Free Unnaturals by Dean J. Anderson

he was lost. He just exploded before us.'
    `Shit! Sorry, go on.' Nikki found herself hot and clammy from her mother's words. Some of her mother's energy seeped from the phone into her.
    `It was terrifying. Michelle and I were still children, ungifted, and Agnes used that to her advantage. She took Michelle from me. I couldn't stop Agnes or even make her bleed. She made me watch as she,' she sighed. `As she turned Michelle into a Bloodells. Stabbed my sister in the heart and forced her own blood into Michelle.
    `The sound a child makes when poisoned by a Bloodells is something I still hear in my dreams.'
    `Ma,' Nikki wiped her eyes. Tears fell as the pain her mother felt seeped through her. `You've never told anyone this, have you?'
    `No.'
    Nikki took a deep breath, sharing her mother's pain but wanting to hear more. `Who killed Agnes, then?'
    `Agnes sent Michelle away with her followers and she stayed in the forest with me for a day. Trying to break my spirit. To make me hers. She could not. I was stronger than my sister. Agnes told me she had to kill me if I wasn't hers. I would be a threat if I lived.
    `All I wanted was to kill her. It kept me alive but it mattered not when Agnes held me by the neck. For a second I thought I saw a moment of weakness in her eyes, but it was gone. I accepted my death as she crushed my throat.'
    `No!' Nikki leapt from the couch, her body alive with the gift, and the sensation of hands tight around her throat. `Don't say that. You didn't die!'
    `Aye, child, I did. My life fled and I was in darkness, neither here nor in our goddess's arms. It was a cold nothingness and I screamed for her. I screamed for Darla to save me, to take me into her arms.'
    Nikki struggled to breathe. The room shrank as she paced. `What are you telling me? This is insane. How?'
    `A voice pulled me back to the agony that was my body. The pain was better than the cold. Hands touched me with great care. It was a man. A man covered in blood, kneeling beside me, brown eyes full of compassion as he kept asking me to come back. Tears shed for me streaked his face.'
    `A Darkells? Where was Agnes?'
    `Agnes was dead, clove in two by a woodsman's axe. He showed me her head and heart torn from her body.'
    `Wh, what happened? I mean, what happened next? Did he tell you how he did it?'
    `Nay. He spoke very little to me, just took me to his home, cared for me and treated me like his own kin. It took me months to recover.'
    `A human, a man with an axe, did what none other could?'
    `Aye, daughter. A simple but loving man who lived in the great forest killed Agnes. A man at one with Gaia.'
    `Did he know he was like this?'
    `No. To him the forest was his kin, his family. Agnes was a cancer.'
    `Did you stay with him? I mean after you turned?'
    `I left one day when he was out in the forest not long before I turned. It hurt too much knowing I would have to watch him die as I lived on.'
    `So, what happened to him? Did you ever see him again?'
    `I went back a year later, I had turned by then. It was hard. When I left I was a child and now returned as a woman. I found him where Agnes had died. He remembered the day he had found me and returned to the spot each year.'
    `He celebrated that day? The day he found you?'
    `Yes. He had planted flowers and herbs there. He was there, tending to them. I nearly didn't speak to him. I didn't trust myself to be strong enough to leave.'
    Nikki sipped some water. `But you did?'
    `He knew it was me — even as an adult woman he knew who I was. All he wanted to know was if he had done something wrong to make me leave. I told him no, and that I could not stay. He went quiet and I felt his heart burn for me. He would not speak the words but I knew he would love me, the child he saved in the great forest, all his days.'
    `And you just left him there?' Nikki didn't hold back; her heart pounded, the image of her mother and the woodsman burning in her mind.
    `I had to. He knew what I was and he loved me, but to stay