The vivid sapphire returned to her eyes. "You're lying to me."
Her accusation surprised him. "Why would I do that?"
She swallowed. "I don't know. I just know that I have no powers."
"Why are you so afraid of them?"
"Because..."
He cocked his head as her voice trailed off and she didn't finish her sentence.
"Because?" he prompted.
She looked up at him and the grief in her eyes took his breath. "When I was fifteen," she said in a hushed tone, "I had a dream." She blinked back tears as she gripped the counter beside her. "I used to have a lot of them back then. They always came true. In this one, my best friend was killed in a car wreck. I saw her. I felt her panic and I heard the last thoughts that went through her mind before she died."
Kyrian clenched his teeth at the pain he heard in her voice. Reaching out, he took her hand in his. Her icy fingers were shaking.
"When I saw her at school, I did everything I could to keep her from going home that day with Bobby Thibideaux. I even told her about my dream." Tears fell again. "She didn't listen. She told me I was stupid and mean and jealous because he liked her and not me."
She shook her head as she relived that day. "I wasn't jealous, Hunter, I just didn't want her to die."
He stroked her fingers, trying to warm her hand. "I know, Amanda."
"She got in the car with me screaming at her to get out. Everyone at school was staring at me, but I didn't care. Tabitha pulled me away so they could leave and everyone was laughing."
She licked her dry lips. "They weren't laughing the next morning when they found out the two of them had died on the way home. They called me a freak. For the next three years, no one wanted to be near me. I was that weirdo girl who saw things."
Anger flashed in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Tell me, what good are these so-called powers when they make people afraid of me? Why can I see things I can't change? What good is that?"
Kyrian had no answer for her. All he could do was feel her inner pain and turmoil.
"Don't you understand?" she continued. "I don't want to know the future when I can't stop it. I want to be normal," she insisted, her voice cracking on the last word. "I don't want to be like Talon or my grandmother and have dead people talking to me. I don't want to know what you're feeling. I just want to live my life like other people. Don't you ever want that?"
Closing his eyes against the unfounded agony that clenched his heart, Kyrian let go of the softness of her skin and stepped back from her. "It wouldn't matter if I did."
Amanda started at the look on his face. She'd wounded him somehow. "I'm sorry, Hunter, I didn't mean-"
"It's okay," he said slowly. He moved to stand by a chair and she watched the way he gripped the edge of it. Though he was trying hard to hide it, she could sense his pain.
"You're right," he said at last. "There are times when I do miss being able to feel the sunshine on my face. I miss so many things that I can't even begin to count them all. I have learned the best thing to do is to not torture myself with the memory of it." He looked up at her and the heat in his eyes scorched her. "But people like us have special gifts. We can't be normal."
Amanda didn't want to hear that. Her heart couldn't take that news. "Maybe you can't. But I can. I don't let myself feel those powers anymore. They are dead to me."
He laughed bitterly. "And you think I'm stubborn."
"Hunter, please," she said, hating the agony she heard in her tone. "I just wish it were the day before yesterday. I wish I could wake up and have all this be a nightmare."
In that moment, she felt something that scared her. It was just a quick twinge of the powers he referred to. And the sensation of it sliced through her as she heard his thoughts.
Wish you had never met me, you mean.
She moved toward him. "Hunter..."
He dodged her touch and went to the counter where the phone was. He picked the phone up and handed it to her. "Call Tabitha and tell her to stay at your mother's until Friday. She can come and go in the daytime, but after dark it is imperative that she stay indoors."
"She won't like that."
Aggravated fury smoldered in his midnight eyes. "Then have your mother tie her down. We're not dealing with regular vampires here. These Daimons have unlocked some exceedingly dangerous powers, and until Talon and I figure out what we're dealing with, she needs to lie low."