From, “Souvenir”, Bright Star:

“How did you get that scar?” Jackson asked raising a fingertip to her face. Against his own better judgment, he traced the angry pink mark from her widow’s peak down between her copper brows and under her softly rounded cheek. The injury’s puckered ridge served to punctuate the softness of her pale skin. His fingertips tingled at the touch. He put his hand in his pocket.

“Rush left it for me,” Bright Star answered with a flippant shrug of her  shoulders even though the words were spoken with reverence and joy. Her red hair rustled and settled with the movement. Her eyes were heating up, casting blue light all through the room.

No blue light warmed Jackson: she still would not look at directly at him. For a second, he thought, she hid a bashful and girlish smile.

About the story:
 
The Precocial, Jackson Rush has just used his High Energy to save the life of a girl named Bright Star. Her red hair, incandescent blue eyes, and endless vulnerability draw Jackson to her as no other woman has. But, saving this woman’s life comes with complications Jackson could never anticipate.

Jackson discovers that two years earlier, this same woman was saved by his brother Jacob Rush, believed by some to be the most powerful Talent the world has ever seen.

Bright Star is a believer. She understands that Jacob Rush’s destiny is to be the salvation of the world despite Rush’s insistence that he will not.  Amassing a devoted following for Rush, Bright Star forces him to demonstrate his strength again and again by viciously endangering her own life and all of the lives around them.

 Both Rush and Jackson try to stop Bright Star’s increasingly violent and far-reaching actions, but Bright Star will not be stopped, even if she has to risk the world to get Rush to accept who he is, who he must be… Bright Star is a contemporary fantasy and horror novel characterized by a heady mix of psychological tension with beautifully creepy and surreal moments.

As he emptied his body, Jackson started focusing on facts. Something had to anchor him before the Perma-Shift really did kill him. Parameters of Shift 101. He could see the text behind his eyelids: The brightest recorded light manifestation of Shift was approximately .96 watts, about as much as can be powered by twenty-four volts. A single Christmas tree light. The longest recorded distance for a Shift was five kilometers, just over three miles. He looked at the skyline. If he judged correctly, he was about ten miles from the apartment. And his brother was doing this from long distance. Even Jackson had only been able to affect a Shift from ten miles away. Rush was at their apartment more than ten miles away. Jackson swallowed trying to push that thought from his mind. The youngest recorded age for someone to Shift was 11. Well, that had been true before Jackson was born. But, Jackson was the anomaly, the outlier always excluded from statistical measures. He was special.

Jackson shuddered and rocked. He had to focus. The average age for someone to be able to manifest a Shift was thirteen and a half months. The phrase, Permanent Shift, was derived from a permanent magnet. A permanent magnet retained its magnetism after removal of the magnetizing force. Perma-Shift was what happened when the High Energy used to create a Shift was out of balance with the High Energy required for the Shift. When there was too little Energy, the strain started to tear the Shifter apart,inside out. When the High Energy was more than required and left unrestrained, it had nowhere to apply itself but back to its source. The average time it took to recover from minor Perma-Shift was 176 seconds. The average time it took to recover from major Perma-Shift was never. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and turned around.

Bright Star breathed normally beside him. There was no deep rush of air, no coughing as if she had drowned. Nothing. She simply started to breathe. The blood that had pooled around her slowly turned clear then evaporated up into the air in transparent flakes. Even her skin began to grow thick, opalescent. The veins disappeared, turning her skin from alabaster to porcelain. Bright Star had not been healed, she had been returned.

The Shifter sat up. Her shiny, copper hair fell just behind her ears. She blinked. Her eyes were slowly returning to a natural, earthly blue as she pinned them to Jackson. Her first words in this rewound life were accusatory. “You didn’t save me.”

Jackson felt the shame but was not sure if he showed it. He had been trained to hide such things. Her gaze fluttered to the ground at his feet and he knew she had seen.

“It was my brother,” Jackson offered scratching the back of his head. His brother. Funny. Jackson had not known before those moments that his brother possessed Talent, and yet he had known to reach out to him. He hadn’t been the least surprised at the strength his brother had exhibited. He shook his head.

“Is he dead?” She asked her eyes coming to his again, startlingly clear. He was beginning to recognize the incandescence as a signal of her High Energy.

“No. No, he’s not. I would know if he were,” and though he hadn’t once thought about it before, Jackson knew his words to be true. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure he can experience it.” Jackson pushed off from the wall and took a step toward her. Not another. He was too cautious for that. He shook his head, “I’m not sure of anything.”

“Is he here?” Her Bright Star eyes searched around the dark recesses of the rooftops a faint blue tint illuminated any and every thing she studied.

“No.” Jackson replied.

“But he is close?” she persisted.

“No,” Jackson answered warily. He knew her next question.

“Then how could he have—“

Impulsively, Jackson told her, “I can Shift from ten miles away.”

The blue gaze fell on him and stilled. Her eyes seemed to dim. “So can I.” In a soft voice she added, “I brought you here.”

Jackson said nothing. Five minutes ago he had been the One, the Precocial. He had broken records. He was the most Talented, most special of anyone on Earth. And yet, here was a Shifter who claimed to match his Talent, and he had a brother somewhere whose power he had not known before that night. It was a power, he felt, that could not be measured or weighed.

In a swift and graceful roll, she came up to her feet and stood before him. She was rounder and shorter than she had looked lying down. The top of her head just barely reached his chin and he was less than six feet tall. Her face was a perfect pale, apple with defined cheekbones, a broad brow and with a shallow indention in her chin. Her lips were pink and her lashes russet.

“You nearly killed yourself bringing me here,” Jackson mumbled.

“Well, if you were who and what I believed you to be, that wasn’t much of a risk. You would have saved me. I realize, however, you are not who we thought you to be at all. It’s your brother we need.” Her eyes rolled skyward and Jackson could almost see twin blue ribbons of light reach toward the moonless sky.

Jackson did not deny her conclusion. He knew at that moment, and  had maybe always known, that his power was nothing when compared to that of his big brother Rush. Now he wasn’t the only one who suspected his brother’s deific skill. He was nothing, and Bright Star knew it.

Without thought he reached out to her, his hands leaving his sides like metal drawn to a magnetic force. For a moment, she studied them then allowed him to take her hand. She asked him, “Where do you live?”

“Not far from here,” he answered. His voice had been quick and high and wavering. He sounded eager even to his own ears. Maybe there was a chance.

She tilted her head up a little and their eyes met. Her rod straight red locks hung back. Dark pink lips parted slightly before she licked them. The move had been natural, without artifice. Bright Star had nearly died. Of course, she was not trying to seduce him. Still, Jackson felt a sharp pressure on his sternum. Jackson couldn’t breathe for a heartbeat, then when he could, he noticed that she smelled like freesia. She stepped closer to him. Her body radiated heat. Her scent was even stronger and seemed to wend its way inside of him. Though she didn’t touch him, he knew her body was soft. “Does your brother live there, too?”