“He asked about it—said his reasons were on a “need to know” basis.”

“And you don’t need to know?” I asked, winking at him.

“Guess not.” He backed away. “I think he’s just worried. He said something happened on the beach the other day.” He eyed Falcon suspiciously, then asked me, “Anything you wanna share?”

“Um.” My gaze flicked to Falcon, whose face pretty much said ‘Don’t you dare’. “I’ll check with David first.”

“Fine with me. So—” Mike clapped his hands loudly and looked around the room. “Volunteers?”

Everyone in the room went dead quiet, half of them casting their gaze to the floor—fifty strapping young lads, shirtless and manly, all cowering before a girl half their size.

“Fine.” Mike rolled his sleeves up. “I’ll do it.”

“Mike?” I started. “You—”

He leaned in and cupped my arm. “I’m pretty sure I deserve it, Ara.”

At first I was confused, until I realised he meant that he deserved the pain for the slap he’d given me. “Fine.” I grinned, rubbing my hands together. “Pay back time.”

He laughed. “Then we’re even, right?”

“Not even close.” I bared my teeth at him. “But I might consider forgiveness if you make me some of your famous brownies later.”

He shook his head, smiling, and moved to the centre of the room. “Clear the space, everyone.”

Everyone moved back five paces, giving Mike and I plenty of battleground.

“Where would you like me to fire, Mikey?” I asked, resting my hands on my knees. “Cause, personally, I’d like to shoot you in the ass.”

“Ha! Good luck.” He turned and offered me a small glimpse of his butt. “This knight is way too quick for—Ah!” He jolted forward and hit the deck, a rush of blue filling the space around him, as if a glow-worm just farted, retreating back into my fingertips after.

The entire room of knights, both vampire and Lilithian, broke into burly laugher, and from the corner of my eye, I saw greenback exchange hands.

“Where shall I shoot you next?”

Mike stumbled to his feet, rubbing his bottom. “Why not aim for the heart?” He faced me again. “You did a pretty good job of banging it up last time, maybe you can finish it off.”

The crowd roared, half with laughter, the other half with a very long “Ooooh.”

“Heart sounds great,” I said, and flicked a bolt of energy toward him, but he ducked to one side and swept under it, charging forward fast before I even realised I hadn’t hit him. I coughed out as I went down on my back, the ground rattling my spine like an iron hammer on a twig. I was sure I even heard something crack.

“You okay?” Mike leaned back a bit.

“Sure,” I said in a squeezed voice, using my pain to distract him, then hooked my ankle up and around his chest, forcing him onto the ground as I rose up to pin him flat with both knees. “I’m fine. How are you?”

He whacked the ground with a flat palm three times, and I eased my kneecap back off his throat.

“Sorry, too much?”

“No way.” He shoved me back on my butt and skittered away. “Silly girl. You had me then, were it not for your compassion.”

I got to my feet and stood ready to take him on, but he waved in three more knights from the sidelines, and the odds suddenly changed in their favour. But I had a new weapon up my sleeve, something none of them could fight if I could just figure out how to use it.

“To your right, Majesty,” a man called, coming in from my left.

I saw him shift before I heard his voice, though, so his attempt to distract me was futile. My fist drove a new path for blood through two bones in his ribs, burning the hole closed with a bolt of blue energy after. He fell to the floor just as knight number two dove into the fray and cupped the side of my face from behind, twisting my neck to the highest point of resistance. I dropped my hand down by my hip and shot him in the balls, logging his screams of horror in my feel-bad-about-it-later thoughts. It wasn’t over yet. We had fifty more knights in here that’d willingly take me down.

But it was Mike’s hands that wrapped my waist. “Going for a man’s family jewels, Ara. That’s low. Even for you,” he whispered in my ear, then flipped me upside down, dropping me to the floor with one knee on my chest, the other pinning my head by the ponytail. “Yield?”

“Never.” I struggled against him for a second, then pushed a hand into his chest and shot him right through the heart. I smelled the flesh burn, saw it melt as the shock registered in his eyes a second before he flew back. And two knights grabbed me as Mike hit the ground, dragging me to my feet.

I yanked my arm from one grip and elbowed the guy in the ribs, swinging my wrist up to his jaw with another jolt of energy. He went down hard, but the knight on my right wasn’t giving in, and the pain in my head slowly grew, strengthening for each shot.

This guy was twice my size in both height and weight, and he was a vampire. I had nothing on him physically. But . . . mentally.

I focused hard on his arm, feeling my face and hands go hotter, the pain in my head rippling throughout my jaw and neck. My blue light seemed useless against him—the man wearing it like a Christmas tree parades its candles, and the telekinesis wasn’t working either. I couldn't find that place in me that’d awakened when I broke Jase’s arm. Maybe it was there, maybe it was afraid to come out again because of how devastated I felt after I hurt Jase. But if the power didn’t surface, I’d lose this battle to a vampire and, in turn, probably lose a lot of respect among the Core.

One of us was going down in the next ten-seconds, though, and it wasn’t going to be me. I knew this guy’s strategy: he’d stand there and cop the pain until it got too much for me—until I threw the towel in. But he was hurting, too. That much was clear, and if my energy was at full strength like it had been when I first shot Mike, this guy wouldn’t even be standing. But the colour was fading, the light more of a white than a blue. I knew the vampire could take the pain, but I was sure even he had a limit.

I brought my hand up to his face and pushed him backward. He fought me for a second, but his weight shifted suddenly and mercifully, and he let go of my arm, stumbling back a few steps.

“Get back in there, Phelps!” the knights surrounding us called, barking like dogs on the sidelines.

I blocked them all out and sent another jolt at the vampire to finish him. He dodged, though, and the pain in my head intensified, rising up my arm. I screamed, caging my head in my arms as I landed on my knees. I had to get up. I couldn’t quit now, not when I was this close.

“Ara?” Mike called.

I turned my head and saw myself in the reflection of his eyes as they met mine—saw all the fear and amazement he felt inside radiating out of him, right into the deepest part of me. I heard him speak, saw his lips move and even felt him run a finger under my nose, collecting something wet, but the words didn’t really register. My electric hold was locked onto the vampire, and he was going down, come hell or high water.

“Ara, stop,” Mike yelled, pulling my hand down. “Look at the floor.”

My eyes drifted away from the lock of an angered gaze at the standing knight, and saw a pool of blood flooding my feet. I wondered how it got there—if someone had been hurt. I wondered why Mike hadn’t called for them to see the nurse. I was about to tell him to do something, tell him to help the person who was bleeding, when Mike’s words shot past me in a mighty growl, “What are you doing here?”

“Saving her life,” Jason said.

I felt him touch me—felt his hands on me, felt the world move under the swaying in my head, but I didn’t see him move me. I didn’t see anything until I felt the grass under my fingertips, Jason pinning my wrists to the ground, holding them there.

“Don’t move,” he demanded, then looked up at the approaching crowd. “Everyone stay where they are damn well standing, or her head will explode.”

The earth heated under my hands, like touching a cake fresh from the oven. It smelled like warm clay on a hot summer’s day—the grass giving off a little smoke. Mike took one step closer and watched on with his mouth agape as the light from my hands went bright white, melting the sand to mud in the cup of my palm, the liquid rising up my arms and through my veins, assimilating the pain in my head, like warm water over cold toes. My spine eased to relaxed, my neck rising from within the safety of my collar bones, and I rocked back on my knees, resting on my sit-bones beside Jason, who held a stern gaze at Mike, one finger still aimed in case my beloved BFF saw fit to interfere.

“What. . .” I started, breathless, “just happened?”

Jason laughed. “The pain’s gone?”

“Yes, that pain’s gone.” I pressed three fingertips to my temple. “Where did it go?”

He laughed again. “It worked. I can’t believe it actually worked.”

“What worked?”

He spun me at the shoulders and held them both tight. “I went through a thousand conclusions: that maybe you were a negative terminal of a battery, and the knights you were shooting were positive, causing a short circuit. Then I thought maybe you were what’s known as a ‘loose circuit,’ because the energy wasn’t passing through a load, but that didn’t really fit, either. And then I came up with what proved to be right.”

“Which is?”

“It’s Nature’s energy. You’re drawing it from the earth, and you can use it, but it needs to go back into the earth after.” He pushed his dark locks from his face, his smile so radiant you’d think he was a kid at a circus. “When you use it for that purpose, you’re the negative terminal, the knights the load, and the earth the positive.”

“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me right now,” I said with a soft chuckle, “but my head doesn’t hurt, so I don’t really care.”

He laughed and helped me to my feet. “I’ll show you more about it later. I have an entire report on it, but I gotta write this down before I forget what’s. . .” He tapped his head. “There’s a lot going on here. I gotta g—”

“Ara!” Mike pushed in and swathed me like a blanket. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, my lungs restrained by the grip of Mike’s loving embrace.

“I’ve never seen you fight so hard before,” he said, sweeping my hair back. “You really weren’t gonna give up, were you?”

“What would be the point of it all then, Mike? If I always give up when it gets too hard.”

He pulled me in again. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks.” I gave him a gentle squeeze then stood back. “But, I have to shoot you now. I wanna see how powerful I am without the pain.”