Lightning Sealed

by Lila Felix

I cringed at his crassness and took a step back. Rebekah’s throat had been sliced open and no matter how tough I acted, the image of her in that apple red bathtub still haunted my waking thoughts.

  “There has to be a way to get rid of them without actually—you know—killing them.”

  With that sentiment, Torrent flopped onto his back.

  I got an idea and decided, while I was being courageous, to ask him. “What about those things that the government uses to take our powers? Can we use those? It’s as good as killing them.”

  He nearly fell off the cliff laughing.

  Repeating my name to myself over and over again relieved the ache. In a matter of a little over three hours, or what I guessed was three hours, I’d managed to transport so many souls to where they belonged that I’d lost count—lost track of time—almost lost myself.

  It would be so easy to let go and curl under the weight of the despair around me.

  My stupid ego thought they would be happy to see me—and they were—for a few minutes.

  Barely a dent had been made in the sea of souls before me.

  Theodore Ramsey—Theodore Ramsey—Theodore Ramsey

  “Me next!”

  A lion of a voice scratched my eardrum. I raised my fingers to my ear and pulled them back, certain there was a trickle of blood from the boom. The others had been endearing, some of them, their sorrow had pierced me. But this being didn’t belong in Paraiso. I wasn’t sure where he belonged, if anywhere.

  “What is your name?” I shuddered.

  The menace of his breath sent frost through my veins. This was no child—this wasn’t even a man.

  “Pariah. Once my name was Pariah. It is the name I was given. Now take me back!”

  The crowd before me scattered with the shattering of his demand. Their fear tasted like slimy mushrooms on my tongue. Or maybe it was the slime of his soul.

  A nefarious slug of an emotion crawled through my chest, warning me that this wasn’t anything I’d experienced with any of the others. They were merely being escorted to Paraiso.

  Paraiso was not this being’s destination.

  I quelled my trembling and stood as tall as I could. “I can’t take you where you want to go. Your destination is out of my reach.”

  “He can do it—the one who mirrors you.” Pariah towered over me.

  “He can’t. His powers are—weaker than mine.”

  The swirling soul spat on my shoulder. “Strong enough to take me anywhere but here.” He was delusional if he thought that anywhere Torrent could take him would be better than this nothingness—this emptiness.

  I countered, “You’ll have to wait.”

  He stomped. “Wait! Wait! Wait! All I do is wait!”

  The milk sloshed us all into chaos.

  “I can get him—I think. But there are so many more.” I couldn’t believe I was bargaining with this devil.

  A roaring laugh disturbed the atmosphere. “I’ll swallow them whole—feed from their fear until you do.”

  And then the wailing—the piercing cry of a million lost souls invaded me again.

  They were more fearful of this wretched soul than they were an eternity of nothingness.

  Theodore Ramsey—Theodore Ramsey—Theodore Ramsey

  The slime of a soul busied himself with curses aimed at me when another child leaned over and whispered in my other ear. Her voice cut through his sludge. “You must think of the one chained to your heart. She will guide you home.”

  “Colby?”

  Her name was already foreign on my tongue, as though she were a picture I’d lost in a box hidden under a pile of old clothes.

  Her small face nodded against my shoulder. “Only you know her.”

  I slumped. “I can’t—I don’t know where she is.”

  She sang into my ear once again, “If you can’t find her body—find her heart.”

  Letting go of the little sense of gravity I had in this place, I floated in the slight memories I could conjure. I cornered the other voices so I could pull up the anchor until Colby was all I could see. Her hair—her ocean smell—the sandiness of her hair—the way she called me without a voice.

  “I can see her.”

  “Then go to her—while you still can see her—while you still remember.”

  ***

  I’m the damned Eidolon. The least I should be able to do is land somewhere more—classy. This is embarrassing. I think there is a fork in my…

  “Why are you in the sink, Theo?” Ari sneered with a hand on her hip. On her way toward me she bit into her cheek, fighting a smile.

  I was seven inches away from certain parts being exposed to the garbage disposal and she was laughing.

  “Shut up.” I snapped back.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine, you Highn-Ass. Get yourself unstuck from there.” She threw up her hands in aggravation and began to walk away.

  “Hey, Ari?” I must’ve been desperate to ask Ari for help.

  “What?”

  “You know how astronauts come back from space and they have no muscle mass?”

  She didn’t turn around, but her shoulders acknowledged my words. “Do I look like I geek out on NASA documentaries?”

  I choked on a laugh. “Kind of.”

  That got her attention.

  “Excuse me?”

  I threw my head back and hit it on the spout of the faucet. “Ari, please. My legs are jelly and I’m not sure my arms aren’t licorice. Help?”

  She was enjoying this. “Fine. Add this to the list ‘oh golden one.’”

  With her arms around my torso, she hefted me from the suction with a grunt. Sure to my previous explanation, I slumped to the floor. For people who could travel the world, we sure did spend a whole hell of a lot of time on the floor.

  Eating chicken.

  Crying.

  Being generally depressed.

  Mostly being big babies.

  She hefted me up and walked me to the couch. It was the first time I’d noticed that Colby wasn’t rushing toward me. Since I’d figured out all of this Eidolon crap, Colby always seemed to be crashing into me. Now she was nowhere to be found.

  “She had to get away. Torrent followed her. Collin is with Pema and your parents. Colby’s mom went to spend some time on the coast. You had everyone on hold.”

  I rolled my eyes at Ari’s quiet dramatics. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ari. It’s only been a couple of hours.”

  She dropped onto the chaise lounge near the fireplace and stared at me as though I should take back whatever I’d said to offend her.

  “What?”

  Ari wasn’t one to bullshit. “Theo, you’ve been gone a week.”

  “Rebekah told me something about this. But it was one of her riddle prophecy things. It’s like you don’t understand the meaning until you’re in the thick of it.”

  The tunnels were stifling, so much that I could barely speak without begging for more air.

  Torrent was unaffected by the mention of my grandmother’s name or by the conditions of this place. He continued to breathe and blink his eyes. I expected the impact of her death to hit everyone as hard as it had hit me. “I was never formally introduced to your grandmother. I was just told she was meddling where she didn’t belong.”

  Torrent whispered like most people yelled. Apparently, Hades didn’t have courses on whispering.

  I added that moment to the many moments when I wanted to wrap my lanky fingers around his trunk of a neck and squeeze until he popped.

  “She was brilliant. They should’ve revered her instead of—instead of what they did to her.”

  He leaned over my shoulder, looking at something out of sight. “How do you know it was them?”

  He was more interested in whatever was blowing in the wind than he was about something as serious as the murder of a Prophetess.

  I put my hands on the ground and scooted away from him. “Trust me. It was Regina.”

  His eyebrow cocked. It was
the first sign that he had any emotion regarding the issue at hand. “Never did like that wench. There’s a lot you can tell by the length of a woman’s nails.”

  “Hers aren’t nails. They’re claws.”

  For the third time since Theo had vanished, we were scouting out the Synod’s lair. I didn’t know exactly why I’d chosen Torrent as my partner in crime or why he’d agreed, but most of his intention, I supposed, was to keep me occupied in Theo’s absence. Collin had made vague attempts to stop me but there was nothing the Viking could do.

  I had to stop them before they forced Theo to do something he wasn’t willing to do.

  Anyway, Torrent wasn’t that bad. He allowed me to keep busy, sometimes on fruitless efforts.

  And he never mentioned Theo’s name out loud.

  Maybe a sliver of Torrent wasn’t rotten.

  By now, I could tell anyone how to get in and out of the living quarters and the interrogation room without fail. It was actually a simple layout and anyone who wanted to figure out a way to slay them wouldn’t have to try very hard.

  Over the last week, I’d distracted myself by learning as much as I could from the enemy. The Blinder, a Taser-like weapon I’d feared for most of my life, was nothing but a myth manifested by the Synod to further their mysterious cloud. I hadn’t squeezed out of Torrent the real way our powers were taken, but that Blinder was complete bullshit.

  I actually felt pretty stupid that I ever believed it.

  It was almost cartoonish.

  Torrent was maniacal, but brilliant at the same time.

  Theo was methodical, but bewildering at the same time.

  These Ramsey boys were too much for the world to handle.

  Torrent leaned against a metal pipe that I was sure pumped in Regina’s hairspray or something else vile. He crossed his arms over his chest and said, “So now that we know our way in here, we just have to strike.”

  I stood next to him since we only had one flashlight and turned a particular shade of ‘doesn’t really want to kill anyone’ green. “Strike? See, that’s the part I’m not so comfortable with.”

  Torrent slapped my thigh. “This again? I can’t believe…”

  His mouth was moving but I was long gone, suddenly plummeted into a bulb of knowing. The hairs on the back of my neck perked up as a burn grew deeper in my chest. Every nerve stood on end and each cell felt like it split and shattered only to put itself back together again. I dropped the flashlight as my hands began to shake.

  Theo and I used to talk from our bedroom windows with those cup phone things. Every once in a while when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, he would thrum the string so the noise would reverberate me awake.

  That’s what I heard—the only thing I heard.

  The thrum of my mate as it awakened my heart.

  “He’s back.”

  Torrent muttered, more like ground out, a curse and nodded. He understood even if it blocked his plans—our plans. Understood might have been an overstatement. He knew what would happen when Theo returned.

  And he knew what I would do.

  What I had to do.

  Torrent grabbed my wrist and gripped it so tight that I felt my heartbeat in my fingers. His expression turned dark. “He can wait a few minutes. We need to find out where this tunnel goes. It’s the only one we haven’t explored.”

  He let go and kept on walking like my life hadn’t just clicked back into place.

  Like every gear that had halted inside me hadn’t started running again, like a rabbit’s heart.

  I was barely breathing here—fueled on by saccharine revenge and the premise of keeping myself busy until Theo got back.

  Not letting myself be Sevella, writing in tear-stained journals about her lost love.

  The love that everyone got a piece of but her.

  “But I won’t wait.” I shouted after him.

  Not waiting for his answer, I propelled myself into the house in Portugal and felt—pain.

  “Shit!” I doubled over and almost vomited right there on the polished marble floors.

  “Colby, what’s wrong?” From my vantage point, I could see Theo holding onto the furniture as he wobbled over to me. Someone needed to find out what was wrong with him. It seemed I had the least of the issues in this place. Another gush of seething ache punched me somewhere inside, blurring my vision.

  “It hurts. My spleen is burning.”

  With laughter in his voice he said, “Your spleen? Do you even know where your spleen is?”

  I dropped to my knees. “I do now.”

  “When did it start?” he asked, now on his knees in front of me.

  “When did you start needing a cane?”

  He chuckled but it was short lived. The concern was written all over his face. “Tell me what hurts. Stop with your crap.”

  I waited before answering because as soon as the pain had come, it started subsided by the second. “I don’t know. It’s fading. When I flashed—it burned—it stung.”

  He scooted closer and wrapped one arm around my shoulders. I heard the pure commanding worry as he spoke to me. “Don’t flash again for a while. Not until we know what this is.”

  We both collapsed onto the marble. He smelled like candy and marshmallow fluff.

  After a few moments spent letting the last threads of pain fizzle out, I turned and faced him. He looked the same and more mature all at once. I knew the Fray would change him, but I never thought he would look so serene. His gray eyes were a shade lighter. His skin was liquid caramel. “You smell like candy,” I told him.

  “I feel like mashed potatoes.”

  I bit my lip against what I really wanted to say. “You have to tell me everything.”

  Theo sighed and shifted to look me in the eyes. He lifted a thumb to run it across my bottom lip but I could tell that every movement took all the energy he had left. “I will. I need to—decompress. I haven’t slept. I need you for that.”

  I sighed and released every inclination thinking otherwise.

  “Ari?” I knew Ari was there but she was keeping her distance. I heard her sighing and shifting on those sandals that tended to clack on the floors.

  She answered immediately. “I’m here. You two are a bloody mess.” Squinting, she knew I’d caught her wording.

  I countered, “What’s with all the British crap?”

  Ari shrugged. “Torrent says it. I guess it rubbed off on me.”

  “Are you sure that was the only rubbing going on? You’ve been influenced by him quite a bit lately.”

  She kicked the back of my knee, making me groan. “You should talk. The two of you are inseparable.”

  Theo heard her comment regardless of how tired he was or that he could barely walk. He tensed for a second but didn’t utter a word. He wouldn’t.

  Still, I felt the need to explain.

  But it wasn’t the time. And once again, we had an audience.

  Theo interrupted my thoughts. “I need to speak to Torrent when I wake up. Colby, I’m sure you know his number.”

  I drew myself from my splattered position on the floor and righted myself before answering. My abdomen was still sore from the earlier episode. “I’ll call him as soon as you’re settled.”

  He nodded. Ari helped me lift him from the floor and he grunted trying his best to help. He protested against help but relented after realizing that his legs were no better than noodles. As we reached the bedroom that we had claimed, he tore himself away from the both of us and did the furniture walk and reach until he collapsed on the bed. I almost left, disregarding his words about needing me to sleep peacefully.

  He rasped, “I still need you, unless you have something else to do.” His words rang sour.

  “I’m here, Theo.”

  Ari winked at me and then left. I closed the door and shut the heavy curtains blocking the sun from interrupting his sleep. Slipping in next to him, I laid on his chest and reveled in the sound of his heart. I whispered a plea to the Almighty
to fix whatever made his heartbeat sound so faint and far away.

  Laying there next to him, I decided to face the unspoken rift instead of letting it fester. “He’s helping me find my way into the Synod’s headquarters. I had to have something to keep busy with.”

  Theo huffed out a breath through his nose, disapproving. “Take Collin next time.”

  There was no way I was taking the mighty Viking and Theo knew it. “Collin is preoccupied with Pema or slaying dragons. Without something to do, I would’ve…”

  “Gone mad? Cried rivers? Bled over a journal? Longed for another moment with me?” A hint of sarcasm warmed my heart.

  I nodded. No matter how close my life was to Sevella, I didn’t want to end up like that. “They took my grandmother from me. They took a prophet from us. I won’t let them go unchecked.”

  He rubbed my back once and then lost steam. I shifted to lie on his stomach, giving him easier access, but the moment had lapsed. He didn’t have anything left— his time in the Fray had left him completely spent.

  “I missed you every second.” I said, my breath spilling over his stomach.

  “I love you.” That was all he said before drifting into sleep.

  ***

  “Colby,” Theo said hours later, reaching for me and feeling nothing. He patted the empty space beside him and then groaned.

  “I’m here. You must be starving—thirsty.”

  He gifted me with a crooked smile. “For you.”

  I’d sat on the chair beside his bed the entire time he was asleep wondering how this was going to go down. There was always an awkward moment, sometimes long lived and sometimes not, when you’ve been away from a person for that long of a period with no contact.

  A moment of readjustment that could feel like forever.

  Salty drops rivered down my face and I realized there was a part of me that didn’t know if he’d recognize me, much less love me, when he returned.

  That being the Eidolon would take precedence over anything else in his life.

  That my years of selfishness would be met with rejection.

  “Meu amor, por que choras?” His eyes weren’t even open. He reached for me blindly and a little bit more of me fell deeper in love.

  I confessed, “I just missed you, that’s all.”

  “I missed you, Querida. I want to tell you everything. I’m just so…”