|
An Excerpt From: PISCES PHENOMENON
Copyright © MANDY
M. ROTH, 2006.
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave Publishing,
Inc.
Slatkiska, tell me you’re well. I need to know you’re unharmed, he
said, his voice weaker than before. Some day soon we’ll be together.
We’ll touch as we were born to touch one another and our passion will know
no bounds.
Maybe
sooner than he thought. The previous night had been filled with erotic
images of a man with bronzed skin and jet black hair. The visions
had started as just that—visions. She’d seen him standing in a darkened
bedroom taking his shirt off and had been unable to resist the urge to
touch him. Never before had a vision become interactive. The man had called
to her on a level she couldn’t explain. He felt familiar and seemed to
radiate the same energy the man who spoke in her head often did.
He was too good to be true and the idea of the
mysterious voice in her head belonging to not only a real person but a man
who looked like a god was too much. He had everything she found attractive
in a man. A squared face and stubble-covered jawline.
Short, shaggy black hair. Piercing blue eyes. Tattooed bands on his upper
arms that wrapped the entire way around his biceps and a body that was
chiseled to perfection.
Deliciously incredible.
Slatkiska, talk to me. I love the sound of your voice. If
I were closer and you were willing, I could just
read your thoughts.
Now,
as she sat, sexually frustrated but thankful to have had even that tiny bit
of contact with him, she smiled. “That’s not my name. You’re not even
close. You’d think after twenty-two years of guessing, you’d be closer than
that. Tell me why you keep calling me Slatkiska
and I’ll think about humoring you,” she said, slipping her lightweight,
zip-front sweatshirt on.
He sighed and wrapped his power around her, making her
feel safe. Ease an old man’s mind, Slatkiska. Tell me you’re unharmed and
somewhere safe.
Phoebe
glanced around the studio and shrugged. “I’m safe and unharmed unless you
count a slight cramp in my lower back which isn’t life-threatening. Just annoying.
And stop calling yourself an old man. I told you that I get the sense your magik is old but you’re not.”
I
get the sense you’re lying about being somewhere safe. You’re close. I can
always feel it when you are. That means you ignored my warning and came to
me anyway. It’s not safe right now. In truth, it may never be.
She
huffed as she pushed the exterior door open and walked out into the cool
spring night air. The door shut and locked behind her. “Listen, buster, I
didn’t come this way for you, so get over yourself. I came because I wanted
to be here not because I was hoping to meet the voice in my head.”
He
laughed and the sound did what it always did, it wrapped around her. I
love how you don’t fear me.
“Why
would I? You’d never hurt me.”
Something
moved in the shadows in the dimly lit alley. Phoebe stilled, not wanting to
be scared but unable to help it. “Of course they’d tag this as part of the
Zodiac Zone,” she whispered, doing her best to joke off her fears.
Zodiac
Zone? Une Slatkiska, tell me you’re just trying to get a rise out of me. You
can’t be that close. I’d have sensed it if you were in this city with me.
Hell, I’d know if you were even in the state.
She
didn’t answer. Phoebe wasn’t like normal women. Even without taking the
voice in her head into consideration, she was different, powerful, and at
times she scared even herself. Normally, her extraordinary gifts were
limited to sleeping hours or times when her emotions ran to the extremes.
Since the visits from the man in her head had increased, so had her
abilities. It was as if he somehow intensified them. Amped
them to the point they were noticeable in waking hours.
Something’s
wrong. You’re scared.
Phoebe
turned and visually scanned the alley. “Who’s there?”
Slatkiska?
She
mentally stayed the voice in her head as she tried to focus on her
surroundings. “Someone’s here. I can…umm… I know you’re here.” It was on
the tip on her tongue to say she could sense them there but she’d managed
to hold back. Her sister had been boisterous about the gifts she possessed
and the state had tucked her safely away from mankind, deeming her a threat
to herself and others. Mentally unstable. The desire to follow that path
wasn’t in Phoebe.
“Aren’t
you a talented little human,” a deep voice said from the shadows.
She
tried and failed to locate the direction it came from.
An
eerie laugh sounded. “You will not see me until I am ready to be seen, une zeena.”
Phoebe
stifled a scream as she heard the stranger utter the name she’d grown
accustomed to hearing from another. “No. How do you know that name?”
CLOSE WINDOW
|