A Touch Of Lightning (COMPLETED!)

Chapter 82 Psi Worms

A Touch Of Lightning Chapter 82

Callin leaned on the railing, looking down at the front lawn of the mansion. The lawn was empty, except for a single red-haired girl, standing alone. Standing still, her head down, her hands in fists at her side. She looked like her namesake, Mirage. An apparition that shimmered with beauty, and unreality. Something there, right in front of your eyes, but not truly real.

"She goes back to that spot on the lawn every day, doesn't she?"

Callin looked up as Carmen stepped out onto his balcony, his eyes haunted. "Yes."

Carmen looked out at Mirage, seeing a sister she hadn't known she had. Seeing one incomprehensibly wounded. Seeing something that she hadn't believed was possible.

Her power was a Healers power. She had always known she held a nearly perfect link to that limitless golden entity, and ever since her power had gone Alpha she had believed there was nothing she couldn't heal. Except now, she was facing it. She couldn't help Mirage.

Callin had explained that he and Mirage had carried her back out of that in-between world of gray emptiness, after her power had caged the Layla beast forever. That had been two weeks ago, and Mirage hadn't yet spoken one word to anyone, besides those two words "Hello sister." when Carmen had woven her back together.

"Jacob says he will not enter her mind in any way, not even to try to telepathically speak with her. He says it would destroy him instantly. He said..." Carmen trailed off, rethinking how much she should tell Callin about what Jacob had said.

Callin caught it, and turned to face her, his eyes dark. "What else did he say? You know you cannot lie to me, Carmen."

Carmen looked at him like she was seeing someone being burned alive. It felt like that to her, watching how he hurt for Mirage. And she didn't know how to feel about it all, herself. Her attraction to Callin had not lessened. In fact, everything that had happened had only strengthened it, so much so that she could barely sleep.

"He said her mind has all the elements of a Psi-worm in it."

Callin looked blank for a moment, then his expression went from stunned horror, to dark fury, in a split second.

"I don't care what he said! We can help her! If we can find Raina and Ahleena, you can link up with them, the three of you can help her, I know it!"

Carmen didn't say anything. She knew, as well as he did, that Raina and Ahleena were in the Other. That inverse reality that was directly tied into the Flayer and the Weaver power. And just like him, she knew he could never go back there.

The Berserker was still inside of him. It would see that black power moving through all living things there, and it would go insane. It would destroy that entire world, it would finish the path the Layla beast had tried to set him on.

It would finish tearing a hole between Earth and that place, as the Labs had been trying to do. Carmen was about to reply to him, but then movement out on the lawn caught her attention. She gasped as a jagged column of flickering colors appeared on the lawn by Mirage. It was utterly hypnotic, and she felt herself crumpling to the floor as the image of it invaded her thoughts and left her paralyzed.

She could still see, though, and she saw Callin trembling as he fought back that invading storm of power. His own vicious blue power was beginning to glow in his eyes, and she silently cheered him on, willing him to fight this off, whatever it was.

Then, abruptly, he shook his head and snarled as he broke its effect on him, and he leapt over the railing, dropping thirty feet to the lawn below, moving in a blurring sprint towards Mirage. He felt a sickening sense of dreadful recognition as he thought about how that color storm had tried to overtake his mind.