Mystical Love (98 page)

Well, I'd show him just what I could do now. Now it was on my terms, and the only people who were going to die this time were the ones who deserved it.

The energy pulsed through my body. It was living, throbbing, vying for life. It screeched through my limbs, spiked my veins. I gritted my teeth, fighting unconsciousness, letting the pain of a thousand needles prick me from the inside. I invited the pain, let the energy feed on it. This was the buildup of eight years of depriving myself. Eight years of letting my energy lie dormant. Letting it rest and build and grow strong. I wasn't a naive, weak teenager anymore. I was twenty-four and stronger.

I pried open my eyes, concentrated on the acrid flames. I called the energy from my blood, balled it into my core until it was all I could feel. All I knew. All I was. Then, when it was almost too much for me to restrain, I pushed it from my body, out toward the flames. They exploded, soaring upward until they blocked out the blue of the sky.

For a moment, I thought it hadn't worked, that I had depleted myself for nothing. Then there was a shift in direction of the flames. They danced and flickered, letting off black smoke at the moving tips, as though they were thinking for themselves. And despite the direction of the wind, the flames moved, charging toward the buildings—that hell on earth. Flames descended, obliterating and destroying. There was a lot to destroy in this area of the Toolangi State Forest.

I laughed. My legs gave out. I sank into the dirt, so dry it spiraled around me and clogged my throat. I closed my eyes, felt a smile on my mouth as I welcomed death. At last, I had ended the nightmare.