Guardian Of The Grove Read Online Free

thought that he could simply overpower me. That might have been true once, but my power had grown, and this man was no match for me. I reached out with my gift and started to remove the air from his lungs. A nasty bit of magic but a neat trick to have at your disposal.
    The first indication that the spell was working was when the flames stopped sprouting from his hands. His face grew panicked, and he reached for his throat as if that was how I was choking him. I watched as he started to turn blue and fell to the floor. The second he hit the ground, I stopped the spell, giving him the gift of life. Something he had been more than willing to take away from all of us.
    I walked slowly forward and bent down to see if he had a wallet on him. Hopefully one with a driver's license. My hand brushed against his back pocket, and I felt a hand close around my wrist like a vice. Bones crunched and ground together as my wrist broke. Without thinking, I lashed out with my other hand. The knife stuck into him, but it wasn’t like the movies—it didn’t slide right in. I had to work for it. The knife didn’t want to go in further, and my grip was slippery with his blood. But I kept pushing and twisting the blade in further. Eventually, the knife hit something important and blood started to bubble from the man’s lips.
    “You’ve won nothing here today. They’ll be coming for you.” He smiled up at me, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. His eyes shown with an intensity that he wanted me to see. His job here had failed, but there would be others.
    “My family is alive. To me, that means I have won everything.” I twisted the knife and jerked it up. The man below me started screaming then, but it didn’t last long. His screams turned into gurgles, and then he was quiet. I let the knife go and stood up, looking at the blood on my hands. I felt dirty; I hadn’t meant to kill him, but once I stabbed him, I couldn’t stop. I healed the bones in my wrist as I walked outside.
    As soon as I stepped out onto the porch, my parents rushed forward. Before I made it three steps, I was wrapped up in a huge hug and tears were falling from my cheeks. They were alive. I had saved them.
    My dad pushed me away and looked me over. “Are you hurt?”
    “No, I’m fine.”
    “That was amazing the way you saved your mother and stopped them from shooting me.”
    “Thanks, Dad.”
    “We’ll need to get rid of those bodies and then we need to get out of here.”
    “It won’t take me long to do that. And I don’t care about leaving. As long as we are together, everything will be all right.” I pulled them back into an embrace. The tears were streaming down my cheeks. They were alive, and we would be ok.

    * * *
    “ J ackson , wake up.”
    I felt a warm hand on my shoulder, and a soft female voice spoke to me. I knew who it belonged to—Britta. And if she was here, that meant my parents were still dead. In some ways, the dream where I saved them was worse than the one where I destroyed Tucson. It gave me hope that I would see them again, and now that hope was gone. They were still dead, and I hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it. I hadn’t even bothered to go home to see their graves. I wondered if there had even been a funeral.
    The tears started to fall then, and the sobs shook me from head to toe. Warm arms wrapped around me and held me tight. I was a fucking mess. I couldn’t believe this woman had the courage to stand by me. I woke up either screaming or crying. Who would want to deal with that?
    I stopped shaking, and I felt cool lips press against mine. My muscles relaxed almost instantly. I flicked my tongue out and sighed at the taste of her. She continued to hold me tight as we kissed, gently at first and then with more passion. I moaned as we came together. She had done the one thing that could take my mind off of the dreams. We moved together, and the horrible realization that my dream wasn’t real faded away.