Page 89 of Bad Medicine

My magic exploded from my verypores. My eyes, my fingers, my palms, my feet. I couldn’t stop it now that ithad started. I forced myself to gather it into one colorful mass and I kept itswirling in my midsection like a monstrous, out of control tumbleweed. Itpicked up speed and debris as it spun, and there was no real way to describe itor how it felt inside me.

I ground my teeth against theforce of it, and I kept it there by sheer will alone. But finally, when I’dproven to myself I could control it, I opened my eyes, held my hands to thesky, and offered it to the sun.

It rushed over my ribs,cracking them with the unimaginable power of it, through my chest, into myshoulders, down my arms. And then, it spewed from my fingertips and my palmsand I guided it to the sun, and it exploded from twin silver lines of magicinto a massive cloud of power. If it had hit someone or something, they wouldhave been obliterated.

I’d done that. I’d found mypower. My magic.

When I looked around,everything was…faded, somehow. The colors were different, washed out and dim,and I finally realized I’d nearly blinded myself with the brightness of thatsilver power.

That burst of uncontrolled magichad taken my strength, as well. I was going to have to figure it out. I had noidea where it had come from. The old vampire? My birth? My legs collapsed and Ilay in the dirt, and I was filled with wonder.

Lucy was the first one to reachme. “Kait,” she cried. “Now I understand my dreams. You really are a bomb.”

“I’m da bomb,” I muttered,since my mother wasn’t there to say it for me.

She gave a surprised bark thatwas something between a laugh and a sob. “You’re okay,” she said. “You’reokay.”

“Did he hurt you?” My voice wasn’tmuch louder than a whisper, and I saw little flower-like designs in the airwhere my words were. I didn’t think that was odd at all. It seemed perfectlynormal to “see” my words.

“I told you he wouldn’t,” shesaid, shrugging off her coat. She draped it over me, then glared at someonebehind me. “Pick her up, Sam! Carry her into the house. She won’t hurt you.”

I saw him, finally, when hecrouched beside Lucy, his face unfamiliar. His true face, I believed, because Icould see the similarity between it and the childish face in the photographRick had shown me. “I think, dear Lucy,” he said, tentatively reaching for me,“that you may be wrong.”

I growled at him.

“Kait,” Lucy said, crisply.“Stop that at once. He’s going to carry you inside. There’s someone he…” Sheshook her head. “He has a surprise for you, and you nearly ruined it with all yourcrazy.”

I honestly felt like Ihadgone crazy. “Now I know how he found me when Adam’s wolves held me. When didyou start seeing him again, Lucy?”

“Never mind,” she told me. “Weneed to get you inside.”

Joe and Zach knelt down as well.They were both pale and hesitant, and neither one of them seemed eager to touchme. Apparently I’d scared the crap out of them all.

Except maybe Lucy. “Lucy,” Isaid, my voice stronger.

“I know, I know,” she said.“I’ve got some damn ‘splaining to do.”

I wouldn’t let Sam pick me up.I waited until I was strong enough to sit up, then I let Lucy help me on withher coat, and finally, with a firm hand from Joe and Zach, I limped toward thehouse.

“What the hellwasthat?” Joe asked.

“That,” Sam said, “was a womancoming into her power.” Then he flinched when I looked at him. “You can hurt menow,” he said, unashamed of that fact. Honestly, he seemed a bit proud. “I’msure you know that. I hope you won’t want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to?” Iasked. “Just because you didn’t hurt Lucy doesn’t mean you’re not killing otherwomen. Why wouldn’t I want to stop you, Sam?”

“I just hoped you’d see thingsdifferently,” he told me, then pushed open the door and stood in the middle ofthe familiar living room, waiting for Joe and Zach to help me inside. “Andmaybe you still will, when you see what I have for you.”

“Whoyou have for me,” Isaid, my voice hard. “I don’t care what she’s done, Sam. It’s not going tochange a damn thing.”

But I was wrong, and it changeda lot.

ChapterForty-Two

Sam smiled at Lucy, and whenshe looked at him, there was love in her eyes.

For a second, I was unable tobreathe. It was just too much. The fear that Lucy was being tortured and neardeath, the realization that she was there of her own free will, and now, theunderstanding that she and Sam had decided getting back together was aperfectly wonderful idea.

“Lucy,” I started.