on my way back. Grabbing my baseball hat over the back of the sofa, I tugged it on and headed out.
Kat’s car was gone when I stepped outside. Wondering if she met up with Carissa or Lesa, I cut across the driveways and moved among the bare trees. I knew Kat wasn’t with Dee. If she wasn’t with them, she— I cut my thoughts off. There was no way she would be with Douche Bag, not after last night.
Faint light clung to the thick limbs as I picked up my pace, staying in my human form as I scouted the area. From the wooded areas, we could move around the whole damn county virtually undetected, but it was hunting season, and the last thing I wanted was to be shot. Going full Luxen would noticeably draw attention, but wearing a dark thermal and jeans, I blended in as the waning sun gave way to night.
As I neared the outskirts of the county, a few steps from Pendleton, I skidded to a stop, kicking up dried, dead leaves and loose soil. Ice snaked down my spine. I whipped around, scanning the trees. I didn’t see anything, but there was definitely an Arum nearby.
Shit.
I moved toward the west, farther away from home, and didn’t pick up a damn thing. Backtracking, I picked up speed, coasting over the ground and uprooted trees, barely touching the exposed roots and boulders. Several miles later, I felt the oily thickness gliding over my skin. It was brief, gone before it could taint the air.
The Arum was a fast son of a bitch, staying several minutes ahead of me despite the fact that there was no way it sensed me, not with the looming Seneca Rocks.
My breath puffed out misty clouds in the cold air as I neared the highway. I traveled north a mile before I felt the Arum again.
Slowing down as the trees thinned, I tracked the Arum right up to the Smoke Hole diner. Holy shit, was it going for the meat loaf or something? The darkness of it, the thickness in the air, had heightened as I waited until bright headlights of oncoming traffic cleared. I crossed the road, hitting the parking lot at a sedate pace.
Through the lit windows of the diner, a dark shadow exploded within the building, blackening out the windows and rapidly disappearing. The presence of the Arum vanished.
“What the hell…” The back of my neck warmed and tingled. Kat was here?
The door to Smoke Hole flew open and out came Kat. She wasn’t alone. Douche Bag was with her, his hand wrapped around hers. I stared at them, torn between focusing on the fact that an Arum had just been inside the diner and the fact that even after last night, she was with Blake today.
I couldn’t believe either of those things.
Kat slowly lifted her head, her face pale as her eyes met mine. She pulled her hand free. “What…what are you doing here?”
I was grinding my jaw so hard my molars were going to crack. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
She glanced over at Douche Bag. “This isn’t what—”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you two or whatever.” Douche Bag curved his hand around Kat’s elbow. “But Katy and I need to talk—”
That did it.
Shooting forward, I had him pinned against the window of the diner, my face so close to his, the bill of my cap pressed into his forehead. “You touch her again and I will—”
“You’ll what?” he shot back. “What are you going to do, Daemon?”
Kat grabbed my shoulder. “Daemon, come on. Let him go.”
“You want to know what I’m going to do?” I asked, voice low. “You know where your head and ass are? Well, they’re about to become well acquainted with each other.”
Douche Bag smirked. “I’d like to see you try.”
“You might want to rethink that.” I laughed low. “Because you have no idea what I’m capable of, boy.”
“See, that’s the funny thing.” He gripped my wrist. “I know exactly what you’re capable of.”
I tilted my head, hearing what he wasn’t saying. This little punk. Knew it. From the moment I’d seen him all up on Kat, I knew there was something off about him.
“Boys,” a man spoke. “You’re gonna wanna break this up right now before someone calls the—”
Douche Bag raised his free hand, and the man froze.
Son of a bastard.
I was starting to shift. I tightened my grip until he gasped. “I don’t care who or what you are, but you better give me a reason not to blast you into your next pathetic life real quickly.”
“I know what you are,” Blake choked out.
“That’s not helping,” I growled, letting more of my true form slip through, just enough for him to see exactly what he was dealing with. “Try again.”
“I just killed an Arum, and even though you’re an arrogant prick, we’re not enemies.” A choke cut off his next words, and Kat grabbed both of my shoulders. “I can help Katy,” he wheezed. “Good enough for you?”
“What?” Kat demanded, dropping her hands.
“Yeah, see, you saying her name alone makes me want to kill you. So, no, not good enough for me,” I told him.
His eyes darted to her. “Katy, I know what you are, what you will become capable of, and I can help you.”
Oh man, this…this was something else. I leaned in to him, my eyes pure white and glowing. “Let me ask you a question. If I kill you, will these people unfreeze?”
His eyes widened.
I smiled.
Kat was beside me. “Let him go, Daemon. I need to know what he’s talking about.”
“Get back, Kat. I mean it; get the hell back.”
“Stop it,” she said, and then screamed, “Stop! Just freaking stop for a couple of minutes!”
I glanced at her, and Douche Bag took advantage of the distraction. He swiped his arm across mine, breaking my hold. He scrambled to the side, putting distance between us.
“Jesus.” He rubbed his throat. “You have anger management problems. It’s like a disease.”
“There’s a cure,” I said. “And it’s called kicking your ass.”
He flipped me off. Boy had a death wish. I started forward, but Kat darted in front of me. She placed her hands on my chest. “Stop. You need to stop now.”
My lips curled into a snarl. “He’s a—”
“We don’t know what he is,” she cut in. “But he did kill an Arum. And he hasn’t hurt me or anyone else, and he’s had plenty of opportunity to do so.”
I exhaled roughly. “Kat—”
“We need to hear him out, Daemon. I need to hear what he has to say. Besides, these people have been frozen, like, twice now. That can’t be good for them.”
“I don’t care.” I glared at the boy, wanting to turn his skin inside and out, and I think he saw that in my eyes, because he actually took a step back. “He’ll talk. And then I’ll decide whether or not he gets to see tomorrow.”
Kat swallowed and then motioned at the man in a flannel shirt, the one who was frozen. “Can you, um, fix them?”
“Sure.” He flicked his wrist.
“…police,” Flannel Shirt Guy finished.
“Everything’s fine. Thank you.” Kat spun around. “My car—if you guys can get along in such an enclosed space?”
I stalked over to where her Camry was parked and slid into the passenger seat. Kat got behind the wheel, and Douche Bag made himself damn comfy in the backseat.
Kat turned the heat on and then looked back at him. “What are you?”
“The same thing I suspect you are,” he said to her.
“And what do you think I am?”
I cracked my neck, keeping my mouth shut. Nothing I was going to say at the moment was going to move this conversation along.
“I didn’t know at first,” he answered. “There was something about you that drew me to you, but I didn’t understand what it was.”
“Proceed with caution when it comes to your next word choices,” I growled.
Kat squirmed as she wrapped her hand around the obsidian necklace. “What do you mean by that?”
Douche Bag shifted forward in
the backseat. “The first time I saw you, I knew you were different. Then when you stopped the branch and I saw your necklace, I knew. Only those who know to fear the shadows wear obsidian.” Seconds ticked by in silence. “Then our date…yeah, that glass and plate didn’t just fall into my lap on its own.”
I snickered as my hand curled into a fist. “Good times.”
“How much do you know?” she asked.
“There are two alien races on Earth: the Luxen and the Arum.” He paused as I twisted in my seat. He swallowed. “You’re capable of moving things without touching them and you can manipulate light. I’m sure you can do more. And you can also heal humans.”
“How do you know this?” I asked.
There was a pause. “When I was thirteen, I was leaving soccer practice with a friend of mine—Chris Johnson. He was a normal kid like me, except he was super fast, never got sick, and I never saw his parents at any games. But who cares, right? I didn’t until I was goofing around and stepped off the curb, right in front of a speeding cab. Chris healed me. Turns out he was an alien.” His lips twisted into a wry grin. “I thought it was pretty cool. My best friend was an alien. Who gets to say that? What I didn’t know and what he never told me was that he lit my ass up. Five days later, four men entered my house.
“They wanted to know where they were,” he continued, hands clenching into fists. “I didn’t know what they meant. They killed my parents and my little sister right in front of me. And when I still couldn’t help them, they beat me within an inch of my life.”
“Oh my God,” Kat whispered.
“Not sure he really exists,” he said, letting out a dry laugh. “Anyway, it took me a while to figure out that when you’re healed, you take on their abilities. Shit just started flying everywhere after I was sent to live with my uncle. When I realized that my friend had changed me, I researched as much as I could. Not that I needed to. The Arum found me again.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The Arum in the diner, she couldn’t sense me because of the beta quartz—yeah, I know about that, too. But if we were outside of the quartz range, we are just like your…friend to them. We’re actually tastier.”
Tastier? My fist rested on my knee.
“When I realized how much danger I was in, I started training physically and working on my abilities. I learned about their weakness through…others. I survived the best I could.”
Instinct was firing off left and right. This guy happened to be healed by another Luxen, confirming what I suspected had happened to Kat, the whole changing her part, and he just coincidentally ended up here, in the middle of Bum Fuck, West Virginia? This wasn’t the only place in the U.S. that was protected by beta quartz. This was bullshit.
“This is all great, the caring and sharing crap,” I said. “But how did you end up here of all places?”
“When I learned about the beta quartz, I moved here with my uncle.”
“Awful convenient,” I murmured.
“Yeah, it is. The mountains. Very convenient for me,” he replied.
“There are plenty of other places packed with beta quartz,” I pointed out. “Why. Here?”
“Seemed like the least populated area,” he reasoned. “I couldn’t imagine there being that many Arum here.”
“So everything was a lie?” Kat asked suddenly. “Santa Monica, the surfing?”
“No, not everything was a lie. I’m from Santa Monica and I still love surfing,” he said. “I’ve lied as much as you have, Katy.”
He leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He sank into the shadows inside the car. “You’ve been hurt, haven’t you? And healed by one of them?”
I stiffened.
Douche Bag sighed again. “You’re not going to tell me which one it was?”
“It’s not your business,” she said. “How did you know I was different?”
“You mean besides the obvious obsidian, the alien entourage, and the branch?” He laughed. “You’re full of electricity. See?” He reached between the seats and placed his hand over Kat’s. Static crackled, jolting us both.
My hand snaked out and grabbed his, throwing it back at him. “I do not like you.”
“Feeling’s mutual, bud.” He looked at Kat. “It’s the same whenever we touch an Arum or a Luxen, isn’t it? You feel their skin hum?”
She was quiet for a moment. “How do you know about the DOD?”
“I met another human like us. She was under the DOD’s thumb. Apparently she exposed her abilities and they swooped in. She told me everything about the DOD and what they really want, which isn’t the Luxen or the Arum.”
I turned back around, eyeing him. “What do you mean?”
“They want people like Katy. They don’t give two shits about the aliens. They want us.”
Kat gaped at him. “What?”
“You need to explain that a lot better,” I ordered as static built in the tiny car.
He leaned forward. “Do you really think the DOD doesn’t know what both the Arum and Luxen are capable of, that after studying your kind for decades and decades that they don’t know what they’re dealing with? And if you really believe not, then you’re stupid or naive.”
Kat jolted in the seat.
No way. There was no way. “If the DOD knew about our abilities, they wouldn’t let us live free. They’d have us locked up in a heartbeat.”
“Really? The DOD knows the Luxen are a peaceful race and they know the Arum aren’t the same as your kind. Having the Luxen free takes care of the Arum alien problem. Besides, don’t they get rid of any Luxen who causes a problem?” He jerked back as I started for him, but Kat grabbed ahold of my shirt. He lifted his hands. “Look, all I’m saying is there are bigger fish the DOD wants. And that’s the humans the Luxen mutate. We’re just as strong as you—even stronger in some cases. The only thing is, we tire out a lot quicker and it takes us longer to recharge, so to speak.”
I settled back, my hands clenching and unclenching.
“The only reason why the DOD lets you believe that your big bad secret is hidden is because they know what you can do to humans,” he explained. “And we’re what they care about.”
“No,” she whispered. “Why would they care about us instead of them?”
“Gee, Katy, why would the government be interested in a bunch of humans who have more powers than the very creatures who created us? I don’t know. Maybe because they’d have a superhuman army at their disposal or a group of people who can get rid of the aliens if need be?”
I swore under my breath, because as much as I hated it, what this boy was saying made sense. Made too much damn sense.
“But how…how are you stronger than the Luxen?” Kat asked.
“That’s a good question.” I stared into the backseat.
“In the diner, when I knew the guy was going to skip out on his meal? It’s because I could pick up on bits of his thoughts. Not all of them, but enough to know what he was planning. I can hear almost any human—any one that’s not mutated.”
“Mutated?” Her voice rose.
“You’re mutated. Tell me, have you been sick recently? Had a really high fever?”
Dammit.
“I can tell by your expression you have. Let me guess, you had a fever so bad that it felt like your entire body was on fire? Lasted a couple of days and then you felt fine—better than ever?” He turned to the window again, shaking his head. “And now you can move things without touching them? Probably have no control. The table shaking inside wasn’t me. It was you. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Soon you’ll be able to do a hell of a lot more, and if you don’t get control of it, it’s going to be really bad. This damn place is swarming with DOD, hidden in plain sight. And they’re here looking for hybrids. Far as I know, the Luxen don’t typically heal humans, but it happens.” He glanced at me. “Obviously.”
Kat tucked her hair back with shaky hands. “Then why are you here if it’s suc
h a risk now?”
“You,” he said. “Honestly, I thought about not coming back. Moving on, but there’s my uncle…and you. There’re not many like us
Oblivion Page 52
