A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 34 Ahleena's Revenge

       

Chapter 34 Ahleena's Revenge

"-gonna unleash everything I have straight down and burn every last thing in that hole. That should end it." Jace said, his steel-laced voice sounding like it was millimeters away from Callin's ears.

Callin flinched to the side, his claws baring in his rising panic. His own heartbeat was a staccato thunder, a rushing storm of liquid, rising and ebbing impossibly fast. Two levels up, a fly flew around a bedroom, occasionally slamming into a glass window. Its buzzing seemed to reverb inside Callin's bones for a moment, and when it impacted the glass, the sharp sound snapped his head back as if he were physically struck.

He gnashed his fangs around him, unable to help himself, then followed that with a series of wild, desperate swings with his razor-edged claws. Slashing at what he knew not. The cutting whoosh his claws made in the air hammered inside the very core of his ears, pulling a whine of agony up into his throat.

Just as suddenly as it began, his hearing dropped back to his normal level. Not dulled like it had been for the last couple of hours, but back to where it normally was. He found himself panting, on his knees on the cold floor, sweat tracing chilly trails down his forehead. He cautiously lay flat on his back and closed his eyes, trying to still his racing heart, his racing mind.

Confusion swirled his thoughts around, driven by a paintbrush of chaos, fueled by fear. Fear that his powers were becoming unstable, that they would tear him apart from the inside. And kill anybody too close to him when it happened. Ahleena had warned him about his powers going Alpha many times. He found himself looking inside. Seeing that sickening frigid, flickering gray light in the holes of his walls glowing brighter than ever before. Seeing for the first time that it was somehow tied to his power and the rage inside.

"Callin? Are you alright?" Jacob's mental voice popped inside his head.

"Stay out of my mind!" Callin thought-snarled back, terrified that gray light would sense Jacob, would consume him as it consumed his walls.

He felt what little control he still had ebbing away, felt the beast inside rising up like a volcano, a fiery line of power etching down his spine and spreading outwards. For some reason, it felt like he truly had no control, as if he had no choice about how consumed by rage he was becoming. It happened so fast he barely had time to fear it. Then his logical, thinking mind was completely buried under the killing rage.

With a demonic shriek, he spun and slashed the wall, needing to lash out at something, anything. The tiny bits of blue power sparking at the tips of his claws scattered up and down the wall in both directions, arcing wildly, searing the wall and filling the hall with smoke. His claws had cut through the concrete wall as easily as if it were made of clay, leaving five deep, smoking gouges. Callin threw back his head and howled out his fury, claws raised overhead, as his control slipped even farther.

He took a step forward, then froze in place as his entire body suddenly was enveloped in snapping, crackling lines of blue power. It was like he was covered head to toe in an ever-shifting web of harsh blue lightning. And every time that web whipped and snapped, it sent bolts of searing pain deep into his bones. It was agony on a level so deep that he was momentarily immobilized by it, then he collapsed and curled into a ball. He sunk his own claws deep into his face and held on, mindlessly writhing on the floor, unaware that the tortured, animalistic keening sound filling the hall was his own voice.

In the Med room, a flicker of blue power rippled down the marble statue of Ahleena. And a moment later, the bone armor covering her began to ripple like water on a pond, disturbed by falling raindrops. Then it began to slide, pouring off of her and oozing to the floor, gathering in a shivering puddle, still lit by random flashes of blue electrical power. Once it was completely gathered into a single puddle on the floor, it began to slide towards the door, rippling and shivering the entire way. Noiseless and down low.