Touching Smoke (Touch Saga, Book 1)
I assumed I was human.
I assumed wrong.
I dream of death and warm blood on my hands. I dream of the day I burn the world to the ground. I dream of the day
I will finally die.
Running is something my mother taught me to do very well. I never knew why until the night I cause an earthquake and meet Isaiah. My shadow. My protector. My other half. I need him. I need his blood. He is the only one who can keep me hidden from the man who created me. The man who created
the monster.
The world is depending on me not to fall in love. But what happens when the temptation becomes too great and falling is my only option? Can I live knowing I will destroy the world because his touch is the only thing keeping me alive?
And how can I trust someone as lost as I am?
Touch Passion. Touch Power. Touch Smoke!
Chapter Excerpts
Prologue
I had a dream once. I stood on a cliff overlooking the remains of a ruined city with my bare toes inches from a carpet of torn and unmoving bodies. Plumes of smoke rose up into a sky, churning with the blood of innocent souls lost to the war raging below. Howls of anguish tore through the carnage, shattering time and space with its heart wrenching song of agony. Humidity held firm to the stench of decay and death like a lover’s embrace.
It was beautiful.
Seeing the terror in the eyes of men and women as they fell sang through my soul like the first taste of cotton candy—sweet and addictive. Their blood dripped from my fingertips and rained down the length of my white dress, a harsh contrast. It was warm and thick like paint. I relished in the knowledge that it was me they all feared. It was me who held all the power. I was unstoppable.
Yet I came awake retching. Sweat gelled my clothes to my body. My stomach returned the burger I’d had the night before over the side of the bed in a puddle of chunky sickness.
In the next bed, my mother came awake with a jolt, but it was too late. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing she could say that would make the horror vanish from behind my eyelids, to clean my soul of what I’d done. True, it hadn’t been real, but it had felt real. The sick pleasure I’d felt had been real. The blood of innocent lives lost felt real running down my body.
I never told her.
I couldn’t.
I was so ashamed. I was so disgusted. What sort of person was I that I would dream about such a thing? Was I secretly some kind of closet psychopath? No. I swore I would never tell anyone.
Little did I know at the time that my nightmares were about to become a reality I would be unable to wake from.