Divine Blue [Book One]

Chapter Thirty

She did as she had done before, sending the blinding wind throughout the room. Sarai was still standing opposite her many feet away, but she hadn't made a move for some time. Taylor turned her attention to all of the disarray that was unfolding in the room once more, focusing all of her might on keeping it strong. As suddenly as it had happened before, a severe white force knocked Taylor to the ground. As she fell, she could see Sarai's eyes were illuminated, her energy escaping them.

Just as Taylor had been instructed, and even though she had fallen, she kept her mind on the room. She didn't skip a beat, continuing to concentrate on the energy in the room.

Sarai signaled to her from across the room to shut it down. Taylor obliged.

"Excellent, Taylor. You didn't break away."

Taylor nodded as she had been most of the evening. The feedback felt shallow.

"The next exercise we will work on will be to use your power directly against mine, to ward it off."

Taylor readied herself for what was to come next.

"Now, normally, as you saw from our last exercise, the use of power can be unexpected. Even if you do expect it, it's not wise to assume how much strength it possesses or what it might do to you. But for tonight, you will practice with me under expected conditions."

"OK," Taylor said to her.

"As soon as you see the light of my palms, you need to prepare yourself to put your own against mine."

Sarai held her palms out and each of them began to glow with a bright white light. Taylor, in response, held her own out and summoned the power within her to her hands. She could feel them tingle as they lit.

Sarai threw a burst in Taylor's direction. Taylor, acting on cue, threw her own burst just milliseconds later. The two bursts of power coalesced in the center of the room, one trying to overtake the other.

Taylor continued feeding her current, but she remembered the lesson from earlier with the fireplace. Taylor let go of her beam of light as she gripped onto the power she had already gathered. Sarai's burst of light moved closer to Taylor without Taylor's to combat it.

Quickly, Taylor sent a short burst at Sarai's. Sarai's beam of light flickered out for a moment and then returned. Taylor sent out another short flare of light. This seemed to kick back Sarai's. Sarai responded by taking back all of her power. Taylor, confused, let go of her own. Without warning, Sarai sent out a bright spray of power and hurled it at Taylor. Before Taylor could react, the ball of white fury hit Taylor with a mighty punch. Taylor spun in the air and landed face first on the floor.

"Dammit!" Taylor exclaimed. She braced her weight against her hands and lifted herself from the floor. She turned back, looking at Sarai, who had a strange, arrogant smile planted on her face.

"You did very good, Taylor. You incorporated your exercise from earlier into your defense. But you took your foot off the gas in the middle of a battle. You must keep the power you have called upon accessible to you at all times."

"I see that now. I thought you were stopping."

"I don't stop until one of us is down."

"Duly noted."

"I think that will be enough for this evening. I really want you to continue reflecting on everything you have learned and think about how you want to use it the next time we meet."

Taylor nodded yet again. She put her large Eskimo coat and glasses back on. In a decision to discard with all of the insincere pleasantries, Taylor opened the front door and whipped out of the old Victorian home and into the night air. Taylor was fuming. Sarai's smug smile was plastered inside Taylor's mind. Taylor wondered if Sarai experienced some kind of innate angel pleasure from seeing Taylor fail. She also wondered if she could have misinterpreted it somehow. Maybe Sarai had been genuinely pleased with Taylor's progress. And she was a true blue? What did that even really mean? That she was more of an emotional pansy than all of the other half-angels of yore?