Lightning In My Wake (The Lightning Series) (23 page)

Why us?

I flashed to all the places I could think of that Theo didn’t particularly like, places that I didn’t particularly like either. I wanted to make myself hate travelling. Place by place, I went, convincing myself that being in hiding for the rest of my life was better than having to travel to all those places.

Except it backfired on me.

Even the places he didn’t like—even the places I didn’t like—I would miss.

The reason I got angry at him was not because his words were hurtful. I mean, they were completely hurtful and they stuck in my chest like a briar that refused to budge.

I was angry because he was right.

He was so right, I could barely breathe.

When I reached Argentina, a place that we neither loved nor disliked, I landed on a roof that ran along a row of houses, perched on the side of the curve of a mountain. There was no care in my conscious about whether or not my lightning could be seen. I just didn’t care.

For hours, I people watched from that rooftop.

But everything reminded me of Theo. A group of children in little tiny blue and white plaid uniforms highlighted that Theo and I would never have that opportunity to pursue twelve children like Eivan and Sevella had. Then again, when they were in hiding, there probably wasn’t much entertainment. Apparently, they wrote incessantly in journals and made babies.

It
just went downhill from there. Everything I saw made me aware of something Theo—or Theo and I would never get to experience.

I was fine with giving it all up to go in hiding. I would deal with the impulsion to travel.

Who was I kidding?

Travelling was like my heart beating.

~~~

Hours later, I travelled back to Portugal.

I had to face him one way or the other. Plus, if he made the choice I didn’t want him to make, then I needed to spend all the time with him that I could.

Every garden was void of him. I looked everywhere, until finally finding him in the kitchen of all places. He was sitting on the floor and was surrounded by every slush puppy flavor invented and a bucket of fried chicken. He wore nothing but boxers and socks. His hair was a mess, strewn every which way.

It was the funniest damned thing I’d ever seen.

“What the hell? Are we binge eating?”

He was encircled in some cultish circle of slush puppy worship, yet none had been drunken from and the chicken hadn’t been touched. The slush puppies were for me, I knew that much.

“Theo?”

“I went nuts. I flashed to every slimy gas station I could think of and got them all. It was the lamest attempt at apologizing ever.”

“No, it’s actually really sweet. But the fried chicken?”

He shrugged and kicked it away from him, “I couldn’t even tell you.”

In his eyes, I could already see the struggle.

“The voices?”

“Yeah, they’re quiet now that I’m not in that garden, but they’re still buzzing.” He tapped the side of his head.

“How about we just go to bed and before anything is decided, we just rest. I—I feel like you haven’t held me in weeks.”

He got up and gave me the look. Even though everything, the decisions looming over his head, the weight of our people on his shoulders, and the voices in his head—that look meant that I was in real trouble.

“Eu vou segurar você todas da minha vida, Querida.”

“In here,” he took my hand, placed it over his chest, and translated what I already knew were sweet words. “I have held you all of my life.”

He exhaled and his shoulders slumped. He could sweet talk me still, but everything about his posture told me th
at he was way beyond exhausted. I often forgot how tiresome flashing could be for some of us.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing his hand and leading him to the bedroom at the very top of the stairs. He was already undressed for the most part and climbed into the enormous king sized bed.
Xoana’s house was open to all. It always had been. It was a retreat of sorts, a timeshare, shared by all Lucents. We used to have to make reservations, but in the past decade or so, people just stopped coming. I couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to visit Xoana’s home.

Well, it wasn’t her original home. Her father was, as we knew, a farmer, and not a rich one at that. But
Xoana was smart. So smart that she realized her gift allowed her to begin the first Lucent delivery service. Of course, hers wasn’t software or vaccines—more like rare spices and fabrics. In fact, there are said to be several non-native species of plants and other creatures present in Portugal that no one knows the origin of. Science blames evolution, but the Lucents know better.

All this trading of recherché goods made
Xoana a very rich woman.

Climbing in the bed, I could hear the deeper, elongated breaths, signaling me that he was already asleep. I chuckled a bit to myself. Nothing ever seemed to bother him like it did me. I would stay awake all night until the early hours of the morning demanded I get at least a few hours of sleep when something was bothering me. And whatever it was plagues me with my first blinks of wake.

But not Theo.

That boy could sleep through a damned earthquake.

Only seconds after I’d gotten comfortable, I heard noises downstairs. It was probably Ari drinking all of my slush puppies or Collin eating all the fried chicken—the beast. Looking over at Theo, his eyelids were fluttering. I decided not to worry about whoever was downstairs until I heard a dish break.

I padded down the stairs to find Ari and Pema, eyeball deep in some kind of argument. Whatever Pema had done, she had no idea what she was getting into with Ari.

Ari wouldn’t hesitate to kick another girl in the uterus for me—or anyone she loved. As I got closer, the conversation became clear.

“So, you just dump the choice of a lifetime in his lap and now—oh, I think I’m gonna go away for a while. Bullshit—you’re gonna keep your shaven-haired, skinny ass right here until this is all sorted out. You are straight up shady-fied. I mean it.”

Pema looked like she was working harder at figuring out Ari’s street slang than she was actually being offended.

“I am trying to help them, no matter how shady-whatever you find me, child. I am their friend just as much as you are.”

Ari reached out and flicked Pema in the forehead, “That’s where you’re wrong. Those are my best friends in the whole world and there’s no two people on Earth who deserve happiness more than them. I’m only gonna say this once. If you screw with either one of them—I will hunt you down and strangle you with my own bare hands. So, you go, do whatever you think you need to do. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“
Whoa,” Theo secreted in my ear, nearly making me jump through the ceiling. “Since when am I Ari’s best friend.”

I snorted, “That’s what you got out of it? Who knew Ari was so thug?”

“Not me, that’s for sure. Where’s Pema going?”

“I don’t know.” I was turned to face him now. He almost looked in worse shape than just minutes ago. I questioned him with a confused face.

“Voices. They started again. There’s no predicting when they’re going to start talking. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

He grabbed my hand in the middle of explaining.
As soon as we touched, he slumped against the wall next to him. It was borderline comical how they quieted when I touched him. They probably all knew what a loud mouth I was and decided it wasn’t even worth the battle.

We turned our attentions back on Ari who was picking up Theo’s mess—grumbling the whole time about love struck idiots and stupid Icees. She always called them Icees.

I moved to help her, but Theo stopped me, “Let her. She needs to learn some humility.”

That was the last night Theo slept a full night without being woken up. We didn’t speak about the inevitable—we didn’t really need to. I knew Theo—I knew the second the choice was put before him how this all would go down. Theo wouldn’t have me hide for the rest of my life any more than I would ask him to.

I stayed sick to my stomach, knowing that these days, filled with
unspoken words, living in the shadows of what he would do, were the last days we had together. Theo was honorable beyond anyone I ever knew.

I wished it was me. I deserved to have to make a decision like this. With my constant ill repute and blatant rebellion of authority—you’d think that the Almighty would give a treacherous task like this to someone like me.

No, that wasn’t right at all.

Because I would choose to run.

Cowards run.

Collin and Theo walked the grounds during the day. Ari joked about them having a bromance. But I was grateful for it. Collin seemed to be the only person Theo would talk to about it all.

He certainly wouldn’t talk to me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Theo

The Eidolon, should another be born, shall answer to the Synod.

Sitting outside the window of the bedroom, I let all the information settle deep down in my chest. Everyone wanted something from me—everyone. The Synod or the Resin, they were one in the same wanted me as their own living key to carry around, attached to a blood red string around their necks. They’d stick me into their noxious smelling chests, rotting from the inside out not from disease but because of their dung pile of sins against their own people. They’d pull me out and unlock the door, take what they need from heaven and then come back out, more powerful and more rotten than ever before.

The
stained glass window was open behind me. Through it, I could hear her wrestling around in her sleep.

I regretted showing her my gifts.

If I was any kind of decent person—any kind of decent man, I would’ve kept my mouth shut. I would’ve let her be separated from me. She would’ve been safer that way. If I could take it all back, I thought maybe I would.

As I watched her, I took inventory of her marked changed appearance
in just the past couple of days. Her skin was pale and the crescents that hung below her eyes shone like glittery blue moons as the beginnings of the sunrise settled on them. Colby was usually pale, but this was the pale of someone on the edge of sickly.

She hadn’t been sleeping. I’d woken at all times of the night, the voices becoming too overbearing to sleep through, even with her touch and
when I did, she was always awake. On the rare occasion that she was asleep, she remained in a sitting position.

She was stuck here, taking care of me.

Already I was robbing her of her life.

Aside from Colby’s deteriorating outer shell, she’d lost her fire.

That’s what scared me the most. Her voice had evolved into something timid. She no longer argued with me at every turn. She was the first to give in.

Something about this short but trying journey had stripped her of her vitality.

Pema had informed me with a solemn tone that the only way to seal the door between Heaven and the Earth was from the inside—and I was the key. Apparently, it was an easy process. All I had to do was travel to Heaven and wish for the door to be closed—more mind over matter bullcrap.

Our souls would still be able to trans
cend to
Paraíso
, but the Synod would not be able to access it through anyone, anymore, even if there was another Eidolon. My action would be finite.

So would every future I’d dreamed of for Colby and me.

It all seemed like an easy choice from another perspective. I could see it. Anyone could. What’s his problem? All he has to do is give up his life, close the portal and be a hero etched in time and the histories for generations to come. He’d give up one life to save thousands.

The Synod would be glorified hall monitors without their bigger plans of world domination.

But in my own eyes, I was saving thousands and giving up the only other life that was more precious to me than my own.

I found myself asking the Almighty why so many times. Finally, I’d
gotten Colby back and I was being forced to give her up. That’s what I had to do. I had to give her up.

It was like she was already gone.

My chest already felt the void.

The rest of the morning was spent soaking her up. The way she slept with her hands pressed together in prayer on the side of her face.

She owned me. From the time she said she hated checkers, her heart wrapped a chain around mine that would never be broken. I would be happily chained to her regardless of the constraints of time or place. I would love her in Heaven or in Hell and everywhere between and beyond.

She stirred as my mind finally deferred to the only decision that carried any honor. Her lithe arms breezed over the space next to her, seeking me.
It would be a while after I disappeared before she slept well, I knew that about her. She’d wrack her brain, trying to find a way to get me out.