Anger flashed in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Tell me, what good are these so-called powers when they make people afraid of me? Why can I see things I can't change ? What good is that?"
Kyrian had no answer for her. All he could do was feel her inner pain and turmoil.
"Don't you understand?" she continued. "I don't want to know the future when I can't stop it. I want to be normal," she insisted, her voice cracking on the last word. "I don't want to be like Talon or my grandmother and have dead people talking to me. I don't want to know what you're feeling. I just want to live my life like other people. Don't you ever want that?"
Closing his eyes against the unfounded agony that clenched his heart, Kyrian let go of the softness of her skin and stepped back from her. "It wouldn't matter if I did."
Amanda started at the look on his face. She'd wounded him somehow. "I'm sorry, Hunter, I didn't mean—"
"It's okay," he said slowly. He moved to stand by a chair and she watched the way he gripped the edge of it. Though he was trying hard to hide it, she could sense his pain.
"You're right," he said at last. "There are times when I do miss being able to feel the sunshine on my face. I miss so many things that I can't even begin to count them all. I have learned the best thing to do is to not torture myself with the memory of it." He looked up at her and the heat in his eyes scorched her. "But people like us have special gifts. We can't be normal."
Amanda didn't want to hear that. Her heart couldn't take that news. "Maybe you can't. But I can. I don't let myself feel those powers anymore. They are dead to me."
He laughed bitterly. "And you think I'm stubborn."
"Hunter, please," she said, hating the agony she heard in her tone. "I just wish it were the day before yesterday. I wish I could wake up and have all this be a nightmare."
In that moment, she felt something that scared her. It was just a quick twinge of the powers he referred to. And the sensation of it sliced through her as she heard his thoughts. Wish you had never met me, you mean.
She moved toward him. "Hunter…"
He dodged her touch and went to the counter where the phone was. He picked the phone up and handed it to her. "Call Tabitha and tell her to stay at your mother's until Friday. She can come and go in the daytime, but after dark it is imperative that she stay indoors."
"She won't like that."
Aggravated fury smoldered in his midnight eyes. "Then have your mother tie her down. We're not dealing with regular vampires here. These Daimons have unlocked some exceedingly dangerous powers, and until Talon and I figure out what we're dealing with, she needs to lie low."
"Okay. I'll do my best."
He nodded. "While you talk to her, I'm going to change clothes."
Amanda watched as he walked out of the kitchen, her heart heavy. She didn't want him to leave her even long enough to change. She felt a peculiar urge to follow after him and help him shed those clothes…Instead, she dialed Tabitha's cell phone.
"Oh, thank God you're all right," Tabitha said, her voice filled with tears. "The police just told me about the houses and I knew it was past time for you to be home."
Amanda's own eyes teared up, but she forced them back. Crying wouldn't accomplish anything. The houses were gone and all the tears in the world wouldn't bring them back. What she needed to focus on now was for all of them to survive Desiderius's wrath.
"How's Allison?" she asked, trying to distract herself from the fear.
"She's fine. Her mother's already at the hospital. I'm in the car on my way to see her even as we speak. No one knows what happened to Terminator."
"I have him."
Tabitha breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, sis. I owe you big time. So, where are you now?"
It was the question Amanda dreaded answering. Tabitha was bound to go ballistic when she found out. "I'd rather not say," she hedged.
Silence. It stretched for several minutes and all Amanda heard from the other end was the noise of traffic. Tabitha was trying to read her.
Damn! Tabitha said the word at the same moment Amanda thought it. "You're with that vampire again, aren't you?"
Amanda cringed. How did someone tell her sister, the vampire hunter, that she had a crush on a vampire and planned on spending the night in his home? There was no easy way around that one.
Sighing, she tried to think of some way to explain it. "He's not a vampire…Exactly. He's more like you."
"Uh-huh," Tabitha said. "Like me how? He has breasts? He has a boyfriend? Or he just likes to kill things?"
Amanda ground her teeth. "Tabitha Lane Devereaux, don't be such a bitch. I know you don't like to kill things, either, and I don't want to play Twenty Questions with you. The guy who attacked me in your place is really scary, and not like the other scary things you play with. This is different. Hunter wants you to lie low and I agree."
"Hunter? Is that the same bloodsucking ghoul who threatened your life to me earlier?"
"He didn't mean that."
"Oh no? So you're willing to bet your life on it?"
"I'm willing to bet both our lives on it."