“I saw. You fought, and you survived. And Mace will never hurt anyone again.”
“And John will never have freedom. Taking Mace’s life wasn’t worth John’s.”
“Enough.” Dante’s command cut through the raised voices filling the house. “Whitlee. Enough.” He let out a breath and dropped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Shit. I knew this would be hard.”
I’d thought losing Brandon was hard. The pain I felt now could only be compared to his loss. I hated that now each of these guys felt the way I did. “I’m sorry, Dante.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You misunderstand me. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to tell you the truth.”
Isaiah had been staring out the window. The morning glories had closed, but he examined their blue and white buds as if they held the answer to the mysteries of the universe. Now, however, he turned and narrowed his eyes at Dante. “Tell me.”
“I couldn’t be certain,” Dante began. “That’s why I didn’t say anything. And it’s been hammered into my brain all my adult life: don’t say anything until you’re sure.” He lowered his chin to his chest and shut his eyes. When he opened them, he pinned me with a stare. “If you want to blame someone for this, blame me. But don’t just blame John’s death on me. Go back farther. Blame the Infection. Blame the Controlled. Blame Dexter and Gil Lake and Hugh Karlton all on me.”
I sighed. That was ridiculous. I rose to touch him. “Dante, I appreciate you showing me the futility of blaming John on myself but that’s just a little too far.”
He held up his hand. “I’m serious, Whitlee. To explain I have to go back a long time ago. By the time I was ten, it was clear I was… smart.”
Dante looked away. I touched his hand to reassure him. “It’s okay to say it. You’re a genius. That’s not surprising to anyone here.”
Carson raised his hand. “I have a genius IQ, too.”
“No one ever tested mine.” Nick sat down in the chair. “But yes, no one is at all surprised that the two of you are very smart.”
Dante nodded at Carson. “Okay, I’m a genius. Like Einstein. I was recorded at 160.”
Carson shook his head. “I’m not that high. 142.”
Isaiah stepped away from the window. “What happens to a person who has an IQ of 160? I don’t know mine either, but I can guarantee it’s not that.”
“I have a feeling there are things about you, Isaiah, that are high on a chart. I think all of us are, actually. But I’m getting ahead of myself. What happens to a person diagnosed with a 160 IQ at the age of ten is that they quickly find themselves being observed by all sorts of people from all sorts of institutes. That is, unless their parents protect them from that. My mother was earning ten dollars an hour at the grocery store. She was glad for the help all of these people kept offering her, financial and otherwise. By twelve I was no longer living at home. They found my natural abilities useful, particularly when it came to analyzing the psychic abilities of others.”
“Psychic abilities?” Brandon took my hand, drawing me next to him and Nick on the couch. He was right I needed to sit. My legs were wobbly. “Like the woman finding the serial killer for the police kind of thing?”
“Sometimes. There weren’t that many legitimate cases of small town psychics actually doing that, despite what books and movies would lead us to believe. Most of those people are smart enough to know they don’t want to be noticed by people like me. Or they were. Sometimes I forget that everything is different now. Nothing is as it was. I died early on in the process. I still remember things as they were.”
“What do you mean people like me?” Isaiah said. “Geniuses?”
Dante shook his head, not meeting his eyes. “No. I mean bad guys. Ones like Dr. Karlton whose experiments”—he air quoted—“are actual torture.”
“That’s why he wanted to know about you,” I said.
“Yes. Dr. Karlton was my mentor. Taught me everything I knew about cognition. Or I thought he did. Turned out, I was the one teaching him to track people with extra-cognitive senses. I designed a series of tests that could weed out people with parlor abilities, like guessing the card you pulled from a deck and those who could see into the future. Or read minds.”
“What does this have to do with the Infection?” Isaiah asked. “Okay. So you worked for some weird super-villain institute. So what?”
Dante stared at me. “Before the Infection, Whitlee, I would have pointed my finger at you.”
I wrinkled my nose in confusion. “I don’t get it.”
“You, and Dexter, show signs of psychic abilities. The control Dex has over the Infected? I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s genetic.”
“I’m not psychic.” I refuted the statement even as I considered it. I’d always had feelings about things. Like a pit in my stomach when something bad was about to happen. Or a sudden urge to take a certain road instead of the way home I always went. But… “If I’d been psychic, Brandon and John would still be alive. I’d have known my brother was Infected. I’d have seen all of this.”
Dante smiled sympathetically. “You’re not that kind of psychic. I would call you an empath. You’re highly sensitive and tuned into other places. You take their emotions, their energy, and even their physical traits, and make them your own.”
I opened my mouth to argue and then shut it. He watched me as his words hit home. “That’s why I felt your pain. It’s why I called you to me when I was hurt.”
“Energy. The brain is an incredible thing, Whitlee,” Dante said. “I think you’ve probably always had the connection to Brandon. For God’s sake, you went into the middle of a forest full of undead because you knew he was alive. You may not have admitted it to yourself, but when you got that letter from him, you didn’t doubt he would meet you at your spot.”
“All it took was a little burst of energy, of electricity, and that empathic ability you had, the way you reached out to people, it coalesced and spread until it found a place to land.”
“The storm,” Carson said. “When we brought her back to Zero, there was the storm. Lightning struck the ground more times than I could count.”
“That zap was enough to connect us.” Dante stared at me. “Do you remember your dreams?”
I did. The dream resonated with me. Scenes and images reappeared in my mind. I’d asked them for their permission… they’d given it. Hadn’t they?
30
Nick
I hated how much sense this was making. I didn’t have a genius IQ but even I was following. Dante researched this stuff and now we were living it. “Wouldn’t we have to have some sort of abilities, too? To connect to her, or is she so strong she just chose and wham bam it’s done?”
Isaiah laughed and then covered his mouth. He shook his head at me. He was right. Not the time for jokes. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself. I had foot-in-mouth syndrome. But my question remained legitimate.
“Oh, I think we all have some ability. It’s why we broke through to begin with. Our psychic powers went in direct opposition to Dexter’s. It’s why Whitlee, in the dream that really wasn’t a dream, asked us to choose. And we all did. We don’t fight her and so we stay connected. She feeds us energy, and we take from her, and now that we’re all starting to get healed we feed it back to her, too.”
I rubbed my eyes. I remembered of what he spoke. She’d said choose. We had. “We fought Dexter and eventually broke through.”
“Well,” Dante shook his head. “One of us broke through. Made a hole. Smashed right through it and the rest of us who could, followed.”
I knew who he was looking at without even turning to see. Isaiah. He had been the first. The one to get out of Dexter’s control when the rest of us hadn’t been able to do so.
“I really can’t explain it. There was a storm.” My friend took his place back at the window. “If that’s the case, why is John gone now?”
“Why does Dexter actively want you guys back?” Whitney asked almost
at the same time as Isaiah said, “Why does he want us so badly?”
Dante took a seat. He rubbed his forehead. This was rough on him but he should have told us a long time ago. He had to stop keeping secrets. I’d given him a hard time, been tough on him in the beginning. But now we were all linked. We needed him to be okay. “Get it all out and then be done with the hiding things.”
He nodded at me. “John went back because I think out of all of us he was the least sure of the choice. He was the one who wasn’t sure he wanted everything that comes with this.”
She answered him in a low voice. “The sex.” Whit paled, and I tugged her toward me just enough to kiss her on the cheek. She smelled like the moment after the rain stopped, fresh and new. Everything good in the world. “Or the sex that might be coming. There’s no sex yet.”
I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. “Yet being the key word.”
I loved the blush that came to her face and how she leaned into me. Yeah, I was never letting this go.
“Dexter is always pulling to get us back. I can feel it on the edge of my brain.” Carson sighed. “I didn’t give in. John did. And I bet Dexter wants us because we help fuel his own psychic powers. He needs us back to close the hole.”
Dante touched his nose. “Bingo.”
Tears leaked down Whit’s face. “I didn’t just pick random people. You’re all connected to Brandon. I had Brandon and it was an automatic attachment to all of you. There is a very specific role you all play. I see it whenever we do this. You’re all essential. John being gone? I get how Dex feels to an extent. It’s like a big gaping hole.” Her hands went to her stomach, folding over it. “It hurts.”
Isaiah stared at Dante. His gaze flicked to Whitney, and I caught his indecision.
So I pushed. “Spit it out, Zero.”
He glared at me and sighed. “Is there any way for John to be free without connecting him to Whit?” He shook his head before pinning her with a stare. “I’m sorry, Whitney. I’ll do anything for him.”
She swiped her tears away. “I know. I would to.” The breath she took made her entire body tremble, but still, she squared her shoulders. “Is that possible Dante?”
He nodded. “If it happened once, it can happen again. We just need—”
“A storm,” Brandon interjected.
“Electricity,” Dante clarified.
“Like a Taser?” I asked. I thought I’d seen one at Zero, and I was fifty percent sure I’d given it to someone.
“No,” Dante said. “It has to be bigger than the voltage a Taser contains. A Taser has fifty-thousand volts. A bolt of lightning? A billion.”
The inside of the house suddenly seemed darker, and I left Whitney to go to the window. The sky was full of fluffy white clouds. As one moved in front of the sun, the shadows cast the house in darkness. But they moved aside a second later. “Nature’s not helping,” I announced.
“So there was a storm, and Isaiah got free,” Brandon said. “You really think the same thing could happen for John?”
“I do,” Dante said. “I think we’ll need to get him away from Dex. The greater the distance, the more difficulty he has holding us to him. I woke up twenty miles from Roanoke. Isaiah?”
“No idea,” Isaiah said. “I think I was in a suburb, but I couldn’t tell you. I did have to walk a day and a half to make it to Zero. Or, where Zero would eventually be.”
“Four miles an hour, over twelve hours of walking? Definitely more than twenty miles.” Well, look at Carson, doing math! I contemplated giving him a slow clap, but it probably wasn’t the right time.
“So we steal John, drive him far away, stick him in a field and wait for lightning to strike,” Brandon said. “Easy.”
“Forty-eight miles?” Whitney said. She glanced up at me and smiled. “I don’t suppose you can steal a car?”
“Baby,” I said. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to ask me that.”
31
Whitney
After we made the decision to rescue John, there wasn’t much to do except wait. Nick, and surprisingly, Carson, snuck out to find a car. They’d decided to steal one from my father, who was likely still with Dexter. They thought they could get in, hot-wire a car, and get out.
I was sick to my stomach worrying about it.
I sat on the dusty couch, sniffling and wiping my nose, ostensibly because of allergies. But the truth was, each time I thought of John, my heart broke.
Dante said John had chosen me, but he hadn’t been certain. Because of that, when he’d been shot, he’d returned to Dexter’s control.
Why couldn’t I make him certain of me? Why wasn’t I enough to hold him?
Isaiah knelt down in front of me. “It’s not you, you know. It’s women in general. He never trusted them. His own mother left on the back of a motorcycle with a biker when he was five years old and never returned to his dad or him. The idea of sharing? I think it was too far out there for a person who would probably never have trusted a monogamous relationship either. Please believe me, Whit, he was crazy about you. It’s not you, it’s John.”
I laughed, despite myself. “That’s a different variation of it’s not you, it’s me.”
His smile was slow. “Come with me. You don’t need to be on this couch.”
“Where do I need to be?”
He lifted his eyebrows slowly. “In bed. With me.”
My heart rate kicked up. “I think that is where I need to be.”
Isaiah nodded before he rose, taking my hand to draw me up with him. The house was quiet. I didn’t know where Dante or Brandon went, and I supposed it didn’t matter. We were all in this. Being with Isaiah was just as fine as if I’d been with either of them. They were sure of it. They were still here.
He walked me back toward the bedroom. Someone had thrown a sheet on the bed. I didn’t know how long ago or if it had been washed. It was dirty but so were we. I wasn’t going to dwell on it too long. Isaiah kissed me by the doorway. His lips were smooth and sure of themselves against mine.
I kissed him back, drawing out the moment. This was real, it was happening. We’d both lost John, and I needed him as much as he did me. I could feel his energy feeding into me and my own pushing back at him. Now that I was aware of what happened, the buzz between us was obvious to me. It added to the chemistry I always felt around Isaiah.
I knew why he was Zero, why he was the first. He’d never have let himself be held back by someone as shallow as Dexter. The first chance he’d gotten, he’d proven the impossible was possible: he’d come back from the dead.
And fuck—I wanted him so badly.
My hands shook as I pushed his jacket off his shoulders, and I took a breath to steady myself. A thousand questions ran through my head, heightened by the energy zipping between us.
“I feel like I’m flooded with adrenaline,” I admitted, forcing myself to still.
“Me, too.” Isaiah laughed and held out his hands. They trembled, and he clenched them before shaking them out. “Can you feel this? I almost expect…” He held his hand to mine, palm to palm, and like I’d shuffled across the carpet, static zapped me. “Holy shit!”
“Isaiah!” I said, rubbing my hand across my pants. “Ouch.”
“It didn’t hurt.” He reached for me and laced our fingers together. With a tug, he brought me closer, but lowered our hands. His eyes searched mine before he touched my lips with his. “I’ve wanted this longer than I should have,” he said as he pulled away.
A weight lifted off my chest. Part of me feared that whatever this mysterious connection was, it was the reason why these guys cared for me. Putting it bluntly, I was pretty normal looking. Nothing special. But I guessed I was an end-of-the-world ten.
“What’s going through your head?” he asked. “You were with me and then you disappeared.” He dropped my hands and cupped my face. The energy I’d felt earlier flared to life, zooming down my nerves and making me tingle everywhere we touched.
“I’m doing something wrong if you are distracted,” he said. And before I knew what was happening, he’d swept me into his arms. In a dizzying move, he dropped me on the bed and landed on top of me. Dust puffed into the air, surrounding us like tiny little lanterns illuminated by sunlight. Isaiah coughed, dipping his head into my neck. “Sorry,” he said, trying to catch his breath.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were teary and his nose was red, and suddenly, I was okay again. This time, I initiated our kiss.
All thoughts of nervousness, of self-consciousness, they all disappeared as Isaiah trailed his lips down my throat and licked the hollow at the base of my neck. I kissed anywhere I could reach, the top of his head, his ears, his temple. I certainly wasn’t smooth, but what I didn’t have in game, I made up for in enthusiasm.
He moved down my body, peeling my jacket from my arms. His fingers tucked into the waistband of my pants as he continued his journey. When he got to my feet, he dragged my boots off, tossing them over his shoulder while keeping his eyes on mine. They landed with a heavy thunk and another cloud of dust, which immediately made him cough.
Laughing, I reached for him and pulled him back over me. Somehow, in the mess of dust and ripped bedding, Isaiah had managed to get him, and me, naked. The entire length of his body lined up with mine, his heat searing my skin.
“You’re so beautiful, Whit.” He kissed the tip of my nose.
I wasn’t, but I didn’t want this to become a whole you’re beautiful, no I’m not discussion that might wreck the mood. “Isaiah, maybe I should tell you I’ve never done this before.”
Of course, I might have just wrecked it right then, too.
He bit down on the tip of my thumb. “I’ve not done this since I died so maybe we’ll call it a first for both of us.”
The heat hadn’t died in his gaze. He wasn’t getting off the bed and insisting we stop. Instead, he kissed me again hard, claiming, biting down on my bottom lip like he had my thumb. I cried out, the jolt of pain mixing with the pleasure exactly what I needed to take my mind off my inexperience.
Lightning Strikes: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Storm Book 1) Page 17