Guardian Of The Grove Read Free Page B

weren’t even talking. With all that had happened over the last few days, I found that odd, especially when they had promised me breakfast. I pushed open the door to the kitchen in time to see my father getting hit in the face and a man slitting my mother’s throat.
    I wasn’t going to let it happen, not again, not this time. I rushed into the room, calling on my gift to send the two men by my mother flying into the walls. They hadn’t been shielded, and that was their first mistake. Their bodies made sickening crunches, and they fell to the ground in a heap. The man beating my father pulled out a gun, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. I placed a hand over my mother’s throat and felt the power pour into her. Her skin knit together under my hand, and she let out a gasp for air as the wound finally closed.
    The man with the gun looked at me with disbelief on his face. I continued to ignore him as I helped my mother to her feet. I moved to position myself between her and the man with the gun, and slowly moved her back toward the kitchen door. “Mom, go wait outside.”
    “What about your father? We can’t leave him,” she said with panic written all over her face.
    She couldn’t see the look on his face like I could. I kept her behind me so that she couldn’t see it; I didn’t want her to be here for this. I kept her out of the kitchen and kept my eyes on my father. His eyes screamed out for us to go, that we should leave him and save ourselves. That wasn’t going to happen, not this time. “Mom, I can’t worry about you and him at the same time. Go outside. I promise that we will all be together soon.”
    She tried to push around me, and the man with the scar on his face only smiled, turning the gun toward us. My father shouted, “Damn it, do what he says!”
    I turned toward my mother. She looked shocked at his outburst. I put a hand on her shoulder. “It will be ok. I promise.” Then I pushed her down the hallway toward the front door.
    “That was touching, really it was, but you can’t possibly think that anything will ever be ok again.” He turned and fired the gun. I heard my mother’s screams from outside.
    I sighed with relief as the bullet bounced harmlessly away from my father. I had spent the time arguing with my mother creating a shield in front of my dad, just in case. It turned out that it had been the right call. My dad looked shocked now, and I understood why. By all accounts, he should have been dead with his brains splattered across the wall behind him. He reached up slowly and touched his face, almost not believing that the bullet hadn’t found its mark. He would be happy now but not when he got the bill for replacing the cabinet destroyed by the bullet meant for him.
    The man with the scar sneered at me. “That was a nice trick, but it won’t save you.”
    I motioned to my dad for him to leave, and unlike my mother, he ran out of the other side of the kitchen without looking back. As long as they got away, everything was ok. I wouldn’t let them sacrifice themselves for me. This time, it was my turn to save them. The gun swung back toward me, and I laughed as the bullets bounced harmlessly away. He was going to have to do better than that to try and stop me.
    I picked up the knife from the ground, the one his men had used to slit my mother’s throat. It felt heavy in my hand as if it carried with it a great burden. One of the men I had tossed to the side stirred. I used my gift again to send him flying back across the room and into his unconscious friend. This time, he didn’t try and get up again.
    The leader of their group looked at me with hate filled eyes, his scar pulled down into a tight line when he spoke. “So it’s going to be like that, is it.” He tossed the gun to the side, and a stream of blue fire leaped from his hands.
    Instead of dodging around the fire, I matched it by sending a stream of water from my own hands. The flames intensified as if he