lowered his mouth and kissed the tears off of her cheeks.
He could taste the salt in her tears and his heart broke
again. This woman was never meant to cry; she was meant
to be kept laughing and delighted at all times. Why did she
have to be part of this crazy destiny that they all shared?
Why couldn't she have been destined to live the normal
existence that she had obviously been raised in? She
deserved better than all of this craziness, and certainly
better than him.
"Don't worry about how I know, precious girl." He
kept his voice low. "It's enough that I do."
Kal felt her melt in his embrace and pulled her
warm body close to his so he could really hold her. He
didn't know if she really needed it or if he did but he wasn't
going to fight the moment.
Kal? Marina interrupted, which Kal supposed was a
good thing because they were not secluded enough to do
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the things that he was dying to do with and to her.
Yes. Kal responded quickly, pulling his eyes from
Isabelle and wondering what the battle was that Isabelle
had been silently waging with herself. Here's the thing,
'Rina. Isabelle's car has been spell-cast. The tires keep
blowing. What can I do about it?
You? Marina sounded surprised. You can't do
anything about it, Kal. You don't spell-cast.
Kal pounded his fist on the car, which earned him a
look from Isabelle. There has to be something I can do
about it. We are sitting ducks out here. There was already
one attempt made on Isabelle's life today, I can't let there
be another.
I guess I could try to break the spell from here but I
don't know if you are enough of a conduit. Marina sounded
concerned.
A conduit? Kal had never heard that phrase before
or maybe he had and he had just opted not to pay attention
because it didn't involve blowing up anything or stalking
the bad guys—much more interesting subjects.
It's something Leonardo and I have been working
on while you have been away. That girl you're with, what's
her name?
Isabelle, he responded, even sounding reverent in
his telepathic thoughts. It was, by far, the most beautiful
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name he had ever heard. He realized he was going to have
to get control of himself—he couldn't, rather wouldn't, let
himself become a sniveling weak-minded fool just because
he happened to come across his soul mate.
There had to be some kind of choice to this matter,
and it seemed to him that the woman standing next to him
was not going to settle for anything other than being given
an absolute voice in the rather large decision about who she
was going to spend the rest of her life hopefully loving, and
if they were lucky, making babies with.
Right, Isabelle. What are her powers? Kal could
almost hear the wheels turning in Marina's head. She was
plotting something and he imagined Charma and Leonardo
standing next to her as she did it. If he had been there, his
input would not have contributed very much to the
conversation. His intellectually-inclined cousins knew this
kind of devising was not Kal's forte.
Not sure yet. She can hear me sometimes in my
head. She can hear the chanters. Kal was not going to
explain just where Isabelle had heard the chanters last. He
didn't need them knowing that, for the moment.
She can hear in your head when you're not talking
to her telepathically? Really? Marina sound skeptical.
Focus here Marina, remember, the car problem?
Kal was starting to feel really exposed standing on the
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street and Isabelle had narrowed her eyes at him in a way
that made him think she was about to explode if she wasn't
included in the conversation.
Right. Leonardo and I think that we can help you.
Take Isabelle's hand and try to focus on my image.
Leonardo's going to enhance me and then I'm going to push
my powers on you which should work if Isabelle is standing
there to enhance you. We're pretty sure it should work. But
you need focus, Kal. Just focus on me.
Pretty sure it's going to work? How sure is that?
Kal would have preferred to have more than just Marina's
best guess but who was he kidding, they'd all been
functioning on their best guess since they'd landed in Veli's
kitchen twenty-nine years earlier.
Just do it, big shot. Marina was sounding annoyed.
Or should I tell Veli what's going on?
Kal really wanted to get to a point in his life where
Veli didn't bring such a sense of dread to his mind that he
would rather face a firing squad than another lecture,
argument, or belittlement from Veli. Inwardly he groaned.
Isabelle grasped his hand tightly and he smiled at
her. Just the feel of her skin on his was enough to make the
rest of them vanish from his thoughts. "What did she say to
you to make you so upset?"
"It's not important. Same old shit." Kal tried to
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smile at Isabelle. "I need to take your hand in mine and
Marina is going to try to fix the car from where she is." Kal
knew it had to sound preposterous to Isabelle but she was
not resisting him, instead she was taking both of his hands
in hers. Kal could feel the energy flowing between them
even before he focused on Marina and felt her power
flowing through him. Kal was sure Isabelle had felt it too.
It lasted less than a minute but it was striking and the tire
miraculously re-inflated before their very eyes.
That should do it, Kal, Marina said. Kal?
Yes, Marina? Kal answered quickly, not pulling his
hands from Isabelle's as he found he really liked them there
and was not anxious to have her warmth leave his body.
I'm sorry about the Veli comment. I don't know why
I do that. It's like I don't know how to relate to you without
somehow striking out at you for things that are not your
fault any more than they are mine. I would never tell Veli
you were in trouble just to make things worse on you.
Marina sounded forlorn.
No worries. Kal looked down at Isabelle's hands
joined with his. We're all getting all sorts of emotionally
healthy these days, aren't we? Next thing will be Leonardo
actually expressing a thought he hasn't over analyzed one
hundred times before he said it. He thought he could
actually hear Marina laughing over their connection.
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He was convinced that as long as he could keep the
warmth that Isabelle was generating in him then he could
get through any future snide remarks his family deemed fit
to make to him. Her op
inion was the only one that
mattered.
Maybe he wasn't going to give her a choice after all.
Maybe he was going to demand this strong, brave,
gorgeous woman love him for all time and she was just
going to have to acquiesce. He ushered her back to the car
and drove in the direction that the sign on the highway
indicated would lead them to the nearest hotel. It was
getting dark and he was hungry, for a lot of things.
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Chapter Eight
"Listen." Kal dipped a French fry into his ketchup.
"I've never told this to anyone before and it's going to
sound really ridiculous so you're just going to have to
believe me."
They were sitting on one of the two Queen beds;
Kal had felt it best not to push his luck and ask for just one
King. They shared the remainder of Isabelle's French fries
from their fast food dinner. The hotel room was dark and
kind of old in its decorations, but it had served its purpose
in getting them out of that car and off of the road during the
nighttime hours, which were always more dangerous than
the daytime ones. Isabelle hadn't argued, seemingly too
exhausted and hungry to do anything more than nod that
yes she wanted food, a shower, and bed in that order and
she wanted it fast.
The food, as not gourmet as it was, had revived her
a little bit and she had started her questioning again.
"Okay," she agreed. "I'll hold any skepticism I
might have left after watching you manipulate energy to
stop falling bullets and incinerate a man with your hands
not to mention the chanting, spell casting, and telepathy till
after you finish telling the story. How does that sound?"
Kal laughed. The more time he spent with Isabelle
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the more he liked her, which was good because he could
already feel his physical need for her growing inside of
him, a side effect he could only assume was normal when
one met one's soul mate. He was sure he was going to have
to kiss her again soon or he might start losing his mind.
"There are human beings that are different, for lack
of a better word, from everyone else. I, and I suspect you,
belong to that group. We can do things other people can't
do, move things with our minds, make things happen in
nature, hear other people's thoughts, and even manipulate
fate a little bit. We've always called ourselves the
Outsiders. That's what Veli calls us anyway. These powers,
sometimes they're used to describe witches and wizards in
children's books. We lived harmoniously with everyone for
all eternity and used our powers to keep things in balance,
to keep disharmonious things in check, evil if you will.
"There are always evil things in the world that want
to gain control and we always fought them when they
showed up. But for the most part we lived quietly amongst
ourselves in the hills of England where I gather we had
lived for centuries."
"You're talking about all of this in the past tense.
Your people don't live there anymore?" Isabelle questioned.
Kal didn't miss that she had left herself out of the
equation when asking him about it. It was too much for her
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to process all at once. Hell, most of the time it was too
much for him to process and it wasn't new information for
him.
"It's not like that anymore. Veli tells us that about
twenty-nine years ago some weird stuff started to take
place. First of all, the leader of the Outsiders, Veli calls him
'the Great One', died suddenly. Now, he was 120 years old.
This would be quite old for regular people but our people
can live, as long as we are living good productive lives, to
be about 200 years old. The Great One, or the Old Dude as
my cousin Leonardo calls him, was a really kind, happily
married man who was in good connection with the
universe. He shouldn't have taken ill and gotten sick like
that. But he did and right before he died he told Abraxas,
I'll get to him in a second, a prophecy that seemed too
ridiculous to be true."
Isabelle brushed a piece of hair out of his eyes. No
one had ever touched him like that before and for a second
he couldn't speak.
"A prophecy? There really are prophecies?"
"Yes. Really powerful Outsiders can be given
insight into future and past events from the Spirits that
control the earth. They aren't bound by our human
constraints on time. They can tell us, if they feel like it,
what will or what might happen." He took her hand in his
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and raised it to his mouth to plant a kiss on it. The gesture
seemed natural to him and he assumed to her as well as
they paused to simply stare at each other. Isabelle's cheeks
took on a pink hue and he loved the slight blush on her.
"Kal?" Isabelle touched his chin.
"Yes, Isabelle." He loved saying her name.
"Can I tell you something and you won't think I'm
crazy?"
"Do you think I'm likely to think that you're crazy?"
She laughed. "You might."
"I promise."
"I've been dreaming about you for years, almost
every night since as long as I can remember. Not just
someone like you but actually you, physically you."
"What are we doing in these dreams?" He raised his
eyebrows at her and she laughed at him, making him
wonder if she knew exactly the images he'd been picturing.
"We're not always doing that."
"But sometimes we are?" He liked the idea more
and more.
"Sometimes we're just talking and you didn't always
look like you do now. We kind of grew up together. When I
was ten you were ten, when I was twenty, you were twenty
and so on."
"Where do your dreams take place?"
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"On a green hill some place I've never been. I
recognized you right away but I felt like I was out of my
mind. You're not acting like I belong in a loony bin."
"I think that it's highly possible that what you think
happens, actually does."
"Have you ever dreamed about me?"
"I don't dream."
"Ever?"
"Veli stopped me from dreaming when I was ten
and I don't remember any of them from before that. When I
go to sleep all I see is blackness and then nothing else till I
open my eyes the next morning."
"How does someone stop you from dreaming?"
"You really don't want to know."
"I do."
"Well, I'm not sure I'm ever going to tell you. I'm
not sure I want you knowing that stuff about me." For the
first time he looked down, dragging his eye contact from
her.
/> "Sometimes you seem like this."
"Like what?"
"Sad."
He grinned, sheepishly. "You think I'm sad?"
"I think you're a lot of things. Powerful, smart,
beautiful—and yes, I said beautiful even if men don't like
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to hear that stuff—kind, lonely, and yes sometimes sad."
She paused. "But I'm sad sometimes in my dreams too."
"Why are you sad?" He didn't want her to ever be
sad, even in her dream world.
"Because I know I have to wake up and you won't
be there with me." She lowered her head after saying the
words.
Kal pulled Isabelle into his arms and kissed her so
gently. This kiss was so different from the one out on the
street. Earlier he had seemed desperate, almost crazed for
her lips touching his but now he was fully in control. His
mouth pressed down on hers, taking her as his own and he
knew she had been lost but now she was somehow found
with him. He pulled back to stare in her eyes.
"I don't know what I did to deserve you but I'll
thank the Spirits for you every day." Kal stroked her back
lightly with his hand.
"You're going to have to go over that Spirits thing
again for me sometime." Isabelle smiled.
"Veli will, or Charma, my other cousin, can. They
really know about this stuff. I'm pretty lazy when it comes
to learning the details of how this stuff works. I think, by
nature, I'm a warrior, not a healer or a spell-caster. I need to
do stuff, not talk about it, which has been a problem for me
over the years because using too much power, to fight or
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ward off evil, opens up my presence to forces that I would
prefer didn't know where I was. But that's neither here nor
there anymore." Kal sighed. It felt good to be talking to