Perdition

by PM Drummond

  If I could only learn to emit pulses like this on purpose, I’d have far less problems with my energy levels. I just couldn’t figure out how to send energy out into space. For me, it had to be sent toward something that was touching the ground. It was like electricity. It didn’t go anywhere unless it could complete a circuit.

  These little bursts I formed when I was on overload seemed to be an exception to the rule. They just shot out at random and dissolved like fireworks.

  I took deep, measured breaths and concentrated on being calm. After several minutes, the jolts lessened as my panic ebbed. Eventually, I didn’t felt like a bomb with the timer at two seconds, but I still needed to expend energy to become less volatile, or I’d never be able to join the land of the normal again. Since the only things in my makeshift sanctuary were the dumpsters, I put them to use.

  With my fingers together and pointed toward a dumpster, I gathered some of my body’s erratic energy and bundled it near my right shoulder. Then I pushed the ball of power down my arm and out of my hand. The dumpster jumped away from me about six inches.

  Pushing an item away from me was relatively simple, just gather energy and send it toward whatever I’m moving. Pulling an object toward me was more difficult. It involved more control, and control was something I didn’t have.

  My energy level was still too out of whack for me to trust pulling a large dumpster toward myself with any precision, and becoming a human pancake between two dumpsters didn’t sound like my idea of fun. So, I stood and retrieved one of the pieces of two-by-four wood the food service workers used to prop the dumpster lids open.

  I ducked back down and inserted the wood in one of the metal forklift blade pockets at the bottom of the dumpster at my back. I lifted the other end toward the dumpster in front of me and propped it on my backpack. It would be my bumper just in case I accidentally pulled too hard.

  I lifted both arms this time, spread the fingers on my left hand, and pulled at the energy in the air. With my right hand, I pushed power along the right side of the dumpster. When I felt the stream clear the back of the dumpster, I pulled harder, and the rope of energy circled the dumpster and returned to my left hand, effectively creating a lasso. I was now a complete circuit. By decreasing the amount of energy in the loop, it tightened across the back of the dumpster and pulled it toward me. When the dumpster stopped against my make-shift bumper, I released the loop. Between the small amount of power in the loop, which dissipated when I released it, and the power that naturally leaked from the loop as it made its circuit, pulling the dumpster drained my energy level more than pushing it. Unfortunately, my body still vibrated with overload. I continued to push and pull the dumpster, hoping the twisting maelstrom inside me would drain to a safe level before someone needed to dump their trash.

  I could just hear it now, “What’s that crazy woman from the Archive Department doing pushing the dumpsters up and down the alley?” The university has over three thousand staff and faculty, but that’s small when gossip is involved. And Carl hated undue attention.

  Twenty minutes into playing horizontal yo-yo with the dumpster, a man appeared beside me. No sound preceded his appearance. He was just not there one moment and there the next.

  He appeared during one of my pushes, and he startled me, which was a bad combination. The dumpster crashed into another dumpster and blocked a nearby door.

  I stood and pressed my back against the wall. My head had to tilt up to look at him, which meant he was over six feet tall. He wore black, tight-in-the-right-places slacks and a snug, black T-shirt with a logo over the breast pocket. Dark, wavy hair brushed wide shoulders. A slight frown on his lips, which looked like they belonged on a Greek God, slid upward into a predatory smile. He looked into my eyes a moment longer and then his smile seemed to falter into puzzlement.

  “Fascinating,” he muttered.

  As gorgeous as he was, I didn’t need an energy source when I was trying to un-charge. He moved to step forward, but I raised my hand to stop him.

  “Look, buddy, we both need for you to keep your distance.”

  I braced against absorbing more energy, stupidly keeping my hand raised as if I could fend it off. If I could stop absorbing by simply raising my hand, my whole day—heck, my whole life—would have been much easier, and I wouldn’t be in a garbage-perfumed alley with this Adonis look-alike. I stopped feeling sorry for myself long enough to realize that he emitted no energy.

  He raised his palms toward me like he was warming his hands on a campfire, and his smile returned.

  Ice ran down my spine, stirring up a small blizzard in my stomach as it passed. Somehow, he felt my energy. Even more frightening, I couldn’t feel his—at all. Even with very emotionally contained people, I could feel their life static. I think most people can feel other people on some level. Like when a person enters a room, no matter how silently, and another person looks up as if feeling the newcomer’s presence. I always felt people. Some people were stronger signals than others, but I could always feel a person when they were near me.

  Until today. Until this man.

  “My name is Rune.” His voice was deep and smooth. He inched toward me again, and the energy I threw off became as erratic as the fireflies in my stomach. A strange urge to lean closer to him raged inside me.

  “Please stay back. I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

  The high-set bulbs of the alley danced blue-black highlights across his tousled black hair as he shook his head. He didn’t move any closer, but he didn’t step away.

  He lowered his hands. I left mine raised.

  “I am a friend of Samuel. He sat behind you in the class you just left.”

  “Yeah, well, your friend has a staring problem, and you have a problem taking a hint. Please go away. I’m not feeling well.”

  His presence surged toward me without physically moving. My power pressed against him. He projected presence with no energy, which was impossible. Every nerve ending in my body registered threat. My power pressed against him like a shield, and it was all that kept distance between us. I hadn’t consciously willed this shield. It was unlike the accidental energy spikes I emitted. It was more of an automatic response that formed a natural barrier against harm.

  Rune’s smile softened from predatory to friendly.

  “I don’t mean to frighten you. In fact, I believe I can help.”

  “You have no idea what you’re dealing with. Heck, I don’t even know what I’m dealing with. Please. Go. Away.”

  I scooted to my left. The brick wall snagged my shirt as I slid along its rough surface, but I couldn’t bring myself to move even a fraction of an inch toward the mesmerizing man in front of me. Every instinct told me to keep moving away from him and get out of the dimly lit alley, but his eyes called to some basic part of me. Probably the same part that made me want to pet the Bengal tigers at the zoo.

  He moved to his right, remaining in front of me. His gaze held mine.

  “You did not intend to break the windows, correct?”

  “No.” My voice sounded far away. I stopped moving away from him.

  He raised one hand and felt the air around me.

  “Your power is not totally in your control?”

  “No.” This time it took a few seconds for me to realize I’d spoken. A haze shrouded my senses.

  “I can help you if you will permit me.” He moved a step closer.

  “Help me,” I echoed. “Yes.”

  He slowly reached out to me, never breaking eye contact, and took my hand in his. The energy in my hand calmed. My body had vibrated with the pent up energy for so many hours that I’d become desensitized to it. Now, the lack of tingling in this small area accentuated the tingling in the rest of my body.

  We stood in a cocoon as the calmness crept up my arm. His eyes drew me in, and glimpses of his life strobed through my thoughts. He was in an old fashioned room teaching young men in Romanesque robes. He was in a horse-drawn carriage in coat and tails wit
h a high top hat. He held a dead old man in his arms.

  He blinked as the last image struck, and it was enough to break our connection. I pulled my hand away from his and slammed back into the dumpster without any recollection of moving away from him.

  My voice found its way past my ragged gasps for breath. “What the heck was that?”

  He stepped toward me, and my body shifted into full alarm mode. My hair lifted and dumpster lids rattled.

  He stopped short and ran his hand along the air like a mime feeling an invisible wall. Deep blue eyes connected with mine again, and he smiled.

  I braced myself, but found that I could look at his eyes without sinking into them as I had before. This time I wouldn’t let down my guard.

  “Amazing,” he whispered. “Your gift blocks your mind.”

  My fear moved over as anger trickled in.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m amazing. I’m fascinating. And what I really am is tired, and now I’m pissed, too. I’ve had a really, really bad day.” Tears clouded my vision and crying made me all the more angry. “Look, Roman, or whatever your name is, I don’t know what kind of stunt you just pulled, but I didn’t like it.”

  The sides of his eyes creased, and his mouth lifted in a knowing smile.

  “The name is Rune. And, yes, you did.”

  I rubbed my hand. It wasn’t numb exactly, but it felt deadened.

  “Okay, it wasn’t bad, but I repeat, what the hell was that?”

  He had me so mad I was cursing, and I never cursed, and that made me madder.

  “You seem to have a unique gift to manipulate energy.”

  “It’s more like it manipulates me. And how did you know—”

  “I have a unique gift also.”

  An unladylike snort escaped me. “That sounds like a very bad pick-up line.”

  His laugh was as rich as his voice. I almost let my guard down just listening to it.

  “My gift,” he said, “is absorbing energy.”

  “How?”

  “Through touch, when necessary. Although I can pick up small bits in the air from high sources such as you.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The energy. What do you do with it?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You have to do something with it. How do you dissipate it?”

  “I use it.”

  “To do what?”

  “To exist.”

  Worry has never been good for my telekinesis, and this man, as gorgeous and alluring as he was, seriously worried me. Bursts of energy shot from me. I felt them ricocheting down the alley, except for the ones that shot toward Rune. Those bursts simply vanished off my radar.

  “To exist?” I asked. “You use it to exist?”

  “Maybe gift was a misnomer. It is more of a condition. The point is that my condition could be of help with your predicament. Would you like my help?” The blue of his eyes deepened, but this time I was ready for him. I looked away and held up my hand.

  “Don’t start with the Marvin the Mind Bender stuff again, or I’m out of here.”

  He stepped back, and when I looked again, his eyes were back to their normal but striking color.

  The door behind the dumpster rattled. A voice behind it shouted, “The door’s blocked. I’ll have to go around.”

  “Time is almost up,” Rune said. “Do I help, or do you leave the alley in your current condition?”

  My energy level was better than earlier, but I was still in no condition to go out in public. The sea of car alarms my misfiring ability would most likely set off between me and my car provided an impenetrable barricade. The dumpster next to me and the brick wall behind me were looking a lot like a rock and a hard place right about now.

  “Okay, do it.” I closed my eyes and held out my hand, but he didn’t take it.

  “What?” I opened my eyes a crack.

  “To do this as quickly as we need to, I will require more direct contact.”

  This was sounding iffy again.

  “Like what?”

  “Like this.” He closed the space between us in a heartbeat, and although he hadn’t captured my gaze, I couldn’t look away.

  Just as my mind registered, “Oh, no he’s not,” his lips were on mine.

  My body, stiff at first, relaxed as he deepened the kiss. My traitorous arms slid up around his neck, and I leaned into him. All the stress and worry of the day lifted making me feel slightly giddy. The tingling energy pulled from my extremities toward my head, out of my mouth, and into his. That tingling was replaced by another, more primal, tingling, which spread upward from between my legs to ignite flaming butterflies in my stomach.

  A quiet moan rumbled from his chest. His head tilted more, and he grasped me to him. The dumpster lid beside us lifted. At first I thought I’d done it until I realized I didn’t have enough energy left to lift my hand let alone a huge sheet of metal.

  Someone cleared his throat beside us. “Hey you two, get a room, huh?”

  The lid slammed shut. We broke the kiss. A teenager in an aqua and white striped shirt still had his hand on the dumpster. The kid laughed and muttered, “Old people,” then shook his head and walked away. I wanted to snark at him that I was only twenty-six, but it seemed like too much effort at the moment. My head felt like it was floating ten feet above my neck.

  Rune’s deep chuckle drew my attention, but one look at his face doused all further thoughts of intimacy. The whites of his eyes glowed like paper under a black light, and the deep blue of his irises now shown electric ice blue.

  I tried to push him away but only managed to move him a few inches.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” I said.

  A slow smile lifted his lips. “It is your power that you see.” A hint of an exotic accent now tinged his voice.

  “I may see it, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel energy from you at all.”

  Another push to his chest didn’t budge him, but the feel of the wall of muscle under my palm produced the almost overwhelming urge to step closer to him. After a lifetime living a nun-like existence, I’d suddenly turned into what my grandma used to call a hussy in the last five minutes.

  I pulled my hand away. “You’re seriously weirding me out. Back off.”

  The relief when he backed off was quickly replaced with alarm when I tried to move. I grabbed the dumpster in time to save myself from going to my knees. Rune grabbed my arm to support me, but I shoved his hand away.

  “No, don’t touch me.” I grasped the dumpster with both hands. “What’s wrong with me? What did you do?”

  Concern flashed in his eyes. He reached for me again, but dropped his hand when I flinched.

  “I may have fed too much. It is hard to tell with you. You are not normal human energy. Yours is intoxicating nectar.” He reached out again. “Let me help you.”

  The world swayed as I shook my head. “Ohhhhhh, noooooo. You helping me is what caused this.” My hands had a death grip on the dumpster. I lowered my forehead to rest on them. They were cool and clammy.

  “My apologies. I meant you no harm.”

  “Well you should have been more careful. It feels like you could have killed me.”

  He didn’t reply. In fact, he became so still, I thought he’d gone. I tilted my head and peeked up at him. His unmoving stare spoke volumes.

  “You couldn’t have really killed me. Could you?”

  He looked away to the dark alley and took a shuffling step back. I straightened and leaned against the wall, leaving a hand on the dumpster to steady myself.

  “Oh my God.” My heart hammered out slow, thudding beats. There wasn’t enough energy left in me for it to race. “You could have killed me.”

  I scooted along the wall away from him. Leaving my hand on the dumpster until the last possible second, I reached for the other dumpster and fell toward it, willing my legs to take each step. Vertigo twisted horizontal and swayed vertical like a flag p
ole in a hurricane. The energy void of the alley now worked against me. I needed to get out into the quad area and restore myself with the ambient energy of hundreds of busy students from the surrounding classrooms. The food court ended twenty feet away, but right then it might as well have been twenty miles.

  He looked back, but didn’t pursue me. “I . . . do not wish to hurt you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I drug myself around the dumpster, using my hands as much as my feet to propel myself. “I’m sure the lady who ran over my dog when I was twelve thought something like that just before she squashed him.”

  He reached out to me again, and I threw myself out of his reach. My shoulder and head connected with the brick wall with a sickening crack. Lightening bolts of pain streaked across my vision.

  “Stay away from me, or so help me I’ll scream bloody murder.”

  “Let me . . . I . . .” He lowered his hand and sighed. “I have encountered no one as unique as you in such a very, very long time. I do not wish to frighten you.”

  I snorted and slid along the wall toward the end of the alley. “Too late, bucko. You scare the manure out of me, and I want you as far away as possible. I have enough problems in my life without some glowing-eyed gigolo sucking the life out me.”

  Angry tears flowed freely down my cheeks. Hysteria bubbled up from my thudding heart. A shrieking tone tightened my voice, and I felt a supreme rant coming on.

  He drew a deep breath and looked toward the night sky. When he looked back at me, his eyes lacked some of their earlier glow.

  In a quiet controlled voice he said, “I will see you again.”

  A blur of motion rushed forward and lifted me. The world streamed by in a smear of colors, and I was suddenly sitting on a bench in a dark corner of the quad—alone. My backpack rested beside me. My gut heaved, and if I’d had enough energy or anything in my stomach, I’d have lost it in the bushes behind me.

  I sagged back into the bench back. I’d always tried not to absorb power, tried not to call the monster that was my “gift.” Now, I concentrated on pulling the energy all around into my body, but nothing happened. Had Rune drained me so much that I couldn’t recharge? Mixed feelings of hope that my strange abilities were gone and fear that I would remain drained and listless the rest of my life battled as I pulled again, trying to absorb regenerating power. After a few minutes, I slumped down, rested my head back on the bench, and gave up. Despair and bone-deep fatigue wiped my mind clean. I was so drained, I waited for my heartbeat to stop.