More Than an Echo (Echo Branson Series) (13 page)

“Only in recent history have witches decided to hide in plain sight. Now, they write books, hold open meetings, and even advertise in the Yellow Pages. They can do so because the Christian segment of our country has led people to believe they no longer exist, that they are powerless. Isn’t it ironic that the very people who burned them at the stake have made it possible for them to live in the open?” Melika chuckled, a rare event.

“No longer...then you mean...”

Melika nodded. “They went underground. Now, hundreds of years later, they have been able to resurface because of the very faith that forced them underground in the first place. Irony at its finest.”

I whistled and shook my head. “Hiding in plain sight. It’s brilliant.”

“It’s what we all do. The Bishops of this world are able to do what they do because no one believes the truth—well, no one except those who pay for her readings.”

“How come she doesn’t get in trouble for it?”

Melika chuckled. “Bishop isn’t out there making money. She is on the lookout for others. As you can imagine, New Orleans is a gathering place for many supernatural types. She uses her vantage point to find those who need to be found.”

“You think that someday people will believe?”

“Oh yes, but believing is not the same as understanding. It is incumbent upon you to understand because there is a component to your powers we have yet to discuss.”

Melika’s countenance was heavy. I swallowed hard. “There is?”

“Yes, my dear. You have the unique ability to read the truth about people, and once I show you how, you will be able to know the moment you meet another one of us. You will be able to look at someone and know whether they are telling the truth. You are a truth seeker, Echo, as surely as if you were born to it. In your life, you will find a career that will allow that part of you full play, and you will be prepared.” Melika stopped and took my hand. “Echo, it is incredibly important to be able to do what you can do. I don’t want to frighten you with this, but you are far more than empathic. Your powers are like layers of an onion and we’ve only removed a couple layers.”

“I can do more than read emotions and seek the truth?”

Melika nodded. “Oh yes. Much, much more. You, my girl, are the most powerful empath I have ever met.”

I had been in the Bayou a year when it happened. I had successfully learned how to shield and block, which delighted everyone. I had learned how to read some animals in the surrounding vicinity, and I read up and studied everything Melika handed me about telepaths and telekinetics. There were other paranormal powers, of course, but my immediate concern was to learn about the powers of those I was learning with. Finally, Tip and Mel could relax; I had found my comfort zone where my powers were concerned, and it felt great.

“I couldn’t be more proud of you, my girl, but now, we must step up a little.”

“Step up? Melika, we’ve been going 24-7 for a year.” I smiled as I said this. I wasn’t just learning about my powers. Every day for three hours, the three of us were tutored in every subject from algebra to Latin. We were drilled, tested and put through the educational wringer. Our tutor was an old Cajun professor who had taught at Xavier forever. Every day, Bones delivered Professor Mathias to our dock, and every day he rigorously demanded excellence from us.

I might have preferred his lessons over some of those Melika threw at us. One day, she decided it was time to see if I had really bought into the process, if I was really ready to expand my knowledge.

“What would you do if that alligator over there decided to make a run at us?”

I glanced at the ten-foot beast, remembering Jacob Marley’s instructions in the event one ever came at me. “Climb that tree?”

“Perhaps. But you have a power, and you’re not here just to understand your powers, but to make the most of them.” Melika waded into the water, her dress floating all around her.

“What are you doing?” Fear gripped my throat as I watched her get closer to the alligator.

“Hand me that bag.”

I handed her a bag that felt like it had a bowling ball in it. When she reached into it, she pulled out a whole chicken. “Let’s get his attention.”

To say I was scared to death would have been an understatement. There was my mentor, waist deep in the water, about fifty feet from an alligator, waving a chicken at him.

“Mel—”

“Like martial arts, there are two main styles that can be used to defend one’s self. There are hard and soft shields. You erect a hard one when you need a more solid barrier.”

I gasped when the alligator slid off the bank and into the water. I stepped back, knowing that if it went under the water, it would eat more than the chicken.

“Hard shielding is done by extending the energy of the psychic forces into a sort of barrier around you. In an ideal situation, the barrier width would be equal strength at all points around your body, thereby protecting you from harm.” Melika put the chicken back in the bag and backed away from the alligator now gliding across the water. I gasped even louder when the alligator came to such an abrupt halt it looked as if someone had yanked his tail.

“She doesn’t know what hit her nose, but she doesn’t want to hit it again because it’s not really solid. It’s an energy that acts like a solid. Animals have an aversion to unfamiliar energies, which is why so many act so strange just before a natural disaster. They sense the change in the earth’s energy and it throws them off a little bit.”

I watched in amazement as the alligator retreated back to her bank, without either the chicken or a piece of Melika. “That was...incredible.”

Melika waded back to the bank and I helped her out from the water. Water dripping from her clothes, she addressed me intently. “That was necessary. Oftentimes, when we are faced with a threat, we don’t have time to do anything more than erect hard shields. The more powerful you are, the farther out you can cast a hard shield. It might take you years to cast your energy as far as I did, but you will learn how to create one that does more than protect you emotionally and mentally.”

It was at that moment I realized I did not understand a damn thing about my abilities or the energy necessary to perform them. Energy, like that used when you turn on the light, will always remain a mystery to me. I don’t know how it works. I just know that touching a switch makes a light come on.

“This is what we will be working on for the next few months. It will take more energy, both mentally and physically, and you’ll be exhausted at the end of every day. It’s vital to get plenty of rest at night.”

I nodded.

“Now it is time for your first lesson in personal defense.” She pointed in the distance, and I saw Tip leaning against a tree. Now, I’m not one to stereotype, but that woman could walk in complete silence through the swamp and never be heard. I had no idea how long she’d been standing there or how she got there.

“Why is Tip here?”

“We need a third person: the attacker, as it were. That will come later. She is going to teach you what you need to do to create and maintain a hard shield. She also has incredible skills in energy maintenance. I found she often succeeds with students where I fail.”

I couldn’t imagine Melika failing at anything.

My next big task was to learn how to create and maintain a hard shield. Every day, we went out to different areas around the house and worked until I was a sweaty, exhausted mess. This was really hard work requiring a level of concentration that made my first year look like a party. I would create a shield through various distractions, like Tip tossing pebbles at the back of my head, and then I would have to shift my energy focus to strengthen the shield and make it hard.

Hard was just a term that meant it was more capable of deflecting physical properties and not just emotional energies. For the first two weeks, I couldn’t stop a feather. But around week three, I was finally able to stop a pebble. Constructing and maintaining that energy wrecked me for two whole days. I could not believe how it had sucked the life out of me. Although supernaturals manipulate energy, there wasn’t an infinite amount of it within us, so erecting barriers against physical threats meant we had to push
our own
energy away from us. It felt like someone had drained me of my life force.

By the end of week four, I thought I was getting better at it, but I was wrong. I only had a fifty-fifty chance of erecting a wall strong enough to stop a very small pebble. This went on for two months until I became physically exhausted and eventually sick.

 Really, really sick.

For the first two days, I stayed in bed. Poor Zack worried nonstop about me and wouldn’t even go into town. We had become very close in our year together, and though I was pretty sure he wanted something more than just friendship, he’d always kept a respectful distance. I was now sixteen and Zack was fourteen and going through those awful growth spurts boys go through. His hands and feet looked like they belonged to someone else and his voice and hormones were  all over the charts. Some days he wanted to kiss me, other days, he wanted to punch me, like a brother. It was both cute and annoying.

I had been in bed about four days when Zack came by for his hourly check-up. He had to be dragged out to his own lessons, so intent he was on watching over me. “How are you feeling today?”

“Getting better and better. How were your lessons?”

He shrugged. “Not bad. I have to work with Tip and she just bugs the crap out of me. She thinks she is so hot. I hate the way she talks down to us like we’re stupid or something.”

“Don’t be so hard on her, Zack. She just wants the best from us.”

“She wants something, all right.”

I struggled to sit up a bit. “What does
that
mean?”

He scuffed his foot on the ground. “Never mind. Someday,
we’ll
be that strong.”

I sighed. “Someday. I just can’t seem to get this hard shield thing down. I suck.”

“No, you don’t. Sometimes, you just don’t have the right intent.”

“Intent?”

Zack sat on the edge of the bed. “Yeah. Melika calls it focus, but it was Jacob who taught me about intent.”

“What’s the difference?”

For the next three days, after his own lessons, Zack came in and taught me about intent. The way he was able to manipulate the energy often required use of his telekinesis. I needed to know within myself what it was I wanted the energy to
do
. Finally, after a great deal of hard work, I was beginning to get it.

“Energy is energy, Echo, but you’ll never get there if you don’t accept who you are.
Who
you are, Echo, not
what
you are. God gives each of us a toolbox. Some of those toolboxes are full and some of them are empty. Ours are overflowing, and the first thing we have to do is figure out what tools are in our toolbox and then pick the ones that are going to be the best defense and the more perfect offense.”

After a week in bed, I finally got up. It had taken me that long to fight the fatigue, I slept more than didn’t, and ate only when Tip or Zack brought me food. I could have sworn I heard them bickering over who was going to bring it up the stairs, but I couldn’t be sure.

“I think you have the power it takes to do this, Echo,” Zack said, laying his hand on mine. “You just have to believe.”

“Show me.”

And he did.

I learned about defense shields and combat shields and how to layer them on top of each other. Shields of this sort were made and maintained by concentration and energy. Some shields required less energy and more concentration and vice versa. Zack knew a great deal more than I about something he called the human energy field or HEF.

We all have a human energy field. It varies, of course, in size, shape and color. Everything alive has energy and this energy travels in waves and bounces off objects and other living things. This energy is absorbed by the object it hits, while others bounce off. As an empath, I have the capability of absorbing that energy, reading it and even feeling it. Since energy naturally travels outward, it is possible to gather that energy and, with proper concentration, force it outward. It was this shield Zack spent days showing me how to construct. I wish I could say I was a quick learner, but the truth is, I was a sorry student. Luckily for me, he was a very patient tutor and never got angry or frustrated. He really believed in me and this made me believe in myself, which was a good thing because I soon discovered that he was a really good teacher and maybe I wasn’t as slow as I thought.

Slowly, but surely, I started getting the hang of it until one day, I successfully stopped a rock. I know...big deal, right?

Wrong.

It was a super big deal and I found out just how big when, around eleven o’clock at night, I heard Tip come upstairs.

Tip never came upstairs unless she was bringing me food, and it freaked me out just thinking about her creeping around. Melika had gone to help the birth of one of Queenie’s babies, and wasn’t supposed to return until morning. That meant she left the big Indian in charge.

Then why was she coming upstairs now?

My palms got sweaty and my heart was racing as I felt her presence in the doorway. She was just standing there blocking all light. Then, she moved into the room and I panicked. I didn’t know whether I should sit up and ask her what the hell she was doing, or just lay there and pretend to be asleep. By the time I decided which to do, Tip was leaning over me.