Bright Star

by Grayson Reyes-Cole

Genres: Paranormal; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

In a clash of love and destiny, who pays the price? Jackson thought he was the most powerful shifter in the world. Blessed with gifts and popularity, he's always felt bad for his brother Rush, who'd been born with the disadvantage of being normal. But when a beautiful shifter named Bright Star appears on the scene, Jackson learns his brother is far from normal. Bright Star forces Rush to reveal unimaginable talents he's always kept hidden-talents Bright Star claims will save the world. . .whether Rush likes it or not. WARNING: Contains graphic violence and sexual content. 90,000 Words

Release date: October 20, 2008

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 376

Sample

 

Chapter 1

Saving: The Curse

 

Jacob Rush listened to the rasping, uneven breath of the skinny, wet and almost dead girl stretched out before him. He watched the girl continue to wheeze in a high-pitched plea. Her chest continued to convulse.

She should have been dead. She was dead. And then she wasn’t.

Jacob rocked back on his knees, coming to rest on his calves. Steam rolled off his heated body. He couldn’t focus his eyes. When he tried, the sweat dripped down into them, stinging and blinding him. Feeling around the cold cement in light cautious pats, his fingertips found the over-shirt he had stripped off after he’d dragged her from the fountain. Slowly, he raised it to his face. The shirt was cold relief.

He inhaled deeply and then exhaled, watching his breath crystallize and dissipate as it floated away from him in the night. He had done this many times, and knew he would do it many more. Each time it happened, it seemed to squeeze his organs tighter, to crack and reshape his bones more and to make his muscles fold over themselves and redouble. It caused that trigger, that light deep within his brain to throb and grow.

Jacob would have liked to believe it was his imagination, not his body, mind and Talent that were changing. He lied, telling himself that he had not really saved this girl. Something inside this girl had sped recovery after he’d pulled her out of the water, breathed down her throat, and pushed hard on her chest. Just performing CPR was something he could live with. But Jacob Rush knew the truth: he had done more than some rudimentary first aid technique.

He waited, knowing that soon he would experience the cold. It hit him and stung, lashing out against him. For a long moment, he let the freezing fingers of nature claw at him, willing them to dig out his anxiety and fear. How many more times would he do this? How, in the end, would it change him? When would she come and demand this thing he gave freely?

He put on the shirt. It was slightly warmer then, still heated from his face. Folding his arms and closing his eyes, Jacob Rush started to breathe slower, deeper. He started to leave this place. But before he could completely tuck himself away, a dry and low voice pulled at him. It sounded brittle, parched.

“I’m still alive?” The girl rose up on her elbows and looked around. Her damp, lank brown hair clung to her forehead and neck, to her sallow and pointed shoulders.

He’d seen her there—God knows how—still, eyes and mouth closed, at rest. Peace marked her. Completely under water, lying on the bottom of the fountain her body was pale, tinted a frigid blue and surrounded by yellow, red, and white mosaic. He’d pulled off his shirt and jumped over the lip of the pool in one motion. Then, he’d reached down and grabbed her dead weight. Her clothes, her hair, her skin all clung to the bottom so that he had to grapple with her flesh as he’d tried to peel her from the tiled bed. Her skin had become slippery like a peeled plum, and he’d lost his grip as her body attempted to adhere itself to the bottom again. But those eyes, submerged, brilliant and blue, had opened to pin him with a gaze of recognition.

Ah.

Sadly, finally, Jacob had recognized her. He’d been able to haul her out then, and save her.

When he should have let her die.

Jacob spotted her jacket in the fountain. It must have slid off when he dragged her out of the water. He pointed to the red, white, and gold striped material. Only a sleeve peeped from beneath a stone head and shoulder the size of a headstone.

She noticed how intently he watched her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You almost died.”

“What?” She sprang up and swung her head from side to side, sloshing water into the air. She blinked rapidly as she took in her surroundings. Her hands smoothed over her soaked torso. Then—Jacob could read that awkward expression anytime—she averted her gaze and rounded her shoulders in intense shame. Whatever recognition in her eyes earlier had been snuffed out.

She sighed and slowly rolled to her feet. A distance opened between them when she moved away, cutting a slice into the ready intimacy of a life saved. She seemed agitated and would not meet his gaze. Jacob stood as well, but could not stop watching her.

“Why were you in the fountain?” he asked. His voice was well modulated. His words didn’t sound like a demand. He hoped they didn’t sound as if the answer mattered to him.

She started to answer. Her jaw worked. In the end, she managed to explain, “I was throwing coins in. I threw one in that belonged to my mother.” She chewed at chapped skin on her upper lip. Those eyes, she kept tilted downward.

Jacob knew she did not want him to study her eyes or how startling and nearly illuminated they were. She also probably didn’t want him to know that she was lying, but Jacob knew. She continued, “I got in to look for it. Part of the statue must have fallen and hit me. I think I just panicked and slipped. I can’t swim anyway.”

She had been lying on her back. Her arms had been folded carefully over her abdomen. Her legs had been straight as well. She had not looked like a girl who had slipped, yet Jacob said nothing.

“I guess I’m thanking you for saving my life,” she finished, but it did not sound like appreciation. Her voice was small, tinny and false.

Jacob Rush reached a hand out to touch the base of her skull. Her wet hair lay just over his knuckles. The wound was large and bloody and hot. It felt like an infection. She felt like an infection. Her blood gurgled over his fingers, seeped into his palm, and rode the veins in his arm, spreading through his circulatory system, getting into tissue, into cells. And then, the blood was gone. “How do you feel now?”

Elizabeth placed a hand over the one cradling her head. She didn’t feel any pain. Outside or in. Jacob could tell. Her voluntary touch had let him inside of her. Just like that. She had become a part of him. The intimacy was back. Her thoughts mingled with his like threads in a tassel. Elizabeth was thinking then that for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel any pain. She wondered briefly if her heart would stop. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to die.

He let her go. “Aren’t you cold?” He asked in a voice too calm for reality. His eyes held hers, though they were clear and intense and offered nothing. He knew better than to show her too much compassion.

She hesitated. No, she wasn’t cold. “Yes, I am.”

“You need to change clothes.” But what did compassion matter? The poison was inside him now. His hands, his skin, his heart and brain, his blood, his breath, his Energy was the curse. There was nothing left for it. “Those are wet.”

She looked down at the dingy white t-shirt and worn jeans that were pulling her downward, weighted by water. Her thoughts were murky and congealed, but Jacob Rush could pick them out with ease—He thinks I’m too skinny; He thinks I’m too dark. He thinks. I am dirty-obsessed-stained-removed crazy. He thinks my eyes and body and Energy curse him.

Jacob knew she was hiding something. She rubbed at fine white scars on one forearm.

She was barely audible when she answered. “Well, you’re right. I’m not usually around anywhere long enough to feel the cold.”

He blinked. Even his vision was different now. It was as if his body was still putting out steam, and that was clouding his eyes, creating a hazy film he couldn’t completely penetrate. “I live near here. You can get something out of my brother’s room. You’re very thin. He’s broad, but he’s shorter than me and he might have something.”

She said nothing, just inclined her head in acceptance. She didn’t think he had heard a word she’d said. At least he was still talking about clothes. She avoided his intense scrutiny and mumbled, “My name is Elizabeth.”

“Jacob Rush. People call me Rush.” He took her small hand into one of his own, studying it. He shook it and let it fall softly to her side.

“Were you alone?”

She followed him away, walking as if her clothing were stiff. Jacob imagined her garments were near frozen. “I don’t know, I think so.” Jacob felt the jumble in her head. Her memory was screwed up again. Her veins felt as if they were swelling all through her body. She winced, wanting to cry. And why was that? She was afraid that she was going to have a vision. Again.

“Why are you still here?” he asked, trying to get her attention, her focus.

“What?” She was virtually perplexed, but he was treated for once to the crystal eyes.

“Why are you still in town?” he clarified patiently. “I recognize you from the flyers. I saw them a while back.”

“There was an accident about two months ago. I… I had to stay for awhile.” She shrugged and Jacob thought of the emaciated cat that had taken up residence in his room when he was twelve. It had come to die, just as she had. “Doesn’t matter, though. The guy who runs the gallery owns the condo, too. He wants me out.”

His eyes darted into hers, sharply. Hers, that intense blue, his own, a watery, wild brown. Wet hair irritated her face as her head hung down. She was feeling ridiculous again. The scars on her arms and inner thighs ached. This body. She would get rid of it. Jacob reached out to touch her elbow as he guided her down a side street. She forgot, for a moment, how much she had come to despise herself.

Then, suddenly, he averted his gaze. Again, eagle’s eyes, bright and dark darting. “Come in.” He motioned toward the door in front of them and pushed it open. It was dark inside.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. “I don’t usually go into strange men’s houses. It’s not very safe.” With a sideways smile, he turned and moved into the building. She followed him, lips slightly parted. She entered and closed the door behind her. A cloud of darkness drifted down like exploded gunpowder over her head.

She made a move to open the door. She could not. She felt him beside her and knew that he was using his weight to keep the door closed. She felt his quick breathing on her cheek and neck. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes shut and it only served to add to the darkness, to make her more isolated, to make her more aware of the length of Jacob next to her. She opened them again. It made no difference.

Jacob could feel fear lashing out of her, scratching at him. How long would it take for panic to overwhelm, to peel back the façade she didn’t know she wore?

“You aren’t afraid of the dark, Elizabeth.” A large, gentle hand stroked a lock of hair behind her ear.

She opened her own mouth to speak but instead found herself inhaling warmth. It snaked through her nostrils, touched the back of her chilled throat, then filled her lungs and stomach with heat. Like steam, it did not stifle her.

The light came in the form of a loud crackling blaze from somewhere low on the ground. It was a fireplace. Jacob stood, losing his eyes in the flames that reached for him, licking and destroying as they strove up and out at him. He stepped closer, still out of reach. His toasted skin glowed capricious gold and orange. He stepped closer still and the flames shrank back into their cave, leaving the stone mouth still warm.

He stood up and asked, “Would you like some hot cocoa?” Elizabeth nodded. “You’ll find some clothes down that hall in the last room to your right. By the time you change, it’ll be ready. He watched her as she walked down the hall to his brother’s room.

* * * *

Elizabeth stepped into the room. It was a world completely removed from that of the rest of the apartment. Even the comforting scent from outside did not penetrate this room. It was cold, lonely and sterile. The sun from outside pierced the windows and seared past the blue and white striped curtains. Wasn’t it evening? In Jacob Rush’s living room without the light of the flame, there had been complete and utter darkness. Here, her eyes hurt and she felt so exposed she was nearly overwhelmed by an illogical impulse to hide.

Ultimately, her eyes adjusted to the light and she inspected the surroundings. Her pinprick pupils missed nothing. The bed was made up as meticulously as if some Marine had been ordered to make it a hundred times to ensure he got it right. It was blue. The carpet was dark gray. The mirror mounted above caught the sunlight and bounced the white light off the stark white walls at Elizabeth. Everything was blinding white, and she could not see herself in the mirror; she couldn’t see anything. It was getting hot.

The heat pressed on her shoulders and massaged her back. She wanted to sleep. Wasn’t it nighttime? The bed beckoned and the light followed her as she neared it. She ran a hand over the soft downy cover, and lowered her lids with a slow smile, softening the hard and hungry angles of her face. Her limbs seemed trapped in slow motion. Her breathing was slow in her ears, but irregular to he who was listening. Yes, somehow, she knew he was there. Jacob. Rush. Listening.

The vision was starting again. Only this time, there was no beginning, middle, or end. There was only fire. She was enveloped in flames so hot they couldn’t be distinguished from freezing even as they burned the flesh away from her bones. She opened her mouth to scream but only a plume of black smoke puffed out then tunneled back down her throat, turning to flame and burning her from the inside.

“Are you OK?” His voice slashed in a cool arc through her dream. Her eyes fluttered. She was still burning. Her remaining flesh was bubbling, blistering. Her eyes were tearing, and as the water streaked down her cheeks, steam arose. Her whole body was on fire. She was burning, and she couldn’t understand why she was conscious through the pain. Her eyes opened, but blue light only seemed to reflect back at her. She realized she was in front of the mirror.

“I’m fine,” she called, willing the after effects of the vision to end. Her eyes were open but she could not trust them anymore. She reached out. She remembered a closet. She stumbled blindly until she reached it. She felt for the door, which partly opened for her. It was dark within. She could only make out the outline of clothing inside, but it looked cool in there, safe in there.

Safe. Inside, the vision ceased abruptly. She was cooling. Still hot, but cooling. Quickly, she passed her hands over the rest of her body until the blistered skin fell away and evaporated as it was replaced with pale pink flesh. Mouse-brown hair grew back. She couldn’t let Jacob see the vision on her, smell it on her.

The closet wasn’t dark. It was cast in a soft blue light. Inside, there were indeed men’s clothes. They hung neatly in the closet. Slacks, t-shirts, button downs. They were mostly very big and she only imagined how they would have looked on her thin, wiry body. The clothes were well-worn, well-cared for. She reached out a hand and touched a faded blue and green plaid shirt. It was so cool to the touch, cool to her heated touch. She moved further into the closet that tempted her, inviting her with a cool and fresh scent. The shirt fell around her thighs and she marveled at the size, so different from her own. She moved around in the cooling womb that had expanded for her, encasing her maternally in its obscurity.

Then suddenly, she was afraid to go out. She couldn’t move again into the room with light that exposed her so much she could not see. It was a room that made her tired and told her she needed to close her eyes, to sleep a lifetime, to burn and to die.

Then she heard his voice. “Are you all right in there, Elizabeth?”

“Uhh...uhh, I’m fine.” She wanted to cry out to him that she wasn’t. To make him save her, but she could not. She expected his voice to move away again to leave her. It would be better than the humiliation of being stuck in a closet because she was afraid of the light.

Silence played for a moment. Then the outer door was opened, and she could barely hear the footsteps coming towards her.

He stopped outside the closet door. “Come out, Bright Star.”

Slowly the door began to creep open and a small hand slipped around it. The hand was snatched, engulfed in his and she was pulled out and up. Cradled in his arms, she could see the room had dimmed with his presence. Then the darkness followed them out like a great cape that hung from Rush’s shoulders.

* * * *

“Your brother,” Bright Star asked as she curled up in a soft chair and sipped her cocoa. “Where is he now?”

Rush looked back at her. He was sitting in front of the fire with an arm resting on a raised knee. “Bright Star?”

“Yeah?” She forgot her own question as she felt her skin prickle under his scrutiny.

Rush remained silent for a long moment, but his face with its soft curves and hard lines was turned towards Bright Star. His gaze roamed over her features then fell to the floor and then the fire again. He was still and yet, not still. “My brother’s up north for the moment.”

“Vacation?”

He shook his head, closed his dark brown eyes and leaned back with his arms braced behind him, stretching out his, long, lean body. So strong and exotic. Bright Star noticed how his dark, curling hair caught autumn streaks in the firelight and how his previously dark, dark gold skin glowed hot bronze. She shifted her gaze to the flames that seemed to be dying. Again, she had a fleeting thought that they were shrinking away from him. She continued her scrutiny. With his dark eyes closed, and his head tilted back she found that his ebony lashes were long, curling, and that he had a scar above his left eye. He suddenly seemed so exhausted.

She remembered the way he carried her from that room at the end of the hall. He had pulled her into his arms and lifted her with impossible ease. He had borne her away as if he knew she hadn’t the strength to move through the room to the door. She remembered that he didn’t even look at her until the door had been closed safely behind them. She remembered thinking of him as her hero, her champion. And yet somehow, something was wrong. She could see it when he looked at her.

“Jacob,” she called. Slowly he gave his gaze to her, though he didn’t respond. “Rush? In your brother’s room…”

“Don’t ask me,” he warned in a menacing whisper. Bright Star drew her legs up closer to her chest and studied her chocolate for a long moment. Her guess had been on the money: Jacob thought she was weak. When she glanced up at him, his features had softened as if he hadn’t been able to sustain the frightening visage. He shook his head. “Just put it all out of your head for now. Just bury it.”

The fear within her manifested itself in a trembling of slender fingers, a deep swallow of nothing, and a heart that felt too big for its chest. She usually talked too much when she was nervous, but now she found she could say nothing. In her own defense, she tried to retreat into herself as she had so many times in the ceaseless disquiet of the fair. Setting her mug down beside the chair, she slowly let her eyes roll back as her lids lowered. She breathed in the deep aromatic smokiness of the room. She leaned her head back expecting to feel the plush padding of the chair softly greet her head. Instead, her body continued falling back and back, and her lids became too heavy to lift. She was falling, her whole body feverish and damp with sweat as she descended. She was falling, and then, she was burning again.

“Bright Star!” The sound was loud in her ears, pulling her back. And his arms were around her, pressing her head into his chest and he was soothing her in barely more than a whisper, “Bright Star.”

Abruptly, her blue, blue eyes opened, and she began to shiver. She didn’t understand anything. She drew back and looked into Jacob’s face. She saw something angelic there but she also saw a darkness—a shadow that was so protective and honest in the way it shielded her from the hot light of the fireplace. And she saw it when she looked at Jacob Rush. She didn’t speak but held onto his arms as he anchored her. She found her voice. “Jacob? Jacob, what’s happening to me? I don’t know what’s happening to me.” He stretched long fingers over her face then, and held her with his gaze for moments. Bright Star felt his touch not only on her skin but also in her mind. She had wondered for so many years, what it was like to have someone journey through her mind the way she had with strangers for longer than she could remember. She noticed a blue glow on his nose and cheeks.

He was close enough for her to feel his breath on her face, and, all of a sudden, the light was gone from the fireplace and the house was as dark as it had been the first moment she’d come inside, save for the blue light.

“So you perform? That’s what the flyers said,” Jacob inquired softly. He stroked her hair.

“Psychic readings,” she offered with agitation.

“Psychic readings,” he repeated.

“Don’t you watch TV, you know, like the hotlines? I tell you stuff about your life: past, present, future—all that crap. Except I had lights and music.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Were you always right?”

“Of course, I was always right,” she answered impulsively. Then with eyes cast down, she added, “It’s all rigged anyway.”

“Bright Star,” he whispered. Had his face not remained so emotionless, she would have thought he said the name in horror.

“Why do you call me that?” she asked. He didn’t answer. She wished he would say something else, wished he would offer her something to make everything real and normal again. But he offered her nothing.

Bright Star leaned closer to him and began to listen. She listened for his heartbeat, and then she listened to the very flow of his blood. Like a strong river, it sounded, strong enough for rapids. He was tense. And then, slowly, it came: I don’t know why you are as you are today, but I know you are mine, and whether I like it or not I am yours. Do you hear me, Bright Star? Her eyes snapped upward, glistening, she watched him. He was angry, very angry.

“Jacob,” Bright Star pleaded, “What are you?”

“Better question,” his gaze was accusing. In that moment, Bright Star knew he hated her. “What are you?”

It was then that Jacob stood and clutched his hands to either side of her head. For a moment, there was a ringing in her ears so powerful that it snapped to silence as she felt hot blood trickling down either side of her neck. Her knees buckled and her body became weightless, nothing. The word curse repeated as an accusation in her mind. And then nothing. She was gone.

 

 

Chapter 2

The Precocial

 

On the morning before Jackson Rush met Bright Star, the two occupants of the small apartment on Kolter Avenue found themselves in the same room. That was a rare occurrence. Unsurprisingly, the silence between the brothers was at once intimate and awkward. Jackson, the always-favored son, leaned on one arm against the counter watching his brother Jacob eat and grunt messages. “Ronald called five million times last night.”

“Randall?” Jackson corrected his brother, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, Ronald. I was surprised you didn’t answer. Oh, and once this morning.”

“Huh,” was all Jackson said. He pressed a button on his cell phone. He’d had it on silent all night.

His brother glanced up at him, then back down. “Glad you can be so nonchalant about it. I didn’t get you up this morning because I heard you up and walking around all night. I know you didn’t sleep.”

“No.” Jackson sighed. He closed his eyes and subtly shook his head.

Rush pushed back in his seat. “What the hell is it, Jacks?”

For a moment, there was silence. Jackson smiled. Or grimaced. Either way, he was biting the inside of his lips and flexing his hands into fists.

“What do you think?” Jackson asked into the quiet.

Jacob Rush, called Rush by all who knew him, didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to eat. His shoulders were hunched over a bowl at the kitchen table. His fist was wrapped around a large spoon. He shoveled cereal into his mouth. His jaws seemed to snap, his teeth clicking on the metal spoon. Milk dribbled down his chin. Jackson watched the play in the skinny forearms protecting the bowl. His brother looked like a starved animal.

Jackson grabbed a peach from a basket on the table and flexed his fingers around it. He looked at his brother again. Rush’s forearms circled the bowl as if he were guarding it. “Rush, can I ask you something?”

Rush, the brother who had a different father, the brother with dark skin and dark haunting eyes turned his attention to the golden one. He sat back, pushing the bowl away. He waited as if patience was a gift rarely granted.

“If you could… you know… do what I do, would you feel compelled to go into the Service? Or maybe not go in to the Service,” he amended quickly, “but at least do something to help other people. You know, to save them.”

The dark eyes that blinked at Jackson were flat, the expression blank. His brother went completely still. His chest didn’t even rise and fall with breath. Jackson faltered. What had he said? Jackson swallowed. His brother frightened him. There was no explanation for it, but there was no avoiding it. When Jackson was younger, he told himself that he had just been intimidated by Rush’s silence. But no, he’d gotten older, a little wiser, and now knew the only truth. Rush scared him shitless.

Physically, it made little sense. They were night and day, to Jackson’s favor. Jackson knew he was handsome with his golden skin, dark blond hair, and light brown eyes. But beyond good looks, he was physically impressive, to say the least. Just shy of six feet tall and thickly muscled, he was built like the athlete and current Serviceman he was. It was part of his regimen to keep in rigorous shape through an aggressive cardio and weight-training schedule. He’d won the endurance trial each year for the past three at the Service. His body possessed an obvious strength.

Rush, on the other hand, was a sallow, sickly caramel with dark, kinky hair. That same dark hair perpetually accented his jaw, neck, forearms and legs. Even though he wore layer upon layer of clothing, Rush’s tall frame appeared almost slight. Any muscle he possessed seemed to be of the lean, naturally occurring kind. Shirtless, his skin was pale and jaundiced with smudges defining each of his ribs. Similar smudges were found beneath his cheekbones. Jackson found himself urging his brother to eat more all the time, but it didn’t matter. Rush ate voraciously, relent. . .