Pulse

Faith’s mind, a method for moving things that Dylan had taught her. She could load up her mind with an idea of what she wanted to do, then hold it there until she pulled the trigger and made it happen.
    Bang.
    Clara looked up just in time to see the side of a tree hit her in the face. She tried to move out of the way, but natural objects, things that were still alive, had a surprisingly strong effect on her. Faith had chosen her weapon well without even knowing it. The tree wouldn’t harm Clara—that was very nearly impossible—but it would present a slight problem. By the time the tree was all the way on the ground, Clara was good and pinned, her top half on one side and her lower on the other. It was gruesome, like everything in between had been crushed into the earth and only the head and feet remained. When she looked up, Faith was standing on the tree, staring down at her.
    “Did you kill Liz?” Faith asked. She wanted to hear Clara say it before ripping one of the sharpest limbs from the tree and driving it through her head.
    “I never miss what I’m aiming for,” Clara said, smiling despite her compromised position. She was not happy about being talked down to, but she was patient. This would be more fun if she drew it out a little bit. “And I was definitely aiming for Liz. You should have seen the blood. Wow.”
    Faith was so angry it made her head feel dizzy. There was a plateglass window running along the far wall of the courtyard; and thinking it through, Faith cocked the gun once more.
    Bang.
    The window blew apart, not into small shards but into long, jagged sections of glass. They flew high up in the air, then down in Clara’s direction. When they were within a few inches of Clara’s face, they stopped. Ten shards of glass, four feet long and as sharp as razors, turned in sideways and pointed at Faith Daniels.
    “You really do want to murder me, don’t you?” Clara said, a cold calmness in her voice. “The problem with an idea like that is that it’s stupid. You, Faith, are stupid. You have no idea what you’re doing. I could end you right now—does that frighten you?”
    Faith didn’t know what it would feel like to have shards of glass slice through her body, her face, her legs; but she had a pretty good idea that she would feel the pain before she came to an end. A small piece of her felt like she deserved it; another part was horrified at the idea of dying at the hands of Clara Quinn. She pushed her mind to the outer limits of its strength, trying to force the glass away.
    “You’re stronger than I expected,” Clara said. She’d wriggled free one of her arms, which she held up in the air, letting it sway back and forth. The glass swayed ominously to the rhythm of her movements. “Who showed you how to do these things?”
    Faith began to realize something that hadn’t occurred to her up until that moment. If Dylan, Meredith, Clooger, and Hawk were on one side, who was on the other side?
    “Tell me!” Clara bellowed. She liked to navigate between slippery sweet and raging diva. It tended to disarm her enemies. “Who told you to use the tree?” she said quietly.
    Faith had chosen a living thing as a weapon, and it had pinned the most powerful girl on Earth. If she had chosen something else—a giant rock or a pile of desks—Clara would have blown it apart like matchsticks. It had been a complete accident, this choosing of the tree. Or had it? Maybe she had some insight into Clara’s mind neither of them yet understood. Maybe the tree had known it could be of use in a world of good and evil unleashed. However, she knew it was true: every second pulse had a weakness in battle. For Clara, it was living things used as weapons against her. It was the same for her twin, Wade. A bullet would do nothing against the Quinns, but a freshly fallen tree, still alive and pulsing water through its knotty veins, had the power to do some damage.
    The glass shards began to shake and crack into smaller pieces in the air. Before Clara could grasp what was happening, they were turned to dust particles and blown away like a great wind had swept through and carried them off. Dylan landed on the tree next to Faith, picked her up, and carried her to the roof.
    “Stay here; Clooger should arrive anytime.”
    “NO! I won’t just stand by while you save me. I can do this.”
    Dylan put one hand on each of her shoulders. “No, you can’t. Right now our only chance is to get rid of her before