Holy god, Rayne’s body was on fire. Every cell and fiber of her being was lit from within and raged against its fleshy restraint. Let it go. Let go.

“He’ll save you, you know?” a voice assured. A small one, like a child.

“Who will?” Rayne asked.

“Superman.” The voice giggled. A girl.

What the fuck… “Who are you?”

A spotlight appeared beside Rayne in the dark recesses of her mind. A little girl, around four-years-old, stood in the light wearing overalls and a pink short-sleeved shirt. Pigtails. Little sneakers. Black hair. Bright blue eyes. “I’m you, silly.”

Oh, Rayne was getting really fucked up in here like Xelan promised. She asked, “How do you know he’ll save me?”

The little girl wandered out of the spotlight and onto a street. The street outside her parents’ bookstore was illuminated by lamps at night. Little Rayne ran like she’d waited all day for the door to go unguarded. Rayne opened her mouth to scream at her to stop, but no sound came out. A car sped down Kavanaugh Boulevard, faster than the speed limit. At the last second, he slammed on his brakes, one second too late.

A tall man appeared wearing a business suit and lifted Little Rayne from the ground. He held out his hand and caught the car’s front bumper with it, denting the front end without so much as a scratch or bruise on the man. While the driver got out to inspect the damage, the man carried the little girl back to the door. The short hair and glasses almost made it difficult to identify him, but the height and the way he moved were unmistakable.

Rayne whispered, “Xelan,” but there was no sound.

He muttered to tiny Rayne, and his voice thundered inside her head. “You’re going to give me a lot of trouble, aren’t you, young lady?”

Tears sprung unbidden in eighteen-year-old Rayne’s eyes.

He entered the bookstore and called out, “Excuse me?”

“Yes?” Michelle Callahan turned the corner around a stack of books and cried, “Rayne!” She clasped a hand to her mouth as she charged to her daughter in the stranger’s arms. “Oh, my god! How did you get outside?!”

“Mommy, mommy! He’s Superman!”

Michelle took the child from Xelan, and surreal, adult-Rayne crashed to her knees in tears. She slammed her good fist to the ground, screaming, “Momma!”

Nothing.

Rayne’s mother. Her dead mother…

“Your daughter got a little curious, I think,” Xelan explained.

Michelle said, “Thank you so much. Oh, my goodness. Anything could have happened to her!” She kissed tiny Rayne’s temple.

Xelan smiled as he took a step out the door. “Keep your eye on her. I think she’ll be a handful.”

“Thank you, again! Rayne, how did you get outside? I can’t believe it. I turn my back—”

The sound of the memory cut out, and Rayne’s sobs grew audible in her weird mindscape. Her mother. Met Xelan. How—?

“He’s always been here for us.” The little girl stood back in the spotlight.

“Why don’t I remember this?”

She shrugged. “Too young?”

Another voice cut in, “But that doesn’t explain why you forgot about this time.”

Another spotlight. Another Rayne.

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This one around twelve-years-old. Wearing a short black skirt and a black tank top with a spiked choker and spiked bracelet, she screamed Goth phase. This one stepped onto the low-lit streets a few blocks from the bookstore. Close to the dollar movie theater. Sagan and Tameka, both near the same age, walked alongside.

Young Tameka asked, “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

Rayne smiled, armed with a cross bag and some mace. “I can take care of myself. Besides, it’s just down the road. No sense in putting Mrs. Sterling out.”

“She won’t mind, Rayne,” Sagan argued on behalf of her mom.

“Go on. I’m good!” She patted her bag, indicating her pitiful self-defense weapon.

Adult-Rayne shouted, “You idiot!”

Sagan said, “See you, Monday!”

“Call me when you get home,” Tameka shouted. They both broke off to meet Sagan’s mom in the Kroger parking lot down the road.

“Sheesh. Everyone acting like I can’t take a quick walk alone,” Rayne grumped as she set off to her parents’ store.

“Oh, goddamn, I was dumb,” adult-Rayne snarled. “Behind you!”

Again, no sound.

“Hehehehe… Little girl walking alone.” A strange man sidled up behind her. With pasty skin and glassy eyes, he hunched over as he walked. He held his trench coat tight over him, which gave her more concern than she wanted.

Preteen Rayne huddled in on herself, obviously uncomfortable. She said, “I’m not alone. My parents work right there!” She pointed to a store that her family didn’t own, but he didn’t need to know that. Two more blocks.

“But I know better. I know better.” He actually cackled.

Younger Rayne’s hair stood on end, and her skin pricked with goosebumps. “Fuck you, man!” She picked up the pace into an almost-run.

He stayed right with her and when he whispered his next words, she swore she would never forget it. “Defiled. Raped. Alone and afraid.”

Preteen Rayne spun on him then with mace in hand, but he’d vanished. Some scuttling and a groan came from the blind corner beside her. She peered around it. She couldn’t make out a thing in the shadows. A pale-faced man with short black hair appeared in the light, struggling with the scary man just outside the light. “Run! Get out of here!” After he disappeared back into the shadows and a strangled cry erupted from the alley, she took off like the sidewalk was on fire.

And ran right into the spotlight in the mindscape.

“Xelan,” adult-Rayne said. Her entire life…

Both tiny Rayne and preteen Rayne said in unison, “He’s always here for us.”

“Why do I always forget?”

“Count for us,” they said together.

“What?!”

“You like to count. Count for us.”

Spread out between her and the girls, a field of seeds appeared. It was green grass with a shit ton of seeds. She made it to forty-two thousand before she realized she’d counted them at all.

They both giggled. “Now, run for us, Rayne!”

Her mindscape transformed into the training course behind her house. She started pounding the dirt and clearing obstacles as if on reflex.

A third voice echoed throughout the halls of her mind. “You do not cope well with stress, child.”

“Aw, you’ll ruin the fun,” tiny Rayne chided the recent arrival.

The light shut off with a loud switch, and four-year-old Rayne disappeared.

“You can’t control her. She’s beyond you, now,” twelve-year-old Rayne stated.

Then the curtain closed on her.

A hand touched Rayne’s damaged shoulder, and she whirled to find Celindria standing behind her.

Rayne startled and jumped away a few steps. “This is too much.”

“That is precisely what I mean,” Celindria’s soothing, alto voice admonished. Her bright blue eyes were in startling contrast to her dark skin. Her hair tumbled in a mass of black curls down her back. She wore a simple cream robe, appearing more like a mom and less like a warrior. Celindria said, “You starve yourself of food, sleep, and touch.”

The scene in the space behind the older Progeny displayed Rayne in various scenarios of pushing her plate away, running on the obstacle course in the small hours of the night, and lying awake staring at the ceiling.

Celindria said, “You deny yourself. It leaves you vulnerable to temptations specifically designed with you in mind.”

The scenery changed to Rayne and Nox beside the fire in their shared dreamscape. The image was of her straddling him while he took from her what she feared to give. Then to the scene at the school, the fight. He slammed her against a locker and plunged his hand into her hair. When he pulled tight, she moaned for him.

Not her proudest moment.

Celindria said, “You are not mature enough to handle this kind of fighting.” The scenery changed to another familiar space. The room was made of stone with little furniture inside and the black pyre burning high. The excessively large bed grabbed her attention when the two on it writhed. Beyond Nox’s bare shoulder, Celindria’s face appeared.

“Stop relying on Xelan,” Celindria warned. “Grow into your own. Find healthier outlets for your stress. Your rage will kill us all.” The light dimmed over her.

“No,” Rayne said.

The light reignited, and Celindria stood beneath it. Her face was impassive but for an arch of her eyebrow. “No?”

“I’m not you. To hell with what happened in my dreams or that one moment of weakness during the fight. I am not you. I never knew you and Nox were a… thing, but I don’t plan to follow in your footsteps. Your dead ones, I might add. Sure, I have an impressive track record of Xelan saving me, and yeah, I could stand to make better decisions for my health.” The brow on the other woman quirked higher. “But I don’t have to be you to do those things. I’ll save everyone, including Xelan. I will take better care of myself, but I still plan to do this my way.”

With a flare in her eyes, Celindria asked, “Then what will you do next?”

“Raise morale in my troops, and then we’re going to Enki.”