Lightning In My Wake (The Lightning Series) Read online

  “Should we call Collin,” I asked after slurping some of the pungent broth.

  “I don’t have his number.”

  “Yeah, I guess we missed some of the basics. So when are we going to the temple?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “I need to call my mom. I need to call Ari and Sway. I set up Ari on all of my jobs.”

  He nodded, way too interested in his soup. I sipped at mine, completely blasé about the whole eating thing. The people around us scattered, taking their oxen and goats with them. Theo now seemed to be in a different world, staring off into space instead of eating.

  “If you’re done, maybe we should get back. The vendor woman is eyeing our bowls. She probably thinks we may swipe them or something.”

  Still it took him a moment to respond.

  “Sure.” He took mine and nested it within his and handed it back to the woman who received it with a smile despite her previous foul expression. That was the effect Theo had on women in general.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Theo

  Employment opportunities must be pre-approved by the Synod.

  It happened again. Colby was talking about the monk at the end of the line. I don’t even know how it happened or why it kept happening. I stared at the monk, not really noticing anything different about him. And then while I was eating the soup, I heard him speaking and somehow I knew it was him. It was similar to when I’d heard Colby talking to Rebekah but I assumed it was a thing between the two of us.

  The monk’s voice was hushed and he spoke not to a person but as a person recording something. It was too much. Every time I turned around there was something else happening to me. I had to find more information. Now wonder most of the stories centered on Eivan and his inability to handle all of the powers being bestowed upon him at one time. Wasn’t it enough that I was the fluke male who could flash?

  I didn’t want to put any more pressure on Colby. She was so benign about most deep things. I thought that was why she spent so much energy on superficial things—it was to deter her from thinking about things that really mattered.

  Plus, she was a brat.

  Collin wouldn’t arrive until later in the night. With everything that had happened, it sounded ridiculous, but I just needed one night with her. I’d been so deprived of her presence for so long that I just needed my fill of her.

  Even though she claimed we were together, she was still distant. Maybe it was just the stress of all this. I almost wish she hadn’t come.

  Almost.

  When we got to the valley, we flashed to the house.

  “Are you tired?” I asked her.

  “No. I thought maybe we could go somewhere tonight. Somewhere you like to go. We always used to go wherever I wanted.”

  We had always gone where she wanted, but I’d never minded.

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Do you want to go to The Isle of Skye? Maybe just home? If you want to go spend some time with your parents, it’s fine.”

  She was facing the bookshelves, packed with books I that looked to be as ancient as the mountains themselves. There was no TV in the whole place, not that Colby had ever been find of TV with the exception of the travel channel for obvious reasons.

  “Let’s go to Catatumbo,” I suggested, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her against me.

  “But that’s one of my favorites,” she said, turning so that I could see her pronounced pout.

  “It’s one of mine too. This is the perfect season for the lightning storms.”

  “I know. Let’s grab a blanket or two.”

  A side effect of Colby’s lithe stature and purposefully kept low weight was that she was always cold, which was also another reason why she loved the beach. While other tourists baked, she was completely satisfied in the heat. I grabbed two blankets, both brightly colored, like the clothing of many of the people of Tibet and teased, “Beat you there.”

  I hit our spot at the top of the cliff before she did. From our perch the Catatumbo River could be seen for miles and miles. The lightning storms lasted two hundred plus days a year. It was Colby’s spot of choice next to Scandinavia. She said she felt close to our people surrounded by lightning.

  Her tenacity for the history and wellbeing of our people had been on my mind constantly, of late. She revered the tales of how our people came to be and if Xoana were alive today, Colby would be her biggest fan and greatest ally. Sable once told me, seemingly in jest, that she thought Colby was the spirit of Xoana herself, come back to avenge what started so long ago with the lightning strike on her temple.

  If I was what I thought I was—she was my perfect mate.

  She was my perfect mate—no matter what.

  Colby took a little longer than I expected. Just as I’d decided to check on her, she arrived.

  “I grabbed a sweater, just in case.”

  I nodded and spread out the blankets. I wished we could just go back to the way things were, before.

  I hoped it wasn’t because of what or who I was.

  The last thing in the world I wanted was to be away from Colby for one more second.

  “Meu amor, you think too much. Come, sit.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” she whispered as the light of the lightning around us caused her already blonde hair to glow. That was how I always dreamed of her—it was natural—she belonged to the lightning and it belonged to her. This place always renewed her. It was like she was coming home.

  There was no rain in this storm, only lightning and the dry, balmy winds. A loud, almost thundering bolt struck, but this one could be seen where the negative leader met the positive streamer in the middle of the sky. The light made her jump and a smile ten times more brilliant than the electricity show lit up her face.

  Colby slowly proceeded to sit down next to me, but I wasn’t having any of that. I gripped her tiny waist and hoisted her up so that she sat between my outstretched legs. An electric sensation pulsed through me in waves at having her this near again.

  Thousands of bolts raced through the sky. One particularly close one shot down and startled her. She turned and held on to me.

  “Are you worried?” I asked her, craving her negative response.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m scared for you. I’m worried about me with you and how that will complicate your situation.”

  Another bolt made her scoot a little closer. I took advantage of the position and encircled her waist in my arms. She was as stiff as ice.

  Must she make me work so damned hard?

  “You are like the relâmpago,” I secreted in her ear.

  “Why,” she leaned back and let herself get comfortable in my hold.

  “Because you come from the heavens, from Paraíso, and you strike the sky making everything around you light up. And I’m just one of those streamers, hoping that you will reach down and touch me.”

  She grunted out her aggravation, “I can’t do that, Theo. I can’t open my chest and let you know everything. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel it, because I do. It feels like peeling my skin off.”

  I chuckled and she moved with me, my laugh jostling us both.

  “Good thing I’m sappy enough for us both.”

  “Sway,” she let her friend’s name float into the air without explanation or purpose.

  “What about her?”

  “Eivan could restore the Resin. She wouldn’t tell a soul. You could try your power on her.”

  I let my forehead rest on her shoulder. I wasn’t ready for that. Being ready to try that meant I’d come to a point where acceptance was real. And it was nowhere near real. Eidolon in my head was still a childhood story like Robin Hood. Too good to be true.

  “Can we just let it settle—find out more information before we go doing magic shows?”

  She nuzzled her back closer into my chest, distracting me from the subject. I appreciated the gesture.

  “I forced myself not to miss this,” she tight
ened her hold on my arms around her and I obliged drawing her in the space between us. That was just about the most emotion I was going to get without pinning her down, but I’d take it. I could read between the lines.

  My phone buzzed. I threw it on the ground next to me, silencing it, but Colby picked it up.

  “Hello,” she answered in a sweet tone. She always answered my phone, mostly because I hated it.

  “Already? Boy you are so quick. Make yourself at home. We will be there soon.”

  He said something else that made her giggle and slap her knee, breaking her free of my hold.

  The bastard.

  “Collin just landed. We should get back.”

  “There’s no hurry. Collin’s a big boy.”

  She tensed. I was no mind reader, but I could tell I was about to be on the receiving end of a Colby attack.

  “What’s your problem? You’ve never shown the least bit of jealousy before. And that was when we were in high school. That was when I expected you to be a jealous little ninny. Now you’ve chosen to grow a green tail over a man who is old enough to court Rebekah. Give me a freakin’ break, Theodore.”

  Her eyes squinted. The splotches on her neck and chest were in full force.

  Plus, she’d called me Theodore.

  She always got formal when she was angry.

  It kinda got me going.

  But I’d never tell her that.

  She’d never do it again.

  I had to admit, the jealousy thing had taken me by just as much surprise as it had her. But there were just so many things a guy could suppress. Right at that moment, for instance, I was squashing down the urge to kiss her senseless.

  “In high school I knew you were mine, that’s the difference.”

  I’d also become a little piss ant, apparently.

  She didn’t say anything and I didn’t expect her to. I caved, “I’ll lay off the snide remarks, okay?”

  Nodding once, she tucked herself back into place. My heart throbbed against my ribcage. It was the same throbbing I got when I kissed her under the boardwalk.

  Colby reached back and tousled my hair, pulling me back to rest my chin on her shoulder. These little gestures were her language. She spoke so many things to me through her mannerisms which was why I hadn’t minded her lack of loving words over the years.

  In my arms was my heart—a respiração em meus pulmões.

  “Maybe the lightning is just meeting the streamer in the middle. It can’t help itself. It would leave the beauty of heaven to be with the streamer if only for one second.”

  The skin on her neck pebbled as I breathed warm air against it and fair hairs on the back of her neck rose to the challenge.

  “Can you be my rock, Querida? Will you be my Sevella if all of this is true?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Colby

  Lucent females are to keep an upstanding reputation at all times.

  I changed the subject quickly and pretended to be distraught over having still not called my mother or Ari or Sway. We flashed back to the house.

  Collin was all business. He’d made a pit stop in South Korea and put a set of information carrying USB drives in the hand of someone he said he trusted with his life. The boys were pretty beat, but I was wide awake. I placed calls to Sway and Ari, letting them know where we were, but no more. I told them the bare minimal information in case they were ever questioned in connection to us.

  “Tell me everything,” my mom insisted.

  “Mom, what if you’re questioned? I don’t want the Synod up your ass because of me.”

  “Oh, Colby, the Synod has been up my ass more times than I care to admit. Just tell me. It will help you to get it off your chest.”

  “Okay,” I flopped onto the chair on the porch and spilled my guts. Some things came out as robotic spewing of facts and some things came out with an emotional tone of voice I didn’t know I was capable of. My mom knew my aversion to feelings but never missed a beat. Before I knew what had happened, I was a blubbering mess, just hopping from topic to topic with no intelligent train of thought.

  Arms folded a blanket around my legs and put two tissues in my hands and then disappeared.

  “Mom, I’m a newspaper where he’s a romance novel.”

  She laughed loud and long at that remark. “No, you’re more like a travel magazine.”

  “Make fun of me, Mom. Thanks.”

  That made her laugh even harder.

  “Go to bed, Colby. You sound like a mess and it’s taking everything in me not to flash over there and hold you. I’m going to Rebekah’s tomorrow. She said she’s got some kind of stomach bug and she doesn’t get sick often.”

  “That’s because she’s taken to eating big, greasy slabs of meatloaf. No wonder she’s having digestion issues.”

  “Meatloaf? I just gagged, Colby. Don’t say that word again.”

  I sighed into the phone, “Thanks Mom.”

  “I love you more than time and space, Colby. And Theo does too.”

  “I love you too, Mom.”

  “See? Not so hard, huh? Do the boy a solid and tell him you love him more than just once a year.”

  “Do you a solid? Have you learned how to travel to the seventies?”

  “No. I wish. Goodnight, my girl. Be safe.”

  “Goodnight, Mom.”

  Shrugging out of the blanket, I did the best I could to mop up the remains of my emotion fest. It was Theo who had covered me and provided the tissues. Knowing him, he was watching me through the window. I moved to get up when I saw a flicker of something in the distance. Whatever it was, bobbed from place to place. It must’ve been an animal.

  Blindly reaching behind me, I knocked on the windows. Theo was out first, followed by Collin.

  “There’s something out there.”

  “Resin.”

  “I think it’s an animal. But it was so fast.”

  Panicking, I jumped behind Theo, “I read that there’s a huge jumping spider here.”

  Their response? Both of the men I’d so foolishly trusted with my protection and safekeeping doubled over laughing. Still scanning the bushes for movement I saw it again, but this time, the figure gave itself away.

  “Lucent,” I pointed in awe. “There was a flash. It’s one of us.”

  All eyes focused on where I was pointing but that was the last we saw of whoever it was. If it were Resin, there would be no flashing. But if it were Lucent, who would be so near to us without making themselves known?

  “Let’s get inside. You’re staying with me tonight, just in case. We don’t know who is on our side and who isn’t at this point.”

  Collin cleared his throat not so smoothly. “I don’t think that’s proper. You two are not bonded.”

  He was a lot more handsome when he was fueled by rebellion. All this prim and proper didn’t fit along with his beard and Viking-esque vibe.

  “Don’t worry, Collin, the only person in the world who is more concerned about rules is this one.” I jutted my thumb toward Theo, who looked a little offended. “Trust me. I’ve been with him in one way or another since I was seven and—well—all marriage type rules are being followed.”

  Collin fingered his severely buttoned collar and released the top button. “Well, as long as your parents are aware of the situation, I guess I have no authority over the circumstances. But we have enough to worry about—let’s not add pregnancy to the mix.”

  I was living in a sex talk nightmare featuring a Norseman Sasquatch that I just met.

  “It will be fine.” Theo assured him, grabbed my hand and pulled me down the narrow hallway. My bags were already in the room sitting next to his. That was his plan all along.

  “You are such a sneak. Everyone thinks you’re such a pillar of righteousness and virtue and you’re just a—a—a —I don’t even know.”

  “Just because your bags are in my room doesn’t mean I was planning anything. I just didn’t know what room you wanted to stay in. Don’t
get all twitchy.”

  “So do you think whoever is out there is dangerous?”

  “No.”

  “So why do I need to sleep in here?” I threw my arms in the air and screamed at him. It was out of turn, but it had been a long day and I had zero patience for Theo and his crap.

  I took one step back as I met his gaze. “Can’t I just want to hold you tonight?”

  Who could say no to that?

  After changing into pajamas we both crawled into the bed, really just a yoga mat on the floor with sparse blankets. Naturally, we fell into our old sleeping position and were soon fast asleep.

  “`

  Chopping woke us the next morning. Who chops things in the morning? Who?

  “You should’ve let me kill Collin back when I was jealous,” Theo murmured into my hair. He began a dangerous path of pecks down my back.

  “Please, Theo, you’re still jealous. You’re just going to hide it well. Correct?”

  “What is with all the chopping,” he asked with a wide grin, not so smoothly ignoring my question. In turn, I ignored him, grabbed my bag, and flashed into the bathroom. It resembled more of a sauna than a bathroom—more of the teakwood I’d found in the rest of the house. I loved the simple elegance of the whole thing.

  After showering, trying not to use all of the hot water, I put on a white maxi dress with a pale pink sweater on top. My stomach rolled thinking about all the faux pas I would commit while with the monks. I just knew I was going to embarrass Theo so much that he’d ask me to go home.

  “I saved you some hot water,” I blurted out into the kitchen. As my eyes searched for Theo, I squealed a little. In the kitchen was Collin, chopping away at some fruit salad makings, Theo with a devilish grin on his face—and two monks. One was the one I’d eyed at the end of their line—he was just so intriguing to me. And I was equally intriguing to him, I’d guessed by the way he then stared at me in awe.

  They pressed their hands together and bowed in my direction. I bowed back, only because I didn’t know what else to do. No one broke out in uncontrollable laughter, so I assumed I didn’t commit an international manners crime.