by Dianna Love
I couldn’t make out anything he said.
Etoi pushed the tip of the spear into the scout’s chest and yelled right back. That shut him down.
Scary girl.
Further away, Callan kept distracting the monster as he shot back and forth so fast in front of the creature that I could barely see Callan’s legs move. But a person could only do that for so long before he gave out or made a mistake and got caught.
I couldn’t leave him to deal with the croggle alone, not when he could’ve gotten away with the others if I hadn’t stayed to save the scout. Callan’s enemy.
Clenching my teeth, I clamped a hand on the wound gouged deepest at my side and struggled to my feet. Where had the power within me gone? What had brought it on?
The scout heading toward the child.
If that’s what it took to bring on the energy, I imagined the croggle turning on that little boy after it killed me and Callan.
At once, heat churned in my middle. I staggered toward the croggle now down on all its limbs, pounding the ground and snorting, snapping at Callan. Power swirled inside me, building. I started jogging.
Callan split his attention for a second, glancing my way, and roared, “Stop. Nooo!”
I couldn’t look. No distractions. Moving my feet faster, I felt blood gush around my fingers. I felt dizzy and shook it off, growling. The power coiled tight then expanded. I yelled at Callan. “A spear!”
Fury made the veins stand out on his forehead.
Two more steps and I’d reach the croggle.
I jumped on the monster’s tail that was taller than me at its thickest part. And almost fell off. Grabbing a scale, I hoisted myself back to my feet. Would the monster notice something that weighed little more than one of its scales? I climbed toward the air flap that moved in and out, just as it had on the smaller croggle, only this was like climbing a mountain, not a hill.
Callan dodged right and left, keeping the monster confused as he worked his way around to the monster’s side. He yelled at me. “Catch!”
I braced my feet to free one hand. If I moved my hand from the gash, I’d bleed out faster. When Callan threw the spear, I caught it and flipped the spear around, ready to stab the monster the second its breathing hole flapped open again.
The beast howled, shaking its bulk and snapping its jaws, the sound of giant teeth grinding. Massive feet stomped and the smell of raw sewage reeked in the air. Its twenty-foot tail lashed back and forth then curved, the tip swatting me off like an annoying fly.
I cartwheeled in the air and landed on my back with a dull thud when I hit the ground, my fingers still clutching the spear.
Callan had raced away, yelling and waving his hands to hold the monster’s attention. Even with his speed, he was too far away to reach me in time to offer any help.
Jaws as wide as the transender pod swung around to me. Black eyes streaked with yellow rage turned on me.
Callan’s voice reached me above all the noise. “Rayen!”
He said my name.
A small thing, but hearing that gave me a renewed surge to fight. I had to tap the red-hot energy I felt spinning inside me, but how?
Callan bellowed at the top of his lungs, running straight at the monster.
The croggle paused, head swinging over to Callan for just an instant before whipping back around to lunge at me. Razor-teethed jaws opened to cut me in half.
That was the extra second I needed.
Power detonated inside me once more. I knew it wouldn’t last.
I rolled to my feet, pain lashing my middle and the world spinning around me. I yelled, “Tenadori!” and grasped the spear with both hands, ramming the lethal point into the croggle’s massive foot.
I focused all my thoughts on die and burn!
An inferno of heat pulsed through me into the spear and blasted into the foot. Blue flames and smoke shot from the monster’s air flap. It bellowed in anguish. Scales glowed fiery red.
I released the spear and fell backwards. Warm liquid gushed from my wound and ran across my stomach and chest. My heart thumped slower and slower.
The croggle kicked its legs then crashed over on its side, shaking and emitting a screech that rattled the trees.
Closing my eyes, I drew a gurgly breath, sick of smelling the stench of death.
What about Callan and the others?
Footsteps pounded up. I peeled my eyes open.
Callan walked up to me, chest heaving for air. He dropped down beside me, his eyes now reddish-golden. “You look worse than the croggle.”
“I don’t want...to hear grief...for killing him.”
Shaking his head, he released a breath that almost sounded like a chuckle, but raspy as if he hadn’t done it in a while. Warm hands covered my stomach. I gasped and jerked at the pain racking my body.
What humor I’d seen in Callan’s face a moment ago fled quickly beneath a grim mask, the severity of my injuries written in the worry lines creasing his forehead. “Got to get you out of here before that thing bleeds out and you drown in croggle blood.”
“Doubt I’ll make it. Go. Save the child. But–” I drew another rattling breath. “Please...let my friends go.”
Zilya’s face popped into view. Confusion scrambled the color in her eyes. “You should have let that scout die.”
I breathed out, “Couldn’t let that beast...kill anyone.”
“He’s an enemy.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Why would you help a tek? Protecting your own?”
“No.” I scowled at her, gritting my teeth when Callan pressed harder. “Can I just die . . . in peace?”
Callan’s gaze never left mine when he said, “Leave her alone, Zilya.” Then he told me, “You will not die...yet.”
Now that Zilya had pointed out how I’d, once again, protected their enemy, I wondered if Callan wanted the honor of killing me himself.
I closed my eyes, trying to separate myself from the pain snaking through every inch of my body.
The cries of a child approaching forced my eyes open to find Etoi hovered in my line of sight. She told Zilya, “I think this little one is reacting to the Sphere. He already has a rash on his arms and legs.”
Callan kept his hands in place, applying pressure that tortured me as he turned to address Zilya over his shoulder. “Where’s the prisoner?”
“Tied to a tree.”
“Take the child to Jaxxson.”
“What about her?”
Now I’m her again? I fought to stay alert when all I wanted to do was close my eyes and withdraw from the jagged ache clawing my stomach. Had Callan been telling the truth that I wouldn’t die?
Callan shook his head as if debating with himself. “Leave her with me. We’ll follow once she can walk.”
He expects me to get up and walk? After losing a couple of quarts of blood and with a gaping wound?
As usual, Etoi had an opinion. “This one killed a fully grown croggle. She protected a tek. Why save her?”
Hmph. I’d graduated to ‘her’ then back to ‘this one.’ At this rate, I’d be ‘it’ next.
Callan still pressed on the wound.
I hissed, nauseous from the streaking pain.
The struggle to figure out something warred in Callan’s face. “How’d you kill these croggles? Our spears can’t pierce the hide of a grown one, but you stab him in the foot and he dies.”
Something I could do better than warrior-guy? Sweet, as Tony would say.
Throat dry and fighting dizziness, I opened my hands but couldn’t lift them from where my arms had flopped to down beside me. “With these. Not sure how it works.” I took short breaths, which was all I could handle. “I feel an energy. . . then I think about...what I want to happen. That’s how I killed the flower vine that...attacked Tony. Just worked.” My eyes fluttered closed. Too much effort to keep them open.
No doubt they’d think I was insane and lock me away in that isolation unit forever...if I lived.
“Wak
e up,” he ordered.
I didn’t want to, but forced my lids halfway open, just enough to see the blurry image of Callan still kneeling next to me and arguing with Zilya. “She doesn’t wear her hair like the tek-nah-tee females and no obvious marks on her body.”
Zilya glared an easy message to interpret. She didn’t want Callan discounting her theory that I was the enemy. “We’ll discuss this later, but no matter how great a warrior you are, you risk someone like her using that power to kill you.”
Looking up at Callan, I tried to speak, but it came out as a whisper.
He leaned closer to me. “What?”
Licking dry lips, I whispered, “My word...as a warrior. I will not use my power against you.”
The respect that had shined in Callan’s eyes earlier took on new meaning now. He believed I was not tek-nah-tee or at least he had reservations about condemning me. I could see it.
He said nothing to me, but he told Zilya, “Get moving. The child needs Jaxxson. I’ll deal with this. That’s final.”
Did I have the beginning of an ally in Callan? An alliance that might help Gabby and Tony once I made it back to the village.
If I made it back.
“The blood still flows too fast,” Etoi pointed out in a smug tone. “The decision of her fate may no longer rest in your hands. Staying here may draw another croggle.”
He snarled something at Etoi I didn’t get and scooped me into his arms.
Bad move. Pain ripped through my chest. Felt as though the croggle chewed on me. I’d lost too much blood. I licked my dry lips and tried to say, “Please don’t hurt Gabby and Tony,” but nothing came out.
Darkness closed over me.
CHAPTER 21
Cold. Her teeth chattered.
Gabby hated the cold. She wanted out of here. But where was here? She fought, clawing her way out of this frigid hole.
“Can you hear me?” a deep male voice asked.
Sure, I can hear you, which means there are two of us stuck in here. Got any idea how to get out?
No one answered her.
Too bad. He had a nice voice. She’d like to see the body and face attached to it. But like everyone else in her world, he seemed to have walked away from her.
As usual, she’d have to find her own way out of hell.
First she had to figure out what kind of place her father had dumped her into this time. Her teeth chattered more.
Something heavy covered her, taking the edge off her chill, but not by much.
Why couldn’t her dad find a private school near a beach? She might actually apply herself and stick around if she had sand, water and tanned guys in board shorts.
Had she been sent to Antarctica?
I’ve gotten out of worse places. I think.
Drawing on all the energy she could muster, she ordered her eyes to open. Her lids weren’t cooperating. Like they were glued shut.
The weight over her body increased, the new layer tucked against her. Which helped. A lot. The shivering slowed. Her arms and legs felt heavier.
Fine. She could sleep now that she was warm again.
“Come on, wake up,” the male voice ordered.
She really would like to see who she had as a hell-mate. Giving it one more try, she pried open her eyes and stared up at a guy with a naked chest. A really nice naked chest and beautiful dark, sinfully delicious eyes. “Aren’t you cold?”
He chuckled. Had a nice smile on his oh-so-nice face. “No, I’m not the one fighting off a fever.”
Fever? She stared at him, trying to decide if she was truly awake then turned her head, taking in her surroundings. Dried weeds hung from vines. Ladder over there that went up to a loft. Odd shaped walls of wood.
A deep breath of lavender eucalyptus snapped her jumbled thoughts into order.
I get it. She was still in this freaky world with...her eyes shifted back to hot, bare-chest guy...medicine man. Jaxxson, aka the healer, and not naked, unless he’d ditched the sarong.
He must have levitated the slab table she was stretched out on because she could only see from the middle of his abs up. He didn’t have a body all cut with muscle like that guy Callan, but she found she liked Jaxxson’s lean physique. More her style. Her gaze kept climbing higher up his tanned skin, up to the stern chin, up to the sharp cheeks and... smack, back to the dark brown eyes observing her with wary caution.
What had she done or said to get that look? Had the mixture he’d crushed in that bowl caused her to babble something about her ability to hear other people’s thoughts? “What happened to me?”
“The infection accelerated when you got upset. It spiked sharply, cutting off your air supply. You started suffocating. I treated you, then checked on the new child brought into our village.”
Infection. From the vines. Right.
But he wasn’t telling her something. She’d been burning up and in pain. He’d mixed a poultice of some type in a bowl then she started getting worse to the point that...
Glaring at him with unveiled accusation, she asked, “Did you touch me?”
“Yes.”
“I told you not to.” She dug those last moments of lucidity up from the dregs of her mind, recalled him grabbing her wrist. She’d heard a thought just as she’d lost consciousness.
What had he been thinking?
What had they been talking about?
Irritation migrated back into Jaxxson’s face. “If I hadn’t touched you, you wouldn’t be here to berate me for executing the duty I’m sworn to perform, which is saving a life if I can. Even one who lacks appreciation.”
She thumped her fingers against the table slab, accepting that she owed him and was behaving like a wounded animal. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stared at each other, a visual stand off until he lifted two fingers to graze his chin as he speculated on something. “About touching you.”
Here it comes. What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you let anyone touch you? That’s not normal. “Go ahead. Ask.”
“Why do you fear touch? How have you survived to this age without allowing any physical contact?”
She hadn’t expected that second question.
No one had cared that she hadn’t been embraced in years, not after she’d convinced her father and the staffs at multiple schools that she had very sensitive skin and touching caused her actual pain. It hadn’t taken long for word to get around that she was the weird kid to be avoided. She’d never so much as held hands with a boy much less kissed one.
If a brief touch opened the path to another person’s mind, the idea of an intimate contact such as kissing terrified her.
She didn’t want inside anyone else’s mind again.
She never wanted to cause another death.
Jaxxson waited quietly for her answer, showing patience she hadn’t thought he possessed when she’d first followed him from the isolation unit. People never believed the truth. So she gave him the same patent answer she handed to everyone who asked about her phobia.
“No big deal. My skin is sensitive so I don’t like to be manhandled. That’s it.” With her reaction to the vine, that should be an easy sale this time.
“Why are you lying?”
How had he known that? “Are you a mind reader?”
He studied her with narrowed eyes. “Mind reader?” Then he stared straight ahead, thinking. “An outdated term, but that would make sense.”
Awestruck at what he was admitting, she whispered, “You did hear my thoughts didn’t you?”
“No. That would be inappropriate to enter your mind without an invitation.” His shoulders lifted in dismissal. “It was simple to see that you lied. I used my empathic ability to read the changes in your body.”
Good grief. Someone weirder than me.
He reminded her, “You still haven’t answered my question. Why did you lie when you are clearly disturbed by being touched? I’ll grant that you did have a reaction to the vine, but
I don’t believe that’s the reason you avoid contact.”
Something he’d said a moment ago struck her. “Did you say it would be inappropriate to enter a mind uninvited?”
“Yes.”
“So you can enter someone else’s mind if they invite you?”
“Yes, of course. Why is that surprising? It’s a simple matter of training for some and bonding for others.”
“So I’m not the only one,” she murmured to herself.
“You try to hide this ability by not touching? Why?”
This had to be the most bizarre conversation she’d ever had. How could he act as though picking up thoughts was as natural as breathing? What would be the point in trying to lie again with someone like him? She admitted, “You’re right. I hear thoughts through touch, but I hate it.”
She especially hated the day she’d heard her mother’s thoughts about sleeping with another man who wasn’t Gabby’s dad. Barely ten years old, Gabby had blurted out, “Why were you in bed with that man?”
“What man?” her mom had stammered, squeezing Gabby’s hand harder.
“The yellow-haired one. At the Four Seasons where we’ve had tea. The hotel.”
Her mother had backed up from her, demanding in a frightened voice, “How’d you know?”
Gabby told the truth. “I saw it in your mind.” She raised their joined hands and looked at them, whispering, “I see things when I touch you.”
That was the day her mother backed away from Gabby with a look of horror on her face. Her mom normally only drank at home, but she grabbed a bottle of liquor and jumped in her convertible Mercedes, squealing tires when she tore away from their home. Hours later, the police arrived to inform Gabby’s father that her mother had died in a single car collision. She’d been ejected when she lost control and the car rolled down an embankment.
Gabby developed her skin phobia the day she killed her mother.
“Did you hear me?” Jaxxson said, snapping his fingers in front of her face.
“No. What?”
“I asked why you listen to other people’s thoughts via touch if it bothers you? And to do so is wrong anyhow.”
Her temper came back with a vengeance. “I hate to point out the obvious, but if I could prevent hearing them, don’t you think I would?”