by Lila Felix
ANY LUCENTS LOST IN THE FRAY ARE TO BE REPORTED TO THE SYNOD IMMEDIATELY.
I felt her land somewhere and, reaching into my gift, found she was in Iceland. I should’ve known. The woman tried to pretend like she was this no frills kind of girl.
Colby was so high maintenance she should come with a manual.
Good thing I’d become a Colby-specialized machinist.
I knew just how she worked.
I made arrangements for us to stay at a borderline contemporary home in Tibet, near enough to the temple as not to cause too much of a flash, but close enough to be out of suspicion’s hearing distance. It was costly. My father had opened up my trust fund for me. I was not supposed to have access to it until my twenty-first birthday, but he wanted me to have anything I needed on this quest. I also think that a small part of him thought I may not survive it. I may not live past knowing what I was.
I may just up and disappear like Eivan—never to be seen again.
No, those were my own fears.
With everything set, I decided to get back to the cottage and pack up the little I had. When I first began traveling, I tested the waters with weight limits—like an airplane. I tried to carry heavy things and light things until I found a good balance. Thirty pounds was about right for me—though for Colby it was more like twenty, gauging the weight of her bags. I also tested the limits on my own weight—it was the same thing. When I gained weight, on a purposeful binge of glazed donuts, I felt heavier and after I flashed, my body was weak and exhausted.
I hated it when Colby was right.
She was always smug about it.
But somehow the same principle wasn’t true with another being. I knew it in my gut.
I packed up all our things and sat down at the computer, waiting for Colby to arrive. After re-studying the notes, looking for a clue or more information I’d missed, I felt a rush of energy inside me—the shadow of myself returning to my body. I’d let my shadow play in the field outside the cottage while I was in Tibet, pretending to read and take a long leisurely walk.
There was only one reason he would return without my call.
Resin were present. And if he’d been discovered, then they were near.
I grabbed my bags and Colby’s and called her phone—of course it was off, she was in the geothermic pools. I had to get her.
Flashing quickly into Collin’s home felt like an invasion of privacy, but one word, ‘Resin’, answered all his questions at once.
I couldn’t conjure a cohesive thought other than making sure Colby was safe. Honing my seeking skills, I felt warm water around me and an icy coolness at my neck. It made me feel like sweating and shivering at the same time. She was still in Iceland.
I didn’t know how I could feel her sensations like that. Maybe it was a new power emerging.
Almighty above, I hoped not.
I just wanted to flash to her location and hide her away from harm.
“Colby is going to the cottage tonight. I have to get them away from there,” I yelled mostly at the air, but also at Collin. Somehow in all of this he’d become an advisor to me—always so calm and knowing.
“Use your shadow.” He was bustling now, in more of a rush to leave with the Resin near.
The Resin were mostly just humans, powerless and unable to travel. But it wasn’t what they couldn’t do that made them dangerous—it was what they knew coupled with their vengeful attitude about their lack of power.
The power they’d been born with had been stripped from them.
Lucents didn’t even know how the Resin’s power was stripped. We figured it was through endless torture or experiments—but there was no surety.
Not one of them could remember the exact moment their powers were taken.
They only mourned their absence. Some of them were even said to have a phantom feeling, like amputees can still feel their missing arm or leg.
Still, we could be caught. They used some device—Colby called it the Blinder—it was a crude contraption that completely bound our visual cortex. It looked like a stun gun—or so was the rumor. They sent a needle-like dart into our body with a dose of some medicine that rendered our occipital lobes completely dormant.
If we couldn’t visualize our target destination, then we couldn’t flash.
Nor could we pick out our captors without a brain that could process sight.
“I need to distract them. Maybe if I flash in front of them, they will think I’m gone.”
“That will expose your gift. I assume they already suspect. That’s why they are following you, but why give them more ammunition?”
“It will get them away from Colby.”
He sighed, sounding exasperated like a parent with a child. “Just go get her. If she throws a fit, I will restrain her myself.”
He grinned mischievously.
I knew something shady went down in the hallway while they were looking at the picture of Rebekah. They stared way too long.
I’m a jealous bastard.
“It would be a real hardship, I can tell.”
“What?” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “I don’t exactly have a harem around here. I can appreciate a handsome woman when I see one.”
“A handsome woman? What are you, eighty?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay, get ready to hold her down, but don’t have that shit-eating grin on your face when she gets here.”
Collin saluted me.
In a moment’s time, I was in the back of the changing room of The Blue Lagoon and grateful for an empty space. I shucked my pants and shirt, tossing them onto one of the benches as not to look out of place. I quickened my pace through the lobby as I hadn’t paid to get in—and probably wouldn’t. There was only one thing on my mind and a massage in sea water wasn’t it.
Clenching my hands into fists, I concentrated on her. I imagined the perfect curve of her hip that led to the hourglass of her waist. My fingers twitched—as though they were remembering the feel of her skin—and that’s when she appeared to me. The sensation was different from before when I just knew where she was. This was like being near her—close enough to take a picture.
She shot up to a sitting position and looked around her for something. I wondered if she could feel me.
I knew her exact location and my feet took me there in an instant.
“We need to talk.” She bolted from the pool in a hurry.
“Yes, we do. We had…” I glanced around me to see if there were listening ears. “There are dirty people around the cottage. We need to move faster than I thought.”
“Dirty.” She shuddered, still not getting my drift.
“They like airplanes,” I said in a slow row of words, trying to get her to understand.
“Oh, them, yeah, okay. Can you show me pictures?”
“Not yet. Let’s get to Collin’s and then move from there. He will be worried otherwise.”
“Behind there,” she pointed to a fairly empty pool in front of an icy wall.
In a moment, we were back at Collin’s, or what was once Collin’s, mansion. I expected the need to hide Colby from his sight, especially since she was wearing only threads and the old man was already jonesing for her.
But Collin was nowhere to be found.
“Where is he?” Colby inquired. We weren’t worried—it was a huge place.
“I don’t know. I brought our bags here. Maybe you should get changed before he returns.” I looked everywhere but at her, hoping she wouldn’t get soaked in my spew of jealousy.
“Okay,” she questioned with a furrowed brow.
When did I become this archaic man?
I searched the whole house for Collin. I had no way of calling his cell phone—no way of getting in touch with him other than coming directly to his home. Colby came out sometime later, having taken the liberty of using Collin’s shower.
“Where is he,” she repeated her earlier question.
“I don’t
know, but now I’m getting a little worried.”
Colby popped out her bottom lip. “He’s a big guy. He can handle himself. We aren’t his babysitters. Maybe he had business in town or had to say goodbye to a girlfriend. You don’t know. That’s a handsome sasquatch.”
“Yeah, you two had a little moment in the hallway.”
She flounced onto the antique-looking couch and laughed. “Oh yeah, it was so sexy. We had a real moment there. His eyes bore into mine. It was like our souls understood each other…talking about my grandmother!”
I could take a lot of things. Seeing Colby flirt and have fun with other guys had never been a comfortable situation. But all of this relationship in the air stuff had me on edge. Plus, there was that thing where I could possibly be the savior of the Resin.
I couldn’t even save myself.
“Sorry, I’m just—I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“You’re a man, remember.” She patted down herself as I’d done the night before.
“Funny.”
We sat in silence, both glancing back and forth at the door, expecting Collin any moment.
“Theo,” Colby said, throwing her legs over the edge of the sofa.
“Yes, Querida.”
The term of affection flowed so easily from my lips.
“What’s your greatest fear?”
I checked her face to see if the question was serious or just one of her games. The sternness of her chin indicated she was true in her want to know.
It made me squirm, her question. Mostly because I didn’t know the answer. I had a clue as to what my ultimate fear was, but really, was it her goal to completely expose me? Did she have to dissect me all the time? I just wasn’t that interesting. But if there was anything interesting about me, she would dig it out.
“You have to earn that knowledge.”
“Earn it, pshh…”
Her response irked me. It irked me a lot. Just those two words and one sound made me know for sure what I’d suspected for so long but refused to acknowledge. I had spoiled Colby rotten. So rotten that she’d begun to take me for granted. She’d been doing it for years.
At first I didn’t mind it. I somewhat prided myself on being one of those guys who tended to my girl’s every whim. And for the first few years, it was give and take. She was affectionate and loving. But after her dad died, she began to slowly pull away. I knew it was aftershocks of her dad’s death, so I gave her the space she craved. But when I gave her a mile, she stretched it to two miles. She was fine over the phone or while we were with a group of people.
But one on one, she was distant. She made sure we were either making out or doing something equally busy so that we never had time to really talk about anything.
“Yes. Earn it. You’re my best friend before anything else, Colby. But we have hardly spoken in two years and now you just expect to jump right in and have me bare my soul? Give it five minutes for the love of the Almighty.”
Her eyes widened at my response. I bit my lips to stop them from immediately apologizing. That’s what I would’ve done before, apologized—even if I wasn’t wrong.
She had me by a noose and she knew it, but did she really have to tighten the knot so much?
“I’m sorr…”
The door busted open and in barreled Collin with a swollen eye and a slit lip. His button-down shirt was torn from the pocket being ripped open and there was a cut across his broad knuckles.
“What the hell,” I asked him.
“Resin—tried to break in—beat their asses.” He huffed out. A chuckle burst from me at hearing Collin say he’d beaten someone’s ass.
“It looks like they got a few in,” Colby said, running to Collin’s aid. He was barely bleeding.