anticipated Ang’dora. I’m finally more like him.
Neither Mom nor Rina answered me, but they exchanged meaningful looks. Impatient with their silence, I headed to the door.
“No!” They both cried, but not aloud. They were in my head…or I was in theirs.
I turned around.
“What?” I asked.
Neither answered. But their faces said it all. Something was wrong.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. I dimly remembered those bits of conversation, but none made sense.
And then the voices raged in my head all at once.
“He’s going to kill her,” Mom thought.
“She is strong enough. She can handle it.” Rina’s thought.
“I can’t hold him much longer! I need reinforcements now.” Owen.
“Kill the little bitch.” A frightening, deep-throated growl. “No mercy. Just kill her.”
The feeling, whose ever it was, came so strong it filled my head until I thought my brain would explode. No images appeared except an angry swirl of reds and deep oranges, pulsing and growing until the mass pressed against my skull. I threw my arms over my head as if they could stop the onslaught.
“Go away! Make it stop!” I shrieked.
“Alexis!” Rina said sharply, grabbing my attention. My head snapped up and my arms fell to my side. “Focus on my voice and nothing else. That’s it—focus on me, on my words.”
I looked her in the eyes and listened specifically to her voice. The others’ thoughts dimmed in my head, just background noise now. The colors faded away and the pressure ebbed back.
She spoke slowly and softly, like a hypnotist. “There you go. Just remain focused on me. Now, imagine a black wall in your head and the only sound on this side of the wall is my voice. Yes?”
I nodded. I closed my eyes and imagined pulling a wall up in my head, dividing that black space or cloud, separating her voice from the others. The jumble in the background went completely away.
“Now, can you hear me?” Rina thought.
Yes.
“Anyone else?”
No. I opened my eyes.
“Good. You are doing beautifully. You are very powerful.” She smiled, then she said aloud, “Sophia, think about something you want Alexis to hear.”
Mom nodded.
“Now push my voice behind the wall and focus on your mother’s thoughts,” Rina directed.
I tried, but the wall fell.
“He’s going to break loose! I can’t hold him!” Owen’s thoughts roared.
“Kill. Her. Kill! Her!” Images of crimson blood against grayness flashed in my mind.
“Who wants to kill somebody?” I cried aloud, frightened and offended by the thought. “Who else is here? I can’t tell!”
“Alexis! You must focus,” Rina ordered.
“How can I focus with that? It’s horrible!”
“That is why you must focus. You have a very powerful and rare gift, but you need to learn to control it. The world is full of horrible and you will not be able to handle your power otherwise. Trust me.”
I took some deep breaths to calm myself, then I focused on putting up the wall again.
“Do you have a wall?” Rina asked.
I nodded.
“Now, concentrate on your mother’s voice. You know her voice very well. Listen only for it. Do not try to move the wall or try to take a piece of it out. It must always remain there intact. Just concentrate on the voice you want.”
I envisioned the cloud again. It enshrouded Rina, but the wall blocked off everything else. I imagined the cloud reaching out to include Mom.
“You can do this,” Mom’s voice reverberated in my head. I nodded.
“Can you still hear me?” Rina asked. I nodded again. “That is good if you want to hear us both, but you need to focus on just one. Block me out.”
I tried pulling the cloud away from Rina.
“Rina is right. You are amazingly powerful. I can feel it above my own.” Mom kept on with the pep rally as Rina’s voice died away.
I tried the opposite and I could hear Rina again and not Mom. Rina must have sensed me.
“Now tune out everyone and listen only to yourself,” she instructed.
I focused on shrinking the cloud until it became nothing in my mind, nothing but my own thoughts. But my thoughts still worried about the other voices and the wall started to crumble. I concentrated on holding it there, beads of sweat popping out on my forehead from the intense focus. The wall finally held. I relaxed my mind slowly and the wall remained.
“Control will take much practice,” Rina said aloud. “Just hold the wall up and the rest will come in time.”
I mentally assigned one part of my brain to hold up the wall and tested the rest to wander. I thought about Tristan. The wall remained—no one’s thoughts came through—even with the swelling of love that felt nearly overwhelming. It felt strange to be able to hold one part of my brain there on its own. The capacity of my mind felt larger and I could use more parts of it at once. I continued thinking about Tristan, kept the wall up and used a different part of my mind to think of Dorian. Wow! This is incredible! I kept those three thoughts running and tried communicating with Rina.
Rina, I think I can do this!
She smiled. She heard me. And Tristan’s and Dorian’s faces held, as did the wall.
“I knew you would be good,” she thought.
I suddenly realized how tense my muscles were, as if I physically held the wall in place. I relaxed one muscle group at a time, working my way down from my neck to my feet. The wall held.
“So who’s here?” I asked aloud. “Who is that terrible person or…thing? I don’t sense evil. Why would anyone here want to kill someone?”
Mom and Rina exchanged glances again.
“You do not sense evil?” Rina asked.
“No. Should I?”
“That is interesting,” she said. “That is good.”
Mom shot her a pointed look. “Don’t you sense something?” she asked Rina.
“It does not matter what you and I sense, Sophia. Alexis will be more highly tuned to it than us. She has a connection that we do not. We need to rely on her in this situation.”
At the same time as that conversation, I thought about the voices, trying to identify that horrible growl. I’d heard Rina, Mom and Owen in my head. But not Tristan. I still smelled his mouthwatering scent, so I knew he was in the house. Is he sleeping? Or…
“Oh, no!” I cried. “What’s wrong with Tristan?”
“Honey,” Mom said, “we have a serious situation we’re going to have to deal with as soon as you open that door.”
“What’s going on? Was that him?” I started for the door, already knowing the answer.
“Alexis, wait!” Mom barked. I stopped with my hand on the knob and turned to look at her.
“He needs me, Mom. He needs my help.” I opened the door and the growl—what had sounded like a train —became a terrifying roar.
“Alexis, you can’t just go out there!” Mom cried. “He wants to kill you!”
Chapter 21
