Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

I reach out. Grab every single phone I can find. Thirty or so – some in pockets, some already held in clammy fingers, filming the action. My range must be half a mile now, way further than I’ve ever gone. I gently grip every phone with my mind, feeling their smooth surfaces, the texture of their power buttons, the fingerprint oil on their touchscreens…

And then I squeeze.

Dive deep into each and every phone and crush the chips.

The phones die instantly, bricked. The outsides unchanged, the internals a mess of broken silicon. There are a few security cameras on the buildings surrounding the storm drain, and I take care of those too. A thought tugs at me: our little pinhole cameras, the ones broadcasting back to Reggie. I break them, too, although it comes with a little guilty twinge. Sorry,Reggie. Can’t be too careful.

People will see what’s about to happen. They’ll swear it’s true. And maybe that might have consequences for me, somewhere down the line. But there’ll be no photos or videos, none, no evidence at all.

Africa claws at me, and I reach out and take his hand, letting him know it’s going to be OK.

Then I go to work.

I tear away the bridge slabs. Just lift them right off. Every single one, like they’re made of foam. Daylight floods the van’s interior as I move the pieces of the broken bridge to one side, out of the way. I don’t throw them, or put them in a place where someone might think, how the hell did they land up over there? I just give us a bit of space to breathe.

The slabs give out a crunching bang as they impact the surface of the storm drain. The bikers have stopped in their tracks, except for one or two who take a step back.

With a small smile, I rip the doors off our van.

All of them.

I blink – a movement that feels like it takes aeons. When I open my eyes, after a million years, Annie and Africa have exited the van, staggering away from it on the opposite side to the bikers.

I take my time. Clamber out of the van, not worried about being shot – I’ve shut down the bikers’ guns, almost as an afterthought. I stretch extravagantly, and the crick in my back feels delightful. I’m bursting with energy, raw and pure. It’s like I’ve had the best sleep ever, deep, dark, dreamless, and now I’m awake and I’m under blue sky and there’s nothing I can’t do. God, why did I think meth was bad? It’s fucking awesome.

A thought intrudes. Jeannette – Africa’s girlfriend. An image of her when we first crossed paths. A skeletal crust of a person, hunched, body stripped clean. Screeching and snarling like an animal.

But the distance between her and what I’m feeling now is immense. It’s easy to push the thought away.

I stare at the stunned, trembling biker gang, some of whom are desperately trying to shoot me. I’m barely aware. My mind is a thousand miles away.

My parents made me. And not just in the Biblical sense. They were gifted geneticists, light years ahead of anybody else, and they wanted to create a soldier who could end wars before they started. Turns out, not even they could put multiple abilities in one person, so they split them between me, and my big brother and sister. Adam didn’t need to sleep. Chloe could see in infrared, picking up heat signatures.

What would their abilities have been like on meth? I don’t know about Adam, but Chloe… her vision would be an explosion of colour. A billion shades of heat and light, dazzling, hypnotic.

Chloe and Adam are gone. Adam went insane, his mind shredded from never having slept. My parents had to lock him away, and his twin Chloe – poor, deluded Chloe – let him out. He killed them all, almost killed me too.

I miss them so much. All of them. Especially Chloe.

The thought of her brings hot, bittersweet tears to my eyes. I would have loved to share this with her. I can picture us on the ranch in Wyoming, both of us high off our fucking tits, riding horses through the forest and laughing, her seeing every colour of the universe while I move objects half a mile away. She should be here. With me. We should be doing this together.

There’s a box at the back of my mind where I put all the bad shit. Don’t get it twisted: it’s not like I have a box of bubbling, evil darkness threatening to take over. That’s just not me. A lot of horrible things have happened in my life, but I’ve dealt with them. I spent a long time dealing with them, thank you very much, and although I can’t get rid of them, I have found a place to put them.

When I picture it, I actually see a dusty, slightly tattered box on a high shelf in the closet. The kind you don’t really think about until you need to get something from it.

What can I say? Therapy works. Even when you’re imprisoned in a government facility.

I don’t like to pull the box down too often – it’s not a fun experience. But now, it’s as if the contents have no power over me. Like I can hold them in my hands, turning them this way and that.

My real name isn’t Teagan Frost. Back when I was still hanging with Chloe and Adam, I was plain old Emily Jameson. Em. It’s been a long time since I even thought of myself as Em, and the memory is so bittersweet that it almost makes me cry.

Almost.

One of the bikers throws his gun, hurls it away like it’s poisonous. I smile slowly at him. He makes the sign of the cross, does it again.

I’m still levitating some of the bridge slabs. I let them drop, and the bikers break. Two of them sprint right at