“I don’t have time right now to remind you. Get under cover.” Rubin sprinted away from the two of them, across the bare, bald landscape, toward some spot that he seemed to have in mind.
“Move it,” Diego snapped, proving he was just as bossy as his brother. He began to sprint in the opposite direction.
Jonquille followed him, but she wanted to be with Rubin. She wished she were in his mind the way Diego was. She had the capability, but she didn’t have the pathway.
Diego and Jonquille had to travel quite a distance in order to get across a gorge to allow them to see the flat, bald top of the mountain where Rubin planned to conduct his experiment. Diego spotted a crevice Jonquille could fit her smaller body into to keep the lead stroke from finding her.
“Can you see Rubin?” There was no way to keep the anxiety out of her voice.
“Yeah, I’ve got him, he’s lying flat just to the right of those boulders. See them? Left side up near the highest point.”
Thunder rumbled. There was little to stop the wind or keep it from slamming into them. She couldn’t imagine what it was doing to Rubin, exposed as he was. Overhead, the clouds were dark, black and purple. They lit up, lightning forking inside them as the charges bumped against one another repeatedly, causing enormous friction. The pull on her body was horrendous.
“You all right, Jonquille?” Diego asked. “You’re glowing like a Christmas tree.”
“Just keep your eyes on Rubin. I’ve done this a million times now.”
“You really are worried about him. I’m sorry I thought about killing you so often. That would have been a tragedy.”
She wasn’t so certain, not when her core temperature was so hot now she felt like the ground around her was melting just from the contact with her body. This was never going to end for her. She’d done so much research. Rubin, as far as she knew, was the best mind in the field working on the possibilities, and yet he couldn’t help. She’d been at her research for years. It didn’t seem as if there was any hope for her. Maybe Diego’s bullet would have been a kindness.
Static buildup was fast. The charge was coming. She couldn’t help herself. She was folded into a little ball, crammed tight into the crevice, but she stuck her head out to look up at the sky just as the bolt of lightning slammed to earth. She saw the trajectory in her mind. Knew where it would hit. Out of nowhere a blast of energy every bit as strong hit it, diverting the path, knocking it off course so that the spear moved from its intended target to another. Sparks flew up in all directions.
“He did it. That son of a bitch actually did it.” Elation poured out of Diego. “He said he could, and he hit the target dead-on.”
“What target? There were no targets.” Jonquille felt like a turtle, with her head stuck out of the crevice trying to peer at the bald mountaintop.
“Rubin mapped the entire mountaintop into various coordinates. He told me where each strike would be directed.”
Another was coming. She felt the pull on her body. “Watch your eyes, Diego,” she warned.
Thunder crashed directly overhead as the blinding flash of white-hot electrical energy burst down looking for the charge coming from the ground. Again, before it could reach its target, it was struck and knocked off course. Diego was muttering continually to himself. “This is insanity. No one can do this.”
“Do you know how fast he has to be?” Jonquille demanded. She nearly crawled out of the crevice. “He hit it quicker that time. He knows it’s coming the way I do. I want to go up there. I wish I could talk to him the way you do. I should have asked him if we could do that. It would have made things so much easier.” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice.
“Hang on a moment and don’t do anything dumb like move.”
“There’s another one coming,” Jonquille warned again.
This one was very dangerous, directly over Rubin’s position. He directed it with seeming ease this time. It was all Jonquille could do not to sprint back up the mountain toward him.
“I’m a strong telepath, Jonquille,” Diego surprised her by saying. “I asked Rubin if he minded if I looped you in. He agreed, so I’ll start you out. That way you can talk with either of us when you need to.”
“That would be so perfect, thank you.”
Rubin, she’s all yours.
She is, Rubin agreed.
I’m coming up there. The minute I start moving, the lightning will start striking. The lead stroke will look for me.
Even down here? Diego asked. We’re quite a bit below Rubin’s position.
Yes. I’m fast though. After the next strike I’ll start running. Rubin, do you think you can redirect when the lightning is targeting me?
Rubin was silent. She could tell he was thinking it over. I know I could if you were up here. The idea is to practice for every situation though, so this is good for me. I don’t want you hurt. It’s building again. Stay put, Jonquille. Wait one more time.
She wanted to get to him, but she waited, the pull terrible now, especially because it was doubly so, the need to get to Rubin almost as strong as the magnetic charging happening to her body.
Diego, your eyes. Both Rubin and Jonquille warned him at the exact same moment, and she realized Rubin had been warning his brother every strike. She thought it was significant that Rubin knew the strike was imminent the exact moment she did. The bolt slammed toward something Rubin must have laid out in the field to attract it, but this time, even faster, it was redirected much farther than the last one, hitting something she couldn’t see and sending up enough sparks that it looked like the Fourth of July.
She didn’t wait. She was up and running. She might be short, but she had been given enhancements as well, from Whitney, and she used them to her advantage, leaping huge distances, fully across the gorge, racing up the other side to get to the bald top.
Her body was lighting up. Glowing. Going hot. Her hair pulled straight out and up. Her eyes went fully silver. She was exactly what the lead stroke looked for when it came charging toward earth. She put her arms up. If the bolt struck her, as it did others so many times a year, she wouldn’t be harmed in the way they were. She didn’t have to huddle in fear. She would absorb the strike. She had no idea why, or how it was possible. Neither did Whitney. He only knew that she’d been born attracting energy and he’d enhanced that to the point that she had become a freak of nature, and there seemed to be no way of undoing what he’d done to her.
The cloud seemed to open and fire rained on the earth in the form of white-hot silvery jagged spears. She had known there were going to be multiple strikes, not just one. Rubin was going to have his hands full. She tended to attract more than one strike. She should have warned him. The bolts came so fast it was impossible to see them, so she hoped Diego was actually getting them on his recorder so they could slow it down later because Rubin managed to redirect every single one. The last came close enough that she felt the whisper of its burn before it was gone, whisked away by an astonishing force of energy every bit as strong and willful.
The storm was still moving, the wind pushing it toward the valleys, where it was slowly dying down in strength. A few more streaks of lightning leapt at her sideways, and each time, Rubin pushed them away from her.