a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure)

by Charles, L. j.

  I offered a heartfelt thank you to all Hawaiian deities that there was a navigation system in the car, programmed it for Tripler, and merged onto the highway. I half-listened to the GPS voice with one hand on the steering wheel and one fiddling with my belly jewel. I couldn’t keep my fingers away from the diamond, kept rubbing it, hoping for inspiration, for some clue as to how it could be used for healing. Maybe my grandfather…

  The sign for Tripler appeared on the right of the road, faster than I expected. The guy behind me laid on the horn when I made a sudden turn. Wasn’t the GPS voice supposed to warn me? And then I realized it had, I’d just been ignoring it, lost in thought. And hope. Time to focus. I had a gnarly, secretive Kahuna to locate.

  The headlights flashed on a yucky green building that matched the picture I’d picked up from my grandfather’s note. Had to be it. I edged to the side of the road and stopped. He materialized from the shadows, the faint glow of streetlights illuminating his come-to-me gesture.

  It rankled—leaving me raw and steaming with impatience. I shut off the engine, and met him on the sidewalk. "Why the secrecy? Why not just tell Pierce you needed to get into Tripler to cure Annie?"

  As soon as the words left my mouth, guilt set in. He was old. Supposedly wise. And it wasn’t his fault that Annie and Parker had been infected with the toxin.

  He offered me his hand. "Walk with me, Granddaughter." There was no animosity in his tone, no admonishment for my burst of temper.

  I hauled in a breath and tried to calm my racing heartbeat. What I needed was to get inside the Army base and figure out a way to… "Do you know how to heal them, Annie and Parker? You know Parker had a relapse on the airplane?" My question was softer, but there was still an ugly edge to my voice.

  "I did not know when it would come, but yes, I expected there would be a second stage to his illness."

  Grandfather's hand was warm in mine, lightly calloused, but smooth to my touch. My breathing slowed.

  "I’ll sneak you inside. You know how to heal them, right? Kahunas do that?" Desperation washed through my words, clung to them like spilled glue.

  "It is not in balance for me to heal them. This is a task that has now been passed to you, Granddaughter."

  Say, what? Shock stopped me, my bare toes sliding forward in my slippahs and biting into the pavement. "I can’t. Don’t know—"

  "It is your heritage. It has been passed down for centuries, and was activated when you stepped onto Makani Maliu’s land. Only those who are born into our house are allowed to know the secrets."

  Panic pressed into the small of my back, fanned through my body. "But that can’t be true. My parents put me through a series of dreadful psychological tests. Surely if this were a genetic thing, my mother would have known. Wouldn’t have done that to me."

  "Loyria’s gifts were in finding poisonous substances, not in healing. She would have tried to protect you from her fate."

  "And denying me knowledge was her way of protecting me?" Anger slipped through my words.

  "Listen, Granddaughter, for time is short. You must begin from where you are. You are no different from a flower or a rock. Become energy in its purest form, hold the balance until their harmony is restored, and then remain strong. Hold the space for the healing until the purity of love nullifies the toxin."

  Mumbo jumbo. His words made no sense, and I needed… And then it clicked into place.

  The diamond was energy. A rock. Part of the earth. Annie, Brody, Parker, and his cousin were created of the same energy. All I had to do was hold them in pure love. Pure love being the key words. And loving Brody and Parker’s cousin? Seriously? Not remotely possible.

  Damn, but I couldn’t fail Annie and Parker because I had a closed mind.

  Kahuna Aukele and I had reached a bend in the road where a bus stop took up the parking strip. "Sit here," my grandfather said, guiding me to a bench seat inside the Plexiglas enclosure.

  "No time. I need to get inside…"

  He was chanting, the resonance floating in the air, surrounding us with energetic walls so powerful we had to be invisible to anyone passing by. He used his arms, moving energy around, cool, then warming. Turning hot. Fire consumed me without burning.

  I had no words, my mind open and empty, my body tingling, but without substance.

  Grandfather blew across the top of my head three times, each of his breaths pressing against my crown chakra, filling my body with images and information that passed in a blur. The frailness of my human mind was unable to keep up with the universal stream of knowledge pouring into me.

  Time hiccupped.

  The rumble of a diesel engine assaulted my ears, and the stench of its fumes clogged my throat.

  I tracked the taillights as they faded into the distance.

  Grandfather was gone.

  And I had just become a healer.

  Free fall. No parachute.

  Twenty-five

  There wasn’t time to wallow in awe about whatever Kahuna Aukele had done to me, so I knocked back a mental tumbler of whiskey—neat—and got back in the car to fight my way through Tripler security.

  There was paperwork. Since Pierce wasn’t with me, they needed to verify my identity and slap a parking pass on the car. My nerves knew it took forever. The clock said ten minutes had passed.

  It was quiet outside the ICU. No Mitch. No Jayne. No Sean. I bellied up to the nurse’s station, heart knocking against my ribs. "Annie Stone?"

  The nurse smiled. "She and Mr. Steele are in a private suite near infectious disease." The smile had reached his clear, brown eyes, but there was a shadow of sympathy lingering in his voice. Annie was still alive, but they didn’t expect her to make it.

  My heartbeat slowed to double time.

  "Infectious disease?" I must have looked totally blank.

  "We can filter any contaminants from being brought into the unit if we keep them in isolation. They’re on the ground floor. Ask anyone, they’ll point you in the right direction."

  It made no sense. The poison wasn’t contagious. But of course they couldn’t know that. I shrugged it off as hospital protocol, got back on the slowest elevator ever, and then turned my mind loose on the immediate problem. How the heck was I supposed to become one with the diamond tucked in my navel, then somehow transfer that energy to Annie and Parker? My intuition was blank. And by the time the elevator door dinged open, panic had taken over my few remnants of common sense-slash-sanity.

  The lack of functioning brain cells would probably turn out to be a good thing, since this metaphysical activity relied on blind faith more than proven theories.

  I had to ask directions a couple of times, before I hit the infectious disease nurses’ station. They pointed me in the right direction, explained the disposable gown and bootie drill, and then sent me on my way.

  The room housing Parker and Annie was stuck at the end of a hallway, around a corner, down another hallway, and there were no obvious medical types hanging around. I figured it was partly because they were terrified of a potential disease that antibiotics wouldn’t touch, and partly because Tynan Pierce was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean and wasn’t riding herd on them.

  They’d put Annie and Parker in an out of the way room—probably because they didn’t know what to do with people who might be highly contagious, and weren’t dying quickly enough. Rage flashed through my veins, pushing my panic into oblivion. Somehow, I’d see that Annie and Parker were moved into the main part of the hospital. Right after I healed them. Pierce would never have let this happen, and neither would I.

  Healing first. Then the move.

  Mitch spotted me through the glass panel in the door, his eyes too bright, a paper gown covering his clothes. He stepped into the anteroom, yanked the gown off, wadded it into a ball along with his booties, and then tossed the whole mess into the trash.

  He rushed to meet me, crushing me tight against him, trying to protect me from the pain of losing Annie and Parker. His intention ting
led under my fingertips. "Annie is fading," he whispered against my ear.

  There wasn’t anything else to say, so we just held each other for one long, desperate moment. I stepped back, lacing our fingers together. "Parker?"

  Mitch snagged a gown from a stack outside the door, and handed it to me. "Holding his own so far. Fading in and out of consciousness, but not comatose." He spun me around, tying the gown behind my back. I did the same for him, then we covered our shoes with booties. There were gloves, but I didn’t want my fingers covered. Not for this. Also, I knew the toxin wasn’t in any way contagious. Just lethal. I did use the antibacterial hand cleaner because I didn’t want to chance passing any kind of germs to either Parker or Annie. Their bodies didn’t need to contend with fighting infection.

  Properly attired, I made a light fist to keep my fingers safe, then pushed the door open with my shoulder. No way did I want to pick up any images from that door.

  Jayne sat quietly by Parker’s bed, holding his hand, mopping tears from her cheeks.

  Sean was lying on Annie’s bed, holding her, his eyes closed.

  My throat clogged with unshed tears.

  Mitch tried to tuck me under his arm, but I shook my head. "No. I need to…" What? What did I need to do? Please, please, God, help me.

  I closed my eyes to shut out everyone’s grief. There was no room for grief in healing.

  Crown chakra. Light. Love.

  I stepped to the head of Annie’s bed, scooted between it and the wall. The bed rolled a few inches, but Sean didn’t move. Even his eyelids didn’t so much as flicker.

  Jayne bent over Parker’s hand, sobbing, and Mitch moved across the room to comfort her.

  Good. Everyone was in place. Sean loved Annie. I loved Annie. And there should be an outpouring of amazing strength if I bound our love together for the healing.

  Where was this idea coming from? And how was I supposed to pull it off? I shoved the question out of my head. This was not the time for questions.

  My hands slid under Annie’s head, cradling the weight. No images. No warmth. Her body was too cold.

  First thing. Fire.

  I closed my eyes, forced my shallow breaths to become deep and long. Calm. Then I moved my attention back to the bus stop…of all places. There was irony there somehow.

  Not now, Everly.

  I slammed the door closed on my unruly thoughts. It was hard work, shutting off my brain.

  Annie’s breath rattled.

  Panic flared.

  Bus stop. My grandfather. The fire of healing energy.

  I yanked it in through the top of my head. Visualized the purity of the fire, the intensity of the flames, red turning to blue as the heat increased. Sweat broke out, prickling over my skin. I bent, blowing the heat over the top of Annie’s head, opening her crown.

  I hoped, and I prayed.

  Ruthlessly I stomped on the doubt blossoming in my chest. There was no place for it, not within the fire of pure love.

  Another breath. Warmth from her head seeped into my palms. But not enough.

  I changed images, holding the picture of Pierce slipping my belly diamond into place, securing it with a silent request not to remove it. My focus widened to include Pierce’s smile, the sunlight filtering through the windows of my tree house, creating a rainbow of color that sparkled against the walls.

  Color. I needed color.

  I wove the mental image of a rainbow around Annie, cocooning her body in the promise of life.

  Finally, my mind switched off. I became the rainbow, and I could sense Sean’s love brushing the edge of the energy field surrounding Annie. Dark pink, blending into red. I welcomed it, nourished it as it merged into the rainbow of diamond light.

  My palms were on fire. I blew against the crown of Annie’s head again. Could sense her body warming, softening with life.

  And that was when I caught my first glimpse of the toxin. I expected black. I saw olive green. Plants without life. Dull. Thick and clingy. Hungry for her body.

  When Annie’s warmth began to fade, I realized my brain had kicked in again.

  I sucked in a dozen cleansing breaths, holding the image of myself as nothing but the joy of vibrant color. No body. No mind. Only life. I steadily surrounded the dull, green mass with my rainbow. With my love. With Sean’s love. And then I trickled it into the ugly mass, slowly spreading the joy, eating the empty nothingness that was the poison, replacing it with love.

  Annie must have moved, because the energy pouring from Sean shifted. It didn’t stop flowing to her, it just…thinned.

  When I opened my eyes, his gaze met mine. Penetrating. But he didn’t ask. Didn’t flinch from the impossibility of whatever I was doing.

  If he could do it, so could I.

  Closing my eyes again, I dropped back into the energy field, knowing I couldn’t move until the ugly green blob was gone. And knowing that my physical body wasn’t strong enough to continue unless I left it—did one of those out-of-body things I’d read about way back when, but could never pull off.

  The closest thing I knew to being out-of-body was the hypnagogic state just before sleep. I drifted, allowing the exhaustion swamping my body to take over, to dissolve into the floating nothingness of pre-sleep. The room rippled, and I slipped back into healing mode, where I could monitor the progress of my rainbow, but no, it wasn’t mine. These colors belonged to the Universe.

  I was making progress, but it was too slow. Annie’s body only held the warmth for a few minutes, then chilled until the power of the colors built again. I needed to do something else. Moving my hands from under her head, I brushed the limp strands of hair away from her face. I hated seeing it dull and stringy, wanted to watch it turn healthy and golden under my fingers. But I couldn't…

  That was it. I’d started the healing process, but I didn’t have the soul-deep belief that it would work. Didn’t believe in myself, or in the power of my heritage.

  What my grandfather had been trying to tell me was that we didn’t need an antitoxin because I was it—my family. My mother’s secret, my grandparents’ knowledge that had been passed down from generation to generation—it was our genes that held the ability to find the toxic plants, to make them into a lethal substance. And, more importantly, we had the ability to create the antitoxin. Maybe.

  There it was again. The doubt.

  There was no room for it, not if I wanted Annie to live, to build a life with Sean, and shower the world with exceptional children.

  Images began to slip through my fingertips as I stroked Annie’s cheek. They splashed, full of life, on my internal monitor—Annie sitting in bed, pale but laughing. A quiet wedding ceremony with just the two of them. Annie pregnant.

  Annie. Pregnant.

  My brain totally kicked in. Annie’s cheek cooled beneath my fingers.

  I slammed my eyes shut. Focused on breathing, on the fire and on the wonder of diamond light. When I could see the rainbow of colors still at work on the poison, I shifted position, moving away from the head of the bed until I stood next to Annie.

  My hand reached, almost of its own accord, to hover over her abdomen. How would I know if there was life there? What would it feel like against my palm?

  My knees wobbled.

  Mitch must have noticed something was going on, because he slid a chair behind me, and ever-so-gently touched the back of my legs with it.

  He didn’t speak. Didn’t ask questions. Just did the right thing. Love for him flared from deep in my soul.

  And there it was.

  A tiny spark of life, completely surrounded by brilliant shades of so many colors. Colors I didn’t have names for. It was a girl. And she was safe from the toxin.

  A new bolt of determination shot through me. No way was this little one going to die. Not on my watch.

  I glanced at Mitch and patted my shoulder.

  He heard my message, and rested his hands there. Warm. Without questions. Love born in trust, without doubt.

 
I sucked it in. Met it with an incredible rush of my own belief. In him. In us. In my grandfather, and my parents.

  Light exploded in the room. White. Blinding bright. Except that I was probably the only one who could see it because my eyes were closed.

  Annie coughed.

  Sean jumped off the bed.

  Had I finally opened my eyes? I touched them. Yeah. Open and wet with tears.

  Jayne left Parker’s side, nudged the machines around Annie out of the way, and gasped. "She’s okay." She squinted at me. "You did it, didn’t you? I don’t know how, don’t want to know, but get your butt over here and do whatever hocus pocus is necessary to get Parker out of that bed."

  Last thing I remember: Parker’s smile.

  Twenty-six

  The antiseptic scent of the Tripler intensive care unit roused me from sleep. And then the rhythmic bleeping of hospital monitors crept into my awareness, sending a tiny burst of adrenaline through my blood. It wasn’t enough to force my eyes open. But when the cramp in my neck spasmed, it slammed me from cozy sleep into wide-awake pain.

  I struggled to free myself from the blanket holding me captive. Stopped, and gave my brain a chance to process the situation. I was on one of the sofas in the intensive care waiting room, not strapped down in a patient bed. Okay, then. I could handle this.

  Mitch was sprawled in one of the chairs, watching over me. Well, he probably meant to be watching over me, but the snores drifting from his limp body indicated he was catching up on some much-needed rest.

  I immediately headed for the ladies’ room, intent on washing the sleep from my eyes, rinsing my mouth out, and empting my bladder. Normal activity. Comforting.

  If I’d known what waited for me, I would probably have locked myself in the bathroom for the rest of the day. When I returned to the waiting room, Jayne and Sean sat on the sofa staring at me, eyes burning with questions. The good news: they each held a grande-sized Starbucks cup.