“I’m sorry…” The tears started to track down his cheeks again, and he was shaking. He crumpled to the ground, turning his hands flat against his chest. “Die,” he cried desperately. “Die. Die. Die. Die.”
It was the first time I had seen him trying to kill himself with his own power, but it obviously wasn’t the first time that he had tried. I stumbled backwards, wishing that he wasn’t in front of the door so that I could run for Jayden. Jayden would know what to do.
“Please…” I fell to the ground helplessly, knowing that I couldn’t get too close. “Please, Danny, stop… I’ll read you the stories, the rhymes, it’ll help like it always does. Just stop and I’ll get the book, okay? Danny!”
“DIE!” he screamed, pressing his hands harder, shuddering with the effort to hold them there, his knuckles beginning to turn white.
The door swung open and one of the nurses rushed in, immediately moving to grab a hold of Danny, as though he were about to attack me. I shouted out a warning to her, but it was too late. As soon as she grabbed him, he turned and shoved one of his hands against her arm, and the limb slackened, falling limply to her side as though it had simply been switched off. She screamed and another nurse appeared in the doorway. Danny scrambled to his feet, the angry tears still tracking his face as he shoved his hands against the legs of the two women, causing them to crumble to the ground.
“DANNY!” I screamed in tandem with them, my throat tearing with my urgency. “STOP!”
“Why won’t you help me?” he shrieked back at me, crawling up onto the first nurse’s torso and pressing his hands down against her chest.
“Please,” I sobbed, trying to pull the leg of the second nurse to get her out of the way.
Danny launched himself from the first nurse, who now lay unmoving, and advanced toward me, the fury trembling in his limbs.
“You’re supposed to be mine to look after,” he spat the words with venom. “Everyone tells me. They say my special power is protecting you. But who’s protecting me?”
He stopped, realising that he had backed me into a corner, and he simply stared down at me, thoughts ticking away behind his eyes as the doorway flocked with more people and an alarm was sounded, a red light flashing on to signal a warning in the hallway.
“Help me, Lela,” Danny pleaded, his hands outstretched as he inched toward me. “Kill me or I’ll kill them all.”
One of the Klovoda agents that I recognised made a move to grab him, but he placed his hands against the man’s legs, collapsing him before he crawled on top of him and pressed against his heart. I shouted at the others to leave, but they could only stand in the doorway and stare with terror-filled eyes, wondering how they had never known about the little boy with the horrible power.
“Leave,” I begged them all, curling into a ball as Danny began to move toward me again, pleading words of his own. “Please leave.” I continued to sob, and another one of the nurses made a grab for Danny a second before he would have reached me.
He screamed, slapping a hand against her face. Her eyes rolled backwards, and she collapsed immediately, twitching on the floor for a second before becoming still. Eva skidded into the room, her green eyes flashing in alarm, her red hair spilling around her face. She assessed the situation in a split second, and then she was summoning a wall of water to separate Danny from the remaining people that surrounded her. He knew better than to walk through the water—it was rotating so quickly that it would tear his skin off if he tried to pass through it. Unfortunately, Eva hadn’t noticed me curled up into a corner of the room, and when Danny started running toward me again, her eyes went wide with alarm. The water was released, flooding into the room and drenching Danny as I scrambled away from him, still pleading my useless words.
“This isn’t you,” I told him. “You’re just afraid. It’s the power. You know what it does to you. You’ll regret this tomorrow. You’ll cry and tell me you’re sorry. Danny… please…”
He swung around at the last second and caught Eva on the face as she tried to creep up behind him.
“Sleep,” he told her, and she crumpled to the ground. He looked at her, and then at the waterlogged room. He shook his head and held up his hands. I wondered why he hadn’t killed her as he had the others.