The surge wasn’t as painful this time, perhaps because I was anticipating it, perhaps because it was Billy. He didn’t fill me up so much as create a cool, dark, still place inside me. Others might have been frightened by that, by the depths, but I wasn’t. I closed my eyes, forcing the kiss to deepen, needing more of it, until his hands went to my hips, pulling me into him.
And then he let me go.
I blinked for a minute, trying to find my feet in all of this, only to be caught by him. Jake swooped in, but of course he did. He was water because that’s what he did—trickling through the cracks and filling them up for all of us until they weren’t there anymore. I paused for a moment, something that scared him, if the flutter in his bright red light was anything to go by, but he didn’t understand. I just needed to see him for a moment, my Jake. The glow flared brighter as I stroked his face, then I leant in and kissed him, just a press of his lips to mine before he drowned me in him.
He was a deluge, an out of control torrent, and while my first impulse was to fight him, pull away, I realised I couldn’t, not without ripping his heart out as well. It was him that “Ache” came from, the awareness of the pain of living so disconnected, having every attempt to change that slapped away and trampled over. To still bravely stand up and try again. I broke the kiss but rested my forehead against his and wondered how I could tell him.
Jake was the brightest, the bravest of all of us. While we all snarled at each other, hissing with suspicion and wariness, he just dove in, facing the potential of pain completely fearlessly.
“It’s OK,” he whispered. “I know.”
“What do you know?” I asked with a gentle smile.
“Everything. I know everything. The beat told me of you way before we ever found you, kept me on the path when they were making side trips. I knew where we had to go, who we needed to be with. With you, we can be completely incomplete.”
“Completely incomplete?”
Was I ever going to understand Jake?
“Don’t need to. You know me, Kira. In here.” He pointed to my heart, then smiled in a way that made mine ache. “Now, you’re gonna need to be gentle with our boy.”
I was passed into stiff, uncomfortable hands, ones that just held me still, but not close. Luc was a man at war with himself. I couldn’t tell if the far-off sound of thunder was him, Sky Daddy, or both, but it made a good articulation of how he felt. His jaw was locked tight, his muscles popping with the effort he was using to keep me where I was, something I knew well.
Luc didn’t see me right now. If I dove into his head again, I’d see his mum and dad playing out that unique form of domestic terrorism they considered normal, with him and me thrust into their roles. I broke his hold, his view of us. His grip hurt and wouldn’t help anything. I stepped into the space between his still outstretched hands, his limbs slow to realise what I’d done. I stepped in, under his barriers both physical and emotional, and rested my head on his chest as my arms went around him.
There was such a weight to Luc. He was much bigger, more muscular, my own personal Viking, but it was more than that. As soon as my skin touched his, I could feel it—the burdens he carried. Of wanting to be better than his parents, of being an avatar of a god he never wanted to let through, of Sky Daddy’s insistent imprecations. Of needing this fragile brotherhood to keep going, be better, be a more functional family than the one he left, and how often it had failed at just that.
As before, his power bit at mine, the light that rose in his chest crackling with static energy, zapping me over and over. But that was Luc and me, like oil and water, but right now, I wanted peace from that.
He didn’t fight me when I reached up, drew his lips down to mine, gave him the kiss someone does when you haven’t seen a loved one for so long or were about to say goodbye. He knew that too. I heard the catch of his breath, the gentle, heavy, prickling feel of his arms going around me, pushing me tighter against him so his power struck harder, deeper, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop him.
“You have to choose this time,” I said, my muscles twitching in time with the cycles of his power. “I’ve chosen you each time you’ve asked, but now I’m asking you.”
“Kira, it’s not a choice! He wants this—”
“You know what I think about Sky Daddy. I’m coming for the motherfucker. We sort out this situation with the Rutherglen, and then it’s full speed ahead on the kill the sky god mission. Mark’s a sentinel, they’re god killers. We can do this, Luc, we just need the goddam hubris to think we can.”
“This is what he wants. It’s all going to his plan, I can feel it in here. We’re making bonds fae shouldn’t be able to make in a shitty Soho bathroom, and he’s fucking smiling. We’re playing right into his hands!”
“So tell me you don’t want me.”
A pained groan fought past his clenched teeth as he stepped away from me. I wavered a little. I knew what was coming, what had me running all those times. I watched him scrape his hair back, his face a mask of pain, and I knew how he felt.
I’d been knocked back plenty of times before, from the primary school kids edging away from me when forced to sit next to me, to the adults’ studious avoidance of my gaze, turning their backs to me, just trying to pretend I didn’t exist, until it began to feel like I didn’t. I’d weathered that, so I could weather this. I squared my shoulders when he turned back to me, forced myself to stare him down, even as his lightning grew so bright, it hurt my eyes. Or was it the tears welling there? My stance widened. I could take the hit that was coming and keep on going, because that’s what I was now. I was strong enough to weather these connections, even when they failed.
Yes, Lilith hissed. You see it finally. Nothing will knock you down again, Kira. Nothing.
“I can’t!”
He didn’t say or do what I expected, so I just stood there when he swept in, pulling me up into his arms until I was cradled against him. His power didn’t hurt now, maybe because the ache inside me outweighed the electrical sparks of it.
It took me a second to see his tears, because I was half blinded by mine, because the red lightning crackled across them. Red lightning? That dull little voice that seemed to pop up occasionally made mention of it, but I didn’t get time to think that through as his mouth came crashing down on mine.
Lightning galvanises, shocking you out of your apathy and into action. When our lips touched, that’s what it felt like, that we were jolted out of what we’d been. Me and him playing at Lilith and Sky Daddy. The sweet date night courtship between Kira and Luc. Now there was only this. Too fast, too hard, and hurting as a result, he swept into me, filling me with all of his pain and desperation, his fear and anger and need to not make the same fucking mistakes over and over.
But like thunder provides that dark, rumbly counterpoint to lightning’s flashiness, there was the Luc beneath his thoughts, who loved with everything he had, right as he was terrified of what that would do to him and them. He needed me and us to be safe, because the alternative appalled him, made him marshal every damn scrap of energy to try and ensure that didn’t happen.
The crackle of his power slammed into me, making my muscles seize for a moment that felt like it went on forever, and then…it equalised. I opened my eyes, saw his go wide as the crackle dissipated and then bled away. I could ground Luc, and neither of us had expected that.