The Storm Runner (The Storm Runner 1)

I looked over my shoulder then back to her with a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding expression. “You want me to touch one of those things?”

“You must choose one in order for this to work,” she said, holding the hammer over her shoulder like she was ready to use it—on me. “Now hurry up.”

For what to work? The cane? She must’ve registered my reluctance to stick my hand in the water and touch a lightning bolt.

“Do you think I’d go to all this effort, pound lightning like I haven’t done in centuries, just so I could watch you fry your puny brain?”

Point taken.

I went over to the pool and squatted down. The bolts zipped through the water like racer fish. As I reached in, she yelled, “WAIT!”

“Wha—what?” I stumbled back.

The Sparkstriker stepped down from her stool. “Do you have any allergies?”

“Allergies?”

“To lightning? Electricity? White-hot energy?”

“Uh—pretty sure I don’t.” Not that I’d ever touched lightning or white-hot energy.

“That’s good.” Then, with a nod of her chin, she motioned for me to continue.

I dipped my right hand into the pool. I felt a burst of heat on my skin, but it didn’t scald me. The bolts zipped past, weaving through my grasp. Then they went still. Except for one. It slipped into my hand and I lifted it out of the water.

It was like holding a warm, tinfoil-wrapped burrito fresh from the oven, except this pulsed like a living thing. I went back to the cave and handed it over to the Sparkstriker. She examined it then muttered, “It’ll do.” As if each bolt was unique. Maybe they were….Stepping onto her stool, she said, “Well, climb up here.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “What for?”

“So I can pound this into your leg.”

I swallowed, did a double take, and almost laughed. “Are you kidding? You want to pound my… my leg with lightning?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“I—I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I mean, my leg, it already doesn’t work too good and—”

“This is why gods and humans don’t mix! Never can tell what you’re going to get.” She set down her hammer. “Zane, your father is the Heart of the Sky.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He’s very powerful.”

“Uh-huh.” Already knew that, too.

She looked down at my bum leg, then back to me. “He’s also the Serpent Leg.”

“Yeah and he passed it on to me,” I said, swinging my bad leg.

She smacked her skinny lips together. “A typical human would assume that a serpent leg is useless. But in a god, the power of the serpent is unparalleled.”

“You’re trying to tell me my bum leg is powerful?”

“Your leg,” she said slowly, “is the most powerful part of you, not the weakest. It’s the doorway to your magic, the only clue to your ancestry.”

Someone needed to give her a reality check. “Are you going to tell me to run with the storm, too?”

“Why, for the love of all that’s holy, would I tell you to run with the storm?”