She should have been able to draw on that legacy, but in the face of this new and overwhelming power, she was lost.
She stood tall, her cowboy boots planted far apart to give her a sense of stability that she was sorely lacking. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated, and swung her hand out again to direct another whip of lightning across the desert. Instantly a jagged bolt flew—in the wrong direction.
“No!”
Teresa shrieked as her black truck exploded into a fireball. Flames leaped into the air, plumes of smoke twisted in the wind and flaming tires shot off the body of the truck like Frisbees from hell. As thunder still rattled the sky and wind howled, Teresa stared at the smoking hulk of her truck.
“Son of a bitch.” She kicked the sand and thought not only about the incredibly long walk back home she had to look forward to but also about her now-burned-to-a-crisp cell phone. She couldn’t even call someone to help her. She was stuck—no water, no food, no way home.
She’d grown up here, so she wasn’t a stranger to the desert. But the thought of a long walk back to town through the rain with the storm chasing her sent her stomach to her knees. Added to that was the fact that she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was being watched …
Steeling her spine, she pushed thoughts of unseen watchers to the back of her mind. If they were out there, somewhere, there was nothing she could do about it. The important thing now, she told herself as she stared at the fire and the billowing black smoke, was control. Just how in the hell was she supposed to protect herself from the coming dangers if she couldn’t manage her own powers?
What good is it to be a witch, she demanded silently, to be able to pull down the lightning from the sky, if you can’t freaking control the magic? Disgusted, she muttered, “Could this day get any worse?”
As if the gods were answering, Teresa heard a distant, pulsing beat, like the heartbeat of a giant. The thrumming sound seemed to jolt up from the desert floor to her feet and into her chest, where it pounded along with her own suddenly galloping heart. Stunned, she just stood there, trying to assimilate it, and then she realized something else.
The sound was getting closer.
She whirled around, gaze searching, straining to see past her surroundings to whatever was coming. Her own heartbeat was pounding in time to that otherworldly sound. She scanned the dark skies in all directions. The shadows of the craggy mountains jutted up from the desert, scratching at a sky still churning with ragged bolts of lightning.
Thunder boomed, but just beneath that awesome noise and power there was something else. Something low-pitched and dangerous, like the deep-throated growl of a predator. Fear tightened into a hard knot in her belly. She trembled, swallowed hard and felt her breath catch in her lungs as she found the source of that growl. Against the lowering gray clouds, there was a darker spot.
A blot of black that was headed right for her. An instant later, Teresa identified the heavy beating sound—the whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades churning through the air. Mouth dry, fear racing through her, she looked at the emptiness surrounding her and knew she was in deep shit.
She’d come into the desert to be alone with her burgeoning magic. But being alone also meant that there was no one to help her. Though if that helicopter was what she thought it was, no one could have helped her anyway.
As the chopper closed in on her, she saw the bright yellow slash across its belly. Black and yellow. The MPs’ colors. The Magic Police. They’d found her. Somehow they’d found her and she knew that if they got their hands on her, she might as well be dead.
A captured witch had little hope of escape and every expectation of execution. Though not until after torture and imprisonment, of course. Fear nearly choked her. She wasn’t ready for this confrontation. She’d had no time to prepare. To conquer her magic and make it work for her.
The power she had been relishing only moments ago now felt like an anvil tied around her neck. She was about to be captured and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. She couldn’t even hop into her truck and make a run for it.