Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,97

hit by a blast of heat. It didn’t hurt me. It’s like... I was in the eye of a storm. But I saw with my own eyes how it knocked all of the soldiers to the ground, as if they were flattened by an invisible hand. The farthest ones took more impact; the energy gained strength as it radiated outward...”

Tal heard murmurs of agreement. Their helicopters bore the brunt of the blast at the outermost point. It had been powerful enough to send them into tailspins.

“…sent some of them flying several feet. And here they remain, still in their corporeal forms, still alive, but unconscious. Just like Sophia.”

“These are Medusa’s turned soldiers?” Lord Wind asked.

Tal remembered his voice. He used to be Medusa’s Blooded Mate when he was still called Enlil Naram-Anu. He’d been her henchman for as many millennia as Tal had been her prisoner before he finally severed ties.

Someone crouched on the ground and checked a body, Tal could perceive from the motions and sounds.

“This one’s eyes are blue, not black. Is it possible that the energy blast…whatever it was…changed them back?”

“We will know when they awaken,” Cloud said. “We cannot leave them here. They will have questions, and we need answers as well.”

“Looks like this search and rescue mission just broadened in scope,” one of the Chosen noted.

Tal frowned. Something was wrong.

As the others debated the best course of action to bring all of the unconscious fallen soldiers back to the Shield or Cove, Tal concentrated his senses on the surroundings.

“Where is Benjamin?”

Everyone froze at his query.

He heard their movements as they looked around. He, too, closed his eyes and harnessed his Gift to search for signs of the boy.

Finally, Dalair uttered the dreaded words that Tal already knew:

“He’s gone.”

*** *** *** ***

It all unfolded like a movie.

Except, he was in the movie even while he was watching.

Benji was holding Sophia’s hand. She seemed to need the reassurance.

He looked up at her, worried.

Her eyes were so very dark, no white in sight. It was as if he was staring into an abyss, more unfathomable than the endless space that Benji read about in his encyclopedias, online, and from what he learned in science class at school.

There was nothing frightening about space. Well, unless you considered the lack of oxygen… and food… and water…

Anyway, he only ever thought about space in the context of being safely ensconced in a luxurious spaceship (not the real kind from NASA, but the cool kind from Star Wars, Star Trek and The Avengers). Or sitting on a hill with Mom and Dad while camping outside of the city to gaze up at the countless stars.

Space was vast and unknowable, no matter how mankind tried to puzzle it out. There would always be new things to learn, new galaxies to discover. Space was not frightening.

Not like the yawning, lightless void that oozed from Sophia’s eye sockets.

Shudder.

The ugly greenish veins spreading everywhere on her skin didn’t help either. Nor did the sharp black nails that lengthened from her fingertips.

So, he grasped her icy hand and tried to pull her back from the abyss like he always did. He tried to send positive thoughts her way, coax her from her enraged trance back to his side of the world. The bright, sunny side where everyone got along and happiness reigned.

It’s not that Benji never felt sad. He did.

He missed his Lamby blanket whenever he misplaced it. He lamented that it faded with every wash, that the little pink face with smiling eyes sewn into the hood with ears got less recognizable as time went on, even though it still made him happy every time he saw it.

He was upset when Olivia passed away. She was his birth mother, but he barely remembered her. When she’d been alive, she hadn’t spent much time with him. Not voluntarily, anyway. It’s as if he reminded her of someone she’d rather not remember. It wasn’t until she got cancer that she started paying more attention to him. As if the incurable illness, late as they’d discovered it in her, had given her the passion that she’d always seemed to lack for life.

But Benji knew that didn’t mean she wanted to live.

No, Olivia had been looking forward to death. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he always had. He didn’t feel upset that she died, per se, because he felt as if she was happier now; her soul was at peace. It’s just that he wished he got