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They were midflight when the trouble started. Raine had tried not to think about the deep disquiet that had settled in the pit of his gut when he and Sierra had boarded the plane. He had tried to concentrate instead on them simply taking their seats and had pushed the horrifying notion that something was going to go terribly wrong to the side of his consciousness. Clairvoyance was not among his many talents. For all that it was he was capable of, he could not see the future.

Sierra was all too happy to chatter somewhat aimlessly about cakes, food and decorations. She didn’t even care that Raine was only really listening with half an ear. She was completely involved in planning a graduation party for Renee and had successfully blocked out most everything else.

Elizabeth was supposed to be there, too. She had planned on taking time off of work to come and see her sister graduate from college. Elizabeth had chosen differently than her sister in life. While Renee had furthered her education, seeking a degree in neuroscience of all things, Elizabeth had thrown herself full tilt into the adult world immediately upon graduating high school. Sierra could not be any more proud of either of her daughters and she wasted no time bragging about them both to anyone who would listen.

Raine had seen the various consequences of his choice to keep moving the kids around after that fateful night at the mental institution all those years ago. After about six years of them moving around all the time and never staying in one place for more than a year, he and a “Higher Authority” as he liked to call them had reached a tentative agreement. He would not wreak havoc where ever he went, and they would leave his family alone to live and grow as was their right. They really had no other choice, he reflected bitterly. The girls and Sierra had grown tired of moving around from state to state to try to “keep under the radar” and he was ready to settle and live in the same place for awhile, as well. They needed stability in their lives and he knew the “Higher Authority” could keep them running forever. The “Higher Authority” knew that all Raine had to do was think it and they would be cleaning up frightful, massive messes that would have been all that would be left of a few good men. Tentative truce, indeed.

The years of moving around had taken their toll on the girls anyway. Elizabeth never stayed in one place for very long and Renee placed too much importance on staying in one place. Both girls had taken it too far to extremes. Elizabeth refused to even sign a lease on a place of her own, preferring instead to rent rooms where she could simply move in and out at will. She never dated any one man for very long and always spent most of her extra money running from party to party. She called it “the fun life” while Raine thought of it more as wandering aimlessly.

Renee had worked tirelessly during her college years and now had most of the money she needed to buy a home of her own. She had even gone so far as to state that she would never move again once she had the house she liked. Raine had asked her about it once being a worried father and she had said that she just wanted to wake in the same bedroom every morning for the rest of her life. It wasn’t that he could blame her, for he understood all too well. It was simply that he saw in her an uncompromising nature that could well make her life lonely and solitary and even though she had always been the introverted type, she would regret it later in life.

Raine thought about all this while he listened to Sierra talk about different foods for a graduation party and whether or not she might have it catered. He also began to see the flight attendants begin to urge passengers back to their seats. Their outward calm was unshakable, but the tension around their eyes was unmistakable. Their voices as they talked to one another were low and tense and here and there, some of them had darting gazes. Raine knew something was going on, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Then a voice came over the intercom, filled with forced calm and cheer and Raine felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. The voice stated that they were flying through some turbulence and the next few minutes would be a bit of a bumpy ride but that everyone could rest assured that they would be free of it very quickly and the rest of the flight would be smooth as silk. Flight attendants worked to secure passengers and then themselves. No one seemed to notice the slight temperature change in the air or the fact that the lights burned brighter for a moment.

Raine worked to try to control himself. He knew better than anyone else just how disastrous a loss of his self-control could be. More than once, he’d left people nearly dead when he lost his ever tenuous hold on his instinctive power. Sometimes, he simply couldn’t control it and the effects were devastating. Houses leveled, buildings crumbled and people driven utterly insane by the intruding presence in their heads. He’d rather just try to hold onto his errant talents and leave others safe.

He took deep breaths while the plane began to shimmy. Sierra stopped talking and looked at him with a vaguely alarmed expression and said, “It’s getting warmer in here, Raine.”

He tried to manage a small smile for her sake which probably looked more like a pained grimace and continued to breathe deeply. The plane dropped by several feet and then leveled again and some of the passengers stifled cries of alarm.

The lights flickered and temperature in the air rose by several degrees. No one but Sierra and Raine paid any attention to the flickering lights. No one thought anything of it. They were the only ones who knew what was going on and Raine fought with everything he was to try to stem the tide of power. Sierra began to kick him in the shin to try to shock him out of it. Sometimes it helped and others it didn’t. Sometimes it stopped him cold and sometimes, Sierra just earned an angry husband and a bruised foot for her trouble. There really was no telling what would happen.

Find it on Amazon at Inheritance (The Evolution Chronicles Book 2)