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His face swims in front of mine, distorted like the image in a funhouse mirror. My stomach clenches, and I force myself not to bend over in pain. “What’s wrong with me? I’ve never felt like this before.”

Every time I visited Kera in our dream world, I’d felt invincible.

Baun moves closer. I try to step back, but the chains keep me still. He stops. “When you defeated Navar, you absorbed his powers, including those he stole from me.” He raises his hand, and the surge of power trying to escape my body sends me to my knees, gasping for breath. His fingers glow softly and he breathes deeply as if savoring a top-cut steak.

I groan, and he suddenly steps back. “My powers want to return to their rightful owner, but they can’t.”

He closes his eyes, murmurs something, and then opens his eyes. “Better?”

The strange feelings slowly dissipate. I nod.

“Do you know why I’ve brought you here, into my dreams?”

“You said before that I have something you want.” It didn’t take the collective effort of a bunch of astrophysicists to know what he meant. He wants his powers back.

The chains chink together as he walks around the tiny room, an eerie musical score to his movements. They don’t appear to weigh him down like they do me, but then again, he’s worn his chains for nearly as long as I’ve lived while I’ve had mine on for only a few minutes.

“Imagine yourself carrying my chains not for a day, but for years. More years than you can remember. Imagine how desperate you’d become.” A strange light burns behind his eyes. “Slightly mad even.”

The intensity rolling off of him is a little unsettling, and I mutter, “From what I hear, you weren’t all that stable to begin with.”

The light burns brighter behind his eyes. “I had vision. A hope for something better.” His voice softens. “Yet a man learns his flaws when he has nothing but time to contemplate what chains him.”

Bad guy learns lesson. “Yay for rehabilitation.” I shrug. “What do you want from me?”

“My freedom.”

I look down at the chains holding me still and then back at him. “Does it look like I can help you?”

“The pux sense the part of me that’s in you, thus the chains. Their weight is only a ghost of what I carry.”

“Great.” Like that explains everything, and if that’s true, how the hell can he move? “Look, I don’t know what delusional state you’re under, but I can’t help you.”

A tic appears in his jaw. “You can.”

So, all those years, he didn’t have any need to contact me, until now, when he needs help…and he’s desperate for it by the look of him.

I laugh. “Why should I? I haven’t heard one good thing about you.”

He’s in front of me before my next blink. A tall, angry, desperate man. Nothing good ever comes from that combination.

“Do you know what the pux do?” He rakes up what’s left of his sleeve and thrusts his arm under my nose. A series of deep wounds, some new, many old, track up and down his skin. He bends near; his mouth twists in disgust. “They’re evil little fiends that take pleasure in others’ pain. They feed off emotion. Extreme feelings are the sugar coating that makes their pathetic lives livable.”

The sound of wings fluttering outside the door catches our attention. He takes a deep breath and calms himself. “I’ve learned to mold my emotions into a bland existence. It’s how I’ve survived this long.” Tears shimmer in his eyes, and he blinks them away. “I’m about to break, Dylan. Death is seducing me toward the peace I crave.”

His arm drops, and he pulls himself together. “I’m asking for compassion, something my kind has thrown away. Once condemned, forever condemned.”

He doesn’t sound like I expect. He should be bitter, but he sounds sad. Something about him feels off. I want to leave, but he demands my attention. “But you. You know about second chances. You can help me.”

He’s hit a nerve. I craved a new beginning, and I was given one. How can I refuse him? Except the last time I saw Baun, he was in the woods and the pux appeared to be doing his bidding, not torturing him. “I don’t know…”

“You’re my son. My own flesh and blood.”

Playing on the family card isn’t smart. It reminds me of all the problems I had growing up with a mother who cared more for herself than anyone else. Where was he when she went on her monthly rampages? Where was he when the guy-of-the-moment shared his anger issues with a closed fist? I don’t need another messed-up parent who thinks he can guilt me into doing whatever he wants. “You abandoned me and my mother. I may be your son, but you’re not my father.”

She left me,” he hisses.

There’s no doubt Mom is messed up, but he has to take some responsibility for the woman she became, though he’s hardly the demonic madman Kera painted him. He barely looks like a man, more shriveled soul than maniacal tyrant.

“You didn’t take her with you. You knew what that would do to her. Kera told me. Our kind loves deeply, but the humans, they become enslaved. You ruined her forever.”

“It was not my intent. If she had only waited…but she fled. I vowed if ever I broke free of these chains, I would find her.”

“And do what?”

His voice drops so low I can barely hear him. “End her torment.”

“How?”

“We are only whole when we are together. I will keep her close to me always.” He turns away and drags his feet back into the shadows. “If you will not help me, then we have nothing further to discuss.”

His shoulders sag as his shuffled steps expose his defeat. He’s so alone…completely and utterly alone. It actually makes me wonder. “Even if I wanted to help you, I can’t.”

“You have the power to do so much, but you are too weak to use it. Your imagination is too small.”

If I have so much power, how can I be weak? The mess coming out of his mouth is the type of parental support I’m used to. Mom and Mr. I-Lost-It-All/Woe-Is-Me are perfect for each other.

“You don’t know me,” I snap. “You don’t know what I can do.”

“Your talents aren’t an eighth of mine,” his voice booms from the darkness. “I would show you how to control the powers surging through you, to use what you’ve been given, but why show an ant an elephant’s strength?”

“An ant can lift twenty times his body weight. An elephant can’t even lift his own.” Take that, old man.

Baun chuckles, but it’s not a pleasant sound. “When has an ant ever crushed an elephant?” The shadows shift as he lies down, turning his back on me and ending our meeting.

Instantly the dream blackens, and I’m swimming in a void. For once, my dream isn’t paired with the distorted images of death. It only shows me my own doubts and insecurities and the sharp edges of “what if.”

Unwanted

The caves that hid those tainted with human blood loomed ahead. Dragging a one hundred and ninety pound weakling with her caused her shoulders to ache and her back to spasm. She should have reached the caves by now. Frustrated, she settled Reece against a tree, calling the moss beneath him to thicken. He immediately closed his eyes and let out a huge sigh of relief. She touched his forehead with the back of her hand, checking for a fever.

He cracked open his red-rimmed eyes and stared at her. He hadn’t said much, but then he’d been concentrating, much like her, on putting one foot in front of the other. Lips pale blue, eyes shadowed darkly, and skin the shade of rancid butter, he looked awful.

She produced a flask of cool water and a serving of bread and cheese and placed it in his hands. The act of summoning whatever she wanted was becoming easier, but because of her, someone would most likely go hungry tonight. She had yet to learn how to pick an item from a specific location, so whatever she needed was plucked from close by. Even she couldn’t make something out of nothing.