He came to a side street and turned onto it. He stopped, cut the engine, and rested his forehead on the wheel.
What the hell was happening to him? He’d never experienced anything like this. An energy that could bring him to his knees? With the power to crawl into his head and scramble his brain?
He wasn’t cut out for this superhero bullshit. He’d had a good thing going, pre-Sixers. Life had been easy. Fast car, fine threads, beautiful women.
It hadn’t been enough.
He’d felt more alive the short time he’d been a Sixer than he had in all his years of living large.
Dammit! This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. To give a shit? To take something so seriously, shrugging and walking away wasn’t an option? No way. Zach Harris kept things loose. Kept his options open.
But who is Zach Harris?
He had to get a grip. Had to figure out either how to beat this thing or protect himself from it.
He leaned his head back at the seat back and closed his eyes, told himself to focus. When his gifts first manifested, they’d turned him upside down. Physically and emotionally. He’d had to learn how to harness his abilities. How to control their effect on him.
He hadn’t been helpless back then, hadn’t been a victim.
And he wouldn’t be now.
Zach turned to what had worked in those early days and then again, during his Sixers training. He drew a deep breath in through his nose and released it out his mouth, working to clear his head as he did. Visualizing gathering up the chaos, blowing it out. New breath. Clean. Sparkling and bright. Collect the mental garbage again. Dark and ugly. Pain and confusion. The stench of whatever that thing was. Dump it at the curb. Go back for more.
Minutes passed. His trembling eased; his heart rate slowed. Mind emptied.
Of everything.
Except light. Gleaming and bright.
The realization hit him like a thunderbolt. Zach opened his eyes and sat up straight. White light. When he emptied himself of everything else, that’s what was left. It’d always been that way. He’d figured it was for everyone.
But what if it wasn’t? Emptied, did some folks have a gray slate? Or colors? Like a painter’s palette? Or even a deep endless black?
Zach thought about the voice in his head from earlier. Urging him to use his light. A woman’s voice. One he hadn’t recognized. Even as a part of him denied the possibility it had been real, another accepted the notion.
Someone sent to help him? But who? And how?
Or simply a manifestation of his own psyche, another part of himself responding to the assault?
Arrogant Half Light.
Brite Knight. She would know. The darkness is greedy, she’d said. Light is fleeting.
Not a coincidence.
He jumped as his cell phone vibrated at his hip. He unclipped it. Mick, he saw.
She didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Where the hell are you?”
“Up the street.”
“What street?”
“I don’t know. The one with the streetcar line.”
“Seriously?”
“Dead serious. Or almost dead, but that’s another story.” He peered out the window. “I had to pull over.”
“You’re in your car?” Her tone was hushed, but vibrated with fury. “You left the scene? Just climbed in your car and—”
“Drove off. Yeah. I had to get away from there, Mick.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t just decide you’re going to make a coffee run or something and leave the scene.”
She was sputtering—a fact he wasn’t about to point out. “We have to talk.”
“You bet your ass we do!”
“Not like this.” A woman pushing a baby carriage walked past, glancing in at him curiously. “Face-to-face. Someplace private.”
“This is bullshit, Harris. I covered for you. Made up some crap about you checking out a hotline tip.”
“The energy attacked me. Stepping out of the kitchen wasn’t enough.”
“Details. Now.”
“No, not like this. Meet me at the Eighth.”
“One hour,” she said and hung up.
The hour passed in what seemed to Zach like a blink of an eye. He sat across an interview room table from her; she was looking at him like he’d sprouted a second—and third—head.
He went on anyway. “It felt like it was hammering at me. Trying to find a way inside me.”
“The energy?”
“Yes.”
She drew her eyebrows together. “To do what?”
“Ruin my day, steal my soul. How the hell do I know? I’ve never had anything like that happen before. And believe me, nobody, including Parker, warned me something like this was even possible.”
She stood. Began to pace. “But I felt nothing. Culpepper and Roberts, nothing.”
“Just my lucky day, I guess.”
“Talk to me about the energy. You say it’s the same as before.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But more aggressive. Angrier.”
“And that’s it?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “For now.”
“For now,” she repeated acidly. “Wonderful. It’s like being partners with frickin’ Houdini. What’re you trying to hide from me now?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“I think I can beat this thing.”