Surge: Bolt Saga Volume Five (Bolt Saga #13-15) Read online

  “Perfect, baby. You’re doing great.” Though Reece is still joyous, a deeper thunder rumbles through his voice. Oh, God. When he starts sounding like the human version of these cliffs, my senses turn the texture of the sediment that’s collected behind the high end of the dam, only without the picturesque trees that have taken root there.

  “Shit,” I mutter beneath my breath. “Shit, shit, shit.” But thankfully, I’m able to shove aside the arousal, steady in my main purpose again. I’m here, I’m pumped, and I’m ready to take on the next part of my training course like the badass goddess that I am.

  That I need to prove myself as…

  No.

  That I am.

  Now that my inner cheering section has my back, I square my stance and fully face the six wooden “bad guy” cutouts Reece has positioned between here and the spillway on the other side of the dam.

  “You’re doing great, beautiful!” The man’s mighty baritone, always my ultimate inspiration, blazes up to me with perfect timing. I breathe in, welcoming more of his fire in my mind, my muscles—and every pore pulsing for him in ecstatic, electric love.

  “Fry those fuckers where they stand, baby.” But his energy doesn’t dilute his voice’s defined dip into lustier registers. “And then come back to me for your equally hot reward.”

  I spurt out a laugh. Toss aside my pretend battle batons before calling down, “Nothing like a not-so-subtle incentive, Mr. Richards.”

  Reece’s chuckle is uniquely audible due to the natural echo chamber we’re in. “Since when am I subtle with you, Miss Crist?”

  I seesaw my head and crack my knuckles. “Valid point.” Coming from the man who delivers the best rewards on earth—namely the kind that leave my throat raw from screaming and my sex numb from a thousand jolts of ecstasy.

  But the guy’s cutout building skills…

  I seriously need to talk to him about leaving this stuff up to Wade and Alex. But before that happens, I need to get through this. And before that happens, I need to make sure I’m not laughing my ass off. So I tuck my head down, quelling a snorty snicker. And another. Oh, dear hell. My man has painted these big wooden “bad guys” so badly, they resemble South Park characters instead of legitimate Consortium henchmen.

  No. Really.

  I lean out a little, assessing the thick wood shapes. Though the obstacles increase in height and thickness down the line, I still swear the fourth one down the line is Bebe. That, or a really bad piece of Sawyer Foley concept art. It could go either way.

  As thoroughly as I’d love to jibe the man I love about exactly that, the silent conclusion is as far as I can take the ribbing. It’s time to get to work. Real work. To apply myself fully to this “mission” as if it’s the real deal—and that means viewing the cutouts as if they’re really Consortium soldiers, not cute pieces of wood painted to look like TV youngsters. I have to start thinking like a warrior myself.

  To turn Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and even that really funny Bebe into enemies who have been ordered to exact some deep damage to me.

  All of them—except the cutout waiting at the end.

  She’s special, as symbolized by the care that was obviously spent on painting her big catlike eyes and red feline smirk. And even though he didn’t bother with the sleek black hair and the matching latex catsuit, I already get the reference.

  And I’m prepared to take Faline Garand all the way down.

  To make up for the first time I was given the chance to do so—and freaking blew it.

  I had the bitch. Dead to damn rights. Splayed beneath me, helpless as a fish on a pier. That should have resulted in her being dead in other ways too, but it hadn’t—and as understanding as Reece was, and still is, about my lapse, I’ve already looked into his mind a thousand times about what has to happen in the aftermath of it.

  There can’t be another aftermath.

  Right now, I can’t even fathom what that would look like—considering Faline’s decided she needs to be a member of the electric mutants club too. The powers she displayed back in July, from throwing an invisible web on the air to some advanced levitation moves, was more than enough proof for us all. But I doubt the woman is going to settle for simply making Rice Crispy treats for the team’s fundraiser. She’s probably already changing the T-shirts from Team Bolt to Team Bitch.

  But that’s never going to happen.

  Which is why I get to work.

  With all the instincts he’s been teaching me to unlock inside. With every cell of my blood and force of my soul, abandoning the woman known as Emmalina Crist. I have to access something new. Be something new. An entity of primal purpose and cold intent, despite the fire I must access to bring it to life. In many ways, a creature that was born on that rainy afternoon in New York—for every time I must go to this mode, I start with that wrath-filled woman. She rises inside, helping to push back doors in my psyche until I reach the inner sanctum where the cauldron of my hottest rage burns.

  From there, it boils and sluices into my blood.

  Which twists around my bones.

  Which fires into my muscles.

  Which propels me forward along the top of the dam, undaunted and unafraid and unstoppable.

  Which fires every long, lunging stomp I take in my badass boots, facing off to the line of enemies before me. And now, they really are enemies. I don’t know the difference anymore. My mind shows me a mob of grimacing Consortium goons, and the firestorm through my whole body confirms that truth.

  At my center, a white-hot nucleus burns brighter and bigger than ever before. It rolls furiously back over itself, spinning faster and hotter, like one of the Ground Bloomer fireworks I loved as a kid. But this thing isn’t like a pretty colored flower. The sparks flying off its center are like shrapnel, nicking my ribs and clawing my guts. I cry out, protesting the assault, but I already know it’s no use.

  The invading energy is mine.

  “Yaaaaaaahh!” I scream it as fire rages up every inch of my throat, making no other sound possible. As I repeat it, tiny sparks dance off my tongue and flicker at the edges of my gaze. I blink away the distractions, staying true to my fiery focus, and zero in on my first target.

  And take a surging stomp closer.

  Closer.

  My chest turns into a hot bellows. My blood reaches critical temperature. I direct my arms toward the first asshole in the lineup, jacking one side of my mouth into a deceptively friendly smile. Reece’s approving grunt comes through our comm line. He’s watching every move I make; I feel the intensity of his scrutiny as clearly as if he’s pulsed himself all the way up the rock wedge. If he sees me conveying anything other than a façade of “Superhero Zen,” the man’s going to let me know it, my concentration be damned.

  But I’m on my game today.

  Yes. Yessss.

  I’m a glowing goddess.

  A supercharged seraph.

  A bolted, badass bunny.

  And ready to take out this line of assholes and stand face-to-face with the bitch who runs them all.

  Heat fills my arms, stinging my veins and glowing through my skin, before it collects in the center of my palms and then surges out through my fingers like rays of surreal sun. Only then do I feel it sneak into my grin as well, adding to the euphoria of my electrified high.

  “Someone call for a pizza?” I quip at the first henchman—right before whipping my fingers up as if flicking off peanut butter. But the gold stuff in the air isn’t Jiffy Extra Crunchy. They’re balls of pure heat. The globs smack hard into the thick wood, melting it away like acid through steel, until all that’s left is a pile of smoking balsa chunks.

  Asshat Number One, down for the count.

  Before I even step over the rubble, another burst of heat forms between my ribs.

  And just like before, blasts out along my limbs.

  Collects in my hands.

  Sizzles out my fingers.

  I lift a confident smile at the second baddie of the obstacle cou
rse. This cutout is bigger than the first one, and deliberately so. I’m not surprised, because Reece has already trained me not to be—the same way I know he’s watching me and scoring me now not just based on how I tackle the “enemy,” but where. Every combatant I face will have a different center of gravity and a different way in which it’s handled.

  Which I get a giant taste of now, as the bull-sized bruiser comes at me with full-throttle speed and fire-breathing fury. No; really. Reece has mounted the cutout on a rolling base so it coasts along a short length of slanted track, causing it to pick up speed with every inch it covers. And yes, he’s even rigged the cutout with smoke blowers, just to make things more fun.

  But I don’t try to charge through the fog.

  I crouch. And then wait.

  And wait. And wait.

  So the patience game is more excruciating than I thought it would be. But I’ll deal. I have to. My blood burns to attack, but I let the bull loom bigger and bigger and bigger, until the second he’s about to bash into me.

  I dip back and to the side, leading with my shoulder and head. Within seconds, I’ve robbed the “attacker” of his prize like a toreador sidestepping a rushing bull—

  Only this bull doesn’t have time to recover and come snorting back around for more.

  Thanks to the heat I’ve directed at the front of the short track, the wooden beast rolls off the end of the rails, down the steep slope of the dam, and all the way into the dark jade water below. I watch the lagoon swallow up those half-dozen chunks with a winsome shrug and a sarcastic murmur. “You didn’t play nice, buster. No pizza for you.”

  Surprise, surprise—there’s no pizza for Cutout Jerkface Numbers Three, Four, or Five either. Two of them come at me at once, equipped with whirling battle knives mounted on spinning wheels, forcing me to access a lot of the close-quarter battle moves I’ve been learning from Sawyer Foley over the last two months. Despite the extensive prep from the guy, whom I’ve now determined to be either former special ops or ex Assassin Brotherhood, it’s difficult to dodge both rivals at once—thanks once more to Reece’s “just for fun” innovations. Since each cutout hulk is also equipped with a turbo air fan, they wobble and squirm more than the average five-layer balsa plank. Then there’s the way they’re harshing the mojo of my magma bombs with their violent crosswinds.

  Finally, after dropping to my belly and pushing the heat up, I’m able to weaken the metal track beneath at least one of them. With another “Yaaahhh,” I curve the softened metal with a bunch of hard kicks, forcing Jerkface Number Three to gore the crap out of his successor.

  “Silly assholes,” I rasp between hard breaths, recovering on my back. “You want two for one and free extra cheese? On a Saturday when UCLA is facing off against USC?”

  No pizza for them either.

  But it looks like Cretin Number Six wants the extra-large everything pie, with comped garlic knots and Mountain Dew—and is also refusing to take no for an answer. This asshole’s taller than all the rest, but that’s not what has my spine tensing and my neck hairs prickling. That comes from the gazillion bullet-sized holes drilled into the slab. There’s hardly enough balsa left to keep the cutout’s structure intact…

  And I’m damn sure I know why.

  But I sure as hell don’t like that I do.

  Because as soon as I pivot and start marching closer, all of my instincts are validated. Reece turns on the floodlights behind the cutout. The glare’s so bright I can’t see my own feet, let alone where I’m stepping. The damn things are likely showing up on a few satellite feeds from Mars itself. I’m plunged into a sensory deprivation tank, everything sucked away by light instead of darkness. After a few seconds, there’s no denying the urge to fight it—

  With a sun flare of my own.

  I take a second to breathe deep. To focus fully.

  My mutated blood doesn’t let me down. It answers with atomic intensity, turning my center into nothing but white and gold light. It’s permeating and excruciating, ripping out a war scream that makes my earlier cry sound like a baby’s babble. I struggle to keep my hands extended, fighting past the crushing craving to coil my fingers into fists, even as the light strands between my fingers thicken to the texture of full webbing.

  Webbing?

  Okay, kids. Full stop.

  I raise my hands to see sizzling strands looping back and forth between my stretched fingers. But the power—my power—doesn’t stop at the webbing. As I watch, nerves racing and breaths pumping, the jolts combine and extend, taking over my fingers and making my nail beds look like pressed stars.

  No.

  “Pressed stars” is a cute name for nail polish. Now is no time for cute. I feel more like a walking tractor beam now, complete with the crazy-ass variations on my overall balance and perspective.

  Including the way my power flows in as well as out.

  But is that necessarily a bad thing?

  By the time I’m done asking it of myself, I’m already figuring out the answer. I stop, not even trying to take any more steps, while pushing my hands up and out again, letting my cells experiment with the back-and-forth dynamic of the energy. The tactic is either a signature on my death warrant—overloading things on the “in” valve could be as dangerous as overflowing everything outward—or a breakthrough that’ll become a valuable secret weapon for Team Bolt. I’m banking on the latter, staking my tactic on the philosophies from Sawyer’s Jiu Jitsu lessons. Observe. Conserve. Counteract. Counterbalance. Then control…

  Only in my case, there’s an extra step. An important one.

  “Absorb.”

  As soon as I whisper the word into existence, my body recognizes it.

  Embraces it.

  Enacts it.

  The nets between my fingers begin to vibrate. Then hum. Then sing.

  Weirdly, that is the best word for it.

  I feel a smile breach my lips as the music intensifies, like Andalusian flutes mixed with electric harps, a sound that’s space-age but primitive at the same time. I look up in wonder. Is the canyon itself singing the harmony? I swear, as I watch the wind in the trees, that they’re swaying in time to the otherworldly rhythm.

  As it resounds louder…

  Plays bolder…

  Surges brighter…

  Sucking up every spectrum of light in its path.

  Holy shit.

  Even the natural light.

  In the space where the cutout just was, it looks like some nature spirit has walked in and washed the scene with a giant spectral paintbrush. There’s literally nothing there—or so it seems.

  I walk forward, my hands still webbed. I stop as soon as my outstretched fingers ram into the hole-ridden cutout. The only parts of the obstacle I can see now are the two places I’m still touching. As soon as I retract my hands, they disappear again.

  “Holy…”

  “Shit.” Reece, freshly completing his pulse-and-bounce up the face of the dam, finishes with a shocked flourish for us both. He steps over, nearly facing off with me. Mirrors my open gape with every carved angle of his bold face. Pushing harsh, heavy breaths in and out of his bare, hewn torso—

  That, thanks to the large cutout between us, I shouldn’t be able to see at all.

  Not that I’m actually complaining about the view, but…

  “Reece?”

  He’s attempting to do the same thing I just have—except when he taps at the wood slab, nothing happens. He looks like a Montmartre mime, if France bred mimes who wore nothing but shitkickers, black battle leathers, and burnished eight-packs.

  “Emmalina. Holy hell.”

  More astonishment clearly dives over him, imparting more of the mime hunk vibe. His jaw works up and down, but no sounds come out.

  Finally he stammers, “You…how the hell did you…”

  “You think I know?” I grimace. My hands are really starting to hurt. The rest of me feels like hell’s magma core.

  “You…you sucked in all that light. M
ade it a part of you. And then the whole damn thing—”

  “No shit.”

  “Velvet?” He’s traded out the amazement for apprehension. “Em, are you—” And in one second of lightning speed he’s at my side, cradling my crumple to my knees. “Fuck.” He lowers with me, gathering me into his lap.

  “It…hurts,” I mumble into his chest. Damn it. Of all the times for the man to smell so freaking good. Sunshine and sweat are such an intoxicating mix with his masculine musk, the only detail I can stand to commit to consciousness before another wave of agony hits me.

  “Crap.”

  I force my head to tilt up. “What does that mean?”

  “Sorry, baby.” The resignation on his face copies the intent of his tone. “You’ve just had the chance to train new muscles, if that makes any sense.”

  “Kind of.” He’s speaking more to Lydia’s wheelhouse now, not mine.

  “Think of it like prepping for a marathon and getting past your first ten-mile mark.”

  “Do I have to?”

  His answering smile, so tender and concerned, almost makes me regret my glare. “Damn it, Emma,” he murmurs. “I really am sorry. I was hoping the mutation wouldn’t affect you like it did me, but…”

  “No such luck?” I attempt a laugh, but there’s going to be no good fortune with that either. Before I get much further, the magma from hell rises over me again, claiming me with twice its awful fire. “Oh, fuckity-fuck-fuck!” But just as fast, my teeth are clattering and every inch of my body is racked by shivers. And I thought the hangover after Duncan Black’s Halloween party was the worst I’d ever feel in my life.

  “It’s okay, baby.” As Reece croons it, I’m aware of him cradling me closer but then fully rising. The canyon, so much my bestie a minute ago, is now a sickening collection of weaving colors and textures. “Don’t fight it. That makes it worse. Let it happen. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

  His last few syllables are noise after the five I fixate on in horror. “Just let it happen?” I spit, enduring a fresh fire infusion to my blood. “Are…are y-y-you f-f-f-freaking kidding me?” And then the ice again, turning all my fevered sweat back into ice.