A Diamond in My Pocket (23 page)

“Unzip her pocket and remove the
pouch,” he said to the first slave. The captive did as instructed, but as he
removed the pouch, it fell out of his hand, landing on my stomach. The slave
crumpled to the ground, dead. The second was ordered to slide the diamond out
of the pouch onto my chest without touching it. As he did so, the Sanguine
Diamond caught the sunlight and a bright brilliance reflected everywhere. The
gasps from the onlookers were heard. And like the first captive, the second
collapsed to the ground. Apparently even simply touching the pouch of the
diamond was deadly.

The withered leader addressed the
clans, “Today, all will witness ultimate power bestowed upon our clan, and the
fate of all those who stand in our way.” He motioned to me as the other Death
members formed a wide circle around the stone table and began chanting
unrecognizable words. Their arms were raised and hands shaking. I looked to my
left then to my right and found Chris standing in front of everyone with a terrified
expression. He opened his mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Calli? Why
didn’t you confide in me that you had the stone all along ? Why didn’t you let
them kill me? Clearly nature wanted it, I had the number he called. But now
I’ll be saved to live a life of sorrow without you!”

Oh, how I wished to communicate
with my mind. I would tell him everything. I would tell him the witch told me,
no ordered me, to keep this absolutely secret, to not remove the stone from the
pouch, to not tell anyone and not show anyone; to keep it safe. She informed me
I was just a regular human, enchanted to appear as a Runner. She did not tell
me the stone would give me all the powers including Healing. She did not say so
much about me would change. She left out the part about how I would become
selfish and greedy with my newfound powers and how I would do anything to make
sure Chris didn’t die in the end. I would tell Chris he clings to a vision of
someone else, not me, and he should move forward in life and find the girl of
his dreams, his Healer. I am only the Sanguine Diamond deliverer, a human, used
to do what people of powers cannot.

Then Chris said to me with his
mind,
“I don’t care that you’re human. You are the girl in my vision. I wish
you would have trusted me. I would’ve been your support through such difficult
times. There is nothing selfish and greedy about you, you are my Healer.”

I’d just communicated with my mind!
And he answered! I replied back,
“Chris, I’m human. Besides, even with
everything you knew, you distanced yourself from me when you thought I was
dealing with a witch out of the fear I would discover your dark secrets. I
became determined to save you the first moment I realized you would die. Am I
defying nature or completing what nature intended all along?”

Our eye contact was blocked as the
Death Clan members tightened their circle around me. I wished they would move
so I could continue talking to Chris. Isn’t this just my luck that I would get
the power of telepathy just mere moments before my death?

The language the Death Clan chanted
sounded like gibberish to me and my mind wandered to the cave by the falls; to
the day I first discovered my powers. The day I realized Chris had deep
feelings for me, I remembered how I felt inside and how my heart warmed.

The stone heated on my chest and awareness
filled my senses. The exposed diamond unhampered by the pouch barrier infused
much greater powers into my body. My own future flooded into my mind. I stood
on well trimmed grass near a grave headstone. Several children were running
toward me shouting, “Grandma, Grandma!” I knelt down and opened my arms
embracing them all. Together, we laid flowers around the headstone of Chris
Harding, loving husband, father and grandfather. The vision switched to a
gathering of ten or so middle-aged people, including myself and Maetha, where
the decision was being made to harvest another diamond. I pulled out of my
vision due to the pain in my chest.

The stone became hotter and hotter
and I cried out as it burned me. Why wouldn’t they just kill me and get it over
with? No, they had to put me through agony first. My breathing did nothing to
knock the stone off of me. The sheer weight of it held it in place even though
my chest was rapidly rising and falling with my frightened breathing. Some of
the Death members were collapsing and I could see Chris again. He was being
held back by several guys including Justin. His face glistened with tears.

I sent my thoughts to comfort him,
“Everything
will be fine, Chris. I will always love you.”

He was too distraught to reply.

The pain intensified and I couldn’t
stand it any longer. It felt as if a hot sword was stabbed right through my
heart. I arched my back and screamed in agony as a bright explosion rocked all
around me, and then everything went black.

Chapter 14

Unaltered

I hurt. I always thought when you
die you go to a better place; one that doesn’t include pain. Not that I
believed in heaven or hell, but more of a higher plane of existence or perhaps
a different dimension. Then again, if I was wrong, and this was hell, that
would explain the pain. Perhaps I was still alive. I heard voices far away but
couldn’t tell what they were saying. My chest burned where the diamond had been
placed and I felt extremely weak, too weak to open my eyes. I drifted back to
unconsciousness.

I opened my eyes and saw the inside
of a tent above me. I was laying on some kind of a cot or make-shift bed with
my arms beside me, no longer tied behind me. My chest still hurt but in a
different way than before. I turned my head to the right hoping to find Chris,
but no.

“She’s awake,” a female voice
sounded from my left. Slowly I turned my head to the other side. Several
healers came toward me including Andrew Stuart.

“How do you feel?” he asked me.

“My chest hurts. Did the diamond
burn me?” Mr. Stuart exchanged uncomfortable glances with other Healers. No one
wanted to answer my question. I tried to sit up but their hands held me down.

Mrs. Winter came in and pushed her
way to the front, “Calli, you made it! You had us so worried! I had no idea
when you said some people would die, you meant you.”

“Where’s Chris? Is he alright?”

“He’s fine. He’s helping repair
tents and floodlights.”

“I need to talk to him and explain
everything.”

“Calli, please don’t move around or
you might hurt yourself further. A piece of the diamond is still in you and no
one is sure what to do.”

“What do you mean a piece is in
me?”

“The diamond exploded and killed
all of the Death Clan. However, one shard entered your heart. If they remove
it, you’ll bleed to death before they can heal you.”

“They are dead?”

“Yes.”

I looked into her eyes and slipped
through her walls with the question of ‘what happened when the diamond
exploded?’ Of course, I highly doubted I’d be able to gain entry into her mind.
With the diamond gone now, my powers should be gone too.

And yet, her memory opened up to
me.

Through her eyes, the Death Clan’s
bodies altered in strange ways. Their skin seemed to fall off and regenerate at
an alarming rate. Some of them fell to the ground and writhed in pain while
others literally crusted over into a statue-like form. A bloodcurdling scream
reverberated through the air and it took me a moment to realize it was my
scream. The bright supernova-type explosion disintegrated the remaining Death
members into dust.

Chris ran to me. Mrs. Winter looked
at the remains of the Death Clan, if dust piles qualify as remains, and then at
Chris who was picking my limp, bloody body off of the table. He had his arms
under my knees and behind my shoulders and had pulled me close to his chest. Distraught,
he slid down the side of the stone edifice until he sat on the ground. He caught
Mrs. Winter’s eye and yelled for her to get the Healers. She scanned the area. People
ran crazily in mass pandemonium because the explosion had blown out the flood
lights and shredded many of the tents. The one individual I’d hoped she’d
locate stood across the way … Maetha. Mrs. Winter made eye contact with her
briefly and turned her head to find the Healers. All along, Chris’s despondent
cries intermingled with the chaos, “Come back, Calli!—Don’t die—Come back to
me—Please!”

The Healers came running over and
took my bloody body from Chris. Mrs. Winter pulled him into a warm embrace
comforting him. He sobbed against her shoulder saying angry unintelligible
words.

I exited from her mind and looked
her in the eye, “Clara, would you tell Chris I need to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

Andrew Stuart placed his hand on my
shoulder, “Calli, we were able to mend the walls of your heart around the
diamond piece to stop the bleeding, but other than that, I don’t think we can
help you.”

I held his hand on my shoulder with
my mind and extracted at will. I needed to see Chris again. Mr. Stuart was the
first to reach Chris in the clearing. He didn’t want to let go of me but
eventually did. My lifeless body was moved to this tent where they worked
quickly to stop my blood loss. My heart was not beating yet the blood flowed
like an animal being bled out. After mending the holes, they started my heart
beating again. Clearly it was not nature’s way I should die if my heart continued
to beat on its own power.

Mr. Stuart told someone to go get “him”
and soon Chris entered the tent still covered in my blood. He told Chris I was
alive, but only barely. Chris walked hesitantly over to my side and placed his
hand carefully on my head. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered as he bent forward and
kissed my forehead. He turned and walked out of the tent.

When I pulled out of the Healer’s
mind, I found three different people trying to pull his hand off of me, to no
avail. I released my grip with my mind and apologized.

“What kind of power physically holds
me to you like a magnet?” his startled voice cracked.

“Mind extraction, I think,” I
answered calmly.

“I would like a word with the girl,
alone,” an authoritative female voice, which I recognized as Maetha’s, sounded
from behind the crowd causing the group to part. Clearly, they all knew who she
was and their respect for her was enormous.

After the tent emptied, I watched
as she walked a circle around me chanting some sort of spell. “Calli, I’m so
pleased you are alright. I’ve isolated our conversation so no one will be able
to eavesdrop on us.” She sat down by me. “You are the Sanguine Diamond bearer. You
carried, protected and delivered it bringing about the fall of the Death Clan;
as was intended by nature. Now, you bear a piece within you.”

“Why am I alive? In my vision I
died.”

“Visions only reach the point of
death. You did die, but we brought you back.”

“I wanted to make sure Chris didn’t
die and I kept altering the future till I found the formula to saving his
life.”

“And you did.”

“What’s going to happen to me now?”

“You will keep the shard in your heart;
let’s just say for safe keeping. You will mend over time.”

“What about my powers?”

“You will possess powers
permanently because of the shard. I would recommend you focus on one of the
abilities in particular.”

“Healer. I want to be a Healer.” The
first person I’d use my healing ability on would be Jonas.

“Excellent choice.”

“I witnessed the Death people dying
through Mrs. Winter’s memory, but I don’t understand what happened.”

“Their abilities are rooted in
healing. They were originally Healers to begin with, so when the magical chant
was issued over the stone, the powers began to infuse their bodies giving them
the ability to heal themselves at the same time compounding their ability to
kill. Kill the girl, absorb the powers; but you are an Unaltered human and they
couldn’t kill you. So they tried harder. Their killing was increased ten-fold
and the diamond reflected it back on them. They were then destroying their own
bodies, but also healing themselves. The rapid decay and regeneration created a
kind of super cancer in which accelerated cell growth mutated all organs,
tissues and bones. They didn’t know that would happen. They didn’t understand
the reason this occurred was because they chose to pair the absorption of the
powers with the killing of you. That is the true beauty of it all. They didn’t
know you are an Unaltered human nor did they fathom the significance.

“I chose you because I trusted you
would act as most humans do; selfishly unselfish. Your desire to make sure
Chris lived helped you discover the proper formula for success.”

“So, they didn’t actually kill me?”

“No, the splintering of the diamond
and the force of the shard entering your heart is what caused it to stop
beating.”

“What does ‘Unaltered’ mean?”

“You are an Unaltered human. No
cosmic energy waves changed or altered you in any way. You are a physically
pure human girl, and you are very rare.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Calli, you belong to a bloodline
of purity. I’ve followed this bloodline through many centuries, both male and
female, watching the effects of being an Unaltered. I learned an Unaltered
human is more powerful than any other individual on the planet and is superior
to all. Mind readers cannot enter your mind, your future cannot be seen, Death
Clan members could not kill you, Healers cannot heal you. Hunters cannot smell
you and witches and wizards cannot cast spells on you. You and others like you
hold the most potential to be powerful. This is the reason I selected you, as
with others in your bloodline in the past. In fact, a few hundred years ago one
of your ancestors aided me in the destruction of the Vampire Clan.”