“You snooped in my bus!” I said indignantly.
“I’ll snoop anywhere I damned well please, Ms. Lane. I’ll snoop inside your skin if I feel like it.”
“You just try,” I said, eyes narrowing.
He moved forward in one swift, violent lunge but caught himself and locked down hard.
I mirrored the move, without conscious thought at all, as if our bodies were connected by puppet strings. Lunged forward, froze. Fisted my hands at my sides. They wanted to touch him. I looked down. His hands were fisted, too.
I uncurled my hands and crossed my arms.
He crossed his at exactly the same moment.
We both practically flung them down at our sides.
We stared at each other.
The silence lengthened.
“Why did you take my guns?” he said finally.
His question snapped me fully awake again. I was dangerously tired. “I needed them. Figured it was the least you could give up after all the sex you got,” I added, with flippancy I didn’t feel.
“You think you can steal from me? You’re out of control, Rainbow Girl.”
“Don’t call me that!” She was dead. And if she wasn’t, I’d have killed her myself.
“And you know it.”
“You’re the one who’s out of control,” I said, just to irritate him.
“I’m never out of control.”
“Are, too.”
“Am—” He broke off and looked away. Then, disbelievingly, “Bloody hell, have you learned nothing?”
“What was I supposed to learn, Barrons?” I demanded. My temper, already a frayed rope, snapped. “That it’s a sucky world out there? That people will take everything from you that matters, if you let them? That if you want something, you’d better hurry and get it, because odds are somebody else wants it, too, and if they can beat you to it they will? Or was I supposed to learn that it’s not only okay to kill but sometimes it can be downright fun? That was a real kicker to find inside your head. Want to talk about it? Share a little intimacy with me? No? Didn’t think so. How about this: The more weapons, knowledge, and power you can get your hands on, any way you can, the better. Lie, cheat, or steal, it all comes out in the wash. Isn’t that what you think? That emotion is weakness and cunning priceless? Wasn’t I supposed to become like you? Wasn’t that the point?” I was shouting, but I didn’t care. I was furious.
“That was never the point,” he snarled, moving toward me.
“Then what was it? What the bloody hell was the point? Tell me there was some kind of point to all this!” I snarled back, stepping toward him.
We charged each other like bulls.
An instant before we collided, I shouted, “Did you help the LM turn me Pri-ya just to make me stronger?”
His head snapped back, and he stopped so suddenly that I slammed into him, bounced off, and sprawled on my ass. On the floor. Again.
He stared down at me, and for a split second I saw a completely unguarded look in his eyes. No. He hadn’t. Not only hadn’t he, this … man, for lack of a better word … who enjoyed killing, was horrified by the thought of it.
A terrible tension inside me eased. Breath came more easily.
I stayed on the floor, too drained to get back up. There was another of those long, strained silences.
I sighed.
He took a deep breath. Released it.
“I would have given you the guns,” he said finally.
“I should have asked for them,” I admitted grudgingly. “But then you probably would have spiked them with something deadly, same way you did the Orb, and I’d have gotten blamed for that, too,” I couldn’t resist adding.
“I didn’t spike the Orb. I bought it at an auction. Somebody set me up.”
He said it with such a complete lack of heat that I almost believed him.
There was another long silence.
He slid a bag from his shoulder, dropped it at my feet. It was my backpack.
“Where’d you get that? I didn’t see it in the room when I left, and I hunted for it.” I’d wondered where it had gone.
“Found it here at the abbey while I was waiting for you to get back.”
I frowned. “How long have you been here?”
“Since late last night. I spent all day yesterday trying to find you. By the time I tracked you here, you’d left again. Easier to wait for you to come back than waste time tracking you again.”
“Doesn’t your trusty little brand work?” I rubbed the base of my skull where he’d stamped his mystical tattoo. The one that had failed me when I’d needed it.