by Eleanor Eden
“I want to try one more thing, if Garrett is up for it.”
Jay looked at the boy.
Garrett nodded enthusiastically. “This is fun!”
“I think I can channel like Eve can – well, something like it.”
“Be careful; if you’re going to connect to Garrett like Eve does, start really small. You’re much stronger than him.”
I nodded. “Can you take Eve inside, so it’s just me channeling?”
Jay nodded. “Someday, she’ll control it.” He smiled proudly at her, and headed toward the back door.
Money looked dubious.
“What?”
“I feel – weird – about this.”
I frowned, caught between admiration for the protective bond Money had with Garrett and confusion over his hesitancy. “You don’t think we should try it?”
“I think you should, but with me.”
“I have.”
He looked surprised.
I laughed, “Whenever we work together and I see the imbalance between us, I try to channel into you.” I shrugged. “But it doesn’t work.”
“Huh,” he made a face.
“So, this probably won’t, either,” I shrugged. “But let’s try it.”
“Small,” Money said.
I looked at Garrett. “Ready?”
Garret assumed his stance and started.
I smiled at Money, but refrained from any “he’s so cute!” exclamations, as hard as it was.
“OK,” I breathed, focusing on control, then opened up.
“What should I do?” Garrett called out, his eyes still shut.
“I’m going to send you some energy now. Just a tiny bit,” I called.
He dug his feet in, like a ball player getting ready for a pitch.
And I focused on connecting with him. It was too easy; our energetic connection was automatically visible, and Garrett’s face registered surprise.
“Oh!” he smiled, but then it faltered, just as fast.
“What’s wrong?” Money stepped toward him and I pulled back.
“I don’t know!” Garrett cried. “It hurts!”
I felt the pressure building inside him. “You need to cast!” I cried, knowing it.
He tried to pull back to throw it, but even I could see it wasn’t gathered right. His grimace deepened. “I can’t!”
A panic began to build in me. I could push energy to him, but he couldn’t cast it.
I began to close down the connection, shocked at Garrett’s increasing pain as he dropped to his knees.
“Pull it back!” Money shouted, and I very nearly shut it down before he added, “Draw the energy back in!”
And it clicked; I needed to take it back, not just shut it down – but I’d never drawn from another person before.
I stepped closer, pulling instead of pushing, and watched in awe as the energy reversed and pulsed back into my arms and chest. “Oh, my God!” I cried, overcome at how pure it was. How very changed, just by being inside of the small boy in front of me.
Garrett sat up. “The pain is gone. What’s happening?” He squinted up at me.
“Burden?”
I looked at Money. “Can you see it?”
He nodded. “Does it feel different?”
“It’s incredible!
He held a hand out. “Give me some.”
I stepped to him, wary of the failed attempts from before. But then, this was different somehow. It wasn’t all mine, or from our surroundings.
I held my hand an inch above his and pushed, just a little, and he instantly collapsed to the ground, a dazed smile on his face.
“Holy shit,” I said, then looked at Garrett. “Whoops. Sorry, bud.”
He shook his head. “It’s OK.”
I frowned. The child looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Dark circles deepened beneath his eyes and he leaned forward, resting on his hands and panting.
“Garrett, what’s wrong?”
“I feel tired.”
I looked at Money. “He needs it back!”
Money rolled to the boy. “Hold your hand out.”
Garrett complied, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Money did as I had, his hand hovering over Garrett’s, but nothing happened. He looked at me. “You have to do it.”
I fell to my knees before Garrett, moving to replace Money’s hand with my own, then I pushed, a little harder, and light flowed from my palm into his. I watched his face and it brightened right away.
I stopped as he smiled at me. “That was cool!”
I sat hard on the ground, stunned.
“Well, that was something,” Money said, sitting up. “I feel amazing, still.” He looked at Garrett. “You all better, Mister? Or do you still feel a little tired?”
Garrett pumped his fists into the air. “I feel better than ever!”
Money frowned and looked at me. “What about you? You must be drained.”
I shook my head, slowly. “I’m absolutely charged up right now,” I whispered, watching his eyes widen. “And Money – I felt him move.”
He leaned toward me. “The baby?”
I nodded.
“Did you – make – energy?”
I looked between them. “I think so.”
Chapter 20 – Theories
“It’s puzzling;” Jay frowned over his empty plate, tenting his fingers as he thought. “Eve channels without trying, but when she tries, it’s more powerful than even Burden knows what to do with.”
“I would if there was something dark to aim it at,” I said, popping a grape into my mouth.
“And then there’s the fact that you can channel, too, but not into Money or Garrett. Not with results like Sorrow, anyway.”
“Except when she put some of the energy she created into me, and that was amazing. That was healing.”
Odyssey shook her head. “We’ll have to keep working at it; trying new things.”
“I didn’t like what it did to Garrett before I fed some back into him,” I shook my head.
“But all you had to do was return a little bit back to him, and he was better than when we started.”
“I wonder if you could draw from one of us – do the same thing, I mean? Channel into us and then take it back, create more?”
I frowned. “I felt like Garrett needed to cast. If he learns to focus the energy I’m giving him, maybe he could cast it, but you can’t. Seems like too big a risk.”
We fell silent, Garrett and Eve’s voices from the other room where they played the only sounds.
“If only we could practice against dark energy,” I muttered.
“Not just against it,” Money added, and my eyes flickered to Jay’s.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve – when dark energy is near, I have the urge to draw it,” Money confessed, his eyes on the fruit bowl.
Jay and Odyssey looked at each other, frowning.
“He’s worried it makes him more like them,” I said, begging Jay with my eyes to counter my words.
He did shake his head, but paused, regarding Money with dark eyes. “Perhaps it is only because you’ve had dark energy close to you for so long.”
Money shrugged. “It’s not just that I want to draw the dark; it’s that drawing the light is harder than it’s ever been.”
I nodded. “We’re not balanced when we work together.”
“And you’re not able to channel into him,” Odyssey spoke up, leaning toward me.
I felt my face clear. “Maybe I’m not able to send light into him – that I haven’t made, that is.”
“Regardless, we have no idea what dark energy would do to you except hurt you,” Jay waved a hand. “We can’t risk that.”
“But maybe we have to risk it now, so we know what happens before we go against Legion,” Money looked at Jay, and then me. “I don’t want to lose control.”
“Then you have to decide now what you’d do with the energy once you drew it.�
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Money frowned. “I guess I’d try to focus it and cast, like I do with the light.”
Odyssey laughed. “It’s all well and good to theorize, but how do you propose we practice?”
We all fell silent again.
I spoke first. “Everything we’ve ever known tells us to banish the darkness, not draw it.”
“Maybe I could, though.”
I made a face. “You’d try to bring a dark one? Here?”
He frowned. “Not here; not with the kids. Somewhere else…”
“At the tiny?” I suggested, but Jay was already shaking his head, even as Money’s eyes lit up.
“You should be with him, just in case he needs help, but I don’t want you too far from Sorrow – not while you’re only in your second trimester.”
Odyssey nodded. “I agree with Journey; it seems Eve has a lot to do with the fact that your pregnancy happened in the first place. I don’t want to find out if being away from her would break that spell.”
My hands went unconsciously to my belly. “I don’t, either.”
“I need to try, and waiting until our boy is born isn’t an option – not when time is short.”
Odyssey bit her lip, thinking before she spoke again. “But her pregnancy also makes her vulnerable. Leaving her would be the wrong thing to do, especially with Garrett and Sorrow here with her.”
I put my hand up. “I’m not an invalid. And I’m not vulnerable if I don’t open myself to it.”
Jay frowned.
“They may not be afraid of me, but I’m not afraid of them, either. I know I can beat them,” I looked around the table. “The ones from before, anyway.”
“So, what do you suggest?”
I looked at Money, floundering but wanting him to get his chance.
“I’m fast,” Money said, his eyes on me.
I nodded.
He looked at Jay. “I’ll go to the tiny house. It’s perfect; sort of secluded, but close enough that I could be back here in a minute, if I need Burden – or if she needs me,” his eyes found mine again.
“We’re connected,” I said. “Either of us would know.”
“You’re not going alone,” Jay said.
Money nodded.
“And there has to be a time limit,” Odyssey added. “You have an hour to draw a dark one, and then try to gather from it. After that you’ll have to try casting.”
Jay leaned toward Money. “And if you’re unable to use its own energy against it, you need to draw the light, and banish it that way.”
Money clenched his jaw.
I leaned forward. “And if you can’t use the light alone, for any reason, you run back to me. I’ll be waiting in the back yard for you.”
Money looked at Jay.
“I’ll be fine,” Jay laughed. “I’ll drive.”
We all laughed quietly.
I looked at my hands on the table, a seed of anxiety spinning in my stomach.
“When?” Odyssey asked what we were all thinking.
Money looked at me. “Tomorrow?”
I nodded. “And I think we should work on connecting to the dark energy together before you leave.” Money looked confused, so I added. “We’ve never sought them out. I don’t want you to draw it; just find it.”
“It might be dangerous if it clues in that a Fated is connected to it,” Jay frowned.
“It might, but it might be necessary, too. Money has a time limit, and we don’t want it to be wasted.
“I think it’s smart. You can shut down the connection if it turns,” Odyssey offered, and I smiled at her.
“Right, then. Tomorrow,” Money said.
“Tomorrow,” Odyssey, Jay and I said together.
And as I rose to go find the kids, the little seed of worry in my belly took root.
Chapter 21 – Something New
I inwardly acknowledged Eve’s high-pitched giggles, then went back to my breath. Money touched my hands and we connected, both of us entering a trance as we’d done to many times in the past, when we were training Money after years of denying his abilities – his purpose.
“Remember how we reached out before?” Money asked, his voice filtering through my veil of stillness.
“Yes.”
“This time, let’s seek out the darkness, rather than avoiding it.”
I bowed my head, and then I was travelling, and Money was with me. We were out of ourselves, but together. Part of a new timescape – travelling through space, but experiencing it individually.
“Beautiful,” I breathed, my voice echoing around us, though there were no surface off of which to bounce that was evident to my eyes.
“Look,” Money answered, and I felt a pull, stretching my gaze through multitudes of space dust and toward a deeper darkness nestled between the stars.
“Like a vortex,” I said, my voice distant, somehow.
“We need to see what lays below it,” Money said, and we tilted, our view suddenly narrowing, full with blue-green earth and white clouds.
I looked back at the emptiness, then at the landmass below it – only it wasn’t land. “The Atlantic Ocean,” I whispered, my eyes back on the depths of darkness. Then a hand was on mine, tugging.
I fought the pull, unable to look away from that mass as it seemed to grow, pulsing and swallowing light dust into its depths.
“Burden!” Money cried, and I gasped as I was sucked back down, down, into myself.
“Are you OK?”
I opened my eyes to find Money’s right in front of me, full of concern. “It was growing.”
He nodded. “It sensed us. “
“It’s not far,” I whispered, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.
“No, but who knows how long it’s been there, waiting. I doubt sensing us this time was a new discovery.”
He was so much more confident than me, and that was rare.
“Can you still feel it?” he asked quietly, his eyes darkening in that way that only his could, changing from blue to black.
I reached out – opened myself. Then shook my head. “Do you?”
He nodded.
I made a face. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing that you can connect to it so easily.”
“Regardless, it’s a fact we have to work with,” he said, then pulled my hands to his lips and kissed them.
“I see you changing,” I said, and he kissed my lips, that time.
“Success?” Jay asked, approaching with Eve in his arms. My eyes flicked to Odyssey and Garrett, who were still by the house, Odyssey blowing bubbles and Garrett casting energy at them to pop them.
“That’s a great idea!” I smiled at Jay, then reached for Eve.
“We know where it is; I can still feel it,” Money answered Jay’s question.
“Will it wait for tonight?”
Money nodded. “It didn’t seem surprised to see us”
“What was it? A piece of Legion, or an older darkness?”
Money shook his head. “I couldn’t tell.”
“Guess we’ll just have to find out tonight.”
Chapter 22 – Proofs
Odyssey and I sat by the fire just as the sun was dipping behind the trees. Eve sat upright on Odyssey’s lap, watching the edges of the yard just as keenly as we were.
Odyssey had tried to stay inside with the children, as we’d all agreed would be best, but Eve wouldn’t have it. And when our methods of persuasion wouldn’t work, she used energy to tell us, drawing from around us with a look of ferocity and the rumbling bass sound of thunder. And a pressure that made us - uncomfortable. And then, she had cast; she’d gone against our assumptions and sent the energy back out in a wave, but concentric in a spreading circle from her, blowing back our hair and taking our collective breath away.
“Uh – maybe you guys should take her,” Garrett had said.
“What the hell was that?” was my reaction.
But time was short.
