A Chain Across the Dawn by Drew Williams

Author:Drew Williams [Williams, Drew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

CHAPTER 7

Dinner that night was a subdued affair, despite the fact that it was excellent—I guess living primarily off whatever fish he could catch in the ocean beyond his villa had given Mo plenty of time to practice his piscine-related culinary skills. Tasty fish curry aside, though, the conversation about the Cyn—and the nature of his hate—was fresh in everyone’s minds, which tended to put a damper on their appetites.

Except for Sho. The discovery that our enemy was a member of a long-lost species even more powerful—and more dangerous—than we might have imagined notwithstanding, nobody ate like a Wulf adolescent.

After we’d finished up our meal and night began to fall, Mo went off to pray, Jane went off to prowl the grounds, Sho went . . . somewhere, I’m really not sure, and I stayed right at the big dining room table, having set up an acetylene torch on the fancy inlaid wood in front of me, terribly out of place among the finery and the delicate decorations. I stared into its flame for a moment, the only light source in the room other than the glow of Mo’s monitors and the moonlight falling from the windows.

Regardless of the fact that we had this Cyn trapped on Valkyrie Rock, where there was one zealot, there were more. That sort of focused hate didn’t just spring fully formed from the void; there was a belief out there, a dangerous one, and this particular Cyn was only a . . . a symptom of it. For all we knew, the whole damned race believed like he did. If I was going to learn to take on more of his kind, I was going to have to learn how to manipulate energy, just like they did. That was . . . that was just a fact.

I’d proven I could do it, back on Valkyrie Rock—I’d shifted the angle of his attack, just a little, but enough. Now I just needed to learn to do it without melting my brain. And, as Jane had taught me, the only way to get better at a thing was practice.

I reached out with my telekinesis, and tried to lift the flame free of the torch.

Ouch.

It felt as though I were grasping the fire with my bare hands, thrusting fingers deep into the flame, except it was my mind that was burning, not my palms. I growled soundlessly, snorted—hopefully not smoke—and tried again.

Ouch.

The goddamned fire didn’t even budge before I had to withdraw my “touch.” It might have been wiser to start with something less . . . energetic—a candle flame, rather than a welding torch—but I was afraid that I’d simply crush the wick rather than actually manipulate the fire. Plus, plunge into the deep end and all that. I’d shifted the flight path of a ball of primal energy made up of . . . whatever the hell the Cyn was actually made up of, or summoned to his being, or whatever: I could do this. I could do a simple torch flame if I only—

Ooouchgoddammit.

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