“I can’t come to you, Lorraine, so I need you to get closer. Come up by my head and you won’t have to be near the blood.”
She detested that he knew she was struggling. He was dying, and instead of her being a help and comfort, she was still too immersed in her past to get beyond the blood. “I’m sorry, Andor. I wasn’t always a baby.” What did it matter if he knew? The entire world knew. He was dying, and when he was gone, she’d be alone in the wilderness again, surrounded by silence.
“Come up here, by my head.” He patted a spot with just his hand. His long lashes lowered and she noticed they were the exact black of his hair.
She scooted until her knees were just under his wide shoulders, facing him, keeping her gaze steady on his so she wasn’t tempted to look down and see the hole packed with dirt in his chest. He was incredibly good-looking. Not handsome. He was too unrelentingly masculine to be called that. Still, he was beautiful. A man of raw power, even cut down as he had been.
He lifted his hand toward her face, his fingers finding her temples. Very gently he touched them. Pressing. His touch felt light but firm and his palm spanned her face in order to allow him to reach both sides. Strangely, the headache that had refused to leave her was suddenly gone. His hand dropped to her stomach. Once again, his fingers spread wide and his palm pressed into her. Through her shirt, she felt heat spreading, and the terrible sickness churning there was gone as well, just like the headache.
He removed his hand and waved it in the air. At once a slight breeze seemed to go through the tent, removing the foul stench of blood, pushing it through the screened windows. He slumped back down as if that effort had cost him.
Lorraine knelt beside him, her mind spinning. Chaotic. In turmoil. “You’re a healer.” She breathed her sudden realization aloud, in total awe. He had to live. She knew they existed. When she’d researched telepathy, she’d also looked into other psychic gifts. True healers were very rare. And needed. “Can you heal yourself? Is that why you’re so certain you won’t die?”
He rested his head against the dirt. She hated seeing him like that, but he seemed to want—or need—to be surrounded by the soil. Those long lashes closed down so she was no longer looking into his fathomless eyes.
“When I’m stronger, I can do it. Right now, I’m worn out.”
“You need more blood, don’t you?” Even suggesting it to him made her heart go crazy, but if she was going to be any help at all to him, she would have to give him the tools he needed to heal himself. He’d only taken a few sips of the water. Blood had to be one of the tools he needed.
“Yes. But not yet. You keep digging around me, make the hole deeper and throw more soil over me. Right up to my neck. Just leave my arms and head out. While you do, tell me when you began to have such an aversion to blood.”
She scooted backward until she was beside her very dirty saucepot. She began to dig, understanding that he wanted to be deep in the cool soil. While she dug, she began to notice how the soil was richly black and sparkled with veins of minerals. Once she got down to that layer, she dug with more strength and speed, working her way around him, as close to his body as possible. She widened the long hole so he could move to one side while she dug deeper.
“Before I tell you why I have such a hard time with blood, you have to know a few things about me.”
“That’s good, sívamet, because I want to know everything there is to know about you.”
“You could look into my mind.”
“You could look into mine.”
“That wouldn’t be polite,” she denied.
“Exactly.”
She liked that he didn’t want to rip explanations from her, even though he could. She liked the sound of his voice and the way, for such a big man, his touch was gentle. She didn’t want him to know any of those things.
“I grew up in a family of martial arts practitioners. When I say that, I mean for generations. My parents believed in the lifestyle, and we lived it. I will say, both had tempers, especially my dad, so the discipline was considered essential. When you grow up in that world, everyone you know practices some martial art—most learn several. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t working on learning some discipline from various countries around the world.”
“I wondered why you were so confident when you attacked my three would-be murderers. You moved so well, and your kicks and punches were very powerful.”
She didn’t want him to know that a simple compliment uttered so casually by him could affect her as it did, could please her so much. She didn’t even know why herself. “My parents were very loving. We might have been disciplined, and we were expected to work hard, but they were loving, demonstrative parents.”
She couldn’t keep the tears out of her voice. No matter how many times she went over what had happened, she couldn’t stop the horrible emptiness that sat in her like a giant, gaping hole. She dug hard for several minutes. The only sound in the tent was her labored breathing. Andor barely made a sound, and the few times she snuck looks at him, his chest was hardly rising and falling. That scared her, but now that she knew he was a healer, she was going to put all her hopes into that.
“You say ‘we,’ as if there were more of you.”
Again, his voice was so gentle it turned her heart over. Not prying. Not acting as if she owed him an explanation or that he was in some way entitled to one. He didn’t even try to hurry her. She knew, because she dug for another few minutes.
“Can you scoot to your left just a foot or so? It’s deeper and you’re going to get jarred when you slide into it, but the soil is very rich in minerals.”
“I need to remove my clothes.”
Her gaze flew to his. Now he had his eyes open, and he didn’t blink. His gaze held hers captive. It was impossible to look away.
“I need to be completely immersed in the soil to heal myself.”
She licked at suddenly dry lips. It wasn’t as if he could do anything. He was practically dead. She took a deep breath and nodded. “I can cut them off. Just keep me from throwing up on you.”
“Cut them off?” he echoed, one dark eyebrow arched.
She unsheathed her favorite knife. “The blade can cut through anything. The material shouldn’t be a problem.”
“I can rid myself of my clothes. You keep digging. I just don’t want you to think I’m about to demand anything of you. Sexually, that is.”
She burst out laughing. She was thankful he made her laugh because just the thought of him naked made her body heat up unexpectedly and laughing eased the sudden clenching in her deepest core. “I would have to think you were a zombie, with as many holes as you have in you, if you were suddenly to start making moves. I’ll pour dirt over you while you remove your clothes.”
He nodded, his hands going to his chest. Lorraine turned her back to give him some privacy. She knew it was going to hurt him. He didn’t seem to ever acknowledge that he was in pain, but she could see it reflected in his eyes and the deep lines on his face.
“The ‘we’ you hear is my brother. Theodore. Teddy. I used to call him my Teddy bear. He was so sweet. The best brother ever.” The ache in her grew and she rocked back and forth, pressing three fingers against her lips as if that could keep the rest of the story from being told, let alone happening. The tent seemed to revolve, spinning like a whirling top. There wasn’t enough air to breathe. Her lungs felt raw and burning. Her throat closed until she was gasping, trying to get air.
“Lorraine. Sívamet. Breathe with me. Turn around.” There was command in his voice. Steel. One didn’t dare disobey.
She turned, and his hand caught hers. He brought her palm right over the top of the dirt smashed into the hole in his chest, and settled it over his heart.
“Feel me breathing. Feel my heart beating. Let yours follow. In. Out. Just like that. Your body knows how to do it.”
Her body followed his until they were in perfect sync, and the lump was gone as well as the terrible burning sensation. “I’m sorry.” What else was there to say?
“Do not be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. And yes, this soil is very good, very rich in nutrients. If you could continue to dig it a little deeper and cover me with more, I would appreciate it.”
She knew he was giving her something to do so she wasn’t thinking too much about the fact that she’d made a fool of herself. She looked down, expecting to see him naked, but he was covered in a thin layer of dirt already. She began scooping.
“My brother killed my parents and then himself.” It was better to just blurt it out, the elephant in the room no one wanted to talk about yet everyone was desperate to talk about. She kept her head down. “He wanted to bulk up so he began using steroids. I was away at college, so I had no idea. Mom and Dad began to suspect because he was particularly susceptible to the side effects.”
“Did they talk to you about it?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to hear the sympathy in his voice. That would just bring on the waterworks. “I didn’t find out until after. They talked to some of their friends about it and apparently decided to confront him. You know—like an intervention. There were three couples: Mom and Dad; Dad’s brother, Uncle Walter, and his wife, Aunt Janey; and Paula and Lincoln Steanor, two friends who were the parents of my brother’s best friend. He apparently flew into a rage, went into his bedroom, got a gun and came out and opened fire.”
She stopped shoveling, her hands shaking. She couldn’t look at him. “It was two days before Thanksgiving. I came home about three hours after he shot them all and then turned the gun on himself. I opened the door and walked into a bloodbath. Mom, Dad, Aunt Janey, Paula, Lincoln and my brother were all dead. Uncle Walter lived another five hours. He told me and the police what happened.”
“Lorraine.”
Just the way he said her name nearly was her undoing. She jumped up, flinging the dirt in the saucepot over him and then rushing out into the night. The moment she was out of his sight, she put her head down, hands on opposite knees, and tried to breathe. Her life had been ripped right out of the headlines. Theodore would never be known for all the good things he’d done. The groceries he’d bought for elderly neighbors. The lawns he’d mowed for them, and porches he’d fixed. He’d never taken money, not even for gas.