Lightning Sealed Read online

  By: Lila Felix

  To Dynamis: If ever there was a dynamic team, we are it. Love you gals tons.

  To Ashleigh, Mandy, Tee, and Rebecca. Thanks for putting up with my bull. Sometimes it’s a lot of horns but you hold up the red flag anyway and always accept me.

  THIS book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  NO part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Lightning Sealed

  Copyright ©2016 Lila Felix

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-63422-182-5

  Cover Design by: Marya Heiman

  Typography by: Courtney Nuckels

  Editing by: Kelly Risser

  Smashwords Edition

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  No matter what he said, Theo would leave me soon.

  It was just a matter of time.

  I waited for it with saccharine breath. I watched him in the mirror. I counted his footsteps up the stairs. Counted his bites. Waiting had turned me into a bit of a stalker.

  The worry consumed me. I couldn’t think about anything else.

  There was acid in my smile—bitter beneath my tongue.

  Something was missing in his touch. He didn’t hold my stare. He spent hours and hours alone now. He was a caged tiger in a zoo that no longer kept him grounded and my audience no longer entertained him.

  There isn’t a psychiatric diagnosis for what is going on in my head.

  All of this was in practice, I guessed. Practice for the time I’d be without his heart—without him.

  He didn’t need me to quell the voices anymore. I still helped some, but my presence didn’t have the same impact.

  The man I loved was finding solace in the depths of insanity—just when I’d found my own voice of sanity.

  I doubt he thought it was insanity at all anymore.

  Self-reliance and I were about to get real cozy.

  Pema didn’t seem fazed by the slow and slothful transformation. I watched her with intent. She glided between furniture, acting like she wasn’t listening to every conversation—every word. Hanging on everything we said and every fact, flippant or important. I’d never liked her. She floated around us like a ghost. Present enough to be a significant presence but not enough to make waves—on the surface.

  Nothing about Theo’s decline bothered her in the slightest.

  It was as if she knew it would happen.

  As though she wanted it to happen.

  Like she was watching her ancestry relive itself in the flesh.

  “I’m telling you, the wench is crafty, Bee,” Ari whispered in my ear. Well, Ari attempted to whisper in my ear. I hated when she did that. What she’d really done was rasp loudly. She was right, though, about the shaven monk that moved like a ballerina. None of us trusted Pema. She was way too close to Sanctum. She hung on every word he spoke. She looked at him like he was the Eidolon instead of Theo. It should be the other way around. Sanctum was the devil on the Eidolon’s shoulder. He was the evil to Theo’s goodness. Then again, nothing Pema did ever made sense.

  I hated her in our lives but she held information I knew we’d one day need.

  “Will you shut up? Pema always looks like that. Anyway, I can’t tell what she’s doing while she’s in Sanctum’s shadow.” Ari and I were unable to simply say ‘Sanctum.’ The name and title were always coupled with eye rolls and maniacal tones.

  “I need a vacation.” Ari flounced her torso onto the marble countertops of the kitchen. We were still in Xoana’s home in Portugal. It was the longest time I’d ever gone without flashing. It put me in the worst mood—you know, on top of all the ‘your boyfriend has to either kill people or lock himself in heaven forever’ stress.

  The worst part was his light was fading before me. It wasn’t easy to see the glow from his soul dim. The last time I’d seen it dim was when I’d left him standing after telling him that he and I were over.

  I now understood why the family and mate of the Eidolon chose to hide themselves from this world, from the Synod, and from the Eidolon’s purpose. Some days when I saw Theo losing himself, I wanted to whisk him away and hide him—flash him from place to place until they stopped looking or we both succumbed to what we didn’t want to face.

  He wouldn’t let me help him anymore—his contentment came and went like the wind. That wasn’t exactly true. He did let me help him, but I assumed it was out of pity—making me think I was helping.

  I woke up most nights to see him at the window. Otherwise, I had to search for him in the gardens.

  One time he flashed and left his shadow in his place. The only reason I knew was I could feel the difference between his real self and his shadow. His shadow always felt like a TV channel not quite on the right station—fuzzy and out of focus.

  I felt betrayed by that shadow. He wanted me to think he was there. That I would wake in some slumberous stupor and think that pathetic version of my mate was really him and drift back to sleep like an idiot.

  I almost had.

  The whole thing made me angry. Angry at him. Angry at this life that had been thrust upon us. Angry at the Almighty for not giving it to someone else—anyone else.

  Theo didn’t even tell me when or where he was going anymore. I just guessed.

  All of it was his attempt at tempering me like eggs in a custard—giving me little bits of his absence to increase my toleration. It wasn’t working. Didn’t he know it wasn’t working?

  I didn’t want it to work.

  I wanted him to stay.

  It began as a walk to the gardens here or there. One-hour walks became two and progressed from there.

  The darkened half-moons hanging below his eyes told me the amount of sleep he was getting even if he denied the accusation.

  He couldn’t lie to me. He’d never been able to lie to me.

  His ever-shrinking form was proof he wasn’t eating. His chapped lips, which had once been softer than mine were, meant his body was water-deprived. His hands shook at those times when I forced him to eat.

  It was as thoug
h he were punishing himself for who he’d become by withering away to nothing.

  But it was really punishing me.

  Everything had gotten worse since the arrival of Sanctum, but none of us could deny that we needed him in our corner.

  “Now ladies, it’s rude to whisper. If you’d like to gush over me with your praises and compliments, please do it so all can hear.”

  That was the other bullshit we had to deal with—Sanctum the Sovereign.

  No, seriously, that’s what he called himself.

  He requested that we call him that. Ari punched him in the nuts. I couldn’t believe my eyes when she did it. Her fist invaded his groin before anyone could stop her. It wasn’t the first time she’d pulled that move. There were some guys in high school who referred to Ari as the ‘Nut Puncher.”

  Sanctum the Sovereign.

  Sovereign my ass.

  Pema almost shit herself when Ari wiped her hands, thinking she’d done a good deed.

  Collin put his hand over his face. I thought he was praying until his whole body started to shake.

  Everybody enjoyed a good nut punch now and then—the audience, not the recipient, and Collin wasn’t immune to the comedy of it.

  When you were around us, you had to learn to roll with the punches.

  Collin had evolved as a vital part of our group over the last few weeks. He started out as the guardian of the Synod, and we now considered him friend and guardian to the Eidolon.

  I decided to answer his statement, mostly out of boredom. “We were just saying how you look a little different today.”

  Ari cued in as only Ari could. “Yes. There’s an absence of some sort. Can’t put my finger on it. You’re less… slick.”

  From the moment Sanctum got to the house, he’d complained about the humidity and his lack of styling products. It was like having a higher-maintenance version of me around—if that was even possible. Truth be told, he looked better without the slicked back Dracula look, but I’d never admit it out loud.

  “I still look better than your mate,” Sanctum, or Torrent, whatever his name was, quipped back.

  “How long has he been gone this time?” Ari asked out of the blue. She knew better. I hated when she asked that question in front of Theo’s brother. He seemed to absorb my loneliness and concern and processed it like his own personally engineered energy drink.

  I pinched the hell out of Ari’s arm for doing that—again. She needed to learn a lesson and since her chosen learning method for others was violence, I thought that might grind the point in.

  If the girl had nuts, I would’ve punched them—hard.

  “Sorry. Damn it, that hurt. I meant… nice dress?”

  Collin cleared his throat and leaned to the left in his chair, looking out to the gardens and then back to me as though he could see Theo from that vantage point. He couldn’t, of course. Theo was in the thick of it, probably obsessing over the area where my grandmother Rebekah was buried. “It’s been five and a half hours,” he grunted, pretending to go back to reading the newspaper for the third time that day.

  The sun was setting on the house of Xoana and not just on the horizon.

  “No one asked you, Thor.” Ari and Collin had a running argument. It provided a necessary comedic relief.

  He jerked the paper from his face and crumbled it onto the floor. “Stop calling me Thor. I am neither from Viking descent, nor do I have a hammer.”

  Part of entertaining myself included taking jabs at Collin whenever I could. I couldn’t help myself. “That’s not what your girlfriend said.”

  Collin gasped and screwed up his face in disgust. You would’ve thought after a couple of weeks with me that the shock of my lack of manners would wear off. For a moment, he acted like he was going to get up out of that way-too-tiny-for-him chair and do something about it. Instead, Sanctum’s shadow intervened on his behalf.

  “What will you do if the Synod summons you again?”

  Pema—always bringing me down.

  I responded, again, out of pure boredom. “I’ll go. I don’t have a choice. There’s been enough blood spilled on account of my disobedience.”

  “If they take you, they aren’t above torture. Trust me.” All of her words jumbled together like that teacher on Peanuts.

  I pulled my hand into a fist and put it on my hip. “I know.”

  I knew all too well the torture they’d orchestrated on Sevella when Eivan went missing. The Synod had a special slideshow tailored just for my terror-filled viewing.

  “How could you know? She was my grandmother.”

  I turned all of my aggravation on Pema. She was such an easy target. “The Synod is the world’s most vain gathering of women in the entire world—so much so that they think themselves better than humans and want to take over the Almighty’s army. You don’t think they’d pour so much energy into tearing down the Eidolon without some kind of visual proof, do you? You actually believe you’re the only one that knows everything there is to know here?”

  She stuttered before actually conjuring real words. “You’ve seen the pictures?”

  Every eye in the room was on me. I hadn’t told anyone about my little visit with the Synod or what had occurred there. The blood at once pooled in my face and neck, thumping hard in my temples. I was at my breaking point. Truth be told, these days, I always bubbled around my breaking point—it was crossed all too easily.

  “I’m going out. Theo knows where to find me.”

  “And, of course, I do.” Sanctum’s voice threw ice on my fire and coals on my cool.

  Ari and I both stopped. Ari was sticking to me like hot asphalt on shoes lately. Wherever I went, without Theo, she went-which wasn’t very far. I drew the line when she’d followed me into the bathroom the night before.

  Sanctum, or Torrent, I didn’t know what to call him, threw his head back in laughter that wasn’t funny at all. His laugh was vinegar and rot.

  He took a few steps toward me and worms crawled through my veins at his nearness. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Whatever powers the Eidolon receives, the Sanctum receives in turn—or something close to them. Mine may not be as sophisticated as his, but they are useful all the same.”

  My smirk said everything, but just in case… “Sanctum, everything about you will never be as good or as sophisticated as Theo. Get over it already.”

  There was not very much fight in me anymore.

  I’d given up wrestling with the voices. Lately, it was better to come out to the gardens near Rebekah’s grave, lie down on the grass, and just let myself drown in them. Allow the gates to open. Feel myself tumble in the undercurrent, happy to drown. Happy to let go.

  There was a time when I could control them—allow Colby’s touch to make them still.

  That was until Torrent returned. Sanctum’s presence amplified it all.

  They weren’t just voices, as I’d convinced everyone around me.

  They were disembodied souls seeking the same thing I was—peace.

  These unrelenting souls wouldn’t let me sleep, wouldn’t let me eat. Even a glass of water seemed to contain the lives of thousands and I was swallowing them whole.

  I knew exactly what needed to be done. It was so simple and so damned difficult.

  The Fray was not their destiny. The Almighty never intended His children to float around aimlessly for eternity.

  But even the Almighty required help sometimes.

  And there I was, His hand, refusing to help.

  I knew the toll it was taking on me and Colby. I could see it in her eyes, the way they’d lost some of their sparkle, their luster for life. She watched me—a mild panic in her gasp when I disappeared from her line of sight.

  She’d taken to eating only when I ate, which was next to never.

  She hadn’t slept more than a few hours in weeks.

  Her cries when she did sleep were for me, for us. That was when I couldn’t stand to be near her—the time when she needed me most. She wrestled with the
sheets as though they were me, or who I used to be.

  She should’ve given up on me a long time ago.

  And I should’ve let her.

  I was hurting her, but I didn’t know how to stop it.

  There was nothing more I wanted in life than for it all to stop.

  “If this is your idea of a battle plan, then we are verifiably screwed.”

  I shielded my eyes from the blaring sun and looked at the man, once the boy, who was once my brother. I guessed, technically, he was still my brother. He looked the same for the most part. His grooming habits had changed, which might have been the only improvement. He was the dingy one of the family. My mom always had to beg him to take a shower.

  My parents had called here and there to check on me, but I’d left out Torrent’s presence. They had enough to worry about without adding him to the mix. I was weaker with him around—more fragile.

  It pissed me off to no end.

  I would have to tell them eventually. I didn’t want to see any more of their pain.

  “I thought you were the almighty Sanctum, Warlord Supreme. You said I was just the weapon.”

  He canted his head at me and then plopped down beside me on the grass.

  I hated him.

  I needed him.

  We needed him.

  “Please. We are all the weapons. Plus, a few guns never hurt anyone.” His voice was shrouded in filth, like he talked to me through a sheet of mud.

  “If you’re looking to get guns from me, you’re not looking in the right place.”

  There were still some things I knew about my brother. A title doesn’t change the root of who someone is. When he turned his face away from me, he was rolling his eyes.

  “Don’t roll your eyes at me.” I joked, but didn’t recognize my own voice.

  “The great and powerful Eidolon wishes me to mind my manners. Sorry, brother. It’s in my veins not to mind my manners. It’s so easy to be—nasty.”