Destiny's Revenge (Destiny Series - Book 2) Straight, Nancy (book club reads .TXT) 📖

case, it may be what has saved your life. He will not be able to find you again so easily. Lauren, this is incredible news!”

Less interested in the whole Beast hypothesis and still reeling from the idea that Max was stuck on a mountaintop with no food or shelter, maybe out of water, I all but screamed, “I need to see Max again; I need to know he’s okay. If you don’t think this was some crazy trick that my sub-conscious was playing on me, if I really was there with him, I need to go there again. I need to make sure he’s okay.”

“I agree, Lauren, you need to relax, you need to breathe deeply, close your eyes and think only of Max. Beyond this advice I cannot help you. Though I do not possess the power of sight, this is how I find minds that I need to listen in on. You must relax your mind, allow yourself to travel.”

As Rewsna instructed, I laid back on my bed, closed my eyes and thought only of Max. I steadied my breathing so that it sounded less like a woman in labor, but I couldn’t get calmed down enough to make it feel like I was even teetering on a light sleep, let alone plunging into a deep meditation. She whispered to me after a few minutes, quietly, “Visualize his eyes, Lauren. Tell your mind you want to see his eyes wherever they are.” She offered other suggestions like visualize your hand in his, think back to your first meeting and the magnetic pull you felt to him. Although all of these were great memories, none of them miraculously took me to Max.

She sat by while I tried several times. Nothing worked. Rewsna simply stated, “It will take practice.”

I visualized that shrub that he had sat under on the mountain, to no avail. I lay with my eyes closed, reliving that moment when I realized who was coming up the mountain. The emotion of relief to see him, of recognition when I touched his face spilled over me. Rewsna must have seen it all playing through my mind when she quietly told me, “Lauren, you are trying too hard. You need to relax.”

Rewsna reached into her bag and pulled out her scrabble board and began to set it up on my coffee table. I thought back to that day in the dessert shop where she was sitting by herself playing a game of scrabble with no board. I thought it odd at the time. She had the board set up and the tiles laid out when she motioned for me to play with her. I rolled my eyes, but not wanting to offend her, I joined the game.

I hadn’t played in years, but she was right. I needed to relax and this would definitely get my mind off of my new found power that didn’t seem to work very well. We had played several rounds when I picked up A – A – E – N – R- S – W. I fumbled with the letters when I arranged them on my holder and realized I had Rewsna a. She had such an odd name that I turned my holder so she could see and showed her Rewsna spelled out, “I should get a double word score for this one.”

Rewsna grinned a little mischievously, “You know we do not select our own names.”

“So does that mean your parents had a sense of humor, and gave you a name that would build character or something?” I had always thought of Rewsna as being foreign born, that maybe her name was common where she was from.

Her grin held but she shook her head slightly, “No, the Council chose my name for me and whispered it to my mother.” She slid my tile holder to her and moved the tiles around: the same letters spelled Answer.

A little surprised at the coincidence, I asked, “So even as a child they knew people would bombard you with questions and you would be the one with answers?”

Rewsna nodded slightly, looking embarrassed. “You were much more fortunate than I.”

“Why, because I got a normal name? I guess you’re right. If I had been named Rewsna, I would have probably turned into a schoolyard bully to keep kids from teasing me.”

Rewsna fumbled around with the tiles until she had L-A-U-R-E-N spelled out in front of me, “You were named for your powers as well.”

Confused and unsure if she had suddenly developed a sense of humor, “I have Lauren powers? Well that’s a new one on me. Here I thought the power of sight you were talking about seemed cool, but Lauren Powers, that really is something!” Sarcasm was in my voice again, but this time she only looked border-line perturbed.

Rewsna slowly shook her head and moved the same tiles to spell out the word U –N - R-E – A-L. “We knew your powers would far exceed those of any individual member of the Council, so much so, that we could only describe them as Unreal Powers.”

Just then a shard of light flashed through my brain. I fell to my knees and wanted to scream. The light felt like a white hot branding iron scorching me right behind my eye sockets. I couldn’t breathe, as if my lungs were too stunned to function. The light anesthetized all of my senses: I couldn’t see anything other than the light…I couldn’t breathe, or smell, or touch. Pain isn’t an appropriate enough description.

After a few minutes the brightness began to fade a little, and although my senses were still cut off from me, the searing pain began to subside, and I was finally able to take in air. My vision started to show spots the way you see them after you look away from the sun on a clear day. As my vision went from spots to blur, I could feel that I was on my hands and knees on the