Immortal Secrets (9 page)

I was finally getting it. “None of you are here to go to school or to teach, in Dr. Greene’s case. So what is it that you are really here to do? Or do I really want to know?”

Dr. Greene spoke up. “Jeff said you were quite intelligent.”

Jeff made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “No one in this room is who they appear to be. So give Allison and Dr. Greene a general idea of who you are.”

I swallowed hard. “Okay, Lisa Wilson isn’t my real name, obviously. I am in witness protection and I am the key witness in an upcoming mob trial.”

Dr. Greene raised his eyebrows. “When you say key witness, does that mean that without your testimony there is no case?”

I nodded. “That’s it in a nutshell. The mob wants me taken out before I can testify.”

Allison let out a short whistle. “Well, I am officially impressed that you have that going on plus going to school. Then you go out of your way to help Brenda.”

I gave her an appreciative smile. “Okay, so enough about me. I want to know about the three of you. Jeff, who are you? And I want the truth this time. By the way, I do expect your answer to include something about that thing you can do with your hands.”

He cut his eyes toward me. “Will you believe what I tell you? The truth sounds more than a little crazy.”

I scooted closer to him. “Just tell me the truth. I am tired of the lies.”

He took a deep breath. “Fine, here is the truth. We spotted your marshals so easily because we have been doing this for about two thousand years.”

I looked around the room, expecting Dr. Greene and Allison to have a hard time keeping a straight face. They actually looked like they believed this nonsense. “What did I just say about the lies? I was honest with you guys. Why shouldn’t I just walk out the door?”

Dr. Greene took a stab at it. “My dear, it’s true.”

I hoped they could all tell that I was really tired of this game. “Two thousand years? Really? That is the best story you guys could come up with?”

Allison stood up and grabbed my arm. “Screw this, you’re coming with me.” She dragged me to the kitchen. “I want to show you something.”

I yanked free of her grip and crossed my arms in defiance. “What do you want to show me?”

She grabbed a butcher knife from its holder on the counter. “I wanted to show you this.” She handed me the knife, handle first. “See how this feels in your hand?”

I looked down at the knife that I was holding between myself and Allison. “What does this knife have to do with anything?”

She gave me a knowing smile. “Just this.” She lunged at me. I felt the knife impale her all the way up to the handle. Blood went everywhere.

I screamed as Allison threw herself violently backwards so hard that the knife almost came out of my hand. The knife came free, leaving a massive hole in her midsection. Allison crumpled to the floor, writhing in pain. I heard footsteps behind me. Somehow, I had stabbed Allison.

Jeff gently took the knife from my hand. “I wouldn’t want you hurting yourself with this. You know, when you first confronted me about saving Brenda, and I figured out that Allison was feeding you information, I felt like stabbing her myself.”

Allison got still and I knelt down to see how badly Allison was hurt. “Jeff, don’t just stand there, help me! Can you do that thing you do again or something?”

He chuckled. “I could stab her again.”

Allison moaned. “Very funny. I think the bleeding has stopped. I forgot just how much it hurt to get stabbed.”

I heard Dr. Greene behind me. “Allison, you will clean this mess up.”

I turned around and I was livid. “What is wrong with you people? We have to get her to a hospital.”

Allison sat up. “Actually, I don’t need a hospital. I’m fine.”

I lifted up her shirt. “Let me see how bad it is.” There was blood all over her torso but she had stopped bleeding. Not only that, but I could actually see the gashing wound I had inflicted closing. Within thirty seconds of the time I started watching it, the wound
was
completely gone. I stood up and backed away. “Who or what are you?”

Amazingly, Allison stood up like nothing had happened. “Lisa, do you believe in Jesus?”

Oh great, now I was going to hear a sermon from the person that I had just stabbed or who had stabbed herself, depending on how you look at it. “I guess I do. I mean I go to church on Easter and Christmas.”

“All three of us lived in the time of Christ. The three of us plus nine others were selected for a special purpose.”

“What sort of purpose?”

“Our job was to make sure that the bible got put together the right way. We had to make sure that the things that needed to be there were included and other things were not included.”

“And why does God need people that never die to get this done?”

“You have to remember that Christianity was illegal for a quite some time after the death of Christ. The bible wasn’t even printed in the form it has today for hundreds of years. The only way to insure our survival was to keep our bodies from decaying and dying old age and making us incredibly hard to kill.”

I was freaking out. They were friggin’ immortals. “Okay, let’s say I accept everything you just said. I want to know about the thing that Jeff did with his hands in Brenda’s room. What exactly happened to improve her condition and how does your little power work?”

Jeff decided to answer for himself. “It’s really simple. I have the ability to heal others. I healed Brenda just enough for her to survive. I could have completely healed her but it would have raised too many questions. You asked me to save her life, I did that.”

“But how did you get that ability?”

“There were plenty of Christians in the first century with miraculous gifts. As that generation died out, so did those abilities. Only the apostles had the ability to pass abilities on to others. We never died, so we still have our gifts.”

“Allison, why didn’t you heal Brenda yourself?”

She held her hands out with her palms up. “These hands don’t heal like Jeff’s do, I have
a
different gift. And I will be happy to tell you what it is once we get out of these blood soaked clothes.”

Chapter Eight

Allison drove me to her house. Jeff stayed behind to clean up the mess we had made at Dr. Greene’s. Allison lived near UMC, just off of Indiana Avenue. She was renting a two bedroom house in what was commonly referred to as the Arnett-Benson neighborhood. And no, I have no clue who Arnett or Benson were.

We didn’t talk much on what I think was the short drive from Dr.
Greene’s
house. I sort of dozed off on the way from one to the other. Of course, by that time it was almost three o’clock in the morning. In fact I was so sleepy that it didn’t take much for Allison to convince me to spend what was left of the night in her guest bedroom.

I only slept for a couple of hours and woke up to the smell of fried bacon and coffee. As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I found a plate on the nightstand next to the bed. It had fried Bacon and scrambled eggs on it. Right next to it was a still steaming cup of coffee.

Allison walked into the bedroom and tossed a pair of khaki cargo shorts and tank top on the bed. “I think these should fit you well enough. We could go to one of the department stores or your house to pick up some clothes for you. I just assumed that you wanted to get to the hospital before most of the stores opened and you might not want to explain to Aunt Jenny what happened to your other clothes.”

I rolled out of bed. “I think I probably already have enough questions to answer from Aunt Jenny. I’m not in any hurry to have that conversation. Thanks for the clothes and the breakfast. I do appreciate it.”

She turned to leave. “Well, I’ll leave you to get dressed and have a bite to eat. Let me know when you’re ready to leave.”

I started getting dressed but I wasn’t done with Allison just yet. “Wait, I was hoping we could have a conversation while it’s just the two of us girls.”

Allison turned around sighed as if she knew what was coming. “Sure, what did you want to talk about?”

I took a sip of my coffee. “I think you know. To be blunt, I want to know what your game is. Besides, last night you promised to tell me what your gift is. You never did. I guess it’s probably not any of my business really. Still I am extremely curious and figured that since you outed Jeff…”

She crinkled her nose. “What my game is? I’m not playing any games here.”

“Let’s see first you act like you hate me at school. You come to the hospital and threaten to kick my butt if I hurt Jeff and then turn into my best friend in the world. You even go so far as to sell Jeff down the river so that I will beg him into saving Brenda. So, what is your game?”

She sat down on the bed. “Look, I always hoped that we could be friends. But once Jeff spotted your little security detail, we needed to know some things.”

I was a little confused. “What do the marshals have to do with whether or
not
we can be friends?”

“We didn’t know if they or you had anything to do with our objectives. We had to find out how they would react to specific situations. What would they do if someone made a verbal threat against you? We eventually figured out that they would not act against anything we did. We decided that they were defending you against a single, known threat. Now we know that threat is the mob.”

“So that’s why you threatened to beat me up over Jeff?”

Allison gave me a mischievous smile. “No, I actually meant that part. Or at least, I meant it at the time. Jeff has had a rough time and I didn’t want some hot looking college girl to play games with his feelings. Now that I know you a little better, I see that you’re not that way. I think you’re good for Jeff.”

“Believe me, if anyone is going to get their little heart broken, it’ll be me. Jeff is better than I deserve.”

“You’re a lot better person than you give yourself credit for. Anyway, enjoy your breakfast. Just let me know when you’re ready to go.”

“When exactly did you find the time to make breakfast anyway? You couldn’t have gotten more than an hour or two of sleep.”

“Actually, our bodies recover from almost everything super quick. That includes fatigue. We need sleep but only an hour or two a night. So, in reality, I got my full night’s sleep.”

I wondered how much more trouble I could get myself into on a daily basis if I only needed an hour
of sleep a night.

By the time Allison and I got to the hospital, Jeff was in the waiting room. Tina was visiting Brenda. She was now awake and alert. Brenda was the talk of the hospital. Of course, the doctors were trying to take full credit for her recovery without coming right out and saying they were responsible for it. That was actually a good thing. It kept us from having to answer any questions about any role we might have had in her recovery.

Jeff sat
beside me, holding my hand. “Did you sleep okay last night? I hope Allison was on her best behavior.”

I snuggled up next to him. “She was. Thank you for what you did last night.”

“It was a group effort.”

I looked around and saw that Allison had wandered away from the waiting room and I was alone with Jeff. “Speaking of the old group effort, what was Allison doing while you working a miracle on Brenda?”

“She didn’t tell you? She was keeping everyone occupied with Dr. Greene.”

“How exactly could she do that? I saw Dr. Greene at the nurses’ station. I don’t remember seeing Allison until after the fact.”

“Allison has a gift she calls inspiration.”

“What exactly is inspiration? She makes us all feel good about ourselves or something?”

“No, let me give you some background. The bible was written by men who were given divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit. They were told what to write.”

“So does she have some sort of mind control thing she can do?”

“No, but she can suggest things to you mentally without you even realizing it in most cases.”

“What do you mean suggest things?”

“Okay, I’ll give you an example. Allison likes for other people to think she was a cheerleader in high school. Have you ever thought that Allison was a cheerleader?”

“Yeah, but she told me she started that rumor and stuff. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Tell me who told you Allison used to be a cheerleader.”

I tried to think back to the first day of school. I realized that I couldn’t remember anyone in particular telling me Allison had been a cheerleader. “I can’t, it’s like I just thought I had heard that somewhere. I just all of a sudden thought she was a cheerleader.”

“Allison puts that idea in almost everyone’s head and ninety percent of the time, it is accepted as fact. Let me ask you something else. Last night, did you feel like Dr. Greene was a really interesting man? Maybe more interesting than you would usually think he was?”

“Yeah, I felt it while we were in the room with Brenda. He was at the nurses’ station. I felt like I wanted to hear what he was saying. That was Allison? Why was she messing with my head?”