Oblivion

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  They disappeared into the house. A light turned on inside, and then someone I guessed was Nancy passed in front of the window. The curtains were drawn closed.

  “Huh,” Kat said. “Private bunch, aren’t they?”

  “Maybe they’re getting some bow-chicka-pow-wow.”

  She looked at me. “Ew.”

  “She’s definitely not my type.” My gaze dropped to her lips. “But now I totally have that on my mind.”

  “You’re a dog,” she said, a bit breathlessly.

  “If you pet me, I’ll—”

  “Don’t even finish that sentence.” Her lips twitched. “And knock the innocent look off your face. I so know—”

  Kat yelped, jerking in her seat. Her head hit the roof of the car.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “An Arum,” she gasped, digging the piece of obsidian out from under her sweater. “An Arum is nearby! You don’t have any obsidian on you?”

  Tense, I scanned the road. I didn’t feel a single thing. Weird. “No. I left it in my car.”

  She stared at me. “Seriously? You left the one thing that kills your enemy in your car?”

  “It’s not like I need it to kill them. Stay here.” I started to open the door, but she grabbed my arm. “What?”

  “You can’t get out of the car. We’re right in front of their house! They’ll see you,” she reasoned, and dammit, I hated logic. “Are we still close enough to the Rocks?”

  “Yes,” I growled. “They protect us for about fifty miles in every direction.”

  “Then just sit still.”

  Sitting still was not something I was a fan of, but I managed as a shadow moved up the street, darker than the night. I slowly shook my head. How did I not feel it? The Arum glided to the curb and drifted over the thin layer of snow. Its path became obvious. The Arum was going for Vaughn’s house.

  “What the hell?” I placed my hands on the dashboard.

  The Arum took form, dressed in a black jacket. His pale blond hair moved slightly as he walked up to the front door and pressed his finger on the doorbell. Vaughn answered the door and grimaced. His mouth moved, and I picked up a name, and then he stepped to the side, letting the Arum enter his house.

  “Holy monkey balls,” she said. “That did not just happen.”

  I sat back. Fury rose swiftly. “That did. And I think we’ve discovered how the DOD knows what we’re capable of.”

  “The DOD and the Arum are working together? Sweet alien baby… Why?”

  “Vaughn said a name—Residon. Read his lips.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “What I want to do is blow up their house, but that would draw too much attention.”

  She pursed her lips. “No doubt.”

  There was one person I thought we could talk to, that we could trust, because at this point, we had to talk to someone else about this. What we saw went beyond Kat and me. “We need to go see Matthew,” I said. “Now.”

  Chapter 21

  Bringing anyone into the fold was risky and could open up a whole new set of problems, but discovering that the Arum were working with the DOD wasn’t something I could keep to myself. That wasn’t smart. We were going to have to take this risk and see it through.

  Matthew lived farther out than we should’ve attempted to reach in this car. By the time the vehicle crawled up his driveway, I was wondering if we were going to make it back in the Prius.

  We climbed out and immediately Kat slipped in the snow. I grabbed her arm. “You fall and break something, I’m going to be irritated.”

  “Sorry, not all of us can be as awesome—”

  She squealed as I lifted her up in my arms. I darted up the driveway, shielding her face against the wind and snow. Once we were in front of Matthew’s door, I placed her on her feet. Kat stumbled to the side. “Could you give me a warning next time?”

  I grinned as I knocked on the door. “And miss that look on your face? Never.”

  “You’re insufferable,” she muttered.

  Matthew opened the door, his gaze swinging from me to where Kat stood shivering, because of course, it was snowing and she didn’t have a jacket on. “This is…unexpected,” he said.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  He eyed Kat for a moment and then led us into his living room. Matthew lived in a legit log cabin home. It looked like it had when he first moved here. Like no one lived there. Kat sat close to the fire, obviously needing to thaw out.

  “What’s going on?” Matthew picked up a glass of wine. “I’m assuming it’s something I don’t want to know, considering she’s with you.”

  Kat looked entirely unimpressed with the statement.

  I sat beside her. “I guess we should start from the beginning, and you’re probably going to want to sit.”

  “Oh, this is starting out good.” He swirled the liquid inside the glass.

  Oh, he had no idea. “Katy saw Bethany yesterday with Vaughn.”

  Matthew’s brows shot up, and then he took a long drink of his wine. “That’s not what I was expecting you to say. Katy, are you sure that’s who you saw?”

  She nodded. “It was her, Mr. Garrison.”

  “Matthew, call me Matthew.” He took a step back, shaking his head as he cleared his throat. “I really don’t know what to say.”

  “It gets worse,” she said, rubbing her hands together.

  “I know where one of the DOD officers lives,” I chimed in. “And we went there tonight.”

  “What?” Matthew lowered his glass. “Are you insane?”

  I shrugged. “While we were watching his house, Nancy Husher showed up and guess who else did?”

  “Santa?” he said drily.

  Kat laughed out loud.

  I ignored that. “An Arum showed up and they let him in. Even greeted him by name—Residon.”

  Looking away, Matthew downed the entire drink. He set the glass on the mantel above the fireplace. “This isn’t good, Daemon. I know you want to rush up there and find out how Bethany is still alive, but you can’t. This is too dangerous.”

  “Do you understand what this means?” I rose, stepping forward. “The DOD has Bethany. Vaughn was one of the officers who came and told us that they were both dead. So they lied about her. And that means they could’ve lied about Dawson.”

  “Why would they have Dawson? They told us he was dead. Obviously Bethany isn’t, but that doesn’t mean he’s alive. So get that out of your head, Daemon.”

  Anger flashed through me. “If it was one of your siblings, would you ‘get that out of your head’?”

  “All my siblings are dead.” Matthew stalked across the room, stopping in front of us. “You guys are all I have left, and I will not stand by and humor false hope that will get you killed or worse!”

  I sat down, taking a deep breath. “You’re family to us, too. And Dawson also considered you family, Matthew.”

  Pain flashed in Matthew’s ultrabright eyes, and then he looked away. “I know. I know.” Turning, he walked over to his recliner and sat down heavily, shaking his head. “Honestly, it would be best if he weren’t alive, and you know that. I can’t even imagine…”

  “But if he is, we need to do something about it.” I paused. “And if he’s truly dead, then…”

  “You don’t understand, Daemon. The DOD would have no interest in Bethany unless…unless Dawson healed her.”

  I stilled as I stared at Matthew, and I could feel Kat doing the same. I didn’t want him to know about Kat and me. Not yet. “What are you saying, Matthew?”

  He rubbed his brow, wincing. “The Elders…they don’t talk about why we’re not allowed to heal humans, and they have good reason. It’s forbidden, not only because of the risk of exposure on our end, but because of what it does to a human. They know. So do I.”

  “What?” I glanced at Kat, relieved that she knew to stay quiet. “Do you know what happens?”

  He nodded. “It alters the human, splicing his or h
er DNA with ours. There has to be a true want for it to work, though. The human takes on our abilities, but it doesn’t always stick. Sometimes it fades. Sometimes the human dies from it or the change backfires. But if successful, it forms a connection between the two.”

  A true want? What the hell did that mean?

  “The connection between a human and a Luxen after a massive healing is unbreakable at a cellular level,” he continued. “It marries the two together. One cannot survive if the other perishes.”

  Kat’s sharp inhale echoed in my head as I shot to my feet. Blake had not said that when he talked about Kat being changed. He never mentioned that the Luxen and the human were bonded on an unbreakable level. But that meant…

  Oh my God.

  I barely got the words out. “Then if Bethany is alive…”

  “Then Dawson would have to be alive,” Matthew finished, sounding weary. “If he had in fact healed her.”

  Flipping my gaze to the fire, that tiny spark of hope grew stronger. Dawson had to have healed Bethany. I knew it, deep in my core, and that meant that my brother was alive. He was alive, somewhere out there; he was alive.

  “But you just said he couldn’t be alive,” Kat spoke up, and I looked at Matthew.

  “That was my weakest attempt to persuade this one from getting himself killed,” he said.

  It was like taking a punch to the chest. Raw emotion poured into me. “Did you…did you know this the entire time?” My form began to flicker. “Did you?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No. No! I believed both of them to be dead, but if he did heal her—did change her—and she’s alive, then he has to be alive. That’s a big if—an if based on whether or not Katy really did recognize someone she’s never met.”

  I slowly sat down, feeling so much I didn’t feel anything. “My brother’s alive. He’s…he’s alive.”

  “What do you think they’re doing to him?” Kat asked.

  “I don’t know.” Matthew stood. “Whatever it is, it can’t be…”

  It wasn’t good.

  “The DOD knows, Matthew. They know what we can do,” I said finally. “They’ve probably known since the beginning.”

  His lashes swept up, and he met my stare. “I’ve never truly believed they didn’t, to be honest. The only reason I never voiced my belief is because I didn’t want any of you to worry.”

  “And the Elders—do they know this, too?” I asked, thinking of Lydia.

  “The Elders are just grateful to have a place to live in peace and be basically separated from the human race. Stick-their-heads-in-the-sand kind of thing, Daemon. If anything, they probably choose to not believe our secrets aren’t safe.” He glanced at his empty glass on the fireplace. “It’s…easier for them.”

  “That sounds incredibly stupid,” Kat said.

  Matthew smiled wryly in response. “Dear girl, you do not know what it is like to be a guest, do you? Imagine living with the knowledge that your home and everything could be whipped out from under you at any moment. But you have to lead people, keep them calm and happy—safe. The worst thing would be to voice the darkest of your concerns to the masses.” He paused, eyeing that glass again. “Tell me, what would humans do if they knew aliens lived among them?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Uh, they’d probably riot and go nuts.”

  “Exactly,” he murmured. “Our kinds are not that different.”

  She squirmed next to me. “What about the Arum thing?”

  “I don’t know.” Matthew refilled his glass. “I can’t even fathom a reason why the DOD would be working with them—what they could even gain. The Arum absorb our powers, but never healing—nothing of that magnitude. They have a different heat signature than we do, so with the right tools, the DOD would know they weren’t dealing with us, but to walk up to an Arum or a Luxen on the street, there would be no way to tell us apart.”

  “Wait.” She tucked her hair back, glancing at me. “What if the DOD captured an Arum, believing it to be a Luxen, and you guys were studied, too, right? Forced to assimilate into the human world? I don’t know what assimilation entails, but I’m sure it was some kind of observation, so wouldn’t they have noticed eventually, especially with the heat-signature thing?”

  Matthew walked over to the liquor cabinet in the corner, going for something harder. “When we were being assimilated, they never saw our abilities. So if we work off the theory that they’ve known for some time, they studied our abilities on Luxen who could never tell us that the DOD is aware of what we can do.”

  “You’re saying that those Luxen would be…”

  “Dead,” he said, tossing back a mouthful of clear liquor. “I’m not sure how much Daemon has told you, but there were Luxen who didn’t assimilate. They were put down…like feral animals. No stretch of the imagination to believe that they used some Luxen to study their abilities, to learn about us, and then got rid of them.”

  I was quiet, but I was listening, and I suddenly thought about Blake. What if the DOD was sending some of the Luxen—or ones like Kat—out to spy on others? Maybe that was paranoid. Maybe not.

  “But that doesn’t explain why the Arum would work with the DOD,” Kat argued.

  “It doesn’t.” Matthew moved to the fireplace. He propped his elbow on the mantel. “I am afraid to theorize over what that could mean.”

  “Part of me doesn’t even care about that right now,” I said, feeling tired. “Someone betrayed Dawson. Someone had to tell the DOD.”

  “It could be anyone,” Matthew said wearily. “Dawson didn’t try to hide his relationship with Bethany. And if anyone was watching them closely, they could’ve suspected something happened. We all watched them when they first got together. I’m sure some of us didn’t stop.”

  Who in the hell could it have been?

  We left Matthew’s house shortly after that, and she handed the keys to me without fighting when I asked for them. Snow was coming down heavier, and I needed…well, I needed something like driving to focus on. I turned to open the car door, but Kat walked back to me. Before I knew what she was doing, she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed tight.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “We’ll figure out something. We’ll get him back.”

  We’ll get him back.

  After a moment of hesitation, I folded my arms around Kat and held her close. “I know,” I said, full of steely determination. “I’ll get him back if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Over the next couple of days, we staked out Vaughn’s house after Kat finished her evening training with Blake. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No visiting Arum or Nancy. Each evening, we returned home, and my frustration grew.

  My brother was out there, somewhere, and nothing I was doing seemed to be getting me any closer to finding him. When I wasn’t with Kat, I was staking out Vaughn’s home on my own. I began to realize that the man was barely there, and I wondered if he had another home. Though the times I managed to follow Vaughn on foot, he didn’t go anyplace else.

  Thoughts of my brother and who could’ve possibly reported what he’d done to the DOD consumed me. It would have to have been someone who saw either Dawson or Bethany immediately after whatever happened or someone Dawson trusted enough to tell.

  Dawson didn’t trust anyone in the colony, not even Lydia, with that kind of information. The only person he could’ve talked to would’ve been Dee, but there’s no way she would’ve kept that quiet all this time. I already knew he hadn’t confided in Adam. So that left two options. Someone saw them.

  Or it was someone Bethany knew.

  The more I thought about it, the more it made sense that the person who had notified the DOD was connected to Bethany and not Dawson. My brother would’ve been so damn careful to keep what he’d done a secret, and maybe Bethany hadn’t realized the seriousness of what had happened, trusted the wrong person.

  But that theory had its flaws, too, because who did Bethany know that would’ve even had the inclina
tion or the know-how to contact the DOD? It’s not like you could call 1-800-ALIENS or something.

  Looking into Bethany was a start, though.