Shadow's Awakening: The Shadow Warder Series, Book One (An Urban Fantasy Romance Series) (17 page)

“Hannah?” Conner said. His voice intruded on her secret fantasy, startling Hannah. Making a small sound of protest in the back of her throat, she scrambled to her feet, ducking her head to hide the hot flush of embarrassment in her pink cheeks. Clearly she couldn’t concentrate while Conner was touching her. Even with just his knees.

“Give me a sec,” she said. Hannah stared at the sky, soaking in the deep blue, trying to clear her mind. It was imperative that she learn to do this, Hannah reminded herself. This wasn’t the time to get distracted, especially not by a guy. Hopefully, she’d have plenty of time for sex later. When her life wasn’t such a mess. Taking a deep breath, Hannah walked in a loose circle, then dropped back down to the blanket. Still facing Conner, but with a foot of space around her, Hannah straightened her spine, prepared to try again.

This time, without Conner’s touch as a distraction, Hannah became aware of the yawning cavern inside her mind when she closed her eyes. She pushed back panic and tried to allow her conscious mind to flow into her deeper self.

“I think I have it,” she said, not sure that she did. “But’s it’s dark. There’s nothing there.”

“There is. You just can’t see it yet. Imagine a bright sun rising. You have to bring in the light before we can get started.”

“‘Kay,” Hannah said, absently. How was she supposed to bring in the light? Figuring she’d give it a shot, Hannah visualized a clear, deep blue sky. Hanging above the sky, she pictured a hot midday sun. Not the soft yellow sun of early spring, but the blinding sun of July.

Gradually, as she painted an imaginary picture of wispy clouds in a blue sky and the heat of the summer sun, Hannah became aware of the black emptiness fading into a hazy gray. When she tried to look around, the dark fell like a dropped curtain, drowning her fledgling sun.

With a breath, Hannah started again, carefully rebuilding the sun in her vibrant blue sky.

Again, the dark faded to a pale dawn. This time, it brightened to the electric blue sky and round yellow sun she’d been trying to create. The sun hung low in her sky, so vivid Hannah could feel the warmth of it in her mind just as she could feel the heat of the real sun on her face.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

“You’ve got it now, don’t you?” Conner asked, a smile in his voice.

“Yeah, I think I do.” She heard her wonder, but was too absorbed by what she’d done to be embarrassed.

“What do you see around you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m afraid to take my eyes off the sky and the sun. The last time I did that, they went away.”

“But now you can get them back. Keep the sky and sun in the back of your mind, but look around and tell me what you see.”

Hannah didn’t expect to see anything. Just more blue sky. That was all she’d imagined—the blue sky and the bright summer sun. A shock ran through her when she shifted her inner gaze down and found herself surrounded by a landscape not unlike the rolling green hills where she’d grown up.

“Wow,” she said.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Conner said. Hannah obeyed. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I think so. It’s weird.”

“What do you see?” Conner asked.

“It’s like I’m standing in the woods near my house. Not exactly the same, but almost just like home. I don’t get it. Is this what you see?”

“No. I can get a visual of my shield and a little more, but I’m guessing your mind has a lot more detail.”

“What do I do now?” Hannah asked, alarmed to find that tendrils of darkness were beginning to creep into her inner landscape. “I’m losing my light,” she said with a hint of panic.

“Refocus on the sun. It should become automatic, but for now you have to keep your attention on it.”

Hannah did as Conner said and was gratified to see the tendrils of darkness retreating.

“The way I understand it,” Conner said, “what you’re seeing is both an illusion and real. When you step into your mind, you see the place of your inner self and the manifestation of your power. So the first thing you need to do is build a wall around it.”

Since the forest inside her seemed to stretch for miles, that sounded like an impossible task. “It’s huge,” Hannah said. “How am I supposed to build a wall around it?”

“Think of it as a sphere. Like your mind is the universe and your consciousness—the forest—is a planet. You need to create a bubble around the planet.”

Hannah wrinkled her nose in doubt. Conner laughed again. “A bubble doesn’t sound very strong,” Hannah said.

“Maybe that’s the wrong word. Whatever you want to call it, it’s powered by your energy, so it’s pretty strong.”

“You lost me again. How is it powered by energy?”

“Shadows get their power directly from the energy of the physical world. You have the capacity to draw and process energy into almost anything. Heat, cold. You can use energy as a weapon or create fire. All of you are supposed to have telekinesis to some degree. I’ve heard some Shadows can literally move mountains. Some of you can’t handle electronics because you can’t control the electricity well enough. Shadows have all kinds of specific talents, I don’t know most of them, but it starts with energy. Once you get a feel for it, you should be able to fuel your shield automatically.”

“Okay, that’s weird. Except that I’ve always burned out watches really fast. I had to use an old-fashioned wind-up watch. And my cell phones kept breaking,” Hannah said. “Is that why I love being out in the sun so much?”

“Probably. It makes sense that Shadows would love the sun. Like charging a battery.”

Hannah was listening to Conner, but half her attention was taken up by exploring the scene around her. She’d gotten the courage up to walk around some. The woods in her mind looked like the woods at home, but they were quiet. No animals scurried in the underbrush. There was no insect song in the leaves above her. Hannah looked, but she didn’t see anything living other than the plants and herself.

What she did see were a few faint paths through the trees. Paths that she was pretty sure hadn’t been there when her sun had first risen. Paths that all began in the small clearing where she stood. Hannah suspected that they’d appeared based on her location and would follow her if she moved around. Part of her was eager to explore, but she needed to focus on the shields first.

“Look into the sky of your mind,” Hannah heard Conner say. She returned her attention to the clear, rich, summer blue. “Now imagine a thread of energy above you. Like a steel wire.”

Hannah forced her imagination to go to work and found that, in this place, thought flowed into reality with fascinating ease. The thread appeared immediately, conjured from nothing. It crackled across her sky like an errant streak of lightning. As if sensing her success, Conner continued.

“Now, make more. As if you’re making a web, or a net.”

Hannah fed her thoughts farther into the growing mass of glowing threads, pushing them apart and winding them together until she had an uneven net, spun from intention, covering the entire sky. When it reached the edges of her vision, Hannah instinctively continued to weave the net, sending it farther until both sides came together in a crackling snap. It was rough and a little uneven, but the web created an envelope of energy around her consciousness just as Conner had said. Power pulsed through it, matching the beat of her heart, flowing through the messy strands as if alive. Relaxing back into her hands, Hannah kept her eyes closed and watched the shield flicker above her. Crude, but she imagined it would be effective. It was also ugly.

“Is it always going to look like this?” she asked. “It’s messy.”

“The visual fades as you get used to holding it,” Conner said. “Send yourself into your mind and tell me if you feel a difference now that you have a shield. Once you learn what it feels like, you’ll be able to monitor it all the time. After a while it’ll be automatic, like breathing.”

Drawing her direct attention from her new mental safety net, Hannah searched for any hint of static. Nothing. Her mind was completely clear. But this close to Conner it was impossible to tell if her new shield was really helping. Slowly opening her eyes, Hannah kept part of her awareness anchored in that green, wooded sanctuary in her head. A moment of dizziness hit her as she saw both the actual mountain forest and her personal woods at the same time. A second later her perspective shifted and she was able to bring the real world into focus.

The shield held with the smallest bit of attention, as if it was meant to be there. She’d been afraid it would begin to slip when she opened her eyes, but unlike her first attempt at creating a sun, the safety net she’d woven was fixed securely around her. Her mind hungered for the protection, and was eager to maintain it.

“I want to try again. Walking away from each other.”

“No,” Conner said. “It’s too soon.”

“We don’t have a lot of time. I promise I’ll stop if I feel anything wrong.” Hannah had to learn to sink or swim now, while Conner was still there to catch her.

The second experiment was an unqualified success. Hannah got halfway up the hillside and Conner was almost out of sight before he called a halt. She hadn’t felt the smallest wisp of the fuzzy static in her head. The odd sense of being tugged back to Conner had shifted from a sharp pulling sensation to a more general desire to stay close. Even in this short time, the shield was becoming a part of her. It still required a fraction of her awareness, but already it was taking on a life of its own. Soon it would cease to be something she was doing and would become just another layer of who she was.

Hannah sat back down in the clearing and tipped her head back, soaking in the energizing heat of the sun. Better than a shot of espresso, the spring sunshine gave her a much needed boost. The rough shield she’d built was a relief, but creating it had been exhausting.

Aware that learning shielding was just the beginning, Hannah tried to get her head in gear for the next task. She was flushed with her success at building and maintaining the shield. But still bone tired.

“It’s so simple, now that it’s there,” she said, eyes closed, watching the flexible energetic net in her mind. On its own, the glowing strands of energy were easing into neat alignment. Every second that passed found them shifting, weaving themselves into an impenetrable barrier. If she’d had any doubt about being a Shadow, it was gone.

“If I’d known how to do this a few years ago, everything would be different,” she said. A sobering thought. The static had been the beginning of the destruction of her life. Without the stress of her illness, would her mother have had a heart attack? Would Glenn have been infected? Regret stabbed through her. Such a small thing, creating this shield. The work of an afternoon, and it might have saved her family.

“Don’t think about it,” Conner said. Hannah opened her eyes to see him watching her with sympathy. He was right. She couldn’t go back, only forward.

“So, what’s next? Are you going to show me how to bend spoons with my mind?”

“Maybe. We’re going to give the telekinesis a try. All Shadows are supposed to have the ability. But I don’t know how to teach you. The shields were easy. Shadow shields are different, but at least I’ve built shields of my own. I absolutely can’t move things with my mind.”

“We figured out the shields,” Hannah said, squaring her shoulders. “We can figure out this too.”

Conner watched Hannah’s face screwed up in concentration and fought not to laugh. She was beautiful, especially without all the bruises. But when she wrinkled her nose and squinted her eyes at him she was pure cute. Conner found cute no less attractive. He hadn’t thought through the effects of asking her to use her nascent Tk abilities on him.

The physical brush of her mind on his body was one of the most arousing sensations he’d ever felt. The pressure of her mind skated over his skin, light and warm as fingertips, brushing his face, sliding down his neck and centering on his chest before Hannah took a breath and pushed him. Hard.

Conner rocked backward, holding his own but floored by the imprint of Hannah in her mental touch. Everything that was Hannah, distilled into the stroke of her thoughts over his body. Conner fought not to reach for her. He’d almost kissed her earlier when they’d been getting ready to try the shield. Their knees had been touching as they sat on the blankets, her hands in his. Hannah had leaned into him, eyes closed, lips curved in a sensual half smile. A second later she’d leapt to her feet, clearly flustered, and paced away, missing the raw lust all over Conner’s face.

Conner was tired of telling himself he couldn’t touch her. It had only been a day, but his restraint was already wearing thin. It seemed he had all the discipline in the world when it came to being a soldier, but none at all where Hannah was concerned.

Fine then. It wasn’t like he was planning on running off and setting up a love nest with her. Their time together was on a short clock. Hannah was an adult. Conner couldn’t let himself make the first move. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. But if she touched him, he wasn’t going to deny himself. A kiss wouldn’t hurt anyone. There was no way it would stop at a kiss, but Conner pushed that away. One thing at a time.