Lord of Lightning Read online

  Lord of Lightning

  Suzanne Forster

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  A Biography of Suzanne Forster

  Prologue

  THE CHILDREN SAW IT FIRST.

  The iridescent green cloud hung in the evening sky like an ocean mist, clinging to the darkening foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. It glowed oddly, almost transparent for several seconds. And then its color deepened to a rich emerald flame against the twilight horizon.

  The two youngsters stood side by side, transfixed.

  “What is it, Danny?” the girl asked her older brother. She brushed dark bangs from her serious gray eyes and pressed closer to the much-larger boy, tugging on his shirt sleeve. The gravity in her expression contradicted her waiflike appearance. She was slight to the point of spindliness, and looked to be little more than a grade-schooler. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, Em,” Danny said, hushed. “It looks as if it’s coming from the rock quarry.”

  Set back into the foothills, the quarry was nearly a quarter mile away. It was partially visible through a clearing of thickly wooded sycamores, and as the children began a cautious approach, they noticed a log cabin tucked back into the trees. A windowpane was broken, and the weathered old building appeared to be deserted.

  The girl hung back a moment as the boy picked his way through the undergrowth toward the cabin. “Oh, Danny, look at this!” she cried.

  She dropped to a crouch near the limp form of a sparrow hawk, its graceful head wrenched backward as through its neck had been broken.

  “Don’t touch it, Em,” Danny called out to her as she bent to scoop the bird up. “It’s dead. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “But it’s so beautiful—”

  “Emily!”

  Danny’s voice had a frantic sound. As Emily looked up he was sprinting toward her, waving her away from the bird.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “I heard something in the bushes behind the cabin.” He caught hold of her hand and pulled her to her feet, dragging her with him toward the cover of the nearby sycamores. “Come on, Em. Something’s out there!”

  Emily’s breath burned through her nose as they huddled behind a thicket of mountain laurel and manzanita, their eyes fixed on the cabin. “What do you think it is?”

  The answer constricted in Danny’s throat.

  A silvery flash of light appeared in the wooded darkness across the way, and he jerked Em close as if to silence an imminent scream. Immobile as graveyard statuary, the two children watched the silvery flashes draw nearer, taking on substance and form.

  The luminescent being that emerged from the side of the cabin moved like a man, a very large man, encased in a shimmering metallic skin from head to toe. His features were hidden from view by the dark glow of a face shield, and the apparatus he carried looked ominously like a space-age weapon.

  Em and Danny ducked down as the man scanned the area thoroughly, saw the bird, and walked to it. He knelt down and murmured something, then he picked up the limp form and touched its head. The bird twitched and went still again.

  Silver flashed in the waning light as the man stood. Suddenly the bird fluttered in the cupped hands, and a weak cry burst from its broken body. In the next moment the creature was all flying wings and graceful, harrowing energy. Silhouetted by an iridescent green aura, it soared into the falling night, its cries echoing sweetly in the foothills.

  One

  HAD LISE ANDERSON foreseen the fateful consequences of roaming the Tools ’R Us Hardware Store with a gimpy shopping cart that bright June afternoon, she might have decided to trade the conveyance in for a smoother running model. She might even have decided to shop on another day. At another hardware store.

  But Lise wasn’t thinking about consequences as she browsed in the electronics section, mulling over step-down transformers and rheostats, just two of the high-tech gizmos she needed for her class’s science project the next day. She was wondering how in the world she was going to teach twenty rambunctious summer school students to build a model metrorail when she had trouble telling a monkey wrench from a pair of duckbill pliers.

  “‘Connect the red wire to the blue terminal at junction A,’” she mumbled, reading the transformer instructions to herself as she muscled her wayward shopping cart down the aisle. A pyramid of oil cans loomed to her left. She saw it out of the corner of her eye and made an automatic adjustment for it as she continued reading. “‘Make sure the local electric power is AC. If the wires touch adjacent terminals, a severe shock can result.’”

  That was when her shopping cart escaped from her.

  With a will of its own the cart locked into a curve, wheels jamming, ball bearings screeching. Lise threw her body weight behind it, trying to right the stubborn thing with one hand while she clutched the transformer with the other.

  “Swell,” she muttered, unsurprised. She was a battle-scarred veteran of the renegade shopping cart syndrome. Her particular peeve was with carts that headed straight for parked cars in the store lots, as though they were designed to search out and destroy.

  She twisted, heaved, and swore under her breath, but none of her gyrations made any difference. The cart lurched like a demon possessed for the oil cans.

  One last urgent yank brought the cart around. Wheels screeched, axles ground, and Lise heaved a sigh of relief. As she squeaked past the pyramid and rolled into the plumbing section, she glanced behind her. Home free. Not even one can of thirty-weight motor oil had tumbled to the floor.

  She never saw the other shopping cart approaching.

  Or its operator.

  “Oh, no!” The transformer slipped from her hand as the two carts collided head on, and a shower of electronic minutia bounced out of Lise’s upper tray. Throw switches, battery sleeves, switch brackets, and connectors flew every which way, scattering like a string of pearls.

  “I’m sorry,” Lise cried as she dropped into a crouch and began scooping up debris. “My shopping cart—”

  “Right,” he said, laughing softly. “The shopping cart from hell. Mine too.”

  Lise barely registered the low ripple of masculine laughter as she knelt to clean up the mess. She was too busy piling connectors and switch brackets into the crook of her arm. She reached for the transformer just as the man knelt to help her.

  Lise saw it coming, another collision, but she was as helpless to stop it as she had been the cart. Her bare arm brushed against his as they touched the metal casing at exactly the same instant. Lise felt as though she’d stuck a wet wire in a live socket. Their hands met and the jolt of electricity that rolled up her arm seemed hot enough to scorch off the fine blond hairs.

  What happened next seemed to defy the laws of physics. Lise stared in disbelief as a tiny arc of green lightning connected their fingers. Spiky and white-hot, it was visible even in the harsh glare of the store lights. “Good Lord,” she breathed, realizing that the spark couldn’t have come from the transformer. It wasn’t plugged in!

  Seemingly endless seconds flashed by before Lise had the presence of mind to pull her hand away. She had no idea how much time had actually elapsed. The entire incident played like a horror movie scene in slow motion.

  In the aftermath of the physical shock, a ringing sensation filled her ears, and the odor that burned in her nostrils smelled faintly of sulfur, as though a match had just been struck.

&nb
sp; “What happened?” she asked as the man gripped her arm and helped her to her feet, steadying her as she emptied her load of electronic paraphernalia into the tray.

  “I think we shorted out,” he said.

  “We certainly did.” Lise laughed shakily and stepped away from him. “I’m surprised we didn’t black out the entire store.”

  Lise’s first impression was of faded blue jeans, a chambray shirt, and a log-splitter’s shoulders. An outdoorsman, she thought, registering his dusty gold hair and several days’ growth of beard. As their gazes connected Lise felt another kind of lightning. A type of déjà vu—not quite the feeling that she’d met him before, but that she knew him somehow. The sense of recognition was powerful. Its clarity confounded Lise because there was nothing to confirm it. Her mind searched for the details of a meeting, any kind of a memory, but she came up empty-handed. There was no corroborating data, no personal history to be found, not even a glimmer. “Do I know you?” she asked.

  He took a slow, contemplative moment to study her. “I find myself wishing I could say yes. But no, you don’t know me. It’s impossible.”

  Impossible ...

  Lise examined him quite openly then, taking in his height—well over six feet—and his husky, blue-collar build. Dark blond hair cascaded carelessly to his shoulders, and the beard that chased his angular jawline was shot through with gold and a darker hue, bronze. A head-turner, she thought. Not handsome detail for detail, but arresting taken as a whole. If infinity had a color, she decided, it would be the blue of his eyes. To describe them as dense didn’t begin to do them justice. They looked as though they could absorb all the light in the room.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “You remind me of someone.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know ...” Usually Lise wasn’t one to equivocate, even when she was off balance, which she very definitely was at the moment. But she couldn’t shake the confusion, or the certainty that he was someone she’d met, perhaps even a shaping influence in her past.

  And then it came to her. Of course, she thought, smiling to herself as she remembered the stories her Scandinavian mother used to entertain her with on rainy afternoons. Legends about flaxen-haired beauties, about seafaring Vikings and Norse gods. Odin, Heimdall, and Thor—men like golden lions.

  As a child she’d spent endless hours imagining herself being carried off by some enthralling Viking warlord, sailing through stormy seas on his long ship. That was where she knew this man from, she realized, her childhood fantasies, the pages of ancient mythology. Slightly disconcerted, she brushed stray hairs back from her face, and felt the flush of warmth in her cheeks.

  “Are you new here in Shady Tree?” she asked, aware that the store’s customers were making a wide and curious path around them. Of course he was, she thought. There were exactly two thousand and three residents in Shady Tree according to the latest census. Soon to be two thousand five with Peggy Latimer expecting twins. Lise knew every one of the city’s proud sons and daughters, and this fellow, with his Viking bones and hair the color of winter sunshine, wasn’t one of them.

  He scooped up the transformer and handed it to her. “I’m on vacation. A geologist. Some people call us rock hounds.”

  “I’m Lise Anderson,” she said. “The grade-school teacher.”

  “The grade-school teacher?”

  “Well, Harlan Meek usually teaches math and science, but he’s on sabbatical this summer, so I’m the only show in town.”

  Lise felt another mild shock as she took the transformer from him. Only this time it was rather a pleasant sensation. A tingly warmth spread up her arm, and her fingertips went slightly numb. “Did you feel that too?” she asked.

  He smiled unexpectedly and it did such intriguing things to his face, Lise found herself smiling back. Quite a silly smile, she imagined. If she’d ever stared at a man the way she was staring at him, she couldn’t remember when.

  “We seem to have our wires crossed,” he said.

  It was an offhand reference, a throwaway line. Lise realized, but the undertones were sexy. Even his voice was a little grainy, and the sound of it gave her an unexpected thrill. Nerves sparkled, and a depth charge headed for the reaches of her stomach. When a man’s tone went husky like that, it put a woman in mind of one thing and one thing only. Sex.

  “One of us had better be grounded the next time we touch,” she said. “Or the results could be fatal.”

  His eyes lit with laughter. “Not a bad way to go. Must be the dry weather.”

  “I don’t think weather has anything to do with it,” Lise responded softly.

  He stared at her oddly, and Lise wondered if she was being too straightforward again. She knew the folks around Shady Tree said that Lise Anderson, gentle-mannered, understated beauty though she was, was a little too plainspoken for her own good. She’d scared off all the eligible men with her honesty, they said. Lise had heard the rumors.

  He rolled his cart back and took the only item from it, a small white carton, as though he meant to leave. “You didn’t ask, but my name is Stephen Gage,” he said, tucking the box under his arm. “I’m staying in the Cooper cabin outside of town.”

  “The Cooper place? You’re really isolated out there.”

  He shrugged. “I’m used to being alone. Besides, your local mountains are supposed to have some rare mineral deposits. I wanted to check them out.”

  “Will you be around long?” Lise could hardly believe she was grilling him this way. She rarely—make that never—came onto men. She hadn’t even dated in years. At twenty-seven, people were already beginning to call her a spinster, and oddly enough, she didn’t mind. She’d never felt the need of a man underfoot. But this man was so oddly compelling with his winter smile and his electric touch, the thought of not seeing him again gave her a pang.

  “No, not long.” He inclined his head slightly as though he’d read her mind. “But I have the feeling you and I are going to run into each other again.”

  “Yes ... so do I.”

  Lise heard a soft beeping sound, and thought for one crazy moment that it was her own heartbeat. She looked around the store for a smoke alarm or a security device, and then she noticed the small black case attached to his belt. “I think your beeper’s going off,” she said.

  “Beeper? What’s that?”

  She thought he must be kidding, but he looked so totally blank, so devoid of any comprehension of the word, she quickly pointed to the case.

  He unhooked the device, smiled at her, and slipped it into his back pocket. “Thanks,” was all he said.

  They were both silent a moment, regarding each other, the situation suddenly full of promise and possibility. Lise kept thinking she ought to say something, but she had no idea what it would be. Backlit by neon, his hair was afire with silver light, like sun breaking through the rain. Lise was struck by it. She almost mentioned it, and then he saved her from the certain embarrassment. He acknowledged her with his eyes, and a barely discernible nod, and then he swung around and disappeared down the aisle.

  Lise was left to stare after him, softened and bemused. Now what was that all about, she thought. As she turned to the errant shopping cart she glanced at her watch. It took her a moment to realize that the second hand wasn’t moving. Her watch had stopped! Without knowing how she knew, she realized it had happened at exactly the moment he’d touched her.

  “He’s got a primo ray gun! I saw it. And he can make dead birds fly!”

  “Yeah! My big brother says he’s an extraterrestrial.”

  “An extra what?”

  The children’s excited voices flew through the open classroom window of Abraham Lincoln Grade School, distracting Lise as she laid out the various items for the model railroad turnpike they would be starting that morning. She listened to the chatter a moment and smiled. Last week it was Nintendo. This week it was ray guns and spacemen. The kids were always revved up about something. There must have been a science fiction
movie on TV over the weekend.

  “An extraterrestrial, barf breath!” one of the boys snorted indignantly. “Like E.T., only bigger.”

  “Yeah, butt face,” another boy chimed in, “a man from Mars!”

  Lise clicked her tongue. Later she planned to have a word with those two young men about their language. It was going to be a challenging day, she could tell. The first day of model construction. The state science fair was imminent, and her students had chosen a project beyond their abilities, she feared. Certainly beyond hers. She’d agreed because building the model metrorail would be a wonderful learning experience, and she also hoped it would make a favorable impression on the county school board.

  Lately the board had been making noises about converting the grade school into a community center and bussing the kids to Redlands, where, they contended, the students would get a better education in a more modern facility. Lise wanted to show them that Lincoln’s students were top-notch and weren’t being deprived. And what better way, she’d decided, than by winning a statewide science fair?

  “Miss Anderson, did you hear about the UFO?” The class suddenly turned its attention to her.

  “We’re being invaded, Miss Anderson, by a whole fleet of puke-green flying saucers! They landed in the rock quarry!”

  Lise nodded patiently. “What have you kids been up to? Reading those dreadful science fiction comics again?”

  A chorus rang out. “It wasn’t a comic book! It really happened!”

  Each of their versions of that weekend’s excitement was more fantastic than the next. From what Lise could determine, someone had noticed strange lights in the foothills, and although no one had actually seen the UFO, Danny Baxter claimed to have been an eyewitness to some startling occurrences. He’d seen an alien life-form, he said, a huge silver creature who packed a ray gun.

  With a little more probing, Lise determined that Danny was the only actual witness. And because she knew a little about his background, she couldn’t help but wonder if he might be making the whole thing up. The ten-year-old was from a broken home, and he’d reacted to the upheaval in his life by becoming boisterous and demanding the attention his beleaguered mother wasn’t always able to give him.