“Why would you risk your life to save mine?”
“What difference does it make? I don’t make casual conversation. Let’s do this and get out of here.”
“I didn’t realize the conversation was casual. It isn’t to me.”
He wanted to swear—and he wasn’t a swearing man. She stared up at him with her dark, enormous eyes and her exotic, Asian beauty and somehow slipped past his guard and got under his skin. There was something about her he couldn’t quite grasp, something important, elusive, something that floated in his mind but refused to be caught. It had to do with feelings, and the one thing Nicolas wasn’t good at was dealing with emotion.
He let his breath out, determined not to let her get to him. He had to keep them alive and that was all that mattered. “Focus away from us. Think of the energy like a charge. Something you’re detonating. Direct it to a specific area.”
She shook her head. Her heartrate might be following his, but her lungs were starved for air, the energy choking her with wanting to get out. “I can’t.”
“Focus out there.” He indicated the bog several hundred yards away from them. “Think of it as an arrow. You’re sending it right there. Picture a target and get as close to the center of the bull’s-eye as you can and send the energy there.”
“It will burn everything.”
“There isn’t much to burn.” His gaze shifted restlessly, examining the areas around them. Instinctively he was crouching now, pulling her down with him so that the trees and bushes gave them more cover. “Send it.” This time, deliberately, there was hard authority in his tone. They were out of time. He didn’t mention that he had seen shadows move in the bog.
Dahlia sent up a silent prayer that it would work. She stared out into the night, wishing the moon didn’t keep going behind clouds so she could actually see an image. She felt the force of the energy moving within her. And she felt something more. Nicolas Trevane. His strength, his determination. His focus.
The energy poured out of her, dark and terrible, raging and churning as it leapt toward the bog. The night exploded into flame, everything turning red and orange and burning blue-black. Screams erupted, horrible, agonizing. Gunfire burst through the night, like angry red bees streaking out of the heavy swamp.
Nicolas heard a distinct thump. “Incoming.” He knew the sound of a M203 when he heard one. They were in for trouble.
Dahlia was backing away from him, a horrified expression on her face. He simply caught her smaller body and slammed her down into the muck, his body covering hers as the grenade hit somewhere behind them, spreading destruction in all directions. The force of the blast rushed over them. Nicolas was up, dragging her with him, hurrying now, heading away from the water back toward the interior.
“Head west,” Dahlia said. She kept her head down while hell erupted around them. “The ground is firmer and we can move faster.” Her stomach was churning, but her mind was blessedly numb. The backwash of energy was already racing to find her, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She worked at keeping her brain from functioning past survival. If she allowed the energy to find her too quickly, she had no hope, and perhaps Nicolas would die as well.
“We’re going to have to go into the water, Dahlia.” He wanted to prepare her. Alligators and snakes called the bayou home. He had to know if she was going to balk. Again he heard the distinctive thump of a grenade fired and pressed her to the earth. She made no protest and didn’t fight him. It was the most he could hope for under the circumstances. The blast landed to their left, a distance away.
Nicolas never questioned himself. He made decisions fast, under life and death conditions and didn’t believe in second-guessing himself. It was a useless and detrimental trap, yet he found himself regretting using her abilities against their enemies. He glanced at her as they ran again. She was impossibly pale, her eyes enormous. Her body trembled beneath his and she winced, shrinking from the contact each time he took them to the ground to avoid the blast from the scattered grenade shells.