Character Guest Post from Jaycie Lerner

Today I am super excited to have a character guest post from Jaycie Lerner.

Jaycie is the amazing telepathic, main character in Natasha Larry's Darwin's Children.

You can read my review of Darwin's Children here

The Difference Between Revenge and Justice

 When the first angelic Guardian I met told me “relationships are a great way to restore balance in the world,” I was like, whatever. I knew what the angel meant as soon as I found out about what happened to my best friend. Haylee isn’t even just my best friend, she’s my soul mate.

I get why people think kidnapping her father and sic’ing a vicious, psychic vampire on him was an act of revenge. It’s only because they don’t understand what the world really looks like. When Haylee’s power first manifested it was when something evil was happening to her. Not just something bad- absolute evil. You see, all superhumans are empathic by nature… it is, after all, the amygdala that gives us our power. When our abilities first manifest, they do so in response to an event that is charged with an extreme emotion or idea. With Haylee it was evil. But, Haylee’s ability to burn evil is a part of having the superhuman ability to manipulate the human soul. Her larger ability got trapped by the fact that she didn’t adapt in that moment- she was supposed to burn her father alive but she couldn’t look at him.

Haylee is also a Core member, which complicates thing a little. If the problem was simply killing her father, Misha of the Dey-Vah Guard would have done it. Haylee and I needed a true bond, and the imbalance had to be corrected.

When I took on Haylee’s pain the bond was secured. My parents knew what was about to happen, and they could have stopped it. My father actually dropped his shields so I could put him out, and told me that the Gray family would help me end Haylee’s father’s life. But, he only let it happen because Haylee was there. Haylee, despite the fact that she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eyes, could look into

mine. In that moment she understood that she could understand goodness as well. I knew that even if she couldn’t look him in the eyes, she had to be able to watch him die.

My dad made me go to Sasha because we’re his kids, and vampires kill humans all the time anyway. Which, I think is pretty funny. The result is the same. He timed everything so that by the time Sasha agreed, he would be there to give Haylee back all that pain so that she could face it.

You see, Haylee cannot burn a person unless they are absolute evil. I don’t know what absolute evil is, but when I was in her head it wasn’t the actual men that raped her she wanted to burn- it was the man that watched it happen. She watched her father die at the hands of Sasha Gray as the little girl he abused, but in those final seconds she had to look into his eyes to make sure.

Anyway, all I know is that my best friend is totally awesome. For someone that literally has to worry about having unlimited power corrupting myself absolutely, I feel better knowing that Haylee will be

there.