What had Quincy been doing in this room? Was it curiosity that had drawn the Luxen? I doubted he’d seen or felt a hybrid before, and these newly arrived Luxen put Curious George to shame. But was it something else?
Christ. I couldn’t even think of all the possibilities, because none of them was good. If Rolland continued to value my presence, she’d stay alive, but after spending two days with them, I knew there were worse things than death.
I was standing next to the bed without realizing I’d even moved. I shouldn’t be in here; this was the last place I should be, but instead of turning around like I had two functioning brain cells, I sat beside her, my eyes glued to the hand resting just above her navel.
Her hand was so pale, so small. So fragile in spite of the fact she was no ordinary human. My gaze traveled up her arm. The shirt was torn and the material was charred over the shoulder, the navy blue dark with blood.
I leaned over her, placing one hand beside her still hip. Blood had seeped into the white comforter and sheets. No wonder her skin was so washed out. My heart pounded as my gaze crawled across the long lengths of brown hair that had spilled across the pillow.
My fingers burned to touch her hair, to touch her, but every muscle locked up in my body when my gaze stopped on her parted lips.
Too many memories slammed into me, and I struggled through them, my pulse ratcheting up. The only thing that seemed to dampen the roar in my veins and the tightening of every muscle in my body was the shocking scarlet swipe under the corner of her lip.
Blood.
I dragged my eyes up, feeling pressure clamp down on my chest as I saw the ugly reddish-purple bruise along her temple. When Dawson had zapped her, she’d gone down, cracking her head on the floor, and that sound still echoed through my thoughts as if taunting me. Truth was it would haunt me. Forever.
Her lashes were thick and unmoving, the skin under her eyes shadowed. There was another bruise along her hairline, but she still was the most—
I cut off the thought, closing my eyes and exhaling slowly. For some reason, I saw Archer’s face, his expression as our gazes locked the second after she had gone down. In the bloody chaos and confusion, it had been like time had stopped. Then Archer had started toward her, and I . . . I had wanted to leave her there. I knew I had to leave her there, but someone else had grabbed her.
And I hadn’t stopped him.
Opening my eyes, I saw my arm tremble as I lifted her right hand. The moment our flesh met, a charge jumped from her skin to mine, stirring me. Carefully, I tugged down the hem of her shirt, my knuckles brushing across her stomach as I covered her, the contact brief but torturous.
Then I caressed her, and I was f**king lost.
My fingers drifted over her cool cheek, brushing a strand of soft hair back from her face. I don’t know how long I sat there, tracing the line of her jaw and the curve of her lips, and I really wasn’t aware of healing her, but the bruises faded from her skin and I knew the bleeding had stopped. I wanted to pick her up, clean her, but that would be too much.
It could already be too much, and then what?
Color now infused her cheeks, a sweet pink flush spreading across her face, and I realized she would wake soon.
I couldn’t be in here.
Gently, I removed her shoes and then lifted her legs, tucking them under the blanket. There was more that could’ve been done, should’ve been done, but this . . . this had to be enough.
Closing my eyes, I lowered my head, inhaling the sweet, unique scent that was solely hers, and then I kissed her parted lips. Sensation rushed over me, a jolt of something close to being described as sublime, and I forced myself to lift my head and stand and back the hell away from her before it was too late, even though a dark voice whispered that it probably already was.
There were a hundred ways all of this could play out, and I couldn’t see a happy ending with any of them.
{ Katy }
I had to fight my way through the fog of unconsciousness, and my brain was slow to come back online. Lying still for several moments, I was kind of surprised by the fact that I wasn’t in any serious pain. There was a dull ache in my shoulder, and somewhere deep behind my eyes, there was a faint throbbing, but I’d expected more.
Confusion swirled inside me as I played back those precious minutes before I landed headfirst in la-la land. The poo had hit the proverbial fan at the market and the Luxen had been everywhere, taking on human DNA at such a rapid pace that it had done something to the humans, killing them. I prayed that little girl had made it to safety, but where was it safe? They’d been everywhere and . . .
My heart sped up as I remembered feeling Daemon, seeing him in his true form, knowing he’d seen me, but then he’d disappeared and . . . and Dawson had hit me with a blast from the Source. Why would he have done that? Better yet, why hadn’t Daemon come to me?
In the furthest reaches of my consciousness, there was an insidious whisper that spelled out the answer. Luc and Archer had suspected as much, but I couldn’t let myself believe that they had been right and that our greatest fear had come true.
Just thinking that Daemon could be different now, could be one of them—whatever they actually were—made it feel like a fist had seized my heart.
Taking a deep breath, I blinked my eyes open and immediately sucked in a startled breath, jackknifing up so fast my head felt like it would fall off my shoulders.
Two emerald-colored eyes stared back into mine, framed with heavy black lashes. All at once I was tossed back to last summer, the morning after I’d discovered Daemon Black wasn’t quite human—when he’d frozen time, stopping a truck from turning me into roadkill. I’d woken up to find Dee staring at me.