Sure, he and she might be mates but this man in front of her, this gorgeous hunk of a blond-haired Adonis, had never known he was an Outsider. Anytime she'd tried to bring it up, he'd laughed and talked about 'real life,' which had included school, family, and obligations. The first two she knew very little about and the last one she knew far too much of.
Did knowing nothing about his heritage preclude him from having feelings only for his soul mate?
Charma suddenly wished she'd asked Isabelle more about her life prior to Kal. There had been no time. From the moment the woman had swept into their lives, everything had exploded around them and now she was in Europe, hopefully, saving Leonardo from serving jail time.
She closed her eyes, not something she normally needed to do to enter a mind but she felt fearful and eyelids closed made her braver.
Sending her senses out, she let her essence reach his. Immediately the skin on her body burned. Something was wrong. There was another presence on him. Something that didn't belong to the person she'd once known. Whatever it was, it blocked her from pushing inwards.
Or at least it tried to. Inside of her head, she felt the presence. The same darkness that had infected her mind the night before when she soothed the elements. It danced in her head now. She almost wanted to let her tongue hang out as she shared its excitement.
Whatever entity was inside of her knew this other presence. That meant that whatever this thing surrounding the gorgeous man on the bed was should be considered very very bad.
Charma sighed. With no choice but to continue, she called upon the blackness within her and let it fill her for a moment. She pushed, using its tremendous strength, and the wall that had separated her form the man she felt desperate to reach crumbled for a moment. She knew she had no time to celebrate.
Driving forward with all of her strength, she forced the evil inside of her back until she could barely feel it anymore. She wouldn't be infecting him with what dwelled inside of her and it bothered her to no end that she'd been able to access the demon's leftovers so easily.
What is going on with you? She probed his mind gently and with a gasp felt herself sucked from her own body and into the mind of the man before her. Somewhere she was conscious that her body hit the floor but she didn't feel the pain.
Floating, she saw only nothingness.
Chapter Five
She appeared in front of him like an angel. One second she was not there, Jason was alone with his thoughts, wondering when Self-loathing would show up again and the next second— boom— the grown up version of his childhood fantasies appeared in front of him with a thud.
Before his fascinated gaze, she groaned and grabbed her head. "What the hell is going on?" She let go of her head and placed her hands in front of her face as if she was surprised to see them. "How can this be? This isn't what happens." Her voice sounded frantic and the urgency compelled him to comfort her.
He rushed to her side and touched her face. She seemed real, that was what was most amazing about these delusions. Her skin was soft like rose petals or how he imagined a butterflies wings would feel. His relief and sheer amazement of her abrupt appearance was short lived. If Self-loathing showed up she'd hurt the angel before him. He imagined that as long as he was stuck in this place, even his hallucinations could be hurt.
"Are you okay?" His voice sounded rough. He cleared his throat. Her blue eyes bore into his and he wondered what the strange, tightening feeling in his chest was.
"It really is you. I saw you lying on the bed and I still didn't believe it. And now we're here?"
"Wow, I've really turned a corner with my delusions. This feels so real." He reached out and touched her cheek again and she jumped backwards an inch. Hmm, he wouldn't have chosen to have her so skittish if he'd been consciously deciding things about this situation.
The woman's eyebrows rose slightly and he restrained the urge to pinch her nose. She was so adorable. In truth, she was like a grown-up children's doll but with short pixie hair. "You think this is all some sort of delusion? Just as you believed when we were children. You still believe that?" Disgust coated her words.
He stood. "I suppose you're here to tell me this is all real, like she does."
Not moving from where she stood on the glade of his childhood dreams, the blonde-haired goddess quirked her head to the side. "Whose is she?"
Jason shook his head. This wasn't going to be easy. Maybe her arrival was a good thing. Maybe she was another piece of the puzzle he needed to solve his dilemma. "Self-loathing, the woman I've invented to come here and cause me tremendous pain as a way to punish myself for killing a man who assaulted me in the parking lot." Jason gestured around the hillside. "This whole thing is one giant guilt trip."
Standing up, her eyebrows pressed inward, and she held a confused look in her eyes. They seemed to be searching for something but he wasn't clear on what.
Finally, she spoke. "Listen to me very carefully. So much of what you just said makes no sense to me and we have zero time to sort it out. I'm not sure how to convince you that what I'm about to tell you is the absolute truth but it is. This is not some grand illusion. Not really."
"That's just what a falsehood that didn't want to be proven wrong would say."
She shook her head again. He worried if she kept doing that she might give herself a headache. Finally, she spoke. "You must be a blast at parties."
"I don't go to too many social events. I tend to avoid them."
Nodding, she smiled. "Bit of a recluse?"
"You could say that."
Her grin got wider. "I'm not surprised. We all are."
"The Outsiders. You're going to tell me that the 'we' you just referred to are these creatures I've made up in my head called The Outsiders and that I am one of them." He was getting a little tired of arguing with himself. Maybe someday he'd give into the delusions just for the sake of some peace and quiet. But not yet. He still had hope of getting out of this with his mind intact.
"You've heard that name then. From whom? You're surely not referring to our shared dreams? You always refused to hear the name when we were children."
Her eyes were serious, cold. Why were they discussing this when all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her? That had to be the reason he'd manifested her in the first place. Company was definitely one possibility or as another means for his psyche to convince him the impossible was possible.
Hell, if he was going to live in a dream world, a wet-dream world wasn't the worst thing.
Crossing her hands in front of her, she glared at him. "Are you going to answer me or stare at me?" She snapped her fingers in front of his face.
"That was rude." He hadn't invented her to be pestered. If he wanted abuse, he'd stick to Self-loathing.
"I asked you a question. I expect an answer. We're in serious danger and you're staring off into space."
She paused as if to regain her composure. He smiled. His mother used to do that with him when he was a child.
"I asked you how you knew the name Outsiders." She said it as a statement, not a question. Whatever-her-name-was did not seem to be asking anymore. This was a demand for an answer.
Well, screw that.
Jason stalked to his blonde manifestation until he loomed over her. His breathing was hard. He needed to control his temper. And if he didn't put a serious leash on himself, he was going to lose it.
"You don't get to demand anything. I'm sick and tired of this whole fiasco. I say when it ends." He threw his hands up in the air. "As much as I am thrilled to have your tight ass to stare at for the rest of eternity, I am not going to take pushiness from a creature of my own invention that exists only in my own mind."
Putting her hands on her hips, she stared at him. Muscles worked in the back of her jaw indicating she clenched her teeth. In other circumstances, he would remind her what a bad habit that was but at the moment he was more invested in finding out what her response would be. Maybe he had finally told hi
s imagination what was what.
"You are rather self-important aren't you?"
She moved to the left to stare at him from the side. He realized she was about to make a circle around him. It reminded him of a panther stalking its prey. He swallowed hard.
"You assume everything about this is about you. I have news for you—whatever your name is—most of this has very little to do with you." The blonde goddess laughed, sounding a little hysterical. "I'm very close to a nervous breakdown. Excuse my strange amusement, I just can't help it."
"Your laughter seems a little out of place here."
His mind whirled. Confusion was not an emotion he usually owned up to. Jason had gone through life making sense out of everything. He could see patterns that no one else could see. He didn't like that this woman, who wasn't even real, turned his whole world on its axis.
"I came here to rescue one of our lost brethren, a person I had hoped was the soul mate for Leonardo so he could perk up, or at least someone who could help us defeat the Darkness." She walked a few steps away and then paced back. "I am, by the way, now carrying some of that Darkness in my own damn head, I might add, and I found you instead. The man who I have spent the last eighteen years assuming is dead. Want to know why? Because I could have sworn I felt you die when I was twelve. But you are so useless, so completely devoid of any real feelings or instinct, that you have come to believe this entire scenario is about your self-worth, as if it's something you can control." She laughed again and he wanted to throw something. "I mean, really, what kind of Outsider gets trapped in their own brain? It's pathetic really. You should be thanking whatever deity you believe in that it was me who showed up here and not one of the others because they wouldn't be handling this level of—this level of, well, pathetic lack of understanding of anything that you are currently showing. This whole thing is ridiculous."
She clasped her hands behind her back and raised one eyebrow, looking at him as if she desired a response to the mouthful of anger she had just spun in his direction.
A lot of what she said bothered him. He didn't think of himself as pathetic and it certainly never occurred to him—not even in his deepest hidden places—that he might not understand something. That was just ridiculous.
He threw his hands in the air in frustration. "All right. I'll play along. Why not?" He raised an eyebrow hoping it showed his disgust. "Tell me about the Outsiders, the creatures I heard about from Self-loathing who comes here regularly to beat the crap out of me."
She sighed. Her shoulders slumped. Had she expected an argument, been geared up for one and he'd not delivered? He shook his head. Really, what did he care?
"The Outsiders are an ancient race, as old as time, as old as the Fates, some would say. Placed here on earth, it was our job to keep order and balance in the universe."
He smirked. "Little Yin and Yang maintenance, huh?"
She nodded. "If you like. Sure."
Her eyes looked so sad he wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek until she smiled. "Go on."
"If things got out of hand, the Outsiders took care of it. Destroyed the evil, restored the good, kept the order in balance."
"They're like the universe's police officers."
"Until it was our parents' turn to take the reins. They got tired of watching the evil return again and again, so they decided to see if they could rid the universe of it once and for all. When their plan failed with a huge blunder, they made it more powerful than ever and unleashed it on humanity. We were born—eighteen of us, each with a pair, a soul mate of sorts that made us stronger and kept us complete—to save humanity."
"So why don't I know anything about this? Shouldn't I know?"
Jason tried to picture his parents calling upon evil and ridding the earth of it. The idea was preposterous. His mother, and God knew he loved her, would worry about breaking a nail or ruining her silk suit.
"Because we were separated. Our parents were killed by the minions of the demons and we were all meant to be sent to a man named Veli to live and survive—to hide until we were old enough to fight back. That plan failed too. I made it to Veli. You didn't."
Jason's heart pounded. What was it his mother had said to him? He'd suddenly appeared in his mother's life. He assumed she meant he was a surprise pregnancy. If he thought about this story, if he actually considered it, 'suddenly appearing' to his mother might mean any number of things.
Including the possibility that he had literally appeared in front of his mother as a baby.
He looked around his surroundings, the strange garden hillside he'd invented as a child. Since he was doing this, it made sense to follow it to its logical end. "What is this place?"
"It's our garden."
"Our garden?"
The blonde goddess nodded and concentrated her gaze at the ground. "Yes, the place where we met in our other consciousness."
"Where you and I met? As children?" He frowned slightly.
"Where we were meant to always meet. Our shared dreams. Useful, considering we were separated, for us to always somehow be together. Evidently, it didn't work out that way. You disappeared. It felt like a death to me."
"It was a death, of sorts. I decided I had to live in the real world, couldn't keep coming here. I could never be all the things that I wanted to be if I didn't stop it."
She looked up, her eyes filled with tears and his hands shook. He felt like the worst kind of monster for admitting what he had. "So you quit me too. I see." She nodded and he had no idea what she was thinking. He was pretty sure he didn't want to know. "I didn't even know that was possible. Everything I'd understood about this process was that the two couldn't stand to be away from one another. I've pretty much been mourning you for eighteen years." She looked up suddenly. "What is your name?"
"Jason Randall. Dr. Jason Randall." His cheeks heated as he realized he'd included his title. What did she care if he was a doctor?
"I'm Charma. It's spelled with a Ch even though it's pronounced like a K."
"So it's Karma but spelled with a Ch?" The spelling of her name was ridiculously fascinating to him. He wasn't sure why. "That's very unusual. 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 an
d 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 for him anywhere.