Lightning Kissed (4 page)

“You can travel?” He stuck his large face
into the opening. When he spoke, his jaw worked against the frame
and the door at once. It reminded me of Jack Nicholson when he’d
stuck his head into the hole he’d just axed open.

“Yes, I am also a seeker and—maybe
more.”

“Come in.” The door swung wide for my
entrance and then closed firmly behind me.

The Yeti stuck out his hand. “I am Collin.
Let’s begin the journey.” He was no nonsense.

“Now?”

“I’m sorry; I thought your reason for coming
here was to study the texts.”

“It is—I just didn’t expect—let’s go.”

With heavy footsteps, we made a straight
shot through his castle. He took me to the back of the house, then
through an invisible panel in the wall which led to a library that
would make the United States Library of Congress shit its
pants.

The shelves were made of cedar. I could
smell it way before the door was opened. There were book shelves
nine feet tall spanning the room. Just when I thought my eyes had
trailed to its northern limit, I saw a set of stairs that led to
the second floor—with more books.

“This is it?” I asked, staring, quite
unimpressed.

“Did you need more?” he asked,
unbelieving.

“I just assumed…”

He chuckled, a low grumbling laugh. “You
assumed it was a cave-like cavern, buried deep in the mountain,
never to be discovered, taking days and weeks of hiking and
starvation to reach?”

“Yeah, something like that. So tell me,
where in the hell do I start?”

“Tell me, Theodore Ramsey, male Traveler,
what you’re looking for. I’ve been the Guardian for forty years. If
it’s here, I know where to find it.”

“I’m looking for the papers on Eivan.”

He screwed his face up in disbelief. “And
why would you be looking for those?” His attitude had suddenly
morphed from helpful to suspicious.

“Because I think I’m a…” I couldn’t even say
it out loud. If I couldn’t say it, there was no way I was who I
suspected I was. The person I suspected I was embodied strength and
confidence. We were told stories about him as children. He was to
our people as Robin Hood was to humans.

I gathered my courage and tugged nervously
at my top button, preparing to tell the first person ever of what
I’d discovered about myself. “I am Eidolon.”

LUCENT FEMALES SHALL
NOT ATTEMPT TO TRAVEL WITH THEIR MATES.

Ari showed up at two a.m. on Friday morning
with two bags and a grin. “S’up ladies! Let’s go!”

I’d met Ari at an arcade by my house. Two
games of Galaga, one shared cotton candy, and we were best friends.
She was homeschooled by her parents. My parents hadn’t known we had
Lucents that close to our home. Good thing Ari had a super big
mouth. She’d gotten angry at her mother at a family dinner and
flashed from the table to her room. Her mother gasped and her
father lost all the color in his face. I simply smiled, clapped,
and responded, “Ari can flash too?”

“Where are you gonna be,” I asked both of
them. Between Ari and my mom, someone had to take inventory. I was
the most responsible of the group and that was really saying
something since, in general, I was mostly selfish and wild.

“I’m going to the alley behind the hotel,”
my mother reported like I was the parental and she was the teen
queen.

“And I’m flashing to one of the lifeguard
posts on the beach,” Ari answered in turn.

“Okay, Mom, you go first and I will be right
behind you. Then we can all check in and get some sleep.”

“You already made reservations.” My mother
thought the whole thrill of our gift was flying by the seat of our
pants. But what did an advance reservation hurt?

“Yes, we all have cabins out on the water.
Are we ready?”

Ari was gone before she could answer and her
crystal clear golden wake told me she’d arrived without trouble. My
mother was next and her wake, pale purple, like a beauty queen’s
dress, resembled pixie dust—a good sign.

My turn.

It was a simple process. I visualized the
place I wanted to go, and I was there. I didn’t understand the
physics of it—nor did I care. The science behind it would probably
take all the fun out of it. I just knew that I could get into Sacs
in the middle of the night or was able to see the sunset in every
time zone in the world—all on the same day. It wasn’t necessary for
me to have visited the spot before, just to have seen pictures or
video—the beauty of a cell phone with internet was
incomparable.

I felt the familiar tug of time and space
plunging me to my desired destination, and before I knew it, I was
next to my mother in the alley behind a tropical Belizean
paradise.

No time was wasted—I knew Ari’s game. The
last one in the ocean after arriving at a destination bought
breakfast the next morning. After checking in quickly and paying a
fee for our odd arrival time, I slipped my maxi dress onto the
floor which revealed an ivory crocheted bikini. I loved the cabins
in Belize. Why people stayed in hotels overlooking the best view in
Central America, when they could stay in these huts hovering atop
the ocean was a mystery. I booked the same cabin every time, no
matter what.

As my toes wrapped around the edge of the
porch surrounding my hut, I heard a splash and knew that breakfast
would be on me. I dove in after Ari, and from that time until the
tangerine sun began to peek over the horizon, we played and swam
like children.

It wasn’t often Ari and I were free like
this. One would think that, with our gift, we could go anywhere,
anytime. But Ari was in the same kind of specialized delivery
business as I was. She and Sway had taken the medical side of it.
They flashed from place to place with vials, samples, and God only
knew what else.

Except Sway had been stripped of her
ability.

Ari was tired from the traveling, so she
suggested we go ashore. We leaned back, side by side on the
shoreline, and the tide caressed us as it rose. I closed my eyes as
the first rays of the sunrise hit my face.

“Is it a gift or a curse, Bee?”

Ari had called me Bee since we were kids. I
knew what she was referring to, but acted ignorant, as I always
did. The right or wrong, the blessing or curse question of what we
could do, never went away.

Yet, I still had no answers.

It hid behind the thick red curtains on the
stage of my life. Everyone could see its form behind the material,
and the curtains swayed this way and that, letting us know it was
there and trying to get our attention.

I didn’t know the answer.

If there even was an answer.

“What?”

“Flashing.”

Leaning back on my elbows, I threw my head
back. Ari counted on me to soothe her worries. I tried my damnedest
to fulfill that role. What could I say this time that would placate
her?

I began, “The first time we flashed to Jeju
Island, I spent three days there, just taking in the scenery, these
two older men were arguing. Theo was with me. Our parents had all
travelled together. And of course…”

She groaned. “He speaks Korean.”

“Yeah, so he starts translating for me. They
were in one of the most majestic, serene places on the entire
planet and they were arguing politics. So, I looked at Theo and I
said, ‘I don’t understand.’ He answered, ‘There is no perfect gift.
Every good comes with bad—every blessing carries its own
curse.’”

She made a gagging noise. “He makes me sick
when he’s right all the time.”

I cracked up at her blatant disdain for
Theo. A picture of Ari and Theo was next to the phrase ‘love/hate
relationship’ in the urban dictionary. Theo could drive her
completely into the ground with anger—but if anyone wrongly batted
an eye in her direction—he was on them in a heartbeat.

“Me too.”

“I miss his smug ass, sometimes. I bet you
just miss his ass.”

I pretended not to hear her while cupping a
handful of sand, and then I stuffed it into her hair. Instead of
reciprocating, she flashed out into the ocean, past the breakers,
and flipped me off.

“I miss him so bad it hurts.”

THOSE WHO MARRY A
LUCENT FEMALE MUST INCLUDE THE HIDING OF HER ABILITIES INTO THEIR
SEALING VOWS.

By the time Collin stopped pulling down the
books he could find on Eivan, the day was already gone. Thursday
and Friday, I’d gone back with his permission and studied
everything I could cram in—which wasn’t much. The thing was, Collin
wouldn’t actually let me touch the books. Even he handled them with
rubber gloves on, and it took him a full seventeen seconds to turn
each page. Once, toward the end of the night, I leaned in too close
and he clothes-lined me, nearly taking out my larynx.

Apparently breathing on the books was a no,
no.

Friday night, I flashed to Belize. My
parents had booked us a hotel room instead of our regular cabins. I
didn’t exactly know if my presence would be welcomed by Colby.

I landed unceremoniously on the bed, toeing
off my shoes before the shrill of my mother’s yell startled me.

“Theodore Romero Ramsey, you come in and
don’t even let us know!”

I looked in the direction she was coming
from, the bathroom. It was just like my mom to give me no personal
space. I was twenty years old, and she still thought an adjoining
bathroom was a good idea.

“Mom, I’m exhausted. I would’ve called in a
few minutes.”

Her stern face didn’t faze me.

“I know. Come on, let me see you.”

That was mom-speak for let me squeeze the
life out of you while simultaneously not-so-coolly checking if
you’ve lost weight or suddenly stopped bathing.

“Son, don’t give your mother a hard time.”
My father’s voice beckoned me to motion.

“I’m not. I’m just tired.”

I made my way over to them, endured the
sniffing and measuring of my mom and the back-clapping embrace of
my father. I wasn’t sure if I passed the test with my mom, but my
arms had gone around a lot more of her this time. My parents had me
late in life, and after my mom had turned fifty, she began having
trouble flashing long distances—and now she could only flash once
every few years and short distances. Out of boredom and
frustration, she’d taken up cooking, and it showed. Even my dad,
who’d once been a stickler for exercise and health, now sported a
peach-cobbler belly.

“Hazel, let’s leave him to rest. Son, we’re
going shopping. We have our phones. We will see you tonight at
dinner, right?”

“Yes, Dad. Does she know?”

“No,” Mom answered. “Sable knows, but not
Colby.”

I nodded in reply and yawned.

They left me to my thoughts—which always
strayed back to her. I walked over to the sliding glass door and
looked out onto the beach, searching her out with my eyes. Instead
of searching for journals and texts which only held obtuse bits of
information, I should’ve been honing my seeking skills. There had
been seekers before. It was a common secondary gift for females.
Some stories said they could pinpoint a person down to the specific
room where they were. So far, I only knew the general area people
were in and what country.

Right now, scouring the sea of bodies on the
beach for hers would be a perfect time to sharpen that skill.

I chuckled to myself at the girls on the
beach. Hundreds of them lounged on the sand hoping to perfect their
tans. If I knew Colby, and I did, she’d be under an umbrella
praying for the Almighty to give her the power to block out UV
rays. Her mom and her grandmother were the same way. Her
grandmother, though seventy years old, could pass for a woman in
her forties. Her skin was nearly wrinkle-free and without a
blemish. Sable and Colby wished for the same thing, so they
followed the elderly woman’s strict advice: avoid the sun; it was
made to heat the Earth, not bake your skin.