Healing Hands (The Queen of the Night series Book 2)
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Healing
Hands
Book Two in the Queen of the Night Series
Laura Emmons
ISBN-13: 978-1497537309
ISBN-10: 1497537304
HEALING HANDS
Copyright © 2014 Laura M. Emmons
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any storage or retrieval systems is forbidden without the express permission of Laura M. Emmons. Contact through Facebook at www.facebook.com/lauraewrites.
All characters in this book are a product of the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to any persons alive or dead. All incidents described in the book are also pure inventions of the author.
DEDICATION
This story is dedicated to my inspiring sister, Dia. Her work in hospice care, palliative care and as a shamana has brought light into many, many lives.
CONTENTS
Ch. No.
Chapter Title
Kndl
Loc.
Acknowledgments
68
Prolog
1
The Suspect Moon
The King and the Queen
76
141
2
Night of the Mothers
316
3
Corey
448
4
The Destroyer
544
5
Children’s Day
723
6
House Warming
794
7
A Quiet Christmas
950
8
Aura Camouflage
1043
9
Saying Goodbye
1161
10
Mistletoe
1300
11
12
13
14
15
16
Hogmanay
New Kids in School
Testing
The Moon Garden
Imbolc
Groundhog Day
1403
1603
1753
1891
2035
2174
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
Epilog
Fallout
Steve
Eagles
Family Tree
Sweetheart Dance
Vision Quest
A Month of Quiet
Poet’s Play
All the Queen’s Spies
Mooney
Crystal Cave
Together
Perfect Harmony
Regret
Vengeance
Recovery
May Day
2364
2492
2611
2735
2902
3130
3217
3405
3582
3730
3879
4023
4174
4275
4477
4616
4784
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to all of the aspiring authors on Authonomy.com who offered comments and advice on this novel. Special thanks to my beta readers: Chris, Karen, Mindy and of course, my ever-patient husband, Jim.
The cover on this book is comprised from several photographs, two of which are reprinted through an agreement with Shutterstock.com. The photograph of the mated eagles in flight is copyrighted by Gregory Johnston. The photograph, ‘Holding Hands’ is copyrighted by gurinaleksandr. The background was photographed by Dia Emmons at Prospect Peak in Morgan County, West Virginia and is reprinted by permission.
Prolog
The Suspect Moon
Six years earlier…
The man shivered. He’d been conditioned to endure all kinds of physical discomforts but he still felt the cold. This Afghani canyon was inhospitable in more ways than one. After almost baking to death mere hours ago in the arid, cloudless climate, he now found himself near frozen. He paused, hanging from the side of the cliff, pulling his army-issue flak jacket tighter around his middle and scoping out his next moves.
Finding solid footholds and handholds in the craggy cliff side took all of his concentration; the porous rock crumbled to dust in his hands and under his feet. Not wanting to lose purchase and plummet to the jagged rocks below, he considered his next handhold carefully and searched for the target.
He’d seen this location in a vision. He knew that in one of the many caves hidden amongst the eroded and misshapen rock, the enemy built IEDs, but the terrain looked a lot different in person. His gift of premonition didn’t allow him to sense his own future, but it helped him become an important intelligence asset to the U.S. military. His magical lineage gave him unprecedented athleticism and enhanced senses so he’d been able to become one of the elite members of the Special Forces.
Scuffling noises came from the rock in front of him. He froze. A desert hedgehog, no bigger than his fist, scoured the rock for insects. The tiny rodent would have been cute, if not for the sharp quills covering its whole body. All of the indigenous animals were predators.
Most of the people belonged to a radical sect bent on killing Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans and Australians. They would probably have liked to kill more people, but there were only so many hours in the day. He didn’t bother disguising himself with traditional garb. His pale skin and blue eyes, hell, even his light brown hair, made it obvious he didn’t belong here. Plus, he spoke lousy Pushto. His best option for survival on this mission was to not get caught. He counted on the cover of darkness and his dark clothes to help him stay out of sight.
They’d chosen this night to execute the mission because the new moon, completely hidden in the Earth’s shadow on one day each month, guaranteed absolute darkness.
The home-made bombs made mincemeat of his fellow soldiers. As a Special Forces operative, he’d been ordered to infiltrate the bomb manufacturing site, plant an explosive of his own, and sneak back out undetected. Twelve men made up his unit, but this operation had been designated a two-person job. His partner hid at the bottom of the cliff with the radio detonator.
He returned to his search along the face of the cliff. There. He found the opening. He used his enhanced hearing and sense of smell to confirm that he was alone in the cave. Then he planted the small but powerful device and retreated.
As he retraced his path back down the cliff to his partner, he saw a sliver of light from the moon cast rays upon the landscape. That’s odd, he thought. There shouldn’t be any moonlight at all until tomorrow night. The slice of crescent moon widened as he watched it. Uh oh. If the moon grew any brighter; his position would be spotted by the lookout guards posted on the cliff opposite him across the narrow valley. He chuckled to himself, nervously. This would be a great time for one of those fairy concealment charms, but he’d given up using magic altogether when he’d eloped with his stunningly kind-hearted and beautiful wife, Shannon. She stayed at home with his nine year-old daughter, Maggie, and his three year-old son, Corey. His marriage to Shannon had been forbidden by t
he rules of his coven. She was descended from Healers, people able to heal almost any illness with a magical touch. He was a Seer, born with the gift of prophesy. The deities forbid Healers and Seers to intermingle. Their community would have undoubtedly sided with gods and goddesses over two teenagers in love, so he and Shannon left Cacapon, West Virginia and everything associated with it.
He’d climbed halfway down the cliff, lost in memories of his wife and children, when it appeared that the laws of nature were wholly broken. Out of nowhere, the moon rotated until it shone in all its brightness upon his position. This was how it seemed to non-magical humans. The Queen of the Night, the goddess of the Moon, played a trick on the world by using the magical glow off her own sparkly silver visage, from the heavenly realm, to deliberately expose him to danger. Why now? After letting him live for so many years, why did she choose now to exact her revenge for his disobedience?
He heard shouts in Pushto, and saw the unmistakable glint off a sniper rifle scope.
***
November 1st, present day…
Evan woke up with a start. They shot him! Still lost in the dream, he reached for the journal and pen he kept by the bed. He’d had the rare gift of having dream visions of past events for five years now. By habit, he recorded the vision in as much detail as he could remember. His mom was part Poet, people who had phenomenal memories, so he had great recall. His visions of the future always came to him when he was awake. Of course, he couldn’t see his own future, no Seer could. Nevertheless, the members of the Cacapon clan chose him to represent all Seers on the High Council because he was uniquely gifted.
In spite of his standing in the closely knit, extremely secretive, and very magical community of Cacapon, in his mother’s eyes he was still just a senior in high school, and he had to get a move on or he’d be late. He tried to place the journal back on the nightstand, but accidentally dropped it. It had fallen open to an old journal entry.
Weird. He’d entirely forgotten about this vision. The vision described Ewan Stewart capsizing his boat on Cheat Lake nearly twenty years earlier. He remembered how the vision had disturbed him at the time because Cheat Lake was known for being calm, but Ewan’s boat capsized when a freak wave almost eight feet tall crashed over it.
That event had happened at night also, just like the dream vision he’d woken up from today, but today’s vision was about a man he knew had died seven years ago, Matthew Stewart, Ewan’s oldest son.
“Evan,” his mother called, “you’d better get down here. Fiona’s on the phone. It’s about your girl. Her mother’s sick again.”
He trudged down the stairs with his toothbrush still in his mouth, his clothes draped over one arm and his sneakers in his other hand.
“Don’t call her that, Mom,” he grumbled, “you’re gonna get us in trouble. We’re just friends.” Evan knew better than to break the rules with Maggie. She was a Healer and he was a Seer. If he didn’t want to end up like her dad, exposed to sniper fire while hanging on the side of a cliff, nothing could ever happen between them. No matter how much he might ache for her.
Chapter One
The King and The Queen
Transcript of e-mail conversation spanning October 28th through December 13th, present day…
EMAIL
Subject: New way to stay in touch (25 messages) Me, Evan
Maggie Stewart
Oct 28 at 4:25 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Hi Evan,
This is going to be a better way to talk to you. If we talk on the phone, someone might overhear us. The close call we had during our last conversation was frightening. I’m having a hard enough time keeping straight what secrets I’m keeping from whom. I’d hate for Corey to overhear us talking about magic, or for Mom to hear me say I have Healer and Seer gifts. Can you imagine how upset she’d be?
I’m hoping Mom can’t monitor this account. Wish me luck.
Evan Keach
Oct 28 at 8:03 pm EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
I like this format. We can share pictures, too. Are you doing anything special for Samhain?
Maggie Stewart
Oct 28 at 5:18 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
I’m too old for Halloween, but I think Corey is going trick-or-treating. He’s dressing up like one of those superheroes. Again.
Maggie Stewart
Nov 1 at 7:53 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Oh my Goddess, Evan. You won’t believe what happened this morning. I’m still shaking. What should I do?
Corey and I had stayed up because he wanted my help evaluating his trick-or-treat plunder, so I overslept and almost missed doing my daily scan of Mom before she left for work.
What I saw made me drop my electric toothbrush. I dry-heaved my guts all over, while it flopped uselessly on the ground like a caught fish. Instead of one tiny speck in the back of one breast, she was riddled with grayish-brown masses. These masses look like the cancerous tumors Nyad Easnadh developed last summer from the radiation poisoning of her stream. They’re everywhere: Mom’s lungs, her intestines and her pancreas. Overnight! She developed CANCER overnight!
Evan Keach
Nov 1 at 11:12 pm EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
Calm down, Mags. It’s too early to panic yet. Let the doctors do their tests. What you’re seeing with your magical healer vision might not be cancer. It might be something else.
Maggie Stewart
Nov 1 at 8:24 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Yeah right, Evan. Remember the part where I was cursed by an angry fairy queen into a catatonic state? Remember how you and Fiona saved me and when I woke up I was a walking combined X-Ray, Ultrasound and MRI machine? It looks just like the Ritual of Transfer. There’s only one entity in the universe that can perform this type of magic.
Evan Keach
Nov 1 at 11:26 pm EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
You’ve only had this ability for four months. You can’t possibly interpret every condition you sense accurately. Hang in there! Tell me what happens at the doctor’s. As far as the Ritual of Transfer is concerned, don’t you think the Queen of the Night has more important things to do? Also, do you still think of your healer vision as a curse? I was under the impression you’d started to embrace your legacy.
Maggie Stewart
Nov 1 at 8:29 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Okay, maybe you’re right. No, I don’t still think of it as a curse. It’s hard though, because only you, Fiona and I are aware I have this gift. I’ve known she had a 4mm lump in the back of her left breast since last August and I haven’t told anyone about it because I can’t explain how I know without revealing that I have both Healer and Seer gifts to Mom or revealing that magic exists to everyone else.
Also, the QoN probably does have better things to do, but didn’t you say her magic is the strongest on Halloween? Anyway, thanks, Evan. I’ll keep in touch.
Maggie Stewart
Nov 2 at 4:47 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Hey Evan,
Mom’s oncologist was able to examine her today. He looked at the places I told him to with an ultrasound and ordered a few emergency biopsies. At least he’s taking this seriously. The masses are still relatively small, but I can tell Mom’s starting to feel the pain, especially in her pancreas.
Evan Keach
Nov 2 at 8:02 pm EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
How do you even know what a pancreas is?
Maggie Stewart
Nov 2 at 5:05 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
You’re kidding right? I’ve wanted to be a doctor ever since I was five. Mom gave me a copy of Gray’s Anatomy for my twelfth birthday. Of course I know what a pancreas is.
Evan Keach
Nov 15 at 6:02 am EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
Maggie Stewart
Nov 15 at 5:05 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Thank you, Evan. I’m not doing that great. Every day I can sense the masses growing but I can’t tell anyone what I see. Mom wanted to throw me a party. I talked her out of it. She’s really starting to act sick. She has trouble breathing. She won’t eat. There’s nothing I can do to help her. I just didn’t feel like celebrating.
Fiona and Rose are helping Mom make plans to move to Cacapon permanently, so the only good news is that I might see you a lot sooner than next summer.
Maggie Stewart
Nov 24 at 7:19 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Hey Evan,
It’s official. All the tests have been analyzed and the diagnosis is confirmed. There’s no way to fight this much cancer. You should have heard the oncologist. He kept muttering things to himself.
“I don’t understand it.”
“She was cancer-free.”
“The post-operative radiation treatments worked.”
“I’ve never seen anything this invasive.”
My personal favorite is his new mantra. “How did this happen?” The masses are growing at an astronomical rate. All we can do now is help Mom put her affairs in order before she can’t even get out of bed. Corey’s distraught. How am I supposed to help him through this? It’s like Dad all over again.
Evan Keach
Nov 24 at 10:30 pm EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
I’m so sorry, Maggie. What can I do to help?
Maggie Stewart
Nov 24 at 7:35 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
I have no idea. Now that everyone else knows what I’ve known for weeks, I just feel wiped out. I should probably go to bed early.
Evan Keach
Nov 24 at 10:38 pm EDT
(evankeach@email.com)
I could tell you a bedtime story.
Maggie Stewart
Nov 24 at 7:42 pm PDT
(maggiestewart@email.com)
Why not? You’re the one who is part Poet. Tell me a story, Evan.