Dangerous Calling (The Shadowminds) Read Free

sharpened my awareness on the weight of it, the shape and the balance, then I felt around for what was available. The easiest source to pull from was, of course, Diana. If I’d wanted to kill her. It took a huge amount of concentration and focus to pull without hurting the humans around me, but after months of practice, I was growing more confident.
    It was a still night, unfortunately, but it was plenty hot. Five miles away, the muddy Pearl River meandered its way to the gulf, but it was too far off for its slow current to be much use. The heat would have to be enough. I focused on the temperature and drew it in.
    Nothing happened at first. When I had to be careful like this, I was slow. As I pulled in more and more of the heat energy of the night, the chassis of the old car creaked. My breath frosted in the air around me, and feathery tentacles of ice formed where my feet touched the crumbling asphalt. The air was humid enough that water vapor crystallized in the air, grew heavy and fell. The chassis groaned and the car broke free of the earth, hovering a foot and a half in the air. Around me, it was snowing.
    I held it for as long as I dared, until the ice at my feet reached the gas pump to my left and crept up the discolored chrome structure like rust. I set the car down. It landed with only the barest bounce as the tires took on the full weight of the frame again. I turned to Diana, whom I’d been ignoring for her own safety.
    She said, “I believe you.”
    “You said you needed help,” I prompted.
    “It’s not about me.”
    “That’s fine.” My fists tightened. Did she have a kid with this guy? If the bastard had hurt a child, I wasn’t going to bother with what passed for due process in our community. “Why don’t we go somewhere safe and talk about it?”
    She nodded slowly and took another step toward me. I turned and led her to Shane’s Camaro. Halfway there, the sound of her footsteps stopped.
    “Diana?”
    She’d frozen in the middle of the driveway. Her irises had gone totally black—a sure sign of a shadowmind using her powers.
    My first thought was that Shane had been right to worry. It was a trap, and this girl was about to stop my heart.
    Well, she could try.
    I abandoned etiquette and reached for her mind, but I came up short against mental walls more impenetrable than any I’d ever encountered. She didn’t just have shields, she had defenses, and she was actively keeping me out. I gathered my own power, ready to protect myself, but the attack never came. Diana hit her knees on the uneven asphalt.
    “No...” she said, but not to me. She swayed back and forth with her head in her hands. “No, no...too late.” He eyes snapped back into focus. “You have to leave. I shouldn’t have come.”
    “Diana, whoever’s after you, I’m not afraid of him. I can protect you, okay? I won’t let him hurt you.”
    “You don’t understand.” She scrambled to her feet and backed away from me. “I’ve put you in danger, I’ve put you both in danger.”
    “I can take care of myself, all right? Just come with me, we’ll go somewhere safe, we can talk—”
    She bolted.
    “Diana!”
    She sprinted back to her car. I tore after her, but she was quick. By the time I got close she was already peeling out, driver’s side door open and flapping as she fishtailed.
    “Stop!”
    She tore out of the station and down the middle of the deserted road. I ran after her, reaching out with my powers.
    If I hadn’t cared about her safety, it would have been easy to stop her. I could’ve blown out her tires and crippled the car in an instant. The other option was drawing energy straight out of the internal combustion engine, but pulling power like that was a risk. Working that fast, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to avoid draining energy from Diana, too, and there was too much risk she’d lose control of the car. So I settled for yelling and waving my arms. Like an idiot.
    I ran a good four hundred yards