LITMIR.BIZ

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made the index finger-over-thumb sign against evil despite their avid gazes. Melanie saw with some sense of irony that now that he wasn’t looking directly at them, all strained to see everything this unusual man might do.

      To Melanie’s wonder, then consternation, he appeared to do nothing at all. Then he gently pulled away the mechanic’s bloodied shirt, exposing the ravaged, lacerated chest. Melanie bit her lip to keep from groaning in horror.

      El Rayo then raised both hands over the man’s chest and flexed his shoulders as if steeling himself against a great ordeal. A multivoiced sigh rippled through the anxious crowd. As if that were a signal of sorts, El Rayo lowered his rock-steady hands to lay them directly on the man’s bloody chest. Again Melanie had to hold in a cry of instinctive protest.

      Though his back was to her, she could see a shudder seize him and shake him as violently as though he were caught in a tornado. A moan escaped the mechanic’s wife and her baby whimpered once, then all were silent again. Even the winged denizens of the forest seemed to be holding their breaths.

      Unconsciously, Melanie had drawn closer, and now took another step forward, as much to see better as to offer whatever assistance she might have to give. Pablo’s arm shot out to restrain her. A work-roughened hand encircled her wrist.

      “No, señora,” he whispered. “Wait.”

      “What is he doing?” she asked, and though she had only breathed the question, she was shushed by the older woman flanking the mechanic’s wife.

      “Wait,” the attendant said again, and turned his gaze back to the tableau at their feet.

      As if rigidly locked in a battle as ancient as the mountains themselves, the stranger beneath her seemed frozen over the dying mechanic. Ignoring both rain and the people crowded near him, his concentration was solely and absolutely on the man under his hands.

      Melanie had the disorienting feeling that she had experienced the merest hint of that concentration just seconds earlier when they had locked gazes. And a dim part of her wondered what his hands would feel like against her skin, and if that deliberation of mind and soul would accompany his touch. She shook her head as though the movement would rid her mind of such unusual imagery.

      From the reaction of the crowd, and from the rumors she’d heard, read about, back in Pennsylvania, Melanie half expected thunderbolts to shoot from the rain-heavy sky or for the ghost clouds to come snatch the mechanic and his odd healer from their midst. But in actuality the rain only continued to fall softly and silently, the ground grew muddier, and the people standing around got wetter and colder.

      Somehow, to Melanie, this seemingly prosaic attitude of Mother Nature’s only strengthened the illusion of magic that was transpiring before her very eyes. A contrast, nature’s indifferent energy versus that of the man at her feet. She felt as though she were watching a play that had been written in the Dark Ages, but was seeing it unfold in another country, another time.

      And in watching this bizarre spectacle wholly at odds with all she had known to be true before, Melanie trembled. Could it be true? Could this man really heal with his touch? She suspected—no, she knew—he would, if by no other means than sheer force of will.

      The thought sobered her. And made her hopeful for the first time in six months. Could Chris ever learn to harness his talents for good, for tremendous good, instead of making his toys dance, and instead of the sorts of goals the PRI had in store for him?

      She dimly pondered what she was witnessing: an old-fashioned, often disputed healing. Even as she realized the implications of this “healing,” she wondered, almost in anger, what, if it was true, this man was doing in the backwoods of nowhere. Why hide such a gift? If he was indeed such a healer, he should be out in the world helping millions, hundreds of millions.

      She remembered the notes on his telekinetic abilities, remarks recorded when Teo Sandoval had been only some nineteen years old and as wild and furious as a trapped mountain creature. And then she remembered the detailed description of his destruction of one entire wing of the PRI. That he hadn’t killed anyone had been a miracle in and of itself. The PRI scientists had termed him “untrainable,” “irredeemable,” a barbarian with untold powers. When he’d fled the institute, no one had tried to stop him. Nor had they done anything to stop the annuity the PRI had established for his father and his heirs when he essentially sold Teo to the PRI almost fifteen years ago. As Tom had tried doing with Chris.

      But with such powers, such a tremendous gift for healing, how could Teo Sandoval remain at the edge of nowhere, allowing pain and misery to exist in the world, when by a touch he could alleviate so much?

      More than that, he should be out in the world helping children like Chris learn to live with their unusual gifts. Keeping them safe from being exploited as he had been. Would she be able to persuade him to help her? To protect her son and teach him how to live with his double-edged gifts?

      She felt that sense of helpless anger coalesce into determination. How dare he linger at the edge of oblivion when the PRI was threatening to take her son away, tear him from her against her will, shunt him away into some frightening institution simply because he was different…and then try to use his unusual talents for their own desires? This man, if he was indeed Teo Sandoval, had endured a similar childhood. How dare he ignore other children like him?

      Time seemed to stop and the entire universe seemed to focus on this one small portion of land, man and hope. El Rayo’s beautiful hands, broad-palmed with long, narrow, tapered fingers, seemed to lay upon the mechanic’s chest, or to hover above it for hours, though Melanie found out later that the entire scenario had lasted a mere quarter turn of the clock.

      Suddenly she felt a difference in the quality of the air. The low clouds continued to spray a fine mist upon the silent onlookers, the still mechanic and the dark healer, but a new element had been added, or perhaps subtracted. The air all but crackled with electricity, smelled heavily of ozone—as if lightning had struck the ground they stood on.

      She could feel the tension rippling through the rough hand around her wrist, and she half suspected the man who held her had forgotten he was doing so. He, like everyone else, was watching, waiting, probably crossing his fingers for a seeming miracle or, like some of the others, against evil.

      Then El Rayo gave a sigh, strangely like a groan of pain, and reeled up and backward from the mechanic. His moan was echoed by the crowd, but no one moved to assist the staggering healer. He turned blindly, stumbling over something, nearly falling, slipping on the sodden clay soil that comprised the earth in the New Mexico mountains.

      Shocked by his pallor, by the blue rimming his full lips, Melanie ignored the now surrounded mechanic and involuntarily cried out and tried to reach for him. Again the hand on her wrist held her back.

      “No, señora. You must not,” Pablo murmured. Not “you should not,” but, “you must not.”

      “Let me go!” Melanie cried, snapping her arm away from her would-be rescuer. “He needs help!”

      Unaware she was calling out in Spanish, she didn’t understand the look of amazement the attendant turned on her. Or was it something else? Something to do with her wanting to help the “healer”?

      “No one can help El Rayo, señora,” he said. “I have tried for many years. It’s no use.” His voice sounded as sad as his face looked, but did he mean the man was beyond help, or that he would not allow another to lend aid?

      A cry from the mechanic’s wife snared everyone’s attention and Melanie turned to see the mechanic slowly pulling himself up to his elbows. “Doro?” he asked in a sleepy voice. “What happened, Doro? Why—?”

      Everyone pushed to answer him, to assist him, and in the brief distraction, Pablo released Melanie’s wrist. Without further thought, she lunged for the strange healer before he pitched into a thick scrub oak.

      Wrapping her arms around his body, she eased him back against her, though his weight pulled them both to the ground. A tremendous shudder worked through his body and he half turned, instinctively seeking the comfort of her arms.

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