Page 23 of Dima's Vision
“So, he sucked the joy out of things? I’m not sure I understand.” Dima frowns.
I try to think of the best way to describe it. I could never fully figure out exactly how Maddigan’s gift worked. “Think of it like being an extrovert. They gain energy from being with others. Maddigan was kind of like that, but he gained energy from being around joyful people. He’d become light and everything around him would pulse with joy. But over time he somehow managed to, I dunno, harness it maybe? Instead of the joy pulsing, it would feel like a vortex, like every happy thing that ever happened to you was sucked straight out of your soul. Parties that once were happy would end in tears. The more Maddigan fed on other people’s happiness, the darker he became until allhe did was deprive them of any lightness they could possibly have inside them until they died a husk of who they once were.”
“He killed them?”
I nod, unable to voice how I felt the day I walked in on him with Mary-Sue. The little girl whose gift was to take people’s sadness and replace it with love and light.
“Indirectly. He’d send them into depression so deep they’d become desperate to do anything to feel normal and happy again. He would then manipulate them into doing whatever it was he wanted. If they pleased him he’d give them a little bit of joy, before taking it away from them again. He had them hooked, like a drug I guess.
His swallow is audible in the vehicle as we hurtle toward god knows where. “And Mama Celene?”
“She tried to help him as best she could, but the house felt oppressive with him in it. The peaceful calm that usually resided there would disappear as soon as he walked through the front door. It’s like every time he came home he was bigger, stronger, more … evil. So, I followed him.”
“Where did he go?”
“Sometimes it was to airport arrivals. He’d walk through all those family reunions bathed in love and take their joy with him. Sometimes he’d take so much that families would lose loved ones then and there. One man had been with his family for five minutes before Maddigan sucked the joy out of him. That man then stepped in front of a car as they left the airport.”
I roll my head along the headrest until I’m looking at Dima’s profile. Straight, strong nose, full lips, thick neck.
“I watched him steal the joy from a first time mother in a maternity ward. Her depression turned to psychosis and she killed her baby not ten minutes after Maddigan visited her. That was the day I put a bullet in him. I left him there, in the alley of the hospital.” Dima’s large hand leaves the steering wheel toland on my thigh, squeezing in comfort, grounding me. “I went home, told Mama what I had done. She told me that death may be my curse, but it can also be a gift.”
“Your actions that day saved many people,Ved’ma moya.As your actions continue to do.”
“I guess.” Dima’s words, like Mama’s, only slightly soothe the hurt I carry with me about that day. “The next day La Madrina turned up on our doorstep offering me a way back into the family.”
“And now you’re riding with me to feed a dead man to an alligator,” Dima says, a cheeky grin on his face, lightening the mood.
“I kinda wish I hadn’t killed him.” I grumble. “Next time, I’ll keep them alive so we can feed them to the gator. It’ll be more exciting that way.”
Dima chuckles. “You think so?”
“Ah, yeah! I mean, I love how efficiently I get rid of people, but the real bad ones deserve more than a bullet to the skull.”
“OK then, next time, we keep them alive.”
I grin at Dima. I know that I’m getting carried away planning to kill more people with him, but it’s kinda nice having a side kick. Being a hitwoman is a pretty lonely existence. But I guess being a finder, like Dima, is lonely too. I never realised how isolated people like us are until I met Gabe and Maddigan. I know from Mama that there are plenty more of us out there, but Mama only saves the ones that need it.
“When did you know you had a gift?”
Dima looks surprised at my question, before understanding dawns on his face. “I guess I always knew. My family, it’s just their way. Each generation has someone like me. Most of time it’s a healer or someone who can read the future. In some ways my gift can do that too, but I never have the full details, only snippets.”
“So your family knew you were special?”
He smiles gently at me. “Da. My older brother showed no signs. After my mother had me she was told she couldn’t have any more children. She’s tiny, barely 5’ tall, birthing large babies. So I guess they just presumed that it was me who was gifted. And they weren’t wrong. From the time I could talk I would have lessons with thevedma, witches, mystics, however you want to call them.”
“And then you came to America and joined the Bratva?”
“Not quite. My brother came first. He was travelling before starting college back home. He met a man and they fell in love. My family disowned him but I knew, deep inside me, that Roman is Sasha’s other half of his soul. So, when I stood up for him in front of our family, they disowned me too. I came here to join him and to earn my way into the Bratva I used my gift.”
“How?”
“I’d find people that owed the Bartashevs money. Hunt down people who had crossed the Bratva.”
“And then you just quit? And they let you go?”
I take a deep breath, then let it out. “I lost my vision. All of it. My gift abandoned me, as did my eyesight and I abandoned the Bratva as I was no use to them anymore. My brother wasn’t happy, but he understood. He protected me so there was no fallout from the Pakhan.”
“You left the Bratva because you wentblind?” I ask, shocked that first off, you can lose your gift, and secondly, that it could leave you in such a state.
