Lightning Kissed (22 page)

“Theo?” I called to him. There was no
answer. He was on his knees on the circular plate of marble next to
the pedestal. He didn’t hear me, but clearly he heard
something.

The atmosphere was different in this garden.
I’d thought I had imagined it during the funeral—chalked it up to
an air of sorrow. It was something more. Looking around, mentally
comparing this garden to the rest, I realized the difference. The
grass wasn’t growing here. In the past days, the greenery in the
other parts of the vast property had grown up a bit, but the grass
in what I was now calling the keyhole garden wasn’t. Through the
holes in the topiaries that towered over us like giants,
butterflies fluttered and danced in the neighboring areas.

But no insects or butterflies meandered
through this place.

“Theo,” I yelled this time. He never budged.
I ran to him, desperate to relieve him of whatever I could.

I reached him just as he’d raised his hands
to cover his ears—as if he could squelch the voices inside with the
act. Kneeling down beside him, his reaction to my touch was
immediate.

“Thank you,” he covered my hand lying on the
side of his neck with his own, keeping it there. “I don’t know how
you can get rid of them, but thank you.”

“Are they getting worse?”

He shrugged and consulted the sky before
answering, “No. Yes. There are more of them and they’ve gotten
louder. They get louder and instead of demanding that I help
them—they demand that I come here over and over again. So here I
am, but they are relentless. What do they want from me?”

A new voice entered our conversation then. I
missed that voice. “They want what we all want in death, Eidolon.
It’s simple, really.” Collin came to perch on his haunches near the
marble circle, but not touching it. “There’s some correlation
between the Prophets and those who are stuck in the fray. Some have
said that the Prophets giving their wisdom was actually words
straight from the mouths of the soldiers of God. The Eidolons in
the past have heard the voices from the other side—and in order to
quell them, visited the fray to help them find their way to heaven.
Before, being the Eidolon was a gift.”

As I listened to Collin, I should’ve been
amazed at his knowledge. I should’ve been grateful that finally we
were being given straight truths, or what I hoped were truths,
about what Theo really was.

Instead, anger pulsed behind my closed
eyelids and drummed between my temples.

How could he keep such information from
us?

“And now?” No matter my level of anger, we
needed to know what we were up against.

“During the time of Eivan, the Synod,
through the torture of Sevella, found out that Eivan was traveling
from the fray and then to Heaven and back to Earth, bringing back
stories and revelations that the Prophets were no longer able to
give.”

Theo was focused on Collin and twitched as
he eagerly waited for his chance to propose a question, “So what?
Why did the Synod care?”

The more Collin spoke, the lighter the air
became around us.

“Why did the Synod declare the Prophets’
revelations void?” Collin shot back at him.

Theo hesitated, but I didn’t. “They wanted
to make their own rules. The Prophets spoke of an Earth where
humans had full knowledge of our gifts—and we lived in peace.”

“Yes,” Collin switched from a crouch to a
sitting position. “And the Synod wishes for us to remain elite.
Which is why, when a weak link is discovered, they simply remove
it.”

“I don’t understand,” Theo and I both spoke
at once. What was he trying to tell us?

“There is no difference between the Synod
and the Escuro. They are one in the same. Didn’t you ever wonder
how Demetrius was killed by Sanctum when that was before there even
was an Escuro? The Synod and the Resin council came about at the
same time, during the rise of Eivan. So what happened to Demetrius?
Sanctum was Demetrius’ brother.”

I was more confused than ever. All these
history lessons were fine and good, but the only thing I really was
concerned about was Theo and how to relieve him of the madness that
was slowly consuming him.

“Just tell him what to do!” Screaming at
Collin wasn’t what I intended. But it happened anyway. The last two
weeks made me feel like I was constantly teetering on the edge of
sanity myself.

“The Synod want to enter
Paraíso
—not
for the gift of seeing the Almighty, but rather to ‘borrow’ the
Army of God for a sole purpose.”

My hands moved him along with a paddlewheel
motion.

“They want to annihilate the human
race.”

Even though I was supposed to be strong for
Theo, the information overload made me lay down, resting my head in
Theo’s lap. I still didn’t understand Theo’s place in all of this.
And more than anything, I needed to know. After all, the former
Eidolon’s didn’t fare so well.

A groan of complete frustration erupted from
me. Collin was vomiting out a lot of things, but none of them were
actually helping.

“Where’s Pema?”

I turned to face Collin, hoping that the
fierce expression on my face would make him spill his guts and her
whereabouts.

“In Tibet.”

“Call her, please. Tell her we need to see
her.” I pointed at the Viking. “And don’t even think about telling
me that you don’t know how to contact her. We all know better.”

“Theo,” I implored him, dragging him out of
another deep thinking session. I’d itched for days to flash but I
felt guilty traveling when my grandmother could no longer. “Let’s
go somewhere far away. Just come with me. By the time we get back,
Pema will be here and we can get some answers.”

He didn’t answer, so I took control of
bringing him back to sanity. Enveloping his waist in my arms, I
flashed us to the first place I thought of—the Haiku Stairs in
Hawaii. I was so careless, I didn’t even think about the time
difference or about anyone spotting us—I just needed to get Theo
away from it all.

He needed to be reminded that he was the
Eidolon, but the Eidolon wasn’t all he was.

When we arrived, it was right before dawn
and thankfully the only people awake that I could see were eager
surfers who probably thought that a storm was now brewing from the
sighting of the lightning. The entire island could be seen from
that vantage point. It ranked in my top ten places to see the sun
rise.

“Do you remember this place?” I asked him,
framing his chiseled jaw with my hands.

After a few minutes, he shook himself free
of the depths and met my eyes. “Hawaii, when we were fifteen.”

“Welcome back,” I grinned and as he mirrored
my smile, it became apparent how long it had been since we were
happy. It seemed like decades past.

We stared at the ocean for hours as the sun
rose. I missed the sun rising. I missed my gift. Lately it had just
been used to run from the Resin or the Synod, whichever one they
were.

“Can you promise me something?” Theo asked
with an attitude of lament. His hair was out of control now,
blowing this way and that. High School Theo would’ve offered him
some gel and a comb. He lay back as he spoke, taking a more relaxed
stance against one of the steps behind him.

“I will promise you anything.”

He blew out a breath, heavily laden with
sorrow. “Sometimes I can’t pull myself out of it—like today. It’s
like the voices anchor me to that spot in the garden. Can you
promise to get me away from there if it gets too heavy?”

“How do I know when? Is there like a code or
are you going to knock twice and whistle once?”

It was a lame attempt at a joke, but hearing
him laugh proved it was worth the shame.

“Use your intuition. It worked pretty well
today.”

Who knew I had intuition. That little
attribute may have come in handy all the times I’d stepped out of
line.

“Come here,” he commanded, patting the spot
between his legs. “You’ve been taking care of me when it should be
the other way around.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just always been that
way.”

I tilted my head back so that I could see
his face upside down. “Maybe that was the problem, Theo. Maybe all
the time you were taking care of me, we should’ve been taking care
of each other.”

He lowered his face down so that his lips
barely grazed my forehead. Outlining the perimeter of my face, he
whispered, “I think you’re right. But do I still get to spoil
you?”

“Absolutely. What? Just because you’ve got
super powers, you think I don’t need shoes? Please.”

What started out as an easy laugh evolved
into an all-out, doubled over, tears running down his face
laugh—every time he stopped, we would begin again.

A text brought us back down to Earth. It was
Collin, informing me that Pema was back.

LUCENTS
SHOULD NOT ATTEMPT TO TRAVEL WHILE PREGNANT.

Could I just ignore the whole Eidolon thing?
It would be fairly simple. I could avoid the gardens, the books,
and the Synod for the rest of my life.

Easy.

The gardens were simple to avoid. The books
were missing. And the Synod, well, they were actually a problem.
Everyone was scared of those three heinous wenches. But to my
knowledge they’d never carried out any orders other than to punish
Colby by not letting her travel.

Now we knew they were capable of so much
more. In the days that followed Rebekah’s murder, there had been
whispers among the other Lucents about the scandal. It wasn’t a
secret. Everyone knew who had murdered Rebekah. They may not have
killed her with their own hands, but they had ordered it for
sure.

Plus, I didn’t want Colby living the life of
a fugitive. She deserved better than that.

“I guess we’d better go see what Pema has to
say. But you’re not going back to that garden. Even if I have to
chain you down.”

I rolled my eyes at her tenacity. We flashed
back to the house of the Lucents where Collin, Ari and Pema were
already in some kind of heated conversation. Heated wasn’t quite
the word to use. Ari was in Pema’s face pushing her back inch by
inch with tiny, jerky shoves.

“Hey, knock it off Ari.”

Colby’s spunky best friend turned on us.
“She’s nuts. She’s trying to defend the Synod.”

“Just sit down, everyone, please.” Theo
begged. He was exhausted. Anyone could see how this whole ordeal
had worn down on him.

All five of us sat down and for a few
minutes were silent—each of us, I supposed, was gathering our
thoughts.

Pema ticked her eyes around the room like
she was on the clock and her lunch hour was dwindling away. “Collin
said you have questions.”

“I’m only going to ask one question. What is
my purpose?”

Pema took a deep breath and crossed her
hands over her lap. “The Eidolon’s original purpose was to escort
those caught in the fray to
Paraíso
. They are shrouded in
doubt and cannot find their way. However, your purpose to the Synod
is to allow them to travel to
Paraíso
with you. They think
that somehow they can tap into the power of the Almighty and
command His army. They plan to threaten God with the annihilation
of the human race.”

“But isn’t that why they want the army?”

“No, they wish to use the army to enslave
the humans. But if necessary, they will begin to slaughter the
humans until the Almighty relents.”

“So I don’t let them go with me. It’s
done.”

Pema zeroed in on Theo with a gaze that
could melt steel. “Yes, because the Synod reacts so well to being
shot down when they want something.”

Pema was sarcastic after all.

“Colby and her mom will go into hiding—Ari
and Sway too—and my parents.”

“You’d cement them into a life of
hiding—which isn’t a life at all. Trust me. That’s what Eivan did
to us. His love for Sevella kept him from completing his tasks. He
refused to grant the Synod entrance to
Paraíso
and in doing
so, thrusted us into this life where our family is scattered to the
winds, assuming aliases to keep the Synod off our trail. It’s no
life worth living.”

I didn’t know if it was just this moment, or
everything building on me and coming to a head. But if Pema wasn’t
a girl, I would’ve added the word throat punch to her vocabulary
five seconds ago. These damned people wouldn’t know a straight
answer if one was stapled to their eyelids.

“So what choice do I have here?”

Pema wrung her hands in distress. For a few
seconds, she studied the wall behind me—I recognized the maneuver
as one of procrastination. My mind made no attempt at figuring any
of this out—it was done trying to navigate a maze that had no exit
in sight.

“The way to
Paraíso
must be locked—or
the Synod must be overthrown. Those are your choices.”