At the use of the pet name—Daemon’s pet name—I lost it.Blake was on me in a second. I darted to the side, ignoring the painful protest of my muscles. His arm came out in a wide sweep, and whitish-red light crackled. I spun at the last second, narrowly avoiding taking a direct hit.
Letting the rush of energy swell through me once more, I sent another blast arcing across the room, hitting him in the shoulder.
He stumbled back, hands dropping to his knees as he doubled over. “I think you can do better than that, Kitten.”
Fiery hot rage slipped over my eyes like a veil. Launching myself forward, I tackled him like an NFL linebacker on speed. We went down in a mess of tangled legs and arms. I landed on top of him, swinging my arm back and bringing it down repeatedly. I wasn’t really seeing where I was hitting, only feeling the flare of pain across my knuckles as they connected with flesh.
Blake shoved his arms between mine and swept them out, knocking me off balance. I teetered for a second, and then he raised his hips and rolled. I slammed onto my back, knocking the air out of my lungs. I aimed for his face, hell-bent on clawing his eyes out.
He caught my wrists and pinned them above my head as he leaned down. A cut had opened under his left eye, and his cheek was starting to swell. A vicious amount of satisfaction rushed through me.
“Can I ask you a question?” Blake grinned, turning the flecks of green in his eyes brighter. “Did you ever tell Daemon that you kissed me? I bet you haven’t.”
Each breath I took I felt in every part of my body. My skin became hypersensitive to his weight and proximity. The power built inside, and the room seemed to be tinted in a brilliant sheen of white. Fury consumed me, riding every breath and latching onto every cell.
His grin spread. “Just like you never told him how we liked to cuddle—”
The power burst from me, and suddenly I was off the floor—we were off the floor—levitating several feet in the air. My hair streamed down behind me, and his hair fell forward into his eyes.
“Shit,” Blake whispered.
Flipping upward, I tore my wrists free from his grip and slammed my hands into his chest. Shock rippled across his pale face a second before he flew backward, crashing into the wall. The cement cracked, and a fissure spread out like a wicked spiderweb. The whole room seemed to shake with the impact as Blake’s head snapped back, and then he slumped forward. Part of me expected him to catch himself before he smacked into the floor, but he didn’t. He hit with a fleshy splat that knocked the anger right out of me.
As if I’d been held up by invisible strings that had now been cut, I landed on the balls of my feet and rocked forward a step.
“Blake?” I croaked out.
He didn’t move.
Oh no…
Arms shaking, I started to kneel down, but something dark and thick spread out from under his body. My gaze flicked up to the wall. A Blake-size imprint was clearly visible, a form reaching through at least three feet of cement.
Oh God, no…
Slowly, I looked down. Blood pooled out from under his motionless body and seeped across the gray cement floor, stretching toward my sneakers.
Stumbling back, I opened my mouth, but there was no sound. Blake didn’t move. He didn’t roll over with a groan. He didn’t move at all. And the visible skin on his hands and forearms was paling already, turning a ghastly shade of white that stood out with such stark contrast against the deep red of the blood.
Blake was dead.
Oh my God.
Time slowed and then sped up. If he was dead, then that meant the Luxen who had mutated him was, too, because that was how it worked. They were joined together, like Daemon and I, and if one died…the other died, too.
Blake had it coming in more ways than one. I’d even promised to kill him, but words…words were one thing. Actions were a totally different ballpark. And Blake, even with all the terrible things he’d done, was a product of circumstance. He was only goading me. He’d killed not really meaning to. He’d betrayed to save another.
Just like I did—and would.
My hand shook as I pressed it against my mouth. Everything I’d said to him came back in a rush. And in that tiny second when I’d caved to the fury—nothing in a span of millions—I had changed, become something I wasn’t sure I could ever come back from. My chest rose rapidly at the same time my lungs compressed painfully.
The intercom clicked on, the initial buzz startling me in the dead silence. Sergeant Dasher’s voice filled the room, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Blake’s lifeless form. “Perfect,” he said. “You’ve passed this stress test.”
It was too much—ending up here, so far away from my mom and Daemon and everything that I knew, then the exam and the subsequent showdowns with the hybrids. And now this? It was too much.
Letting my head fall back, I opened my mouth to scream, but there was no sound. Nothing as Archer entered and gently placed his hand on my shoulder, steering me out of the room. Dasher said something, sounding very much like an approving father, and then I was taken out of the training room and into an office, where Dr. Roth waited to take more blood. They brought in a female Luxen to heal me. Minutes turned into hours, and still, I said nothing and felt nothing.
…
Daemon
Being handcuffed with metal coated in onyx, blindfolded for five hours, and then put on some flight wasn’t my idea of a fun time. I guess they were afraid that I’d bring the plane down, which was stupid. It was getting me to where I wanted to go. I didn’t know the location, but I knew it had to be where they were keeping Kat.
And if she wasn’t there, I was going to go postal.
Once the plane landed, I was hustled to a waiting car. From underneath the blindfold, I could make out bright light, and the smell was really dry and acidic, vaguely familiar. The desert? It hit me during the two-hour drive that I was going back to the place I’d last been to damn near thirteen years ago.
Area 51.
I smirked. Keeping me blindfolded was pointless. I knew where we were. All Luxen, once discovered, were processed through the remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base. I’d been young, but I’d never forget the dryness to the air or the remote, barren landscape of Groom Lake.
When the vehicle rolled to a stop, I sighed and waited for the door beside me to be opened. Hands landed on my shoulders, and I was dragged out of the car, thinking whoever had their hands on me was real lucky that mine were handcuffed behind my back, or someone was going to be leaving work today with a broken jaw.
The dry heat of the Nevada desert beat down as I was led several yards, and then a wave of cool air hit me, raising the strands of hair off my forehead. We were in an elevator before the blindfold was removed.
Nancy Husher smiled up at me. “Sorry for that, but we must take precaution.”
I met her eyes. “I know where we are. I’ve been here before.”
A single thin brow went up. “Many things have changed since you were a child, Daemon.”
“Can I get these off yet?” I wiggled my fingers.
She glanced at one of the soldiers in camouflage. He was young from what I could tell, but the khaki-colored beret hid most of his upper face. “Unlock the handcuffs. He’s not going to give us any trouble.” She looked back at me. “I do believe Daemon knows this place is outfitted with an onyx defense system.”
The guard stepped forward, fishing out a key. The set of his jaw said he wasn’t too sure if he should believe her, but he unlocked the cuffs. They scraped along the raw skin of my wrists as they slipped off. I shook my shoulders out, relieving the cramped muscles. Red marks circled my wrists, but it wasn’t too bad.
“I’ll behave,” I said, cracking my neck. “But I want to see Kat now.”
The elevator slid to a stop and the doors opened. Nancy stepped out, and the soldier motioned me forward. “There’s something you need to see first.”
I ground to a halt. “That’s not a part of the deal, Nancy. Y
ou want me to go along with this, I want to see Kat now.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “What I’m about to show you has to do with Katy. Then you will see her.”
“I want—” I whipped around, eyeballing the guard breathing down my neck. “Seriously, dude, you need to back the hell up.”
The guy was half a head shorter than me and nowhere in my league of extraordinary ass-kicking abilities, but he didn’t back down. “Keep. Walking.”
I stiffened. “And if I don’t?”
“Daemon,” Nancy called, her voice laced with impatience. “All you’re doing is delaying what you want.”
As much as I hated to admit it, she had a point. Sending the punk one last promising look, I turned and followed the woman down the hall. Everything was white with the exception of the black dots in the wall and ceilings.
I didn’t recall much about the inside of the buildings from when I’d been here as a kid, but I did remember there were very few places we’d been able to go. Most of the time we’d been kept to a community floor until we had assimilated and been set free.
Being back here didn’t sit well with me for a multitude of reasons.
Nancy stepped in front of a door and leaned down. A red light clicked on and shone in her right eye. The light on the panel turned green and the door unlocked. That was going to prove tricky, and I wondered whether, if I took on Nancy’s form, the systems had been prepped to recognize that. Then again, I felt as drained as the desert floor from whatever this building was outfitted with, so I wasn’t sure what I could actually pull off.
Inside the small circular room, there were several monitors manned by men in uniform. Each of the screens showed a different room, hall, or floor.
“Leave us,” she announced.
The men stood up from their stations and hastily exited the room, leaving Nancy and me with the tool who had come in with us.
“What did you want to show me?” I asked. “EuroCup?”
Her lips pursed. “This is one of many security control rooms stationed throughout the buildings. From here, we can monitor everything in Paradise Ranch.”
“Paradise Ranch?” I laughed bitterly. “Is that what you’re calling it now?”
She shrugged and then turned to one of the stations, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “All of the rooms are recorded. That helps us monitor activity for various reasons.”
I ran a hand over the scruff growing on my cheek. “Okay.”
“One of our concerns whenever we bring in new hybrids is to make sure they are not a danger to themselves or others,” she began, folding her arms. “It’s a process we take very seriously, and we go through several rounds of testing to ensure that they are viable.”
I really did not like where this was heading if it had anything to do with Kat.
“Katy has proven to have some issues and can become very dangerous.”
I ground down on my teeth so hard I was surprised they didn’t crack. “If she’s done anything, it’s because she was provoked.”
“Really?” Nancy punched a button on the keyboard, and the screen above her to the left flickered on.
Kat.
All the air went out of my lungs. My heart stopped and then sped up.
Kat was on the screen, sitting down with her back pressed against a wall. The image was grainy, but it was her—it was her. She was in the clothes she’d worn the night she was captured at Mount Weather, and that had to be weeks ago. Confusion rose swiftly. When was this taken? It couldn’t be a live feed.
Her hair hung down on the sides, shielding her beautiful face. I started to tell her to look up but realized at the last minute that would make me look like an imbecile.
“As you can see, no one is near her,” Nancy said. “That is Sergeant Dasher in the room with her. He is doing the initial interview.”
Suddenly, Kat’s chin jerked up, and she sprang to her feet, racing around a tall man in a military uniform. The next second, she hit the floor. I stared in open horror as Kat withered, and then one of the men unhooked a water hose from the wall.
Nancy flicked a button, and there was a different image. It took me a second to recover from the last scene and get what was going on now, but when I did, pure, red-hot rage lit me up.
On the screen were Kat and freaking Blake, squaring off. She whirled, grabbing for a lamp, but he darted in front, blocking her. When she swung on him, pride swelled in me. That was my Kitten, claws and all.
But the next thing had me searching for a way out of the room. Blake had intercepted her punch, twisted her arm, and swung her around. Pain registered on Kat’s face, and then he had her down on her back, pinned to the bed.
I saw red.
“This isn’t happening now,” Nancy said calmly. “This was a while ago, when she first arrived. It’s muted.”
Breathing heavily, I turned back to the TV. They were struggling, and Blake had obviously overpowered her. She was still fighting, though, her back bowing and her body twisting under his. Violence rose in me, powered by potent rage and a level of helplessness I’d never felt before, and it tasted like Blake’s blood. My hands formed fists, and I wanted to smash them in the monitor, since his face wasn’t in front of me.
When he had pulled her off the bed, and I saw him dragging her across the floor and off the screen, I spun toward Nancy. “What happened? Where did he take her?”
“Into the bathroom, where there are no cameras. We do believe in some sort of privacy.” She clicked something and the video fast-forwarded a couple of minutes, and Blake entered from the right. He sat on the bed—her bed—and Kat appeared a few seconds later, absolutely soaked.
I stepped forward, exhaling out of my nose. Words were exchanged between them, and then Kat whirled, opened a dresser, and grabbed clothes. She disappeared back into the bathroom.
Blake dropped his head into his hands.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I promised to no one in particular, but it was one I was going to keep. He would pay for this—all of this—one way or another.
The soldier cleared his throat. “Blake isn’t an issue anymore.”
I faced him, breathing raggedly. “Care to tell me why?”
He pressed his lips together. “Blake’s dead.”
“What?”
“He’s dead,” the guy repeated. “Katy killed him two days ago.”
The floor felt like it dropped out from underneath me. My first response was to deny it, because I didn’t want to believe that Kat would have had to do something like that—that she had to go through it.
The monitor was turned off, and Nancy watched me. “The reason I’m showing you this isn’t to upset you or to make you mad. You need to see with your own eyes that Katy has proven to be dangerous.”
“I have no doubt in my mind that if Kat really did do that, she had a reason.” My heart thudded in my chest. I needed to see her. If she had done this… I couldn’t bear to think about what she had to be going through. “And I would’ve done it, too, if I were in her shoes.”
Nancy tsked softly, and I added her to my Going to Die Painfully list. “I hate to think of you as being unstable, too,” she said.
“Kat isn’t unstable. All these videos show is her defending herself, or that she was scared.”
Nancy made a sound of disagreement. “Hybrids can be so unpredictable.”
I met her gaze and held it. “So can Luxen.”
Chapter 10
Daemon
They let me clean up in an empty communal area. At first I didn’t want to waste the time. I needed to get to Kat, but they weren’t giving me much of a choice, which turned out to be a good thing because I looked like something straight out of the mountains. The growth on my face was out of control. After a shave and a quick shower, I put on the black sweats and white shirt that had been left behind. Same standard uniform they had used years ago. Nothing like dressing everyone the same to make them feel like a nameless face in a crowd of nameless fac
es.
It was all about control and keeping everyone in line when I’d been here before. To me it looked like Daedalus was no different.
I almost laughed when realization kicked in. It probably had always been Daedalus running the show, even when I’d been assimilated here so many years ago.
When the guard returned, it was the tool from earlier, and the first thing he did was check the plastic razor for the blade.
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m not that stupid.”
“Good to know,” was the reply. “Ready?”
“Been.”
He stepped aside, allowing me back into the hallway. As we headed to another elevator, he was glued to my hip. “As close as you’re riding me, man, I feel like I need to take you out to dinner or something. At least I should get your name.”
He punched in a floor. “People call me Archer.”
My eyes narrowed. There was something about him that reminded me of Luc, and hell if that boded well. “Is that your name?”
“That’s what I was born with.”
The dude was as charming as…well, as me on a bad day. Flipping my gaze to the red number on the elevator, I watched it steadily go down. My gut twisted. If Nancy was screwing with me and Kat wasn’t here, I was about to find out.
I didn’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t. Probably go insane.
I couldn’t stop what came out of my mouth next. “Have you seen her—Kat?”
A muscle flexed in Archer’s jaw, and my imagination ran wild until he answered. “Yes. I’ve been assigned to her. I’m sure that pleases you to no end.”
“Is she okay?” I asked, ignoring the jab.
He turned to me, and surprise crossed his features. Trading insults and barbs wasn’t on my to-do list right now. “She can…she can be as expected.”
I didn’t like the way that sounded. Taking a deep breath, I ran a hand through my damp hair. The image of Beth freaking out popped into my head. A tremor ran down the muscles in my arm. There was no doubt in my mind that no matter what condition Kat was in, I could handle it. I would help her get better. Nothing in this world could stop that, but I didn’t want her to have experienced anything that would’ve damaged her.
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