Free Bright Star by Grayson Reyes-Cole Page B

laws. Somehow, they made these Shifts easier. It hadn’t been explained in his parameters but… His body got even heavier. More and more weight seemed added to his chest until his heart was a boulder and gravity was in excess. Weighted down and down and down, Jackson expected to hit the floor and to have the breath pressed out of him, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he found his skin tingling as his soul peeled itself away.
    He had admitted it to no one, but he loved this sensation. It felt like butterflies and his knees getting weak. Only it wasn’t just his stomach and it wasn’t just his knees. All of his joints, his body just seemed to melt into a languid tingle. Like floating in warm salted water. High; he imagined this is what it was like to be high. Then, he was hovering over the roof of that building several hours ago.
    Slowly, the scene unfurled before him in his mind. There he was, crouched over her. There she was, a white and untouched angel lying in a deep ruby pool of her own making. Then he was gone. She was lying there broken and alone. Her lips were moving but no sound was coming out of them. He couldn’t tell what she was saying. Then, he heard his name like a soft sigh on the wind. His name. She called his name. Jackson Rush .
    Jackson brought his hands down from his eyes, though the cloud of Shift made the room and its inhabitants dim. Bright Star was even darker, her brilliant white skin dim like honey. Everything was hazy but the eyes. Her blue eyes were more pronounced, as they were the only things to truly penetrate the fog. “Do you know me?” he asked her in surprise.
    Bright Star put down her fork and steepled her hands in front of her. She was still and careful as she said to him, “I did not.”
    “Then why did you call to me for help?” Then he answered his own question: “Because you knew about me being the Precocial. You called me because you thought I could save you.” It hadn’t occurred to him, but it had happened before. Many times in the field, he’d fought alongside men with varying preternatural Talents. Some had called to him when they were in trouble because he was the strongest. Jackson wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. He was the Precocial. She didn’t say anything. Jackson continued, “You believed that I was the only one who could save you. You knew of me the way every other Shifter knows of me.”
    “Yes,” Bright Star chirped with a firm nod.
    “No,” Rush provided at the same time.
    Jackson looked from one to the other and back again, “Bright Star, you called to me because you wanted to be saved.”
    “Yes,” she answered with a more fervent nod.
    “But not by you, Jackson,” Rush interjected. He pierced Bright Star with his gaze, but she still refused to look directly at him.
    “Then who…” Jackson queried slowly, just milliseconds before the answer dawned on him. He wasn’t the person in the end who had saved her. Precocial or not, Jackson didn’t have the Talent. But Rush did. “How could she have known?”
    Rush replied solemnly, “I told you. We’ve met before.”
    “I did know Rush and I knew that he had a brother, Jackson,” Bright Star added.
    Jackson thought on this for a moment, then questions started to flood from him. “If that was the case, then why would she call me and not you, Rush?”
    “She was afraid I wouldn’t come.” Rush stated pointedly. “Isn’t that right, Bright Star?”
    The creamy-skinned, red-haired girl remained mute. She cast her eyes downward this time, not looking at either of them.
    “But how could she know that even if you were my brother, you would come? I didn’t even know about your Talent, Rush, before yesterday. How could she know you would come?”
    “She’s a very, very clever girl, our Bright Star,” was Rush’s only answer.
    “Is this true?” Jackson turned to her. She didn’t answer. Her hands rested folded in her lap and she studied her plate. “You just used me to