Lightning Kissed

  LUCENT HISTORIES MUST BE PRESERVED BY THE SYNOD.

  How could it be? I’d felt him in New Zealand. He was there, but it was fuzzy, like static on an old television set. It had felt that way since early afternoon. I didn’t question it. In fact, I reveled in it. Maybe it meant my power was waning. I welcomed less power.

  I was about to find out what the hell was going on.

  I flashed straight into his room after asking the people at the front desk which one he was in. His parents always seemed to get adjoining rooms or cabins, no matter how old Theo was, but I asked anyway. He stood on the balcony in jeans—his shirt flapping in the ocean wind. I could no longer differentiate between habit and desire with him—my feelings were blurry. I swayed in his direction involuntarily, but stopped myself. We were no longer together—I’d made sure that I’d stayed away from him so the Resin, the Synod, and the government were all kept at a distance.

  Because they were constantly on my trail.

  “Took you long enough,” he remarked, still facing the beach.

  I blew out an emotionally loaded breath. “I needed time to think.”

  “And to what conclusion did you come?”

  Leave it to Theo to sound cavalier at a time like this.

  He turned around and my breath caught in my throat. His dark brown hair was gelled in a completely clean-cut style out of another time. Even as a child, he emitted an air of vintage class. He wore suspenders at the age of ten. In high school, he wore button-down shirts and slacks, the exact opposite of the other boys with their sports jerseys and ragged jeans. He was James Dean meets David Gandy, but with glassy gray eyes. He was my every desire and it pained me not to run to him, bury myself in the security of his embrace, and let him tell me it was all going to be okay. It was not going to be okay. So many suspicions and insinuations were flitting through my mind. And none of them ended well.

  “I don’t even know, Theo.” My voice cracked as I said his name. It showed my weakness for him.

  I hated my weakness.

  “Come here.” He motioned with open arms.

  I screamed in response. He wasn’t just going to hug me and think all of this would go away. “No. I’m pissed off at you. How are you doing this? You’re gonna get caught. And then what will I do?”

  I hadn’t meant to confess that. How was it that my weakness took center stage when he was around? Why couldn’t I be the strong-willed person everyone else knew me to be when I was with him?

  He didn’t listen to me. Forging toward me, he grabbed my arms and slammed me into his chest. I fought against him, trying to push him away. He remained steady, holding me until I broke, relenting to what I really wanted. I let it all go, crying into the nook of his neck, letting his steady breaths and heartbeat calm me. I knew the implications of what he was doing. I knew he would be an even more attractive target now.

  “Let it out, Querida. It’s a lot to comprehend.”

  I cried for a half an hour, holding him as tightly as I could manage.

  “Cry, my love, cry all night if you must,” he said, his mouth next to my ear. I could feel his chin bobbing up and down as the syllables rolled from his mouth.

  “I won’t lose you,” I murmured, still in his hold. My palms meant to be the barrier between his body and mine but instead they relented to the feel of his solid pecs. I let out a sound that Theo took as an invitation. He moved in closer, his foot between mine, making his knee rub against my upper thigh. I gave in and looked into his eyes, so gray they were nearly translucent. He leaned in, the tip of his nose ghosted down the bridge of mine and when he began to speak, our chins were connected as his mouth moved.

  “Amada, talk to me. One day you deny my existence and now you’re here, in my room, telling me you won’t lose me. And you can’t ignore the heat between us. Why? Why do you deprive us of what we need?”

  Amada—he called me beloved. Theo and his damned Portuguese. Why must he speak the sexiest language known to man? He’d eaten some kind of banana caramel cake for dessert and the sweet smell flowed with his words. He knew what it did to me when he spoke to me in Portuguese—the language of our ancestors calmed me with just a few choice words.

  And I did need him. I needed his bottom lip between my teeth. I needed his warm, rough tongue in my mouth, searching for more contact. And his hips, cut in a shape made for my hands, rocking against mine for the sheer pleasure of the movement—even clad in jeans, it was thrilling.

  But those desires were squelched in an instant as I remembered the real reason for my visit.

  The piece of my heart I’d tried my damnedest to ignore was in danger that far surpassed his traveling abilities.

  He thought I left him that day after his admission of his abilities. But the truth was I’d left him long before that. My father’s death made an immediate and profound impact. He was so much more than a father. He was my friend. My mother never stopped mourning him, not for one single second.

  That was my problem—I didn’t want to mourn Theo.

  I thought that if I left him, he’d find a good human girl and spend his life with someone who might actually be in his bed in the morning.

  Not like me—I might be in Greece.

  So when he told me that he could flash—it doubled our trouble. Instead of worrying about mourning him chasing me, like my father chased my mother—now I worried about the Resin, the government, and maybe even the Synod going after him.

  Was it too much to ask my love to stay out of trouble?

  “Tell me everything,” I finally managed to croak out after I was well spent.

  “Sit down, meu amor.”

  He escorted me to a chair by the bed and then pulled the desk chair beside me. I let myself relax. I would fix this. Whatever I had to do to protect him, I would.

  “I don’t even know what it’s called. I’ve been looking through the texts, trying to figure it out.”

  “What texts?”

  “Eivan’s journals. The journals of Sevella. Their life—his life.”

  I gasped. Eivan was Eidolon. He retained many gifts—gifts that consumed him. An Eidolon had not existed for centuries. Eidolon meant phantom, ghost, apparition. That’s what Eivan was. Few had seen him, but the stories were many. There had only ever been two—one was Demetrius. He was assassinated by the Resin’s then leader, Sanctum. And then there was Eivan. Eivan travelled one night and never appeared again. There was speculation of all kinds in the stories told to us as children. Eivan travelled too much—he overexerted his gifts—his wife killed him. Even the descendants of Eivan were forced into hiding at the shunning of the Lucents.

  No one even knew where they were.

  Or who they were.

  “I think I am…” he began. I jerked forward and covered his mouth with my palm.

  “No. Don’t even say it. It can’t be,” I sobbed, removing my hand and using it to cover my face. Eidolon carried such a profound power and responsibility to our people and the Resin alike.

  “Saying the word doesn’t change what I am capable of.”

  “Which is?”

  “Duality. I am there. A shadow of myself is there, in New Zealand. It’s like an obedient clone, walking, talking, breathing, doing whatever I want it to. It’s actually the perfect decoy. And it follows every instruction to a T. Collin says it looks like a more translucent version of me—a ghost, if you will. And if any member of the Resin should come in contact with it—it vanishes. That is its orders.”

  “How,” I begged for answers.

  “In Madrid, I waited for you.”

  My heart stopped for a moment with that admission. I knew he would be waiting there. Yes, Ari had seen some guy there. But that was only part of the story. She’d also seen Theo on her trip, but I’d ignored it—like she’d never told me.

  It must be easy for couples to break up when one or both of them don’t really want to be together. It was nowhere near that with Theo and me. But at least I tried to act like I d
idn’t hang on his every word.

  Theo had no ability to pretend—at least not with me.

  “There are a lot of Resin there. I was confronted behind one of the clubs and as my fear grew, I felt a shedding of sorts, like I was losing my outer shell. I don’t know exactly how it works. It was stranger than the first time I’d flashed. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I saw the gang of them, looking back and forth from me to something else and back again. I followed their stares and found—me.”

  “And now you can summon it at will?”

  “Yes, after some intensive practicing.”

  I recoiled at his response. This made a total of two things that according to legend and history, he should not be able to do. Things that made him even more valuable to our enemies.

  “You’re scared of me?” he asked. There were very few times that Theo sounded vulnerable, and this was one of them.

  “I’m scared for you. There’s a difference.”

  He moved his head from side to side, cracking his neck. A disgusting-sounding habit, I’d learned to live with long ago. He made no attempt to respond, just leaned forward and laid his head in my lap.

  “I feel better just telling you. I hate not telling you things.”

  I ran my fingernails through his hair and against his scalp. I knew it calmed him. He was being careless, just flashing here and there, and practicing unprecedented gifts.

  I needed to formulate a plan. I had to convince him to let me keep him safe, somehow.

  A knock at the door of the adjoining bathroom startled us both, and I flashed immediately. All we needed was the added nosiness of parents.