Merkaba, a supernatural suspense series (Walk the Right Road, Book 3) (2 page)

Once a woman allowed a man into her room at night, she wouldn’t care if her children saw. She’d give everything to him, and her children would come second. He swallowed and squeezed the steering wheel a little harder as he remembered all too well when his own mother had taken men into her room at night. He could hear, and so could his brothers and sisters, all five of them. But none of them spoke of it when the man slipped out before dawn, and their mother’s mood would be shaky. They never knew who’d be downstairs, whether it would be a happy, sad, or angry mom. “Women,” he spat out, as though the word was distasteful.

He sat up straighter as the dark-haired beauty ahead of him slowed down. Her brake lights flashed, and she turned into the parking lot of the Super Save, a clean, no-frills, box-style motel for anyone on a tight budget. Dan slowed as she parked, pulling over to the side of the road as she hopped out of her Jeep. She toted the package up the stairs, opening the second door from the end and shutting it behind her.

“Well, at least I know where you are. It’s a start. So, my dark-haired beauty, what brings you to Gardiner?” Dan smiled to himself as he pulled back onto the highway. He loved this game, anticipating how to handle her when and if she returned to her circle. Maybe she would come at the same time tomorrow, and, like every morning for the past five days, he would be waiting.

Chapter 3

Alecia tossed her keys on the chipped bedside table. It was a clean room, the bed a little on the soft side, but all that mattered was that there were no bugs or rodent droppings, and staying there didn’t drain her bank account.

With a heavy sigh, she sat on one of the double beds and ran her hand over the brown paper wrapping of the package she had just picked up from the post office. Her mother—bless her—had sent her more supplies: sage, sweet grass, tobacco, and another deer-hide pouch and a medicine bag for her treasures. Alecia loved her mother, and that was why she was here. Her mother never tried to stop her from coming back to clear the hurt and anger that had been ingrained in the earth by so many generations of desecration and pain. Her father, on the other hand—Patrick Moran, a proud Catholic Irishman born in County Galway in Ireland—now lived in Boston with her mother. He, of course, had yelled and swore over her ridiculous need to come and set things right. He didn’t understand—he couldn’t—but Alecia’s mother, Harriet, not only understood but recognized that the time was now, as she had worked with elders across the nation from where she was in Boston, elders from many tribes.

Alecia breathed in the scent of each red cloth bundle and prepped her pouch for the next morning, wondering if that strange man who’d been watching her for days would be there as well. He was handsome, tall, lanky, with short reddish hair that had its own natural curl. He had patrician features, a long nose and a smile she was sure could set a lady’s soul on fire. He had timed his visit, she knew that much. She hadn’t seen a man so much in control of his emotions in a long time, and maybe that was why she had stared as she did. He had misread her, though. She hadn’t ignored him when he came to her circle—she’d been speechless because of who she thought he was.

With broad shoulder and tanned arms, his body screamed of a man who knew how to look after himself. But his casual manner downplayed why he’d really been watching her. He wanted something. Her, namely. She’d figured that much out, but why? She knew she looked good, but she was by no means a cover girl. She was plain, ordinary, and she knew she’d never win any beauty pageant, not that she cared. Alecia never put any effort into looking like a woman. She tied her hair back, loved her hiking boots, and always had her face tilted to the sun, which had always sent her friend Tina into a tizzy, warning her that she’d be old and wrinkled before her time if she kept it up. A woman needed to be kind to her skin, keeping out of the sun, to maintain her youthful appearance. Of course, Alecia had snorted and laughed at that. Her mother had rolled her eyes, and her father had left the room.

Alecia wasn’t interested in being one of those damsels who cried too much and hid out in the shade, afraid to get dirty. She had worked alongside her father in his downtown bar in Boston, with all its laborers, cops, and men who worked with their hands all day—men who could curse a blue streak. According to Tina, the bar was definitely no place for a lady, but then, Alecia hadn’t been raised a lady. She had been raised to be respectful, tough, and hardworking, and she had worked damn hard for everything she had, including the PhD in theology that she had earned at Boston University.

Her father had taught her honor and the importance of family, and that was why she was here now in Gardiner—for her mother, for what she had survived as a kid and, to this day, still couldn’t talk about.

Chapter 4

She glanced at her watch but already knew he was right on time. She could feel his presence, and he wanted her to. She didn’t look up as she folded over a red cloth filled with tobacco and tied it with a string before standing and closing her eyes. She had already put her intent, her prayer, into the cloth. She leaned down and sprinkled tobacco at the entrance and stepped into the circle after she’d silently asked permission.

The center pole was a solid two-foot-high stick with a short branch veering off, and that was where she’d tied each of the prayer cloths. Red, yellow, white, purple, blue, and green. She knew it looked like a rainbow, and she could feel his interest as he hovered just behind her. She pinched tobacco from her pouch and tossed it on the ground before she walked out of the circle to where Dan McKenzie stood, watching her in a way that had her relaxing a bit.

Maybe all this fuss was just her anxiety over what she’d decided to take on. After all, undoing the past and healing all those deeply buried hurts was a monumental task. So, instead of continuing with what Tina—a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slender beauty—had called her prickly attitude that sent guys racing for the hills, she relaxed and met the curious, charming man’s gaze.

“This is amazing. So what is this thing you’ve built here?” He uncrossed one arm and swept it in a gesture to her circle of rocks.

“This is a medicine wheel.” Alecia started to say more and then clamped her jaw shut. Most people weren’t really interested, and quite often she babbled on, wanting—no, needing—to share all the information, the history, and why it was so important. But after the last guy had walked away, uninterested—which really did hurt, no matter what anyone said—she found herself saying as little as possible.

“This is so cool. What does it do? I mean, what is it built for?”

She hadn’t expected this, and she wondered if, in fact, she had blinked or done something odd with her expression, as he stepped closer to her, and his face brightened.

“Really, I’m fascinated. I really want to know.”

Alecia touched the medicine bag she had tied to her belt loop. It was the one filled with her four crystals, each to balance her, and she glanced away, wrestling with the impulse to blurt out all the knowledge she loved to share with those who were truly interested.

She squinted as the bright sun rose a little higher just behind his head, setting off an unusual glow of light around him. He seemed so ... nice.

“This is a Native American medicine wheel. I built this in the tradition of my mother’s people, the Ojibwe, and I built it for a purpose, for truth, honesty, and healing.” She felt her face heat for a second. Vulnerability lurked just below the surface, and she had to struggle to shut it down. He watched her the whole time, as if he could read her every thought.

“This must be something that means a lot to you. I mean, I’ve heard of these circles and the power behind them. I believe in them. But why would you build it here?”

She looked up at him with clear eyes. “This is where my mother was sent when she was taken from her family, and this land was taken from the people,” she answered.

Chapter 5

He was still there. Still listening to her. In fact, instead of slipping away, he had stepped closer and studied the wide open meadow of the parkland, as if seeing something he hadn’t before, and then squinted as he gazed back at her, giving her all his attention.

“Your mother was taken from her family, and this is the people’s land? Are you a little off, lady? This is parkland owned by the state of Washington.” He was walking around the circle in a way that had her heart thudding and drawn to him, mesmerized, but not in a fearful way. He was so charming. He wasn’t handsome, she realized—he was breathtaking. Something deep inside of him drew her, and she felt stuck, as if an elastic held her and she had to be near him.

“My mother is Ojibwe and Cree, and when the government and church people came and separated families, taking all native children and tossing them in residential schools where they were brutalized, their mandate was to send the children as far away from their homes as possible, to obliterate all contact. My mother was one of them, and she was only five years old, ripped away from her own mother and stuck in a sterile jail. Her hair was cut off, and she was forced to dress in their clothes, the clothes of the white people, and to speak only English, not her native tongue. If she slipped up accidently, she was beaten. This was in the fifties, with residential schools and the churches still inflicting abuse.

“Mom’s family, her tribe, was in Wisconsin. The Hoh were one of the tribes in this area, but the government had stolen their land and sent them away. To this day, the cycle of hate, anger, greed, betrayal ... and everything they did to my mother, her people, to all the people, is... Well, let’s just say I believe the cycle was started in order to annihilate my mother’s people.” She was shaking as she stepped back.

He didn’t say anything as he watched her with the most amazing hazel eyes. She blinked when he did and frowned as she wondered if his eyes had changed color from green to brown. But she shook her head. No, that was impossible.

“I’ve never known anyone who suffered the abuse of residential schools, someone whose native land was stolen from them. These corrupt sons of bitches in the government,” he said, and he shook his head.

Alecia wondered for a moment if his rant was for her benefit, but he stared at her in a way that tugged a little at her heart, as if he had his own hidden pain that he had buried someplace deep inside. She recognized it, for a split second, as something similar to what her mother carried. Maybe she had misjudged him. After all, when it came to men, she rarely read them right. That was where her father came in: Patrick had made a point of shielding his daughter, and shield her well he did. The last guy who had broken her heart had also broken her nose, and her father had stalked him, waiting for him outside his townhouse with a baseball bat and a warning. That was all she knew before Brian had suddenly packed up and left town.

In a way, it was comforting to know her dad would willingly kill anyone who hurt her, but on the other hand, she knew all too well that he would interfere in any relationship she tried to have. She was dammed either way. But when it came to this guy, Dan, who lurked in front of her now, her dad wasn’t there to help her, to save her or protect her. Nor should he have been. Until she faced her demons and practiced what she had learned, she would continue to be a magnet, attracting the bad and the ones to be avoided. The fact was that she was on her own.

“My mother is a survivor, and she’s my hero, but this wheel is about more. It’s about healing this land. It’s about setting wrongs right. It’s about healing hurts from the past, and our own personal hurts, because you can’t get past the hurt until you’ve been heard.”

Dan nodded, his face hardening and flashing with this knowledge, as if he knew more than she did. “And the treaty talks are on the table now, as we speak,” he said.

Chapter 6

“Yes, you’re right. They are.” She turned away from Dan and all the charisma that was oozing off him. She walked around him to somehow break his hold, which had her wanting nothing more than to tell him everything. Doing so would only be foolish. She pulled out the amethyst she kept on the string around her neck and squeezed it. Then she reached into her pouch and sprinkled tobacco around the circle again. She stopped at the four odd-shaped rocks she’d piled by the eastern door, and she starting stacking them on the rocks that formed the line between the east and south.

“What are you doing?” He was behind her again, close enough that she could feel his heat.

She didn’t look up. She didn’t need to—she could smell his earthy fragrance. Who would have thought a plain bar of soap could make a man smell so good? “This is called a Manitou. They were constructed and set on the paths when warriors were taken, for protection from their captors.” She balanced the four rocks, with the largest on top.

She could remember her mother practicing when Alecia was a teenager. One of the elders, Harriet’s sponsor while she was sobering up, had her practice and would tell her which stone was first, second, third, and fourth. It became a task of persistence, patience, to get them to balance and stay. Alecia had been told she was a natural. She just knew what went where, and why, and when she needed to build them. Her father never interfered, even though he was a devout Catholic. If she thought about it, her family was an odd mix. Her father had questioned, accepted, and respected her mother’s people’s ways. But then, that had only been after he allowed her mother to return after she’d left for five years when Alecia was eight.

“Is someone going to be taken captive?”

She stepped back, brushed her hands together, and stepped on Dan’s foot. “No, this is for protection. I built this between the east and south. The east is new beginning, a new journey; the south is adolescence, when we learn to behave, to be kind to our fellow man, to better listen to our moms and dads, to our elders. This Manitou is to protect this journey, this new beginning. I just get an idea to build one in a certain place, and I will without question. Sometimes I don’t know why, but I don’t question that feeling.” She shrugged, unable to explain any more. He must have thought she was nuts.