Book 1 of the Black Magic trilogy.
Inessa felt Mark's pounding heart, as well as those of his two victims. Larry was practically delirious with shock, his predicament of being robbed while with a hooker, washed over his unprepared mind.
Bunny was also frightened, but was able to keep her cool, glowering at Mark. However, Bunny's mind also turned to her own gun, a small one she kept in her purse.
"Now!" Mark hissed with urgency.
Full of anger, Bunny rose and walked to her purse. She was intent, not wanting to lose what little money she had and was about to make. However, Mark was prepared, pointing his gun right at her.
Inessa felt things were happening too fast. Mark was focused, ready - Bunny was intending to reach into her handbag and shoot him with her small pistol. Larry was cowering in a corner, his heart pounding nearly as hard as Bunny's, but he was watching and drawing some hope from her confident actions.
It was not going to end well, Inessa realized, as she once again felt Mark's fast-beating heart.
Inessa had only moved small things, swirling ice cubes in a glass or a few leaves under a tree was the pinnacle of her experience. But now she closed her eyes, as she stood in the shadows of someone's front yard, a couple hundred feet from the apartment building, and squeezed.
Mark's mind burst full of pain, but not extraordinary pain, just the everyday pain of a bad cramp, food poisoning, intestinal blockages, appendicitis or any of many miseries people experience. Inessa didn't release her mental grip until Mark's heart gave up its fight, finally resting after decades of pushing blood. His collapsed body was sprawled across Bunny's floor, his mind dissolving into nothingness.
Inessa paused, she could feel Bunny and Larry. They were looking at the lifeless body of their would-be robber. It was relief they felt, he had had a heart attack, possibly a stroke, neither of them was sure.
Inessa knew she had done good - she had saved two people. Mark was dead, but he had been dead for a long time. It was not really her who had killed him - his own ways had killed him - it was his fate. Nothing else.
Inessa tuned away to continue her late-night walk as Larry quickly dressed and hurried away from the scene of his own crime.
