Oblivion

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “Actually, I mentioned it yesterday, but you were watching something on TV, so you weren’t paying attention to me.” She flashed a bright smile while I frowned at her. “But you’re not going to make a big deal about it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you would’ve already if you were.” She swung her legs like a five-year-old. “I just…want to do something different, and we’ve never done anything like that before. Dawson would’ve loved…” She trailed off, lowering her chin.

  She didn’t need to finish her statement, because I already knew what she was going to say. Dawson would’ve been all over the idea of having a house party. Because Dawson pretty much loved everything while I was the exact opposite.

  “Anyway,” she said, exhaling deeply. “I just want to do something fun. All of us could use that.”

  I leaned back. Wait a second. Wasn’t Kat’s birthday coming up? Yes. It was. I’d overheard her saying her birth date when she was taken to the hospital after the Arum attack. Damn, I hoped she was feeling better by then. Would suck to spend your birthday sick. Then again, I didn’t think humans stayed sick that long. I started to tell Dee that Kat wasn’t feeling well, but realized if I did, Dee would go right over there and it seemed like Kat wanted to be alone.

  Please just leave me alone.

  Damn, I wanted to check on her. It was killing me not to, but her coming down with a bug or flu wasn’t a national crisis. I needed to chill. Plus, she had said she was fine.

  After I resisted the urge to point out that the party might be a bad idea, Dee eventually disappeared back into her room, working on her English assignment. I ate the rest of the leftover pizza and then spent the next several hours trying to entertain myself.

  There wasn’t a damn thing on the TV. No Paranormal Hunters marathon or anything. The internet bores me. Dee had finished up whatever she was working on and had gone over to Adam’s house, because apparently they needed to hang out more than once in a day. They were probably sucking face again—God, I wished I hadn’t even had that thought, because now I sort of wanted to barf up the pizza I ate—and picking up a book required waaay too much effort.

  And books made me think of Kat and her middle finger.

  She didn’t want me? Yeah, and people in hell didn’t want ice water. God, what a stupid-ass saying. People in hell were dead. They didn’t drink water, iced or not.

  Flipping onto my back, I groaned. Night had fallen, so instead of turning on the lamp like a good, normal human, I lifted my hand. White light with a reddish tinge radiated from my open palm and lit up the ceiling. Night-lights? Ha. Who needed one?

  My gaze followed a thin crack, starting at one corner of the ceiling and spreading to the middle, webbing out into a million tiny crevices. The foundation of the house was most definitely damaged.

  As was my brain right now.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this restless. Well, that was a lie. The night and morning before I’d learned that Dawson had died, it was like this. Equally tired and hyper, I was keyed up and too damn lazy to do anything. An itching deep under the skin, a stirring to take on my true form and do…what?

  “Jesus,” I muttered, letting the light fade out around my palm.

  Sitting up, I swung my legs off the bed and stood, stretching out cramped and tight muscles. Sleep so wasn’t happening anytime soon. I could always do some patrols. Yay.

  Man, I was about as exciting as a game of golf.

  A year ago, I would’ve called up Ash. She was always good with easing a serious case of boredom. Or Dawson, and I would have…

  I derailed that train of thought before it could completely form.

  I wouldn’t be calling Ash, and there was no Dawson.

  Leaving the bedroom, I hurried downstairs and out the front door. Brisk November wind slammed into me as I stopped in the driveway.

  Not going to look. Not going to look. Not going to look.

  Twisting around, I looked up at the house beside mine, to the bedroom on the second floor. Lights were off. Wonder what Kat would do if I woke her up and said we had to work off the trace? And I wasn’t thinking about the running kind of workout. Horizontal cardio. Hell, stand up, sit down, on the floor, anywhere anytime kind of cardio. I wasn’t picky.

  Body said yes please, common sense said no.

  Kat would punch me in the face.

  Hmm. Maybe then I could ask her to kiss it and make it better.

  I’d taken a step toward her house before I stopped myself. Kat hadn’t been feeling well earlier. Humans were so ridiculously fragile. They could die tripping over a damn chair leg. Car accidents could kill them. Colds turned into pneumonia and killed people.

  Mental note: pick up vitamin C before school tomorrow and force it down Kat’s throat.

  Spinning around, I sighed and started toward the lake. From there I could head down toward the colony, make sure everything was kosher, and keep circling until I was ready to collapse. Sounded like a damn good plan.

  Halfway there, that strange tingling whenever Kat was near—and not the fun kind—broke out across the nape of my neck. It couldn’t be her.

  I picked up my pace.

  She had no reason to be out in the woods in the middle of the night. It was late and cold and—

  Holy crap.

  As the still waters of the lake came into view, so did Kat.

  My pulse sped into uncharted territories. Was I dreaming? Because she was standing there with her back to me, her bare feet sinking into the loose soil at the edge of the lake, and she was only in a loose white shirt. Those legs—God, I really had a thing for her legs—and her long hair blowing in the breeze.

  This was a mirage created to torment me, no doubt.

  “Kat?”

  Slowly, as if it took some great effort for her to move, she turned, and I knew this was no dream. Tonight just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

  “What are you doing, Kitten?” I asked.

  She stared at me for so long I started to get a bit worried. “I…I need to cool down.”

  She needed… Understanding whipped through me. “Don’t you dare go into that lake.”

  Because Kat never, ever listened to me—why start now?—she moved backward. Water lapped at her ankles and then her knees. “Why?”

  “Why?” I took a step forward. “It’s too cold. Kitten, don’t make me come in there and get you.”

  Considering how fast I was and how incredibly slow all humans were, I was a little boggled by how quickly Kat went into the lake. Her head slipped under, and I knew it had to be freezing.

  What in the hell was she doing? Kat could be weird at times. After all, she really thought she could convince herself that she wasn’t obsessed with me, but this? There was no logical explanation.

  Shooting forward, I hit the lake at breakneck speed and sank down, wincing as icy water swept over my head. I grabbed her around the waist and shot back up, not even touching the water or the ground until I had her safely on her feet.

  So I could strangle her. Hello. Colds. Pneumonia. Death. Jesus.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I demanded, grasping her shoulders and giving her a light shake. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Don’t.” She pushed at me weakly. “I’m so hot.”

  My gaze drifted all the way down, getting hung up on several areas. I’d seen most of it before, but she was…wow. Like no one else and a whole slew of warm and fuzzy things.

  “Yeah, you’re hot,” I said, ignoring the near primal urge to take her down on the grass and do all kinds of things. “The whole wet white shirt… It’s working, Kitten, but a midnight swim in November? That’s a little daring, don’t you think?”

  Kat stared up at me with eyes that were kind of glassy, and then she wiggled free, heading back toward that lake.

  I caught her before she took two steps and turned her toward me. Okay, I was starting to get worried again. “Kat, you can’t get in the lake. It’s too
cold. You’re going to get sick.” I brushed back the hair plastered to her cheeks and felt how hot she really was. “Hell—sicker than you already are. You’re burning up.”

  Blinking once and then twice, she leaned into me, pressing her cheek against my chest. I think she sniffed me before saying, “I don’t want you.”

  Yeah, and I would be voted Most Friendly in the high school yearbook. “Uh, now is not the time to get into that conversation.”

  Her arms went around me, and my brows shot up. I kind of liked this Kat. “But I do want you,” she said.

  Those words did something outrageous to my chest. I held her tighter. “I know, Kitten. You aren’t fooling anyone. Come on.”

  She let go, her arms hanging limply at her sides. “I…I don’t feel good.”

  “Kat.” I pulled back and grasped her face, holding her head up since it didn’t seem like she could by herself. Unease from earlier returned and it unfurled in my belly, quickly spreading its icy tendrils into every nook and cranny. “Kat, look at me.”

  A second later, her legs went out from underneath her. Letting out a ripe curse, I caught her, cradling her against my chest. “Kat?”

  Nothing.

  Pressure clamped down on my chest. Her head fell back like it wasn’t connected to any muscle or bone. “Kat!”

  Still nothing, and holy shit, panic exploded and my brain clicked off. Whirling around, I took off, running faster than I ever have. I hit her porch in half a second and by the time I placed her down on the bed, because I thought she’d be more comfortable that way, I had yanked out my cell phone and called Dee. She answered on the third ring, her voice a bit breathless.

  “Something is wrong with Kat. I need you here. Now.”

  That was all I said. The call disconnected. Pure terror had its claws in me as I cupped her cheeks. “Kat, open your eyes. Talk to me.”

  Her chest rose in shallow breaths, but she didn’t open her eyes and she didn’t speak. Preparing to slip into my true form to heal her, I stopped at the very last second. Had I done this to her? Made her sick by healing her? We were forbidden to heal humans. No one ever really told us why, and this could be the reason.

  Could we kill them?

  “Shit.”

  This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t save her life to be the reason why I lost her all over again. That was too fucking cruel, and I would never—

  Dee appeared in Kat’s doorway, her hair messy from obviously running the miles between the Thompsons’ house and ours. Her lips way too swollen for me even to go there. She took one look at the bed and was beside us in an instant. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” I grabbed for the blanket to cover her, but I didn’t know if that would help or hurt, so I threw it back toward the foot of the bed.

  “Is she wet?” Dee placed her hand on Kat’s forehead and jerked back. “Oh my God, she’s burning up. What was she doing?”

  “She was by the lake and got in. I got her out, but she passed out.” Hovering over her, I felt absolutely helpless and useless. “Kat, wake up! Come on, girl, wake up.”

  Stricken, Dee clasped her hands together. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with her!”

  Dee paled.

  Closing my eyes, I let out a breath. “I’m sorry. She just…she won’t wake up.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure she’ll be okay.” Dee placed a hand on my arm. “It’s probably the flu. Humans get really high fevers.”

  “But fevers are bad for humans, right? Brain damage or something like that.” Panic socked me right in the gut again, and I looked down at Kat. Her cheeks were way too flushed. “Come on, Kitten, open your eyes.”

  “Oh God…” Dee whispered.

  Heart pounding, I wanted to put my fists straight through the wall.

  “Daemon! You need to calm down.”

  My sister’s voice drew my attention. Plumes of plaster fell from the ceiling. The damn house was starting to shake.

  Calming down was not easy. I didn’t know what to do—how to make Kat better without unintentionally screwing her up.

  Dee fluttered around the bed like a nervous hummingbird. “I could get something cool—a washcloth. That might help until her mom gets home.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting beside Kat. I was vaguely aware of my sister leaving the bedroom and rummaging around in the bathroom. Brushing her damp hair back, I winced at how hot her skin was. How had I not noticed right off the bat that something was wrong? Hell, she was walking around in just a T-shirt. That wasn’t normal.

  Returning with the cool washcloth, Dee tossed it to the floor. “What am I thinking? She’s soaked now and it’s not helping.”

  Kat turned her head slowly, pressing against my palm, and my heart freaking fluttered. My fingers splayed across her too-warm cheek. She murmured something too low for me to understand, so I leaned closer. “Kat?”

  Her body shuddered. “Daemon…”

  “I’m here.”

  She shuddered again, turning her head away. Her face pinched, and she called out for me again, and the sound of my name was like being hit by an Arum. These tiny, pitiful sounds escaped her parted lips.

  “We need to get her into something dry. Maybe that will help?” my sister offered.

  She didn’t sound convinced, but I nodded. Moving as fast as lightning, Dee grabbed a dry nightgown out of one of the dressers. It was some kind of sleep jersey, with the number eleven on the back.

  Even though I didn’t want to leave her side, I pushed away from the bed and turned my back, giving Kat privacy as Dee changed her out of the soaked shirt.

  It didn’t help.

  Nothing did, and when she started shivering uncontrollably, I was about to lose my freaking mind. I wrapped her in a blanket, but her body was shaking so hard the bed trembled.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. “We need to take her to the hospital.”

  Dee agreed, not that it mattered. One way or another, I was taking her there. Gathering her in my arms, I started down the stairs. I was outside, letting my human skin shed away when my sister stopped me.

  “Daemon, we have to drive there.”

  “Too slow.”

  She grabbed my arm, her eyes meeting mine. “I know you’re worried, but we can’t show up there with no car. There’s no way we can explain that. We need to take the car. I’ll drive.”

  I exhaled harshly.

  “I’ll drive really fast and break every speed limit there is, but we need to do this like normal people would.”

  Dammit, she was right, and I hated that.

  Climbing into the back of Dee’s Jetta, I held Kat close. I didn’t know what to do. So I spoke to her in my native language, then realized she probably couldn’t hear it since it wasn’t something we spoke out loud.

  But the strangest thing happened.

  Kat stilled, and her breathing deepened.

  Gathering her against my chest, I bent over, pressing my forehead to her flushed one, and kept talking to her, telling her about this stupid TV show I’d seen the other day, knowing she couldn’t hear me, but it was something and that’s all I had. And after I recapped the show, I closed my eyes and told her in my own language the truth.

  I don’t know how to make you better. I wish I did, but please stay with me. I need you, and I can’t lose you. Not now. Not ever.

  Chapter 4

  Running my hands through my hair, I paced around the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room. Dee was sitting in one, her knees tucked against her chest and her cheek resting against her knees. An older couple sat on the other side, and I was confident that I was probably going to see someone die before anyone came out and checked on the man.

  A nurse had immediately taken Kat when we arrived, forcing me to place her down on one of those rolling beds with a thin mattress. I hadn’t wanted to let her go, let some human guy who looked a few years older than me wheel her off behind doors I wasn’t
allowed to pass.