by Dale Mayer
Her eyelids drifted lower. “You should have left me. I was so close.”
“So close to what?” he asked in frustration. “And why is whatever you’re so close to – killing you?”
“It’s not me, it’s you,” she whispered. “I let you get to me. My mother would hate me for this.” Her voice faded lower and lower.
“Tell me what you’re trying to get close to?”
“Not what – who. Anna.”
Shit.
“I was on Anna’s trail.” Then her head rolled to the side. “I could see one end. I was trying to track her to the other.”
And she lost consciousness.
*
“Tavika?” He gave her shoulders a gentle shake. “Tavika? Wake up. Please wake up.”
Her eyelids fluttered open and a cloudy gaze stared back at him, only to slowly tumble closed again.
He gave her a harder shake. “Tavika, you need to wake up.”
“Tired,” she mumbled. “Can’t stay awake.”
“Damn it. You need to. You have to tell me what you’re doing. Did you find Anna?”
Her eyelids opened up and this time her gaze was confused. He could see the fatigue, the drain of whatever she’d been doing inside her system.
“You need to recharge,” he stopped. “This is important.”
“Recharge?” She frowned as if she was trying to work through such a concept. He bowed his head, trying to hold back the frustration. He’d come up against this before. It was the missing gaps in education. The pieces psychics needed to learn so they could continue to do what they were but on an efficient level.
“You’ve drained your energy doing whatever it was you were working on,” he said. “You need to grab a hold of whatever source you get your energy from and recharge.” He reached a hand down to lay it between her breasts. “Like this.” And he sent a heavy dose of energy into her heart chakra.
She arched up above the bed crying out.
He lifted his hand.
She collapsed back on the bed, her eyes opened wide. The color flowed back into her skin.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “You look much better.”
She lifted up on one elbow, a cough wrenching out of her chest.
“Well I haven’t seen that reaction before.” He reached over and gently rubbed her back. “That shouldn’t have hurt you.” But as he watched her struggle to recover from the blow, he realized he’d dislodged something somehow. She was struggling to recover.
Stefan’s voice whispered through his mind. It’s old energy. You hit her in the heart chakra, whether intentionally or on purpose I don’t know, but that shockwave disturbed a lot of old stuff. You can expect there to be some repercussions from this.
“Damn it. She was tracking Anna. Said she was close but I didn’t ask or listen, I just acted.”
It will be okay. But you know what happens when you stir up old stuff.
In front of them Tavika coughed and coughed and then finally when it seemed like she was done she hacked up some more. She bolted from the bed and raced to the bathroom.
And retched.
Jericho sat on the bed and stared after her. “Jesus, Stefan, I didn’t hit her hard. I never even thought that such a thing was possible.”
She will adjust.
“You sure I didn’t cause an injury? Maybe she needs to go see a doctor.”
No, she’ll be fine. She just needs time. You’ve opened up a blockage. One she put in place to keep her history locked down. And a lot of difficult emotion ended up piled on top.
He wasn’t sure how that was going to go. Just the thought of it made him wince. Opening up her history, those old aches and pains were going to do more than hurt. He stood outside the bathroom wanting to help but not knowing how. “Tavika, I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t know that was going to hurt you.”
In a weak voice, she said, “I’m fine.”
He heard sounds that were distinctly not fine. But there was no point trying to talk to her as it was very hard to reply when your stomach was trying to empty itself. He went back and sat down on the side of the bed and waited. What the hell had he done?
Chapter 22
Tavika took a swallow of water and rinsed her mouth. She’d been awake all of five minutes and had bolted to the bathroom as soon as she could.
What the hell just happened? She leaned on her hands and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked odd. Different. She recognized that Jericho had sent a lightning bolt of energy into her heart chakra. That accounted for the color in her cheeks and the brighter look in her eyes, but the pain on her face, the grief in her heart, and the ache so deep inside she swore it was through her bones – where had all that come from? She wanted to cry, to scream. She wanted to do something… But at the same time, she wanted to curl up into a tiny ball and hide away from life. How was any of this fair? None of it made any sense. And was any of it even explainable?
She opened the door to see Jericho sitting lost on her bed, Solomon in his arms. He was a good man. He’d been trying to help her. He didn’t deserve to feel guilty. It was her fault for stuffing a cauldron of emotions inside.
A similar blow could have come from any number of directions. That it was from him just added to the nightmare. She made her way weakly to the bed and sat down beside him. He never said a word, but she could feel his gaze drift over her face, searching for the truth of her condition.
“I’m fine.” She flopped backwards on the bed, needing the support beneath her back.
“I’m so sorry,” he said in a low voice. “It’s not what I meant to do.”
She gave a broken laugh. “Well, it is what you meant to do. That shot of energy was meant to stop me from what I was doing. In that sense it worked. You weren’t to know how much I had stuffed into that chakra with the hope of it never seeing the light of day.”
“No, but I should’ve. I know what happened to you. I know what you went through. I opened up old wounds I hadn’t intended to. And for that I’m really sorry.” The sincerity in his voice rolled over her.
She believed him. “I’ll be fine. I just didn’t need this right now. The Ghost’s return is enough of a trigger. In fact, that’s likely why your bolt of energy did as much damage as it did. His arrival has already sent minor shocks through the parts of my psyche that were on lockdown, weakening them. You just popped the walls wide open.”
There was a comfortable silence between them. He flopped backwards to lie beside her.
Solomon walked onto her tummy, his engine loud as he curled up in a tight ball. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close.
After a long moment Jericho asked, “What exactly were you doing?”
She rolled her head sideways to look at him. “Connecting the dots.” She hoped he’d allow that answer to fly by, but she knew before the words were out of his mouth he wouldn’t.
“I was sitting in the restaurant across the road having a cup of coffee.” He stared up at the ceiling. “When a shockwave hit me. My hand shook so badly I spilled coffee all over the table and myself.” He turned to look at her – their faces only inches from each other. “I had no idea what it was. It terrified me.” He smiled crookedly. “I raced out of the café petrified something had happened to you, yet what I saw when I looked up at the apartment was out of this world.”
“What did you see?” she asked curiously. “I’ve never seen or heard of anybody being affected by my connecting the dots before.”
“When you say connecting the dots, why is that I don’t think you mean drawing lines on a piece of paper, making connections within a case or something like that?”
She dropped her gaze and rolled back to stare up at the ceiling again. She took a deep breath and said, “That’s exactly what I do. Only…” her voice trailed off.
“Only?”
She winced. “I do it on the etheric level. I call it going into the abyss.”
Silence.
Then again what
did she expect? He probably didn’t know what that meant.
“Meaning?”
What to say? How could she explain something like that? He was psychic. But he had a lot of abilities she’d never heard of. Was it possible she could do something he couldn’t? She contemplated that idea.
Her mother hadn’t had anything to do with any other psychics, preferring to keep the family isolated. The circle of knowledge Tavika was familiar with had come from her family. That didn’t mean it was all-inclusive. Neither did it mean her mother shared. It wasn’t really part of her makeup.
“It means I search through the fabric of our world for colored dots that show me patterns that connect people, places, things – on the physical level.”
More silence. She wanted to smile. She didn’t dare.
“Colored dots?”
This time she laughed. He rolled over so he could stare down at her.
With a smirk on her lips, she said, “Of everything I’ve said, you pick up on the color issue?”
He grinned. “Stefan works on the fabric of our existence stuff too, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody talk about colored dots. And although some people may be able to see things at that level, I’m not sure I know someone who has been able to see or work patterns there.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Stefan goes there?”
This time it was Jericho’s turn to laugh. “Sounds like you and Stefan need to spend some time together.”
This time her smile was natural as she said quietly, “And maybe I’d like that.”
He reached down to entwine their fingers. “I think you’ve been alone for so long, on many different levels, that you’ve become afraid. A prisoner almost. Of the world you didn’t know. That there would be nobody else like your mother, like you, your sister, or brother even here.” He gently stroked his thumb across her hand adding, “It’s not like that. There is a group of us. It’s only a life sentence if you’re alone. When you have other people to help – those who are in the same boat with the same challenges – then life is a lot easier.”
“I was the youngest of a family of very strong and talented psychics, some of them very aggressive.” She squeezed his fingers then said, “That didn’t make it easy. They didn’t make it comfortable. In many ways there was nothing pleasant about it.”
“I was raised with nobody around me having any kind of abilities. I came into mine late in life,” Jericho said. “I knew nothing about it, and I knew no one to ask. I always assumed my life would’ve been so much better if I had been born into a family that already knew about these challenges and could help me to adapt.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
He nodded. “Two brothers. Lots of cousins, aunts, and uncles.” He grinned. “And now one nephew and niece.”
She rolled her head over to the side so she could study his features. “Did you fight lots? Have any arguments and disagreements with your family.”
“Absolutely. Some days it was like World War III.”
“Exactly. Do you know what it means when everybody’s a psychic, but they’re all more developed than you are because you’re the youngest? It means no privacy, no thoughts of your own. It means constant battlement in terms of abilities – whose better, bigger, or stronger. It means realizing you are the weakest, ugliest, youngest, and the worst off, being raised and formed by criticism and judgment inside and outside your head, every waking moment.” She gave a half snicker. “There was nothing peaceful about my life at all. I was raised in the middle of a war. Among very aggressive people who all knew more than I did. In a field where there was nobody to ask for help. In a field you can’t even mention to other kids because they’ll look at you like you were not only lying, but off your rocker.”
He dropped her hand to prop himself up on his elbow. She studied the man that somehow managed to work his way into her apartment, her life, and she feared he’d easily work his way into her heart if she let him.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Everyone who’d been close to her was dead. And she didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.
*
It never occurred to him her childhood would have been anything other than wonderful up to the point of the Ghost’s arrival. But as he listened to her and really understood what it was like to be the least developed in a family of psychics like hers…well that would have been incredibly difficult. He just couldn’t imagine. He reached over and with his thumb gently stroked her cheek. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
She laughed, but the bitterness was obvious. And the pain.
“How can anybody know? I think honestly I was so determined to not be like them I shoved all my abilities down deep inside so I wouldn’t have to deal. So I didn’t have to strive to be better than they were. I was the failure. I was the one born without anything special. I was the worst thing you could be in my family, I was average.”
“But inside it didn’t work for you. You just pretended to be.”
Her gaze turned sad. “I don’t know if I pretended to hide or if because I was keeping secrets that made me feel superior.” She stared at him. He could see the embarrassed honesty in her eyes. “I didn’t like myself very much. I knew they liked me even less. I was just playing mind games as children do.”
He tapped her lightly on the chin. “Not mind games. Survival. You did what you had to do to survive. Your family life, your childhood, couldn’t have been easy.”
“No, it wasn’t, but that didn’t excuse me from not making the best of it. I had so little time with any of them. The realization afterwards that they were gone, that I would never see my mother again, that even my sister’s cutting remarks were done because she was dead…” she shook her head.
“I fell into a deep spiral of depression and anger. It was very hard to pull out of. Took years of growing up. Even now I feel guilty. Guilty I lived with so little to offer the world when they who were so gifted died.” Tears lit up her gaze, the drops slowly tracking down her cheeks.
He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. No child ever makes the best out of the situation they have. The point of being a child is to live in the moment. Not to look down the road at what’s coming. You are not responsible for what happened to your family.”
Her lips trembled. “That’s the trouble with words. They hit at one level, yet emotion hits at a very deep one. And no amount of words would have convinced me I wasn’t responsible. That if I had just developed as I was supposed to instead of trying to hold that part of myself apart, hidden, secret – that maybe I’d have had abilities that could have saved us.” Now the tears flowed steadily. “Do you know what it’s like to watch your family die in the hands of a madman, knowing you’d wasted the time you’d been given and could have saved them?”
“Of course I can’t know what that’s like. But I do know that guilt eats through your soul. You can’t let it. You deserve a life. You survived that nightmare. All the things that happened before then don’t matter because from the moment it was over you became reborn. You became somebody new. There was baggage you could never let go of.”
He smiled at her tenderly. She was so damaged. So proud. So capable. “But you stood tall and you made it. You took those steps and you walked forward – you survived. There is nothing in this world stronger than a survivor.”
She was not to blame for what the Ghost had done. Jericho knew there was a lot more that needed to come out, but this was a start. “Let me tell you how I came to do what I do.”
She turned to look at him, a question in her eyes.
He told her about Darren’s boy being kidnapped. The cop turned child predator who had opened his eyes to the real evil of the world and how he’d met up with Hunter who’d introduced him to Stefan.
And both had shown him the reality behind the polite face of society.
“So this is what I do now,” he said quietly. “And every day t
here’s something new to learn. Something new to see.” His smile deepened, turned lazy. “Like you. I had no idea who you were on the inside. What you were dealing with. How unique you are inside and out…but I’m learning.”
He had so many more questions he needed to ask her. Questions about her connecting the dots. And what the hell had that blast been all about. Because wow, that was a weapon in itself. If she could learn to do that there was nobody out there who could touch her. Nobody would be able to harm her ever again. Maybe indeed that was partly what she was so upset about. If she’d been able to trigger that while she’d been a captive…
Right now it didn’t matter because in his arms was that little girl inside her desperately needing reassurance. To know she was not responsible for her family’s demise. He took her in his arms, gently rubbing her back until her tears dried up. There was still a lot of work to do. He didn’t know when or how, but they needed to get to it as fast as they could. Anna was still out there.
And so was the Ghost.
*
He walked through the station and headed for Tavika’s desk. The office was empty as usual at this hour. He had clearance here but not in this particular area, but he came often anyway. No one ever checked.
The room, as always, was completely disorganized. With a sigh he moved her little pencil organizer to the corner of the desk. Everything had a place. A home.
Why couldn’t she get that through her head?
It was early yet. He was safe for at least an hour. That should be plenty of time. He had a brunch to get ready for. And a lover to meet. Life was good, he wanted this future. He was trying to clean up, but it really was an addiction.
And so hard to walk away from. Still, it was going to be worth it in the end.
He pulled out his list. He needed to make a selection soon.
Time was running out.
Chapter 23
