Awakening (26 page)

I looked at the girl. Anna.
Her name was Anna. I wondered if I’d ever be able to forgive myself
for doing this. Killing, even in mercy, went against everything I
believed in. Against the very essence of the person I was.
Used to be
, a voice
whispered in the corner of my mind. But I was no longer a healer. I
had slowly morphed into a death dealer, and now I was about to
become a killer.

Luke took a small volume, bound in
black leather, out from one of the bags and gestured for me to join
him.

I didn’t think I could get out of the
chair. My hands were trembling so hard I clenched them together in
front of me. It took every ounce of will power I had to force
myself to my feet. I had no choice, I had to do this. I took one
step and then another until I stood by Luke’s side.

“
The protection pouch. You
need to take it off.”

I took off the pouch and put it in my
pocket.

Luke handed me the book.

I took it from him. I could feel it
slightly vibrating in my hands. He’d said books had power, spells
surrounding them. I looked down at the pages. They were yellowed
with age. “I don’t know Latin, I can’t read this,” I said, holding
it out to him.

He took the book from my hands, leaned
over, unzipped one of the bags and pulled out an orange plastic
tube.

“
Is that the devil berry
ointment?” I asked, my voice shaking.

He nodded and flipped open the tube.
He leaned over me, squeezing the tube. I watched as a thin line of
white cream came out of the tube and spread across the back of my
left hand.

“
Rub it in.”

I didn’t move.

“
Colina, I can’t touch the
ointment, you have to rub it in.”

I took a deep breath and began slowly
rubbing the ointment into my skin. It felt cold and sticky against
my fingers.

He pushed the book back into my hands.
“I’ll help you pronounce the words.”

Before I could answer, the door burst
open. A woman rushed into the room, tears streaming down her face.
In her hands she held a gold necklace, and from the necklace
dangled a gold heart.

“
I forgot to give her
this,” the woman said, making her way to the bed. She fastened the
necklace carefully around the girl’s neck. “There. She loved my
necklace. Inside there’s a picture of her when she was a baby.” The
woman reached out and brushed the hair from the Anna’s face. “They
said you won’t cause her any pain. Promise me my baby won’t be in
any more pain.”

“
I promise,” Luke said, his
voice low.

The woman’s eyes were bleak. “What
choice do we have but to do this? The doctor gave her as much
morphine as he could this time. She’s unconscious, but I know she
still feels the pain. Her body twitches, her face contorts in
agony.” The woman’s voice came out in a sob. “She’s in so much
pain. We just want it to stop.”

She leaned over and kissed Anna on the
forehead. “Goodbye my angel. Mommy will see you again. One day I’ll
be with you on the other side. Wait for me in peace, my love.” And
with those words the woman took a step away from the
bed.

She started toward the door but then
she stopped and turned back toward the bed, her hands suddenly
reached out as though she was going to move forward and embrace the
girl again. But instead she shook her head, and another sob escaped
from her lips. “You promise there’s no pain?” she whispered,
looking at us, her eyes wide and full of…what was the
emotion?

It was loss. I recognized the look. I
had seen it enough times in the mirror in my own eyes since my
family’s death.

Luke looked over at Anna. “I promise
no more pain.”

The woman nodded her head and walked
out of the room. She never looked back as the door closed behind
her.

Luke turned to me and handed me the
book again. “Her mother wants us to do this. Her mother is begging
us to end the girl’s pain.”

I looked over at him. What choice did
I have but to do this? I couldn’t find the words to answer, so I
just nodded my head and took the book from his hands.

Luke came to my side and read the
first word. I repeated each word, trying to articulate it the exact
way Luke said it.

I focused on the words, not on what I
was doing. If I stopped and thought about what was about to happen,
I might not be able to continue.

I followed along, and as I did my body
felt hot, feverish. I felt a heat rising up through my limbs,
crawling slowly up my neck toward my face. Something was not right.
I felt strange. The room suddenly seemed too bright, and the words
began to blur on the page. I blinked and blinked again trying to
clear my vision. The words began to move, starting to slide off the
page. They slid down toward the edge of the book, and ever so
slowly, they began to fall like a small waterfall onto the floor.
Where they landed a pool of black ink formed. It expanded as more
words fell and began to quiver. Before my very eyes, the ink pool
stretched and changed. It morphed into the shape of a
caterpillar.

I shook my head, trying to clear my
thoughts. Was what I was seeing real? Was it a hallucination? The
black caterpillar rose up onto its legs and crawled across the
floor and disappeared under the bed. I turned toward Luke. Did he
see it? Was it real and, if so, what kind of spell was this that we
were creating that changed words into bugs?

Luke’s eyes never left the book. He
repeated another word, and I tried to open my mouth and copy what
he said, but nothing came out. I opened my mouth again, but my
throat was suddenly incredibly dry, so dry the words could no
longer escape. My throat constricted and with the loss of breath I
began to panic. My heart pounded in my chest. Fear raced through me
and as it did a pain burst out from the center of my forehead. The
white-hot pain spread across my head. It was so intense I dropped
the book and fell to my knees. I instinctively cradled my head.
Gray shadows edged in and my vision became blurred, and that was
when I heard the laughter.

I looked up, seeking the source of the
laughter. Anna was standing by the bedside. No, wait, it wasn’t
her. It couldn’t be her. I looked back at the bed. She was there,
hooked up to the machines. I could hear them beeping.

The laughter again. My eye swung back
to the girl standing by the bed. It was Anna, but she was strong
and healthy. Her hair ran in red curls down her back. She gave me a
wide smile and tried to step away from the bed, but she stopped,
and a frown crossed her face. She seemed unable to move, frozen in
that one spot. And that’s when I noticed a glowing silver cord
between the two bodies. The cord ran from the center of the healthy
Anna and into the middle of the bed-stricken Anna.

The smiling Anna tried to move again,
and as she did the silver cord flexed and stretched, but then
bounced back intact.

“
Colina, can you hear me?”
Luke’s voice came from somewhere far away.

I tried to cry out, “Yes,” but no
sound left my lips.

“
You have to help her move
on. Do you see the cord? The cord stretching between Anna’s body
and spirit? The cord of life?”

“
I see it.” I shouted the
words, but I had no idea if he could hear me or not.

Luke’s voice sounded urgent. “You have
to sever that cord in order for Anna to move on. Do you see the
fire?”

It was there, a small flame burning in
the darkness.

Luke’s voice whispered across the
darkness. “You need to make the fire higher, hotter.”

As I concentrated on the flame, it
sparked up and expanded and with it my body began to burn. The fire
slid up and down my limbs. Flames flickered off my skin.

“
Now send the fire toward
the cord. Focus on the cord and burn it through,” Luke’s voice
commanded.

The flames grew hotter, and I became
alive with fire. It pumped through my heart--it ran through my
veins, it fueled my blood. And as my hands reached up the flames
shot out.

Orange and red encircled the silver
cord. It burned brighter and brighter until finally the cord broke.
Anna’s spirit was now free. The healthy Anna leaped away from the
bed. I heard a loud shout of excitement and the sound of singing
filled the room.

Suddenly the world spun around and
around, and I was being dragged down. Something pulled me into the
dark abyss. I stood at the mouth of a great stretch of darkness.
Within the darkness things called out to me.

“
There you are girly. I’ve
been looking for you.” I recognized Wanda’s voice, the spirit that
had possessed me.

I was in that place
again--oblivion.

I felt Wanda’s presence edging closer
to me. “You thought you could get away from me, but I found you.”
Wanda cackled. “I knew I would if I kept looking hard enough. I’ve
always been a wily one, alive or dead. Anything I wanted bad
enough, I would and could get. And girly I want to live
again!”

“
No.”

“
Now, don’t be difficult.
No one’s here to help you this time. It’s just you and me, girly.
And that’s the way it should be.”

“
Leave me alone,” my voice
commanded. My words shook through me, and I felt myself rise up. I
wouldn’t stay in the shadows. I refused to be forced into that dark
place again.

Wanda’s presence shrank back. Her
voice was silent, but the darkness was still there. It was a great
expansion of ink black which spread before me. This time I heard a
growl. There was something out there. I felt something slowly
coming my way.

I waited for words to form, or a voice
to say something to me, but there were no human sounds that I could
distinguish. The noises were unearthly--snarls and snaps, like
maybe from dogs or wolves? And then an awful sound. A dragging,
slinking, thumping. I’d have backed up, I’d have fled, but there
was nowhere to go.

And then, in a flash, I was standing
in the pantry in my house. I watched from between the wooden slats
as the knife came down and sliced across my father’s throat. I
watched the blood gushing from his wound. A hatred I had never felt
before filled me. And with the hatred a fire blazed inside
me.

Another flash and I was in the woods,
running, my heart pounding. I could hear the footsteps behind me,
chasing me. They would catch me. I saw the water in the moonlight
and heard the waves of the lake splashing against the
shore.

Sarah.
The word slid across my mind.

“
He needs you.” Sarah’s
face was before me in the lake’s waters. “You can’t leave him now.
He needs you more than you know.”

Then I was back in
oblivion, and that otherworldly thing coming closer. Whatever was
now next to me, I suddenly felt certain it came out of the very
depths of hell. When it touched me,
its
darkness slid inside me. I felt the blackness ooze into my veins
and move into my blood.

I screamed the words, “No! No! No!”
and as the words echoed flames came, and I was on fire again. The
flames inched higher until they consumed me. Red heat blazed up
against the blackness.

I opened my eyes. I was on my feet,
barely. Luke’s arms supported me, holding me tight.

“
Are you all
right?”

I couldn’t speak. I was so relieved to
be away from the darkness that I sobbed and threw my arms around
him.

We stood there, together, for a long
time.

I took a deep breath, and I pulled
away from him. I looked over at the bed. “Anna?” I
whispered.

“
She’s moved on. You helped
her move on,” Luke said quietly, his face full of
concern.

I walked over on shaky legs and looked
down at Anna’s body. Her eyes were wide open. Sky blue eyes filled
with emptiness. She exhibited no signs of life. I had killed her. I
waited for a dread to fill me at the words. I waited to feel the
pain of killing someone seep into my soul. But I realized, as I
looked down into Anna’s lifeless body, that I felt nothing, I felt
completely numb. I should be feeling…what? Sadness at the girl’s
passing, happiness that I’d helped her pass onto a better place?
Anger at the injustice of her death? Instead I felt absolutely
nothing and that suddenly frightened me even more than the
darkness.

Chapter
Thirteen

I had survived the three terrifying
rituals. They were finally over. Was I relieved? I wasn’t sure what
I felt. Before I could delve too deep into my current emotional, or
was it more accurate to say emotionless, state, Luke took my hand,
and we walked out of the room. Anna’s family greeted us.

Her mother’s eyes were full of tears.
“Is it…is she…”

I realized I was having a hard time
meeting her gaze.

“
She’s passed on to the
other side.” Luke’s voice was full of compassion.

The family, faces stricken with grief,
made their way into the room and left us on our own in the hallway.
But we weren’t entirely alone I suddenly realized. A group of
people were mingling at the other end of the hallway and in the
midst of the group was the woman who’d confronted and cussed at us
earlier. The woman suddenly spotted us and pointed in our
direction. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could read
the expressions on the faces around her. Whatever was about to
happen, it was not going to be pleasant.