The Ultimate Sacrifice, Talia Jager [novels to read .TXT] 📗

and you didn’t understand it. Being a mind-blower is an amazing talent. There is so much you can do with it.” His eyes lit up. “I can’t wait to teach you.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be excited or scared. Vala patted my hand. “It’s fine, child. We’re both here to help you. We want to help you get your gift to the level it needs to be at for a battle.”

“Okay,” I said, ignoring—for now—the fact that this man knew my parents. I’d have to learn more about that later. “How do we do that?”

“It will be a lot of work. We will have to teach you how to control your gift. We’ll also be working on physical workouts and weapons training.” He turned to Vala. “How is her focus?”

“Depends on her mood,” she answered like I wasn’t sitting there. “She misses her friends terribly, and she was in love.”

“I am in love,” I corrected her.

“Ahhh…I can sense that,” he said to Vala and then turned back to me. “From what I hear, your friends protected you until the end, and now you’re protecting them.”

“Something like that,” I muttered, casting my eyes down to the floor.

“Now, I haven’t met Kern. What was he like?”

My head snapped back up. “Scary.”

“Scary how?”

“Well…he was gorgeous, which I hadn’t expected.”

Ramsey chuckled loudly. “That makes him scary?”

I blushed. “Well, it was more that I didn’t expect that. I expected demon-like, freaky, ugly, and then there was this beautiful, white-haired guy in front of me. Young too. It was just something that surprised me,” I admitted.

“Okay, what else?”

“He was rambling on about me being his bride and ruling the world together whether I liked it or not. If I didn’t give myself to him voluntarily, he was prepared to force me by brainwashing me or something.”

“Did he say how he planned to rule the world?”

“Only that he was going to unleash demons. First, small ones, then bigger and bigger until we all bowed to him.” I shuddered, remembering his words.

“We can’t allow that.”

Duh. “So, how do we stop him? Do we attack first?”

“No. We can’t do that. Both the gifted and the faeries are peaceful beings,” Vala said. “Being who I am, I too, am peaceful, bound by the Earth. I cannot start a fight. I can help and protect though, once that fight has been started.”

“I have been in many battles,” Ramsey said. “But none were started by my people. We have to be very careful here. Kern has to attack first, and then we can step in.”

A timer started beeping. “Oh good, dinner is ready.” He served us steaks, potatoes, and green beans. Being as hungry as I was, the green beans tasted like cookies! I ate everything on my plate and asked for seconds.

“Why don’t you get some sleep now. I’ll be waking you early in the morning to start. No time to waste.”

I nodded, wiping my face. “Dinner was delicious. Of course, I haven’t eaten much in days.” I stole a look at Vala, who almost cracked a smile. “Vala, you said you’d be able to find out if my friends were okay. Is that something you can do anytime? Can you tell me how they are before I start this training?”

She nodded. “Go get ready for bed and I’ll be in to see you.”

“Okay.” I rinsed my plate off and headed upstairs.

I heard Ramsey speak to Vala. “Are you sure you should tell her how her friends are? Will that distract her?”

“No, I think she’ll do better knowing how they are rather than wondering. I think it’ll help her focus.”

As I walked up the stairs, I glanced over to the living room. An image of my parents playing with me in there flashed through my mind. Odd. What was that? I shook my head, continued on to my room, and got ready for bed. When I walked back into my room from the bathroom, Vala was sitting on the chair. She had a faraway look on her face. I guessed she was checking in to see how everyone was. I sat on the bed and waited for her to speak.

After what seemed like an hour, she finally looked at me. “First, they are all fine. Alive. No injuries,” she reported. “Mira is, well, she’s devastated, but Auralee has finally convinced her to eat and go to class. Noe hasn’t seen anything yet and Daxton is hurting; he too hasn’t been taking good care of himself. But Zane got on him and he’s starting to recover. The school has started trainings too. Physical stuff, weapons trainings, a lot of the same things we’ll be teaching you.”

I smiled and tears sprang to my eyes. “They’re all okay.”

“Yes, they are. That doesn’t mean they don’t miss you every minute of the day, and I am sorry about that. I know how much you miss them, but hang on. I will get you back to them, I promise.”

“Thank you, Vala.”

“You’re welcome. Sleep now. Tomorrow I want you focused and alert. Don’t make me regret filling you in.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I got under the covers. “Good night, Vala.”

“Good night, Kassia.” She turned off the lights and closed the door.

I sobbed silently in my pillow until I fell asleep.

Morning came way too early. Gone were the days of sleeping in and hitting the snooze button. “Rise and shine!” Ramsey pounded on the door, causing me to fall out of bed. “Time to get up and face the day.”

When I opened my eyes, I noticed the sun had already peeked over the horizon. At least he waited until sunrise. “Coming…” I said in a drowsy voice. The air was chilly, so I quickly slipped on the only clean jeans and T-shirt I had. I grabbed my hoodie from the chair and threw that on too.

After getting ready, I hurried downstairs and had breakfast. I had no idea what Ramsey and Vala had in store for me. Imagine my surprise when I walked out the door to find them with a cat-hound. I froze. My eyes widened, and I looked back and forth between them, trying to figure out if I had been duped.

Vala shook her head. “No.” She answered the question I had asked in my head. “We caught him a while ago and now we want to see you kill him.”

“I need to see what you can already do.” Ramsey gestured.

I let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, move out of the way then.” I walked down the porch steps and faced the demon as Vala and Ramsey moved to the sides. I planted my feet and glared at the cat-hound, sending him my death stare. Being a smaller, weaker demon, it only took me ten seconds to have him flat on the ground and another five for him to die.

“Impressive.” Ramsey clapped. “Our goal is to get that down to less than five seconds.”

“Smaller ones are easier,” I told him. “Bigger ones take longer. And when there are a lot, I can do more than one, but not hundreds at a time.”

“You will.”

“How are we supposed to test this?”

“Nobody ever told you that you could do other things?” Ramsey asked.

My jaw dropped. “Um…no. I would have remembered that.”

“Tell me, when you kill like that, how do you feel inside?”

“Angry. I get mad and then whoever is there suffers from pain or death.”

“So your body fills with anger and hate?”

“Pretty much.”

“What do you hate? Bugs? Birds?”

“Definitely bugs.”

He stood next to me. “I want you to look out in the field and see the bugs. They’re out there. You need to focus and concentrate enough that you can see every bug.”

I shot him a look. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I’ll be sitting over there when you’re done.”

That made me laugh. Bugs? Really? Okay. I concentrated on the bugs. Some I could pick out right away; however, I was certain there were more of them. I tried to push my mind further, expanding beyond a few feet, but it felt blocked somehow. I glanced over at Ramsey, who was smiling. I wasn’t laughing anymore. Sighing, I tried again and again. After about an hour, I threw my hands up and sat on the ground.

I held my head in my hands, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. How was I supposed to find every bug here? How did I open up and let my mind go?

Ramsey finally got up and walked over to where I sat. “Get up,” he ordered. I stood. “You can’t give up. You can do this. Empty your mind and listen.”

I nodded. First, I closed my eyes for a few seconds. I tried to let every thought in my head disappear. Then I opened my eyes and listened. I envisioned seeing the bugs showing themselves. And they I did—not all of them, but there was definitely more than before. Just not enough.

“Better,” Ramsey said. “Now, do it again and try to push back further.”

I did the same thing as before. I could see the ones I had earlier. I focused further on a spot in the distance and concentrated on getting every bug around to show up. More started to appear and I got excited. Suddenly they all disappeared again.

“Good, but see what happened? When you got enthusiastic, you broke concentration, and you lost power. You have to hold it until you’re done with them. Remember, you are in control. You have the fate of any living thing in your hands.”

Any living thing?

It took another few hours to really get it down, but I was pretty sure every bug nearby was visible. As I held my focus, I heard Ramsey whisper to me, “Now kill them.”

My eyes narrowed, and the power within me sprang to life. It was almost like Kern had said. The power enjoyed being used. When the power reached its limit, I told the bugs to die. About a third of them dropped right then and there. “Damn,” I swore.

“That was better. Not enough, but better.” He looked up at the sky. “I want to you to jog around the tree line for twenty minutes and then come inside for lunch.”

I looked up at him to see if he was serious. He was. I sighed and started jogging. It felt good to be actively doing something, but after twenty minutes I was ready to stop.

Lunch consisted of sandwiches and soup. They let me have a half an hour break before taking me back outside to practice more. Each time I tried it, I got a little better. After a couple more hours, Ramsey moved on to teach me martial arts in case I ever needed it. “With your gift, I doubt you will, but there may come a time when it comes in handy.”

“Sure.” I shrugged. I had learned the basics at Glendale, so Ramsey taught me the next steps. We worked on them for the rest of the afternoon. After dinner, I excused myself to my room. I sat on the bed reading one of the books from the bookshelf, but I only got a few chapters in because my mind just wasn’t in it.

I wished Auralee’s gift worked long distance. I could send her a message; let her know I was okay. It seemed wrong to allow them to think I was dead. I missed my friends. I missed talking to them and hanging out with them. I missed Daxton’s kisses and Mira’s laugh. I curled up on the bed and tried to fall asleep.

Even though