Divine Blood (Vampire Love Story #6) (13 page)

I found that waking up around five in
the afternoon was an ideal time to wake up for a vampire if you
have a house that is sealed off against the sun. My castle was
about as sealed off to the sun as any place with a door could get.
But throughout the years, I had found it to be an ideal time to
wake up if one was so inclined to be a vampire, or just have them
for friends, or even for enemies. Most vampires slept all day, so
they had little chance to be hit by the sun.

Lena herself had satiny skin that was
the color of milk. Not only did she avoid the sun, but she used all
sorts of protection on her skin from various mail order companies
that promised to screen out all UV light, such as from computer
screens and large televisions. I told her that I thought we only
had to worry about the sun and not the low-level ultraviolet light
from devices, but she was adamant about protecting her skin and it
showed. She had not aged at all in her years as a Mani, in fact,
each year, she seemed more beautiful to me.

I valued Lena’s opinions, even though
she did not always believe it was so. There hadn’t been too many
times that I had blatantly gone against Lena’s wishes or challenged
her authority as a parent or a spouse. Unfortunately, today would
be one of them. I would be taking her little boy to a place where
he was to try to heal a young kids, as if Jason was some television
preacher.

I frowned. I hoped that there would
not be that sort of precedent set. Jason was a loving healer and
there were no words or anything that he asked of those who he
healed. He did not even ask that they believe in his healing
abilities. He just...loved them unconditionally.

Most of his healings had been animals,
or family members. And once, when we were in Southern California, I
saw him brush against a kid in a wheelchair, on purpose, when I had
taken the boys to a midnight movie and we were passing by their row
on the way to our seats with popcorn. Jason had pretended to trip
and spill his popcorn all over the boy. He touched the boy’s chest
when he apologized, I saw it. At the end of the movie, the boy had
stood up from his wheelchair and walked out of the theater, his mom
screaming and crying behind him.

Today was shaping up to be quite a
weird day...It was to be the day of the healing of Brock’s son, or
a lack of healing. I remember it was raining in the morning and
almost as bad, it was T-shirt weather by evening. But that was our
crazy island weather.

I decided to only include three people
on the trip: me, Tommy and Jason. I had chosen Tommy to come along
because he had a knack for seeing things that didn’t seem right and
he was usually right on when he did have a hunch. So he was my
right-hand guy, once again, for the job—my friend Tommy, the
werewolf extraordinaire. Luckily, he was on one of his periodic
visits to Helena Island.

The three of us took the helicopter to
Attica to see Brock and his son, Pierce.

When we arrived, we were
led up to the very top floor of his mansion. I had no idea
how
Phantom of the
Opera
-looking this kid had become since
the last time I’d seen him. I anticipated the worst. But the worst
didn’t arrive.

He was just the Tandra boy I
remembered meeting, however, now he was not full of energy.
Instead, he was lying in a bed with his eyes open, but
unfocused.

Brock held his son’s head and sat next
to him on his bed. He reached out to the two of us and said, “Can
either of you save my boy?”

“
I’m pretty sure that
question wasn’t directed at me,” Tommy whispered, just loud enough
that I could hear. Even here, the guy couldn’t help himself. He had
to put his two cents in.

I leaned in toward Pierce, and invoked
the Triat to take any sickness and restore him with health. I
prayed hard but...nothing happened. I was not surprised. Jason was
in control of his own healing gift, unlike me.

I stopped trying when I realized it
wasn’t working, turned to Jason and I said, “You’re on,
son.”

Jason stepped up to the bed with the
almost inert boy lying there, his eyes glassy. Unlike me, Jason had
his own way of getting close to the subject he was planning to
heal. He often mentioned that he saw special images as he healed
them.

Jason stood up and knelt down next to
the son’s bed. “What’s your son’s name?”

“
Pierce. You have met him
before,” Brock said.

Jason nodded. Then like I’d seen my
son do a few times in the past, he got into position to heal
Pierce. “Pierce, can you hear me?” Jason asked.

Pierce nodded, and then Jason placed
his right hand over the boy’s head and his left hand over the boy’s
heart.

At first, it was a pretty thing to
watch. There was a powerful energy happening in the room as the
healing began. It usually began by now and I knew something was
wrong.

For the first time, I saw a ripple in
the fabric of the atmosphere, as if air was water and from the
points where Jason touched Pierce, concentric circles widened. But
then something happened. Jason yelped and let go of Pierce, pulling
back and almost throwing him off the bed. The ripples of water-like
energy in the air disappeared and Pierce let out a weak cry that
was like a kitten’s tiny mewing.

“
He cannot be healed,”
Jason said calmly.

“
What is he saying?” Brock
said in disbelief.

“
He cannot be saved,”
Jason continued.

“
Why not? Who are you say
who is to be saved and not to be saved? He is a little boy. He
deserves a chance at life!” Brock said desperately. As a father
myself, I felt his pain and anger.

“
If he was healed, it
would be the end of us all. Even you!”

Jason wasn’t messing around. My
sixteen year old was telling this very successful Mani man the way
it was.

“
What?!” Brock
yelled.

“
I want to go, Dad,” Jason
said to me.

“
No one is going, my son
isn’t healed.”

I looked at Brock and
smiled.

“
Don’t just smile at me,
Josiah. What has happened here? Why are you leaving without healing
my son? I demand to know what happened here.”

I stood up and stared Brock in his
face. Whoever he controlled, he knew there was no way in hell that
I was one of them.

“
We’re going to go,” I
said. “I’ll sort out what happened tonight with my son. This may or
may not be over. Just hold on tight.”

“
Don’t go. This is an
abomination to have a gift like this and not use it to help people,
to judge people before they are even given a chance to live.” Then
Brock got real angry and yelled, “Is that not what you do with my
son? Judge him by his future, the one you perceive he will
have?”

It was a delicate and tragic
situation, but I trusted my son’s decision to not heal
Pierce.

I turned around and said very
compassionately to Brock, “I will get to the bottom of this. You
need to hold on tight.”

“
My son may not have that
kind of time.”

“
I’m sorry. That’s where
it stands at this moment. Good evening, Brock.” I looked at Tommy,
who just listened and had my front and back covered. I had to
admit, it did make me a tad bolder when Tommy was with
me.

When we left there that night, Tommy
watched our backs to protect us, all the way to the chopper. All
the way, I kept thinking was that I should have listened to Lena.
Taking Jason there had been unwise. In retrospect, Lena was wise,
however, in the moment, she had been less convincing.

In the helicopter, Jason didn’t say a
word. The light was low in the interior of the chopper and I didn’t
try to see what was going on in his head.

When we got back to the castle, I told
him to go to his room and his mother would be in there shortly to
speak with him.

I went up and saw Lena. She was
already shaking her head as if she knew I was going to return with
something bad to report.

“
I take it, it didn’t go
well,” she said, carefully looking at my face.

“
What makes you think
that?” I said.

“
I know when you win. I
know when you have success. There is a look in your eye that is
indescribable. I just know, though. I know when you win. Tonight,
you didn’t win. What happened?”

I looked at Lena and just her insight
on my looks after a success or a failure was partly mind-blowing to
me, but I couldn’t let her know that just yet. We needed to speak
to our son. Something weird had happened back in Attica and we
needed to get to the root cause, figure out what went wrong, and
discuss and decide what we should do about it.

Chapter
Eighteen

When we got back, and I had told Jason
to go to his room and that his mother and I would be down to his
room in a minute, I knew that there would be explaining to do. When
I went to go get Lena, I knew there were going to be repercussions
because she had been against Jason going to Attica to heal Brock
from the very beginning. I should have listened to her, but I did
what I thought would make the most peace between the two islands.
In recent years, we’d had our differences. But something had
happened tonight that would change things forever, and not in a
good way.

“
What happened?” Lena
asked.

“
Jason refused to heal
him.”

“
He refused to? Why? I
don’t understand.”

“
I don’t know why he
wouldn’t. At first, he laid his hands on him for a good couple of
moments and this weird energy thing happened in the room. You
should have seen it, Lena. It was like the air was water and I
could see these rippling concentric circles in the
atmosphere.”

“
Wow, then what happened,
Josiah?”

“
Jason looked up at Brock
and me and said he refused to do the healing.”

“
He couldn’t do it or he
wouldn’t do it?” Lena asked.

“
Wouldn’t. He refused. He
saw something during the beginning of the healing that made him
pull away and vocalize his refusal.”

“
Oh no. What did he
see?”

“
When he laid his hands on
Brock’s boy, a presence came to Jason. He had an indignation like
none other. No, it was more than that. It was a revulsion and a
repulsion.”

Lena said, “I think we should go
downstairs and both have a talk with him and find out what he
saw.”

“
You and your special
talks.”

“
You say special talks
like it’s a bad thing. Things get done in a nonviolent manner,”
Lena replied. “It’s problem solving at its most non-invasive and
most effective. No weapons, no blood, no tears.”

I nodded, finally seeing just what my
wife was made of, as she devised these talks to problem solve, not
to get her own way. It was true. Things did get done. “You’re
right.”

“
This time, I didn’t want
to be right, Josiah.”

“
Thank you for that,” I
said.

“
When we have special
talks, it is never to say, ‘I told you so.’ It is to be closer to a
perfect Oneness of us, a single-minded evolution of us as a married
couple, as parents, and as lovers.”

I felt like we had just reached some
epiphany in our relationship and I didn’t want to let the moment
get by without honoring that. I took a deep breath. “I need to tell
you something, Lena.”

“
What?”

“
I think that sometimes, I
seriously underestimate your abilities and also, I don’t
acknowledge the importance of your contributions to this
family.”

She nodded. “Go on.”

“
Have I told you lately
that you are an absolutely incredible life partner?”

“
You just did. Come on,
let’s talk to Jason.” Lena got up from her favorite chair and
kissed me with tenderness that melted my ego into desire for her.
Then the two of us walked, hand in hand, downstairs to Jason’s
bedroom.

When we got in there, Joshua was
already in his room talking to him. The moment we were in the
doorway, the boys stopped talking and looked right at us. I had no
idea what Jason had told him, or if he had just got in his room.
Either way, Joshua had curiosity written all over his
face.

“
Joshua, could you give us
a minute with Jason?” I asked as I entered the room.

“
Why do I always have to
leave when you talk to Jason?” Joshua blurted. “Jason was the one
who got to go out tonight. I want to know what happened. I’ve been
waiting for hours and I need to know. He’s my brother.”

I looked at Lena and said, “They are
twins. I guess he can stay.” I didn’t give Lena a chance to say no.
I decided on my own. It was time for Joshua to be allowed into the
inner circle of the gift of Jason. Just minimal information would
satisfy Joshua tonight, I hoped.

“
Thank you, Dad,” Joshua
said. “I shouldn’t always be the one outside the bedroom, waiting
to find out what you and Mom said to Jason.”