood on her right side.
Settling the worn leather strap of the drum around her neck, its weight a familiar comfort as it rested against her stomach, she held her sacred feathers in one hand, and beat the drum with the other. She stroked the air above her aunt's head, pushing power into each movement, before flicking her wrist to the side. With patient care and attention, every sense alert, she repeated her actions, moving down her aunt's body.
When she reached the heart area, she detected a thickening of the ether that resisted, physically pushing back against her hand. Drawing more deeply on her power, she erased some of the darkness sitting in her aunt's heart, but she realized a large part of the baleful mass remained. With great care, she continued until she'd cleansed every inch of the rest of Aunt Lil's body.
Tatya understood her aunt wasn't cured of whatever psychic ailment had attacked her, but she rested at the end of the bed for a moment, satisfied to see the sickly yellowish band gone from her aunt's aura. Aunt Lil had dozed off and Tatya kissed her aunt on the cheek and smoothed back the hair off her forehead. Please, please get better and come home soon, she prayed.
She was packing her healing paraphernalia away, preparing to leave, when flecks of gold sparked at the edge of her vision, and she knew he was there. Even if the heightened tension in the air or the scent of sandalwood hadn't alerted her. Was Vanse agitating her on purpose to make her realize he could reel her in any time he wanted?
"No, Tatya. Those emotions are coming from you."
She was still calm from the healing and wanted to hold on to that peace for a little while longer. She picked up her box, giving him a fleeting look. Flashes of last night's dream; a boat, fishermen laughing, a small village, and a sense of the ancient past.
"I am sorry, Tatiana."
She brushed off the flick of suspicion that it was a memory and not a dream. "Let me pass."
"Sean will stay with you from now on."
It wasn't a question. Vanse moved aside; she glared up at him as she marched out the door, too agitated to trust herself to speak.
Tatya asked Sean to sit in the other car with the vamp guards for the trip out to the reservation. She needed some alone time. Sean raised no objections. He understood her moods.
She drove, hardly noticing the traffic, wrapped in her own thoughts. She needed, and missed, Aunt Lil more than ever. Life was moving in unforeseen directions, and she felt rudderless. She tried to stay positive. Her aunt had taught her the glass half-full was easier to live with than the half-empty one. Everyone's got baggage. It wasn't what happened to you because there were times you didn't have the power to control events, but it was how you dealt with what life threw at you that made the difference.
Aunt Lil was an earth witch of limited ability, but she'd taught Tatya everything she knew. Changing Sky would know what to do. Thinking of him calmed her. They'd often joked how the universe sent Changing Sky when they needed him.
By the time the reservation's dilapidated boundary sign came in sight, she'd regained her equilibrium. She parked on a desolate stretch of road outside the reservation boundary.
The vamp bodyguards parked behind her, and Sean came over to her window. "We'll wait here. How long will you be?"
She rolled her eyes. "As long as the sky takes to change." They laughed at the old joke. "It'll take as long as it takes. What else can I say?"
"If, by any chance, we're not here when you leave, go back to Changing Sky's place and remain there. Okay? You'll be safer from Angelus there than anywhere else. Promise me."
Something resonated when he said those words. Had someone spoken them in her dream? She wasn't sure she wanted to promise anything to anyone, but she nodded.
"Say it."
"Okay, okay. I promise to stay on the rez if you're not here when I want to leave. There. Satisfied?"
He grinned at her. She was glad. She missed the old Sean, but this one would do; she could try to think of him as an improved, updated Sean.
Changing Sky's cabin perched on the top of a hill, overlooking the ramshackle government housing and mobile homes spread over the reservation.
Tatya parked at the bottom and climbed the narrow trail. As she neared the top, a young man with waist length crow-black hair in a tight braid down his back came down the hill. She'd met most of Changing Sky's students and some had become friends, but she'd not seen this young man before. Tatya stepped off the path to give the stranger enough room. He glared at her, almost growling in disgust as he passed.
She let it go. She had too much of her own stuff to deal with right now. Whatever was bothering him, it wasn't her problem. By the time she reached the summit, she was out of breath and stood for a minute, enjoying the autumn air cooling the sweat trickling down her back.
Changing Sky sat waiting for her on the steps of his home. For as long as she'd known him, he looked the same, his gray-white hair in a braid down his back, a weathered face, and eyes that could see into your soul.
"Who was that?" she asked.
"You know what he is?"
"A shifter."
"Which species?"
She remembered the way his nostrils had flared as he'd approached her. She remembered his growl. "Werewolf."
"Good. Go and sit on the other side. I'll bring tea."
Changing Sky's familiar presence lifted her mood. In spite of his name, the shaman was always the same; patient and wise. He had placed wooden benches on both sides of his cabin: one that looked over his people, and one that looked over the land. Depending on his mood or the needs of his callers, he would choose one view or the other.
She sat down, and in no time cradled a warm cup between her hands, inhaling the tea's sweet-smelling perfume. Changing Sky made the best sage tea she had ever tasted. She'd watched him and he did nothing different, hot water over dried sage leaves; she attributed it to the magic in his hands, because when she drank it, somehow the world was set right.
The two of them sat side by side without speaking, and from time to time Changing Sky refilled her cup. They sipped in silence, contemplating the landscape.
Orleton had been built on one of the Western Plateau’s large expanses of flat grassland scattered throughout the small mountain range. To the west of the town, the land rose in a steady series of rocky ridges and forested slopes, and to the east, gradually dipped down to vast flat plains.
The reservation occupied the plateau’s southern edge, and extended out into the plains, where the land received less rainfall than the north-eastern grasslands, and hadn’t appeared overly attractive to the expanding white settlers. But the tribe had survived. They were practiced in adversity.
Today, there wasn't a cloud in sight and the bright afternoon sunshine turned the plains grassland to gold, generously dotted here and there with dark stands of trees.
"You are still not calm, Little Sister." Changing Sky’s name for her. "You need to practice more often so your lessons become part of you. You must remember what is important if you want to benefit from my teaching."
He was right. Since Aunt Lil had fallen ill, Tatya had neglected her shamanic practice. She bowed her head, and without warning, the whole story of the night in the parking lot and the day that followed came spilling out. She included everything Vanse had said since then.
Healer's Magic Page 6
