* * * * *
Janelle hovered miles above the earth as the ocean churned below. A roar filled her being with an energy she had never imagined—and it only grew stronger the more she spun over the intoxicating warmth of the water. She wrapped more of the moisturizing clouds around herself and turned towards a distant stretch of land. There was something to do, something that had to be fixed.
“Feel the power, Janelle.” Andrina’s silky voice seemed to echo from everywhere, fading in and out and cutting through the roaring in her mind. “Grow strong on it...go north...move faster.”
Yes. She swept as much of the ocean’s energy as she could into her eye and allowed it to course through her being, making her stronger…more powerful.
“Faster…don’t give them time to get away.”
The coastline drew nearer and the mouth to an enormous river cut away into it. Gray and brown lumps stuck up from the ground all around it. Skyscrapers. Pointed and squared, they towered into the sky as if daring her to test them.
“Drown the city, Janelle. They all hate you. Show them no mercy, and make your mother proud!”
With a flex of her will, she raised a wall of water and hurled it against the shoreline and down the river, watching it tumble towards the huddled group of buildings in its path. The tallest of them pointed up to her like a conical finger, accusing.
“No!”
Janelle sprang up in bed, flailing and flinging the blanket off. She gripped her arms to make sure they were still there and ran her hands across her stomach. She hadn’t transformed yet, but that voice was still everywhere around her, invading her ears and--
The drone of Andrina’s voice came out of the stereo. “Flood it all. Smash everything that you can.”
Janelle leapt out of bed and hit the STOP button before it could get out any more. The room fell silent.
Andrina had left. Some time must have gone by. An hour? Two? The repeat function glowed on the stereo, which meant that the recording could have played twenty, thirty, or forty times by now. More than once it had burned its poisonous message into her brain.
Janelle sat on the floor, staring at the carpet for what felt like an eternity. The nightmare replayed itself in her mind, like Andrina had stamped it there forever. Terror crept up into her chest, riding on the realization that she did have another nature after all, and that the skyscraper from her dream had been the Empire State Building.
Andrina had appointed her New York City’s executioner.
Chapter Sixteen