Glaston (The Gifted Book 1)

by C. C. Lynch

“Almost there,” she tugged my arm.

  Just as we were about to open the door it flung open from the other side. I froze in panic staring at the man who could not see me. Liz pulled me quickly against the wall and I tried to calm my breathing. I couldn’t hear Liz, I couldn’t smell her, but I could feel her hand tightly grasping mine.

  The man walked slowly into the building, assessing the chaos that had ensued from the explosions. A gentle tug on my hand told me to side step slightly and I did as Liz guided. I watched the man walk in a slow circle around the room and I played back the moments in my head. When he opened the door I knew I had exhaled sharply and I was out of breath. I smelled like mint and tea tree oil, Liz used only unscented products. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I could be invisible, but not undetectable.

  Another man came to the side of the stranger and they both turned and walked straight towards me. Liz’s hand was shaking and I held my breath. Was I still invisible? I was too frightened to move. The man reached his hand out and touched my face gently.

  “There you are,” he grinned.

  I let go of Liz’s hand so she would not be discovered as well. His expression never faltered as I became visible once again.

  “Liz, Liz run,” I screamed sitting up in my bed. Scurrying and a shattering sound preceded the room filling with light. Moments later Liz and Draxe were standing over me. I was still panting and shaking.

  “What did you see, Abrielle?” Liz sat by my side and took my hand in hers comfortingly. I took Draxe’s hand in my other and played the vision back. I expected her to be scared or angry but she looked rather determined instead. Draxe stood up and began pacing.

  “Visions that have not happened yet can be changed, right Draxe?” Her hand was still in mine.

  He shrugged looking defeated, “I can’t see why not.” Just then I realized that he had slept in his jeans and sweatshirt. Draxe’s lack of comfortable clothing told me that either he was trying very hard to be proper or they were expecting something like my vision to happen. “Go ahead and give Vlaine a call, he should know about this right away.”

  I nodded and pulled my phone out from beneath my pillow. I had fallen asleep text messaging Steph and Nicholas all night. There were a few messages from both of them I texted them responses quickly before calling Vlaine.

  “Morning Abbs,” he answered sounding groggy. “What’s up?”

  A tingling feeling extravasated throughout my entire body when I heard his voice. The shock of the vision dissipated and I was able to calm my voice enough to not sound alarmed. “Is there any way you could bring over some coffee? I’ve got something I want to show you.”

  “I guess it is close enough to five to obtain some breakfast. I’ll be there in a few.” He answered with a sexy and raspy just-woke-up voice.

  I asked Liz who the men were in the dream. The man that had touched me was Jeremiah and the man next to him was Luther. Luther was another person who could teleport and according to Liz was just as despicable as Slade. They followed orders without question and seemed to enjoy seeing people suffer just as much as Jeremiah. I felt intrusive asking what Jeremiah’s ability was and Liz told me that he could influence electricity. A doubtful look must have been on my face as I wondered what he could do that was so terrible with electricity.

  “Think about it Abrielle,” her voice was mournful, “your heart works on its very own electrical system. The least of your problems is him stopping your heart or starting it again. He has his very own torture room designed to use his gift on people.”

  Draxe was still pacing when Vlaine came into the room. One glance at Draxe’s demeanor and Vlaine was by my side waiting for an explanation. I took his hand and showed him the vision. He stood up and began nervous strides just as his brother had. His hands were folded on top of his head lifting his shirt enough to reveal sculpted lower abs. I shook my head from the thought and tried to focus on the situation.

  Draxe asked his brother the same question Liz posed to him earlier.

  Vlaine sighed then sat beside me. “We’re going to have to work really hard on your replication. I haven’t heard of someone changing their vision but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. Go ahead and get dressed. I’m going to let my dad know then I will meet you at the gym.”

  I took my time getting ready to meet Vlaine. The morning sun would not peak across the horizon for another hour and walking in the cold darkness was not at all appealing. I felt comfortable taking my time since the vision I had before occurred for over a decade before it happened and there was no telling how long it would be before this one came into fruition.

  I gathered my assignments and dropped them off in the professor mailboxes before I left for the gym. The building was filled with an eerie silence when usually Susan would have been up and getting breakfast prepared at that time. Curiosity brought me into the kitchen where I could hear the soft clanging of pans in the back of the room.

  “Susan?” I called out softly.

  “Oh, good morning dear,” she was wiping her hands on her daisy speckled apron. “It’s bitter cold out there this morning, my car would not even start!” Her nose was still red from the wintry outdoors.

  “Where do you live?” To anyone aside from Susan it would have been a rude question, but I knew that she enjoyed having someone to talk to.

  “Oh just up the ways a bit. If you remember taking that turn off of the highway to get on this road there’s a sharp left turn that you’ll miss if you don’t know it’s there. My little cottage is just up that way.” She tilted her head and pursed her lips in a disapproving manner. “You hold on just a minute Abrielle,” she disappeared into the pantry and came back out holding a pair of thick gloves. “I know where you’re heading and you’ll get frostbite by the time you get there. Go ahead and return them to me once you get back.”

  “Thank you Susan,” I took the gloves reluctantly. “I’ll return them to you as soon as possible.”

  I jogged my way to the gymnasium and a terrible burning in my throat made it hard to breathe. My new cell phone was in my hands and I looked at it quickly to see it was only six degrees outside. I was hoping for a burst of warm air once I got inside the gym, but it felt just as cold in there.

  Vlaine was walking towards me, his eyes aglow with excitement. “I have the coolest idea!” He held up a bow in one hand and a quiver filled with arrows in the other.

  I had no idea where he was going with his idea. My archery class was only half of a semester and most of the time we neglected to practice because I was more than proficient and working on my skill class seemed more important most days.

  “You figured that I was so impressive with a bow that you’re just going to send me into Jeremiah’s lair to take all the bad guys out and give me an A for the course.”

  “No, you’re getting a B- in archery,” he shook his head seriously before getting excited once more.

  “Wait, a B-?” I crossed my arms across my chest and pursed my lips. “I was an ace and hit the target every single time. Maybe it was not a bull’s-eye, but my grouping was exceptional.”

  “It will look like favoritism if I give you a better grade. Also, it gets weighted differently since it was a half-semester activity.” Once again his face changed from serious to enthusiastic. “I was thinking, what if you could project your replication onto objects! I want to practice you using my concussive power and then once you have it down try projecting it onto the arrow so when the arrow is midflight it will send out the blast instead of your hands.”

  “Wow, Vlaine that would be pretty incredible. Do you think it’s even feasible?”

  “That’s what I am hoping to find out before the end of this week.”

  “We are going to get me to master manipulation then,” I waved my hands around like I was casting a spell as I searched for a proper word, “superimpose, for lack of a better word, it onto an inanimate object by the end of the week? Mighty presumptuous, aren’t we?”

  “I have fa
ith in you Abrielle,” he squeezed my arm reassuringly.

  The first time I tried to emulate his gift I failed miserably. I was able to create a wave that left my hands, but it threw my body backwards instead of going forwards. He tried to stroke my ego by telling me that it would take a while to get it since my nature was more restorative than destructive. Three hours and a broken coccyx later I could push the force forward.

  Susan brought us lunch and retrieved her gloves so she could go home for the day. After eating we worked on aiming the calamitous force. It was dark by the time we had returned to the residence hall. Draxe was waiting in the room and Liz was lying on her bed studying. Final exams would begin next week and I was sure that aside from literature, which was a take-home exam, I would fail them purely from being distracted.

  Instead of studying for my finals, like I should have, I practiced pulling a psychic barrier up against anyone who would try to read my mind. It was just another way a telepath could find me if I was invisible or use information against me. Draxe was on watch once again that night but he was not planning on falling asleep. I employed him to assist me with my psychic wall. Though I could just simulate the music gift if it was a dire situation, putting up a psychic blockade was an extremely difficult task.

  Liz hypothesized that because of my empathic abilities I wore my feelings, and essentially my thoughts, on my sleeve. Her theory was a nice idea, but mine was that I could not be good at everything. Psychic barriers were my weakness and it seemed that it was something I would always struggle with.

  The next morning I woke up frightened and yelling like I had the day before. Liz was by my side before I woke up trying to calm me down. Draxe sat across the room looking at me powerlessly, as helpless as I felt in the midst of Jeremiah and his men.

  If the vision was going to be a reoccurring thing it was not fair for Liz to lose sleep when final examinations were just around the corner. I asked if there was any way I could sleep downstairs on one of the couches in the common area, but Draxe made it clear that everything had to be run by his father. Liz said that being woken up would give her more time to study but I could not tell if it was because she enjoyed having Draxe around or if she was being kind. Most likely, her statement was the product of both speculations.

  Eight hours of working on replication in the gym with Vlaine allowed me the time to grasp the power to successfully aim an explosion towards a particular target as well as the ability to mimic the appearance of either Steph or Vlaine simultaneously.

  I thought being able to master the reproduction to two different abilities would make me feel strong, but I only felt vulnerable. I could not understand why of all the people in the world I was the one to get this particular gift. It should have made me indestructible and powerful to be able to imitate the gifts of others; the ways I could help the planet were endless. Instead of learning to help the world I was learning to utilize the gift to save myself from some lunatic. In my eyes, that was raw weakness.

  Draxe was in my room by the time I returned from practicing with Vlaine. He was quizzing Liz for finals and they were in the middle of flipping through ecology note cards. I lay on my bed and listened as they went through the cards; it was the perfect opportunity to rest and study at the same time. I folded my hands on my stomach listening to them and thought of how brilliant it would be to be invisible and hide from the worries of the world.

  23

  I had fallen asleep while listening to them and woke from the vision again. Draxe was by my side this time and a consoling hand was wrapped around mine. I looked to Liz’s empty bed just before I heard the shower running.

  “We can tell when you are about to have your vision now,” Draxe’s expression was more pity than sympathy.

  “I wish I could control it somehow,” I whined.

  He patted my shoulder quickly, “the more you practice, the more confident you will feel. It’s your brain that keeps playing this vision to you so maybe once you believe you can overcome your impending fate it will stop reminding you that it’s coming.”

  Draxe had meant for it to be helpful, but it made me feel worse. I did not want to be tormented by the same vision every single morning and most of all I did not want the lives of others to be endangered because of some bizarre innate talent I was born with.

  I rolled my head into my hands and tried to rub away the stress. “I just don’t understand how people could have been working on the inside for Jeremiah and there was no knowledge of it or who they were. How did Osiris not know that Professor Horicon was a bad guy?”

  “Abrielle,” Draxe exhaled, “the abilities that these people have as a team is something you cannot wrap your head around yet. You think just because you understand how to pretend to be Vlaine for a few minutes and throw a ball of energy you can understand what a group of people who have worked in a place that have spent over seventy years dedicated to learning about these gifts can?” He stood up and straightened his clothes then looked me in the eyes. “You haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”

  I felt like I had just been slapped. What he said may have been the truth but it stung and it made me defensive. “And the Josnic men feel that I’ll be able to penetrate this surface by keeping things from me?”

  Draxe raised his brow at my outburst. “Knowing everything wouldn’t help you. You’re already getting round-the-clock body guards and five people monitoring the thoughts of suspected infiltrators.” His voice had been soft and compassionate, but the words were harsh.

  “You two really are brothers, aren’t you?” I gritted, annoyed by his bluntness.

  I did not wait for him to respond; I just grabbed a change of clothes and went straight to the barn. Cinnamon was sleeping, dressed in her turnout sheet. She stirred slightly when I went into her stable and exhaled loudly but remained lying down. I stacked more hay into the stable, gave her a quick pat, and then continued to the gym.

  I had gotten ready in the locker-room and had time to practice before Vlaine arrived. I needed to practice appearing like him without having to touch him. I imagined all of Vlaine’s features; his typical black boots, stonewashed jeans, tight fitting thermal sweatshirt, his wide strong jaw that curved softly underneath thin bowed lips, straight brooding brows, perfectly proportionate nose, and a simple short hair that always seemed to be flawlessly muddled.

  “That is terrifying,” Vlaine was staring at me. “Damn outré is what that is,” he shook his head and walked towards me. “Walking into a room and seeing me was one of the last things I expected this morning. But, hey, you got to look like someone besides Steph.”

  “How did you know it was me?” I let go of my concentration and allowed my natural appearance to come back. “I could have been Draxe or one of Jeremiah’s men.”

  “You’re thoughts are too loud,” he winked and handed me coffee.

  Heat rose to my face as embarrassment clutched my entire torso. If he could hear me concentrating he knew what I thought of him, how I thought of him. I wanted to get out of the room and away before he read anything else. Just as I tried to think of excuses to leave he started picking up the archery equipment to bring it outside.

  “You don’t happen to be hiding any telekinesis in there to make this a little easier, do you?” The targets were not heavy, but they were large and awkward to carry.

  “I wish,” I giggled slinging a quiver full of arrows on my back, “telekinesis would be amazing.” I picked up a target and began to follow him outside. “Are we trying for the arrow blasts today?”

  He nodded and finished setting everything up. Once the targets were in place I picked up the bow and began concentrating.

  “Wait,” he walked closer to me, “start off slow. I don’t want you attempting to blast a deadly weapon right away while trying to concentrate on a dozen different things.”

  Vlaine pressed his chest into my back and his hands slid down my arms onto my hands. His face was so close to mine the warmth tickled my cheek. Softly he spoke, “
I’ll do the shooting for now until you can get a feel of how this is going to work.” My body was frozen into place and my breath caught in my throat. All I could concentrate on was Vlaine’s body pressed into mine.

  White clouds of breath left my mouth but all I could feel was the heat of his proximity. It was not fair; he had to know what he was doing to me.

  “Vlaine,” I breathed keeping myself still, “let me shoot a practice arrow before we work on any abilities.”

  “Sure,” he pulled away slowly. Cold air hit my back where his body had just been. It was a necessary system shock that allowed my mind to clear enough to be able to hold the bow on my own. My body still felt tingly and I was acutely aware of his distance from me.

  It was taking me too long to gather my wits so I shot off an arrow to get the feeling of the projection. I hit the top right corner of the target then shot another one just outside of the bull’s-eye.

  “Are you ready now?” I could hear him stepping closer.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine something else. My mind went blank trying to think of things to focus on. Just as my mind went into a panic trying to take my mind off of Vlaine my pocket began to vibrate. Just in the nick of time, I thought to myself. I pulled my phone out to see that Nicholas was calling me.

  “How peculiarly fortunate and slightly freaky,” I laughed to myself. I held the phone up so Vlaine could see that I was getting a call.

  “Making good use of the phone, I see.” I was about to answer it but then he pushed my hand down gently, “you’ve got a psychopath heading for the school to try and abduct you. Do you think Nicholas can wait until tonight to talk to you?”

  I shrugged and declined the call. “I suppose, it was probably a pocket dial anyway.”

  I tucked it back into my jeans. If it was important he would call again or send a text message. A moment later it buzzed and I picked it up to see I had a voicemail. A bunch of jumbled noises and static was recorded.

  “Yeah,” I nodded to Vlaine, “it was just a pocket dial.”