Lightning In My Wake (The Lightning Series) (2 page)

Xoana was the first Lucent and we, her daughters, carry her light to this day.
Some crudely call us teleporters. I’d always despised that name. Either way, I can travel anywhere in the blink of an eye thanks to Xoana and her curses. I can do all this without stepping foot on any land or oceans between myself and my destination.

And I’d perfected the art
.

My father
had tried to understand it, he had. Many a night he’d stay up by the light of his lamp, sitting in his chair, studying our history. I couldn’t keep track of the many times he’d asked my mother how it felt to travel—and later he’d asked me.  He would beg my mother to take him with her.  “Just try it,” he’d say.  But there were rumors—females of our kind who’d tried to share the experience with their husbands, friends, and lovers—and lost them in the fray—never to be seen again. 

He
’d died of a heart attack on a jet, headed to Portugal to meet her—alone, eternally chasing his love. 

I’m sure there are those who envy our gift.  But what good is the ability to travel the world
in seconds if you are perpetually lonely.

I’m lonely without him.

The bridges of Paris, packed with embracing patrons reminded me.

The scrolling, illustrious sunsets on the coast
of the Sierra Leone made the fact gleam.

We couldn’t be together.  I
t was too dangerous. 

Chapter Two

Colby

All Lucent births must be recorded by the Synod within ten days.

              Flashing, to me, was like a jewel I continued to polish and shine.  I could now slide gracefully into the driver’s seat of a parked car, the pew of an abandoned chapel, a conspicuous phone booth, my chair at the dining room table without a sound.

Most Lucents could only flash once or twice
a year, but I’d stretched my talent to its borders—and found it limitless.

My mom screamed
, “Colby, you really should give me some warning.  I swear you scare the shit out of me when you do that.”

She held her chest in panic and
I quickly squelched the laugh that threatened to bubble up at her dramatics.

“Sorry, Mom.  Mr. Sato started asking me questions, so I had to duck out early before he completely wigged.”

She grabbed Mr. Sato’s invisible neck with her hands, choking him hypothetically, “Why do they do that?  Do they think we’re just going to have a seat in one of their modern glass office chairs and give an exclusive interview?  It never fails. They need to learn to accept the delivery, pay up and shut up.”

She flitted about the kitchen while she spoke.  We were kinda like birds in that we tried to eat very little to stay as light as possible.  I’d gained twenty pounds in my phase of rebellion and when I
’d finally flashed again, well, let’s just say had taken a little more effort than usual. 

“I’m really not hungry, Mom.  I picked up some soup in the city.”

“That’s fine.  I’ll just eat some salad.  And by the way, Ari called, she wanted to know your decision about Friday night—some club called Orion’s Belt?”

I laughed at her exuberance. My mom would be the first one in that club. She was a clubber type.

My mom was more of a friend than a mother.  She still strongly resembled a woman in her thirties and dressed like a conservative teen.  Our hair was exactly the same in color, sandy blonde. But where hers was straight and shined like glass, mine puffed out in curls that I barely managed to contain after ten bottles of product.

Eventually, I just stopped trying.

“It’s in Spain, right in the middle of Madrid, underground.  You’ve been there, Mom.  It’s just another European club—nothing special.  But she saw this guy there, so she wants to go back and see if she can spot him again.”

“Madrid, huh?”

“Yes, Madrid.  But I probably won’t go.  How about you and I go to Costa Rica or maybe the Caymans?”

She said nothing and I knew why.
It was a running silent argument, had been since the day Theo and I had split up. She just couldn’t contain herself for very long, so once in a while, she’d politely sneak it into regular conversation.

Or just blurt it out like right then.

I groaned, “Just say it.”

She sat down beside me, holding a white bowl with various julienned vegetables shimmering a bit from a drizzling of olive oil and lemon juice.

“I was already married by the time I was your age.  It’s possible, you know, marriage, family.  Just because we Lucent females are travelers, doesn’t mean we can’t have some stability. Our husbands give us a home to come to—a home that isn’t a place, but a person to belong to.”

The older
female generations called it traveling—called themselves travelers.  But it sounded like a convoy of gypsies to me and my generation had more readily adopted the term flashers.  Plus, the word flashers was more fun.  And flashing sounded—naughty. The term earned giggles from pre-pubescent Lucents and scolding glares from the older ones.  It was a win-win.

“I’ve heard this lecture, Mom.
I just—can’t right now.” My mom knew nothing about why Theo and I weren’t together anymore and it was safer all the way around if she didn’t... That was the whole point of this exercise—to keep all of them safe and at a safe distance from me and my antics.  She was hinting, not so subtly at the fact that Theo had spent the summer in Madrid.  She probably didn’t know he’d moved on.

She changed the subject quickly. 
“I haven’t been to Belize in years. Maybe we should just go there. You love it there.” We tried very hard not to fight.  There were a lot of things that could go wrong when you traveled through chasms of space.  You could get stuck.  You could get misdirected.  You could get caught—any of us could get caught. 

I got up from the tabl
e and scooted my chair under it. “Let’s leave Friday morning—spend the weekend.”

“
Sounds good. Sleep tight, Colby.  I love you more than time and space.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

I trekked the hall toward my room and paused midway to let my fingers glide along the last picture of my dad.  It was a selfie we’d taken the day before he had gotten on the plane. He was ecstatic to see Portugal for the first time. He and Mom were going to have a second honeymoon.  He was happy.  I was happy.  We were invincible.

And then he was gone.

I headed straight for the shower.  I didn’t stink per se, but I always smelled like the last place I’d been.  It was disconcerting to say the least. It made me forget what country I was in.  Peeling off the leather pants, I reveled in my freedom as the hot water deflated my hair and cascaded down my back.  Most people, excluding my mother, and from what I’d heard, my grandmother, were exhausted after flashing.  But I was exhilarated, alive from the core of my body to the electrical pulses in my brain. 

I washed Japan from my skin and then brushed my
teeth to the beats of Moby.  My landline rang and I knew it was Ari.  She was one of only a few who knew the number. 

I plopped on my bed, still wrapped in my gray towel and answered the phone, “Hello, you’
ve reached the voicemail of—Colby Evans—please leave a message after the tone.”

She laughed before replying.
“It’s really scary how good you are at that customer service voice.  You’d think you were human.”

“You’re such a snob.  And by the way, no, I’m not going to Spain. 
Mom and I are going to Belize for the weekend.”

“That’s fine.  I’m thinking about not going myself.
Think Sable would mind if I tagged along?”

“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 travelling.  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 and signed into my email—a perk from the software company.  There were three from new clients and one from him.  There was always one from him. 

The t
wo from clients were more of the same.  They’ve 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 threatens 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 vai
n—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.

Th
ere 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 these—a male Lucent
, who could flash. 

And my fetish for frequent travel plus his genetic mutation was just a governme
nt 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, 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 freak 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.

Chapter Three

Theo

Lucent females shall not take labor intensive jobs.

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