Lord of Lightning Read online

  Lise’s reaction was immediate and angry. “If Buck Thompson found a statue on the Cooper property,” she muttered, “it’s probably because he buried it there.” It hadn’t occurred to her before that Buck might have been the one to take the statues, but it made perfect sense now that she thought about it. What better way to cast suspicion on Stephen?

  Lise held up a hand and turned to her class, calming their excited buzzing. “It’s all right, gang. I’ll get to the bottom of this. Julie, take over for me,” she said, motioning Earl toward the door.

  Earl swung around the minute they were out in the hallway. “That ain’t all. Miss Anderson,” he said, his voice hushed. “I didn’t want to say it in front of the kids, but the Davenport sisters are missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They ain’t been seen since yesterday, and nobody knows where they went. Buck and the guys at Frank’s station are saying he had something to do with it—”

  “Wait a minute, Earl,” Lise cut in. “I saw Bernice last night. She was on her way home from the library. Did you check their house?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Norbert Potts stopped by there this morning when Miss Bernice didn’t show up for work. He tried calling first, but nobody answered the phone.”

  The Davenport sisters missing? Lise was trying to remember what Bernice had said last night. Nothing unusual except, Adios? Was that the word she’d used? “Adios ...” Lise said, thinking aloud, searching for a connection. “Earl! Maybe they went on that Mexican cruise they’re always talking about!”

  Earl wrinkled his nose. “Bernice Davenport would never traipse off to Mexico and leave the public library high and dry. Why, she’s been our foremost reference person for thirty-five years. And she’s never taken a day off in all that time.”

  Earl was right, of course. Neither of the Davenport sisters would do anything so irresponsible. “Well, I’m sure they’re all right.”

  “More’n I can say for your outer-space friend once Frank’s boys get hold of him,” Earl said ominously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a bunch of ’em headed for the hills about fifteen minutes ago. I s’pect they’re going to rough him up pretty good if they don’t get some answers.”

  Lise’s heart jolted. “But that’s ridiculous. Stephen didn’t do anything!” She touched the janitor’s arm, staying him while she mobilized her thoughts. “Earl, I need your help. Tell Julie to take over the class until I get back. Then, run down to city hall and tell Billy Cornmesser to get out to Stephen’s cabin as fast as he can. Tell him I’m on my way there now.”

  “You oughten to go all by yourself!” Earl called after Lise as she sprinted down the hallway. “Billy ain’t going to be no help, Miss Anderson! He’s down at the courthouse testifying on some traffic thing.”

  Lise shook her head and kept running. She would have to handle it on her own then. There wasn’t time to find anyone else, especially an ally who could be expected to take Stephen’s side against Buck Thompson and his friends. Perhaps she should have sought Buck out herself and tried to talk some sense into him. Their infrequent dates had been years ago, but Buck had never stopped asking her out. And there was something distinctly territorial about him—a cocky swagger that warned other men off. Lord, if she’d contributed to this nightmare, even unknowingly, she would never forgive herself.

  Lise drove the deserted road to the hills with a recklessness fueled by fear. Violent images flashed through her mind, impelling her. She desperately wanted to believe the men wouldn’t hurt Stephen, but in her heart she knew they were capable of anything. Buck saw Stephen as a rival, and he was obviously willing to go to any lengths to turn the town against him. With the Davenport sisters missing and the statue conveniently turning up, he’d probably whipped his cohorts into a frenzy of vigilantism.

  The thought of anything happening to Stephen filled Lise with dread. She had promised herself years ago that she would never do what her mother had done—let a man become the center of her world, let him become everything in her life. And yet in a few short days Stephen had become the center of her world. It felt as though he were everything.

  Dust enveloped the jolting Cordoba as she sped down the rutted dirt access road. The cabin came into view, and as the brown haze cleared, she was a horrified witness to the mayhem she’d imagined earlier. It was a full-scale assault. A half-dozen men had descended upon Stephen, most of them fighting to restrain him as he twisted and whirled.

  A small, wiry man clung to Stephen’s back like a monkey. Another man leapt at him, and another, all of them piling on. Stephen jackknifed forward, throwing two of them over his head. They rushed him again, flying at him, dragging him down. He fought furiously, but he was hopelessly outnumbered. Arms locked around his throat, torso, and legs, anchoring him. His arms were pinned back.

  Lise pulled the car to a stop, bursting out just as Buck Thompson drove his fist savagely into Stephen’s midsection. Stephen reared up with a violent sound, and it took all six men to hold him down. Buck lashed out again, landing blow after brutal blow. Stephen convulsed and doubled over.

  “Buck! All of you!” Lise screamed. “Let him go! Now!.”

  Heads turned and Buck grinned insolently. “I ain’t gonna hurt your boyfriend, Lise. I’m gonna annihilate him!”

  He whirled and jammed an elbow into Stephen’s ribs.

  Lise heard the sickening crack of bone and sinew as Buck followed the elbow with a fist. “No!” she cried as Stephen sagged to his knees. They were going to kill him!

  She spotted what looked like a wooden rifle butt sticking out of the pickup truck’s bed. A gun? It was her only chance! Seconds later she had Buck Thompson’s ugly face fixed in the sites of a hunting rifle. The rifle made an explosive sound as she cocked it.

  “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Several of the men whirled in Lise’s direction and froze. The rest halted where they stood. “Let him go,” she said.

  Stephen slumped to the ground as the men released him. Fear stabbed at Lise as she tried to determine how badly he was hurt. He lay prone, bruised and smeared with blood, perhaps even unconscious.

  Bastards, she thought, jerking the gun barrel at Buck. “Get out of here! All of you!”

  “Hell, Ms. Anderson,” Buck said, a sneer twisting his lips. “You’re not going to use that thing.”

  “Get back!” Lise cried as he started toward her. Her finger froze on the trigger, and panic slammed through her body.

  A savage roar erupted from behind Buck. Stephen wrenched to his feet and flung himself at the man’s back, flattening him with a shoulder slam. As the two men sprawled on the ground, rolling and thrashing, the others crowded around. Within seconds it was another vicious melee. The men who weren’t brawling shouted and jeered, aiming kicks and blows at Stephen.

  Lise swung the rifle barrel in the air and squeezed off a round. The report was explosive. A hard jolt of pain knocked her backward as the gun kicked violently.

  Trembling, she caught her balance and leveled the barrel at the hovering men. “I never thought I could shoot a man.” she said, her voice strangled with emotion. “Dammit—don’t make me have to find out!”

  Tears stung Lise’s eyes as she stood next to the bed, staring down at Stephen’s bloodied features. Semiconscious, he murmured something incoherently and swung out an arm. He was still fighting off his attackers, she realized.

  “They’re gone,” she said, knowing he couldn’t hear her. She glanced out the window, shaking uncontrollably in the aftermath of the violence. They were gone, thankfully. She’d had to put a bullet in the dirt at Buck Thompson’s feet to convince Frank’s boys that she meant business. But once she’d done that, they seemed willing enough to listen to her lecture on mindless vigilante violence. Afterward she’d had Harry Barnes carry Stephen into the house—and sent them all packing.

  Now that she was alone, she had to get hold of herself and treat Stephen
’s wounds. She brought an icy fist to her chest, telling herself it was a delayed reaction. She’d never felt as shaken and helpless, and something in her heart ached so fiercely, she couldn’t move. I’m sorry, she thought. I’m sorry if I was the cause of any of this.

  Moments later she was sitting beside him, gingerly washing the blood from his face and neck. Only one laceration on his forehead required bandaging. The rest were scratches and minor cuts. Most of the blows had been to his body, which meant she was going to have to open his shirt.

  She’d worked all the buttons free and spread open the torn chambray material before she realized how savagely they’d beaten him. “Oh, my Lord,” she whispered, afraid even to touch the swollen crimson welts and violent purple bruises.

  A cut below his ribs was oozing freely and she forced herself to set about cleaning it. She’d never been squeamish about blood or taking care of the sick, but with him it was different. He was bleeding because of her, and she couldn’t stand the thought of causing him any more pain.

  He moaned as she applied a large adhesive bandage to the cut, and her heart clutched painfully. “Stephen?” she said, touching his face. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

  His head was twisted away from her, and the spiky growth of his beard abraded her palm as she brought his face around. His eyes were closed, his jaw slack, and the utter stillness of him filled her with dread. It was as though some vital energy had drained out of him. The blue desolation she’d seen in his eyes, the wildness of deep space, had defined him. Without it, he didn’t seem to exist.

  None of that, Lise, she told herself, holding his face in her shaking hands. Stop it now. You’re scaring yourself. He was simply unconscious, and if he didn’t come to soon, she would have to call a doctor. He wouldn’t want that, she knew, but she had no other recourse.

  Lise knew first aid. She’d had to check unconscious students more than once for signs of a concussion, and she was relieved to find Stephen’s pupils equal in size and responsive to light. Once she’d assured herself that his breathing and heart rate were normal, she began cleaning the rest of his wounds.

  It wasn’t until she was washing her hands in the bathroom that she noticed the crimson stain on the side of her skirt. He was still bleeding somewhere! She returned to the bedroom, searching him for the wound. His pants’ leg was twisted around, and as she straightened it, she saw that the knee of his jeans was ripped out.

  It was a nasty cut. Lise dabbed at the wound through the torn denim, aware that she was only delaying the inevitable. Not only couldn’t she stem the blood flow, but the jeans were smeared with dirt, and the risk of infection was enormous.

  She rose from the bed with a heavy sigh and stared down at him. History repeats itself, she thought, bemused. She and Stephen Gage seemed fated to remove each other’s clothing. He had the easier time of it, she decided, wondering how in the world she was going to get denim jeans off a massively built, unconscious man.

  She refused to let herself think about anything other than his injured knee as she worked open the button of his fly. Unfortunately for her good intentions, it was inevitable that her rigid fingers would come into contact with the corded muscle of his abdomen and the golden hair that flared from his beltline.

  Thoughts crept into her mind that she didn’t want to deal with. Totally inappropriate thoughts about how different the male body was from the female ... how hard and unyielding the muscles, how wedged and narrow the hips. Stop it, Lise.

  She sat back to steady her breathing, and let her gaze sweep over him. A crucial mistake. Perhaps she could have dealt with him part by part, but taken as a whole, he was a devastatingly beautiful man, even with the injuries. With his shirt flung open and his pants undone, he was a riveting mix of raw sensuality and vulnerability.

  Her hand was shaking as she gripped the zipper’s pull tab and drew down the slide. Golden hair caressed her fingers all the way to the metal bottom stop. “I knew it,” she whispered, closing her eyes. He wasn’t wearing a stitch under the pants!

  She kept her eyes shut as she gripped the jean’s waistband and began to tug the pants down. Just do it, Lise, she told herself, trying not to be aware of what she was touching. With some awkwardness, she managed to get the pants free of his hips and down to his thighs. Upon reaching his injured knee, she opened her eyes to be sure she wasn’t doing any more damage.

  The only major snag was his feet. She’d forgotten to remove his shoes. They were an odd kind of sandal made of a woven leatherlike material she’d never seen before. She slipped them off, scanning them for a brand name, but there wasn’t one to be found—and her interest in such things vanished as she looked up.

  Her breathing deepened as she stared at him. Everything seemed to be slowing down, even her thoughts. Opened shirt notwithstanding, he was naked. Despite all his injuries, despite everything he’d been through, Lise’s first—her only—thought was that. Stephen Gage lay naked before her eyes. She was shocked at herself for gaping. She was even vaguely ashamed under the circumstances, but the reason was obvious. She’d never witnessed living, breathing male nudity before. He was the first.

  As it dawned on her that she had unfinished business with his naked male body, her heart did a somersault. And then it slammed up against her chest wall as though it wanted out.

  Hopelessly awkward, she began to remove the crusted dirt and blood from his knee injury. She could hardly get her hands under control, and she knew very well what was distracting her. As her eyes kept drifting to that part of him, she finally took some remedial action. Dragging up a section of the chenille bedspread, she draped it over his midsection.

  Another injury caught her eye as she covered him. There was a jagged rent where his hipbone sloped into his pelvis. That one would have to wait, she decided. Perhaps forever.

  But moments later, as she finished with his knee, her thoughts were drawn again to the pelvic injury. There had been something strange about it. She touched the chenille tentatively, and finally drew it aside.

  The wound was jagged and bluish, but as she looked closer she saw that it wasn’t a laceration. It was some sort of mark, not a tattoo exactly, but similar. Lightning, she realized with a start. She was staring at twin bolts of lightning! They were flawlessly drawn and perfectly symmetrical. Curious, Lise brushed a finger over one of the blue streaks and felt its raised outline.

  Stephen stirred as she touched him, and Lise looked up. She couldn’t tell whether he was responding to her touch—or to where she’d touched him. She pressed the mark again, and he moaned out a word she didn’t understand.

  “Stephen?” She moved up to him, touching his face. His eyes drifted open and after a moment he seemed to focus in on her. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Again he said a word she didn’t understand, and she tried to follow the movement of his lips. “Runes? Is that what you said, Stephen? What does it mean?”

  “Yes, runes. Get them, Lise. Get the stones.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They’re in my knapsack ... get them.”

  Lise rifled through his knapsack, digging into one zipper pouch after another until she found a small metal box. Inside were two smooth black stones, oblong in shape, and about the size of walnuts. As she tipped the box and emptied them into her palm, she had the oddest sensation of movement. The stones seemed to come alive in her hands, and though she couldn’t actually see them moving, she could feel their inner vibrance and energy.

  “Hold them in your hands, Lise,” Stephen said. “They respond to body heat.”

  Lise cupped the stones tightly and watched with silent amazement as a misty bluish light began to seep through the cracks in her fingers. It reminded her of the quarry lights except that it was a deeper blue, and even more luminous. “Stephen, what are they?”

  “Lodestones,” he said, his voice gaining strength, “a form of magnetized rock ... with healing properties.”

  She could feel their warmt
h and energy building within the confinement of her hands. “Healing properties?”

  He tried to sit up and his jaw clenched in pain. “Come here, Lise. Hold them so that the light falls through your fingers.”

  Lise moved to the bed, opening her hands slightly to let the radiant energy glow through. She sat next to him, hesitating only a moment before her movements became instinctive. Bathing him in the strange blue light, she started at his breastbone and moved her cupped hands in ever-widening circles. The stones seemed to shudder in her hands. Lise could feel the power they held ... and yet nothing appeared to be happening as she swirled the intense blue beam over his body. There was no visible effect on his wounds.

  Gradually she began to sense that the stones were controlling her movements, pulling her hands with the flow of light. As the cool blue fire circled his body hypnotically, she could feel herself being drawn into its orbit. ...

  She came to with a start, having no idea how much time had passed. As her thoughts cleared she realized she’d forgotten all about his injuries. A sense of wonderment crept over her as she scanned his body. Was it a trick of the light? Was she imagining the effect? The cuts seemed to be drawing up, the bruises diminishing.

  Stephen’s breathing deepened, and his taut stomach muscles released some of their tension. Lise pulled back, her heart quickening. Something was happening.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Let the light flow off your fingertips ... touch me.”

  She had no idea what he meant until he showed her how to hold the stones loosely in the mouth of her hand, exactly as though she were wielding a pencil. Blue light streamed off her fingertips as she moved them over his body.

  The natural light was fading as the sun dropped behind the hills outside, and in the room’s deepening shadows, the stones’ silvery blue phosphorescence seemed to be the only illumination. It was an eerily beautiful effect that made Lise realize for the first time the strangeness of the situation.

  Outside the cabin a bird cried, haunting and forlorn.