Wherever She Goes (Psychic Seasons, ReGina Welling [novels to improve english TXT] 📗

The angel reached out her hand and touched Zack gently on the forehead. His long lashes dropped to flutter against his cheek then Gustavia cried out as he sagged to the floor.

“Hurry now.” Galmadriel spoke quickly to Amethyst. “Once I create the bridge, you will see its aura. Use your healing ability to hold it firmly on this side, anchor it, you will understand how. When you feel it standing strong, give him,” she pointed to Zack “a push in the correct direction.” She waved a hand imperiously for Julius and Estelle to follow her then they all winked out of sight.

Face strained with effort, Amethyst waited until she saw a rainbow arching back from the point where the angel had been standing.

“Everyone stand right here,” she pushed her friends into a loose semi-circle. “Don’t move no matter what. I don’t know what will happen but you heard what she said. We could lose them both if we fail.”

Using a series of rapid hand movements, the flicked the colors from the end of the bridge, linking them with the matching ones in her friend’s auras then pulled the ends of the rainbow through them, wrapping it around herself the way a climber might secure a rope to a tree.

When she felt she had as firm a hold as she would ever get, she grounded the light as deeply as she could to anchor it then Amethyst grasped Zack’s aura and flung it toward the arc of the rainbow bridge. Now, all that was left for them to do was wait and hold tight.

Chapter 22

When she felt Billy’s touch, cold as bitter wind and fetid as rotting meat just before her life force was wrenched from her body, Kat knew something had gone horribly wrong.

Darkness deeper than anything she had ever experienced fell over her while Billy shrieked until a mighty thunderclap burst against her ears then washed away taking all sound with it. Not even an echo remained. Was this what it felt like to die?

Something tickled Kat’s nose. She brushed at it, automatically opening her eyes. Grass.

Thinking she might still be lying near the gazebo at Hayward House, Kat struggled to her feet then turned in in a circle.

She was alone, in a place where nothing was familiar.

There was no gazebo, no Hayward House in the distance.

Instead, in every direction stretched an endless field of grass lit not by the sun but by an ambient light that came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Now what?

“Galmadriel?” Kat called out into the silent atmosphere. She could hear her own voice but it sounded strange, as though it never left her to travel in normal waves.

If this was the afterlife, it wasn’t living up to her expectations. No tunnel, no bright light, no crowd of loved ones waiting to welcome her home. So much for preconceived notions.

Kat whirled in place again, then walked—well, since there was no sun to be seen, she had no idea in which direction—forward. Everything was utterly still. No breeze brushed the grass into motion or whispered through the blades. The quiet unnerved her nearly as much as the sound of her own shout had done.

Though there was little enough to look at, Kat found that her vision was clearer than it had ever been. Looking down at a blade of grass, she could see every tiny ridge, every variation of color. Greens so vibrant they very nearly appeared to be unreal speared toward her, toward the light.

Bending down, Kat pulled off her shoes leaving them to race barefoot through the verdant field of uninterrupted green. She relished the way it felt to run without being on a treadmill, looked behind her to see the grass spring back up erasing every spot where her feet had crushed it down. With that joy in her, Kat arced through the air, leaping and creating her own breeze.

Tears streamed, now. Could this be all that was left to her? Running alone through some otherworldly place with no chance to say goodbye to her family, her friends, to Zack. The fleeting joy could not compete with that sadness.

Wasn’t your life supposed to pass before your eyes? Like a movie—that’s how people who had had near death experiences described it. No reel played for her, no review of her decisions, good or bad. No eternal record of her regrets or accomplishments and she had some of both. She should have chosen to trust that love could overcome such petty obstacles as blindness or psychic ability. That neither of those things defined her or branded her as less. She should have told Zack she loved him.

Breath coming faster now, she pulled the sparkling air into her lungs and felt its clarity lend even more speed to her feet. She ran without tiring but eventually, with nothing to run toward but more of the same, she stopped and stood still again.

Glancing down, she saw her shoes.

Seriously? What was this? The cosmic version of a treadmill?

Behind that thought came the certain knowledge that though she could not seem to go forward or back through this place, she could, if she chose, move on to the next. Kat was also certain that if she did, there would be no going back.

Kat stood, frozen with indecision.

That was where Zack found her.

_,.-'~'-.,_

It had already been a weird enough day that the novelty of running along a rainbow didn’t even register on Zack’s strange-o-meter. There was no trail, no sign of Kat or her passing to be found until he took that last step across the arching bridge.

Looking around in surprise, he found himself standing in front of a landscape that looked very much like his own painting. Dreary gray buildings splashed with darker shades under a thundercloud sky and not another person in sight.

Kat, where was she? He lifted his head the same way Lola might when she was learning the scent of a thing.

He turned