Hot Blooded

expanded pupils. "I wonder if I could
make it so he never looks at you."
    Screw this,
Grace thought, and swung a fist right at the Maja's jaw. A
wave of heat blasted out of the fingers around her face and froze her arm in
midair
.
    "I wonder," Clarice whispered, "if I could burn your mind away."
    Something reached out of the witch's mind and wrapped around hers,
something black that writhed like a nest of maggots. Grace tried to scream, but
the only sound that escaped her open mouth was a hoarse, gasping whimper.
    Then the pain started. It felt like her bones were turning into red-hot
pokers, burning her from the inside out. Unable to speak, her mind gibbered a
helpless plea
: Stop it stopit stopitSTOPITSTOPIT.
    Clarice smiled slowly. "No."
    Images began to pour from her captor, raining into Grace's mind like
flaming hail: herself bursting into flame, skin cracking and falling away from
her bones like the layers
    of a burning onion. Screaming and begging while Clarice laughed.
    Then it got worse.
    Swirling, horrific images of blood and suffering, not just hers but
everyone Clarice hated, even Lance, all dying before the power that blazed in
the new Maja. Grace couldn't stop her, no one could, Clarice was invincible, she
had touched the face of God, she
was
God, she
—
    A pair of strong male hands wrapped around the witch's head. Her mad eyes
widened. The hands jerked. Something
snapped.
Clarice… folded and fell
like an empty suit of clothes
.
    The fire, the pain, the madness was gone. Powerful arms encircled Grace,
lifted her half off her feet, swept her toward the door. She struggled,
panicked, until she heard Lance's soothing voice. "It's me, baby. It's okay,
I've got you."
    He started telling her something, something about some kind of spell
Clarice had worked that had distracted him until he'd realized what she was
doing. Barely listening, Grace turned to look over his broad shoulder as he
carried her out. A body lay on the gym floor, its head at an unnatural angle.
    But the hair wasn't Clarice's red. Somehow, it had turned into a pale
tangle of blonde. Grace looked closer…
    Â 
    SHE woke screaming, Lance's arms tight around her. "It's all right, I've got
you," he said, his voice sounding so exactly as it had in the dream that she
felt disoriented, unable to unable to tell what was real. "You're having a
nightmare."
    "God." Grace wrapped shaking arms around his shoulders and clung, trying to
anchor herself to his warm strength. "That was horrible."
    "What on earth were you dreaming?" She could hear his heart pounding almost
as hard as hers was. "I've never heard you scream like that."
    "Clarice. I was dreaming about Clarice. Only…" She tightened her grip on his
shoulders and shuddered.
    "Only?"
    "At the end, when I looked back at the body…" She swallowed. "It was me."
    He pulled her closer. "Grace, you're not like Clarice," he said, his voice so
utterly sure she felt comforted. "There was a weakness in her you don't have.
Hell, I warned the Majae's Council she wouldn't be able to handle the Gift, but
they refused to listen. When I wouldn't sleep with her the third time, they sent
another Magus to finish it."
    "But why? Why didn't someone get a vision or something?"
    Lance snorted. "Vision, hell. Anybody with a brain should have seen that
coming. But she was Percival's daughter, and he was bound and determined his
baby would receive the Gift."
    "Whereas Morgana wouldn't give it to Mom even to save her life." Brooding,
Grace stirred a forefinger through the ruff of hair on the strong, hard arch of
Lance's chest. "After Clarice… I wouldn't admit it, but I understood why Morgana
refused to help my mother. The Gift would have destroyed her the same way.
Things… took Mom over. She had a drug problem. She kept saying she was going to
quit, but she never could. If Morgana had given her the Gift, she'd have gone
right over the edge like that. I just couldn't admit it."
    Lance angled his head until he could meet her eyes, his own calm and
understanding. "And you were afraid Morgana would give in."
    "Yeah. God, I felt guilty. That was the real reason I was so damned angry at
Morgana." She looked away from his perceptive sherry gaze. "Deep down, I was
afraid Mom would go off like Clarice—but you wouldn't be there to save me. I
hated myself for feeling that way. She was my mother. I should have been willing
to take the risk."
    "Why?