Tanks lightning

Landing on the other side of the buzzing cloud, she reached again to the clouds above and pulled the sky down upon both their heads. The snowy earth lit with not just a few bolts—she brought them all down.
As she’d promised, she made him drink her power. To the dregs.

~*~

Naomi gasped as the sky opened up. She’d never seen lightning so bright, so vicious. It came from every part of the dark ring of clouds, a flurry of bolts that bent inward to the same central patch of ground. They struck a distant place she couldn’t quite see. Shielding her eyes, she watched as thunder shook the stones and trees, trembling through her.
I kissed the thing that’s doing this. Nameless feelings gripped her, too varied to comprehend, though her hands trembled, her heart pounded, and she wanted to hide from Ryn’s eyes at the same time she wanted to… kiss her again. But carefully.
“That— That isn’t— I don’t…” Denise stared at the same sky, along with Elli. “What’s happening?” She swallowed. “Is it the end of the world?”
“I don’t know,” Naomi confessed. No one could speak louder than a whisper. “We have to get back. Come on.”
They bent to drag Patrick, who was groaning and probably concussed from Denise’s branch.
Still, the lightning struck. It had not yet stopped pouring from the clouds, battering a single piece of ground as though artillery from Heaven. She said the weather obeys her feelings, Naomi remembered. That’s… a lot of feelings.

~*~

Again and again, Ryn spent her anger in blinding neon strokes from the sky. She beat him like an anvil until her head rang, until her eardrums bled, until all she saw was blue and all she tasted was ozone.
When she stopped, she unfurled the kanaf from around her shoulders and stood alone on a singed patch of earth. When enough of her vision returned to make out shapes, she could tell nothing stood within fifty feet of her in any direction. It was only charred stumps, black ground, and boiling pits of vapor where once there had been water. A stink filled her nostrils: that of the ten million dead life-forms Saxby’s essence had split into.
She extracted the snake, the very last piece of him, and could smell his essence inside the struggling serpent. “Stay your hand,” Saxby begged, voice disconnected from any physical form. “I’ll tell you who paid us.”
“I’ve no time for lies.”
“No lies. This is the work of other deva! The Pretender and his foe, the Hidden One, and the Hidden One cannot be found without my help. I know a way. He’s paying for my experiments; he wants to use them for his plans. I could—”
Ryn tossed the serpent into the air and sliced it in half. She cut Saxby’s essence with it. His stink was snuffed from the air forever. Dead and gone, in a flash of her nails.
She ran for Naomi, making quick work of the trek in spite of her near-sightless eyes, relying on scent and intuition to navigate the forest.

~*~

Jane and Todd had dragged their rafts beneath an overhang in a rock wall and herded everyone, blankets around their shoulders, into the rubberized crafts to keep stray lightning strikes from reaching them through tree roots. Both counselors jogged out to help the girls with Patrick, since it had exhausted them to drag him that far.
“Where’s Ryn?” Jane shouted.
Naomi wheeled and stared into the forest, which was thick with swirling snowflakes. Something was coming through the gaps in the trees, a shadow pressed against the snow. “Take care of Patrick. I’ll get her.” Naomi ran toward the darker patch in the flurry.
It was Ryn. The deva hugged herself tight in her hoodie and kept her head bowed. Blood trickled down her cheeks from her ears and she leaned into a tree. Naomi could still see wisps of smoke rising off her shoulders and smell the stink of electric discharge on her clothing.


Chapter 22, Page 340-341