Page 7 of Dark Medicine (Strange Gifts #2)

Caroline Brennan looked identical to her sister, Angela. Both women were short, around five feet; both had gray hair with their once strawberry blonde peeking through; both had bright, curious blue eyes; and both studied the paranormal, parapsychology, and dreams. The only major difference was that Caroline moved slowly and painfully. It was apparent that time had not been kind to the elder sister.

“I’m so glad you were all able to join us this evening,” said Caroline, setting down the glasses of whiskey.

“Well, we’re happy to be here and to meet you finally,” said Aislinn. “But I’m afraid we’ve discovered some things that might indicate this has nothing to do with the paranormal.”

“Oh, really,” said Angela sadly. “Are you sure, dear? I was so certain that you were fae.”

The disappointment in Angela’s face was visible. She loved it when she or her sister were able to prove that things happened outside of logic and reason. Sometimes, fairies, Gods, angels, gremlins, or anything else you could imagine, might just be the reason if you opened your mind to the possibilities.

“I’m afraid so, Angela,” said Kane. “It seems we were all near some strange pink dust on an Army base at one time or another. The same base.”

“Oh dear!” said Caroline. “That sounds ominous indeed. Pink dust, you say. Any idea what it could be?”

“No clue yet, but we’re trying to track down what sort of things came in and out of the depot. It’s a weapons storage facility, but there could have been anything going through there.”

“Well, that does put a different spin on things, doesn’t it? How are your nightmares coming along, dear?” asked Angela, staring at Aislinn.

“I’ve followed your suggestions and found a few things on my own, and it has helped me some. The nightmares still happen, but I’ve learned to tap into other things as well. For instance,” she said, looking at Fiona and Adam, “I was able to see the meeting of Adam and Fiona.” Adam shook his head at Aislinn but said nothing.

“I think in the end, the only thing that will help with the nightmares is not touching anyone. Not a very good plan if I want to live in the real world. Kane being near me or with me is the best weapon I have. Everything seems to right itself when he’s around.” Aislinn looked up at Kane and kissed his cheek. However, Fiona looked at Aislinn, frowning.

“No, not a good idea at all to never touch a soul, dear. You must have human contact in order for you yourself to remain human,” said Caroline.

“I’m sorry, Aislinn, but do mind if I ask what your gift is exactly?” asked Fiona curiously.

“When I touch someone, it seems I’m able to see visions of the future, mostly if they will commit a murder or other heinous crime, just by touching them,” she said solemnly.

“That must be awful!” said Fiona, covering her mouth. Her own gift had been exhausting and frightening as a child, but to see the nightmares of murders must be devastating.

“No more so than having to endure the illness or disease of someone else while you heal,” said Aislinn with a wry smile.

Fiona nodded and smiled at her. Caroline pushed herself carefully from her chair, pausing to straighten her old body. She stood and limped awkwardly toward Fiona. Her crooked arthritic fingers tangled against her palm, her knees painful from the short walk.

“Let me have your hand, child,” she said, reaching out with a weathered, wrinkled hand.

Fiona slipped her long fingers into the old woman’s palm. She felt the pain of her arthritis and squeezed her hand tighter. Fiona knew it was a test, but she could do this for the sweet woman. Her joints screamed in pain, and sweat broke out on her face. The agony that the woman was suffering was unbearable, but it would be short-lived for Fiona.

“Fiona! Fiona, what are you doing?” yelled Adam. He watched the scene unfolding and felt helpless as Fiona worked her healing magic.

“I’m h-helping Caroline,” she said with a pained smile. She released the older woman’s hand and bent over, her body racked with pain. She took in long shuddering breaths and then straightened once more, her face pale but the pain gone.

“I’m… I’m pain-free,” said the older woman. “All the saints of Ireland, I’m pain-free.” Caroline did a deep knee bend, bouncing back up quickly. She rotated her arms in a helicopter-like formation and wiggled her fingers back and forth.

“You did that on purpose?” growled Adam.

“I had to see if her gift was real. Many claim they are healers but cannot heal. Her gift is genuine, but not one she was born with.”

“We already knew that!” yelled Adam, holding Fiona close.

“It’s alright, Adam,” said Fiona with a weak smile. “I knew what she was doing. Look at her. She’s standing straight. Her fingers are straight. She’s better now.”

“What about Angela?” asked Aislinn, staring at Fiona.

“She doesn’t have arthritis,” said Caroline. “She’s always been the healthier of the two of us.”

“That’s right, dear,” said Angela. “I’m grateful that you helped my sister, Fiona. Perhaps now she will come visit me in America.”

The older women smiled at one another and excused themselves to the kitchen to finish dinner preparations. Caroline was giggling like a schoolgirl as they chatted casually over the stove, her new-found energy and flexibility making her feel twenty years younger.

“You shouldn’t do that,” said Adam, rubbing her back.

“Adam, I’ve been doing this a long time. Nearly twenty years now. My only regret is that I wasn’t there when my parents died. I may have been able to save them.”

“You can’t save them all,” said Adam.

“Says the super soldier alpha male doctor who went ballistic only a few hours ago,” she grinned at him, color returning to her cheeks. Adam leaned forward and kissed her lips softly. Flip cleared his throat, and the two looked up at the big man, grinning.

“Sorry, Flip,” said Fiona. “You haven’t told me your gift yet or Spook’s.”

“Mine is, well, let me show you,” he said, standing.

Flip opened the back door of the house and stepped into the massive garden. In the center was a huge marble statue of Pan, his flute held to his lips, his heels kicked high in the air, caught mid-motion of his dance. He stared intently at the statue, and Fiona thought she was seeing things. The statue lifted off the ground at least two feet and moved through the air as if it weighed nothing. It gently settled once more on the grass, some thirty feet away.

“Oh my God!” said Fiona. “That’s incredible! That thing must weigh a thousand pounds, and you moved it as if it was nothing!”

“I don’t know,” said Flip, hunching his shoulders. “I never really know how much things weigh. It doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve moved little things and big things.”

Flip winked at Aislinn, and she winked back. Only a few months ago, he moved a garbage truck that headed straight for her as she crossed the street. At the last moment, the truck veered, and Aislinn came away unscathed.

“It is a lovely trick, dear, but please place him back where he was,” said Caroline, patting his back. “Dinner is ready.” Flip laughed at the older woman and easily moved the statue back to its original pedestal. She seemed completely unaffected by what she saw.

Dinner was a delightful assortment of roasted meats, potatoes, glazed carrots, and the most delicious butter rolls any had ever eaten. For dessert, the sisters brought out bread pudding, but only Flip indulged. In fact, he indulged in three helpings.

“Spook? You haven’t told me your gift,” said Fiona.

“Ah, well, mine are a bit odd. I am able to see data and communication threads and tap into them at will , allowing me to see and hear the data that the threads possess.”

“Sorry? What do you mean?” she asked.

“For instance, I know what your phone number is and that you have only had three calls on your cell phone in the last week.” Fiona blushed a bit, embarrassed that her personal life was so pathetic she had received only three calls.

“But you could have known that by checking with my provider,” said Fiona suspiciously.

“True. But I also know what your childhood home phone was. I know that your brother called you twice the night he died. I know that your boss has your cell phone programmed into his cell phone, and I know that your computer has two viruses, one of which is a tracking device.”

Fiona paled, holding her throat, feeling as though she were choking.

“Tr-tracking device?” asked Fiona.

“Yes,” said Spook. “I’ve been able to send an interference pattern to your laptop that will prevent it going forward until you let me remove it completely. Someone wanted to know where you were at all times, and they wanted to know what you were looking at on your laptop.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I-I don’t know… I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” said Spook. “I’ve made sure they can’t do it going forward.”

“M-my phone?”

“Your phone had a tracking device as well. I think it’s how the gypsies knew where you were going to be. I don’t believe it was random.”

“It’s okay, Fiona,” said Adam. “We’re going to figure all this out, and for now, I’d really like you to stay close to all of us.” She nodded but said nothing.

“So, what do you know of this pink dust?” asked Angela.

“We’re not sure,” said Kane. “We know that it was everywhere around the base, and we know that all of us, every one of us here, was at that base at some time during our childhoods.”

“But if that’s the case,” said Caroline, “there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of children and young adults with special skills.”

“I don’t think so,” said Adam. “I think, for whatever reason, it didn’t affect everyone. If it had affected everyone, all the soldiers on base, the contractors, and so forth would possess unique abilities. We would have known or heard of something so widespread.”

“Hmmm,” said Caroline thoughtfully, “maybe. Maybe this pink fairy dust only affects children of a certain age.”

“Caroline, it’s not fairy dust,” said Kane, smiling at the older woman.

“And just how do you know that, Mister smarty-pants? Did ya nae see the fairies? So, they don’t exist, is that it? Well, we nae see many things, but they still exist,” she said with hands on her hips.

“You’re right, of course,” he said apologetically, “I’m sorry.”

“She actually might be onto something,” said Adam. Kane raised his eyebrows at his friend and then looked at Flip and Spook, both shrugging their shoulders. “Listen, we were all under the age of ten when we were exposed. The only outlier is Fiona’s brother, who would have been a pre-teen, maybe eleven or twelve.”

“He’s right,” said Fiona, looking away from the group. “I mean, Ian never showed signs of the gifts to others, but as early as fifteen or sixteen, he was experiencing it. I remember because he argued with my parents about them placing him in a gifted program for math and science, he absolutely refused. Then something changed when he joined the Army.”

“What do you mean? What changed?” asked Kane.

“His commanding officer was having him tested,” she said casually. Flip dropped the fork against his plate, the clattering sound of silver against china making Caroline and Angela jump. Spook eyed Kane, who stared at Adam.

“Honey,” said Adam calmly, “this is very important. What do you mean his commanding officer was having him tested?”

“I mean, he said that he thought Adam had ‘special skills’ and should be tested. Adam said the tests were brutal, and he didn’t want me to endure the same, so he told everyone I was a cousin when I visited, not his sister. He was trying to avoid showing his skills, but they were doing something that was making it very difficult for him. I told him that it seemed dangerous.”

Kane let out a long slow breath and looked at Adam.

“Fiona, baby,” he said slowly, “that would have been very important to know earlier.”

“Oh? I guess I didn’t think it was relevant. I mean, no one knew I was his sister. Did they? And what would it matter if the Army was testing him? He was in the Army, so it makes sense they would test for aptitude in certain areas,” she said, lying. Fiona knew very well why Ian had lied and what would have happened to her, but somewhere in her mind, she still wasn’t certain about Adam and his friends.

“It would have been very easy to identify that you were his sister,” said Flip. “If you were coming out to the base to visit him, they could have checked your identification at some point and traced you back. It’s an easy thing to find out, Fiona.” The big man tried to speak softly and calmly, but his insides were telling him that this was not a good thing.

“What was his commander’s name?” asked Kane.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said, looking a bit frightened. “He said it was best I knew nothing, but he said that he was frustrated with Ian because he was showing no signs of his true ability.”

“Yet he had abilities?” Flip waited patiently, watching Fiona’s facial features. Adam said nothing, waiting for Fiona to tell the others. There was the slightest movement, the slightest twitch, and he knew. “He did, didn’t he? The things you saw him doing in the forest, they were his abilities, right?”

“Y-yes,” she said quietly. “He made me promise I would never tell anyone. But, well, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” Adam shook his head, and the others did the same. Fiona moved around the room as if circling for the right spot. She finally settled on a small wooden stool next to the fireplace.

“He was able to memorize hundreds of thousands of formulations, numbers, anything mathematical or scientific. Ian always had a good memory and was always good in math and science, but something changed for him. Something changed on or around the time we were at the base. Suddenly, he was remembering things that seemed so obscure, things, that quite honestly, he never even studied.”

“Like what, Fiona?” asked Aislinn.

“He once asked if I wanted to see a trick. I was maybe ten or eleven at the time. He opened up a book. I think it was Fundamentals of Physics. He literally flipped through the pages and then recited every word, every formula, and every answer. It was astonishing. At first, I thought he had memorized it earlier, so I grabbed a book of my father’s off the shelf, something about structural engineering, and he did the same thing.”

Kane was quiet for a moment and then looked around the room. Someone was playing with lives… theirs, but others as well.

“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” asked Aislinn.

“I honestly didn’t think it would matter. Ian is dead, and I’m not sure if his abilities had anything to do with the pink dust or if he refined them on his own after he left school.”

“It seems an unlikely coincidence,” said Spook. “I mean, we were all exposed to it, and even if your brother was exposed at a later age than all of us, something obviously changed in his DNA.”

“I think we need to start looking for others that would have been at the base as well,” said Kane. “When we return stateside, we need to make a list of every child we remember from our time there. I know there weren’t many because I didn’t have a lot of friends, and the town was so small it was mostly just adults.”

“Doesn’t that seem odd to you?” asked Caroline from her big armchair. The others turned to the older woman, sitting with a wise, knowing look on her face.

“What do you mean?” asked Spook.

“I mean a town with adults, but no children, other than all of you? That’s odd. Where there are adults, there is procreation, unless it’s all men, or they were only there for show.”

“Jesus, this keeps getting better and better,” said Adam, running his fingers through his dark hair. “What do you think, Kane? You’re the one with the investigation background. Where do we go from here?”

“Well, I get married,” he said, reaching for Aislinn’s hand. “That’s the most important thing in my world right now. But I also think we all need to stick together. We are stronger as a team. We feel it, and maybe others will as well. I also think we are together for a reason, maybe sensing we all needed one another. There are too many coincidences for me to not question things.”

“And when you all return to the states?” asked Fiona, looking sad and alone.

“Let’s deal with that later,” said Adam. His stomach did a sharp turn and then a double round-off back handspring. A life without Fiona in it? That wasn’t appealing at all, and when the fuck did that happen?

“And what about the men who were trying to take me up on the mountain?” asked Fiona. “They said someone wanted me for my ‘healing’ abilities. If someone is actually sick, I guess I could help. But what if it was something else? Someone else?”

“We need to find out if those gypsies were sent by someone or if they were actually coming on behalf of a sick person,” said Adam. “I’ll send Flip and Spook up there tomorrow to do a little digging.”

“They usually make their camp on the western side of the Wicklow. You’ll find travel trailers and tents everywhere. They are very suspicious of strangers, and you should be careful. They’re usually armed.” Caroline stood easily and shook her head. The first time in ten years, she was able to stand and shake away the dust of time.

“I’m headed to bed,” she said, grinning. “I may not creak when I walk anymore, but I still get tired at nine o’clock.”

“We’ll head back to the bed and breakfast,” said Adam. “We’ll see you both at the wedding. But Caroline? Angela? Be careful and watch out for anyone lurking around your home. If they know we’ve been here, they might think you know things that could help them.”

“Don’t worry about us,” said Angela, “we’ve fairies protecting the house.” The older women kissed them as they left, and Kane drove the van back toward their bed and breakfast, the oddity of driving on the opposite side of the road an easy transition for him. He’d certainly done it many times on deployments.

Fiona laid her head against Adam’s shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head. Kane smiled at his friend with a knowing grin.

Love certainly seemed to be moving fast on his little band of brothers, but it wasn’t love he was worried about. Someone was manipulating the lives of those with gifts. More specifically, someone was manipulating their lives.