Read Online Hereditary by Jane Washington - Free Book Online Page B

once again darkened world. Hazen and Cale had both jumped to their feet, and I could see Hazen’s arm outstretched in a ‘back off’ gesture, which drew my attention to the two guards who were staring at me in alarm.
    He turned and snapped something at them and they melted away.
    “You read my mind,” I accused.
    “I didn’t read anything. I could sense the darkness vying to escape, and I slipped into your mind to help you tame it, that’s all Bea. Trust me.”
    I could hear the sense of his words, but I was suddenly cold in my green summer dress, and I could feel the material whipping about my legs
    “Why are you both being nice to me?” I whispered, feeling my anger melt into something else, something that resembled fear, though it only seemed to intensify the darkness around me. “What does everyone want with me all of a sudden?” I looked between them, feeling my wall slipping inch my inch.
    Hazen was moving toward me again, and I knew that he was going to reach out and touch me, slip into my mind and wipe away my dark feeling.
    But it was my mind, and my dark feeling.
    I took a shaky step back, and for the first time, I saw real alarm flash in his eyes.
    “We have no ulterior motives Bea, none at all.”
    “I need to go,” I stammered, suddenly realising what it was that I had to do. “I need to go right now.”
    “Dammit, you’re out of control, you might hurt someone,” Hazen flung at me as I turned.
    I paused. I heard Cale hiss at him, and felt the anger rising swiftly to the surface again, though I managed to push it away just in time. Perhaps I would hurt someone if I had to run all the way back to the forest, and there was no real need, not when I was already standing in the middle of a garden.
    “It was unfair of me to let you both finish the experiment without offering my own little piece as well. I am connected to everything around me, and it’s not what you think. I. Don’t. Hurt. Things.” I moved back to Hazen, punctuating each word with a step, until we were standing toe-to-toe, and then I let go of my barrier.
    The garden’s presence flooded me the minute I closed my eyes and released my wall, though it was difficult to keep my dark feelings from flooding the bond that my power travelled through. It was a struggle for the first few moments, until the buzzing connection began to calm me, and then it wasn’t so hard to hold the dark feelings at bay, because they were disappearing all on their own. I felt the sigh slip from my lips as the sudden relief poured over me, and I sank slowly to my knees, threading my fingers in the short grass below me. Everything in the garden was fairly healthy already, but I sought out the weak spots out of habit, only pushing my power through the bond when some struggling plant needed it—otherwise I would have been forcing perfectly healthy apple trees to lose their fruit and re-bloom again in a matter of minutes. It had been hard at first to maintain only enough power to open and feed the connection, but now it was just second nature, and I quickly sank into the meditation of it. I would have to return to reality, Hazen and Cale eventually, but for now, I needed this connection. I needed to escape whatever darkness was beginning to take over me; I needed to be healed by my own healing force.
    When I finally blinked my eyes open again, Hazen and Cale hadn’t moved an inch, though I was now looking up at them from my position on the ground, and I was sure that more than a few minutes had passed. All of the previous darkness had disappeared, though an orange, dusky kind of glow was beginning to spread across the otherwise clear sky. I felt a light mist on my face; it wasn’t quite rain, but was pleasant all the same, and the air was a comforting caress against my bare arms and upturned face. The others were looking around at the garden, marvelling over what I had marvelled over so many times in my childhood. The colours that were so bright they looked