The Protectors sounded evil, like Dean. He’d forced a similar decision on me: heal my mother or watch her die. Except I hadn’t been able to heal her. It had been too late. I shuddered, thinking of the house burning down around my grandmother, a woman I’d never met but had more in common with than my own mother.
My father did what Mom would’ve wanted him to. He saved me and made sure we stayed hidden, but he never looked at me the same way. I think he hated me.
And she’d learned to hate herself. The sad resignation in her voice said it all. She’d stayed with Dean and let him tear her down a little more every day because she hadn’t believed she deserved any better. There was a long pause filled with the sound of her deep inhale and exhale as she smoked.
The day I turned eighteen I ran away. I moved to New York, got a job as a waitress, and tried to get lost in the city. I thought I’d put the past behind me but, if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that you can never outrun the past.
She sighed, and I guessed what she’d say next.
I met your father, and he was like nobody I’d ever met in my life. He was fireworks and moonlit walks and flowers for no reason. My entire world revolved around him. Despite the fact that I knew we’d never work out, I fell in love with him. Then I got pregnant, and I knew in my gut you were a girl. I broke up with Ben the day I took the pregnancy test. He’s a good man and wanted to marry me, but I couldn’t put him in that kind of danger. It was your destiny to be a Healer, and your destiny goes hand in hand with death, no matter how you try to escape it.
My fist went in my mouth to stifle the cry of pain. She’d known having me would end in her death, and she’d been right. She’d given up her chance at love to keep my father safe. Grief lit a fire in my belly, and my eyes burned.
I have a confession, Remy. Okay, two confessions.
Her voice sounded thick with guilt, and I held my breath waiting to hear her tell me how having me became the biggest regret of her life.
First, it’s my fault your father was never part of your life. He probably hasn’t told you that, or at least not all of it. He wouldn’t say anything bad about me to you. Did I tell you he’s a good man? He wanted to help raise you, but I refused. He called once when you were older, and I made sure he knew he wasn’t welcome and went so far as to tell him you wanted nothing to do with him. I was too afraid of what would happen when he found out the truth about you.
Had that call been in response to my one desperate plea for help? Bitter rage surged through me, even though I understood why she’d turned him away. She’d kept us apart because she’d been afraid of rejection, or worse, that he’d trust the wrong person with our secret and end up hurt. A small inner voice reminded me I had the same fears. Still, I’d often wondered what it would have been like to have been raised by Ben. I hadn’t realized it had once been a possibility in his mind.
So, now that you’re good and angry at me, I’ll make my second confession.
My mouth twisted in a sour smile. She knew me better than I’d thought. Glass skittered across a surface, and I guessed my mother had crushed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray she kept on the kitchen table, often overflowing with gray ashes and cigarette butts.
I know you think I didn’t want you. That’s just not true. I acted selfishly because I wanted you from the instant I found out I was pregnant. It scared me how much I wanted you. From the moment I held you in my arms, the thought of losing you terrified me. And when you healed me the first time, my worst nightmare came true. I wanted to pretend you weren’t a Healer, and I made you keep a secret you shouldn’t have had to bear alone. I can’t ever make that up to you, baby.
It sounded like Anna was crying. She’d never been one for apologies, and this confession was the closest she’d ever come. There was no mention of how she’d let Dean ruin both of our lives. Raw grief replaced my anger because I would have forgiven her in a heartbeat if I’d been given the chance.
Okay. Enough of that mushy crap. Let’s talk about the Protectors.
I hit stop. For once, I wished my ability to heal worked on emotions. I didn’t want to feel the maelstrom of sorrow, anger, and hurt Anna inspired. Craving the forgetfulness of sleep, I took the pain medication Laura had laid out on the tray with a glass of water.
Night had fallen while I’d slept. My bruised hip ached from lying on it. Cotton filled my head from the medication, and the growing intensity of the pain must have wakened me. I sat up and hissed in frustration because circumstances dictated I couldn’t heal the visible wounds. I hadn’t appreciated how easy it had been to heal myself when I was invisible.
After a slow-going trip to the bathroom, I felt relieved that I wouldn’t need help from Ben again in that arena. Entering my room, I couldn’t bring myself to crawl back into bed. Grabbing the iPod, I curled up in the chair by the window. A chill permeated the air, and I wrapped a blanket around my legs before hitting play.
Okay. Enough of that mushy crap. Let’s talk about the Protectors.
Way back in the beginning, the Protectors and Healers were allies. Protectors have been around as long as there have been Healers. I can’t say when the first Protector and Healer showed up—or why they showed up—but my mother assured me they’d been around for centuries. There are those in the Protector bloodlines with no powers.
Some have forgotten the old ways, unaware this world exists, while others like me can’t escape it.
As you know, Healers have zero defenses after a healing when their energy is lowest. The Protectors watched over our kind, protected us, if you will, when we were at our weakest. Protectors had certain gifts of their own—more strength, speed, and agility than the average human—that made them good allies. In exchange for their service, the Protectors gained immunity to most illnesses just by being near the Healers.
At least that’s the way my mother told it.
Protectors were superhuman. Like me but with their own set of crazy powers. That explained a lot about Asher.
Sounds insane, huh? But then, so does the idea of a person who can manipulate energy and heal with the touch of their hands. It’s amazing what you can do, Remy. And dangerous. You have to be careful. You won’t always choose who you heal. My mother told us how she hated touching strangers because she couldn’t stop her body from healing them. I’ve noticed how you steer clear of crowds yourself.
Unlike me, my grandmother hadn’t learned how to shield herself. With my guard up, I could touch people. Of course, Anna didn’t know I’d had a defense because she’d never asked.
So, what happened, you ask? The Healers and the Protectors are great allies and become very, very powerful. Around the 1850s, the Healers began to sell their abilities to the highest bidders, and they chose not to share the profits with the Protectors, who were dying in service to the Healers. Before you know it, war has broken out between them, and as I mentioned before, the Protectors are gifted with massive strength and speed, while the Healers . . . aren’t.
I sucked in a breath. It must have been a slaughter. Anna got into the story now, pacing around the kitchen again, her footsteps tapping on the linoleum floor. She spoke faster and breathier.
The Healers almost became extinct. There were thousands of us alive at the time, but only a handful survived the war. Oh, and that’s not the worst of it....
You see, the Healer-Protector relationship has always been a mystery. We know that as the daughters become Healers in certain bloodlines, so do the daughters and sons in other bloodlines become Protectors. My mother said that sometimes a female Healer would form a bond with a male Protector. Not romantic bonding, since it was unheard of for a Healer and Protector to be together that way. Rather a mental bonding that made each of them more powerful. Unfortunately, neither party had a choice in who they bonded with.
Okay. That gave me the creeps. Wrapping a hand around my cold feet, I studied the shadows on my bedroom wall.
Bonding is all about energy. Every Healer has a unique kind of energy. Think blue sparks like yours, while my mother’s looked purple.
My mother had pretended not to notice the blue sparks that happened when I healed her. I experienced another sting of betrayal that she hadn’t told me any of this when I healed her the first time. I continued listening to her excited voice.
Healers are a conduit for energy. It’s how she heals since she is able to control the flow of that energy into another’s body. A Protector, though, is more like a sponge. He or she absorbs the energy flow and converts it into strength, speed, agility. When a Healer and Protector bond, it’s like he can absorb her particular brand of energy. I’m not sure what the actual bonding was like, except that there’s a lot of heat and pain involved. As far as we know, it hasn’t happened since before the war. Crazy, right?
Yeah, crazy. A sudden, awful feeling made itself known in the hollow of my stomach. I gripped the iPod tighter in my hand and squeezed my eyes shut.
Well, things get crazier.
Protectors found the key to immortality. If they killed a Healer, they absorbed her energy and became immortal. Her energy cured them of any possible sickness, including the greatest disease—aging. See, the war was never really about money. Oh, yeah, the Protectors were greedy, too, but what they wanted was eternal youth.
My breathing came faster. I knew. I knew what was coming. Anna’s voice sounded ripe with satisfaction.
But nothing comes for free. Oh, the Protectors got their immortality, but it cost them. When they stole a Healer’s energy, they got more than they counted on. The surge of energy shorted out their systems, and the Protectors lost the use of most of their senses. Touch, taste, smell—all gone in the blink of an eye.
Can you imagine living forever and never being able to feel another person’s touch?
I couldn’t imagine it, but I knew someone who could.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? The Protectors are in a living hell of their own making, and the Healers are the only ones who can cure them.
Anna laughed, and I understood. The Protectors had killed her mother. She felt no pity for them.
Since the Protectors discovered what they’d done, they’ve been hunting the few Healers that remain. Those Healers caught have a single fate: death. It’s your energy, see? It’s like radiation for cancer patients: A full dose kills what makes them human while a small dose is therapeutic. It makes them feel alive again. They take their time to draw it out, keep a Healer like a pet to feel a little at a time, until the Healer is all used up. Dead. The sensations never last long, though, so they are always on the hunt for another Healer to feed on.
But some time ago, we made a discovery of our own. It’s another reason why I kept you hidden all these years. Because of what you can do. You’re not like other Healers.
Oh, Remy, you have the power to make them mortal again.
Anna’s words continued, but I heard nothing else. The puzzle I’d been working out these last weeks had been impossible to solve without all the pieces.
Asher.
I’d seen for myself how different his body’s internal workings were when I’d healed him. When no one else would have been able to react with such speed and amazing reflexes, he’d saved that boy from landing in the bonfire. Stronger than anyone I knew, he’d pulled both me and Brandon from the pool, and he carried me as if I were a featherweight when my father struggled with the task.
Asher knew about me because I wasn’t the first Healer he’d met.
And by his own admission, he could feel nothing except when near me. He felt pain. If my energy was like radiation to him, then I was poison to him when our walls were down.
When he told me we were enemies, he’d meant it. He was a Protector, and I was a Healer. His kind had been killing off my kind for over a century.
He
was an immortal and, according to Anna, that wasn’t possible unless he’d murdered a Healer.
I shivered and could sit no longer. Rising, nervous energy had me pacing in front of the fogged window.
Several things didn’t make sense.
Anna thought Healers had no defenses, but I did. Plus, I wasn’t just a conduit for energy. Like a mirror, I reflected pain onto those who hurt me. Surely, I wasn’t the only Healer with these abilities?
And what of the pain that came with the healing and the coldness afterward? Anna had mentioned the weakness I felt, but not that I absorbed the injuries and pain of others. She had to have guessed, as I’d taken on too many of her injuries over the years. Except Asher hadn’t known I would take on his pain along with healing his burned hand. I remembered how distraught he’d looked when I’d admitted the truth.