I'm screaming. That's always first. I'm screaming. Then I'm hot. Then it's dark and I hear Mommy and Daddy groan awake. She doesn't say a word. She just bolts out of bed, picks me up, folds her legs Indian-style, sits me in her lap. Her arms hug me and I cry just a little. Now her fingers comb my hair. We never speak. Our psychic rapport (that's a fancy way of saying "psychic bond") says more than words. She knows the nightmare. I keep having the same nightmare and I think sometimes I put it in her head without meaning to. Telepaths can do that sometimes.

Daddy turns to us and whispers, "The same nightmare with the monster?"

Mommy nods and I think she's saying something to him with her powers. I don't listen. I'm not supposed to listen to other people's minds unless they tell me it's okay. I'm tired, anyway. I yawn big and nuzzle Mommy's chest. My eyelids are heavy.

And then I hear Mommy scream. It's a horrible sound and it's coming from deep inside me. That's never happened before. My eyes pop open. It's getting lighter but the sun's not up yet and I'm laying back down in my bed under my sheet. I sit up straight and call out to Mommy in my head as loud as I can. Nobody yells back to me.

I jump up, run to Daddy's bed and shake his arm hard. His head jumps. "Hey, baby girl. It was just a nightmare; everything's okay." He starts to put his arm around me, but I shake him again.

"Mommy's hurt!" is all I can say. I don't understand what's going on, but I know one thing. My mother is in trouble.

Daddy's face squints behind his sunglasses and I can tell he's trying to call her. He has a psychic rapport with Mommy, too, even though he's not psychic. That's how you can tell if a telepath is really in love—they can make a rapport with their true love, like something from a fairy tale.

Daddy whips his covers off and pulls on jeans and a t-shirt fast. He grabs the binoculars and scans the hills. I peep into his head to find out what he's doing. Grandpa says you're allowed to use your powers however you need to in emergencies. I'm pretty sure Mommy's hurt. That makes this an emergency.

Daddy's mind is racing. He thinks Mommy's dead. She can't be dead. He's thinking it, too, over and over again. She can't be dead. She can't be dead. She can't be dead. His binoculars find a pile of smoke on the horizon—oh, THAT's what a "horizon" is—and he zooms in for a closer look.

The smoke is black. Daddy's brain says that natural fires, like wood fires, burn white smoke and mechanical fires burn black smoke. He looks at the grown-up toys all parked in a row on the sand. One of the quads is missing. So he thinks Mommy was riding a quad and now it's burning. Damn it, Jean, he thinks. How many times have I told you not to go off on your own?! I don't think he should be mad at her right now. He turns to me.

"I'm not mad at her. And she's gonna be fine; you'll see. I need you to do me a favor, okay? I need you to hide." He pushes me under the table by the window. He disappears for a second, then comes back with a gun. "These are really easy to work," he says, "but it's very important that you hold it right so you don't hurt yourself." He puts the gun in my hand, pointed at the floor.

I enter his mind and find his memories. Right in the very front row is everything he knows about guns. I take it all from him in no time at all. I see something called an "eight millimeter handgun", inside and out, and I remember a hundred practices at the shooting range back home, and I feel his fear. He's afraid I'm going to hurt myself. He really doesn't want to give me the handgun, but he's afraid he'll be too hurt to protect me and he doesn't want to leave me without it. I'm getting scared now. Why would he be too hurt?

There's a loud crash at the RV next to our's—it's Uncle Alex's trailer—and I hear Aunt Lorna scream. Now she's choking. I know Daddy needs to go and fight and stop worrying about me. I pull the safety on the handgun back, check that it's loaded and aim the barrel at the door to show my dad that I'm going to be okay with the gun. He must know that I learned his gun tricks because he nods and turns to the door. He comes back to me real quick, hugs me tight and kisses my forehead. I can't see his eyes behind his glasses but I know there are tears there. I think I'm crying, too.

Daddy stands in front of the door with his hand on his sunglasses. From inside his head, I hear him count the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four. There's a kick and the whole door flies in and crashes at the floor. Daddy pulls off his glasses and his vision goes all red. A huge man that he calls Sabretooth falls back and Daddy can see through his whole chest. But the bones are re-growing themselves. Daddy's not surprised. He jumps outside, thinking he has to tear Sabretooth apart as fast as possible, before he really heals. But Sabretooth is already charging at Daddy. They hit the ground hard and Sabretooth roars so loud it hurts my daddy's ears. Without any warning, he's scratching Daddy's face. I hear him scream, both out loud and inside my head. Sabretooth keeps scratching and roaring and slashing. Daddy keeps screaming. I can't tell if I'm screaming or not, but I've dropped the gun and I'm clutching my face. It hurts so much. I have to back out of my dad's mind.

Pretty soon, my Daddy stops screaming. He takes a really small breath and then I feel like a light inside me goes all black. I try to reach back out to him, but everything in his body is empty and cold. There's no mind there. My Daddy is dead. My Daddy is dead and my Mommy is dead and everyone is dead. I cover my mouth to stop the sobbing and I pick the gun back up.

Sabretooth is still roaring and tearing at Daddy's body. When he finally stops, he's out of breath. I hear him scuffling around outside. Then he reaches the first step on the RV and the whole trailer sags. He's like three heavy men all at once. A huge foot stops right in front of me. Then a knee. Then the face. All I can see is long tangled hair everywhere and glowing gold mean terrible eyes and bloody fangs.

It's the monster from my nightmare.

I point the gun straight at him, like from Daddy's memories, but my hands shake. He laughs cold, and grabs my neck. He throws me down on the sand outside next to Daddy. He's close, right up in my face, and his breath is hot.

"Let's see what you've got," he says. Then he pulls the gun right into his chest. "Go ahead."

I wonder if I could control him. But I'm so scared. I can't even shield my mind at practice. I try to enter his head.

Just pull the trigger, I hear him think. It's so easy. Just pull it.

I start to see pictures of Sabretooth firing guns. He looks a little younger. And he's in the middle of a war. And he's shooting so many men and blood is everywhere. NO! I pull myself back. I don't want to see it. I need to stay on the very tip top of his thoughts. I can't go deep. I try to enter his mind again, easy and slow.

What're you waitin' for? It's gonna be you or me, so shift the odds in your favor. Just pull the trigger.

I try to tell him to turn around. I tell him to turn around and walk into the sunrise. But the words are a whisper, even to me. I don't think he hears me at all. Now he's closer. His nose is on my shoulder and he's…he's smelling me. Something in his brain goes hard.

Pull the trigger. Come on, baby. You know you want to. Do it.

His mind fills with all kinds of horrible thoughts. I see blood and bodies and teeth and sweat. I don't understand it all, but it's horrible. I just want it all to stop. I glance away and my eyes land down on my Daddy. His face is gone. The skull underneath is shattered. There's a huge pool of blood. There are bits of skin and meat everywhere. This evil monster killed my father.

PULL THE GODDAMNED TRIGGER!

I hate him. I take a deep breath. I try to remember what Daddy looked like using guns. I remember the big hole in Sabretooth that closed right away. I lift the barrel of the gun off his chest and push it into his forehead instead. I HATE HIM!

I wrap my pointer finger around the trigger and pull hard.

His body falls back, slower than I thought it would. I look down at the head with the tiny hole. There isn't even any blood on his face, but a dark puddle grows under him. The eyes aren't gold now. They're black and staring up at nothing.

I remember something from Sabretooth's thoughts. I spit on the ground beside him.

"Go to hell, you fucking asshole."