Like a Surge Read online

  “I invoke Water!” Paul’s voice rang out to his right. Blood rushed past his ears so hard, Russ thought he could hear it.

  He was never doing this again.

  This was dumb, and stupid, his legs were beginning to cramp, and a boulder of awkwardness made his spine bend forward as though he was trying to hide.

  Except he wasn’t. “Paul!” he whispered, suddenly scared.

  “I invoke Fire,” Mark said in a voice that was cautiously bored, as though he was holding back any effect that might ensue. The flames of the candles before them flared good six inches high, then settled back down.

  And, suddenly, that awful pressure was gone and the roaring in his ears was but an echo of a far-away waterfall. Slowly, carefully, Russ straightened his spine. His back would hurt from sitting like this, especially since he was still sore after all that work he had done. He was sore after Paul’s massage, too, which surprised him.

  Russ closed his eyes. To his amazement, his mind settled to a new and different place. Once he took note of the tell-tale pink glow of the basement’s electrical wires, and the breaker box in the far corner that was lit up like a fuchsia beacon, he noticed the people sharing his space.

  For the first time ever, Russ could see others with his eyes closed. Only Paul was glowing a wild pink of an electric potential that would have to be put to work sometime soon. The others were different. Slowly, as the woodsy scent of incense fragranced the air, Russ was able to tune the electric pink out of his mind’s eye.

  Now he saw more – more than he had ever expected to see.

  Ellen glowed gold and green, with a nexus of power around her belly as new life grew inside her. Mark was translucent, like a see-through balloon filled with much denser air, and Hank was a black shape of utter darkness. Paul’s pink electric field, which glowed a lot brighter than even Ellen’s, fluctuated in regular, even undulations that revealed a shade of shimmering indigo, as though the deep blue was the true color of Paul’s soul and the electricity was just a cover-up.

  With a start, Russ realized that the variations in Paul’s steadily strengthening field did, indeed, correspond to the even, controlled rhythm of his breath. He wished he could somehow record the phenomenon. Suddenly, without a doubt, Russ was sure that Paul was on the verge of a breakthrough of some kind. More power, sure – but also more control, and... and as for him, Russ was just sitting there like a lump, watching everyone else glow.

  Chastised, he focused on the inner darkness that, to his own sight, was his being. He counted his breath and tried his very best to imagine what he couldn’t see.

  CHAPTER 22

  Hank clapped again, and Russ opened his eyes only to realize that they had all been sitting in deep meditation. The candles looked shorter now and the incense stick had burned down to cold ashes. “Now we thank the elements and release them. I’ll go first.” Hank nodded his head reverently. “I thank you and release you, Air!”

  By the time his turn came, Russ was ready to say the word with a lot more confidence than before, and when he finally said “I thank you and release you, Earth,” it seemed as though it had all been a dream. He watched with a bemused eye as Hank walked around the circle and waved his little knife in the air.

  “Now we take our candles and take them upstairs to light the Yule Log,” Hank said. He glanced at Russ with sympathy. “Take your time. I take it you ain’t used to this. Massage your legs if you have to. I don’t want you falling over and having your flame going out!”

  “Why, would that be bad luck?” Russ asked in an honest effort to understand.

  “No,” Hank grinned. “It would be a pain to get the wax out of my carpet!”

  Minutes later, they filed up the wooden staircase, protecting their candle flames. Soon they gathered around the fireplace in Hank’s living room. “Okay, so we all kneel and light the kindling all at the same time! May this Yule Log burn through the longest night and give us light into the next year!”

  They all squeezed together and made it work somehow, jostling and giggling like a bunch of kids playing Twister.

  “Alright, then, this is it! Now we feast, and those of you who are so inclined can go and have an orgy if you want.” Hank crinkled his nose. “Although I’d rather just have some warm, boozy glogg. And let me get the food out of the oven, it’s been keeping warm for us.”

  Russ followed Hank into the eat-in kitchen. The butcher-block table was already covered with paper plates, utensils, and held bread and cheese. “You need any help, Hank?”

  “Sure,” Hank replied readily. “If you could grate some cheese for the chili and open the chips... and there’s salsa and sour cream in the fridge.”

  “On it,” Russ said, relieved that they would be eating familiar food and not something fancy. Hank pulled out a pan of macaroni and cheese while Ellen assembled a salad.

  “Smells great,” Paul said from behind him as he snatched a corn chip. “If we were at my parent’s house, there would’ve been venison.”

  “You complaining?” Hank growled.

  “Hell no! Shit, I was so sick and tired of venison as a kid. That’s all we ever had, with our folks hunting and foraging. Venison and mushrooms and home-brewed beer. This here’s something different, y’know? Now I get to find out what the rest of America eats at parties!”

  “The rest of America has ham or turkey for Christmas,” Russ felt compelled to chime in.

  “I know, right? Ham. Ham! I love ham. Geez, we had these neighbors, they were regular people, y’know? And they had ham, and Mark was allowed to play with their kid.” Paul didn’t elaborate, and after a moment, Russ’ heart sank when he realized that Paul not being allowed to play with other kids was normal. Sensible, even, considering his electrical surge issues. “So anyway, Mark always asked Mrs. Johnson for a small piece to bring for his sick cousin, whose family doesn’t eat that. That was me. So, the only ham I ever got was from the Johnson’s!”

  “I traded her for our mom’s gingerbread cookies. Mom knew.” Mark looked satisfied with himself. “We all tried to keep you involved, you know.”

  “I know,” Paul said with a sweet smile. “Thank you!”

  “That’s it,” Russ said once the lump in his throat subsided. “I’m making ham for after Christmas, and everyone’s invited!”

  “Why for after Christmas?” Ellen said. “Are you having pizza with the rest of us?”

  Russ shook his head. “I... uh. No.” He glanced at Paul, who suddenly grew flushed, and who writhed in place as though he was beset by snakes. “I invited Paul to meet my family. My mom’s making a turkey.”

  When Paul spun and pecked a kiss on his cheek, Russ thought he’d fall over with warm fuzzies. Yes, he could do this thing. He could sit with the clan till the dawn broke, sipping that strangely strong mulled wine and watching the Yule Log burn as the rest of they traded old stories of a world he had never imagined existed.

  PAUL SIPPED more of the spiced glogg and leaned back into Hank’s comfortable sofa. He looked around with satisfaction. The yule log was burning in the fireplace, Hank sat in quiet meditation on his meditation pillow on the carpeted floor, and the others were sprawled around like kittens in the fire’s flickering light. Russ jerked his head next to him once again in a valiant effort to stay awake at four in the morning, while Ellen gently snored with her head in Mark’s lap.

  Ellen was excused, though. Pregnant women needed their sleep, a fact which Grandma Olga impressed upon them in yesterday’s telephone call.

  Russ’s excuse was more along the lines of “I stayed up yesterday just to keep other people’s lights on.” The reason for his fatigue was fitting. He, too, was part of bringing the light into the world once again, even though he had done so in a more prosaic way a day or two earlier.

  “Paul.” Mark’s whisper broke into his musings, and Paul turned toward his twin.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you think you could get me some water? I’m pinned.” And he was. Ellen was sprawled o
ver him like a cat.

  “Water, or glogg?” Paul was still carefully sipping the strong mixture of mulled wine and aquavit with all its spices and booze-soaked raisins.

  Slight hesitation. “Both?”

  They grinned at each other like idiots. Paul collected their mugs and returned with warm glogg and cool water for Mark, himself, and also for Russ. Hank was on his own, in a faraway world where he had no need for either, and Paul knew better than to disturb him.

  “How do you think Cooper made out with that sword?” Paul whispered. “I wonder if we’ll ever see Jared again.”

  “Jared’s dead,” Mark reminded him.

  “Jared’s dematerialized, which is only mostly dead.”

  A spurt of tired, poorly disguised giggles came out of Russ to Paul’s right. “All we need is to cut a chocolate-covered marshmallow with that sword, then, and he’ll be alright again.”

  Making references to the infamous “Princess Bride” movie wasn’t funny, yet it was. They had been yearning for a bit of comic relief for weeks now, if not for months. Paul snorted, and Mark broke into contagious wheezes in an apparent effort not to wake Ellen. Once the glee died down, Mark craned his head to make eye contact with Russ. “So how was your first Winter Solstice as an elementalist, Russ?”

  “Weird?” Russ laughed uneasily, then shifted, and sipped more of the heady glogg in such rapid succession, Paul was almost sure Russ was hiding something.

  “Weird in what way?” Mark asked from halfway across the room in a quiet, soothing tone that carried without disturbing either the sleeping Ellen, or the meditating Hank. Paul was sorely tempted to jump in and help interrogate Russ – or defend him – but then he detected that slight frisson of power in his brother’s voice and leaned back into the sofa again. That’s right, Mark’s specialty was sound, and he was using whatever skill he had on Russ.

  As he mused that Mark’s extra special touch wouldn’t work on Russ anyway, he felt Russ relax into the sofa next to him, and shift so he was facing Mark across the L of the seating arrangement. “You’ll think I’m crazy,” Russ said.

  Paul stilled, willing himself not to move. This wasn’t happening. Was Mark really making Russ talk? Or was it the alcohol that had loosened his tongue?

  “Try me,” Mark said, speaking at the same resonance as before. “Before you met us, you didn’t know other people could see things, too.”

  Paul sipped a bit of water in an effort not to look at Russ. Looking at Russ might break whatever tenuous link Mark had been able to establish.

  “Well, it was weird as shit,” Paul said with an uncomfortable giggle. “I mean, five grown people, and we were sitting in the basement in a circle, around a pentagram, with candles all around and with you chanting stuff, y’know? It was... it was stupid. At first, I felt like I was in a bad B-flick, summoning something.”

  Paul was tempted to say they were summoning the light and that’s what the solstice was all about, but Mark’s expectant silence reminded him to stay hush. He bit his lip and drew a slow, deep breath to feed his patience.

  Moments passed.

  “I closed my eyes, and I could still see the pink glow of all the electric fields,” Russ finally admitted. “And that’s normal. I mean, normal for me. I saw the wires and their direction, and I saw Paul’s bioelectric field.” He paused. “But then I saw other people’s fields, too, and they had different colors.”

  “Hmm?” Mark’s murmur vibrated with encouragement.

  “It wasn’t electric, at least I didn’t think it was, but each one of you had a different color of glow. And Paul, here, he has his own color hidden under all that pink.”

  “And what color are you?” Mark asked.

  “I couldn’t tell!” Russ didn’t bother to hide his frustration. “I was just, like, not there with my eyes closed. Oh, that sounds dumb. Well, you know what I mean.”

  To Paul’s surprise, Hank cleared his throat. “Did you see anything other than our auras, Russ?”

  From a corner of his eye, Paul saw Russ whip his head around toward Hank. He was still sitting on the floor, propped up by his meditation pillow, but his eyes now were fully open.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Russ said in a contrite voice.

  “You didn’t,” Hank said, and smiled. He slowly moved his legs from the half-lotus position and circled his ankles around for a bit. “So, if you saw our auras, did you see anything else that wasn’t electric fields?”

  Now that Mark’s thrall on Russ was broken, Paul turned to see what he would say. Russ frowned, then gave a half-hearted shrug. “I dunno. Was there anything else?”

  “Lines of power,” Hank said. “Jared used to be able to see those. The circle I first cast and then cut, for instance.” He looked at Russ expectantly. “Well?”

  “You mean, did I see a circle? No, just the candles in a circle, and that’s not what you mean, right?”

  “Right.” Hank sighed. “Well, it was worth a try.” He shot Russ an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry about it. Some of us feel the power, to a greater or lesser extent, but Jared had been able to see it. Since you see electric fields, I had been hoping...”

  “That I’d see all that, too?” Russ supplied.

  Hank nodded, and Paul found he was nodding with him.

  Russ’ shoulders slumped the smallest bit. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Paul said immediately as he reached for him and pulled him into a one-armed embrace. “You do enough. We can’t control what we were born with. I guess I’m a testament to that.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The snow-covered, undulating hills of upstate New York gave way to the wind-swept plains surrounding the Great Lakes. The landscape was gleaming white, with only the skeletons of bare trees casting shade on the thruway as Cooper took his turn behind the wheel. He didn’t mind the strobing sunlight that flickered through the branches as much as Ash did, although sunglasses were an absolute must to stave off the brutal glare.

  Even the road seemed to shine in the dry, frigid air, but its calmer shade of white spoke of layers of dissolved and dried-on salt, not treacherous ice.

  “Do you think they held an orgy?” Ash asked, breaking into the hum of the ancient minivan’s wheels on the road.

  “Doubt it,” Cooper said right away. “Ellen’s pregnant, Hank isn’t with anyone, and Hank’s talent would suck any generated power off and send it into the Void.”

  “But the guys?” Cooper detected a curious, almost voyeuristic note in Ash’s voice. It reminded him that group sex during what amounted to a religious ritual was a new concept to Ash. The experience had been new to Cooper too, except Cooper had known that his family and their friends were ‘eccentric,’ and he had always had a feeling that they did ‘things like that,’ even though it had never occurred to him that he should be included. To Cooper, sitting in his underwear in the inky darkness of a canvas sweat lodge where the burning Yule seemed to have cast more shadows than light, was an initiation into what many of his family and friends took for granted.

  Cooper had been aware of people sitting around him until his easy breathing pattern took him into a semi-meditative trance. Then he felt his own power, in a circle of protective shields where it could do no harm, and he added it to the melange of swirling energies that belonged to everyone – and then – to no one. The spiritual transcended into the physical. He had not seen anyone but Ash, his pale limbs and the wanting sparkle in his eye. The taste of wood smoke on his sweet lips robbed him of the last vestiges of self-consciousness, and of modesty, and of his underwear.

  For Ash, it had been a culture shock.

  “I doubt the guys did much, and if they did, they kept it private,” Cooper answered at length. “Think about it. Safe sex with my cousin means not getting electrocuted. I don’t think you could find a condom insulating enough to protect Russ, regardless whether he likes to top or bottom.”

  With a sideways glance, Cooper saw Ash wince. He laughed. “And I thou
ght earthquakes and flash floods were a problem!”

  “Not funny, Cooper,” Ash said censoriously. “It’s weird enough to be talking about people we know, especially after...” His voice drifted off as though he was in the thrall of powerful memories.

  Yeah, that. The huge, canvas lodge with a trough of glowing embers down its length, and with an assortment of cushions and blankets and fur rugs that lined the ground and the walls. The cut logs under the comfortable padding weren’t just a rustic seating arrangement.

  He had never thought he’d find the combined powers of them all so heady.

  He never figured he’d get swept away on a current of lust and love and something higher, greater, than all of them combined.

  He never thought he’d bend Ash over a fur-covered log and sink into his tight, welcoming body.

  And he had not guessed that Ash would welcome him so readily, opening his body as well as his mind.

  He shuddered as the residual physical memory elicited all the right reactions. Now he was hard and wanting Ash with his heart wide open while speeding along at 75 miles per hour.

  They way their hearts touched, their minds unveiled their secret yearnings and fears –he had never thought Ash to be in any way lacking in confidence or fearing that Cooper would leave him for someone better, or that Ash desperately wanted children in his life.

  Who knows what secrets Ash had found lurking in the corners of Cooper’s heart.

  As his whole being brimmed with love for Ash, Cooper reached to the side and settled his hand on the familiar, jean-clad thigh. Ash’s hand covered his, fingers intertwining. Instead of a jolt of energy, he felt a pleasant flow –

  “Shit!” The steering wheel jumped under his palm, or it felt like it had.

  Cooper yanked his hand back, grabbed the wheel, and fought it.

  They slowed down gradually. Now that Cooper’s blood stopped pounding in his ears, he could hear the low whisper of deep snow against the old minivan’s body.