The Touch (Healer Series) (14 page)

  
Max just listened, as he was so adept at
doing.

  
“Addie kept saying she was sure the doctors
would cure the girl; that the doctors had said they would. It’s so hard to look
at someone and lie to their face saying that yeah, they probably would.”

  
“It’s not lying,” Max said, reminding AJ of
their role in all of this. “Did you tell Addie they’d fix Isabelle?”

  
“No. I just said she was probably right.”

  
“You’re not lying. You can’t tell her the
truth. Not without her knowing about you.”

  
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell her,” AJ said
somewhat sarcastically. Max didn’t take it personally.

  
“I’m not worried about that AJ. I know you
wouldn’t. You know that’s not just to protect you, right?”

  
“Yeah, yeah,” AJ replied in the same
sarcastic tone. It was the only answer he ever got and he was already tired of
hearing it.

  
“Think about it. You can’t tell people not
only because of what could happen to you. Think about the burden it would put
on someone. Especially someone you’re getting so close to or truly care about.
Explaining it when first of all they most likely wouldn’t believe it, and they
sure as hell wouldn’t understand it. Asking them to keep that secret and know
what you know is too much to ask of someone. The people we care about deserve
better than that.”

  
AJ hadn’t thought about it that way. It would
be a burden. He knew how hard it was to keep the secret. He knew the pain it
caused to know bad things. It wasn’t something he’d wish freely on another
person.

  
“I don’t know what to do about her,” AJ said,
turning his body and lifting his elbow to indicate Addie’s house.

  
“In what way?”

  
“I feel things Max. Things I haven’t felt
before. Things I can’t suppress.”

  
“What are you looking for me to say? I can’t
tell you what to do, kid.”

  
“I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything
these days. I’m just confused. I’ve never been in love, so I don’t even know
how that feels. I imagine it feels incredibly close to this – to the feeling I
get every time I touch her.”

  
“I don’t know what you’re looking for in
terms of an answer. I can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. We have
the gift of free will just like every mortal does. It is a choice. You can
choose to live your life however you want, and no one is going to judge you
except for you. You’re the only one who has to live with your decision, and so
you have to do what is going to make you happy. Life doesn’t always turn out
exactly how you plan it. It changes on a daily – hell, on minute by minute
basis. The best we can do is
ride
the ebbs and tides
and make the decisions that are best for us at that time. That’s what life is.
We may have a special gift but when it comes to decisions about everything
else, we’re the same as every other person on this planet.”

  
“I hate when you’re right,” AJ said with a
smirk. “Enough of this
talk
. You want some breakfast?”

  
“Yes, sir!”
Max
replied, turning back towards the B&B. “Let’s go.”

  
He knew AJ had more questions. He would give his
young friend the time and space to ask them on his own terms.

  
The guys walked back towards the smell of
Helen’s kitchen and AJ glanced back over at Addie’s house. She was becoming the
most terrifying, daunting, and exhausting decision he’d ever had to make.

**************************************************

After
breakfast, Max felt a bit relieved leaving AJ in the hands of Helen and
Matthew. He knew they would take care of the kid. And just as quickly as he’d
rode into town, he was ready to leave.

 
“Sure you don’t want to stay?” AJ asked. It
wasn’t so much a friendly gesture as the hope that Max being around would keep
him distracted from Addie.

“I
wanted to see your digs, see if you were okay. You’ve got a great couple of
people there watching over you. I’m going to head back to my quiet and
solitude.”

  
“There’s quiet and solitude right here! You
can stay at the B&B.”

  
“I don’t think there’ll be much quiet and
solitude once you go back to stewing about this girl. It’d be like living
through a teenage romantic comedy. All the will she, won’t she, should I kiss
her crap. No thank you!”

  
“There’s not going to be any kissing,” AJ
said, his cheeks lighting up like the fourth of July.
 
“Not now. I can’t do that. Healers are meant
to be Healers for a long time, not a couple of years and then retirement. I
haven’t been doing this long enough. I owe it to my bloodline, to the world, to
live out this destiny I was handed down.”

  
“Who’s to say your destiny isn’t with Ms.
Addie?”

  
AJ rejected the thought.

  
“I’m serious,” Max said. “I just want you to
be open to it. No one tells us what our destiny is. Your destiny could be any
number of things. Look at the President. He’s
elected,
serves his four to eight years, and then he’s on to the next phase in life. His
destiny wasn’t to be President forever; it was to serve that role for a certain
amount of time. People aren’t born Healers to just be that for all eternity.
Well, not every one of us at least. We’re meant to make a change in the world,
a change for the better. And I think when you’ve figured out how you’re
gonna
do that, you’ll see that your destiny is what you
make it, not what you think someone else has planned for you.”

  
Max had a way of making everything make
sense, which is why AJ enjoyed his friendship so much. They were different and
unexplainably the same. AJ enjoyed the education he received and Max enjoyed
having someone to take care of like a son. He’d never gotten to play that role
and he always thought he would’ve been really good at it.

  
“I’m
gonna
head
out. Remember to call me if anything comes up AJ. I’m serious. Don’t head out
with your macho man persona and try to save the world alone. This is
not the right place nor
the right time for that shit. I’m
here to help.”

  
“I got it. I’ll keep you posted. Have a safe
trip.”

  
With a handshake and a wave, Max was headed
back home.

8
Grims

The
Grims
had always been a sordid group, divided amongst their
kind since the beginning of time. Half of them carried out their destined paths
with guilt and reservation, given they inherited the same conscience as Healers
and mortals. The other half used their strengths to further their own agendas.
It was how the world worked with any group capable of usurping a certain amount
of power – there were some bad apples that were greedy to view the world from
the heights of an imaginary throne.

The
pain they caused could range from a mere broken heart to the strength of a
tropical storm, depending upon how resilient the Grim was and what their
bloodline consisted of. The wild ones reveled in destruction and found the
blame-game that humanity played to be delightful.

  
Because the range of pain
Grims
could inflict, it had never occurred to the mortal population that everything
from a scrape or a migraine to catastrophic events could all be tied to one unknown
group of individuals. While people blamed God or the devil, the truth was that
the
Grims
– not tied to any religious belief or
history – were simply people born with a gene that provided them a gift, albeit
what normal people would consider a sinister one. Their power was restricted to
touching one human life directly per day, as it takes far more energy to expend
evil than to create good.

  
There were an especially strong few who
descended from a long bloodline of cruelty, long ago broken off from the
leaders of the original clan. They were the whispers in the ear telling someone
to cause harm. They were the jealousy, anger and hatred that caused wars. They
were the evil that made the bad stronger, and the boredom that made people do
things they otherwise wouldn’t.

  
They laughed at the mortals they viewed as
pitiful as the weaker beings searched for a reason or an answer. Why did
someone get cancer? No logical explanation or scientific reason existed in most
cases. Humans would try and tie it to a particular action such as smoking or
pollution. There’d be equal studies on the internet to support or oppose a
theory and
Grims
took pleasure in the nastiest part
of such documentation; the lengths mortals would go to in order to support
their side. Tearing each other down only furthered the pleasure of the vile
Grims
.

The
truth was a much simpler concept that, because most adults didn’t believe in
what they couldn’t see they would never begin to understand that a coven of
cruelty-laden people could inflict damage with just a touch.

  
The
Grims
drifted
in and out of towns nearly unnoticed, especially in busy ones. Dressed in dark
clothing, they may have been looked at as Goth or punk. That was only a benefit
of their apparel choice. They weren’t attempting to dress like those groups; it
was a uniform they’d had since the beginning of time. They found it amusing
that the humans were scared of them based on looks alone and gossiped about
them for what they adorned their bodies with because they could stand out and
cause fear without ever having to reveal what they could do. Often shunned by
the population, they were able to carry on without getting caught because
people kept a distance from them.

  
Grims
could die the
same way as Healers -- by either utilizing all of their strength or by not
using their strength at all, until it built to a point where it exploded within
them. Just as the Healers battled with the guilt they housed from not being
allowed to heal everyone, the better half of the
Grim
population battled the inner turmoil over having to inflict pain on others and many
refused to touch anyone, causing
Grims
themselves to
lose their lives.

  
When the
Grims
first appeared on the earth, their mission wasn’t entirely a sinister one. They
weren’t there to inflict damage and harm. Rather, they were there to keep the
population from becoming too large and destroying the earth. Though they
brought illness and storms, they did so originally with the knowledge that the
Healers would bring tranquility to people in their dying moments and allow them
a peaceful transition into death.

  
In fact, at the beginning of time, the
Healers and
Grims
had worked to fulfill their
destinies together and keep harmony within the world. It wasn’t until a
difference of opinions and greed for power disrupted the balance and trust
between them that the lines were drawn, causing both groups to be wary of each
other.

  
As always happens when two groups are so
different, a great war evolved. A group of
Grims
who
had broken off from tradition believed that the Healers held too much power,
and wanted to take back control. Many Healers lost their lives as the
Grims
brought terror and destruction to entire towns. When
all was said and done, with the human populations decimated by plagues and
conflict, the
Grims
had backed themselves in a
corner. Any more terror and destruction could wipe out the entire population. Without
having a target to utilize their powers on they would be useless, leading to
their untimely demise. They retreated, a dwindling group.

  
Meanwhile, the Healers found that their
strength wasn’t enough to bring back the masses. Some gave the ultimate gift of
sacrificing their powers to marry and recreate the world, one child at a time.
Thus, the Healer population grew tenfold over the
Grims
as the centuries passed. Many
Grims
lost their lives
without the strength to search out the remaining humans and use their power.

  
To this day, although once in awhile there
were storms and other venues of mass destruction that occurred throughout the
earth, most often a Grim came to town with a specific purpose of taking a
single person. They had learned from the past that they needed the human population
for their own survival. As with any group, there were just a few bad seeds who
wanted more.

  
There were also laws preventing
Grims
and Healers from attacking or destroying one another
unless the other had broken ancient law.

  
While
Grims
did
inflict much of the pain on the current populations, there were other reasons
for pain and suffering encountered in the world: retribution to a group who had
brought forth the Great War. The ancestors of the
Grims
who had begun the war were cursed with a lifetime of bad luck. While most were
good people, born of a bloodline that had thinned so much over the centuries
that barely a drop of Grim blood could be found flowing within their veins, the
universe still had a score to settle in return for having ancient law broken.
The cost was to the lives of their ancestors; often the young who were
inflicted with illness, before the extent of their abilities might be
discovered allowing them to fulfill their birthright of becoming a Grim.

  
So often when the paper reported that a good
person had been killed by another, the truth was that a Healer had lost a
battle against a Grim. AJ had once read about an elderly neighborhood man who
shot a home intruder in self defense. He knew from the man’s photo that the story
behind the story was that of a Healer who survived battle.

  
Although both groups were sworn to secrecy
because of their ancient laws, they were both often in plain sight. It was only
that the simplest explanation, the one that humans would see if they weren’t
always trying to read so much into every event, was right in front of their
eyes but far past their realm of understanding.

  
These are all things Max had taught AJ,
instilling in him the constant need for fear of these rules. Yet the encounters
were so few and far between that it hadn’t truly sunk in until now. AJ was
genuinely scared at the thought of facing something that he had no control over,
something which might potentially kill him. He could control his Healing and
how much strength he used. What he couldn’t control is the power of another gifted
group.

  
AJ walked over to his window, pulling down
one slat of blinds enough to peer clearly through. Addie had just pulled up in
her truck, Rose in the passenger seat. The two got out, a neighborhood dog
running up to the child to entice her to play. He couldn’t shake the
overwhelming feeling of something bad being just around the corner and thought
perhaps it was simply needing to air out what happened last night with Addie.

  
He couldn’t help himself; before he knew it
he found himself walking over to her. As he rounded the front of her truck he found
Rose and Addie petting the dog. He felt the nausea before he could even see the
obvious cause and he knew.

  
Around the corner stepped a man, at least a
foot shorter than AJ and a third of his weight. From the black, pinstripe suit
to the charcoal shirt, the gray hair to the shiny black shoes, AJ knew. Every
hair on his body bristled, and a scowl covered his face.

  
“Addie,” AJ said, wanting to pull the beauty
and her daughter behind him and protect them at all costs. They wouldn’t
understand why he was doing what he was. “
This guy touch
you?”

  
“AJ!”
Addie shouted,
somewhat embarrassed. “Nobody touched me. Saw him up the street, he seemed
lost.
Seems like we have quite a few outsiders in town these
days.”

  
She turned toward the newest stranger, moving
her hand palm-up from one to the other for introductions.

  
“AJ, this is Devin. Devin, this is AJ. Sorry
about that, Devin. AJ’s just a bit protective.”

  
“I see,” the new stranger said, a smile
lurking across his face. “I’d be protective if you were my girlfriend, too.”

  
“We’re not together,” they said in unison,
making it seem as though they truly were.

  
Devin could feel the immense power being
emitted from AJ. He could sense what AJ was, which only served to make him more
enticed by the girl between them.

  
“What’s your business here?” AJ
asked,
the strength and protection still evident in his
growl.

  
“AJ, seriously, could you be any ruder?”
Addie asked, trying to ease the tension. “Go on home. I’m going to take Devin
into town, get him something to eat. I was going to see if Helen would cook but
she’s out shopping, so that leaves the café. Devin’s just passing through.
We’re kind to our guests around here.”

  
“Don’t worry, AJ,” Devin said, stretching out
his name to add a bit of mockery to his tone. “I’m just here for a bit. I have
some business. I don’t expect it to take long, so I don’t anticipate needing to
stick around.”

  
Devin knew that in front of mortals AJ
wouldn’t do a thing. While the
Grims
were a divided
race, the Healers were typically a follow-the-rules type of group. He also knew
AJ was a newbie since Devin had managed to meander all the way into town
without the kid knowing what the hair-raising sense overtaking his body was.

  
With a hand tucked in one pocket Devin
reached out with the other as if he might touch Addie, just falling short. AJ
instinctively moved, stepping right in front of Addie’s face.

  
“Addie here was kind enough to say she’d take
me to get some food and to visit Isabelle. I’m here to…check on her,” Devin
smoothly said, his voice scratchy and unforgettable. His hair was somewhat
straggly, a sharp contrast to the suit he had adorning his body.
 

  
AJ cringed internally at the thought of him
there to see Isabelle; he knew the
Grim’s
purpose was
to inflict the final pain that would cause Isabelle her life. He couldn’t stop
it from happening, as that wasn’t the way the system worked and he knew he
couldn’t heal Isabelle. He’d be forced – along with her loved ones – to watch an
innocent child live out her last days of sickness. While he couldn’t imagine
her parents’ pain, he knew his would also be intolerable because he couldn’t
step in.

  
“AJ, seriously,” Addie said, now thoroughly
annoyed by what she took as jealousy. She had been dealing with that type of
guy her whole life and thought she had been a good judge of character. She
always knew the guys she dated were terrible at best and she hadn’t cared until
recently. She thought AJ was different.

  
“Then you’re leaving?” AJ asked, Addie stepping
around him to get into the truck.

  
“Yes,” the shadowy stranger replied, still
smiling in a way that made AJ completely uneasy. Devin walked to the passenger
side of the truck. “Unless I find something I like. This is a beautiful little
town. I might want to stay for awhile.”