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“I disagree.” I hear the metallic clink of his belt, and my stomach clenches. He unhooks my bra with one hand—all those make-out session with private-school girls finally coming in handy, I’m sure.
“Christopher, please.” I pray for Keema or one of the other tasting-room assistants to come downstairs. “Don’t do this.”
I recoil at the swish of his belt passing through the loops on his pants.
“You want to be a Radcliff?” he says. “Consider this your initiation.”
His belt buckle hits my back like a stone. I cry out in pain.
“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses.
Tears streak down my face as he hits me again.
My back is on fire. I lose count of how many times he beats me. My insides churn like an electrical storm, each blow a bolt of lightning streaking across my back. Even as the pain sears through me, part of me can’t believe this is really happening. I ask myself, why didn’t I fight harder? Why didn’t I scream louder? What gives him the goddamn right to do this to me?
Shame and anger roil within me, like water boiling in a pot.
Bubbling and bursting until the lid can no longer stay on.
My screams are drowned out by the explosion of glass shattering around me. Wine bottles burst, spilling their ruddy contents to the floor.
Christopher staggers back. I can feel his shock, sense his panic. My consciousness swells until it’s touching every corner of the room.
Then, as suddenly as it expanded, it retracts.
I push away from the shelves and take a deep, steadying breath. I’m still humming with psychic energy as I right my clothes, my back stinging from even the slight weight of my tee shirt.
Glancing around the room, I take in the destruction. Every single bottle that was on the shelf now lies shattered, the contents puddling into a mass of dark, red liquid on the floor.
Just like the blood in my vision.
What the hell is happening to me?
As I take a step toward Christopher, he jumps back, slipping and falling on his ass. He shouts as bits of glass floating in the wine embed themselves into the fat of his palms.
Everything seems to move in slow motion. Drops of blood falling from Christopher’s hands, hitting the surface of the wine on the floor, rippling outward...
A wave of exhaustion crests, threatening to wash over me. The understanding that I don’t have much time plants itself like a seed in my mind. I don’t know where it comes from or what it means, but I know I don’t want to be anywhere near Christopher when the wave hits.
I step over his legs on my way to the stairs. Right before I ascend, I glance over my shoulder to tell him, “Stay the fuck away from me.”
Ditching my apron in Keema’s office, I gather the photo albums and race out to the field where I first met Will. Soon enough, the wave of fatigue to comes crashing down on me, and I’m brought to my knees in the grass.
Chapter Fourteen
William
I lie beside Mariah’s sleeping body, waiting to feel the ping of her psychic presence somewhere on the estate. She clutches the albums to her chest like a child clinging to a stuffed animal. I can already see the deep-red bruising on her back through her white shirt.
It guts me that I can’t draw her close and stroke her tear-tracked face. I saw what Christopher did to her. I was there. Howling and railing against it, my fists swiping straight through her half-brother’s form.
It’s one thing for them to hurt me. I expect and have even come to accept it as part of my lot. But to watch them leave marks on Mariah, to hear her agonizing cries and be unable to do a damn thing to stop them... I’ve never felt more impotent as a man or as a monster.
But what she did with those wine bottles was nothing short of astounding.
I’ve heard stories about human psychics who were strong enough to channel their anger with that much intensity, but never witnessed it myself. From the look of surprise on her face, it appears the destruction was entirely accidental.
Imagine what she could accomplish with a few years of conscious practice under her belt.
