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"Enough of this." Asha started toward me again. I stumbled back and landed hard in the woodpile again. Pain seared inside my chest, and I rolled over onto my side, my face inches from the scattered kindling now burning on the hearth. Asha gave another of those long sighs. "Even other humans have proved greater challenge than this." She sounded bored. Bored about killing me. So disinterested in taking my life, that she had the nerve to seem irritated at the waste of her precious time. I clenched my hands into fists.

"Thane," she said. The broad male stepped forward. "Prepare a spot in the underbrush for the body close to the road." She bent over me, her hands starting to reach for me again, but her eyes still on Thane. "Some human will eventually–" With fear buzzing loudly in my head, I grabbed a piece of burning kindling and stabbed at her throat. She immediately rocked back, landing hard on her butt, staring at me while the flames licked at her hair.

I sensed rather than saw Thane and Namere stir in surprise and somewhere, dimly I could hear Caelan shouting something to me, but I couldn't focus on him. I couldn't tear my eyes from her. She began to smile even as the fire still burned on her, the stench 107

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of singed hair and flesh filling the room. Then, just as suddenly as I'd struck her with the fire, the flames went out with no hand or water near them. And the skin, ugly, red, and blistered, began to heal.

Her smile grew broader, and she lifted her hand toward me. And finally, Caelan's voice, his words made it through to my brain, made sense. "Touch her, Zara. Touch her skin." Of course, Asha heard him too. As soon as I lunged for her, her smile faded a touch, and she started to back away. But not quite fast enough.

I caught Asha's fingers with my own and held on for dear life, praying that Caelan knew what he was talking about. My legs tangled with hers, and we began to fall. But in that slow motion slide between upright and flat out, an increasingly familiar sensation spread over me. My ears, already ringing from pain and fear, went to white noise, and my vision clouded with spots. My mind connected to hers. If we hit the floor, neither of us felt it.

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Chapter 10

The human female, small and frightened, stares up at me
from her place on the ground, hands up in her own defense.
A surge of fury. This is the one he brought to replace me.
My view blurs for a moment, and when it clears again, I'm
the one on the floor, crouching, trying to extinguish the flames
gnawing at my flesh. The human, the little female, has crawled to
her knees, brandishing the burning wood, fear and fury contorting
her face. I feel a twinge of respect for her useless efforts to
survive. She will have to die so Caelan will understand...
Caelan. My view flashes to include him, shouting at the
human to encourage her. Encouraging her to hurt me, to defeat
me. Not possible, but still...his words wound me in a way the
human's fire cannot.

His eyes meet mine, cold upon me, but familiar from years of
knowing and a common understanding from the moment we met.
Caelan and the room around me disappear. I find myself in a
different place, a dim room, with circles of light from above
shining upon transparent tubes, rows and rows of them, laid out
horizontally. I'm cold and wet on the floor, and there is a puddle
of blue fluid beneath me. I push myself up, frightened by the
weakness in my arms. My back throbs, and when I look over my
shoulder, I see long gashes traversing the skin of my back, all the
way from a brightly colored image at the small of back down to
the tops of my legs. The wounds sting and blood drips, clouding
the clear fluid on the floor with me.

This is wrong. Something is not as it should be, but before I
can determine what that something is or the origin of the feeling,
movement catches my eye.

Two, no, three of the tubes nearby still swim with blue fluid,
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dark shapes moving and struggling within.
Still too weak to walk, I crawl to the nearest of them and use
the cold shiny stand supporting the tube to pull myself up. And
there, body flailing, dying, a familiar face looks up at me, pleading
silently.

I shatter the tube with a mere touch, but he does not break the
fluid's surface, weakened after his battle to survive.
Moved by feelings that make no sense–warmth, concern,
fear–I pull him free and listen as he clears the fluid from his
breathing passages, coughing and choking.
When finished, he lifts his head to look at me. Our eyes lock,
and we are one.

The walls around us blur and disappear. The cold floor under
my feet is replaced by a warm soft surface. But Caelan remains. I
lean back into the softness, pulling him down with me. My hands
slide up and down the length of his warm and naked body, feeling
the ridges of muscle at his side, the narrowing of his waist, and the
curve of his hip into his backside. He is mine. All of him. I press
him to me, feeling his heat. And when he pushes at the entrance to
my body, I let him in, opening myself to him, knowing that no
matter what else changes, this would remain. He would always be
mine, more than the others somehow.

Except...I remember the feel of his eyes on me, not warm, not
welcoming, but cold, distant, calculating. All for this human
female who...

Human female. Where has she gone? The feeling of
wrongness returns, more strongly this time. She'd struck me with
the fire, then what? She'd touched me and...
Haziness threatens to cloud my thoughts, leading me back to
the past, to the room where I'd first wakened, but no.
That female is still out there somewhere. I couldn't see her,
couldn't...wake enough to do so. But I could find her yet.
I concentrate, listening for her, but something keeps trying to
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push me away, back into my own thoughts. Until I shove forward
with all my strength, just as I had done with that tube to save
Caelan.

An immediate rush of images rewards my efforts. I'm at an
eating establishment, staring at someone...at Caelan. But I don't
know it's him, not yet. Then I'm scrambling to my feet, choking
over smoke in the air, talking to Caelan, panic in my voice and
thoughts.

"I don't understand what you're talking about," I say. A
feeling of fear clutches at my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
Then a flash of Caelan in a dingy room, clearly in pain,
speaking. "Your gift cuts through what remains of our shields,
allowing you access to our minds."

Then Caelan shouting to me. "Touch her." I see in front of
me, an Observer female, her hair still smoldering, preparing to
advance on me.

But I move forward instead, hand outstretched, knowing that
if I can just touch her skin, I'll...I'll what?

The image fades from view, but not before I understand. If I
touch her, I will touch her mind...my mind.
The yawning darkness swallows me whole again. She is in
here, the human attached herself to me. Fury lights within me,
spreading until I feel the power twitching in my grasp.
Somewhere, a dim sensation of panic, of fear, and I know it's her,
hiding inside of me. But that is all right. I know how to eliminate
her.

I train the power on that fear; she's given herself away by
that. Power barrels through me, stripping my anger and my hate,
using it, feeding on it to grow stronger and move faster. But just
before it centers on that little spot of fear, I hear her cry out.
Don't. Stop. You don't understand...

But I ignore her. I do what must be done. The power strikes
the target. And pain rips through me. Agony twists within me, like
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the fire she held to me earlier, and before the darkness closes in, I
have but a short moment to wonder what it is that she's done to me
now.

"Zara?"

Someone's voice close to me. I struggled, fighting against the tar that seemed to hold my eyelids down, keeping me in the darkness. I managed to get one eye open a crack, and I saw Caelan kneeling above me, concern etched into his face.

"Are you all right?" He reached down to touch me and instantly I flashed to a memory of his hand on my skin, all over my body. Except it wasn't my body. It wasn't me, not my memory. I fought back against the sensation. "Get away from me," I said, my voice cracking. He tried to slide a hand underneath me to help me up, but I shoved hard against his chest, and pain screamed through my rib cage.

Tears formed and immediately leaked down my cheeks, dripping into my ears as I tried to hold perfectly still. Something on my left side was definitely broken.

"We must go," he said.

"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said, my anger dying to be vented in a scream but the pain keeping it at a low whisper.

"You just left me there with her...I could have been killed." Should have been killed, more like it. I remembered that blast of power she'd generated and sent on its merry way to me. I could have been broken in a hundred different places.

But instead, it felt like just the one injury to my ribs and that had happened before she let loose with that power. I frowned, trying to take a bodily inventory without moving anything that might be even remotely connected to my ribs, like my toes.

"I had no choice." He looked down at me, worry creasing his brow. "If I'd continued to stand between you, she would have perceived that as a sign of your weakness."

"She'd have been right," I gasped. "She would have killed 112

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you."

"Like she didn't just try?" I still couldn't quite figure how she'd missed me.

"I mean that she would not have bothered with the challenge," he said. "She would have just slit your throat from across the room."

Like she'd cut open his face. I looked up at his cheek. No sign of the injury remained. Unfortunately, I knew it wouldn't have worked that way for me.

"Now, we must go," Caelan said. The urgency in his voice reminded me of that moment in the diner, when he tried to warn me then. "Before the others decide to challenge you in her place." I looked up at him, anger still churning wildly within me. Beneath the desperation on his face, something close to fear moved just under the surface. Caelan hadn't been afraid since...he hadn't ever been afraid, not even when facing off with Nevan. I struggled to sit up. Angry or not, I didn't want to be around for whatever he thought was worse than Nevan. Caelan hauled me the rest of the way to my feet, but in that moment when pain almost swamped me, I got a glimpse of something that pushed that agony out of my mind.

Across the room, opposite to where Caelan and I stood, the wall had caved in. At least that's what I thought at first. The drywall and pine planks appeared to have cracked under the weight of the second story. But then as I continued to stare at the bowed-in wall, I realized the damage seemed centralized, all spreading out from one point of impact. Like someone had smashed something hard into the wall, like a car or...My eyes dropped to where Thane and Namere crouched on the floor, almost behind one of the recliners that had formerly been placed against that wall. Thane knelt so low to the floor that his head nearly pressed into the broken wall. Blood stained the front of Namere's white tunic in large splotches and smears. But Asha was 113

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no longer in the room. Or so I thought, until I started to turn away and I saw the edge of a red leather sleeve and a very still hand on the floor between Thane and Namere.

"No," I whispered. I leaned forward, sucking in my breath at the pain, but needing to see. Almost blocked from view by the now cock-eyed recliner and the two tending to her, Asha lay stretched out upon the ground. "What happened?"

"I'm not certain. We felt the power building. I tried to interfere to break the connection, fearing she would kill you." He looked down at me with eyes almost completely silver. "But before I could reach you, she was...thrown into the wall." I remembered the power rising, her rage at finding me inside. I'd struggled to get free and then, I'd felt that blast come right at me. "But she aimed at me." Confused, I looked up to Caelan.

"When touching our minds, you must have access to our power as well. Her mind was not entirely her own. She built the power, but you used it," Caelan said, an odd blend of pride and regret coloring his tone.

"You're saying I did that?" I turned my head to stare at the wall.

"Yes."

Horror and surprise leaked through me, immediately followed by something much worse: grim satisfaction. I remembered her words to Thane about preparing a place for my body. She could stand to be hurt a little, not like she wouldn't heal up in a few minutes anyway. "Good."

"I'm not sure the others would agree with you," Caelan said. An excellent point. He pulled at me, and this time, I let him take me away.

Except we didn't make it far.

"Human," Thane's voice boomed out into the hallway. It had to be Thane unless Namere spoke with a bass tone. Caelan froze, almost causing me to stumble with the sudden stop, and then he 114

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turned us slowly to face the entrance to the lounge again. Thane stood before us, his black hair now hanging in front of his eyes and his face smeared with blood, like he'd tried to brush his hair back with bloody fingers. "We will remain here until Asha is whole once more and capable of a challenge again." Great. So she'd want to do this again. I had no intention of sticking around long enough for that to happen. Once was lucky, twice would be dead, especially when I didn't really understand Caelan's explanation for what I'd done or how I'd done it. I expected Thane to turn away and head back to Asha's side, but he didn't. He just kept standing there, watching me. I returned the favor, afraid he would suddenly lash out at me as Asha had done, not that I could do anything about it. The moment of silence with the three of us in the hall crossed into an awkward pause. Just as I was about to ask Caelan what was going on, Thane slowly lowered his eyes to the floor and dipped his head slightly. Beside me, all the tension in Caelan seemed to run out. After another long second, I shrugged. Must be a cultural thing, I thought, shifting a bit, intending to hobble away to find some flat surface to lie on, in hopes of easing the pain in my ribs. But Caelan touched my arm. "Thane is asking for permission to stay."