Lies in Blood (Dark Secrets #4)(68)
Author: A.M. Hudson

One of us was going down in the next ten-seconds, though, and it wasn’t going to be me. I knew this guy’s strategy: he’d stand there and cop the pain until it got too much for me—until I threw the towel in. But he was hurting, too. That much was clear, and if my energy was at full strength like it had been when I first shot Mike, this guy wouldn’t even be standing. But the colour was fading, the light more of a white than a blue. I knew the vampire could take the pain, but I was sure even he had a limit.

I brought my hand up to his face and pushed him backward. He fought me for a second, but his weight shifted suddenly and mercifully, and he let go of my arm, stumbling back a few steps.

“Get back in there, Phelps!” the knights surrounding us called, barking like dogs on the sidelines.

I blocked them all out and sent another jolt at the vampire to finish him. He dodged, though, and the pain in my head intensified, rising up my arm. I screamed, caging my head in my arms as I landed on my knees. I had to get up. I couldn’t quit now, not when I was this close.

“Ara?” Mike called.

I turned my head and saw myself in the reflection of his eyes as they met mine—saw all the fear and amazement he felt inside radiating out of him, right into the deepest part of me. I heard him speak, saw his lips move and even felt him run a finger under my nose, collecting something wet, but the words didn’t really register. My electric hold was locked onto the vampire, and he was going down, come hell or high water.

“Ara, stop,” Mike yelled, pulling my hand down. “Look at the floor.”

My eyes drifted away from the lock of an angered gaze at the standing knight, and saw a pool of blood flooding my feet. I wondered how it got there—if someone had been hurt. I wondered why Mike hadn’t called for them to see the nurse. I was about to tell him to do something, tell him to help the person who was bleeding, when Mike’s words shot past me in a mighty growl, “What are you doing here?”

“Saving her life,” Jason said.

I felt him touch me—felt his hands on me, felt the world move under the swaying in my head, but I didn’t see him move me. I didn’t see anything until I felt the grass under my fingertips, Jason pinning my wrists to the ground, holding them there.

“Don’t move,” he demanded, then looked up at the approaching crowd. “Everyone stay where they are damn well standing, or her head will explode.”

The earth heated under my hands, like touching a cake fresh from the oven. It smelled like warm clay on a hot summer’s day—the grass giving off a little smoke. Mike took one step closer and watched on with his mouth agape as the light from my hands went bright white, melting the sand to mud in the cup of my palm, the liquid rising up my arms and through my veins, assimilating the pain in my head, like warm water over cold toes. My spine eased to relaxed, my neck rising from within the safety of my collar bones, and I rocked back on my knees, resting on my sit-bones beside Jason, who held a stern gaze at Mike, one finger still aimed in case my beloved BFF saw fit to interfere.

“What. . .” I started, breathless, “just happened?”

Jason laughed. “The pain’s gone?”

“Yes, that pain’s gone.” I pressed three fingertips to my temple. “Where did it go?”

He laughed again. “It worked. I can’t believe it actually worked.”

“What worked?”

He spun me at the shoulders and held them both tight. “I went through a thousand conclusions: that maybe you were a negative terminal of a battery, and the knights you were shooting were positive, causing a short circuit. Then I thought maybe you were what’s known as a ‘loose circuit,’ because the energy wasn’t passing through a load, but that didn’t really fit, either. And then I came up with what proved to be right.”

“Which is?”

“It’s Nature’s energy. You’re drawing it from the earth, and you can use it, but it needs to go back into the earth after.” He pushed his dark locks from his face, his smile so radiant you’d think he was a kid at a circus. “When you use it for that purpose, you’re the negative terminal, the knights the load, and the earth the positive.”

“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me right now,” I said with a soft chuckle, “but my head doesn’t hurt, so I don’t really care.”

He laughed and helped me to my feet. “I’ll show you more about it later. I have an entire report on it, but I gotta write this down before I forget what’s. . .” He tapped his head. “There’s a lot going on here. I gotta g—”

“Ara!” Mike pushed in and swathed me like a blanket. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, my lungs restrained by the grip of Mike’s loving embrace.

“I’ve never seen you fight so hard before,” he said, sweeping my hair back. “You really weren’t gonna give up, were you?”

“What would be the point of it all then, Mike? If I always give up when it gets too hard.”

He pulled me in again. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a gentle squeeze then stood back. “But, I have to shoot you now. I wanna see how powerful I am without the pain.”

He cupped both my hands and shook his head. “No way. We need to test you on something not living first.”

“Okay.” I looked around. “Any suggestions?”

“A tree.”

“Mike?” I said flatly. “A tree is living.”

“Okay, Miss Mother Nature. Fine.” He flipped his chin in Ryder’s direction. “Run down the barracks and get a couple of dumpsters, would ya?”

“Sure thing, boss.” Ryder saluted and ran off with five guys in tow.

“Here ya go, Chief,” a young knight said, waltzing toward us, carrying a boulder the size of a child like it was a box of paper. “Try this while we’re waitin’.”

“Thanks, Joe.” Mike aimed a finger to the centre of the field backing the hall. “Just plonk it right down there.”

“No worries, sir.” He ran off, jolly and spritely, and dropped the boulder, turning to check with us if the position was okay.

We both gave him a thumbs-up.

“Kay, Ara.” Mike jammed his hands in his back pockets and stepped away from me. “Let’s see what you can do.”

I felt good about it, certain I could explode that morsel of rock with the blast and not end up flat on my back after. I leaned down into my knees a bit, rubbing my hands together. Once upon a time, I needed to use a thought or a feeling to induce the electricity. But now, I could do it on command. I wondered if telekinesis would eventually end up that way for me. In fact, according to Jase’s diary, if I practiced every day, it most certainly would.