Lightning Rider - Excerpt Only

Lightning Rider (Excerpt Only) - Chapter 3

LIGHTNING RIDER

by Maree Anderson

CHAPTER THREE

Voices pierced her consciousness, needling her brain like buzzing mosquitoes. For the most part she ignored them, but one voice—the one the others called Jake—piqued her slumbering senses. This one didn't chatter about people she didn't know, places she didn't remember, things she didn't recall doing. It described different things—intimate things. Remembered smiles and laughter. Sweat-soaked clothes and aching muscles and fierce joy at difficult challenges overcome. Hopes and dreams that couldn't possibly be hers... could they?

A tiny, restless part of her was curious, eager to know more. She tried to swim through comfortable darkness and claim the light, but she was too weak.

Her failure provoked a helpless frustration that woke something inside her. She split apart at an elemental level to accommodate a slowly unfurling alien presence. Even though she didn't consciously understand what was happening to her, some part of her instinctively fought the benign invasion.

Be calm for Light's sake! the thing inside her muttered. You're not making this easy. It wrestled with her, snatched control and set to work bolstering her strength and coordinating her body to perform the tasks her brain was desperately signaling it to do.

When her eyelids fluttered open, the alien presence recoiled, overwhelmed by a riot of too-bright colors. She blinked, and when she could finally focus, realized that she lay with her head lolling to one side, gazing at a table laden with bunches of colorful flowers. Hence the major visual overload.

"Lovely," she croaked, then coughed and groaned because her skull throbbed and pulsed, threatening to explode. Before she could voice another groan the pounding headache eased to a dull, bearable ache.

"Drink this." Cool, capable hands gently turned her head and popped a straw between her lips. She sucked up a few mouthfuls of water, whimpering as it soothed her parched throat.

"Enough?"

She nodded and the straw was withdrawn.

She concentrated on the face hovering above her, blinking at the blotches dotting the man's nose and cheeks, wondering what was wrong with her eyesight.

Oh. The blotches were freckles. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dr. Ross. And you're a patient here at Saint Mark's Hospital."

"Oh. Okay." Where the heck was that?

"Do you remember your name?" Dr. Ross flicked on a tiny penlight and shone its beam into her left eye. She opened her mouth to respond but not a word came out.

As he waited for her response, his forehead creased. He flicked off the penlight. "First name? Surname?"

Her stomach twisted with panic. How could she not know her own name?

The creases on the doctor's forehead deepened to furrows.

She sucked in a deep breath that shuddered through her body. Her own name. How hard could it be to remember? Her gaze darted round the room, seeking inspiration.

Your name is Andrea Marie Brennan.

The words echoed in her mind and she grasped them like a lifeline. "Brennan! Andrea. Marie. Brennan. That's my name." The syllables flew from her mouth in staccato bursts that ended with a gasp of sheer relief. But the relief choked off as the wrongness jolted her.

The name didn't feel right, it didn't fit her.

Her gaze skittered to Dr. Ross's face. He appeared satisfied by her outburst, so Andrea Marie Brennan would do for now. It would have to.