I shook my head, trying to clear it of the awe and confusion before focusing on him again. “Didn’t know what?”
“How could you not know you can harvest power from things?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You feel the pulse of life in the things around you.”
He kept a firm hold on my hands when I tried to tug them away from him. I gave up fighting to get my hands back, so I could glower at him. “Of course I do, everyone does.”
He lifted both of my hands so they were almost dead center between us. “Noone else on this plane can do this. No one else can harvest from the life forces around them and use it as a weapon. You should have told me. We would have focused on working on this instead of the fire.”
I blinked at him and tried one more time to free my hands from his grasp. My teeth grated together when he refused to relinquish them. “Some weapon, it’s not getting you off of me!” I retorted. “And I can assure you, I’ve never turned into a mini-lightbulb before!”
“Of course it’s not affecting me; you don’t know how to use it. If you did, it would be an entirely different story.”
“Then mark it down as number one on my list of things to learn from here on out. Give me my hands back!”
Finally, he released me. When I lifted my hands before my face again, they remained still, no golden-white light leapt from my fingertips. Disappointment filled me as I willed it to come back to me. There had been something so comforting and familiar about it. Soright. I grabbed Kobal’s arm out of curiosity. A single spark leapt to life before fading away.
My fingers dug into his arm, but nothing more came out of me. “I don’t understand,” I murmured.
I glanced at him, but his face was shuttered and his eyes had returned to their pure black depths.He’s shut himself off from me again, I realized.
He’d been open to me moments ago in a way he’d never been before. Now that was gone, and I was left with the remorseless demon I was becoming more accustomed to. Straightening my shoulders, I released his arm and tilted my chin up.
“You should have told me,” he said again.
“Told you what?” I demanded. “Yes, I feel life around me, all the time. However, unlike strange visions of who’s going to volunteer, or where my brother is hiding, and that one time where Imaybecould have set the curtains on fire, it’s something I assumed everyone felt. And if I suspected they might not feel life all around them like I do, I never mentioned it to anyone because it was something I could keep hidden, something I actually enjoyed! The life flowing around me doesn’t hit me out of nowhere; it’s a constant soothing presence to me. So how was I supposed to know it wasn’t something everyone else experienced and never spoke about? How was I supposed to knoweveryhuman on the planet didn’t feel the exact same way as me?”
I wasn’t about to tell him I’d had strange little sparks before. He would only assume I really had been keeping this from him on purpose and would never understand I’d written it off as simple static electricity.
“Maybe,” he replied in a tone that screamedliarat me.
“There is no maybe!”
This time, I was frustrated enough to stomp my foot. It had been a horrible day. I’d met his sort-of ex, had a migraine, stumbled across an orgy, nearly mauled a demon out of lust, and shot sparks from my fingers like a broken robot. All in all, in the list of bad days, it was in the top five, and I’d had enough of it.
“You don’t know me!Idon’t know me anymore! Six weeks ago, I was a somewhat odd human, with my brothers to take care of and fish to catch. Now I’ve been torn from my home, I have no idea what I am, what I’m capable of, how I feel, or if I’ll still be alive in another year since you’re all determined to drag me to Hell, but no one has ever said anything about me coming back!
“Not to mention, you’re telling me Lucifer himself is my ancestor. You’re telling me there could be something evil in my genetics, and I’m just supposed to be allla-di-daabout it because you say there is no such thing as pure good and evil, but he was an angel once and now he’s a monster. I’m not supposed to question if I could somehow become twisted and broken in that way too! I don’t know what or who I am anymore, but I’m leaning toward the demonic side with the fire throwing thing, and even if demons aren’t evil, it terrifies me!”
The tears of frustration and anger burning my eyes only infuriated me further. I wiped them away before folding my arms defensively over my chest. He stared at me as if he didn’t know me; it made me want to hit him.
“River—”
“Please leave now.”
“We must talk about this.”
“We can do it tomorrow. I would like to be alone right now.”
I found I couldn’t meet his eyes when he ran a hand through his disheveled hair and gave a brief nod. “Fine, but we will be working on trying to harvest this power tomorrow.”
“I never had a doubt. It is all about getting me ready after all; it is all about the power.”
He’d stayed a couple feet away since I’d become the human equivalent of a lightning rod, but now he stepped so close I had to press my back against the canvas wall to keep from touching him again. His hands rested on either side of my head as he lowered himself until he was eye level with me.
“Let’s get this straight between us right now. It’s not all about the power. You may be the key to saving both our species and righting the wrongs that have been done. I am going to make sure you are prepared for that, as well as any other threat, but I will do everything I can to make sure you come backalive.”
