Free Jude Stephens by Touch of a VAmpire Page B

began to feel the heat from the water
and could actually feel the steam rising from it. I knew that if I
splashed the water on my face it would scald me. I let out a small
yelp and dumped the water out of my hands.
    “ Why did you do that? It was going
to scald me!”
    “ No, it wasn’t. The water is cool.
I knew you would stop before you actually let it go too
far.”
    I was shaking a little bit “What would have happened
if I didn’t stop?”
    He looked me in the eye, “You would have felt the
pain of being burned.” I was beginning to get angry at him. He
quickly added, “Think about what you just did Orenda, the awesome
power of it.”
    My anger subsided somewhat when his words sank in. I
had actually changed my thought patterns. I hade made the cold
water into scalding water.
    “ Ooh, cool”
    Cheve laughed “Yeah, cool indeed. And that is just
the beginning of your abilities. You will learn to make pain turn
into pleasure and pleasure turn into bliss. It is all in your
control”
    We worked for a while longer on fine tuning my
thought patterns and then we began to work on controlling some of
my other abilities. Sight is pretty easy to control. Cheve showed
me some techniques to use when focusing in on an object that is far
away, so I wouldn’t get a headache. That was the worst side effect
from having vision that could see seven times sharper than that of
a normal human being.
    After practicing for a half hour, Cheve walked about
50 yards and held up a piece of paper and yelled for me to read it.
I closed my eyes and slowly opened them to let my focus adjust and
started to read loud enough for him to hear. “Cheve is the sexiest
man I’ve ever met. Oh! You’re an ass!” I yelled back at him. I
could hear his laughter loud and clear. The man was infuriating at
times; however, when he jogged back towards me, I couldn’t help but
give him a small smile when I saw the boyish grin on his face.
    “ Okay, I will give you that one
Cheve, but I won’t fall for that again.”
    “ Oh, we shall see, Sensay…we shall
see.”
    I knew then and there that a challenge was thrown
down and I admitted to myself that it was rather fun.
    The rest of the afternoon was spent working on my
other senses. I was afraid of trying the hearing as my one true
attempt at it was a disaster.
    “ I’d rather not try the hearing
thing, Cheve. Roberto was working with me one day a few months ago,
and I lost all sense of hearing. It freaked me out.”
    “ Orenda, you have to fine tune
your hearing. It’s an important tool for you to use. It probably
saved your life the other day when someone shot an arrow at
you.”
    With a gasp I said, “How did you know about that?
Oh, let me guess, Mark. I never thought he would be a
blabbermouth.”
    “ Mark only told us because he was
worried. He’s afraid that The Guardians might have tracked you from
the fucking vampires’ house.”
    “ Us? He told my moth…Onatah too?”
Crap. I didn’t want her worried about this and I didn’t like it
that Mark went and told them without consulting me.
    “ Yes, and he did the right thing.
This is not just about you. There is a whole village of people here
that Onatah is responsible for. She has the right to know of any
dangers.”
    Of course he was right. I had to somehow get out of
the mind set that the world revolved around me. I’m not even sure
how I came to be like that, but I didn’t like it.
    Cheve must have seen the look of self recrimination
on my face because he said, “Look, you’re too hard on yourself.
    This is new territory. So it should go without
saying that you will need to make adjustments. Maybe even become a
new person.”
    A new person? Did I want to become a new person?
    Maybe I would. Being the old me was never that
great. My marriage ended in divorce. My second relationship ended
with my man choosing another woman. Yeah, a new person sounded damn
good right now. Strong. That’s what I wanted to be. Strong