Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Her friends on the forum would be happy. She could tell them that there were such things as killer psychometrics. Auden intended to be one.
Stop this! You know you’ve lost!
Ignoring Shoshanna’s order, Auden continued to pump out rage. She could’ve used love, too, but she wasn’t about to waste that precious emotion on this woman who had never been a mother to her except in biological terms.
At the same time, she made a strategic shift that meant her power would encircle Shoshanna’s, creating a suffocating trap. A chill in her heart. This kind of strategy wasn’t in her bailiwick. This was part of her mother’s skills.
Bleedover.
Auden steeled her heart. She couldn’t panic, couldn’t rail against what had already happened. And whatever her mother had left in her during the earlier attempted transfers, that part was no longer Shoshanna. Because if it had been, it would’ve been trying to derail Auden.
Instead, every part of Auden—even the cold and strategic element introduced into her by Shoshanna—was fighting to protect Liberty…and get back to Remi, this man who had taught her what it was to trust.
He’d kept every promise, never let her down, was fighting for her even now.
A ferocious kind of power waited on the periphery of her mind, ready for her to open the door so it could prowl in.
Remi.
She couldn’t open that door. Not when there remained the merest drop of a chance that her mother would find a way to slip through, infect with her frothing insanity the wonderful group of people who had kept Auden safe—and who were now ready to uproot their entire pack for her baby’s life.
You are weak! You stand no chance! Stop this foolish game. It is annoying. Sharp telepathic blows against Auden’s shields…but the blows snagged on the tactile thickness of emotion inside her mind, and what got through were dull thuds at best.
You sound desperate, Mother, she said. The lovely nurse did let me know your brain is going critical. How much longer can you last? She deliberately channeled the piece of Shoshanna that was now part of her, the part that could think with cold clarity and the part, she now realized, that could be used to defend as well as attack.
Shoshanna had used her will and her ability to think with crisp clarity to hurt people. Auden could do the opposite with the same tool. Because that was all it was, a tool, and one that would stand her in good stead in the years to come as she protected all those who were her own. Liberty. Remi. And the pack that had enclosed her baby in its arms.
No one would ever get to RainFire as long as Auden lived.
Changelings! A shocked cry from Shoshanna. You are consorting with changelings!
That answered one more question. Strange that you didn’t know already, if you transferred your consciousness to mine. Seems like I’m tough enough to keep my memories and experiences safe from you. The relief she felt at that confirmation was a roar through her veins that gave her even more power. You are dead, Mother. You died that day you collapsed. What you are now is an abomination, a fragmented shadow that is half-insane.
A screech of sound that hurt her mental ear—and removed any doubts about her conclusion. The Shoshanna she’d known would’ve never lost control that way. Auden had never, not once, seen her mother display any emotion.
But even half-mad, her brain functions nowhere near optimal, she was still a 9.5 telepath with razor-sharp offensive capabilities.
No. Auden frowned. Shoshanna now had access to the same brain machinery as Auden—which meant all she had was psychometry and the most basic telepathy. This was Shoshanna using her knowledge of strategy and telepathic combat to confuse and distract in an endless barrage that stole from Auden’s own power.
Auden shoved back with every violent tactile memory she had—and knew it wasn’t enough. Even with the piece of Shoshanna inside her, she didn’t have enough offensive knowledge to outsmart a woman who’d once been a Councilor. Even with only the brain of a psychometric in her arsenal, Shoshanna was winning.
Auden felt herself bleeding on the physical plane. Blood vessels bursting in her eyes from the pressure and tiny hemorrhages appearing on the skin of her body as her mind tried to redirect the violence. I will never give up! I’d rather die than let you live!
That was Auden’s line in the sand: Shoshanna ended here, her evil stopped before it could continue on.
Because Auden knew she wouldn’t be the last if this infernal “transfer” and “integration” actually worked and Shoshanna maintained even a semblance of thought. She’d find another victim, might even track down Liberty.
You can’t stop me. Chilling confidence, Shoshanna’s control returning as a clawed telepathic hand gripped at Auden’s mind, every ounce of her own telepathic power concentrated in a way she’d never known could be done. But Auden had one final ace up her sleeve that she’d prepared long before she’d stepped foot back in this house.