Designed with a Destiny (32 page)

“It’s better if they come to us on the
sidelines versus us going to them near the stage,” Chord insists,
using our little sister to lure them over.

“Your wish is their command—at least twenty
are headed our way,” Ronan says tightening his grip on my hand as I
lead him through the crowd while he views the area from above. A
woman’s voice broadcasts over a loud speaker and the crowd quiets
down, all eyes turning toward the stage where a woman, who looks
like she's in her forties, greets the crowd of protestors. She
launches into a tragic story of how her thirteen-year-old daughter
was dragged from the family home—beaten, raped, then murdered
simply because her brother refused to join a local gang. We pause
and listen to her story, waiting for the approaching officers to
get close enough to make physical contact. Kennedy seems more
interested in the victims' stories than helping us influence gray
color screenings. Lawrence all but insisted she stay back at the
ranch until further tests could be conducted, but she stubbornly
refused. She creeps closer to the stage, standing on her tiptoes to
get a good look at the next woman up to tell her story. It’s a
story riddled with unspeakable horrors against the protestor’s
sister and it ends with her holding up a large sign depicting the
mutilated body. Claire closes her eyes and even Bernie looks
away.

The two men standing next to Kennedy go
unnoticed until Kennedy alerts us of trouble with a telepathic
message. It’s only then that we notice the one standing behind her
has the barrel of a pistol shoved into her back, inconspicuously
draping an arm around her shoulder, as he whispers instructions in
her ear. Chord lifts Claire down from his shoulders, and we prepare
to intervene in the most low-key way possible. Unfortunately for
everyone involved, the man makes a huge mistake when he runs his
hand over Kennedy’s breast, confident that he’s sufficiently
terrorized her in to keeping silent. I'm sure he thinks he's found
a perfect target—a beautiful, innocent looking, white, American
female with no one around to come to her aid. Kennedy grabs his arm
and bites into his wrist with such force he shrieks in agony,
dropping the gun from his other hand. With his arm still in her
mouth, she turns and kicks him in the crotch causing his legs to
buckle beneath him. Even Chord and Ronan wince. The guy's face
turns blue as he gasps for air, looking to his buddy for help.
There’s fire in her eyes as she telekinetically jerks him away,
slicing the inner part of his wrist as he’s launched backwards. The
action hints to genetic engineering of predatory animal DNA—wolf
comes to mind. It could very well be the last time he ever uses his
left hand again.

“
Chord NO!”
I scream, holding him
back when he starts toward Kennedy. Her color screening is dark
gray and there’s not an ounce of recognizable sanity in her as she
sets her sight on the second attacker. Attempts to stop her are
futile—not only is she absorbing our energy but she’s also visibly
soaking up the gray emotions of everyone around us like a sponge.
Our higher vibrational energy has little impact, and we stand by
watching helplessly as she lunges for the accomplice. The setting
is perfectly primed for a beautiful woman to kick the ass of a male
offender, turning the tables from victim to victor. She doesn’t
disappoint the feminists around her. Punching him in the face like
a professional boxer, she knocks him to the ground, and the voice
over the loud speaker is temporarily drowned out by the cheers of
bystanders in our area. Kennedy smiles wickedly, then leaps high in
the air, coming straight down on the already disabled man’s
chest.

“Kill him, kill him, kill him,” the women in
the crowd chant, adding a dangerous mix of murderous thoughts to
the already emotionally dark energy of mob mentality. Natalie, Liz
and Austin arrive just in time to see her almost do it as she
straddles on top of him with her hands around his throat. As a last
resort we allow the police officer to discharge the Taser gun in
Kennedy’s back, and the minute she drops to the ground writhing in
pain, the leeching of energy from the rest of us stops.

“Leave her alone,” a woman from the crowd
defends her by throwing a rock at the officer who’s putting
handcuffs on her.

“We have to stop them,” Chord says in
desperation, looking to Ronan and me for input on what to do.

“Let them take her,” Lawrence quietly says,
coming up to stop us from intervening.

“I’m not letting them haul her off to some
Mexican jail,” Chord responds through clenched teeth at about the
same time more rocks and other objects are hurled at the officers.
A police officer takes his baton and jabs it into a woman’s belly
causing her to double over in pain. Obscenities are exchanged
between officers and civilians.

“Kennedy will absorb any energy you put out,
which will render you ineffective and her unstoppable. It’ll be
safer to let them get her out of here,” Lawrence reasons.

“He’s right. I can remotely watch where they
take her and we’ll rescue her when things calm down,” Ronan adds.
Chord looks conflicted as he watches two officers callously pick
her up by her arms and legs to carry her off while her body’s still
twitching from the effects of the Taser gun.

“Equal rights for women! Stop violence
against women!” picketers shout as additional law enforcement
arrive, and attempt to push them back. The crowd is on the verge of
a full-scale riot with more and more women boldly challenging the
police officers. A girl just a few years older than Claire kicks an
officer in the shin and he sprays her in the face with pepper spray
causing her to violently cough and gasp for air as she shrieks in
pain. Natalie’s face turns red with anger and she reacts without
thinking using a combination of telekinetic and physical maneuvers
to send the officer flying through the air. She beat the rest of us
to the punch. Bystanders go berserk and it isn’t long before shots
are fired. I look at Ronan and he nods, telepathically announcing a
plan to the others. We have no other option but to take our chances
and hope that Kennedy remains incapacitated long enough for us to
diffuse the situation—otherwise today will end in a massacre.
Designers come together in a mental cloud using a powerful wave of
energy to paralyze the officers, while I make my way through the
crowd of mostly women, channeling a single thought to each one I
touch—
“Run.”

***

More than two-thirds of the crowd is gone by
the time Kennedy recovers from the electric shock, and breaks free
using the energy siphoned from us just as Lawrence predicted she
would. It’s obvious that she’s not doing it intentionally, but
frustrating nonetheless. As soon as our energy has dwindled to
almost nothing we’re faced with a terrified and angry police force
who don’t like what’s happened to them and naturally look to blame
the group of Caucasians crazy enough to come to a Mexican
protest.

“Halt! You’re under arrest,” one yells as we
start to walk away, hoping to distance ourselves far enough away
from Kennedy that we regain power. She’s a good thirty feet from
us, and surrounded with her own set of problems fighting off a
group that’s trying to handcuff her again. While no longer
receiving energy donations from us, she’s not completely helpless
and the angrier and meaner the cops get—the angrier and meaner she
gets.

“She’s absorbing a lot more than telekinetic
energy. Look—she’s completely gray,” Liz points out.

“Lawrence is it possible for her to absorb
emotions too?” Alisha asks, probing him for a scientific
discussion. We’re so distracted by Kennedy’s situation that we give
little concern to the cops pointing their weapons at us, which
makes them more nervous than angry. A few even turn to see what has
us so preoccupied.

“
We have to do something,”
Chord says
telepathically, as a cop prepares to Taser Kennedy once again.
Kennedy loses all control, growling in a beastlike manner, as an
automatic gun flies out of the hands of an officer, landing
purposefully in her hers. Without hesitation, she points and
shoots, showering bullets into everyone around her. I watch as gray
balls of energy float away from their bodies signaling a permanent
separation of the soul. My heart beats wildly out of control and
the earth feels wobbly beneath my feet. We came here on a
peace-creating mission and failed in the worst way possible.
Elizabeth screams, jolting us out of our shock-like state, and the
officers around us take aim at Kennedy, ready to execute her on the
spot. Ronan is the first to react—reverting to good old-fashioned
fighting skills, he kicks the weapons from the hands of two cops
next to him. The rest of us follow suit, cheating with telekinetic
power, until they’re all disarmed. They drop to their knees
anticipating a similar fate. We’ve saved Kennedy’s life but none of
us react with the joy of a victory. A plethora of emotions go
through my mind—shock, sadness, shame. She looks down at the weapon
in her hand and the bodies around her, a look of anguish washing
over her face. Chord slowly starts toward her, the only one
compassionate enough to give her comfort, while the rest of us
stand and watch.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tears forming in her
eyes. She points the gun at her head and pulls the trigger.

***

The knot in my stomach tightens when I catch
a glimpse of Chord sitting alone on the bluff overlooking the
ranch. It’s not quite dawn, yet a single sagebrush sparrow is
perched on a nearby Mesquite tree advertising its presence with a
high pitched flute-like song as if solely to get Chord’s attention.
I quietly take a seat next to him and fold my knees up to my chest,
duplicating his pose.

“Did you sleep at all?” I finally ask. He
shakes his head no.

“You?”

“A few hours,” I reply, although it was
probably more like a few minutes.

“We failed her you know,” he says in a voice
void of emotion.

“I know.” I swallow hard trying to get the
image of a bloody Kennedy with half her face missing out of my
mind.

“Do you think that Lawrence really knows
what he’s doing?” He doesn’t come right out and implicate Lawrence
for Kennedy’s death, but the setup is there.

“If anyone’s to blame—it’s me,” I quietly
admit my guilt. It feels good to get it out. He looks at me
questioningly but doesn’t readily negate the possibility. “I had a
dream the night after the levitation incident.”

“What was it about?” he asks.

“I dreamt of a similar situation as what
happened in Mexico City only in my dream we were holding hands and
had formed a circle around Kennedy, blocking her from siphoning
outside emotional energy. Because we were linked together she
couldn’t steal our kinetic energy either.” His brows furrow as he
tries to make the connection between my dream and Kennedy
committing homicide and suicide. “When I woke up, it was 1:11 am,
and I felt a strong urge to wake someone up and tell them, but
instead I went back to sleep—and then I forgot about it
completely,” I add, trying to further clarify for him, fully aware
that I might be rambling. Chord rubs his eyes, and shakes his head
as if trying to clear a foggy brain. This time when he looks at me,
he has an unexpected sad grin on his face. He chuckles, and starts
to question my logic, replaying my story with a twist of his own
words, which naturally makes mine sound completely ridiculous.
“Don’t you see—I should have recognized that it was a premonition,
Chord. We would have been prepared and had a plan. All of those
lives, including Kennedy’s would have been spared by one simple
action. We had the power all along, but just didn’t use it.”

“You think playing ‘Ring Around the Rosie,”
could’ve prevented this?” he snickers, and my temper flares—the
effects of a traumatic event and lack of sleep makes neither of us
a candidate for good behavior.

“She’s actually right,” the sound of
Lawrence’s voice interrupts the brewing sibling squabble. Almost
immediately Chord’s laughter fades and he looks the other way,
focusing on the sparrow instead. Lawrence sits down next to me and
crosses his legs in front of him, resting his hands on his knees.
He breathes in slowly, then exhales making a low whistling sound
through his front teeth. He comes up here every morning to watch
the sun rise and now that I’m here I can see why—it’s
brilliant.

“Don’t feel bad Cataryn—I’ve been studying
the behavior of energy most of my life, and I didn’t think of using
the circuit technique either,” he says gently, somehow detecting my
guilt. He closes his eyes, and touches his index fingers to his
thumbs, continuing to deep breathe as he begins his morning
meditation. The soft murmur of voices drifts to us from below
signaling that the others are en-route to the early dawn meeting
requested by Lawrence himself.

***

“Kennedy’s death as tragic as it is—wasn’t
in vain. It answers the why question about suicide that may help
others,” Lawrence begins the meeting to a group of teary and
blurry-eyed participants. “I’d heard of emotional vampirism but I
had no idea of the extent it could affect someone until seeing it
firsthand in Kennedy. It seems that a victim of emotional vampirism
who hasn’t learned to properly shield, has no control once the
valve of energy flow is open. They become like a sponge,
inadvertently soaking up any emotional energy around them until
their mind is completely overwhelmed.”

“Then why not our emotional positive energy?
Wouldn’t that have at least balanced out or neutralized the
negative?” Alisha asks.

“Not necessarily. According to the Law of
Vibration and Attraction, we attract what we’re sending out, which
in Kennedy’s case was closer to the emotions of those around her,”
Lawrence replies.

“It would make an interesting case for a
defense attorney,” Natalie mumbles.