Dark Awakening: Echoes of Destiny (The Children Of The Gods #88)

28. Ell-rom

28

ELL-ROM

E ll-rom's world narrowed to a single, horrifying moment. One second, he had been strolling peacefully with Jasmine, their hands intertwined, and the next she was torn from his grasp, a stranger's arm around her throat and a weapon pressed to her temple.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl.

Ell-rom's heart pounded in his chest, each beat echoing in his ears like a thunderclap. He stood frozen, his hand still outstretched where Jasmine's had been moments ago.

The gunman's voice was rough and shaky.

"What do you want?" she said. "I have money in my wallet. It's in my back pocket. Take it out and let us go."

"Nice try, bitch. I'm not taking my hands off you or the gun. Pull out the wallet and put it in my pocket. Give me your watch, too."

Ell-rom barely registered the words, his focus was entirely on Jasmine's face. Her eyes were wide with fear, silently pleading with him. Don't move , they seemed to say. Don't do anything rash .

Ell-rom felt helpless. Even if he had been at full strength, he would have been afraid to move. As fast as he was, he was not fast enough to stop that finger from pressing the trigger. All his strength, all his newfound abilities, seemed useless in the face of this human threat. He watched as Jasmine struggled to breathe, the gunman's arm tight around her throat. Every instinct screamed at him to act, to protect her, but the trembling hand on the gun pressed to her temple kept him rooted to the spot.

"Okay, okay. Just calm down. I'm going to remove the watch now." Jasmine reached for her watch, took it off slowly, and lifted it. "I'm going to put it in your pocket now."

She was so brave. Her hands only shook a little, and her voice was steady.

"Do it," the scum said. "Put it in my front pocket."

"Okay." She reached back and tucked the watch where he had told her.

Ell-rom's gaze locked with Jasmine's again. He saw the fear in her eyes, and there was also a strength that amazed him. Even in this terrifying moment, she was trying to stay calm and handle the situation as best she could.

"Now, the wallet." The attacker tightened his arm around her neck.

"Please." Her hands rose to tug on his arm. "I can't breathe."

Her words cut through Ell-rom's paralysis. There had to be something he could do. But what? He had no experience with human weapons and no training in how to handle such situations, but he knew enough to realize that the finger on the lever would discharge a projectile that would go straight into Jasmine's head.

Any wrong move could cost her life.

Except, he didn't need to move to kill the attacker. A concentrated wish to see him dead should do that, but what if he managed to press the trigger before he died?

The risk was too great.

The world seemed to hold its breath. Ell-rom was acutely aware of every detail—the sweat beading on the gunman's forehead, the slight tremor in the hand holding the gun, the way Jasmine's chest rose and fell with rapid, shallow breaths.

Rage rose within Ell-rom, and as a familiar burning started behind his eyes, his fangs dropped down.

"Ell-rom," Jasmine whispered.

The gunman looked at him, his eyes growing large with fear. "What the hell?"

The hand holding the gun began to shake harder, and fury erupted from Ell-rom.

At that moment all his fear for Jasmine, all his helplessness, all his rage at this human who dared threaten what was most precious to him, coalesced into a single, focused thought.

Nothing outside of him seemed to change, but the attacker suddenly crumpled like a sack of old clothes, his gun clattering to the ground.

For a heartbeat, everything was still.

Then Jasmine stumbled forward, and Ell-rom rushed to catch her. He enveloped her in his arms, holding her tightly against his chest, his heart racing with residual fear and the shock of what he had just done.

"Are you alright?" he breathed. "Did he hurt you?"

She shook her head against his chest, her body trembling. "I'm okay," she said before turning to look at the body slumped on the ground. "What did you do?"

Ell-rom swallowed hard, and the reality of what he had done sank in.

He had used his deadly thought projection. He had taken a life to protect his mate. He had done the right thing, but the knowledge still settled in his gut like a stone.

The ability was real. The dream had been a memory and not a fantasy. He really could kill with a thought.

"I couldn't let him hurt you. I killed him."

"How do you know he's dead?" Jasmine pulled out of his arms and crouched next to the attacker, pressing two fingers to his neck.

Ell-rom knew she wouldn't find a pulse.

He couldn't hear the male's heart beating.

"He's dead," she confirmed. "What do we do now? Do we just leave him here?"

"I don't know."

The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving him feeling shaky and uncertain. Could they just walk away and not tell anyone about what had happened?

He looked around the passageway. There was no one there, but someone could have seen something from one of the windows higher up.

Jasmine pursed her lips as she looked at the gun. "Give me your hat."

He frowned. "Why?"

"We need to get rid of the gun, and I don't want to touch it with my fingers. Without the gun, he is just another drug addict who died of overdose."

Trusting that she knew what she was doing, Ell-rom pulled the cap out of his back pocket and handed it to her.

"Thank you." She used it to pick up the gun and then walked over to one of the large trash containers, lifted the lid, and dropped it inside while holding on to the hat.

He expected the weapon to discharge from the drop, but it must have landed on something soft because there was barely a thud.

That was it, though?

They were going to just leave the body like that?

"What if someone saw what happened from one of the windows?" Ell-rom asked.

"Good point. No one will know what happened to him, but if anyone calls the police, they will want to question us." She bit on her lower lip. "If we call Julian, he will want to know what happened."

"What can Julian do?" he asked, still hoping that they could keep his ability a secret.

"A lot. He could bring in Yamanu, who can blanket thrall everyone working in these buildings to forget what they saw, and he could take care of disposing of the body."

"Then you should call him." Ell-rom sighed. "Sooner or later, I would have confessed my ability anyway."

As Jasmine made the call and explained to Julian what happened, Ell-rom stared at the crumpled form of the gunman. There was no blood, no visible wound. To anyone else, it might look like the man had simply collapsed. But Ell-rom knew the truth.

He had wished death upon this human, and death had come.

The power of it terrified him. How easily he had snuffed out a life with nothing more than a thought. It had been necessary, he told himself again. It had been to save Jasmine. But the knowledge of what he was capable of weighed heavily on him.

He had revealed his ability in the most dramatic way possible.

There would be no hiding it now, no pretending that it didn't exist.

Jasmine didn't tell Julian what Ell-rom had done, only that someone tried to rob her and then collapsed dead, and she didn't know what to do.

"Are you sure he's dead?" Julian asked her.

"I am. There is no pulse. I think he was a drug addict." She looked at Ell-rom and gave him a small smile. "His heart might have given out from the stress."