Demon Moon

Settling the bar in the cradle, he sat up and wiped the perspiration from his face and chest with a T-shirt.
    The symbols scarring his pectorals were pale against his tan. Savi wanted to cringe in sympathy just looking at them; yet he’d willingly stood for it, sacrificing himself to save four of his students—perhaps saving the city. The world.
    If Savi hadn’t been stowed away in Caelum, he likely would have been rescuing her from Lucifer and the nosferatu.
    And if her gratitude when he covered them was tinged by guilt, it quickly disappeared when she realized that he’d put on the sweaty shirt. “That’s disgusting.”
    He shrugged, a smile tilting his lips. “There’s less laundry this way.” His eyeglasses sat on his desk; he slid them on, looked her over. “Talk about what?”
    “My psychic blocks,” she said, and moved farther into the room when he gestured for her to join him. “I know they’re naturally high, but…you want me to take that ?”
    He had held out a large gray dumbbell. She glanced at the number on the end: seventy-five pounds. “That weighs almost as much as I do.”
    “If you drop it, I’ll catch it before it smashes your foot.”
    Her bare toes suddenly felt small and vulnerable. “Okay.” Hugh supported it as she gripped the handle with both hands, then slowly let it go. Heavy…but it didn’t take much effort to keep it up. “Holy shit.”
    “Curl it.” Hugh demonstrated by bending his elbows. “Do ten. They aren’t naturally high, Savi.”
    “I asked Selah if she could read me. I wasn’t consciously shielding, and she said she couldn’t get very deep. And when I did concentrate, she couldn’t get in at all.” She hit ten, stopped. “I didn’t have to concentrate very hard, either. It’s been getting a lot easier.”
    Hugh gave her another weight, one for each hand. “Everything does with practice. Ten more.”
    Savi hadn’t been practicing, but applying—whenever Colin had visited the house. “Or with hellhound venom and nosferatu blood.”
    Shaking his head, Hugh took the dumbbells. “No. You’ve been blocking since you were thirteen.” He crouched and removed a few fifty-pound discs from each end of a long bar.
    “Thirteen?”
    Pausing, he glanced up at her, his forearm resting on his thigh. “You remember. Just think about it. Make the connection.”
    Her chest tightened. “That was the year I started running.”
    In response to no particular stimuli, Savi’s heart would begin to race, she’d not be able to breathe…and when she recognized what was happening to her, she’d fall into a fugue state and run to the nearest small, dark space.
    But not always a safe space. Usually closets and beneath beds, but Hugh had found her in the walk-in freezer at Auntie’s twice; once Nani had located her in the trunk of a neighbor’s car.
    “And the year you stopped,” Hugh said. With a sigh, he rubbed the back of his neck. “It was a technique I used to prevent my physical response to Lilith.”
    Savi sank down on the floor beside him. The doctors had diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder. “The drugs were working,” she recalled. “But they made me…” Slow. Dumb.
    “Aye.”
    She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “That was the stupid meditation thing you made me do for a couple of weeks with you—the counting and the yoga?”
    “Yes.” Behind his lenses, his blue gaze was direct…and filled with regret. “It should have taken you a year or two to adopt the shields—and you should have had to practice to maintain it. I didn’t take into account your memory, and your ability to absorb information.”
    “So it pretty much separated my brain from my body? Didn’t let me recognize what was going on?” She laughed into her hands, rocked forward. “Oh, god, that explains a lot. Do you know what I have to do when I’m in bed with someone?”
    His cheeks heated. So did hers.
    “Forget I said—”
    “I can teach you to lower them so you might not have to—”
    “It’s not like it’s bad when I’m…oh, god, I’m shutting up.” She sealed her lips together, stared at him.
    “I’m sorry, Savi. You can learn to have better control over your shields, but the unconscious level is likely permanent.”
    “Jesus, don’t be sorry. It’s better than a trunk, or not being able to think. And at least I know now there’s a reason for it—instead of, you know, just being totally fucked up after watching a crazy asshole