The Vengeance (18 page)

“You don’t seem like the type to end up in prison, kid,” the scruff voice bellowed from outside the steel bars.

A younger Robert made his way over to the locked cage gate, staring out of it like the mangled and desperate animal he knew he was.

“You there kid?” the voice asked from the left, where Robert turned his gaze.

He couldn’t make out anything but a set of old, creased hands with white hair
dotting his arms. He wasn’t scared about answering or anyone thinking he was weak. He might take his share of beatings but with the gift that had forced him in here, he was sure he’d be left alone in no time.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Good. I’ve been waiting for some company since they moved me over here. Only a few of us on this block so far and the rest of ’em are pretty far down. It’s been lonely without someone to talk to.”

“Just what I was looking for,” Robert quipped. “Prison companions.”

“What are ya in for?”

“Armed robbery.”

The voice cackled a full belly laugh. “Armed robbery? With what? A water gun? Are you kidding me? You look a little soft for something like that.”

“With a knife.”

“Oh, sorry, big man with a knife. What’d you rob?”

“Does it matter?”

“Hell yeah it matters. You rob a bank, you get some respect. You rob a little old lady, you get some ass whoopin’.”

“It wasn’t a little old lady,” Robert replied.

“You’re fresh, that’s for sure.”

“Fresh what?”

“Fresh from finding out. You’re not the only one in here with your little situation.”

“Robbery? Yeah, I assumed there’d be a few other men in here with the same description.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then what
do
you mean?” Robert asked, falling back onto the hard, spring lined bed.

“I mean, you’re not the only one of us in here. As in, not the only one who can take life away.”

“I’m not here to hurt anybody.”

“
Most of our kind are,” the old man replied. “We end up here for the same reason you have; to keep from hurting the people we love.”

Robert caught the words and realized the old man wasn’t just talking about robbery anymore.

“What are you talking about you crazy old man?” he asked, sitting up on the paper-thin mattress.

“You know what I’m talking about. You didn’t need that knife for anything. Not for protection and not to rob a bank. You just need your hands.”

How did he know, Robert wondered? The voice laughed again.

“You’re wondering how I know, aren’t ya? Well you wouldn’t be the first. You’ll start to feel it. Every time one of us is around, you’ll be able to sense it. And you’ll be able to sense those who heal, too. Although they don’t trust any of us much anymore
, thanks to our ancestry.”

“How many of us are we talking?”

“In here? Hmmm, maybe thirty or so.”

“Thirty? In here alone?”

“Prisons are a common place to find us nowadays. A lot of those petty crimes you see on the news every night while you’re tucking your family into bed are us Grims. Doing just enough to get locked up, but not enough to hurt anyone. Pleading guilty without a trial or a lawyer.”

“For the same reason as me, I gather?”

“I imagine. Seems as safe a place to be as anywhere, right? Not allowed to touch anyone, not even on visits. Stuck in your own cell. Hell, most of us get in some sort of fight with each other at some point, just to get thrown in solitary for however long we’re lucky enough to be in there. No human contact is a good way to learn to control this thing. If someone does touch you, you don’t really feel all that bad about what happens next, because if they’re in here, chances are they were a pretty indecent human being to begin with. Am I getting close?”

“Spot on, I’d say.”

Robert was intrigued. He hadn’t thought far enough ahead in his plan to even fathom that others would have had the same line of thought.

“You do something just bad enough to get your five years in, until you can either gain control or give it up entirely.”

“If that’s so, why are you still in here? You seem a bit older than five years after your teens.”

“We’re still part human, right? For some of us, we get in here and after taking a few initial lumps we start to gain respect. We become leaders in our own rights and we have our own job in balancing out the population in here. When we get out
, maybe our family had disowned us or we find they’ve moved onto becoming a new family with someone else. It just makes sense to go back where you were needed, right?”

“But what about getting rid of the bad guys on the outside?”

“Seems like a smarter idea to get rid of the ones bad enough to get caught, before the system lets them out on early parole to hurt somebody else, doesn’t it?”

The line of thought made Robert sick. He didn’t want to end up a lifer in here. What if Addie moved on while he was gone? He hadn’t anticipated that, either.

“Does that happen to everyone?”

More laughter bounded from outside his cell, followed by the creaking of the springs as Robert envisioned the old man sitting down and what he must look like.

“Not everyone, son,” he said. “There’s hope for you yet.”

“Any advice?”

“Whoever the girl is, hang on to her face in your mind. Before you ask, yeah, I assume there’s a girl because we all had one at some point. And we hurry in here so we don’t hurt the people we love most. Keep her picture in your mind and don’t ask about her, don’t write to her, don’t let anyone come here to visit you. The more hope you have that she’ll be waiting when you get out, the less likely you are to find yourself back here, jaded and alone.”

AJ walked into the hospital room, the beeps and bright colors on the screens bringing back a flood of memories. He absorbed it all for a moment, letting the deluge rush over him. The sounds always annoyed him for the mere reason of what they signified – illness and death. He’d hated them while caring for his mother and he hated them even more now with Addie.

He summoned his willpower and walked over to the side of her bed. She was in a worn-out hospital gown, t
he familiar shorts and tank top nowhere to be seen. And her hands were clean. He hadn’t seen them that way in a long time, thanks to the intense work she’d put into the fields. The entire town was in a mild panic as they sorted out how to make ends meet for the year; Addie had simply carried on with the work at hand and gave the worry a backseat.

She looked so pale and washed out
, when just hours before her tan would have been admired by most magazine models. He reached down and stopped himself just before skin touched skin. Gathering his focus, he forced his mind to turn off the ability to see the future. He did not want another glimpse of a funeral for her. When he felt focused enough, he traced her pointer finger with his. She wasn’t warm nor was she freezing; she was stuck somewhere in the middle.

He looked her up and down and was grateful for not seeing a ventilator attached to her in any way. Perhaps it wasn’t as dire as he’d envisioned and yet
, he wasn’t far enough in denial to allow a vision of her future again.

With his middle finger he traced from the tip of her finger
, down across her palm, and up her arm. She never flinched. She lay completely still as he took in the sight of her.

“Addie, wake up. Not for me. Not for Robert or Gram. Wake up for Rose.”

Nothing.

He looked at the screens
and regressed to his time spent in the hospital with his mother. He’d become an expert on oxygen stats and heart rates. Addie’s seemed to be stable and he breathed a small sigh of relief.

In the corner of the gray, cold hospital room he found a chair and pulled it to her bedside. Taking a seat, he folded his arms underneath him on the side of the bed near her arm and propped his chin on them.

His mind drifted to the end of the battle against Devin. As he’d opened his eyes and saw her there, he hadn’t cared about anything else. Whether he lived or died didn’t matter; only saving her did. He knew in that moment what complete love felt like – the ability to forget everything you wanted in life just to see another human being happy. He’d thought he’d loved her before that, but he
knew
he did in that moment.

Should he have just let her go then? He couldn’t help but ponder the question. If she’d been lost then, yes, it would have been painful for Rose and Gram. But maybe Robert would have stayed away
, because right now everyone was hurting.

Or maybe, he thought, he should have gone away. Without him in the picture, Robert would have had no reason at all to be jealous and this wouldn’t have happened.

“If I’m being honest with myself,” he whispered to her, “I wanted to make Robert jealous. I liked seeing him squirm. And if I’d just walked away when you asked, you might not be in here.”

She didn’t move.
He knew his last thought wasn’t entirely true. If it was her time, her death would still happen, regardless of who was there or how it happened.

“Addie, wake up. Please, wake up. I know you’re in there. Come back to us please. Even just for a minute, to say goodbye to Rose.”

His voice choked up as the words spilled out. He wanted to shake her and force her to open her eyes but the back of his mind knew the truth; she wasn’t leaving this hospital. Not awake and not alive. It had been there, in full color, in his vision.

“I’ve done nothing but bring craziness to your life,” he whispered softly. “I imagine this is why the Elders put the rules in place. It’s not possible to love someone as much as I love you and to be with them and then watch on the sidelines as they suffer like you are. I can’t heal you Addie. I wish I could, but I can’t. I know the rules. If I do, your future will change and something else will happen that will take you from us. Or someone else will suffer in your place. And other lives will be affected as well, potentially bringing some of them to an early end. I can’t break the rules again, no matter how much I want to.”

Her chest moved gently up and down, each beat of her heart monitored on the screens around the bed.

“I will look out for Rose. I don’t know what the future is going to bring
, but I will look out for her. I’ll meet her pimple-faced prom date at the door and help her fix up a car for her to drive when she’s sixteen. I’ll be a part of her life as long as Gram and Robert will let me. I’ll tell her all about her mama and just pray that she doesn’t end up half as stubborn and fiery as you.” A laugh escaped his lips as he remembered the fierceness always exuding from Addie. “Life won’t be easy for her, but she’ll be okay. She’s a tough little girl. And she has lots of people who love her.”

“Mom’s going to be okay,” came the small voice behind him. “Don’t worry AJ, she’s going to be alright.”

His heart broke for the little girl who would soon lose her mother. He’d been through losing his mother in his twenties; he couldn’t imagine having lost her as young as Rose.

“The doctors will do everything they can.”

“The doctors won’t save her, AJ. But she’ll be okay.”

He felt his heart break as he listened to her words and knew she knew she was depending on him to save her.

“Rose, this isn’t like your leg,” he said quietly after checking to make sure no one else was around. “I can’t fix everything.”

“You don’t have to, AJ. I promise you, she’s going to be okay. She wouldn’t leave me.”

He didn’t question her; the last thing he wanted was for her to lose the tremendous amount of faith that she had. He hoped with all of his heart that he was wrong about what he’d seen.

Robert had already made it
back to town from the hospital. He turned to the one place he hadn’t been in years, searching for some comfort.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” crowed a voice from the barstool next to Robert’s.

“Double whiskey, coming up.”

“Wow. Strong drink. Apparently you must have something big on your mind. Pending marriage or pending divorce?”

Robert glanced at the old man, downed his double shot and looked away, sliding the empty shooter across the counter in front of him to indicate another. It had only been an hour since he walked out of the hospital, but it may as well have been days.

“Between you and me, it’s not really a good idea to get rip-roarin’ drunk when you’re already having trouble controlling yourself.”

Aside from the fact that his gift was to take lives away, Robert’s second most hated aspect of his kind’s power was the ability to sense so much about another person. Of course it was beneficial in certain circumstances, but mostly, it was only a pain in the ass. He knew who this guy was and thought twice about it before deciding he just didn’t care.

“Why do you care?” he asked, disregarding the fact that the old man was obviously a Grim – and a very longtime, experienced one at that.

“We have this ability,” he said, raising his glass and admiring the contents. “But it doesn’t make us monsters. Our choices are the ones that decide who we are.” He downed the shot and gave a shiver. “Haven’t had a good whiskey like that in years. I’ll have another,” he said, raising his shooter to the bartender.

“I don’t recognize you from around here,” Robert replied. “I’ve been away awhile, but there are never really new faces in Lee.”

“I imagine you wouldn’t. I just made my way back here after a long hiatus.”

“So you’ve been here before?”

“Long time ago. We always have to leave so we don’t give ourselves away, but eventually we make our way back around to what’s familiar. You’ll see.”

“Great. Looking forward to it,” the younger man replied as he downed the amber liquor.

“So what’s eating you?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I left this town so this stupid gift wouldn’t hurt anyone I loved. I’ve come back to give it up and the life I thought would be here is now gone. I thought I’d be okay with that, as long as she was happy. I thought I’d just go on and keep doing what I’m supposed to do in life, but suddenly, it seems to not really be what I want to continue at.”

“You hurt her, didn’t you? I mean, physically?” The old man smiled cruelly.

Robert looked at him with brutality clouding his eyes.

“None of your damn business.”

“Have it your way,” he whispered in Robert’s ear. “But while you’re here drowning your sorrows, that Healer’s there with your girl, whispering in her ear and begging her to come back.”

Robert glared at him, every ounce of his soul wanting to reach over and choke the old man. He’d never had feelings this strong or angry prior to the day he discovered his power and in prison the urges seemed fitting. Now he struggled to change back to the man he was before all of this; the peaceful man who never raised a hand in anger.

The old man had come to town with the purpose of destroying AJ; he hadn’t realized it would be so easy to sit back and let the Healer destroy himself.