Free Love Beyond Sanity by Rebecca Royce Page A

Where did your parents come up with it?"
    "I have no idea. Weren't you listening?" She sounded exasperated. "I was taken from my parents—as were you—as a baby. I never knew them and their deaths set off a cycle that we are desperate to stop."
    "So this thing, this creature, that comes here and hurts me, she's real?"
    Charma sighed. "I doubt very much she actually has a gender. She's very likely embodying a female right now if that's how you're seeing her."
    "The key point being she's real?"
    Nodding, Charma's blue eyes bore into his, and he wished for a split second that he'd never forced himself to stop coming here. If he had, he could know her more acutely, understand her moods, and be able to read her thoughts just because he'd know her expressions so well.
    "Then why doesn't she just kill me? Why waste all of this time with this ridiculous torture routine?"
    Her shrug was so dainty it almost made him laugh aloud. "I could hazard a guess if you'd like."
    "Please." Sometimes she spoke so formally, it did sound as if a person from another time all together had raised her.
    "You have no idea what you are or what you are capable of, which means you haven't come into your full powers. Unfortunately, it seems that while we have innate abilities we can stumble upon, we do have to be focused and trained. When Kal's bride Isabelle came to us, she was loaded with natural talent and had no idea how to use it. She's now a force to be reckoned with." Her eyes glittered when she mentioned these unknown people.
    "I have no idea who these people are, but okay."
    Why did it bother him that her voice held such passion when she spoke of these people? He knew the answer to that. It was because he didn't have any strong relationships outside of his parents. Assuming Charma was real, which he was starting to believe, then she'd done much better in the friends and ties department than he had.
    "Anyway, this being that has trapped you, and now me, in here needs your power. However, it probably needs you to own your power first and it probably doesn't know how to make you do that so you're stuck while it figures it out."
    A lot of what Charma said made sense to him. It would explain why Self-loathing hated that he didn't know he was an Outsider.
    "There is something I can do. Something terrible." He fisted his hands and refused to back down from his confession. She'd said harsh things to him earlier. She obviously held a low opinion of him, and he knew he would only make it worse now. But he didn't care.
    She raised her eyebrows. "What's that?"
    "I can stop someone's heart. I can literally destroy them from the inside out."
    "Wow."
    His hands clenched at his side. "That's all you can say?"
    "I'm impressed. It's a rare gift. A body manipulator ranks amongst the strongest of our kind. Can you do it with animals? Mystical beings?"
    "I have no fucking idea, Charma. I didn't know I could do it until I killed a mugger in a parking lot." He wanted to throw something. Seeing a rock lying next to one of the trees he picked it up and hurled it towards the lake water. Waves split the water in half where it landed. He didn't feel any better for the effort.
    "Are you sure it was a mugger? Not one of the Others, the minions sent to get you by the Darkness?"
    "You might as well be speaking Russian. I have no idea what you just said."
    "Never mind. I'm sure the manipulation is your primary power, but you must have a latent ability, a second gift, which you don't know of yet. It's usually related to the first. Have you ever done anything else strange? Raised a body off a bed? Entered someone's mind?"
    "Unequivocally, no."
    "Are you sure?"
    His head started to pound. This was all getting to be a bit much for him. He'd been willing to play along. Now she spoke of soul mates, demons, powers, and obviously destiny. He made his own life, chose his own path, and there was no way in hell he would buy into the concept that what he was supposed to do had been laid out