I will break him in two.
Hearing my voice, Kat looked at me. “Stop.”
Fury hummed through me. He could’ve killed her, just like that, and I had sat there like a freaking idiot and let it happen. No more. I was done with this. She was done with this.
Still in my true form, I reached out and brushed my fingers along her cheek. Her skin was soft as silk and so damn fragile. Dropping my hand, I shifted into my human form. Only my eyes remained white and sharp like the damn knife he’d thrown at her.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“She wasn’t in any danger!” he shouted. “If I thought for a second she couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t have thrown it at her!”
I sidestepped Kat, my hand curling into a fist. “But there was no way you would’ve known she could do it! Not a hundred percent!”
He turned pleading eyes on Kat. “I swear you were never in any danger, Katy. If I thought you couldn’t stop it, I wouldn’t have done it.”
I cursed again, but Kat blocked me. I stared down at her. “Who does that?”
“Actually, Kiefer Sutherland did. In the original Buffy movie,” he explained. “It was on TV a few nights ago. He threw one at Buffy, and she caught it.”
“That was Donald Sutherland—the dad,” I corrected. What an ass.
He shrugged. “Same difference.”
“I’m not Buffy!” Kat yelled.
A slow grin pulled at his lips. “You are definitely cuter than Buffy.”
I growled low in my throat. “You got a death wish? Because you’re really pushing it tonight, buddy. I’m dead serious. Really pushing it. I can hold you up against that wall until you run out of juice. Can you hold me off forever? No? I didn’t think so.”
His jaw jutted out. “Okay. I’m sorry. But if she hadn’t been able to catch it, I would’ve stopped it. Just like you would’ve. No harm. No foul.”
A whirlwind of rage was building inside me as Kat drew in a deep breath. “I think that’s enough for tonight.”
“But—”
“Blake, I really think you should leave,” she said. “Okay? I think you need to go.”
He stared at her for a moment and then nodded. “All right.” With a quick look in my direction, he started toward the door and stopped. “But you did great, Katy. I don’t think you realize how awesome that was.”
The fury rolled off me, rattling the floors. Douche Bag got the hell out of the house at that point. Part of me was disappointed. I was kind of hoping he’d be stupid enough to try something with me. At least then I could claim self-defense.
Silence fell in his wake until I finally spoke. “No more. Absolutely no more.” My voice was low as Kat faced me. “He could have killed you, Kat. I’m not okay with that. I won’t be okay with that.”
“Daemon, he wasn’t trying to kill me.”
Disbelief flooded me. “Are you insane?”
“No.” She bent and picked up the wickedly sharp knife.
“I don’t want you doing any more training with him. I don’t even want you near him. That boy’s got a few screws loose. I’m going to give him back-alley plastic surgery. I can’t—”
“Daemon,” she whispered.
“—believe he did that.” It hit me again, just how close she came to taking a knife wound to the chest. Stepping forward, I wrapped my arms around her and hauled her against me. I held her tight. “Jesus, Kat, he could have hurt you.” I lifted my hand, wrapping it around the back of my head. Good God, she could’ve died tonight, and I might not have been here to help her. I would’ve been out, chasing down a damn Arum.
Or sulking around my house like a loser.
A tremor rocked me. “Look, you’ve obviously got some control. I can help you work on it.” I rested my chin against the top of her head. “This can’t happen again.”
“Daemon.” Her voice was muffled.
“What?” I pulled back, lowering my chin.
“I froze it.”
My brows slammed together. “Huh?”
“I froze the knife.” She shimmied free, waving the knife around. “I didn’t just stop it, but I froze it. The thing was just hovering in air.”
Then it struck me. She was right. She didn’t stop it. She froze it, and that was one of the most difficult talents for even a fully grown Luxen to master. “Holy…”
She laughed. “God, that’s pretty huge, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “It is. That’s…that’s a big deal.”
Excitement flushed her pretty face. “We can’t stop training.”
No. No way. “Kat—”
“We can’t! Look, throwing a knife at me isn’t cool. And God knows, I’m not exactly thrilled that he did it, but it worked. It really worked. We’re getting somewhere—”
“What part of ‘He could’ve killed you’ don’t you understand?” I backed away before I shook some common sense into her. “I don’t want you training with him. Not when he’s putting your life in danger.”
“He’s not putting my life in danger.” She shook her head. “We can’t stop. I’ll be able to control it and use the Source, just like you and Dee can. I can help you—”
“Help me with what?” I stared at her, then laughed harshly. “Help me to fight Arum?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she tapped the edge of the knife on her arm as her eyes narrowed on me. “Yeah, what if I wanted to?”
I laughed again. “Kitten, you’re not helping me fight Arum.”
“Why not? If I can control the Source and help, why not? I could fight.”
“I think the reasons are pretty huge,” I yelled, losing some of my patience. “First off, you’re a human.”
“Not really.”
“Granted, you’re a mutated human, but a human who’s a hell of a lot weaker and more vulnerable than a Luxen.”
She exhaled slowly. “You don’t know how weak or vulnerable I’ll be fully trained.”
“Whatever. Secondly, you have no business going up against the Arum. That will never happen.”
“Daemon—”
“It won’t if I’m still alive. Do you understand that? You will never go after an Arum. I don’t care if you can stop the world from spinning.”
Her cheeks flushed with anger. “You don’t own me, Daemon.”
“It’s not about ownership, you little nut.”
“Nut?” She glared at me. “I wouldn’t call me names when I have a knife in my hand.”
I almost laughed again. “Thirdly, there is something off about Blake. You can’t tell me you don’t see or sense that.”
“Oh, don’t—”
“You know nothing about him—nothing deeper than that he likes to surf and blog. Big deal.”
“These aren’t good enough reasons,” she fired back
“Because I don’t want you in danger—how about that? Is that damn good enough for you?” I shouted.
Kat jumped, her eyes widening slightly.
Hands on my hips, I looked away. I counted to ten. Still pissed, I counted to twenty. Didn’t work.
“Daemon,” she said, her voice softer. “You can’t stop me just to protect me.”
My head swung back to her. “I need to protect you.”
“Daemon, I’m flattered—I am, but your job is not to protect me. I’m not Dee. I’m not another one of your responsibilities.”
“Damn right you’re not Dee! But you are my responsibility. I got you into this mess. And I will not be dragging you further into it!”
“I’m not stopping,” she said, shoulders squaring.
Shocked, all I could do was stare at her for a moment. Didn’t she get it? Freezing knives would never prepare for her going toe to toe with an Arum. “Does it even matter that I don’t want you in that kind of danger? That I won’t facilitate something as idiotic as you gearing up to go against the Arum?”
She flinched. “Wanting to help you and your kind is idiotic?”
My jaw tightened. “Yeah, it
is.”
“Daemon,” she whispered. “I get that you care—”
“You don’t get it. That’s the problem!” I stopped, pulling it all back in, sucking the air right out of the room with it. “I won’t be a part of this. I mean it, Katy. You choose this, then…whatever.” I hated saying it, but it was true. I would not usher her down this path. “I won’t have this hanging over my head like I do every freaking day with Dawson. I won’t make another mistake and condone this.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Daemon—”
“What will it be, Katy?” I looked at her dead on. “Tell me now.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
I jerked back, as if she had actually hit me. That would’ve been better than this, because she had made her choice. She’d chosen to put herself in danger. She’d chosen to ask me to be okay with it. She had chosen this. Every part of me hardened.
“That was the wrong thing to say. I’m done.”
Anger simmered inside, a constant companion since the night Kat nearly took a knife to the chest. The bitter edge of the fury had faded, only because I put some space between the incident and us. Knowing that she was still training with the psychotic asshole and not being there drove me crazy.
But I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—be a part of that.
It was bad enough knowing that I had stood by and virtually watched everything with Dawson happen and had done nothing to stop it. Then again, I was traveling down that same path at the speed of a racing bullet, wasn’t I?
As mad as I was with Kat, what I felt for her hadn’t lessened. A part of me wished it had, because it would make dealing with this a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t care, but I did.
I hated seeing how worn down she looked in class. I hated how upset my sister was, because Kat wasn’t spending any time with her. Dee asked nearly every night about Kat, as if she expected me to hold all the answers. Screwed-up thing was that I did, but what could I tell her? All I could do was reassure Dee that she hadn’t done anything to upset Kat. I hated that training had become everything to her. What was she trying to prove? That she was strong? That she could stand side by side with me?
Just thinking about it pissed me off and made me want to blow shit up.
A little over a week after the last training session, my phone dinged. Setting my laptop aside, I lifted my hand. The phone slid over my dresser and flew straight to my palm. As my fingers closed around it I wondered if Kat was able to do this now. Control movement so precisely. A lot could happen in a week. I flipped the phone over, seeing the text. My eyes widened slightly. It was from Kat.
Can u come over?
I stared at the message for a good minute and then tossed the phone on the bed. Leaning back, I scrubbed my hands down my face. I lowered my arms, flipping my gaze to the ceiling. I tracked the weblike crack in the plaster. Another text came through.
This is important!!!
Ten minutes passed before a third text dinged on my phone. I was half tempted to pick it up and throw it out he window, but I glanced down and saw the message.
Its abt Dawson.
I was off the bed in a nanosecond. Rushing down the stairs, I flew outside and went next door without a second thought. There wasn’t a single part of me that thought Kat would bring up Dawson without there being a real damn good reason for it.
Kat answered the door. “Daemon…” She trailed off, her gaze dropping south of my face.
It was below thirty, but I barely felt the chill hitting my bare chest or seeping through the flannel pajama bottoms. I stepped inside. “What about Dawson?”
She shut the door, and I couldn’t tell if it was my heart racing or hers, but it was pounding in my chest. As she turned around, she was still staring at me, her cheeks slightly flushed.
“Kat.”
“Sorry.” She walked toward the living room, pressing her arms to her sides so she didn’t brush against me. I got there first, struggling to keep my cool. She took a deep breath and then said, “I saw Bethany today.”
Chapter 20
My head jerked to the side as I stared at her. “What?”
“Dawson’s girl—”
“I know what you said.” Dragging my hands through my hair, I couldn’t believe what she had just said. “How can you be sure it was her, Kat? You’ve never seen her.”
“I’ve seen her missing persons flyer. It’s a face I can’t forget.” She sat down, rubbing her hands over her knees. “It was her.”
“Holy shit…” I sat beside her on the couch, dropping my hands between my legs. I couldn’t process this. “Where did you see her?”
“At the post office after school,” she said.
“And you waited until now to tell me?” I laughed under my breath. “Because you were training with Bilbo Baggins and you had to wait until he left to talk to me?”
Her mouth opened and then she nodded. She squeezed her knees. “I’m sorry, but I’m telling you now.”
I nodded as my gaze swung around the room, landing on the Christmas tree I’d help put together. God, that seemed like forever ago. “Man, I don’t…I don’t even know what to say. Beth’s alive?”
She cleared her throat. “Daemon, I saw her with Brian Vaughn. She’s with the DOD. They’d pulled over on the side of the road and the car door had opened. That’s how I saw them. He was closing the door and he looked angry.”
Slowly, I looked at her, and our gazes locked. Time stretched out as the shocking news gave way to understanding. My entire world shattered in an instant and then rapidly rebuilt itself. I’d been 99 percent sure that something had happened with Bethany, and Dawson had healed her. Knowing how that changed Kat and if what Blake had said was true about the DOD searching for humans like Kat, then it took no leap of logic to figure out that what had happened to Dawson and Bethany was because of the DOD and not the Arum.
Somehow, the DOD figured out that Dawson had done the forbidden. How? I didn’t know. But at that moment, it didn’t matter, because they had come into my house and they had—they had fucking lied to Dee and me. They had ripped the world out from underneath our feet and it had been a lie.
Maybe all of it had been a lie.
Because if Bethany was still alive, and with the DOD, then Dawson…he could be alive.
I shot to my feet, switching into my true form unintentionally. Rage pounded like the beat of a steel drum. Bulbs on the Christmas tree rattled as a wind picked up inside the room.
I spoke to Kat, each word punctuated with fury. She was with the DOD? The DOD is responsible for this?
“I don’t know, Daemon, but that’s not the worst part of this. How would the DOD know what happened between Dawson and Bethany unless…?”
Unless someone told them? My light pulsed, and a blast of heat filled the room. But Dawson didn’t even tell me he’d healed her or that anything happened. How would anyone know? Unless someone had seen them other than me, suspected what happened, and betrayed us…
She nodded as she stared at me with wide eyes. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. It had to be someone who knew, and that probably really limits the pool of suspects.”
Meaning it was someone that I knew, that I trusted. Someone Dawson had trusted. Heat poured off me. I’d never felt such anger before. It was a living, breathing entity in the room. I need to know who betrayed us. Then I’ll make them wish they’d never landed on this planet.
Kat stood, pushing the sleeves of her sweater up her arms. Daemon?