and you are the catalyst, or Synergist as we call it. We each have an ability as you’ve witnessed a little of. When you were introduced into the equation our abilities are amplified. Hence Ollie sparking up. When you first came into contact with one, or all of us, there was a reaction. Tingling you said, if I remember.” Ares pauses, waiting for my reaction. I nod my head, biting my lip. How much of our earlier conversation did he hear?
“That tingling is like a warning system. It’s a way for us to know we’ve encountered a match.”
“Do you guys feel it too? When you touch?”
A slight pink rises on Milo’s cheeks. “Not like it was when we touched you.”
Hesitantly, I brush my fingers over Ares forearm and down to the top of his hand, trailing past his fingers, eventually folding my hands together in my lap. When I look up, he’s staring at the hand I just grazed. “It’s not there anymore.” My words are spoken softly, I knew it was too good to be true.
Ollie comes over and sits on the arm of the couch, he places his hand over mine. “It’s changing,” he offers. “You may not believe much of this, but your body has already accepted it. That’s the only way you would have been able to feed my power.” I still feel something when he touches me, I felt the same thing when I touched Ares, but it’s not the overwhelming feeling that would invade my senses from before, now that I’m thinking about it. I haven’t felt it since the first day I came here, and they tried to explain what was happening.
“So, when you guys need your powers, like for something big, I’ll have to be around?” I get a small jolt of satisfaction, knowing I might be needed. Ares gets up and heads to the kitchen, the light from the fridge opening creates a long shadow behind him. I narrow my eyes, wondering if the light is playing tricks on me, or if it is moving independently of him, which is the way it looks.
Dante grabs my attention by answering my question, “It’s more than just when we’re using our abilities for big stuff, it’s more like we become a unit.” He glances around to the others, waiting to see if he gave the right answer. When no one protests he continues, “We’re able to function separately, but it’s like losing one of your senses. If you are born without taste, eating is still something you would do. But say you tasted… chocolate once in your life, then you had to go back to not being able to experience the bitter sweetness melting on your tongue. Wouldn’t you crave it? Crave it like you didn’t know how to crave it before, because you had no idea there was something out there that tasted like that?”
“So, that’s why you guys are so close. Wait, if Ares wasn’t living nearby wouldn’t that have been hard?”
The man in question drops into the seat next to me, closer if I had to judge. “We do get a certain connection from being together, but it’s not the same as the one we get from you.”
“That’s part of the reason I might have seemed like a jerk the last day or two,” Milo cuts in before I really have a chance to think about what Ares is implying. “Not all of us agreed that finding out how you don’t know about us, or yourself, was more important than having us all together.” He’s not looking at anyone in particular, he’s more addressing the room as a whole, but Dante accepts it as a challenge.
“You act like I was doing it to keep her away from you. It was a day or two max Milo.”
“Yeah a day or two, but I’ve been waiting for three years.” As soon as the words come out of his mouth he looks at Ares, then casts his eyes down to the floor.
“I’ve been waiting six.” Ares’s voice is low, and it sends a fissure of awareness through me. The sophisticated clothes don’t hide the fierce man beneath. I shift away from him on instinct. Ares’s darkened eyes snap over to me when I do. Ollie places a steadying hand on my shoulder and the blackness bleeds away immediately, leaving behind the beautiful burnished brown. “What Milo was trying to tell you cara, is that each of us will continue to struggle a bit