Bright Star (42 page)

“When he came… when Rush came, it was—to sound a little cliché—it was like the sun coming out. The pain subsided to where it was like it was there but inconsequential. And then nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Monk repeated. “No pain. No crash. Everything was set right once again as if it had never happened. But it had happened, we all knew it, and somehow, without physical evidence, we could all feel it. I could explain it to you in an equation, a proof. However, to put it simply, the High Energy was left. True, some was used to right our wrong, but the rest seemed to stay inside me. To blend and become part of what was already there, to make me more than I had ever been. I tell you this, but you know it. You may not be able to remember your experience, but it has been a part of you your whole life. Rush has been a part of you.”

Jackson didn’t respond.

“I don’t have to tell you. You know,” Monk insisted. “Still, with the enhanced High Energy, I started to see as she saw. I am his child, born of his Talent, but it was Bright Star who made this happen. She led me to the sight.”

“And in your sight you lost faith?”

“Faith?” Monk chuckled without humor. “No, in my sight, my faith strengthened. My servitude was complete. I learned something more important than any of those things that Bright Star holds as tenets:
Rush didn’t want me to die
.”

Jackson could say nothing. His eyes began to water and he coughed to hide the closing of his throat. Rush didn’t want me to die. The words were haunting and pure. He wept silently, failing to comprehend why those words had such a profound impact on him.

“You’re crying,” Monk remarked. “But you don’t know why.”

“Everyone reads my mind,” Jackson muttered bitterly.

“You may not believe this, Jack…” Monk flashed a quick grin “But half the time, no one has to. You wear your emotions on your sleeve.”

“Who is she?”

“I can’t tell you who she is. It would be a betrayal to them both.”

“Nobody can tell me a fuckin—”

Monk raised a hand and interrupted him. “But I can tell you her nature. She is born of destruction. She struggled with her nature as I struggled against my own nature, as you struggle with the knowledge of your brother’s greater power. But in the end, hers is not a struggle she can win. She knew that once, and tried to set things right. But Rush couldn’t let her…”

“You mean the first time they met.”

“Yes.” Monk nodded. “She tried to end it then, but even then he loved her and couldn’t let her do it.”

“Rush doesn’t love her. He told me.”

“Rush doesn’t love Bright Star, that’s true. But the other…”

“Who?”

Monk ignored this question. Instead, he continued his warning. “I tried to stop her. I tried to keep the truth from her as long as possible, but she is strong. I don’t think any of us besides Rush will ever know the true boundary of her power. She sucked the vision from my mind. Jackson, Bright Star has committed murder. She will commit murder. She will never stop committing murder. She will destroy us all, has destroyed us all.”

“She is not a force of destruction.”

“She is, just as she is a daughter and a sister,” the monk snapped. Then, as if in meditation, his eyes closed briefly. When he opened them again, he smiled. He sank to the ground and sat cross-legged before Jackson. “Sit,” he instructed.

Jackson dropped to the ground beside him.

“Do you believe the world is in danger?” the monk asked.

“Yes,” Jackson answered, a tick in his jaw.

“Do you know what that danger is?”

Jackson’s ignorance was a live thing. He shook his head. “Rush wouldn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t want you to try and interfere, even though he’s already planted a Shift that will prevent you from leaving this place anyway.”

Jackson’s eyes widened. Mentally he started to reach outside of the compound as he tested Monk’s words. In seconds he found he could not see beyond the walls of his home.

“It doesn’t matter.” Monk waved his hand. “Since I know you are as powerless as I am, I will tell you what he would not.” He measured Jackson with his gaze. “In the simplest terms, she is linking herself to every human being in this world. We are all becoming Followers. We are becoming her as she is becoming us. This includes me. This includes you. And when we are all one, she will do as is her nature.”

Jackson’s heart ceased to beat in his chest. He felt it stop, seize, fold in on itself. He had to force his veins open wide to save himself. He knew what she was going to do. Perhaps he had known it before this monk had told him. He couldn’t breathe, and his right eye started to close involuntarily. “She can’t do that,” he rasped.

“She will do it.”

“No, you don’t understand, Monk, she
can’t
do it. Even with all of the High Energy she’s harnessed. She doesn’t have enough of it to affect that kind of Shift.”

“You’re right,” Monk told him. “She needs more, and she needs to focus it.”

High Energy

Bright Star needed High Energy. She needed lots of it. She needed as much as she could take in order for this Shift to bind her, then kill her. Her eyes no longer dimmed, they were constant and near blinding blue beams as she hovered above the city steeped in High Energy. She needed to see the Holy Man again.

*

She dived like a striking eagle through the air. She pierced the ceiling of the temple and stood in front of him. The monk knelt at the altar and she was sure he waited for her. Bright Star crouched beside him like a starved beast waiting to pounce. Her eyes beamed directly into his. Neither Bright Star nor Monk spoke. They didn’t even communicate in their common mental path.

“So you understand now?” Monk asked her slowly.

“Yesss,” she whispered. Her words were sibilant and her body snaked awkwardly from side to side. Her hands lashed out until she held the Monk’s head in her hands, then she leaned forward to kiss him and suck the life from his body, never realizing that he took just a bit from hers.

When she was done, she howled as the High Energy coursed through her. She dropped the body and located the other occupants of the palace. She did not want to hunt them. But she had no choice. She was going to eat them all alive.

One by one, she found them. She lured them to her with a pair of inviting open arms. When they were near, she said the Energy in honor of Monk and their sacrifice. She lured Stream, pressed her lips right to his temple. The she clasped strong fingers to the base of his skill and his High Energy, his very life force, drained from him. He dropped to the ground before she was even finished. Bright Star wavered in the air as her body struggled to hold all of that Energy inside, but she would continue, she had to.

She found all of her children and she ate them all until one and a half remained. Where was Point? Where was the woman who would help her to harness all of this Energy… to focus it? Where was that silver blue star that lived within in her? The star that was second only to Rush with its High Energy. She wouldn’t need others, if only she could have that star.

She called to the mother. “Point!” Her voice was loud, ringing, traveling throughout the palace. Point did not come. Then with little Energy, Bright Star reached out to find the most devoted Follower. There was no trace of her. Nothing. But she knew they couldn’t be gone. Point couldn’t leave. Point wouldn’t leave. No. Rush was hiding them somewhere. Hiding them from her.

“Point,” she called again, this time adding a powerful suggestion to her voice in hopes of coaxing the expectant mother out of hiding. It didn’t work. Bright Star was torn then. She didn’t know whether she should go ahead and attempt her Shift while the absorbed Energy was hotly coursing through her, or if she should expend Energy finding Point and the unborn child who now possessed something of hers. The roar that tore from her was deep and low, shaking the walls of the palace.

With a feral and frustrated growl, Bright Star decided to rise through the palace to the roof. She would have to perform this ceremony alone and without Point or the baby’s life Energy.

Wed

Jackson went in search of Monk. The whole compound was eerily empty, and he couldn’t stand the waiting alone. He’d tried to walk outside, but Monk had been right, the Shift Rush had used was insurmountable. But Jackson didn’t find Monk.

Her copper head was bowed in prayer. Her milky skin was radiant. Bright Star was kneeling in the temple with her hands clasped reverently in front of her. The serenity of her pose only served to underscore the raging Energy pulsing beneath the surface. The passive violence he sensed within her caused him to reach out for Monk. He should have been able to locate him, but just like everyone else, he was just…gone.

“What have you done?” Jackson demanded. His fingers dug into her upper arms as he shook her. She flopped limply like a rag doll. Even as her body was relaxed, he could feel the High Energy and Perma-Shift inside of her coursing strong. His hands started to vibrate painfully from the rapid, pulsing force. It was strong enough to spill around them and cause metallic items to levitate.

“You don’t understand,” she cried.

“No,” Jackson countered, “You don’t understand! You will ensure that he saves the world by destroying it yourself. You no longer care about anyone. You are addicted to his thirst for your life. You are destroying him!”

“Rush can’t be destroyed.”

“All things die.”

“He won’t,” Bright Star challenged. As her words became more forceful, her eyes began to beam blue light at him. The light bathed Jackson’s face and he tried to resist the leap it caused in his pants. Still, after all this time he was unsure if the light from her eyes elicited this response. He didn’t know if she had some preternatural power over men, or if he simply loved her. No, not quite true. He was certain that he loved her.

She stood and neared him. Her blue eyes turned upward as she approached him to keep him in her thrall. She was so small as she neared him, her copper head thrown back and her beaming eyes holding him. “Haven’t you noticed? Can you not see him as I can? He is growing stronger if anything, more unstoppable if anything, more responsible.”

“Not more responsible. Quicker only to save you.”

“Jackson, you know that’s not true,” she chided. “He no longer cares to save me. He hates me.”

“He doesn’t,” Jackson argued half-heartedly.

“He does,” she insisted with a sure nod. “And he hated the Followers.”

Jackson did not fail to note her use of the past tense.
Hated
. “What have you done, Bright Star?”

Instead of answering him, she said simply with a sad shake of her head and in little more than a whisper, “I can’t have your High Energy, can I? You are Jackson, The Impervious. I can’t take it from you. He won’t let me.”

“What have you done?” Jackson screamed into her face. He wiped the moisture from his eyes in furious desperation. “Bright Star, what did you do?” He shook her and shook her until he thought he would break her. Then he did.

The suggestion shattered into tiny pieces as he heard the animal growl from the courtyard.

Rush! Rush!
Jackson called mentally. He cast a wide net with his mind trying to reach the brother who had shut him out for so many days.
Rush, please tell me where you are. Tell me what’s happening
.

The response was distant but strong. His brother was far away, but he was in good health.
Jackson, Bright Star has lost control. She is on a rampage and she will kill everyone with High Energy in her path. She will kill everyone
.