Page 40 (2/2)

Thera bristled "He is not!"

"You said he was This "

"That was this morn--"

Jared sucked air when Thera’s hands cla her head

A rhythht

He probed cautiously, recoiling when he brushed against a slimy psychic scent "It’s Garth"

Thera released hirabbed the back of her coat "Stay here"

She turned icy green eyes on hirip on her coat, Jaredto have a little talk about tethers"

Therawould envy

They found Garth, his large hand filled with a stone that he was using to pound so he’d placed on a flat rock His teeth were bared His face was contorted He grunted with each impact as he pounded, pounded, pounded

"Garth," Jared called, approaching warily "Garth!"

Garth stared at Jared with blue eyes filled with a killing rage

Jared hesitated, then stepped closer because he’d caught a gli?"

Garth’s uished bellow, he thren the stone and ran away from them

Jared took another step toward the rock

"Jared, be careful," Thera said

Shiny brass buttons, mashed and useless, with pieces broken off

Buttons

And so in the buttons he could almost sense

"Jared"

He heard the sharpness, the intensity in Thera’s voice

Careful Careful

With a delicate psychic tendril, he probed one of the buttons

It happened too fast One mo shot out of the buttons and rapidly changed into thick, sticky strands full of tiny hooks

It looked like a badly woven net, Jared thought as it ca into his inner barriers, securing the strand Another strand touched More hooks dug in

More strands More hooks

It surrounded him in seconds and immediately started to constrict If it sealed his inner barriers, it would lock him inside himself

Like Garth

And then he knehat it was

He poured the strength of the Red into his inner barriers, poured everything he had into his inner defenses

It was a tangled web The kind of web Black Widows used for their dreale a htot through the shrinking spaces between the strands Fed by his own strength, the strands in the tangled elled like fat slugs

Panicked, he tried again and again

No, Jared! Don’t attack it! Don’t feed it! Thera’s voice sounded like ice-coated fire

Tre, he obeyed

Was this how Garth had felt? Had he done the sa in his own destruction?

Hold your inner barriers, Jared, Thera said I kno to get rid of this

She didn’t sound as confident as her words, but since he didn’t see another choice, he again obeyed His body was shaking, but he felt distanced fro would it take his body to receive the , a psychic knife ca with icy Green fire

It hit his inner barriers with enough force to h the sticky strands, charring the severed ends

As sections of the tangled web fell away fro thele" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>