But, oh God, how it hurt.
I dropped to my knees, and, for too many seconds, did nothing more than try to breathe as the pain in my head intensified, and all I could see were pinpoints of bright lights flashing before my eyes. They eased after a few seconds, but the pain didn't.
Why was this happening? When I'd controlled the two lab-made werecats in Moneisha, there'd been pain, but nothing as intense as this. Even when I'd attacked Quinn, there hadn't been a backlash like this—had there?
I frowned, and remembered the wash of pain that had briefly hit before I'd picked my panties off the floor and stormed into the other room.
Maybe it was a simple matter of being too angry to even notice just how bad the pain actually was.
A hand touched my elbow, helped me to my feet.
"We must go," Dia said. "Before he recovers enough to attack again."
He wasn't going anywhere until I released him, but given the blinding pain, that was probably going to be sooner rather than later. I stumbled along after Dia, guided more by her touch and the sound of her footsteps than my own sight, which was at best blurry, and filled with heated white spots that danced about crazily. A situation that wasn't helped when the control I had on the vamp snapped. The pain of it rebounded through me, as sharp as glass. I gasped, stumbling and almost going down. Dia's grip tightened on my arm, and with almost inhuman strength, she kept me upright and kept me going.
Of course, Dia Jones wasn't exactly human, so inhuman strength wasn't exactly surprising. What I really wanted to know was how the hell she was moving so surely when she couldn't see and hadn't even a cane or a guide animal to help her.
A car loomed through the blurriness ahead. A man in a dark suit opened the rear door of a car that seemed to go on forever, then I was being shoved inside. I crawled across the soft leather, then leaned my head back against the thick seat cushioning and closed my eyes. Doors slammed shut, twin sounds that seemed to reverberate through the silence, through my head, then the car was moving.
Silence reigned for several minutes. I could feel Dia's gaze on me—it was a weight that was at once both curious and cautious—but she didn't touch me. Of that, I was glad. I had a feeling that she might learn far too many secrets if she did so right now.
"Telepathy is new to you, isn't it?" she said eventually.
I opened my eyes. Even though the limo was dark, the glare of the streetlights as we passed them were a brightness that was hard to stand. My eyes watered, and the ache in my head briefly intensified.
"What makes you think I'm telepathic?"
She smiled. "While I am not telepathic myself, I am sensitive to the use of psychic power. Generally, it feels like the caress of a warm summer breeze that swirls across my skin—something I can sense, but never catch." She paused, tilting her head slightly to one side, her amazing blue eyes seeming to follow even my slightest movement. How was that possible? This woman was blind—I was certain of that, if nothing else.
"With you tonight," she continued, "it was not a breeze, but a cyclone. An overuse of power if ever I felt one. Has no one ever taught you control?"
"I shield. I can protect myself. What else is there to know?" And Jack had been coaching me, but I couldn't exactly admit that.
"Power of any kind should be treated similar to an onion. There may be many different layers, but you should only ever strip away as many as you need to get the job done." She smiled as she reached forward and took a small cloth from a compartment under the seat opposite, then handed it to me. "The only time problems generally arise for the trained is when the power is still new, or it increases in strength for some reason."
I wrapped the cloth around my bleeding arm. "How would either of those cause problems?"
She shrugged lightly. "You cannot control something when you do not know its boundaries."
That made sense. But was that what was actually happening? I'd been telepathic most of my life, and the last test done at the Directorate had not indicated any increase in psychic output.
Of course, those tests had been done several months ago. Who knew what the result would be now.
"But psychic strength doesn't alter." At least, it generally didn't with normal people. "You get what you're born with, don't you?"
"Sometimes. But puberty has been known to set off wild changes in psi-skills."
"Puberty? Do I sound like an adolescent to you?"
But even as I said the words, I had a feeling she'd hit the nail on the head. Thanks to the fertility drugs that had been forced into me by past mates, I'd recently begun menstruating for the first time in my life. Which in turn meant I was going through a form of puberty—if puberty was defined solely as going through the change and moving from a child's body to a woman's. Not that anyone would ever accuse me of having a child's body. I'd been D-cup since I was sixteen.
"No, you don't sound adolescent. But that doesn't alter the fact your power seems very uncontrolled. You are extremely lucky you caught those vamps unawares. Lucky, too, that none of them were particularly strong psychics."
"Why's that?" I rubbed a hand across my forehead. The needles were beginning to ease, but my brain still felt like it was on fire. If I didn't get some pain relief tablets soon, I was going to have one doozy of a headache.
"Because by dropping your shields as totally as you did, you left yourself wide open for a counterattack."
"Oh." I hadn't even thought of that. Not when I'd attacked Quinn, and certainly not when I'd attacked those vamps. Quinn might have been too much of a gentleman to attack, but those vamps certainly could have.
She tilted her head on the side again. The brown hair fell to one side, revealing slivers of silver running underneath. She wasn't wearing a wig, because the silver and brown ran into each other. It was almost as if someone had dyed her hair, but only done half a job. Odd, to say the least. "Did your parents not teach you to use your gift?"
I snorted softly. "My mother was a wolf groupie who considered the half-breed she gave birth to little more than an inconvenience to her sex life."
"And your father?"
"She never knew for sure who he was. I certainly don't."
"Sad."
"That's me," I said sarcastically. "A sad and sorry tale."
She smiled again. "Do you have a name?"
"Poppy Burns."
She raised an eyebrow. "Indeed? And what are you doing here in St. Kilda, Poppy Burns?"
Something in the way she said that had uneasiness stirring. I shrugged, and did my best to ignore those damned butterflies. "Looking for work, a place to stay. Usual shit."
"So where did you live before?"
"You're getting awfully nosy, aren't you?"
She shrugged. "Given what you said to me before those vamps showed up, I think I have the right to be nosy."
I sniffed, and didn't reply.
"And given your so bluntly put opinion of me," she continued, "why would you then go on and save me?"
"Who says I was saving you? Those stinkers had me in their sights just as much as you."
"Maybe."
"If we're going to be nosy, then tell me how you can be blind as a bat, and yet can walk around as well as any sighted person?"
She went still, and for a moment I thought I'd blown it.
"How do you know I'm blind?" The warmth that had been in her tones until now was replaced by cold steel, and a chill went down my spine.
It was a timely reminder that this woman—however nice she seemed—was one of the five clones and in league with the man I was trying to bring down.