Chapter 1: Defying the Laws
A feminine hand
clad in a fingerless leather glove pulled a hard left on the steering wheel,
maneuvering to avoid a car that had swerved into the way at the last second.
The woman's face remained emotionless, but she felt anger rise up inside of her
at the other driver’s reckless act. She raised her hand, palm facing forward
and fingers spread apart as she breathed deeply.
“Oh, I could
just…”
She could see
the flow of heat emanating from her volcanic center, obliterating the other car
and its driver in mere moments—and then, perhaps, continuing on to clear out
the highway for the next few dozen miles. Her windshield began to crack. No. She abruptly stopped visualizing the
gratifying havoc she could wreak if she released all the pent up power which
hummed at her fingertips. The temptation was too great, and she immediately
closed her fist and returned it to the steering wheel.
She grimaced,
fighting to control her twitching fingers, and forcing them back down onto the
Jeep’s steering wheel placidly. Regret coursed through her, and she
acknowledged that she would need to replace her windshield again. A foul smell
reached her nostrils, causing her forehead to crease. She glanced down at the
bruised, tanned knuckles visible through little oval holes in her worn gloves.
Smoke was drifting up from between her fingers as her heated palms burned into
the rubbery-plastic material of the steering wheel. She felt sick at the stench.
Thorn.
How could you?
The heart of her
anger wasn't caused by reckless drivers. It was the lingering sting of
betrayal. Startling her, a cell phone buzzed against her hip, and she fought
the instant urge to crush it like a pesky insect. Was it him calling? She hadn’t answered her phone in weeks. Why would
anyone still bother to call?
Thorn
in my side, thorn in my brain.
The sections of
the steering wheel she gripped had finally melted completely. Yet another part
of the Jeep would need to be replaced. Luckily, her mechanic no longer asked
questions. She removed her hands from the wheel and tried to wipe the sticky
substance off her gloves. Giving up, she interlocked her fingers together
before resting them in her lap. She continued steering with only her mind. She
enjoyed driving with just her thoughts. She liked the idea that her body was
flying through the air, and direction was controlled by her mere intent. It
reminded her of what made her special: this inherited telekinetic ability. The
ability she had promised her family never to use. The phone rang again.
The feminine
posture of having her hands clasped demurely in her lap brought a sardonic
smile to her face. The only thing which had ever been feminine about Pax was
her long black hair. She had taken great pride in being able to sit on the
lustrous mass, and had enjoyed the competitive factor of being able to say that
hers was longer than that of any woman she knew, and almost all women she met.
(In retrospect, tying her ego to the length of a physical extension of her body
had not been completely feminine.) Even then, it had always hung in tangled,
messy waves which she had hardly ever brushed.
It was only a
month ago that she had shorn it all off. She still felt awkward when she turned
to check her blind-spot and did not have a pound of tresses rolling over her
shoulders comfortingly. She still felt like something was missing when the
window of her Jeep was open, and the harsh wind did not whip unruly strands
into her eyes. She felt naked without these little luxuries. Pax had not realized
that her hair had been her security blanket—and once she did realize this, she
had quickly introduced it to a pair of garden shears.
Pax wanted to
stop depending on external substances for strength. She was sure that she could
find a greater confidence inside her that had nothing to do with her hair, her
car, or her lover.
She had depended
far too much on him.
Her phone was
still pulsating against her hip annoyingly. She did not want to look at the
name on the caller ID, but her mind was already sliding the phone from its
holster and lifting it to hover at her eye level. She glanced away from the
road for a moment to warily read the letters. Amara Kalgren. It was only half of the name that she most feared
seeing. It was the sister of the man who betrayed her.
She had no wish
whatsoever to speak to the blond woman. It was a pity really, since she loved
and respected Amara. The two had been very close when they were younger, and in
recent years they had occasionally double-dated since Amara was also seeing a
relative of hers. Pax felt a bittersweet smile tug her lips as she thought of
her silly uncle Asher. Their families had grown up together, and the Kalgren
kids had always been loyal friends. When families shared secrets such as
theirs, they tended to stay together. Pax had not spoken to her favorite couple
in far too long, because her uncle was exceedingly close to her ex-boyfriend.
She could endure no reminders of what she had lost. Any contact with Amara or
Asher would be chock-full of painful reminders and would inevitably lead to
contact with exactly what she was trying to avoid.
Releasing her
focus on the phone, she allowed it to fall against her thigh. She looked ahead
at the highway, and cursed when she saw the sea of red brake-lights appearing.
She willed the dial that controlled the volume of her speakers to turn up the
music to the maximum. She closed her eyes and let the sound bombard her ears as
she sat still in traffic. Pax did not really have anywhere to go, but driving
endlessly along the highway made her feel like she was going somewhere. It made
her feel like she was getting away, although she was quickly finding that the
continent was not large enough to escape the older Kalgren sibling. She had
been sleeping in her car and on uncomfortable motel beds as she tried to escape
her disgrace, but her rest was littered with fitful nightmares while her waking
hours were tormented with frequent involuntary memories.
A vibration
against her thigh caused her to peer down. She scowled at her phone. Amara
hardly ever called at all; this was an old signal from their youth.
Double-calling. Twice in a minute was a true sign of emergency. Pax jabbed her canines into her bottom lip,
chewing as she considered taking the call. There might be a crisis. Something
could have happened to her uncle Asher. She turned off the music
telekinetically. Unlocking her hands and sliding her pinky finger tentatively
across her thigh, Pax used the tip of her nail to press the green button.
“Yes?” she asked
curtly. For a moment she was seized by an intense panic that it might be
Thornton calling from his sister’s phone. She held her breath, reassuring
herself that he would never stoop that low.
But then, there was precious little she knew about the depths to which
he would stoop.
A small voice on
the other end whispered a usually-upsetting diminutive of her name. “Paxie…”
Pax slammed her
skull back into the headrest and cursed. Although she had not been especially
close to Amara in the past decade, she could recognize the helplessness and
despair in her friend’s soft plea. They had been infants together, followed by
childhood playmates. She knew Amara’s every emotion as though it were her own,
and although she had no inkling of what happened, she instinctively knew that this
must be the worst kind of disaster. Her heart leapt into her throat as she
imagined the worst case scenario—had her foolish Uncle Asher somehow gotten
himself killed?
“I’m on my way,”
Pax said into the phone before hanging up. She glanced at her GPS to get a
sense of her location, and cursed again. Her aimless, wandering circles had
taken her three states away from Amara’s beachfront home. Three states and at
least fifteen hours. An idea struck her: the Jeep was a mess anyway, so perhaps
she could abandon it and travel with her mind.
Pulling over
into a ditch, Pax took several deep breaths to concentrate. She had only successfully done this a handful
of times in her life—usually in emergencies when it was most necessary. This
was an emergency, and surely she would be able to focus enough to move her body
across the distance instantaneously. It was only one small body—she could lift
much larger objects without any effort. She reached into her passenger seat and
slipped her wrist under her purse before beginning.
Pax placed the
palm of her right hand firmly against her solar plexus. She took a deep breath,
visualizing her destination. She placed her left hand beside her right hand,
forming the shape of a heart with her fingers. Her head begin to spin as her
body begun dematerializing, starting at her core. For a moment, she was
immaterial, and floating in nothingness.
A tickle of fear
caused her to gasp, and she immediately found herself falling butt-first onto
the hood of her Jeep.
“Shit! I suck at
this,” she muttered, looking around to see if anyone had noticed her blunder.
Grumbling, she rolled off the hood of her Jeep, wiping the dirt off her pants.
Many insects had been slain with her speed in the past few days, and now their
corpses were decorating her jeans. Pax swore repeatedly as she picked up her
purse from the mud near the wheel of her car. She considered traveling by air,
but there were too many people nearby. She climbed back into her Jeep, and
slammed the door, upset with herself for her own inadequacy at using the
technique which was supposed to be her birthright.
It was often her downfall that she tried to obtain everything she
desired instantaneously.
Digging her key
into the ignition, she jammed her foot on the gas pedal and began driving on
the rough, potholed shoulder. She flew by the stopped cars on the highway,
disregarding the dozen rules she was probably breaking. If she could not be
successful in bending the laws of nature, then at the very least, she could
satisfy herself in defying the laws of the road.
* * *
“Mara! Where are
you? Is everything okay? Amara!”
Pax felt sick.
It had taken ten hours, but she had driven directly to Amara’s waterfront home,
stopping only once for gas. Seeing her friend’s Jaguar in the driveway, she had
let herself in. Now, as she moved from room to room on the hunt for the blonde
woman, she was growing alarmed. She considered calling, but it was faster just
to lift the palm of her hand.
“Pilot me to
thine light,” Pax chanted softly. The incantation was not necessary, but it
helped her to focus. Soon enough, she found herself being subliminally led to
her friend’s bedroom. Amara was still nowhere to be seen, so she continued to
follow the guiding energy to the ensuite bathroom.
Upon touching
the doorknob, Pax recoiled as the strong scent of her uncle overwhelmed her
senses before the door was even fully open. Terror flooded her breast as she
imagined Asher’s corpse sprawled out on the floor. Her gloved hand flew to
cover her mouth before she had even seen a body. A déjà vu swept over her as
she recalled finding her dead mother when she was just a teenager. The scent
was familiar—it was not only Asher, but his blood.
Pax felt her
heart skip a beat as it ached with love for her uncle. She expected to see him
lying there dead, but she still moved into the room with determination. Asher
was nowhere to be seen, but a small blonde woman was huddled in a corner of the
shower stall. Amara was completely naked. Pax swallowed back her fear before
she took in the surroundings. Amara’s fashionable clothes were strewn all over
the floor, and there was dark blood which had dried as it had been dripping
down the glass doors of the shower stall.
“Amara, are you
hurt?” Pax immediately moved to comfort her friend, crawling into the shower
stall and crouching beside her. Pax spotted Amara’s cell phone sitting in a
pool of water nearby. It was amazing that the thing hadn’t short-circuited, but
then again, it was Kalgren technology.
“Mara?” Pax asked
in a soft voice, reaching out to brush her friend’s hair off her face. She was
surprised to find that Amara’s hair was perfectly dry. Her skin was perfectly
dry. There was hardly any water in the shower stall, except for a few small
pools gathered at the bottom. It must have been hours since the shower was
used.
“How long have
you been like this? Amara! Talk to me!” said Pax firmly. Hearing no response
she desperately sent her message directly into her friend’s mind. Has something happened to Ash? Please,
please, Mara. Please tell me that my uncle is fine. I hardly have any family
left. Is he…
Amara snapped
out of her little daze and looked up at her friend. “Ash?” she asked dumbly.
“He’s fine.”
“Thank Sakra,”
Pax said, referring to the god of gods. She allowed herself to fall from her
raised position on her ankles to a seated position on her bottom, ignoring the
pools of water beneath her. She released a gush of air. “Is this your blood?”
The blonde woman
stared forward for a moment silently.
Pax began to
frown as her worry began to be replaced with anger. “Did Ash hurt you? Because
if he…”
“No,” Amara
responded softly. “When he touches me, he is always gentle. So tender. He
wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Pax rolled her
eyes at this description. Were they talking about the same man? Her annoyingly
powerful uncle who had wrestled her toys away with his mind before she could
even walk? “Maybe he wouldn’t,” Pax agreed, “but he certainly could. Did he?”
“No.”
“Sure. He didn’t
hurt you. That’s why you’ve been sitting naked in the corner of a blood-soaked
shower stall for god-knows how many hours!”
Amara looked at
her friend for the first time. “Oh, Paxie. Where’s all your beautiful hair?”
Pax was already
reaching up to search for it before she remembered. She scowled. “Don’t call me
that, Amara. We’re not five anymore. And don’t change the subject. What the
hell happened?”
Amara’s eyes
lowered again. “I did something bad.”
Glancing up at
the bloody shower walls in confusion, Pax frowned. “What did you do?” She knew
that Amara was not strong enough to harm her uncle, physically or psychically.
She reached out to grasp the girl’s shoulder and give it a firm shake. “Mara.
Hey, hey! What did you do?”
“I don’t know.
He left me.”
“He what?” Pax repeated in shock. Asher and
Amara were the most solid couple she knew. Every birthday and holiday, she and
Thornton would always… she could not finish the thought. Her anger at her own
lover was beginning to seep into thoughts of her uncle by extension.
Amara turned to
Pax with wounded innocence in her clear blue eyes. “He said he just wanted to…
have me one last time. Then he walked away.”
Pax felt
comprehension dawn on her as she took in the state of the bathroom. “So… he
fucked you and then he left you?”
The blonde woman
was as still as death. “Do I deserve this? I don’t understand.”
Rage flushed
Pax’s body with warmth as the anger blossomed inside her again. She clenched
her fists. Even after all this, Amara refused to say a negative thing about
Asher. She refused to condemn him for hurting her, and she chose to believe
that it was somehow her fault. While Pax loved her uncle to pieces, she could
not make sense of his actions. Asher often followed the wrong company
(Thornton) and this has often influenced him negatively and gotten him into all
kinds of trouble.
“You didn’t do
anything wrong,” Pax reassured her friend. She reached out to rub her gloved
hand over Amara’s naked back. “I’ll stay with you, okay? We’ll get through this
together.”
Amara felt the
familiar waves of heat radiating from Pax’s hand and lifting her hair. She felt
a small smile touch her lips. She hadn’t realized that she had been so cold.
The warmth of the dark haired woman’s angry energy surrounded Amara's skin like
a comforting blanket. As her lips curled they cracked, revealing how dry they
had become from the salty tears that had been running over them for so many
hours.
“Thank you,
Pax,” said Amara softly.
“What for?” she
asked.
“For being here.
I needed you.”
Pax felt guilt
wash over her when she remembered that she had been ignoring Amara's phone
calls. It’s partly my fault she’s like this. If I had been a better
friend… Gah! I should have flown here instead of driving when my teleportation
didn’t work. As she stared at the small blonde woman who was deathly pale,
Pax began to form a vow in her mind. Uncle or not, she would not allow Asher to
hurt her friend like this and get away scot-free. She would find a way to make
sure that he was the one sitting on the floor and broken. She did not realize
that she was fusing her own pain with Amara’s and transferring it to a
different man. Asher will regret the day
he did this to her. She’s the last person who deserved this. Amara is so sweet
and loving—not bitter and vengeful like me. She was always so true and devoted.
I’ll make Asher pay. I’ll hurt him so deeply, and so terribly that it will ruin
his already ruined life. Damn you,
Thorn! I mean Ash...
Pax saw a single
tear run down Amara’s face and it snapped her out of her guilt and anger. She
put her arms around the blonde woman and held her close, ignoring that she was
naked. Amara leaned against Pax’s shoulder and let the tears fall freely.
GIVEAWAY
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&
Nadia Scrieva
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