Chapter Six
All goddesses have a unique range and combination of abilities, generally with greater talent in one area and lesser ability in others. Some of the most common abilities include: Telekinesis, ability to heal, command over natural elements, transformative power over perception…
“Wow,” John said. “You’re really sweating. Take a break.”
Riley grabbed a towel from a short stack on a shelf and sank onto a roll of mats against the wall. The training center was one big room lined with crash pads. It took up half the seventh floor, and the rest was storage for another company. Sam sat in the corner with his laptop and cell phone, joining them every so often in a drill or chiming in with some advice or information, but otherwise ignoring them to focus on his research. Riley almost wished he weren’t there at all. Testing was easier when no one else was watching, especially not a guy who’d kissed you the night before but then didn’t act any different come morning.
Not that “testing” was a good word for what they were doing. John wasn’t a scientist. He was a fighter, something she should have thought of and been prepared for before she started this. He’d given her a tire iron and had her demonstrate what she could do with it. Not simply moving objects across the table or lifting something heavy, oh, no. He made Sam pretend to attack her, to give her impetus to throw him across the room. John wanted to see how much power she had to reverse momentum. When she’d described metal’s effect on her body, he’d put her through some basic fighting maneuvers to test her strength, then acrobatics to check her agility. Never mind that she’d never flipped or cartwheeled in her life. At least, not since she was about ten.
But she could do it. He’d shown her an aerial and, after marveling that a guy nearly fifty was capable of doing a flip like that without using his hands for support—simultaneously pleasing and annoying him—she’d tried, and actually landed on her feet. Knocked the tire iron out of her hand doing it, and put a gouge in the floor—but already, she’d expanded her abilities.
The success gave her enough confidence to shed her self-consciousness as long as they were working, but when they stopped, her awareness zoomed right back in on Sam. He’d offered praise and suggestions and zero judgment, but there was still a new layer of awkwardness stemming from last night. She wanted to be impressive but was afraid she looked stupid with everything she did.
“Here.”
Riley opened her eyes and took the bottle of water John handed down to her. “Thanks.”
“You’re looking good.” He crouched next to her, his own bottle dangling from one hand. “You obviously have some force, both with channeling and with increasing your natural strength and agility. You’re able to defend yourself, and that’s important right now.”
“Is that all I’m capable of?” She hoped she didn’t sound petulant. “It sounds like it has limited application. What about when I’m not being harassed by jerks?”
He smiled. “That’s next. You ready?”
She drank a few more gulps of water. “Ready.” She let him pull her to her feet and followed him to a card table he’d dragged to the middle of the room. She studied the items on its surface. A paper clip, a small screw, a book of matches, some coins, a crumpled ball of paper, a small book, and a letter opener. She sat in one molded plastic chair, and John swung his around to straddle it.
“What I want to see now is finesse,” he said.
“You mean how little energy I need to draw?”
“Right. We know you can open up with contact to a large mass of metal. But how much do you need, and what can you do with it?”
“I can tell you now, it’s not much.” She glanced into Sam’s corner, but he was engrossed in a phone conversation and staring at his laptop screen. “The last few months would have been much easier if draping my body in jewelry did the trick. All it does is make me a little less tired.”
“You’re still talking about blowing people across the room.” He handed her the small screw, which she folded into her fist. “Can you move that piece of paper?”
Riley had been told she didn’t need the gesture, but she was used to aiming so she held her free hand flat, fingers pointing toward the balled-up paper, and concentrated on flowing power through the screw, into her body, and out at the paper. A second later it flew off the table and smacked John in the shoulder.
“See? Glad I didn’t choose something more solid.”
“It’s just paper,” Riley countered. “I can’t do that with something bigger.” She tried with the book, a paperback, but the pages barely fluttered.
John tilted his chair to reach down and retrieve the paper. “It’s okay. Whatever you can do, you can do. Some things take practice. Some things you’ll never be capable of.” He set the paper back on the table. “Like I said, we’re looking for control here, not strength. Try again, but just nudge it.”
Riley nodded and concentrated. Again, the ball of paper flew. This time he caught it and set it on the table. “Draw back, only let a little power through.”
She concentrated less hard, and this time the ball skittered a few inches and stopped. A grin spread over her face, banishing her frustration.
“Great. Now try the paper clip.” She did, and the coins, and all of them worked as long as the object she tried to move stayed small and light. She still couldn’t affect the book. Nor could she reverse the process—when she tried moving the paper toward her, it did nothing more than rock a little.
“What’s it feel like?” John asked her.
Riley blew out a breath and shoved her bangs off her forehead. “It feels like my brain won’t bend that way.” She unfolded the hand clenching the screw. Red marks in her palm bracketed the metal. “Usually, I pull the energy through the metal into me, then push it out to do whatever I want to do.”
“You’ve had this for three years,” John pointed out. “What have you done with it?”
Her face flushed. “Not much. I mean, it took a while to figure out what was going on, and then I concentrated on not doing anything. I avoided metal, and when I couldn’t, I kept it in.” Holding the rushing sensation back hadn’t been that difficult. At least, not when she wasn’t afraid or angry. “The last six months, I’ve mostly been using it to keep people away from me. Everything I’ve done has been channeling outward.”
John nodded. “So you’ve been directing the flow of energy in one direction, and this”—he nodded at the paper—“tries to reverse the flow midstream.”
“Exactly.”
He suggested imagery and steps to change what she was trying to do and still get the effect she was going for, but nothing worked. Riley got more and more frustrated, which seemed to dam everything up so she couldn’t even direct the power out to the paper, never mind “tell” it to bring the paper toward her.
“One more thing,” John said, glancing at his watch. “Then lunchtime.”
Good. She was starving.
“I want you to set these matches on fire.”
She stared at him. “The whole pack? At once?”
He made a face. “Okay, try one.” He ripped one from the pack and stuck the end of it into the side of the paper clip, to protect his fingers, and held it out. “Try that. Hold the screw, and channel heat. Flame. Elements. Whatever.”
“Very helpful,” Riley muttered, but she tried. Nothing happened. When she held the letter opener, she could access enough energy to bend the match under the force of her attempt, and then twist the whole paperclip out of shape. But John said he didn’t feel any warmth. She held the tire iron instead, with similar results despite the larger mass of metal.