Glow (12 page)

37.

Lucy

As I walk back to the group, I notice Junie’s purple aura is suddenly brighter as if being here piqued her senses into high alert.

“Something bad is in there, Lucy. This isn’t going to end well.” Junie bites her nails. “Duke. We need to go in there, after him.”

“That doesn’t seem very smart. They’re having a family moment, Lukas would know if something wasn’t right.” Duke tilts his head at her, cautiously.

“No, he wouldn’t. He’s a befuddled mess. Distracted by his family. I
know
these things,” Junie disagrees.

“Befuddled? Really?” Colton laughs at her. “Your vocabulary is quite expansive.”

“Knock it off, I’m being serious. You guys, we have to go get him. I mean, don’t you think, Charlie?”

I look around for him, but he’s off with Lucky, brushing her down. Either blissfully unaware, or purposefully ignoring. I’d guess the later.

“Go if you think there’s cause to be concerned,” Basil says, once again the voice of reason. “We can’t let something happen to Lukas now. Not after all this build up to get here.”

“Let’s go,” I decide.

Just as the group of us starts up the front steps I see something out of the corner of my eye near the back of the house.

“In the back, fast!” Junie calls out.

We rush back down the steps and see Lukas’s parents, Layla and Ernie struggling along with some other men, as they try to carry something. A body.

“Lukas!” I shout.

They run faster, toward the barn, and in a flash Duke pulls out a gun.

“Stop what you’re doing. Now!” He shouts.

“Not on your life!” A man hollers back. A man I recognize.

Reagan.

Of course he’d be here, after his post was abandoned, where else does he have to go? Junie’s intuition was right, something bad
is
happening here.

“Shoot if you dare, but Lukas is here, and he can’t help you or himself. Especially if he’s dead,” roars Ernie.

I can’t stand it any longer. Even if Lukas and I don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, he’s still my person.

“Let him go!” I race to them, not thinking clearly, desperate for them to let go.
Why is he not fighting back?
He has an internal strength that can’t be beaten.

Unless they know something about Lukas we don’t.

“I should have never let you go the first time, little girl,” Reagan snarls at me. “But I won’t repeat my mistakes twice. Benjamin, grab her!”

Colton and Duke try to stop the men, but in a flurry of motion, more of Reagan’s guys come out from the barn. They have guns held high, ready to fight anyone who threatens to get in their way.

“Get away!” I scream, wishing I had Lukas’s light, to set fire to them, I look over at his body tied up. It’s not moving. “Stop them!” I scream at Colton, as Reagan gets my hands behind my back. He’s much more threatening when he isn’t drunk. His long greasy hair flaps in my face as he struggles to tie my hands. I flail around, kicking at him, the ground, anything I can to try and stop him.

Bullets are unleashed and Basil and Junie shriek. Although they put on a tough face, they have no desire to die, not now. Not like this. They dive for cover behind some steel barrels, behind Colton who has his gun drawn, too. Without hesitation he shoots at the men coming toward us from the barn.

Amidst the chaos, Layla shouts orders, but no one listens. A bullet grazes Duke’s shoulder, and I watch as he drops his gun, grabbing the wound. Still in the clutches of Reagan I can’t get to Duke who needs my help before it’s too late to heal him.

Everything happens so fast and I scream at the top of my lungs, needing our Cowboy Coalition to come to our rescue. It’s been a matter of seconds since the rain of bullets came down, but the situation is spiraling out of control quickly.

I keep resisting Reagan, realizing I’ve never tried to force a person away before, I have only ever tried to break locks, untie ropes … inanimate objects. Objects that don’t hold any energy, that don’t generate any force to push back against.

Charlie runs toward us, ready to fight. He pulls out his gun, and even though I am much too close to Reagan, he fires at him, hitting him squarely in the chest.

I’ve seen Charlie kill a man before, and it was to protect someone then, too. That time it was to protect Mom. This time he is looking out for me. I’ll forever be in his debt.

My body is released as Reagan drops to the ground, groping his chest, screaming for help.

“Let him go, it was his time,” Layla says as I wail in shock. I want to slap her face.

“His time, huh? You just get to decide who lives or dies, who is a prisoner, who is set free? Is that it?” I scream at her.

“I get to decide because this is my land. This is my home! This is my family!”

“I thought it was
all our home
, Mom. Or was it never about us? Because you haven’t fought for Lukas. And you were just using me.” Charlie walks up to his parents, to the limp body bagged up on the ground.

“All we have ever done is fight for Lukas. You need to calm down and hear that!” Layla screams back.

Everyone backs away, guns still raised. Whatever
show down
was happening has come to a standstill. A group of our cowboys run up the hill, all eyes on deck as the scene of Duke’s shoulder bleeding out and Reagan’s body crumpled on the ground is taken in. Junie screams hysterically from the background and all I want to do is join her.

But I can’t.

This is the part where I find out who I am.

“Lower your guns, every last one of you. Nothing is happening until I stop Duke’s bleeding and assess Reagan and see Lukas.
Breathing and alive.
Charlie, Colton, Jax … hold up your guns around Layla and Ernie, and their men.” No one moves. “
Do it
!” I’m not waiting for people to decide what they want. I’m telling them what I want.

And I want everyone alive.

They spring into action, and I watch as some of our cowboys pull out their guns and work to round up the last of Reagan’s guys. I watch them move, wondering how many of these men have watched their wives and daughters leave for The Light. How many will fight to get back the ones they love.

Junie bends over Duke, her tears falling fast. Her hands hold his face as he breathes deep, trying to maintain consciousness.

“It’s alright, Duke. Allow the light to pour over you.” I place my hands on his shoulder, pulling back the fabric of his coat, revealing the single wound piercing through his flesh. His eyelids flutter as I apply pressure, his chest rising and falling. Junie’s shoulders drop in relief as she realizes that I’ve got this under control. Realizing that Duke is going to be okay. She saw me heal Timid’s leg; she knows the power of my touch. The power of my light. In some ways it seems she understands it better than I do myself.

The bullet remains lodged in his skin, but the entry point disappears as it closes itself up, making his shoulder whole once more.

“Thank you, Lucy. You saved my life.” Duke’s words are true, I know that. Without my touch he wouldn’t survive. There is no modern medicine to ease the pain, no operating table to surgically repair him.

“It wasn’t me. It was the light.”

Junie wraps her arms around him, kissing him in sweet relief. Although it was a mere minute, it feels like eternity as I turn around and see Reagan lying there, blood pooling around him.

I rush to him even though I want to turn away. Even though I feel he can’t be trusted, even though Charlie was the one who put his body on the ground. Still, I don’t want to be the one to bury it. Not if I can help it.

I rip off his shirt, and ever so softly place my hands across the laceration. Blood is everywhere and images of Mom push their way into my mind. I want them to stay far away; I want to remain emotionally uninvolved. I want my light to heal and then I can wipe my hands clean of Reagan.

But I can’t do anything like that. I can’t cut myself off. I can’t stay detached. Because whoever this drunken fool is, he’s still a person.

Just like beneath the insanity that was my father, there was still a man buried beneath all of that, somewhere.

As light spills from my light and onto Reagan, I know there’s still a person who lived through the horrors of losing the known world. A person breathing, still. A person who will remain breathing if I can help it.

I couldn’t help my own mother, but I am stronger now. Braver now. I am a girl who is no longer afraid to speak, afraid to live.

I am alive.

“Breathe, Reagan. Breathe!” I cry out, wanting to save this man in the ways I couldn’t save Forest and Thomas and Shelby. In the way I couldn’t save my mother and my father. “Breathe!”

And he does.

In one crazy, deep, rush of a breath he does. His gulping of oxygen leaves me laughing in spite or despite or because of myself. And I breathe in deep, too.

Then I turn to the one I loved and the one I chose, but also the one who betrayed and the one I let go. Lukas.

Junie and Basil hover over him, the canvas unwrapped around his body where he lies on the ground, lifeless but still glowing as brightly as ever before.

“What did you?” I scream at Layla and Ernie. “What did you do to him?”

“Lucy, it’s okay. Just get him in the barn and we’ll show you. We perfected our Energy Machine. It will work. You gave us the idea. The missing piece. If you’d just let us go, we will show you.”

“Yeah right. I’m not letting you touch him!” I shriek hysterically.

“What’s the alternative? He’s a zombie otherwise,” Basil says, looking up at me. “He’s completely unresponsive, like Hana was after the dark rooms. Breathing, but nothing else.”

I kneel, pressing my hands into his, generating the color wheel around us. All I care about is Lukas looking into my eyes again because he’s the only one who’s ever really seen me for who I am.

“Fine. Show us, all of us,” I holler callously at his parents.

I want to pick him up and pull his arms around me. I know it isn’t fair to say that now, not when I’ve rejected him since he came back from The Light. But my body responds in ways my mind doesn’t. I can’t suppress them both all the time.

And right now, I ache for Lukas.

Layla, Benjamin, Jax, and Ernie lean in to pick up this shining orb of a man. Charlie scowls at his parents as though partnering with Reagan is unforgivable, and maybe it is. Maybe I’m not worthy, for wanting him to live.

I follow as they carry Lukas into the barn, holding tightly to his hand.
Why does my light not heal him, now?
Basil and Junie push open the heavy barn doors, revealing the space I stood in a few long days ago. I don’t understand why my touch isn’t waking him up like it did before, like it did for Hana.

Why is this different?

“What the hell did you do in here?” Charlie asks.

I know what he means. The neatly organized laboratory has been torn apart, pieces of machinery lying every which way; clearly a flurry of activity has went on since we left.

“Stop talking, Charlie. You almost killed Reagan, you shouldn’t even be in here,” Ernie snaps back.

“Listen, everyone needs to calm down. Okay? I will explain this and then we can talk like civilized people,” Layla says through gritted teeth.

“Fine,” Charlie barks, crossing his arms across his chest. This family unit has completely torn apart and I wonder how much of that blame should be placed on me.

Duke, Junie, and Basil have made their way inside the barn too and now we’re all huddled around Lukas and the people holding him. I’m ready for answers.

“Look.” Layla spaces the laboratory while talking wildly with her hands. “Lukas was born glowing. He was electric. With the aid of The Light, his dad Ernie, and I, we developed a device that would harness that energy. The concept was he would plug himself into this chair every night and it would channel the electric current out of him, storing it in the piping systems at each of the Refuges. It worked. The energy would last for several weeks, and in that time he would travel to another Refuge where he did that very same thing. Rotating between the three Refuges he lived, for sixteen years, healthy, safe and living a very honorable life. It wasn’t until he met Lucy that his light became compromised. She was the link that caused the system to degenerate.”

“You’re saying I’m the reason he gets sick? That’s insanity. I’m the one who keeps bringing him back to life!” I shout.

“You may very well be, but what I am saying, when you don’t
interrupt,
is that Lukas can do his job when you aren’t around. When you are near, you cause him to fail.”

Her words sting.

“So why knock him out?” I ask.

“Because he is fixated on you. We knew it the moment you started talking about your
connection
that there was something more to it. And we were right. Your friend Timid filled me in on your powers. She told me about what happened in the dark rooms. She told me what happened when you kissed.”