The Darkening (Dawn of Ascension #2)

Enter my mind, she sent.

Had he heard her right? He met her gaze again. “You want me to mind-dive?

Deep mind engagement?”

“I want you to know me. We’re in this, Samuel. And my instincts tell me that we’re in trouble, real trouble. The better you know who I am, the better we’ll be able to function together. But I can feel your hesitation.” Hesitation didn’t begin to describe what he felt. “I have to be honest with you; I’m completely opposed to the idea because I won’t be able to return the favor. My power is unstable. I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you. But beyond that, Vela, that prison was the worst nightmare you can imagine.”

Vela met his worried gaze, squinting as if in pain. “You’re afraid I’ll see those images.”

“Mind-diving doesn’t just release one image, it releases from the pool of everything I’ve experienced. I doubt it’s controllable.”

“No, I guess not.” She thought about her marriage. Samuel would see it all, the good and the bad, the love-making, the fights. She’d once thrown out an entire salmon dinner because of some comment Jeff had made.

She chuckled softly.

“What’s so funny? I don’t think this is funny at all.” So, she told him about the salmon and he started to laugh. He kept chuckling on and off. “Please don’t tell me you think that’s your worst flaw that you get ticked off and toss out perfectly good food.”

“No, I guess not. But I’ll tell you what I do know; that I trust you enough to let you in, enough to let you see whatever is there.” She forced herself to relax, to breathe. She thought about her darkening ability, about Duncan and Merl, and that she had just had mind-blowing sex with Warrior Samuel. For months now, she’d been feeling an internal pressure, a need to be doing something, she just hadn’t known what. She had thought it would be related to Fiona’s rehab center, now she wasn’t sure at all because this felt right, being with Samuel and engaging her darkening power.

A new path had grabbed her and she didn’t want to hold back, not now. She suspected that her life, her survival, would depend on forging ahead with strength and commitment, that nothing less would do.

She shifted her body so that her legs slid off of his and she lay completely on her side next to him. She planted a hand on his muscular chest and for a split-second almost got lost in his physicality.

She blinked a couple of times and cleared her head. “Do this, Samuel. I don’t know the why of it, but it’s important.

Do some deep-mind engagement and let’s see what happens.

Okay?” He shifted toward her and kissed her, then leaned back and closed his eyes. She watched him for a moment. He had fine lines beside his eyes and even now a certain tightness characterized his expression.

When she felt his mind approach hers, she closed her eyes as well. But when she started to slide her hand off his chest, he caught and held it, which made her heart leap in a way she didn’t think was wise at all. The first flutter of love awakened in her heart. Was it too much to ask that she might actually fall in love with this man as well?

She set the thought aside and relaxed her mind. She felt him approach like a soft caress. Mind-diving was so different from telepathy, which was essentially a mere laying of words over the mind.

But this, as Samuel pushed the barrier of her mind and slipped inside, was incredible. He was there now, a formidable presence in her mind, more than she’d expected. She understood something about him right then, that Samuel didn’t really know the extent of his dark power, this Third Earth ability birthed during his captivity.

Of course, a new problem emerged since she really liked him being inside her mind. Her body heated up instantly, her breasts tingling.

He chuckled softly. You like me here.

Your scent is flowing from you.

I’m tempted all over again. Next time, be inside me like this.

He moaned. Okay, this isn’t helping.

It seems to take so little.

Right. She forced herself to breathe.

Focus on where you were born.

Good idea. She aimed her thoughts into the past, remembering her parents and living in Philadelphia Two in the early 1800s, in what was then, by comparison, a small town. Learning to fly, almost drowning when she flew too close to a lake and her wings got caught in the water, which had been a nightmare. Riding horses and loving it. Growing up and falling in and out of love. Learning to play the piano, expected of a woman in those days. Then choosing a life of travel for a long time, folding from town to town, getting to know her local American world, north and south, learning several languages.

She’d had itchy feet, never wanting to stay long in one place. She’d taken many lovers and felt Samuel tense when a lovemaking image would flow through her thoughts.

Then a close call with a death vampire in 1922, slain by a Militia Warrior, a man who had finally spoken to her heart deeply enough that she’d married him. Jeff Barker. The grief of being childless and overcoming that grief. Of living with him for decades until his death five-years-ago. How much she’d loved making their house a true home, which she still lived in, a small piece of property near the downtown Borderland. Without thinking, she fell into her grief, remembering how often she’d wept, screamed, shouted. At one point, she almost pulled back, but Samuel whispered through her mind, No, let me see it.

Please.

She felt his permission to just feel all that she had lost so she did. He caressed her hand at the same time. What surprised her was that as she remembered Jeff’s funeral pyre, Samuel’s presence within her mind became a tremendous comfort.

He even reached for her and pulled her on top of him and held her in his arms as once again she wept for the man she had loved and lost to the war.

Somewhere in that shedding of grief, Samuel withdrew from her mind so that when she stopped crying she felt an emptiness that stunned her. But he cradled her gently, the heat of his male body soothing her. She sighed heavily.

“You loved him.”

“So very much. But thank you for being with me like this. I don’t feel quite so heartsick right now.”

“Good. You’re an amazing woman.”

“No, I’m not.” She chuckled. “I’m just me. I know I don’t have Havily’s style and ambition or Endelle’s flamboyance and power. I don’t see myself fitting in with these incredible women. I’m just me.”

“Then you don’t see yourself clearly, how you picked up and left home to travel at a time when even female ascenders didn’t move around all that much. And then when you married your warrior, how you gave yourself completely to marriage, nothing held back. That’s a great quality to have.”

“But I have to work at it. The reason I traveled the way I did wasn’t just because I thought it would fun or enriching, but because when I almost drowned I became afraid of the world and afraid to live. Traveling was a way to overcome that.”

“But don’t you see, most people don’t even take that step. They stay stuck.

Shit.”

“What?”

“Like me. I’m stuck. This is the first time I’ve seen even a pinpoint of light at the end of this tunnel.”

“Maybe it would be a good thing to at least try a mind-dive with me. I mean, you had a life before being captured.

Maybe you could just work to release those images.” She felt his resolution, however, that he was determined to keep his years of torture from her. So, she let it go.

Instead, she asked him what his favorite food was - lasagna - and a dozen other things that he could answer freely, which he did. He’d been a Militia Warrior since his ascension out of St.

Louis One in 1908. He’d served as part of many civic policing forces throughout North America Two, battling death vampires in a squad of four warriors night in and night out.

He liked tequila, maybe a little too much. He spent plenty of time at the Blood and Bite, but refused to answer specific questions about the mortal women who frequented that establishment. He’d only been assigned to the Phoenix Metro area six months before he was taken.

“I’ve been a warrior all my life.

Even on Mortal Earth, I’d intended on becoming a Marine when I received my call to ascension.” By now she lay on her side next to him, leaning her head on her hand, her elbow on the bed supporting her so she could look at him as he spoke. He still lay on his back, his arm over his head.

“What was that like?” she asked, curious as all Twolings were, born on Second Earth, about the experience of a rite of ascension. “I’d love to mind-dive just to see what it was like for you. Did you have a Guardian of Ascension?” All really powerful ascenders received Guardians of Ascension to keep them safe from the enemy who wanted to either subvert them and use their power or to kill them outright.

He shook his head. “No, not at all.

Nothing like that. I had a liaison officer who was so bored with her job that I—” He cut off his thought.

“What?” she cried. Then she shoved him with her hand. “You bonked her.” He smiled but he looked embarrassed as well. “What can I say?

That pretty much summed up my rite of ascension. I spent three days in the sack with her.” Vela laughed. “She didn’t want more afterwards?”

“No. We both knew it was just sex and besides, I went into the Militia Warrior Training Camp right afterward.”

“Straight away? Not even one question that this was the right path?”

“Nope. I knew what I was. But let me tell you, the day I mounted my wings for the first time was unbelievable.” He turned to look at her, his arm still angled over the top of his head. “You want to go flying some time?” She moaned softly. “I’d love it. I haven’t been flying—” she broke off, took a deep breath, then added, “Not in five years. I mount my wings of course to keep them healthy, but no, I haven’t been flying in a long time.”

“Then we’ll go. Have you ever flown off the Mogollon Rim in Sedona?”