The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,56

when Isaac needed him, and it had all been fine and good until the day Isaac realized that he was completely in love with him.

He’d always known Justin didn’t feel the same way about him. Couldn’t feel the same way about him. So Isaac had done his best to get over his feelings with people who thought he was a bad boy, who wanted to do something thrilling and dangerous so they could whisper to their friends about it the next day.

None of it had worked, because the problem wasn’t physical intimacy. It was all those different kinds of need twisted together, a dependency that had taken every ounce of Isaac’s willpower to walk away from.

Now, drunk and exhausted, he wanted to take it all back. Instead, he forced himself to shrug Justin’s grip away.

“I told you that I’m fine,” he said brusquely. “So leave me alone.”

His hands buzzed with power again, and he felt something loosen in his mind. He’d lost focus. The memories were pressing in on him, his brothers’ screams growing louder. The scar on his neck throbbed. He could feel his legs trembling beneath him, his heart thumping, and suddenly he was fourteen again. Lanterns flickered in the trees, his family’s solemn faces moving in and out of focus. His bare back chafed against the altar’s rough stone, and he could not move, not even when he saw the glint of the dagger in Gabriel’s hand and understood it was for him.

S for sacrifice.

A surge of panic roared through Isaac, and he stumbled away from Justin, crashing through the underbrush as his power shuddered to life. And just as he had the night of his ritual, he surrendered to its crushing embrace.

It started as it always did, with a rush of pain Isaac could not fight and a rage he had to let free, and it ended as it always did, too. He was lying prone on the ground, coated in soot and ash, surrounded by the evidence of his destruction.

When Isaac had first come into his powers, the meltdowns had been far more frequent. He’d lost control in public a few times, but he had fought tooth and nail to keep his hands from shimmering, to keep the people around him from looking at him as if he were a time bomb instead of a boy trying desperately to keep it together.

Then there had been the Diner, where his reputation had gone from bad to worse.

Now there was this: Another disaster. Another mistake.

Isaac rolled over on his side and groaned. The last he could remember, he’d rushed into the woods?—away from Justin.

Justin. Shit. There had been people nearby?—had he hurt them? He felt for his phone, but it was gone, so he rose into a crouch, squinting into the darkness and hoping his eyes would adjust. Slowly, shapes loomed out of the darkness. Every tree within ten feet of him was dead, burned down to sooty stumps and scattered branches, but there were no bodies. Relief and nausea rushed through him, because he knew what Sullivan powers did to a human. The smell of roasted skin and burned hair, the bits of clothing and bone shards left behind. There was none of that here.

“Fuck,” he whispered, guilt rushing through him. He might not have killed anyone, but he’d still charred an entire clearing into oblivion. He’d destroyed part of the forest for no other reason than his inability to keep his memories where they belonged, inside his head.

It was still night, but he wasn’t drunk the way he’d been before. Time had passed; hours, maybe. Isaac’s stomach twisted. He’d never come out of a meltdown alone before. Justin had always been there, waiting for him.

“Hello?” he called out, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Is anybody there?” His words echoed uselessly through the clearing. Isaac tried to think. Surely he couldn’t be that far away from the Hawthorne house. He gazed up at the moon, mentally orienting himself?—if he headed west, he’d either hit Justin and May’s home or the main road.

He tried to walk, but only managed a single step before a wave of nausea roiled through him, so strong it forced him back to his knees. He was sweating and panting; the world spun, his palms digging into the ash on the ground. Using his powers always drained him, and combined with the alcohol still raging in his system, it was simply too much. Isaac groaned and dry-heaved in the general direction of the