by Angel Payne
“Desolée,” the first of them rasps, wisps of her white-blond wig tumbling into her face. “Lydia was ready to tie Lux down with the party centerpiece strings, but I insisted he be allowed to come over.”
Sawyer nods in concurrence to Angelique’s story. “And I insisted on being his chaperon,” he explains between harsh, exhausted huffs. “But we might have to change that kid’s name to X-15. Or Sonic.”
I almost laugh. Lux definitely wouldn’t object to the latter, since the famous hedgehog stars in one of the few video games we let him play, but any claim I have on mirth has been crushed by a massive wrecking ball called anxiety. “You insisted…why?” I demand to Angie, hoping that she’s still listening. The woman hasn’t been able to rip her eyes off the triumvirate of bliss taking place inside the elevator. “What did you feel, Angie?”
I don’t bother with asking if she felt it. No way would she allow Lux to violate a directive from Reece and me unless her powered perception had kicked into high gear. Reece, with his face already etched in the same grim admission, scoots around to directly block Angelique’s view of the kids.
“We need answers now, Angie.” A massive tick stretches against his jaw, and bright-blue sparks start popping between his fingertips. “As you can see, the damage might already have begun.”
“Oui.” The woman’s face crunches with deep emotions. “I…I do see.” She runs a taut hand across the top of her head. “But…but how is this possible?” And then digs her fingers in and yanks off her wig completely, exposing the purple and gold veins that are pulsing brighter than the jumbotron at a Lakers game. “How…is…”
“What?” I stomp in, butting my shoulder to Reece’s bicep in order to crowd in on my friend. My friend. Never did I ever suppose I’d use that phrase to qualify my relationship to Angelique LaSalle, but the woman has earned her second chance on Team Bolt—and in this moment is solidifying a permanent spot there, as well. Our fate—and more direly, that of our son’s—might rest in the hidden truths she can share. “How is what possible?” I order while wrapping my hands around her forearms. “Angie, you have to tell us what you’re sensing.” I get down a painful swallow before amending, “You have to tell us who you’re sensing.”
She lifts her glowing head. The electricity in her veins is racing. “I…do not know…if I can.”
Reece lunges in. Looms over her like a medieval interrogator, complete with the I’m-going-to-chop-off-your-feet glare. “Not. Acceptable.”
Angie trembles. I hate myself for being grateful for it, but I am. She possesses our only insight into all this. No time for squeamish hesitations, despite how the woman hasn’t lost an inch of her contorted expression as she pulls in a huge breath.
And utters exactly what I prayed she wouldn’t.
“This—this is Faline’s energy. Both of those girls are drenched in it.”
Then everything I didn’t expect.
“But Faline…she is not here.”
Reece jerks his head, channeling complete shock. “What the hell does that mean?” he dictates. “What’s going on here?”
But they’re not the questions he’s really intending. Queries that must be vocalized if we expect them to be answered.
I suck it up, gripping Angelique tighter. “Is Lux in any danger from them? Can you tell? And…and what the hell do they want from him?”
Angie raises her gaze to fully meet mine. There’s still a grimace across her mouth, but I now catch the glimmer of tiny magenta lights in the backs of her eyes. Glowing roses of…
Joy.
Happiness.
Hope.
Beaming at me with an energy I readily recognize. The same sweet, honest rapture I felt the moment Lux joined hands with the twins. An elation that has me releasing her and then transferring my hold to Reece, cupping my solar flares against his neon rods before yanking him back around to behold our celestial gift of a kid again.
Our kid, still fused with his two new friends. Who’s now trading wide smiles with both of them, which light them all up from the inside out. If someone snapped a picture of this right now, they’d be accused of using the “fairy magic” filter, since all three of them remind me of every incarnation of the elusive sidhe fae. That analogy and the fear of Angie’s revelation should have me shivering at biblical proportions, but all I can keep thinking is that this triumvirate of merriment is completely right. Totally destined. Utterly meant to be.
Fate backs up my instincts with a visual fist pump in the form of the new energy between the children. No more electric rainbows up and down their arms or giggly smiles across their lips. The arcs of multicolored light have flattened out, becoming the sizzling sides of an equilateral triangle. And the mixed colors? They’ve blended to the point of being a silver-gold mix, as radiant and magical as the gleam of dawn on the ocean.
But all of that’s not the most wondrous aspect of this sight.
That’s all inside the kids themselves—and what they’re giving each other.
Thoughtful nods. Contemplative head tilts. Even a few eyebrow drops, as if needing to absorb every last drop of what they’re experiencing.
Or…hearing?
“Holy Christ.” Reece’s rough blurt is the perfect verbalization on behalf of us both. “What are they… Are those three…?”
“Communicating.” Sawyer, as so many times before, to the rescue—though his statement is serrated with enough awe to match Reece’s. “Sure as hell what it looks like, gang.”
It’s the ideal segue into a few solemn moments from the three of us witnessing the three of them take part in a language we’re only able to see—but in a thousand ways are already feeling. Sensing. Experiencing.
No. This is crazy.
But my breath stops as my soul affirms it.
Crazier than falling in love with a superhero? Crazier than loving him so hard, you became an electric mutant yourself just to save him? Crazier than the endless, bottomless love you feel for the child you created with him?
This time, I have all the answers to the questions.
And confirm them by watching my beautiful son and holding his incredible father.
And acknowledging the triangle of love between the three of us: not as visible and not as blinding but there all the same. Binding us. Connecting us. For always. Existing in the same forever that Reece Andrew Richards will always consume in my soul—enabling him to gaze at me as he does right now, seeing the core of me and knowing exactly what’s there. And loving exactly what’s there.
The same way in which our son pivots to look at us both now…
And speaks to us without moving a single inch of his smiling lips.
My clutched breath leaves me on a tear-filled gasp.
I can hear him. I can hear him.
The same way I heard him when he was still inside me. Not in the faint whispers that I catch every once in a while when he’s asleep. This is his full, conscious voice. The same pure energy of what he sent to me when we were physically connected but better now.
So much better.
Because one glance tells me that Reece hears him too.
Don’t worry, Mama. Don’t worry, Dada.
Reece chokes out a taut breath. Fully empathetic to his cacophony of emotions, I press closer against him. My tears plop onto his shirt and then slide down his arm, and I let them. They’re his decorations of honor. And probably mine too.
“We’re not worried, son.” Reece, finally giving up on trying to tune his senses to Lux’s freaky frequency, simply spurts the words aloud. The stunned stares from Davidson and the others are immediate, but I’m beyond caring. “We’re just…”
“Concerned,” I fill in, at once accepting Reece’s grateful kiss atop my head. Sometimes, moms just do know the right words. “We’re concerned, Lux.” I form a full sentence for the payoff of getting to repeat it. “Honey, are you okay?”
I gasp in happiness as his adorable towhead swings up and down like a dashboard bobble and the twi
ns let out shy giggles. “I fine, Mama,” he says in full voice. Maybe he’s noticed that Davidson, Garza, and all their men have started inching forward, led by the stealthy SWAT guys. I’m on the verge of ordering them to stand down, paranoid that the drawn guns will wig out the twins once more. But the girls take in the spectacle behind us with open curiosity, as if they’ve never seen men in black with instruments of violence at their fingertips.
Knowing what we know now, there’s a damn good chance that’s the truth.
This is Faline’s energy. Both of those girls are drenched in it. But she is not here.
“Are…are you having fun?” I finally ask Lux. “Are you talking to your new friends?”
He’s the world’s most precious bobblehead again. “Yes, Mama. They are nice. They like me!”
“I know.” I draw out the second word, eagerly latching on to the same tone I use when we go venturing into the canyon behind the ridge together. His fascination with everything creepy, crawly, squiggly, or slimy means I’ve got the emphasis down to an art. “What are you three talking about?”
“Worms. And beetles.”
I half expected it, even in this situation, giving me a leg up on preparedness with the follow-up question. “Oh, yeah? Do they like worms and beetles like you do?”
“Sometimes,” Lux babbles. “But only to play with when they bored. And if the critters no come around while they are sleeping.”
Okay, I’m not ready for that one. Or the horrified bile it surges into my throat. Or the equally awful words that I force to my lips, trying to tell myself that asking the follow-up is going to be more palatable than imagining the possibilities. “Wh-While they’re s-s-sleeping…where?”
As soon as the query leaves my lips, there’s a distinct change in the energy between Lux and the girls. A new kind of thrumming and a new pitch of sound. The pulses are rapid and fierce, like war drums intensifying before a fight. The song has changed into a similar chant. If I heard it on the radio, I’d think it was the start of a new Fall Out Boy hit. But the twins are still as serene as seraphs. Their light continues to swirl through and around Lux as he remains facing us.
For all of two seconds.
Just enough time for him to issue one more sentence to us.
“They show me where…now.”
Just enough time for us to bask in the delight of his excited grin.
Before he disappears down the elevator shaft with his two new friends.
Chapter Three
Reece
I’ve heard my wife scream in a lot of different situations. In the grip of fear, the heights of passion, the throes of labor, the sobs of pure love.
No sound out of the woman’s mouth has prepared me for the wail she lets out now. It resonates through the alcove and then out and up through all three stories of the courtyard, its agony shaking the chandeliers and forcing even the SWAT guys to stumble back by discernible steps.
It makes me want to tear apart the building. The block. The whole fucking city.
But I force myself to hone that shit in so I can rip open the only space that matters right now. The whole floor of the elevator beneath which Lux and the twins have dropped.
Ten seconds’ worth of a focused lightning torch—a power I haven’t switched on in full since fending off the group robbery attempt at the RRO fundraiser in New York—and the lift’s floor is completely free of its moorings. Emma’s right next to me, her power on full so she can melt the slab back onto the shaft walls, preventing it from taking someone’s head off during a plummet of its own.
A horrific thought for a different day. A different set of circumstances.
Like ones not involving me running through every option for saving my son between one eye blink and the next.
Which get whittled down by one—a good-thing bad-thing mix—from the second Davidson charges in, flanked on all sides like he’s the reincarnation of fucking Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. “Move back, Richards,” he growls before bellowing back over his shoulder, “We need rope! Lots of it! Fiore and Pratt, front and center. You’re our fastest rappellers. Find those kids!”
“Rappellers?” But as it spills out of me, every pore of my skin is zapped by the lightning of my instinct. The solution makes sense—to the real world. But half my days aren’t lived in the real world anymore. “No,” I mutter. “No,” I emphasize, pizza-cutting the rope coils that have been brought forward and plunked on the floor between Davidson and me. “That’s only going to make it worse.”
The fire chief grunts. At once I’m back to being the rich-boy wannabe hero who was lucky enough to receive electric-blood infusions for six months. “Mr. Richards.” He seethes the syllables with such vitriol, I’m shocked the dude’s not fried off half his mustache. “I asked you to move back. I won’t ask again.”
I grind down three layers of tooth enamel in the same number of seconds. “Damn straight you won’t.”
“Huh?”
Annnnd another three layers—as I hook an arm around Emma’s waist and then flip her backward and up until she lands squarely across my back. Only after she’s locked her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist do I let my grin relax by a fraction. “Bolt rappelling team, reporting for duty, Chief.”
I punctuate it by ticking my temple with two extended fingers, as Davidson attempts to form words. I’m fine with being the fall guy for every asshole billionaire showoff he’s ever had to deal with, but not when my son’s fate is on the line. Now, all egos are off.
And all limits as well.
And, as Emma and I learn as soon as we plunge into the shaft, all the lights too.
She screams again, but only at half her volume from ground level and only into my ear. Her reaction is more visceral than emotional, a sound even Davidson would be yelping if I subjected him to a drop into impenetrable blackness. The ink-black air surrounds us on all sides. We have only the light from her glow and my pulses, which act as brakes for our drop along the steel-lined chute.
But not for very long.
As I’ve suspected since we first arrived and met the twins, this chasm is about more than the Biltmore’s elevator shaft. That much is evident as soon as the clangs and pongs resulting from my pulses are replaced by earthen thuds and the smell of damp dirt.
We’re below Los Angeles.
Well below it.
The atmosphere gets heavy. Heavier still. I’m conscious of the weight of everything over our heads—buildings, roads, society, life—as we plunge into a world of thick, abject silence.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, glaring and explosive light.
“Aggghhh!”
My growl tangles with Emma’s stunned cries. My instincts, now trained to the point of auto-reactions, manage to land us safely—but barely. As soon as my feet hit the white tile floor, I skid along the slick surface until bottoming out like a drunk ice skater. I go down face first but continue to be a human drift missile, stopping only when my head collides with a pristine white wall.
The pain is bearable only because I lift my face and see hers. With her gorgeous blues open. With tears brimming in them. With her body seemingly unharmed as she tumbles off my back and then plunks down onto the floor until we’re both on our sides, facing each other. It’d be the best torment I ever endured for this woman—if only we were canoodling between sheets instead of sprawled across an antiseptic-smelling floor. And the light wasn’t so goddamned bright.
And there weren’t at least ten pairs of eyes watching us. Including those of our son.
I push upright, not ashamed of using the grips along the wall in order to regain my feet. Wait a second. Climbing grips? Along a hospital-white wall? Wait another second. Why does this place look like a hospital? All this way under downtown Los Angeles?
“What…the…”
My impressions are solidified as I straighten with a labored groan. Emma, who’s already waiting for me, brings some solace as she rolls a palm along the side of my face. “My Zeus,�
�� she whispers.
“My real jumping bunny.” I attempt a wry laugh along with my stupid humor, but everything hurts. Fuck.
“You all right?”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“That’s all that matters, then.”
She’s getting ready to give me the best wound care in the world by rolling her eyes and calling me something like a sappy ox or a reckless rogue, but here comes Lux to my rescue.
“Dada!”
Or not.
“Oof!” I choke it out as my son flies into my knees, which feel like they just braved every black-diamond ski run in France—on the same day. “Heeeey, buddy. You’re safe!” Thank fuck.
“Uh-huh. Yep.”
He jabs a thumb up at me, easing the tension in my chest a little more. I complete our ritual by grabbing his gung-ho digit and then gently nibbling it. But unlike every other time we’ve done it, there’s no ensuing giggle from my son. Instead, I respond to his insistent pull, descending to his level despite the black-diamond disasters still connecting my upper and lower legs. Once I’m there, Lux frames my face with his hands. Pulls at the hair along my temples, compelling me to keep taking in his handsome yet solemn face—as he pulls in a breath too damn serious for a kid of his mental age, much less what he appears to be on the outside.
“Dada.”
I purse my lips and hone my stare. “What do you need, son?”
His little mouth tightens, as well. “We need to help ’em.”
I don’t bother issuing the obvious follow-up. It’s given to me already, in the form of the twins’ reappearance. Emma flicks her confused glance between them and me, and I admit to sharing her mystification. Now that the girls have lured—if I can call it that—Lux down to their lair, they should be strutting like queens of the castle. Or whatever the hell this place is. But no, they’re back to their fidgeting uncertainty from the elevator, as if we’ve dropped in unannounced to their home.
Have we?
If that’s the case, why did they deliberately haul Lux down their goddamned rabbit hole? What’s the wonder twins’ game here?
