Oblivion

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  spine and her back bowed slightly, pushing her body into mine, and I really, really liked that. Maybe sleeping was the wrong idea. Maybe we could—

  The window across from her bed blew open as a large body, mixed with snow, crashed onto the floor, sending piles of snow and shards of glass into the air.

  Kat’s startled scream echoed in my ears as I shot off the bed, switching into my Luxen form. My light chased away the lingering darkness in the room as I stepped around her bed.

  Holy crap.

  Kat scrambled to the edge of the bed and peered down, “Holy crap.”

  A body—a man dressed all in white—was on the floor, obviously dead. Like so dead.

  Chapter 2

  The dead man had to be with the DOD. Otherwise I wouldn’t have any clue as to why someone would be dressed so they’d blend in with the snow.

  Hell.

  Blood pooled under the man’s head, an injury that happened either before he’d come through the window or during it. The charred spot in the center of the man’s still chest suggested that he didn’t simply fall out of the sky and then through the window.

  Freaking hell.

  Kat’s heart pounded like a steel drum. “Daemon…?”

  She was seeing this, and she should never see this. Spinning around, I slipped back into my human form. I folded my arm around her waist, pulling her away from the edge of the bed.

  “He’s an officer,” she stuttered, smacking at my arms to get free. “He’s with the—”

  Her words were cut off as Dawson appeared in the bedroom doorway. His eyes glowed white, sharp and brilliant. “He was sneaking around outside,” he said. “By the tree line.”

  My arm loosened around Kat’s waist as I stared at my brother. I was shocked on two fronts. He’d done this? And this was the most I’d heard him say since he was returned to us. “You…you did this?” I asked.

  Dawson glanced at the body. “He was watching the house—taking pictures.” Lifting his hand, he held up what looked like a melted camera. “I stopped him.”

  Holy hell balls, what did I say to that?

  Letting Kat go, I turned back to the body. I knelt and pulled down the insulated white down jacket. The stench of burned flesh wafted into the air, forcing Kat to scramble off the bed. I looked over my shoulder, seeing her press her balled fist against her mouth.

  I turned back to the man. A hole had been burned through his chest. Normally the Source would incinerate a human, not do this. “Your aim is off, brother.” I let go of the jacket. Tension poured into my muscles. “The window?”

  “I’ve been out of practice,” Dawson replied.

  Out of practice? That was like saying sometimes thunder was loud. No shit.

  “My mom’s gonna kill me,” Kat mumbled. “She’s really going to kill me.”

  Pushing to my feet, I turned to my brother. For the first time, I didn’t really recognize him. Unease festered in my gut like gangrene. Dawson hadn’t just stopped the man. He’d killed him, and there wasn’t a flicker of remorse on his impassive expression. He actually…he reminded me of myself, and that wasn’t Dawson.

  Dawson didn’t kill.

  Deep in the woods, I stood next to Matthew as we both watched the intense white light fade. The snow was melted, revealing the scorched ground where we’d dropped the body of the DOD officer. Nothing but wet clumps of ash remained.

  I exhaled slowly, lifting my gaze to the snow-tipped branches. “Dawson isn’t…he isn’t the same, Matt.”

  The older Luxen was quiet for a moment. “Did you really expect him to be? The DOD had him for far too long for there not to be long-lasting effects.” He lifted his hand, shoving his fingers through his light brown hair. “But this? Dawson would never have…”

  “Killed.” I stepped back from the spot, watching the wind toss the ashes into the blowing snow. “The DOD was watching us—still could be watching us, and now he’s killed one of them.”

  “You’ve killed three of them,” Matthew pointed out.

  “True.” And it sucked to have ended their lives. It still got to me, but if I had to do it all over again, I would. I looked over at Matthew. “There is no way they do not know that Dawson is free and with us. Even if they have no use of him anymore, how could they be okay with that? There is no way they don’t realize that we know they’ve been capturing Luxen who’ve mutated humans. Why are they not banging down our doors and coming for us? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It doesn’t.” He turned sideways, facing me. “We have to be careful from this point on. More than ever before.”

  “They don’t have the upper hand anymore,” I said, squinting as the wind picked up again, pelting snow. “We know what they’re up to. We have that.”

  “We do.”

  We headed back to Kat’s house. Everyone was there—Dee along with Andrew and Ash. Their being inside her house had to be hard. When I walked in, both of them were staring at the spot where Adam had fallen.

  Dawson was by the window, where the Christmas tree used to be, staring out of it. He shoved his hands into his pockets and pressed his forehead against the glass. Lost. He looked lost, and hell, it killed me that there was nothing I could do to change that. Dee was perched on the arm of the couch, her watchful gaze never leaving Dawson.

  We took care of the broken window upstairs. Matthew had brought the necessary items with him—a tarp, a hammer, and nails. It wasn’t the best replacement, but it was the only option at the moment.

  Back downstairs, I went to where Kat sat. She scooted closer to me, nestling into my side as I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. She shivered even though she hadn’t been out in the cold. Reaching over with my other hand, I tugged on the strings of her hoodie. “It’s been taken care of.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, resting her head against my shoulder.

  My gaze slid to Dawson. “Did anyone find a vehicle?”

  “There was an Expedition near the access road,” Andrew said. “I torched it.”

  Matthew sat on the edge of the recliner, looking like he needed something hard to drink. “That’s good, but it’s not good.”

  “No shit,” Ash snapped. I looked at her, really looked at her. Her hair was greasy and hung limp around her pale face. She was in sweats, and I had never seen Ash look anything short of perfect. Or in anything other than short skirts or skintight jeans. “That’s another dead DOD officer. How many does that make it? Two?”

  Apparently she hadn’t heard about the other two.

  Ash tucked her hair back behind her ear. “They’re going to wonder where they are, you know? People don’t disappear.”

  “People disappear all the time,” Dawson said quietly, without turning around, his words sucking the oxygen from the air, because he was right.

  Ash’s bright sapphire eyes slid to him. Her mouth opened, but she clamped her lips shut and then shook her head slowly.

  “What about the camera?” Matthew asked.

  Kat leaned forward, picking up the melted camera. “If there were pictures, they’re gone now.”

  Dawson turned around. “He was watching this house.”

  “We know,” I said, shifting forward so I was in line with Kat.

  He tilted his head to the side. “Does it matter what was on the camera? They were watching you—her. All of us.”

  Kat shuddered.

  “But next time, we need to kind of…oh, I don’t know, talk first and then throw people through windows later.” I crossed my arms. “Can we try that?”

  “And we can just let killers go?” Dee said, voice shaking as her eyes flashed with fury. “Because that’s apparently what should happen. I mean, that officer could’ve killed one of us, and you would have just let him go.”

  “Dee,” I said, standing and stepping toward her. “I know—”

  “Don’t ‘I know, Dee’ me.” Her lower lip trembled. “You let Blake go.” Her gaze shot to Kat. “Both of you let Blake go.”

  I
shook my head as I unfolded my arms. “Dee, there was enough killing that night. Enough death.”

  Dee flinched. Without speaking, she wrapped her arms around her waist. It was Ash who spoke, and what she said surprised the hell out of me. “Adam wouldn’t have wanted that. More deaths. He was such a pacifist.”

  “Too bad we can’t ask him how he really feels about it, isn’t it?” Dee’s spine stiffened. “He’s dead.”

  “Not only did you guys let Blake go, you lied to us. From her?” Andrew gestured at Kat. “I don’t expect loyalty. But you? Daemon, you kept everything from us, and Adam died.”

  Kat stood. “Adam’s death isn’t Daemon’s fault. Don’t put that on him.”

  I stilled. “Kat—”

  “Then whose is it?” Dee demanded. “Yours?”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, but met my sister’s gaze. “Yeah, it is.”

  Shit.

  Matthew jumped in. “All right, guys, that’s enough. Fighting and casting blame isn’t helping anyone.”

  “It makes us feel better,” Ash muttered, closing her eyes.

  Kat lowered her chin as she sat back down, this time on the edge of the coffee table. She blinked rapidly as she folded her hands over her knees, squeezing so tightly that her knuckles bleached white.

  “Right now, we need to get along,” Matthew went on. “All of us.”

  No one spoke, and I thought the likelihood of everyone getting along was somewhere between not going to happen and hell no.

  Then Dawson spoke. “I’m going after Beth.”

  All of us turned to him, everyone struck silent, and then voices rose. Only Kat remained quiet as she stared at him. I spoke up, moving toward him. “Absolutely not, Dawson—no way.”

  “It’s too dangerous.” Dee was standing, too, her hands clasped together as if she were pleading with him. “You’ll get captured, and I won’t survive that. Not again.”

  Dawson’s lips tipped up a little at the corners. “I have to get her back. Sorry.”

  “He’s insane,” Ash whispered, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Freaking insane.”

  My brother shrugged as Matthew leaned forward. “Dawson, I know, we all know, that Beth means a lot to you, but there’s no way you can get her. Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  Raw anger flashed in Dawson’s eyes, turning them forest green, and it was the first show of emotion I’d seen from him, and it was hot, powerful anger. “I know what I’m dealing with. And I know what they are doing to her.”

  I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. Prowling forward, I stopped in front of my brother, prepared to keep him standing there forever if need be. “I cannot allow you to do that. I know you don’t want to hear that, but no way.”

  Dawson didn’t back down. “You don’t have a say over it. You never did.”

  “I’m not trying to control you, Dawson. It’s never been about that, but you just got back from hell. We just got you back.”

  “I’m still in hell,” he replied, his eyes meeting mine. There. I almost saw a part of my brother in his stare, the one who left to go to the movies and never returned. “And if you get in my way, I will drag you down with me.”

  And that small fragment of Dawson was gone.

  “Dawson…”

  A wind blew through the living room, fluffing the curtains and flipping the pages of all of the books and magazines in the room. Kat was suddenly standing next to me, her small hand on my arm.

  “All right,” she said. “The alien testosterone right now is a little too much, and I really don’t want to have an alien brawl in my house on top of the broken window and the dead body that came through it. But if you two don’t knock it off, I’ll kick both of your asses.”

  I looked at her, my brows raised, and I wasn’t the only one staring at her.

  “What?” Her cheeks flushed pink.

  A wry smiled tugged at the corners of my lips. “Simmer down, Kitten, before I have to get you a ball of yarn to play with.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t start with me, jerk-face.”

  I smirked and then focused on my brother. My chest lurched. There was another emotion playing across his mouth. Amusement. He watched Kat with a look of amusement, and damn… A knot formed in the back of my throat.

  Dawson’s gaze moved from her to me, and his expression went blank, eyes shuttered. He was as impenetrable as thick glacial ice. He turned and stalked out of the room. The door slammed shut behind him.

  And I knew in that moment that Dawson hadn’t just changed. He’d become…he’d become me, and like me, he would do anything to get Bethany back.

  He would risk all of us.

  Dawson was currently upstairs, sequestered in his bedroom by his own doing. At least he wasn’t out roaming around in the cold, so that was good news, right?

  Hell. You knew shit was bad when that was considered good news.

  Appetite slaughtered, I pushed the rest of my turkey sandwich and the plate away from me.

  Dee had barely touched her sandwich, and I knew without even going upstairs and checking that the food for Dawson was still where I’d left it, sitting on the desk in his bedroom.

  Sitting back from the table, Dee lifted her gaze to mine. “Kat…she tried to talk to me when I left her house earlier.”

  My gut fisted.

  “I’m not ready to go there with her,” she continued as she picked at the edge of her sandwich. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to do it.”

  “You will be.”

  Dee shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Daemon.”

  I sat forward, resting my elbows on the table. “You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?”

  Anger tightened the lines around her mouth, and I thought that might not have been a wise statement. “I haven’t really forgiven you. Let’s be clear about that. You lied to me, and you let Blake go.”

  So not touching the whole Blake issue right now. “But you’re talking to me.”

  “You’re my brother. I have to talk to you.” Her eyes rolled as she crossed her arms. “And you didn’t kill Adam.”

  “Neither did Kat.”

  Her lips thinned. “If she had been—”

  “Kat never wanted that to happen, and you know that, Dee. You think she doesn’t feel guilty about what happened?” Bitter anger turned the turkey sour. “You think it’s not eating away at her? She didn’t tell you the truth because she didn’t want you to be involved, and she tried to get you two to leave her house. Both of you made that choice to go in there, and you know if Adam was here today, he would do the same thing again.” I paused as Dee looked away. “And so would you.”

  Pushing away from the chair, I stood and grabbed our plates. “Right now, we all need to be unified. We need to stick together, because we have no idea what is going to happen next, but we know something is.”

  I dumped the leftovers in the trash and then stalked out of the room, stopping just outside the doorway. “I’ll be back later.”

  In other words, don’t leave. Keep an eye on Dawson.

  Heading outside in the frosty, snow-scented air, because I needed to patrol, my senses sharpened when I felt the warm tingle along the back of my neck. I looked next door and stopped moving. Maybe even stopped breathing a little.

  There was a snowman in front of Kat’s house, a lopsided snowman with no arms or face that hadn’t been there when I’d left earlier. Beside it, Kat sat in the snow, her back to my house.

  A small smile pulled at my lips as the anger eased away. Mindful of the huge icicles hanging off the roof of the porch, I walked down the steps and over to her, my footfalls cushioned by the thick layers of snow. Kat appeared unaware of me, which was