by Anna Durand
She obeyed. Her hazel eyes flamed with psychic energy and rapacious hunger.
Her power poured into him. He drove his own power back toward her in a feedback loop that pumped in and out of him. The essence of her consumed him, transformed him with her sweetness and passion, invigorated him with her laughter and courage. A love more reverent than anyone deserved penetrated him to the core. Her love. His love.
Their love.
His mind settled, the energy dwindling from a torrent to a gentle stream. The ecstasy of melding with her lingered and stimulated his entire body. God, he wanted her. Right now, right here, for hours and hours, damn the rest of the world. He ached to taste her, arouse her, and worship her in the most carnal fashion.
Her lips curved into a sensual smile. "I know what you're thinking."
"Don't need psychic powers to know that."
Her arousal vibrated into him, supercharging his own. He sucked in a breath. She was doing it on purpose. "Better stop that, unless you want me to ravish you again."
"Maybe I do."
He chuckled. "I know you do. What I should've said was, we don't have time for me to ravish you again."
She feigned a pout. "You're no fun."
"When this is over," he said, sliding a hand up her thigh, "you have my word I'll ravish you nonstop until you beg me to quit."
A blush rose in her cheeks, though not from embarrassment, from the heat of passion. She was dazzling in her amorous glow, and delicious enough to eat. Maybe just an appetizer…
He jumped off the bed. "Get dressed. It's time to end Tesler's reign of terror."
Grace crouched behind a tree, eyes closed. The tranquil warmth of David's energy, suffused through her mind and soul, rejuvenated her powers. Her mind soared above the forest to scout the vicinity, and she swooped down low to check out every vague signature of life, determined to route out Tesler's men before they swarmed on her and David. Never before had she been able to detect life-forms this way. Since their merging, though, she discovered she could scent them out, for lack of a better term, with her psychic faculties. Her mind interpreted each scent as a flickering dot in the woods.
Remote viewing had transformed into something more.
A flicker below brightened. She dived toward it. The single signature separated into multiple lights, a dozen at least. She struggled to differentiate them, to count her enemies. Too many. Heaven above, how would she and David get past them without hurting anyone?
Relax, Grace.
David's voice resounded in her head. No longer did they need spoken words to communicate. His thoughts, his emotions, translated into phrases in her head — more just words, but his voice speaking them. The intimacy of the contact shuddered a thrill through her. At the same time, it unsettled her. She knew he couldn't read her mind, and his words and emotions reached her only when he chose to share them. Right now, he beamed comfort to her in a soothing wash, like lowering her body into a warm bubble bath.
We can do this, he told her.
Can't hurt anyone, she said.
Except Tesler.
Cold dribbled into her. David…
Relax, no one gets hurt unless they try to hurt us.
Okay.
Grace winced at the sting of his anger, so strong and hot he couldn't hold it back completely. Still, she knew — despite his loathing for Tesler, his vow to destroy the man — he would keep his promise to her. No violence without provocation.
She marked out a path to the congregation of commandos, and then she opened her eyes. Adapted to the night, they revealed her surroundings in shades of shadow and pale light. The first rays of sun leaked over the horizon, spilling out across the sky, squelched by the heaviness of the receding night. To her left, the silhouette of David hunched behind a bush. His eyes fluttered open, exposing the burning blue of his eyes, aflame with the power of his mind.
His hand found hers and squeezed. Ready?
No. She would never be ready for war. Tesler had eliminated every alternative.
She nodded.
David scuttled closer, clasping both her hands. She focused on his eyes and let her mind sink down into him and embraced the potency of his gifts, granting him unfettered access to hers. His essence swirled inside her, slow and gentle, yet ardent. Her body flashed back to the moments in the cabin, when his passion had consumed her with the same sizzling tenderness. His heart and mind, like his body, stimulated her from the tips of her toes to the hair follicles on her head, and way down into the most secret parts of her. She exhaled a shaky breath, and somehow her knees — despite resting on the ground — weakened at the memory of his skin, his mouth, his hands on her.
She shoved aside the thoughts and commanded herself to focus.
As one, they disunited from their bodies and rose through the crossroads, then out again to materialize in front of the commandos. The men froze, eyes wide. A few gasped. One by one, they jerked their guns up to target Grace and David.
"You can shoot," David said, his tone low and dangerous, "but you won't hit us."
A figure moved out of the center of the throng to halt a few yards away. "Can't stay away from me, can ya, sweetheart?"
The weight of a bulldozer seemed to pulverize her, and her mouth went dry. "Battaglia."
Her skin prickled, her stomach a roiling cauldron. The arrogant slant of his lips, the oily eyes fixed on her, the massive shoulders hunching as if in anticipation of his next tangle with her — his every gesture awakened a seed of anxiety. It swelled and multiplied, until she battled for control of her jackhammering heart.
A wave of empathy from David enveloped her, like an invisible hug. The panic dissolved under his telepathic ministrations. Thank you, my hero.
Peripherally, she glimpsed his lips twitching into a brief smile. You're welcome, my heroine.
She chanced a fleeting look at him. Heroine? She was no savior. He must've been joking, except she'd felt the fervent intent of his message.
"You're astral projecting," Battaglia said, careful in his enunciation of the words. "I know all about you freaks. But we're not scared of you. We won't stop until we find your bodies and blow enough holes in them to shred you to pieces."
Grace latched onto David's calm energy. The bite of anger tainted it, but she'd take whatever she could glean from him. Calm and angry. Only David managed to hold both in his heart at the same time. She fed a bit of herself into him, praying to assuage his demons for just a little longer.
They were in the woods. The fact had not escaped her notice. The vision she endured, of Tesler murdering David, transpired in a forest identical to this one.
I won't let it happen.
David glanced at her sideways. His question hovered between them.
Oh damn. He'd sensed her state of mind, and guessed what she was thinking. He longed to ask if she was okay, but couldn't waste any mental fuel on transposing his feelings into words she might hear in her mind, or vice versa. Remote viewing this location demanded every ounce of psychic energy both of them possessed, as they combined astral projection, telekinesis, and thought projection into a cohesive image of themselves standing before the commandos.
Battaglia sniggered. "Don't have a plan, do ya? Stupid freaks."
She swiveled her head toward David. His eyes met hers, and the fire in them sparked with a power that crackled between them. Now.
They fired their entire arsenal at the commandos, the combined energy of all their powers, consolidated and electrified, fortified beyond anything either of them could accomplish alone.
The commandos twitched. Their eyes rolled back into their heads.
More.
Grace culled all she could from David and dragged in energy from the crossroads. Not the Golden Power, don't go there. Her own mind warned her, and she veered away from the pathway to the ultimate source of psychic power. Whatever she managed
to devour from the crossroads, she hauled back down with her.
David stumbled, his eyes bulging. The power surging between them exploded tenfold. She hurled it at the commandos.
They crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
The power sluiced out of David, straight through her mind, out into the ether. David vanished, yanked back to his body.
Her mind whirled. Blackness swamped her vision. She slammed back into her body and tumbled sideways. Her head smacked into the ground, bursting stars in her vision. Pain wrenched her body, and she curled into a ball, whimpering like an injured animal.
Heroine, my ass. She tried to gulp down the whimpers, to unsnarl her limbs, but she had no control.
David gathered her into his arms. His firm body encased her, yet no heat or comfort leeched into her from him. He rocked her, murmured consoling phrases, but they bounced off her brain, incomprehensible. Shooting stars twirled around her, and she fought to regain her bearings. Up, down. Real, not real. What had she done?
"Not the Golden Power," she croaked.
"I know." David smoothed hair from her face. "It's okay. This is normal power drain. Just relax."
"Normal?" She zeroed in on his eyes, no longer flaming but gleaming in the pastel shades of sunrise. The spinning lessened, and the earth below them rolled out into a flat surface again. "It's not normal. I've never felt like that before."
"You don't have a migraine."
He announced it with authority, as if he knew this to be true. Of course he knew. Her feelings, emotional and physical, bled into him. She could restrain the flow somewhat, but in her current state, she lacked the energy.
And he was right. No migraine. For the first time in eight months, using her powers had not set off an excruciating, nausea-inducing headache.
She twisted out of his arms, her butt plopping onto the ground. "Why don't I have a migraine?"
He smiled. "Because your powers aren't blocked anymore. Whatever happened to free up your memories, it freed your powers too."
When he'd made love to her, that's what did it.
His smile transformed into a suggestive smirk that instigated a tingling deep inside her. He wrapped an arm around her waist to nudge her closer. "We both know what freed you up."
"Don't get full of yourself. I think it was more than your… prowess that did the trick."
"I know. It was love."
Oh yes. The truth of the statement resonated in her. She loved him more than even she comprehended, and he loved her the same way. Their commitment to each other shattered the wall in her mind.
David jumped up, hoisting her up with him. "Let's finish this."
Her stomach sank. The worst part was yet to come. "It took everything we both had to knock out those guards. How in hell are we going to breach the facility?"
"We don't need the Golden Power."
"But we barely managed phase one of our brilliant plan."
"Shh." He took her face in his hands and brushed his lips across hers. "We can do this. If you stop being afraid of your powers."
"I'm not. We merged and I feel great about that." True. But that old worm of doubt, though skinnier than before, writhed in her gut whenever she accessed her powers. The memory of the Golden Power inside her, poisoning everything she was or could be, roused the worm to lash its tail.
"You don't need more power." His nose bumped hers, their eyes close enough the heat from his eyes would've burned her, if it were real flame. "Stop being afraid. Let it go. You are wonderful and sweet, the best person I've ever known, and you would never hurt anyone if you had another choice. The Golden Power doesn't own you. No one and nothing does." He moved his hand behind her head, cupping it, slanting it up toward his face. "You belong to me, remember?"
Her skin sizzled from head to toe. "You said nobody owns me."
"I don't own you. I love you. We belong to each other, now more than ever. Right?"
The mere thought of belonging to him, with him, made her breaths quicken. "But how can we break into the facility, just us, no energy boost from — "
His mouth devoured hers in a kiss of scorching passion that erased every doubt, cleansed her soul, flared so hot inside her she melted into him. He withdrew, head angled to the side. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes."
"Then trust what I'm about to say, don't ask questions, and follow my lead. Okay?" When she nodded, he dropped his hands to her shoulders. "You and I can do this. We will do this. If we get in there and Tesler has fixed his EM field, then we'll deal with that. You are the strongest psychic I've ever heard of, and together we are unstoppable." He took hold of her hands and laced his fingers with hers. "Let's go end this."
They sprinted through the woods, away from the slumbering commandos, to a spot they'd identified earlier. A shallow ravine shielded them from anyone prowling the woods. Grace sat down at the base of the ravine, her back to the steep wall. David settled in beside her.
Ready? He didn't have to say it. She heard him anyway.
Nodding, she slipped her hand into his. He laced his fingers with hers and gripped her hand.
They sped through the crossroads and back down into the facility, touching down in a corridor bathed in white light from the bulbs recessed in the ceiling. A map of the facility floated in her mind, etched with red lines marking a path. It led in the opposite direction.
Without a word, they both whirled around.
A shadow descended out of the ceiling, dark as the void of space, featureless and human-shaped, a silhouette throbbing with black energy. White disks glittered within its ill-defined eye sockets.
Invisible power snaked out to her, coiling itself around her astral body. She clutched David's hand, but her fingers sailed right through him. No bodies. Without manifesting, she couldn't connect with him. The tendrils of power constricted around her, a strait jacket manufactured from psychic energy. Ghostly fists pounded at her firewall, to no avail.
David stood immobile, his face blank.
The power collared her throat. "David!"
He stared straight ahead.
She grappled with the thing constraining her, helpless to break free. The thundering of her pulse drowned out her own cries. "David, what's wrong with you?"
His eyes rolled to the side, locking on hers. Fear and anguish steamrolled her. His fear. His anguish.
The dark power strangled her.
She gurgled, wrestled against her invisible restraints, but gained not one inch. This force, it could touch her, affect her, as if both she and it had manifested physical forms. But she hadn't.
Had she?
The tendrils from the shadow-thing bound her, but her legs were free of it. She stomped her foot. The concussion reverberated down the corridor. Pain webbed out through her foot. What the hell was going on? She hadn't wanted to manifest, hadn't tried to, and yet something forged a physical body for her.
A shiver jolted her entire body. The truth socked her in the gut, and she struggled for breath. The shadow-thing compelled her to manifest. When its power had entangled itself around her, its will became real. The thing wanted her in a body, in a tangible, crunchable form.
David, can you hear me?
His eyes never wavered from hers, but he did not respond.
She squeaked out the words. "David, fight it."
The shadow-thing slithered down the corridor toward them. Its amorphous body coalesced into arms and legs and a torso, all corded with thick muscles. The oily surface of its form solidified into dark skin. The eyes flamed white as the hottest fire. The bulbs in the ceiling cast glistening rays on the man's bald head and nude body.
Every hair on her body stiffened, electrified by the recognition careening through her.
The shadow-thing. It was… Nkosi.
He halted a few feet from her. A smile of vicious portent warped
his face. "At last I have what I craved." His fingertips traced the line of her jaw. She struggled against the tendrils binding her, but they tightened and sharpened. She gritted her teeth, refusing to gasp, repressing the agony that sliced into her flesh and pierced down to her soul. Nkosi's smile widened. "The golden girl is mine."
Golden girl. She ground her teeth hard, fending off the memory of the last time someone called her golden girl. Jackson Tennant's voice echoed in the recesses of her mind, but she slammed a door on it.
Nkosi scraped a nail across her cheek. A streak of pain singed her flesh in its wake. "You don't yet understand, but I will explain. First, however, I must sever you from him." Nkosi threw a blazing glare at David. "His power corrupts yours. I crave your pure, unadulterated energy. It will feed us both and make us one in a way his puny powers could not accomplish."
The energy wafting out of him enveloped her and she gagged at the acrid taste of it. No, not again. She recognized the taste — and the greasy energy seeping into her. She'd suffered this invasion before. Yet it couldn't be. It just couldn't.
"You are beginning to see," Nkosi told her. He seized her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. The white-hot coals of his eyes seared her mind. "You feel it. But perhaps your lover does not yet comprehend the truth."
David, oh God, David, please break free.
Nkosi aimed a devious grin at David. "I am not this weak human you know as Nkosi. He died long ago, when I consumed his essence and replaced it with my own. Psychic powers are more than energy. They are living things inhabiting human bodies." He ducked his head close to hers and his lips grated over her mouth, his breath hot and fetid. "Tell him."
"No." A choked rasp, nothing more.
"Fine. I will do it." The creature in Nkosi's body hauled her across the floor, until her body pierced the astral image of David, their eyes almost converging. The shadow-thing said, "I am the Golden Power. And your girl belongs to me now."
Energy exploded, rupturing her link to David. Agony wrenched and contorted her body. Power cracked through her. The last thread of her connection to David snapped.
She screamed.