Tribe (Tribe 1) (4 page)

T
he high was definitely wearing
off, and the guilt seeping in like water at high tide. I thought about the woman I’d fed off of.
What if she was anemic? What if I took too much, and she passed out in the parking lot on the way to her car?
The remorse ate away at me, as worse and worse possible complications piled up in my brain. I never have been able to cope well with the necessity of drinking blood. Not from the moment Mom first told me about it.

T
he “worse” was
what scared me. Mom put off having to tell me about that, until I was almost sixteen, and she realized that my drive to heal was even stronger than Meadow’s had been at that age. When she finally told me, I thought I was going to lose my mind. I felt like a monster—like a loaded gun waiting to go off.

Berserk
, she called it. When a Healer goes so deeply into bloodlust that they lose control and just go crazy. People get hurt. It’s not a good thing.

You know those stories you hear on the news about someone going on a killing spree? Not the premeditated situations, where the killer brought multiple guns and ammo, and goes looking for revenge at his former workplace. I’m talking about the times that some mild-mannered Joe Schmoe loses it, grabs the nearest weapon (usually a knife) and kills someone. Then they wander around in a daze until they find someone else, and kill them. And so on. The kind of situation that often ends up in “suicide by cop”.

When I’d felt so weak and shaky in the bathroom earlier that night, it was hard to believe I could have been a danger to anyone. I felt more like curling on the floor and throwing up. It didn’t feel like I could chase someone down and tear their throat out. It’s not like I have fangs, or anything.

But Mom and Dad had warned us often—even though we might
feel
fragile during bloodlust, the moment we cross from bloodlust to going berserk, our survival mode would kick in, and we’d have strength and speed greater than any wild predator. Not faster-than-a-bullet speed, or King Kong strength, but it would take a whole team of cops to pin a berserk Healer down. And though we couldn’t outrun a bullet, our enhanced agility would give us a good chance at dodging it.

A berserk Healer with a sharp object could do a lot of damage before a SWAT team arrived.

And if it got bad enough, a Healer could potentially rip out someone’s throat even without fangs—even a normal human bite is more dangerous than people would assume, especially if the biter in question had lost all control.

Or if the biter was a Healer gone berserk.

Hack and slash. Crazy, delirious rants. Blood everywhere.
That’s
what happens when you heal someone who is at death’s door, and you’re not prepared. To make it worse, in a berserk state, you don’t just sit around and drink the first victim dry. You’re out-of-your-head crazy, thinking everyone is your enemy—and everyone is your dinner. It’s your own little demented buffet, and you simply must sample a little here, a little there.

Chaos. Bloodshed. Mass murder. Sometimes you might walk around in a catatonic state and take a single victim on at a time, or you might go for a room full of people all at once. You never know what can happen when a Healer goes berserk. But in the end, there are almost always a number of victims, whether they were left one at a time in the Healer’s wake, or strewn about a single room.

Of course, with so many victims, and only a little blood taken from each, the authorities often don’t realize that someone has drained those victims’ blood. If they’ve ever made a connection, they’ve held it back from the media. Which wouldn’t be too hard. It’s not like they find two puncture marks on the victim from the attacker’s enormous canines. That’s just fiction.

Vampires.

That’s what storybooks call us. I hate it. It’s such an ugly word for a group of people who only want to help others. We call ourselves Healers. It’s true that sometimes mistakes are made, and a Healer chooses to heal someone when they’re not prepared, risking bloodlust and going berserk. But no Healer ever
intends
for that to happen. All they really want to do is help. They are
compelled
to help. Bloodlust is just an unfortunate consequence of the rare, unplanned healing.

Bloodlust. That’s what happened to me that night. And the trouble had just begun.

“
E
mber
?” My father’s voice called from the kitchen. “Come in here, please?”

“I’ll be right there!” I sat up, running my fingers through the crazy mop of curls that I could feel sticking up everywhere. I wished I had my purse—my stones were in there, and I could really use their soothing energy. I looked around and spied it on the floor by the living room door—River must have brought it in for me. I’d have to remember to thank him later.

I stuck my hand inside the denim hobo-style bag I’d made from an old pair of jeans, and pulled out the velvet pouch that I kept my stones in. Stretching open the drawstring, I stuck my fingers inside and pulled out three stones.

The tumbled stones were smooth in my palm, gleaming in the light of the living room lamp. Rose quartz, citrine, and bloodstone.
Ironic,
I thought.
The first three stones I pull out are the three I need the most.

I slipped the stones into the pocket of my sweater and walked into the kitchen, my voluminous skirt swirling around my feet as I went. I paused at the kitchen door, took a deep breath, and let it out as I crossed the threshold.

Dad sat at the rustic wooden table he had made with River’s help. His arms were crossed, and he eyed me with consternation. I met his glare briefly, then sat across from him. My parents rarely got angry with me. They were pretty lenient and laid-back—at least about anything that wasn’t related to health or healing—so having my father glaring at me was disconcerting.

Mom stood at the wood cookstove, pouring water from the kettle into three mugs. Dad must have gotten the fire going at dusk. Most people walked into our house and felt like they’d stepped back in time. We used woodstoves for heat—one in the kitchen, which we also cooked on in the winter, and another in the living area, which had a stovepipe that ran up through the second floor and out the roof.

I loved the kitchen, with its wood floors—except around the woodstove where it was slate—and the ceiling striped with huge timbers above our heads that supported the second floor. Hanging from those timbers hung handmade baskets from nails, as well as hanging upside-down hand-tied bundles of flowers and herbs from my mother’s garden, drying for use in future herbal tea blends.

I sat down at the table, avoiding my father’s glare by looking at the log walls beyond his head, and the home sewn curtains that flanked the window. To his right—and my left—the wall by the kitchen door was studded with many nails, from which hung a hand-cranked egg-beater, a potato masher, a wire whisk, and several other hand-powered kitchen gadgets. They were handy visual distractions when you wanted to avoid eye contact during a scolding.

We weren’t Amish or anything like that. My mom just believed in living as natural a life as possible, so we avoided using any electrical gadgets that weren’t truly necessary. People always thought we were weird. Even other Healers sometimes said my mother took things too far. I understood her motivations. I just wished it didn’t make us look so odd to other people.

Mom brought the mugs over to the counter and plunked an organic hemp reusable tea bag in each one. She looked tired. I felt bad. My mother was a great mom. She was laid-back, she trusted me, wasn’t over-protective, and she didn’t nag—except about health stuff. She was like a New Age version of a hippy flower child. She never yelled at us, and was always patient. Sure, she drove me crazy sometimes. But I know I drove her crazy too. She didn’t deserve the kind of stress I had brought on, when I healed Alex.

She sat at the table and set the mugs down, sliding one over to me, and another to my dad. The pungent smell of Valerian wafted up in the steam.

“Uh oh, you went straight for the Valerian.” Normally she gave us Chamomile when we were stressed or having a hard time getting to sleep. Valerian was the “big gun”, saved for insomnia.

Sometimes, if we let stress get the better of us, our healing didn’t work as well on things like insomnia. The wheels of our minds would just keep turning, keeping us awake and counteracting our attempts to soothe ourselves. We can’t heal when something blocks our energy channels.

“I think we’re all going to have a hard time sleeping tonight, don’t you?” she sighed, leaning back in her chair.

If Mom looked tired and defeated, Dad was just revving up. He sat forward, his hands steepled under his chin, eyes still riveted on me. Dad wasn’t as patient and laid-back as mom, but compared to most parents, he had the patience of a saint. But Mom’s routine of making tea had already calmed her down a bit. Dad was going to need a while to get to that point.

“What were you thinking?” Dad’s voice was calm and even, but I felt the anger simmering beneath it. He was good at controlling his temper, and I was more grateful for it in that moment than I had ever been.

“I—”

“You could have lost control.”

“I know—”

“You could have killed someone!”

“Dad, I’m sorry—”

“Sorry? Your mother almost had a heart attack when Jenna pulled up—she could
feel
your suffering—it felt to her like you were dying! And now she has to find a way to replace four pints of blood! Do you know how long it takes for her to squirrel away that much blood from the hospital, without being noticed?”

Mom was the head operating room nurse at Sacred Heart. Whenever a surgical patient didn’t use as much blood as they had expected, Mom would mark that the surgical team had used one more pint than had actually been used, and somehow smuggle it out of the hospital. It was risky business, and she could lose her job for it, but she hadn’t been caught yet. She’d come close, once, but so far, she was safe.

I could sense Dad’s anger rising, then pulling back. He lowered his voice. “Ember, how many times do we have to explain this to you? Yes, there are a lot of people suffering out there. But you can’t save them all. You have to be very careful. It’s bad enough that you put yourself at risk—and everyone in downtown Spokane, for that matter, if you had gone berserk. But Ember,” he leaned forward, “you put your own
family
at risk. Your mother. Me. Meadow. River. How could you do that?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no defense.

“Ember?” He wanted an answer, but he wouldn’t understand.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

“That’s not good enough!” Dad pounded the table with his fist, causing the mugs to jump.

“John, ssshh.” Mom laid a hand on his arm. “River’s upstairs.”

My father glanced toward the living room door, then back at me. He sat back in his chair, and folded his arms again. Waiting.

I fiddled with my mug, feeling its heat even through the handle, and dipping the tea bag repeatedly. “He was really sick, Dad.”

“They
all
are, Ember. You’re just one girl. You can’t heal the world.”

My anger flared. “He’s just
one
boy. And he didn’t deserve to die!”

“They rarely do. But that doesn’t mean you should take it upon yourself to cure him, especially without being prepared for it. Ember, the very least you could have done was gotten his phone number to contact him later, and then come back and talked to us about it. At least then you could have been prepared for it. There’s a reason we keep a few emergency pints around, in addition to the blood your mother stockpiles for the one major healing she does once a month, at the hospital. It’s for emergencies, and last-minute healings. You could have brought bags of blood along with you, and your mom or I could have been there.”

“Yeah, right, Dad. You never would have agreed.”

“She’s right, you wouldn’t have.” River stood in the kitchen doorway. We had all been too tense to hear or feel him coming.

“River,” Mom admonished. “You shouldn’t be eavesdropping.”

“Oh come on, Mom. You know that unless you whisper, I can hear everything that you’re saying all the way up in my room. It’s ridiculous for me to pretend that I can’t.”

“You should be trying
not
to hear.”

“Maybe if I had an
iPod
, I could have.” River looked pointedly at my mom. “A little music could have drowned you out.” He was fourteen, and dying to have an iPod. But mom had this thing about electromagnetic energy pollution, and didn’t like us carrying anything electronic on our bodies. She only allowed cell phones when we left the house, and we had to keep them as far from us as possible when not using it. At home they were supposed to be turned off. I understood the cell phone thing, but I thought iPods seemed pretty harmless. So did River. But Mom was fanatical about it…and sometimes weirdly inconsistent.

“Don’t even bother,” Mom said.

“Had to try.” My brother pulled out a chair and sat across from my mom. “Look, I’m not stupid. I know she was in bloodlust. Obviously she healed someone really sick. You guys never get mad at us, except when we heal someone really sick. Well, when
Ember
does. Because
some
of us have enough self-control to stay away from the really sick ones.” He was looking at me.

“It’s easy to stay away from the really sick people when you never do hospital visits.” I visited the local hospitals on a regular basis, as a volunteer. It gave me the opportunity to heal people who really needed it—at least, as much as my mother let me heal them. River avoided hospitals like the plague. “Not to mention, you have no idea what it’s like to have the drive. You can heal, but you don’t have the same strong urge to do it as I do. You’re still a kid.”

He scowled at me. “Even when I’m your age, I’ll know my limitations. I could never volunteer at the hospital and give a toddler with a hole in his heart a quickie dose of healing. I’d end up doing what
you
do, and cause all kinds of problems. No way. Better for me to stick to healing kids from our homeschooling group. Especially the hot girls.” He grinned.

“River.” Mom didn’t appreciate him making light of the situation.

“This is so stupid!” I argued. “What good is it to have healing abilities if you can’t even
use
them?” The sea of emotions at the table threatened to overwhelm me. I threw up my protective shield and closed my eyes, waiting for the feeling to pass.

“We’ve been over this, Ember,” Mom reached out and laid her hand over mine. “You can heal all you want, as long as you keep the flow slow and steady, and stop before you feel drained. You just can’t throw the channels wide open and go around completely curing every patient you meet.”

“I can’t heal
anyone
who is really sick! I can heal people with the flu, or with diverticulitis, but the cancer patients? Oh
no
, I have to let
them
die a miserable death. That’s stupid!” I was tired of the same old debate. It was so frustrating.

Dad’s surge of anger pushed at the perimeter of my circle of light. “He had cancer? You cured a
cancer
patient?!”

“Uh oh, now you’re really in trouble.” My brother cast me a sidelong glance.

“Shut up, River,” I hissed.

“Please tell me it wasn’t terminal.” Dad pleaded.

I looked away.

“Ember!” Dad turned to my mother. “Shanti, you let her go to a fundraiser for a
terminal cancer patient?
And a kid?” He groaned. “That’s even worse.”

“I thought she could handle it. She’s at the hospital all the time.” Mom rubbed his arm, and I knew she was trying to send him soothing energy. “There’s no sense in getting all riled up.”

“Well
that
boat’s already sailed.” Dad pounded the table again, then muttered under his breath. After a moment, he sighed, and leaned back in his chair, his head resting on the wall behind him. “This could get ugly.”

“He had no idea what I did.” I rushed to make the situation sound better than it was. “He fell asleep while I was healing him. I let him think he just passed out from the pain. He just finished chemo not long ago. By the time they figure out he’s healed, they’ll just figure the benefits of the chemo finally kicked in. No one will ever suspect.”

“I wish it were that easy.” Now Dad was sounding defeated. “Cancer is the worst thing you could cure. You know that. They take scans. All kinds of scans. When his next scan is done, they’ll see right away.”

“But that could be weeks away. Maybe even months.”

“Didn’t you tell me earlier tonight that Jenna had said the boy was on his last legs?” Mom asked.

I hate that my Mom is so perceptive…
and
has a good memory.

“Yes,” I sighed. “But that just means that they probably won’t bother with more tests, doesn’t it?”

“I thought you learned your lesson after you healed that lady last year.” Dad shook his head. “That was a close call. You swore you’d never do it again.”

He had to bring that one up. That
had
been a very close call. The woman at Sacred Heart Hospital had actually felt something happening when I healed her, and she could feel the difference right away. She had myocarditis after contracting a virus, which eventually led to congestive heart failure due. Within minutes of me starting the flow of energy, she could breathe easier, her coughing had subsided, and she was thanking me “for whatever it was” that I had done. If she hadn’t also been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, the staff might have taken more notice of her ramblings. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t find out until later that she would have been cured of that, too.

“Her husband was desperate,” I said. “I don’t think he would have made it if she died. I felt it.” The couple had been in their late forties. Jim, the husband, told me they could never have children because of Ellen’s heart condition. She was his whole life. I felt his anguish, and his determination. I was pretty sure he would end up killing himself after she died.

“You don’t know that,” Mom said, “and you’re not responsible for the choices other people make.”

“Even if I could save
two
people by healing one?” I folded my arms and looked away. My legs were crossed, and I jiggled my foot, agitated. I pushed away those memories, and focused on Alex. There was no point in getting yelled at for stuff I did a year ago. “Dad, you didn’t see Alex. You didn’t feel the loss of trust he had. I don’t know what happened to him, but the cancer was killing more than his body. Somehow it made him lose his trust in people, too.” I took a breath, and blew it out. “He was in so much pain, physically and emotionally, that I just had to help…”