Deviation: Altera Realm Trilogy Book 2 (26 page)

She shook her head. “Hunter, my Protector.”

“And the other time?”

“Your buddy over there threw at knife at me,” Syney said, sending a glaring look at Gabe.

He just shrugged. “It served its purpose.”

Hadrian nodded. “Both of those events were emotionally driven, once for your life and the other for someone you cared about, which means your powers are still attached to your emotions. Most young Daemons react the same way, but they train themselves to harness their inner powers.” He held out his hand, and suddenly a ball of crackling red energy appeared there. “You summon the energy—borrow it, actually—from life forces around you. It’s much like when you conjure the elements.”

“Oh, I’ve done that!” Syney exclaimed, eyeing the ball of energy. “But I always have a spell.”

“You won’t need one for this,” Hadrian said. “Just pull the energy from around you. Try it.”

Syney held out her hand and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine taking the energy from the air around her, but nothing happened. Then she tried to remember the feeling she’d had when she and Adam had conjured the rain, but still nothing. She sighed and opened her eyes. “Maybe I’m broken.”

Hadrian rolled his eyes and tossed the ball of energy at Adam.

Syney screamed, and energy shot out of her hands, smashing into Hadrian’s. “What the hell!”

“I second that!” Adam yelled.

“See? You’re not broken,” Hadrian told Syney.

“Oh, my God!” Noelle yelled.

“How about we don’t hurl energy balls at people anymore, OK?” Reed said, stepping forward.

Syney sighed. She understood where Hadrian was coming from, but it was still a sick way of getting results. She placed a hand on Reed’s arm. “It’s OK.”

Reed snarled at Hadrian but stepped back and sat on the steps of the deck. “I need more than ‘Pull the energy,’” Syney said.

Hadrian frowned. “I’m not a teacher, and I haven’t been in school in a very long time. I’m going with my gut here.”

Gabe jumped up from his seat and walked over to them. “Syney, everyone has a life force, and all of a race’s powers stem from that life force. You felt mine back when I healed you. Do you remember?”

Syney nodded and felt her face turn red. She remembered a lot from that time, most of which she didn’t want to bring up now with her father and her boyfriend present.

Gabe gave her a smirk and took her hand in his. “Close your eyes, and try to feel my life force.”

She did as asked. She was about to give up when she felt a stream of power rush through her. She felt as if she could do anything. Then suddenly it was gone. She opened her eyes; Gabe had stepped away from her.

“You have a life force just like that. That’s where your power comes from,” he said, walking back to his lawn chair.

Syney took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She became aware of everything in her body. She was hungry, and her feet hurt. She felt her heartbeat and the air going in and out of her lungs. Then suddenly she felt her power. It was there, pulsing through every part of her body. She had felt it before; she knew now. Whenever she did magic. That night when she had been with Hunter; the amortor—that was when it had been the strongest. She felt the energy as it flowed to her hand, as she directed it there, and told her hand to take the energy, lots of it. She opened her eyes and stared at the bright-purple ball in her hand as it turned and sparkled. Excited about her creation, she smiled at Hadrian
but was met with a dark look. He was staring at the ground with an almost frightened expression.

“Syney,” Adam, said quietly, “let go of the energy.”

“But I got it!” she said, looking at him. He also was staring at the ground. Syney followed his gaze. The grass around her feet was changing from a luscious green to a dead and withered brown. She let go of the energy, but the grass didn’t turn back to green. “What was that? A beginner’s mistake? I’m only supposed to borrow the energy, right?”

Hadrian looked up at her but was silent.

“Only really powerful beings can take the full energy of something or someone,” Adam said slowly.

“You mean, like the Ancient One?”

“Oh, my God.”

Syney looked at Noelle, but she was no longer reading Hadrian’s notes; she was looking right at Syney. Syney could pull energy just like the Ancient one. Did that mean they were alike or…the same? The thought sent shivers down Syney’s spine. Syney swallowed and looked at Hadrian. “I think I’m done for the day.” She turned and walked onto the porch. “I’m starving. Please tell me there’s food.”

“It’ll be ready in bit. Sit and have some tea,” Becca said.

Syney sat down and picked up a cup. She took a sip as Adam sat next to her.

“It doesn’t mean anything except that you’re really powerful,” he said, placing a hand on her thigh.

“I’m like her.”

“No, you’re not. She takes the life forces of people. You just killed some grass.”

Syney looked at him. “What if I can’t control this?”

“You will. We’ll practice every day if we have to.”

She sighed and looked back at the others. Hadrian and Gabe were talking quietly to each other. Neither looked happy. This obviously hadn’t been part of their plan. Syney bit her lip and looked at the grass she’d been standing on. The thing that scared her the most was the amazing feeling she’d had while pulling that energy—she’d loved it.

Gabe poured three glasses of a thick red wine and handed two of them to Adam and Hadrian, keeping one for himself. He joined them at the large, round, wooden table in the center of the library and grabbed the nearest book. Adam watched Gabe flip through the pages then angrily toss it onto the large pile of discarded books. Adam knew Gabe the best, and even he wasn’t sure what the Vampire was thinking. He seemed fascinated with the power Syney had displayed but was visibly frustrated. Hadrian seemed equally annoyed. Adam had spent only one drunken night with the man the previous year, but he struck him as being very similar to Gabe—only Hadrian didn’t hide his emotions as well as Gabe did.

Hadrian laid one of the books open and pointed to a page. “This is a useful one.”

Gabe and Adam looked at it. It was a truth spell, one Adam had seen before. “That potion takes a month to prepare,” he said.

“She can start on it right away and have it in case she needs it,” Hadrian said, sticking a piece of paper in the book and adding the volume to a second pile of books with bookmarks in them. They had been searching the library for useful spells Syney could start using now as a way to practice her magic.

“How are we going to bring all these books back with us?” Adam asked, looking at the growing pile.

“In a bag,” Gabe said, grabbing another book.

Adam rolled his eyes. “You told me what happened with Raine. He was executed for having books just like this in his room. This is a pretty big risk.”

“One we need to take. We can’t keep Syney out here forever, but she needs to learn these spells. We’ll leave them in her room in the palace. The queen won’t do another search. If she’s playing the long game we think she is, her next moves will be friendly,” Gabe said.

“That’s a lot of guessing,” Adam said.

Gabe’s face remained neutral, but annoyance filled his eyes. “I know you two have a nice sweet thing going, but that doesn’t make you the lead on the Syney front.”

“No, Syney is the lead on the Syney front,” Adam said, which received an eye roll from Gabe. “What do you have against Syney being involved in all this? She’s the reason we’re here.”

“And she’s an emotionally driven teenager who doesn’t understand the danger of all this,” Gabe said.

Adam opened his mouth to argue when Syney walked in and took a seat next to Gabe. He had made sure she was sleeping before he had come back down to help with all this, but she looked wide-awake. She obviously was very good at pretending, he thought.

“I’m done with your underestimating me,” she said, glaring at Gabe.

“He’s not underestimating you—he’s protecting you,” Hadrian said, not looking up from the book in front of him.

“Protecting me how?”

“If you knew the risks everyone was taking, you’d talk them out of it and try to do everything on your own,” Hadrian told her. “A lot of people have died fighting for this cause, and a lot more are going to.”

Adam watched as Syney silently stared at the table for a while before taking a deep breath and picking up a pad of paper and a pen. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Writing down everything I’ve done or experienced that might be some kind of power,” she said. “Something might be useful.”

When she was done, she handed the list to Hadrian, who looked it over. “These are mostly Vilori powers. The ‘bad feeling’ sounds almost like a combination of Daemon and Magic User.”

“How so?”

“Amelia was prophetic. She had visions of the future, the far future. Daemons can feel an enemy. I always know who is a foe and means me harm,” Hadrian said.

“A blended power,” Gabe said softly. “Interesting.”

“The healing is Vilori. That’s something you need to practice. It’ll be very useful.”

Syney nodded. She looked at Adam and gave him a small smile. Then her smile fell slowly, and she shifted her gaze to Hadrian, her eyes widening. Adam looked between the two. If he had to guess, he’d say that Hadrian was talking to her in her mind. It was a Daemon power he’d only heard about and not experienced until recently. A lot of Daemon powers were in regard to the mind, taking things out and putting them in. Daemons couldn’t compel like Vampires could, but they could communicate with their thoughts. Syney had done it to him once already, although he was pretty sure she didn’t realize she’d done it. It had happened their first night here at Becca’s, while they were being intimate. She had projected her thoughts onto him, which was pretty much a pep talk to herself. Adam had thought it was cute and meant to mention it to her the next day but never got around to it what with so many other things going on.

Syney looked away from Hadrian and grabbed one of the books on the table. Adam wanted to ask if she was OK but decided against it to let her have some time to process everything. It was an odd sensation, thinking about someone other than yourself all the time. He had spent his whole life selfishly jumping from place to place, never staying long enough to set down roots. Every decision he’d ever made had been for himself, and now he was thinking of Syney as well. As much as he never wanted to be tied down with anyone, he liked being with Syney, thinking of her needs and wanting to be with her for longer than a weekend or a month or even a year. He loved her, and that fact no longer scared him.

“Why don’t we practice the healing?” Adam asked, moving over to sit next to Syney.

She looked at him. “But how? Don’t you heal right away?”

Adam shook his head.

“How can you remain ageless but not heal?”

“He doesn’t feed enough,” Gabe said, not looking at them.

“I eat just fine, thank you,” Adam said, glaring at him. “Part of how Vampires heal is connected to their drinking blood,” he told Syney. “I don’t need to drink blood, so I don’t. I found when I was younger that I didn’t need to drink it to survive. I assumed it is because I’m only half Vampire. The lack of aging isn’t connected to blood; it’s more like a power Vampires have. So when you cut me…” He pulled Syney’s knife off her belt and ran it along his palm, wincing slightly. “…I do bleed.”

“Although if you did drink blood, you wouldn’t bleed for very long,” Gabe said, his eyes still on the book in front of him. “Blood is connected to healing.”

Adam rolled his eyes and held his hand out to Syney.

Syney took his injured hand in her own and stared at the blood for a moment. “I should just be able to tell it to heal, right?”

Adam laughed. “I have no idea.”

“I watched Amelia do it once. She just concentrated, holding her hands over the wound, and then a blue light reached out and closed it,” Hadrian said, looking at them with interest.

“OK,” Syney said. She put one hand above and one below Adam’s hand and closed her eyes.

Adam watched her face as her lips thinned into a straight line and her nose crinkled slightly in concentration. She stayed that way for a while, but nothing happened.

“Do you love Adam?”

Adam looked at Gabe. “What does—”

“Do you love Adam?” Gabe repeated.

“Yes,” Syney said, not opening her eyes.

“Think about that instead of healing him.”

“That’s stu—”Adam stopped when his hand startled to tingle. He looked down as a blue light poured out of Syney’s hand. He smiled at her. “You got it.”

When Syney opened her eyes, the blue light disappeared. She moved her hand and rubbed some blood away. Half the cut was completely healed. “What about the other half?”

“I probably messed you up,” Adam said.

She shook her head. “I felt something happening, and then it stopped…before you said anything.”

Adam grabbed her hands. “Then we’ll keep practicing.”

She smiled and nodded.

“How about a calling spell?” Hadrian asked.

“What’s that?” Syney asked.

“When you call for something,” Gabe said.