*all rights to the original author*
I was so mentally exhausted that I didn’t have the energy to do anything but walk. I had no more fight in me. No Grand Canyon this time. No Miami Beach or Mount Rushmore. Just up my street and down the next.
Eventually I ended up in the park. It was deserted since the sun was starting to set, so I decided it was the perfect place to sulk, and found the nearest bench. I lay down, closed my eyes, and tried to empty my mind. But I couldn’t rid my brain of my problems until I felt a faint surge of energy pop up around me. It startled me, but it was only the street lamps turning on as it became dark.
I don’t know what happened then, but I just snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. I hated the energy I felt. Hated it! No matter what I did or where I went, I couldn’t escape it.
My hands flew up, and with a frustrated scream, I pushed the energy away from me, sending it back to those lights with as much force as I was capable of. It was like pure rage shot out from the palms of my hands in the form of lightning bolts that went whizzing across the park.
I didn’t just burst the bulb of the lamppost I was aiming at—I blew the whole freaking pole out of the ground.
For a split second, the whole world came to a stuttering stop, and I blinked down at my hands. I’d not only controlled the lightning, but it somehow felt twice as powerful as it had at Lauren’s cabin. And I felt stronger too. I wasn’t fatigued like I’d been then. My muscles weren’t weak.
I didn’t know how I’d managed it, but I was sure I could do it again. Yeah, somewhere deep down I was vaguely aware of what I was doing. But it felt too good to release all that pent-up rage. Way too good. So before I knew it I had blasted two more streetlights.
The power was intoxicating. I mean, there I was in the middle of a public park, where anyone and their mother’s dog could have seen me, or even been severely hurt by my actions, but I hadn’t stopped to think about it. It was like I wasn’t in touch with reality anymore. At least not until I heard my name being called.
"Camila!" Carter screamed frantically. "Stop it before you kill somebody!" He startled me so badly that I instinctively whirled around and let go another burst of lightning, which obliterated a small tree just to his left.
"Whoa, Camila! It’s just me! Cut the pyrotechnics before someone sees you!" I looked in the direction Carter was pointing. A crowd was already gathering around the mess in the street, and now they were all squinting at me through the dark, trying to see what had blown up the tree.
Reality started to catch up to me and I panicked. My instinct to protect myself kicked in and without thinking I grabbed Carter and took off. Seconds later I was dropping him on the front steps of the school.
It took him a few minutes to recover from traveling at superspeed. And it gave me great satisfaction, twisted as it may be, when he hurled all over the bushes. It was enough of a distraction that I could finally think rationally again. Well, as rationally as I was capable of where Dave Carter was concerned.
"You do not want to mess with me right now, Carter!"
"I didn’t realize you had any control over the lightning stuff," he said after wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
Not that I would have shot a lightning bolt through him any more than I would through Zayn, but like Malik, Carter didn’t know that, so I held my palm out in his direction. "You want to find out just how much control I have?"
Carter waved off my threat. "You’re not going to hurt me, Camila. You don’t have it in you." Okay, maybe he was a little smarter than Zayn, but I wasn’t in the mood to play around, and his cockiness wasn’t cute like Lauren’s. Not even close. I had him pinned to the ground before he could blink, and he grunted beneath the pressure my fists were putting on his chest. "You’re so sure about that?"
