The first burst of Earth energy was like a refreshing cool drink in a desert but all too soon Shenyo scooped her up, tearing her from the Source. Her defenses were low and she had set her spirit to receive. To Shenyo’s detriment, her magik pulled from the only available power; that of the supernatural being in whose arms she rested.<br/><br/>Good thing that a vampire had not picked her up for Lydia would have drained one dry and left his body a dried up husk. Her own power would have been amplified and only great self control would have kept her from becoming a scourge in and of herself. How little Lydia knew of her own abilities. Too bad she and Shenyo couldn’t put together just how much damage she could be to the vampire community, that group of untouchable nobles, but they did not, at least not at that moment.<br/><br/>She felt herself glowing from her core and her head snapped back as if hit by a bolt of lightning, not from the sky but as it projected through his arms and from his body. She drank of him with an unquenchable thirst, feeling her power rising exponentially. Lydia was drunk with the power and unable to stop feasting. Shenyo’s arms under her never wavered and he seemed immune to the drain. Maybe she was recharging him too but her mind was too far gone to register such a thought.<br/>Somehow in her need, she had found a way to unite her soul with his as they had united under the full moon on the floor of the forest.<br/><br/>Her eyes were turning black and no white showed around the iris. Lydia was shuddering with the ecstasy of their combined essence. They needed to complete the circuit before it drove her mad. Without thinking, she put her hands on either side of his head and kissed him deeply, forcing some of the power back into him. Suddenly they were something alive and more than they were apart. Her mind was clearing enough for her to think and she realized that they would need to run or fight.<br/><br/>“Shenyo?” she whispered with a voice that echoed back into the eternal realms with the low rumbling of thunder.<br/><br/>While she had been lost to spiritual gluttony, the throngs of people had thinned around them. All the world it seemed was at the burning shop. Showers of sparks made the crowd shriek and lurch back in terror.<br/><br/>“Shenyo?” she repeated. “Can we slip away or do we stand and fight?”<br/>