Lightning Kissed (3 page)

“Not at all. We’re leaving Friday
morning.”

“I’ll be there. Later, babe.”

***

She hung up, and I slipped on my pink, gauzy
pajama pants with a matching spaghetti-strap top. It was hotter
than hell itself in Alexandria this time of the summer. For some
reason, the Gulf Coast was a hot spot for the Lucent, and my
parents had chosen Louisiana as our stomping grounds when they were
newlyweds. We’d been here ever since. Most kids were entering their
freshman or sophomore years at my age but I hadn’t been to school
since my one-month spell of sporadic traveling. It had totally been
worth it.

Instead, I got my G.E.D. at sixteen and
immediately began working in ‘special deliveries.’ It was basically
the only legal thing we were good at. Some flashers robbed banks,
muled drugs—we’d even come across some rogue flashers who kidnapped
babies—but the rest of us chose to stay legit.

I opened up my brand new laptop—a perk from
the software company—and signed into my email. There were three
from new clients and one from him. There was always one from
him.

The two from clients were more of the same.
They heard about my services. They were in desperate need of my
special delivery but couldn’t quite meet our price range—typical.
If someone from the outside read these emails, they would probably
think I was hustling drugs—or worse. The cheap ones frustrated me.
They wanted a one-second delivery that constantly threatened my
life and secrecy, but they didn’t want to fork over the necessary
cash.

***

So what did this hard ass do? Yeah, I
emailed them back and told them to name the price so we could help
them—I was such a sap sometimes.

The third email was from a client who was
willing to pay double for our services, but as I scrolled down, I
saw that the writer of the email constantly used words like special
interest and highly confidential, and that meant only one thing.
They wanted us to transport drugs or worse. I deleted it.

I hovered my finger over the email from him.
I resisted in vain—I knew I was going to open it. He wrote in
prose, like poetry-pointed journal entries. He was now in New
Zealand with his family. He had taken the Lord of the Rings tour
three times. He missed me. He didn’t understand why we couldn’t be
together. He couldn’t remember the exact color of my eyes.

Theo Ramsey was so full of shit.

I yelled at the computer, “You do remember,
liar!”

I moved the heartfelt letter into the folder
marked Theo and pushed the lighted button, turning off the
monitor.

There was just so much I could take. Yes,
I’d broken it off with him. Yes, it had been my decision. But I’d
done it to keep him out of the spotlight and, selfishly, to keep my
heart safe from the likes of the one guy who could ruin me with a
single word.

He knew why we’d split up. He was a Lucent,
like me. That didn’t have anything to do with it. Anyway, I wasn’t
that big of a snob. We were allowed to date and marry outside of
our race, the powerful mutation still powered through the female of
the coupling.

There were flukes in the system—one or two
per century—males who could flash, but only short distances, and
their wakes were so bright, it brought them immediate
attention.

Theo was one of those—a male Lucent who
could flash.

And my fetish for frequent travel plus his
genetic mutation was just a government experiment waiting to
happen—not to mention, the Synod’s Book of Lei would crumble to
ashes if they ever found out. And the government experiments, they
happened every day. Lucents were grabbed up in set-up meetings or
facades of money-making opportunities. Then they were tortured,
tested, and re-tested, trying to see what made us tick. The
government just didn’t get it—our blood on a microscopic slide
would never reveal the power of the Almighty to them.

Duh.

The ones experimented on—they became the
Resin—their wakes of light dirtied, muddied, and clouded by the
sadistic acts performed on them. It was devastating to us all and
we mourned such sisters as if they’d died a slow and painful death.
Such was the case of my other friend Sway. She was now one of the
Resin. She could no longer flash—and it made her less than
hospitable, to say the least. Lately, she was a real peach. But it
wasn’t her fault.

And some of them chose to live a life that
portrayed their name—they became lawless—denied respect or
acknowledgement in our world.

I’d rather be tortured thirteen times over
than for Theo to ever come to even a flicker of harm.

So I kept my distance, in theory. Being with
me would just bring attention to him. The Synod kept track of me
like their checking accounts because of what they suspected I could
do.

There was one more glitch in my Lucent DNA,
as if I wasn’t freaky enough. I could travel between places but my
chromosomes took it one step further. I was a seeker—a specialized
flasher who could also travel to a certain person, anywhere,
anytime—which is why he could send emails all he wanted, thinking
he was doing me some service in updating me.

In truth, my body always knew where he
was—always.

LUCENT FEMALES SHALL
NOT TAKE LABOR-INTENSIVE JOBS.

Good thing I put a return receipt on all my
emails to her.

Then again, I always knew where she was, so
it wasn’t really a surprise that less than two hours after she’d
arrived home, she’d opened my email.

I’d skipped the fall semester of college for
one specific reason—Colby. I knew why she’d broken up with me after
years of dating. And really I couldn’t remember a time, other than
right now, when I wasn’t with her—whether in my mind or body. I had
to do what I could to fix myself so she wouldn’t continue trying to
protect herself from me.

We’d met at Westminster Elementary. She’d
given me her peanut butter and jelly sandwich after I realized, at
the stark white cafeteria table, that I’d forgotten my lunch at
home. I’d offered her half, but she’d been content to gnaw on
celery sticks. In second grade, while we lined up on bleachers,
prepping to sing ‘Greatest Love of All’ to our parents at the end
of year assembly, I’d reached for her hand behind the row of
students in front of us and she squeezed mine back and smiled a
front-toothless smile.

In the fourth grade, I had trouble with
division. Mrs. Peabody lined us up along the chalkboard and made us
call out the answers to her drills. And when it got to my turn, I
always answered wrong. Clayton Brown called me stupid at recess and
before I knew what was happening, Colby had clocked his chubby chin
until he was out cold underneath the metal monkey bars.

And when we were twelve, under the boardwalk
at Surfside Beach, where our families vacationed together every
summer, I pressed my awkward lips to hers. She’d tasted like
sunblock and salt.

I knew everything about her. During the
summer, beads of moisture broke out on the bridge of her nose
before her forehead even thought about sweating. She clipped her
fingernails down to the quick out of some asinine fear that she
would scratch herself while flashing. Her hair was the color of dry
sand sprinkled with wet sand. And when I ran my palms along the
length of the backs of her thighs, she moaned my name.

On my eighteenth birthday, I’d pulled her
aside after the family birthday dinner and revealed my secret—I
could flash just like her. Not the distance and certainly without
the flair. But I could do it.

And the next day she’d broken up with
me—that was two years ago.

After some time in Spain, I’d decided to go
to New Zealand but not for vacation—for practice. I’d been
practicing in all kinds of obscure places—the pyramids of Egypt,
the catacombs of Paris, the drug tunnel between Mexico and the
United States, and in all that practice, I realized a few
things.

Number one: not only could I travel in the
underground tunnels, but I could also travel between them and
everywhere else. Last month, I’d gone from Chile to Vancouver in
one straight shot—no sweat. Number Two: the more I traveled, the
more my flash depleted, until it was nothing more than a shot of
lightning. Number Three: I had another talent, other than the
seeking and the flashing. That’s what I was here to research.

This was a talent that even the all-knowing
Colby was ignorant of.

The records of our species were kept in a
cave at the peak of Mount Cook on New Zealand’s South Island. At
least, that’s the only one I knew of. Rumor was, there were plenty
more in various parts of the world, not to mention countless
digital copies, but again, this is the one I thought I could gain
access to.

And there was that little issue of The
Resin. I’d discovered a pack of them in Spain, plotting and
planning on catching Lucents and handing them over to the Escuro
for cash—the answer to the Lucent Synod. There were two on my tail
since I left Madrid. Of course they had to fly by plane since they
could no longer flash, so I was always one step ahead of them—or
three.

My new gift was coming in handy.

Why they wanted to catch us, I didn’t
know.

Maybe it was all just an over-bloated case
of jealousy or revenge.

My phone rang. It was my mother, one of the
few people who knew why I was here.

“Hi, Mom.”

“I’ve just heard from Sable. She and Colby
will be in Belize for the weekend, and we’ve decided to join them.
Do you want to come? You’ll have to travel by plane.”

“She doesn’t want me there, Mom. There’s no
reason to go.”

“God forbid you come to see your
mother.”

She laughed after her statement but it was
laced with a twinge of truth.

“Ok Mom, I’ll be there. It will give me a
chance to conduct an experiment of sorts.” We spoke in rhymes and
riddles sometimes, since we suspected most of our phone calls were
monitored.

“Excellent, I’ll let Sable know and we won’t
tell Colby.”

“Friday?”

“Yes, we are arriving in the afternoon.
Dinner at seven at the regular spot.”

She referred to the Red Ginger on the
Ambergris Caye beach, our favorite in Belize, but such was one of
the things we didn’t discuss over the phone.

She hung up and my stomach performed its
typical acrobatics at the thought of seeing Colby again.

***

The next morning, I flashed to the front
door of the Lucent Guardian of the area. I’d been told that he
guarded the clandestine records, but I hadn’t gotten the
information from the most reliable source—I’d gotten it from an
on-the-fence Resin. For all I knew, I could be walking right into
the pit.

The guardian’s home was more castle than
cottage with vines and flower-laden plants climbing the fence and
peeking out from cracks in the gray stone walls. When knocking at
the huge iron and oak front door didn’t produce any results, I
pulled the long rope-like cord next to the threshold. A gong rang
through the place and then, within seconds, a man lurched the door
open—clearly, I’d disturbed—something. I hoped to God the white
button- down with gray slacks I’d worn was formal enough.

I used a cough to camouflage the gasp that
erupted when the owner appeared.

The man was huge—monstrous, really. I
could’ve taken a picture of him, Photoshopped some fur on his body,
and passed him off for Sasquatch. His long ponytail and beard
reminded me of a Viking warrior. I supposed that was why he had
been chosen—for the scare factor.

“Excuse me, sir, my name is Theodore Ramsey.
I was told to ask you about accessing the Lucent texts.”
Take
that, you six foot four, could have me in a coma with his pinkie
finger, Yeti.

“Why?”

Why—I hadn’t expected why. Why was he asking
me why? I’d always thought the Lucent texts to be the equivalent of
the state library. Fill out a form and walk right in.

I should’ve known better. The Synod had
rules for everything under the sun. They also had rules for things
not done under the sun.

Micro-management didn’t even begin to
thoroughly describe them, and since the Lucent Guardians were part
of the Synod or directly under them, I supposed they’d make this
process just as difficult.

“Because I have questions and I need to
research some things about myself.”

“There are copies of the archives available
for anyone to view,” he respectfully swore and then proceeded to
close the door in my face. This was the point at which a smart man
would’ve moved on, turned right around and just dealt with it. But
I’d never professed to be a smart man—only cunning. I was gonna die
at the ripe old age of twenty at the hands of a cryptozoologist’s
wet dream.

“I can just flash inside if I want to, but I
thought the respectful thing would be to ask,” I yelled into the
splice of the open door, which grew smaller and smaller as he shut
me out. And then it halted and began to swing open again.