The porch light came on, streaming brightness out into the night.
And the thing absorbed the light. Freakin' sucked it up like an ungodly ShamWow.
Garrison flung open the front door, braced his feet, and took aim with a shotgun.
The thing's voice hissed like a hot acetylene torch "The two eldest of the legacy children. Soon it will be four, and I will return to walk upon this Earth." What passed for breathing sounded like a whistle made of chalk and fingernails. "Then you all will be destroyed."
Vaughn had heard enough. An angry pulse pushed his ability outward, expanding outside the bounds of his mind. Shit, his head would explode into a million pieces if he grew any more.
But his power increased. Kept pushing forward.
No longer did his gift protect him, no longer did it detect danger to others, but now it turned Vaughnintodanger, like when he'd found Shelby. It wanted to shift the ability outward. To hurt. To destroy.
Two red dots glowed before him. And inside of it, an outline of a... human form? Vaughn squinted in the porch light and shadows. No. Not possible. "Your days are numbered," the creature seethed.
In that case, hurting that bastard cloud monster sounded like a great way for Vaughn to pass his numbered days.
He grabbed a lungful of air and bore down as he shored up the bubble of pissed-off power that formed inside of him. The effort made him stagger, but he kept at it, unsure of what to do, but determined to do something useful.
What he had felt a few minutes earlier in the barn, the sense of a friend's touch, close to his mind boosted his power even further. No, it didn't quite boost the power—it helped focus it.
Why? How? He glanced at Garrison. It didn't seem to come from him. His brother's grim gaze rested solely on the phantasm trying to kill them both.
Vaughn visualized his power as a round, thick balloon. He shoved as much pressure into it, inflating, expanding. The crucible-hot press of it threatened to crack his mind. But he needed more. He wanted that thing away from the people he cared about.
With a great snap of energy, he blew the rubberized force at the creature.
A howl of a wounded animal combined with a very human-sounding wail of pain rattled the glass in the window casings on the porch.
The glowing twin embers dimmed.
"Not possible." More star-dotted sky appeared as the shape receded. "This result will not stand. You will bend to my will."
The crack of a shotgun blasted across the space between them. Garrison reloaded once again, his jaw set in a grim line. "Sorry, gave at the office. Whatever you're selling, we don't want it."
The creature howled. "I will destroy anything and anyone you hold dear." Red ember eyes glowed as it bore into Vaughn's retinas. "That woman you lust after? Mine." It turned back to Garrison. "Your woman inside? Also mine."
Garrison nestled the butt of the gun into his shoulder and aimed.
Vaughn had had enough of this thing's bullshit. The creature needed to get the hell away from his family. A flicker of faces behind the living room curtains ramped up his pulse.
And that thing had better not even consider coming close to Mariah. His power cracked open into pieces, each shard focused on one goal: remove the creature. The ability changed, deepened, thickened. A picture of Mariah's delicate features floated across his mind's eye, followed by an image of her wounded body laying at the feet of this cloud-like thing.
No!
A hollow, split voice that came from deep within Vaughn echoed across the open ground as another bubble of pissed-off blasted the thing away once more. Sound faded as his ears buzzed. "We are stronger than you. You cannot have what is ours.Get out."
