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.
Shut it down, Rubin, you’re getting too tired. You still have to go see Mama Patricia today, Diego said.
Jonquille realized it was true. Rubin was exhausted. She looked over at him, and he was lying in the blackened section where the first lightning strike had been directed. He lay motionless looking up at the clouds.
I’m sorry, Rubin, I can take a few hits. The storm’s moving away. Just rest for a while. If the lightning keeps coming this way, it won’t for long. You’ve practiced enough. She didn’t dare go over to him, not when the top of the mountain was so bare. She’d lead a strike right to him.
Rubin didn’t respond, but she sensed that he didn’t like attention called to the fact that he was weak after using his particular talent. She wondered if that was because it was in front of her, but she didn’t think so. Rubin wasn’t that kind of man. It seemed as if he didn’t like being weak in front of his brother either, as if he were letting both of them down.
Her hair went straight up again and she felt the charge of energy. This time the lightning bolt came from a distance. To her consternation, Rubin still shoved it away from her, again directing it toward a target he had placed in an area about forty yards away from her. It was a fairly small target, and the jagged stroke still hit it dead center.
Before Diego could reprimand him, she intervened. You are such a show-off. Next time, we’re going to build a huge tic-tac-toe game