Blue Violet - By Abigail Owen Page 0,47

breath, she allowed her power to flow through her in tingling waves. Behind her closed eyes she saw Griffin’s power within him, almost like a glowing golden beacon of light. Reaching out mentally, she touched the light and drew it inside herself. Once she had control of it, she concentrated on locating each mind in the room, one at a time, until she saw all ten. And then she focused very hard on an image, that of a magnificently terrible black wolf.

“Wow,” Alex said under his breath.

“Cool!” Nate exclaimed beside her.

Once Ellie felt sure everyone could see what she saw, she started playing through the scenes in her head, allowing everyone else to witness the pictures in her mind, organizing her thoughts into a cohesive story of what had led her and Griffin here.

Ellie’s memories almost overwhelmed her as she worked through them. She started with some of her earlier recollections of life…she thought of her people, their life, and stories. To the outside world they appeared to be just a band of gypsies. But in reality, they were the largest gathering of people with extraordinary abilities in the world. They called themselves the Darane Svatura, choosing to embody a gypsy term referring to magic and mythology.

In a way, they were the royals of their kind. Both Ellie and Griffin’s great-grandfathers were the original Phuro, or elders. There had been more before them, but in very small numbers. Powers were passed down from generation to generation.

As young men, her great-grandfathers had befriended each other. They both married gypsy women…princesses from two different tribes. At that time in the world, gypsies had a greater tolerance of people who were unusual or different. Certainly more tolerance than the people who’d killed Svatura for suspected witchcraft. As their great-grandfathers married and had children, they’d gathered more of their kind together.

Her parents were the descendants of the original patriarchs. By the time Griffin and Ellie had been born, their Svatura clan numbered in the hundreds. It had eventually broken into smaller groups, travelling far away from the original main group. But they continued to return to the larger community and her great-grandfathers for advice, for protection, for help, and sometimes for judgment or rulings.

When Ellie had been only a young child, the killings started. First, with the smaller of the families who had moved away. Just one or two would survive and make their way back to the main tribe, bringing with them stories of giant metamorphs who all turned into wolves and had decimated all their people. But no matter how they tried, the Svatura had been unable to track down the wolves responsible. They called them the Vyusher, which meant wolf in Romani, the language of their gypsy allies and ancestors. As far as anyone could tell, the Vyusher were gifted people like the Svatura. The biggest difference between the two clans was that the Vyusher were all wolf metamorphs, which seemed impossible given how few metamorphs roamed the planet.

By the time Ellie and Griffin were in their early adolescence and coming into their powers, the worldwide community that had once numbered in the hundreds had been whittled down to only about fifty. They had all banded together for support and protection.

Ellie remembered the heavy feeling of fear that had permeated this time in her life. People with extraordinary gifts—gifts that should have protected them and their families, should have allowed them to fight back— these people had been killed in the attacks. No one knew when or how the attacks came. The survivors were most often younger and weaker or had only just come into their powers. For some reason, they seemed to go undetected by the wolves.

The attack on the one remaining tribe had come eventually. Even her great-grandfather, a metamorph of incredible size and strength, hadn’t been able to prevent it…or survive it. The wolves had attacked him first, along with the other strongest members. And somehow he hadn’t been able to morph in time. The Vyusher seemed to know what powers each Svatura possessed. It had been coordinated and strategic. And deadly.

This part Ellie showed in patches, like she remembered it. She also tried her best to not really think about what she was showing. Emotional transfer tended to be a part of the ability to show people memories, or at least it had been when she’d practiced this on Griffin. This was the worst moment of her life, and she didn’t want anyone else to experience that