Bound Guardian Angel Read Free

up
but couldn’t. Whatever was going on inside his body wouldn’t let
him.
    The howls and whoops of the others echoed in
his ears, suddenly sounding far away, like he was in a cave.
    He clawed, trying to find purchase on
anything that would give him leverage to push himself up.
    Mason turned the lump of quartz over and
over in his hands, sneering. “I think I’ll keep this,” he said with
pompous propriety.
    Rage rocketed through Trace’s muscles. No!
That was his rock. His prize. He would protect it. Mason would never take what belonged to him!
    Righteous fury ballooned within Trace’s
soul.
    “Better yet . . .” Mason
glanced over his shoulder toward the pond. He laughed, and the
sound was like acid to Trace’s ears.
    What happened next played out in slow
motion, stretching through time, even though it only took seconds.
Mason fisted the piece of quartz, cocked his arm, and threw the
rock as hard as he could toward the center of the pond.
    Trace’s heart froze. His gaze zoomed in on
his prized treasure as it hurtled toward the overcast sky then
down, down, down . . .
    The moment it broke the water’s surface,
Trace’s right arm shot out almost of its own free will, his fingers
splayed.
    “NOOOO!”
    All the coiled energy inside him blasted
from his hand.
    The earth tremored as a low boom sounded.
The trees shuddered. An instant later, each of the children
catapulted away from him as if they’d been snapped back by a
puppeteer’s string.
    Seconds ticked by in the aftermath, but all
Trace could do was stare at his hand, his heart racing, his blood
roaring in his ears. How had he done that? What sorcery had he
inherited from his mother to have such power? Was this the darkness
she’d spoken of and warned him about so many times? He’d felt its
presence before and often toyed with making small objects move,
even though he’d been told not to. But he’d never felt such a
powerful force rise inside him with such intensity.
    It terrified him.
    Six pairs of eyes turned toward him in
horrified awe.
    They were no longer laughing, too frightened
to do anything but gawk.
    They were right. He was a freak.
    “Demon!” Mason’s eyes were wide with fear.
He scurried to his feet. “You’re a demon!” His legs cranked so fast
as he tried to flee that his feet went out from under him. He fell,
caught himself on his arms, pushed off the ground, and sprinted
away as the others did the same, crying and screaming in
terror.
    Inside his cell, Trace’s eyes flew open as
the memory came to an abrupt end. He was curled in a fetal position
on the floor, his body a shivering heap, his arms hugging his torso
as if that could stop the teeth-chattering chills drawing his
muscles into tight, spasming masses simply by holding himself.
    He’d survived two weeks in King Bain’s
dungeon without going mutant, yet after five minutes of flashing
back to the first time he’d lost control of his power—and the
ultimate price his mother had paid for his lack of discipline—he
was one breath away from tipping the scales. His vision was sharp
enough to see the feathery, microscopic cracks in the ceiling, his
hearing keen enough to hear the scratch of a pen on paper out at
the desk he’d passed on his way back to his cell. Shit was going
critical, and with his voice locking up inside his throat, he could
do nothing but wince and curl more tightly into himself, praying
Micah would get there soon and bring him back from the brink before
he lost control altogether and lost his soul to the beast.

 
    Chapter 2
    Cordray stepped out of the bar. There went thirty
minutes of her life she would never get back. All that mind
sweeping, and all she had to show for it was a snippet of thought
about an underground fight club named Grudge Match. That and a bad
taste in her mouth from watered-down beer.
    She checked the time on her black MTM
Special Ops Predator watch. Maybe the nine-hundred-dollar watch was
a bit overkill, because, really, when