Read The Vampire Diaries: Bound By Blood (Kindle Worlds Novella) for Free Online

had been practicing the movement ever since returning from the woods—and ever since finding the tree branch covered in blood. I’d discovered that my palm had to be faced upward, and I had to raise my hand or hands slowly. If I raised both hands together, I got a stronger reaction. Now, I only raised my palm slowly.
    Tom’s shirt began flapping. His square napkin sitting on the bar before him fluttered and then went flying.
    “Jesus,” said Tom, looking over his shoulder. “Would someone close the goddamn door?”
    Except the doors were closed, both front and back. And still the wind continued, clinking the wine glasses that hung upside down in the overhead rack. Napkins, receipts, and straws scuttled over the scarred wooden counter. Tom’s shirt flapped wildly and so did his thinning hair. Nearby, the pool tables’ balls began rolling around one of the tables, and a waitress who had been carrying drinks suddenly had to reach down with her free hand to hold down her short skirt.
    “What the hell is going on?” asked Tom. “Where’s that blasted wind coming from?”
    He looked up for a ceiling fan that wasn’t there. Then he looked at me. As he did so, I lowered my hand, and the lower it got, the more the wind subsided.
    Tom didn’t put two and two together yet. After all, who would have?
    But when I finally lowered my hand into my lap and the wind dissipated altogether, my good friend Tom looked at me with an expression that just might have been a combination of eight or nine different expressions mixed into one big look of confusion. And a little bit of awe.
    “What the hell just happened?” he asked me.
    “That’s why I want to talk to you.”
    “Talk to me about what?”
    I was about to open my mouth to answer, when a handsome devil at the bar caught my attention. He had blow-dried hair and wore a leather jacket. It was too warm for the leather jacket. The blowing wind didn’t seem to alarm him, not like the others in the bar, who were still looking around and chattering about it excitedly. Also, I could be wrong, but the man appeared to be listening to us, even from the far end of the bar.
    Impossible, I knew, but so was controlling the wind.
    “C’mon,” I said, leaving some money on the bar.
    “Where we going?” asked Tom.
    “Outside,” I said, leaning in and whispering. “We need to talk. Privately.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
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    Once we were outside and crossed Main Street, Tom grabbed my shoulder and spun me around in the town square. “What’s going on, Max?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you mean you don’t know? That was some freaky sh—”
    I shrugged him off my shoulder. “C’mon, let’s keep walking.”
    “Why?”
    I didn’t want to tell him because I wanted to get away from Mystic Grill, or that I was certain I had seen the same guy I had been dreaming about for many months. Instead, I said, “Because walking clears my head. Let’s go.”
    We continued along the outer edge of the square. It was late evening, but there were still some people about. A couple strolling together. Two friends talking and laughing on a nearby bench. The town bum urinating into a bush. When we were far enough from the Grill that my uneasiness passed, I pulled Tom over to an empty bus stop bench.
    “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, man? Because I could swear that I saw you controlling the wi—”
    I shushed him. “Not so loud, man.”
    “Jesus, Max. You’re kind of freaking me out here.”
    “I don’t know where to start.”
    “How about you start with that part about you raising your goddamn hand and the wind blowing in a closed building. And then lowering it, and the wind stopping. Jesus, listen to me. I sound like a raving lunatic.”
    “You’re not a lunatic, Tom. I mean, you have some serious issues, but you’re not a lunatic.”
    “This is no time for jokes, Max.”
    I ran my hands through my hair and scanned the square. We were alone in this section. Across