BROKEN BLADE

by J. C. Daniels

  Great. Now I owed him, too.

  Not that I didn’t already. He’d been there—

  My breath hitched.

  That awful darkness started to creep back in but as it tried to suck me under, a hand closed around my wrist. A jolt of magic snaked through me. Wincing, I shook the shock of it away and glared at Justin. He was still holding my wrist. “Do you mind?”

  “Nah. Always happy to help.” He smiled and settled back in his chair. “You know there’s somebody slinking around outside, right?”

  I sighed and shoved a hand through my hair. “Yeah. Vaguely.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  I stared at him. “I don’t know. Whoever it is hasn’t come inside yet.”

  Justin just lifted a brow. I knew what he was offering. If I needed him to, or if I asked him to, he’d move the visitor along. But I wasn’t going to start cringing at the very presence of something more than human. Jude was a different story and if I could figure out the right way to kill him while he was still in the box, I’d do it.

  Part of me thought that maybe I should just demolish the Assembly Hall. Burn it, and while it was burning, get to the area set aside for…problem prisoners and find Jude’s box. I had a sword, one that could penetrate any barrier known to man—or beast—and if I drove that piece of metal through Jude’s silver prison…

  “Dark thoughts there, Kit,” Justin murmured.

  I shot him a look and then, just as quickly, turned away. It wouldn’t do to let him know just how dark those thoughts were. Whether he was being disciplined or not, if I did decide to go all vigilante on Jude, I’d be the prime suspect and I didn’t need my friends being pulled in and questioned.

  “Just thoughts,” I said, shrugging. “Don’t worry about whoever is out there. If they become a problem, I’ll deal with it then. Having a were slink around my office is no reason for you to go whipping your magic dick around.”

  I wanted this day done.

  Justin laughed. “My magic dick? Kit…I don’t need that to deal with whoever it is out there.”

  Despite myself, I realized I was grinning. I rolled my eyes and flipped him off before bending back over my desk and eying the mountainous pile of mail. It was neatly sorted and the only bills were recent ones. Somebody had been dealing with those for me. I had a feeling I knew who that someone was. From the corner of my eye, I saw Justin slump in his seat, that vaguely amused smile still on his face.

  After he continued to stare, I sighed and shifted my gaze upward, meeting his eyes. “What?” I demanded.

  He just shrugged and shifted his attention downward, eyeing my neck. “Damn, that’s a piece of work.”

  Magic pricked the air. I might have gotten pissed off, but I knew Justin too well to expect any less. He’d sensed the magic in the tattoo the second he’d seen it. He wouldn’t be who he was if he didn’t ask about it. “Don’t go pulling a mama hen act, Justin,” I warned him. “I’ve already had a bitch of a day.”

  “No mama hen.” He leaned forward, the silver on his sleeves catching the light. “Hell, since I flash magic dick around, if I pull anything, I’d think I’d pull a daddy rooster act anyway. Besides, if you’re crazy enough to let some fetish witch carve copper ink into your skin, that’s your concern.”

  His smile faded and those intense green eyes held mine. “You made yourself who you are, Kit. Nothing’s changed that.”

  I looked away.

  “Are you ready to let me help you with your sword yet?”

  Blowing out a tired sigh, I climbed out of the chair and started to pace. “Justin, stop. There’s nothing to help. It’s just gone. I know what the bond feels like and it’s just not there.”

  “So you’re too afraid to try.”

  Stopping in my tracks, I turned to face him. Every muscle in me was tensed and I felt like I might shatter. “Don’t. You son of a bitch. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” The rage coming out of him caught me by surprise. He closed the distance between us and fisted his hand in my shirt, jerking me onto my toes. “Don’t ruin your life? I did that. Don’t put your life in danger? I did that, too. What am I not supposed to do? Everything bad that I could to do to you, I already did.”

  I swung out and punched him in the throat, putting every bit of strength I had behind it. It pissed me off that there wasn’t as much as there should be, but he still staggered, gasping for air as he dropped me. Stepping backward, I glared at him.

  “What in the hell do you want?” I demanded.

  Anger raged inside him as he glared at me. But I knew it wasn’t directed at me. He opened his mouth and tried to speak. No words came out at first but finally, he managed to choke out, “A chance to make it better.”

  I blinked back the tears. “You can’t.”

  “I can’t make it right.” He shook his head and said, “I know that. I can’t make it right and no matter what in the hell I do, I have no chance at that. But if I can undo some of the damage? Maybe…”

  His voice trailed off.

  I turned away and stared at the bare, stark walls of my office. “If you tell me you’re feeling guilty, Justin, I think I’m going to kill you.”

  He laughed. It was a raw, ugly sound. “Guilty, Kit?”

  That laugh echoed around me and it went on, and on. It was like a living, breathing wound and just hearing it hurt me. Finally, I turned around and glared at him because the very sound made me want to weep.

  “Guilty?” he whispered. “Do you honestly think the word guilt touches what I feel?”

  He leaned his back against the wall and slid down to the floor, his gaze locked on nothing. “Guilt,” he muttered again. “I helped track you across a continent and the entire time, I was linked into that tiger…feeling what he felt, hearing what he heard. He was keyed into you the whole time. And you think I feel guilty.”

  He shifted his eyes to me. “I had to make a choice, Kit. I knew what that motherfucking cat meant to you, even though I hated it. I knew. I could let him die. Or I could use you to save him.” His lids drooped down and he said quietly, “Not a day goes by when I don’t wish I hadn’t just let the motherfucker die.”

  It hit me in the heart. “You’re not helping.”

  In a blur of motion, he surged to his feet, his hair flying around him and his eyes burning with the heat of his rage. “I’m not helping?” he growled. “No. I’m not helping. I’ve not done a damn fucking thing to make this better since I ruined your life. But I’ll tell you one thing… if I had to choose between letting that bastard cat die and sparing you?” He sneered at me. “You’d be grieving at his graveside even now and I don’t care if that makes you hate me.”

  A fist banged on the door and seconds later, it flew open.

  I didn’t even have to look. I knew who it was. The warmth rolling over my skin told me everything I needed to know.

  Damon came prowling inside and I sighed, flinging myself onto the couch and closing my eyes as the two men faced off with each other.

  Chapter Ten

  Damon’s gaze rolled between storm-cloud gray and green-gold.

  The cat inside warred with the man and I didn’t know which one was going to take control at the moment.

  Magic rolled around Justin as he glared at the shifter standing in the door and for the first time, I noticed that the silver on his sleeves was sparking. Not sparkling, but sparking, like it was shooting off energy. It wasn’t just a trick of the light, either.

  A growl trickled out of Damon’s throat as he stared at Justin.

  Justin curled his lip at him. “You want to go a round or two, pussy cat?”

  I reached for the gun at my thigh and drew it. It wouldn’t kill Damon. I knew that. It would probably do a hell of a lot of damage to Justin, but unless I had it loaded with pure iron bullets—and I didn’t—it would only slow the witch down. Still, I didn’t want to hurt them. Well, I didn’t think I wanted to.

  So I aimed at the floor between them and pulled the tr
igger. It was concrete under the carpet and while it tore the carpet up to hell and back, the floor itself wasn’t torn up too bad. Maybe they had injuries from the shrapnel. That thought made me feel better.

  And now I had their attention.

  “I’m not doing this,” I said quietly as I lowered the Desert Eagle. A pang of regret rolled through me. The gun just wasn’t as…poetic as my blade. But nobody could hear a blade the way they heard a mean-ass bitch like a Desert Eagle.

  Justin shot a look at the floor and then at my gun. Damon just stared at him, face impassive. I crossed over to my desk and settled down, keeping the Eagle in my right hand. “If the two of you wanted to have a go, you could have done it without me in the picture. It’s been months and I’m sure you two can figure out how to track each other down. Right now, I’ve got a job to do and I don’t give a flying fuck what your problems are with each other.”

  The magic surrounding Justin sparked a hard, cold silver.

  Damon’s rage was hot and fiery.

  “Tone it down,” I told them. “Or get out of my office. Personally, I don’t care which because I don’t want to deal with this…” I hated that my voice cracked. “And I can’t deal with it.”

  I paused and swallowed, shifting my gaze away from them to stare at the painfully bare walls of my office. I missed my weapons, I realized. Not just the music of them, but the sight of them. The feel of them. Even the comfort of them. “If the two of you are going to go at it, get the hell out of my office,” I said again once I knew my voice would be level.

  “I’m here because you wanted to see one of my cats,” Damon said and although his eyes were still flickering with an eerie glow, his voice was calm, like he was just discussing the weather. “If you want to kick Harry Potter outside? I don’t give a damn.”

  Justin’s lip curled. “Harry Potter, huh? If I was Harry Potter, I would have Avada Kedavraed your ass straight into hell.” Then he prowled over to my desk and leaned a hip against it.

  The air went tight again with Damon’s anger, but at the moment there wasn’t a damn thing I was going to do about it. Truth be told, I felt a little easier with Justin sitting there. He was a barrier and I needed the breathing room.

  The testosterone in there was going to kill me. Damon, I had to deal with for a little while. Justin…if he was there for any reason other than guilt or to jerk Damon around, I don’t know if I needed the trouble, even if I did need the barrier.

  Sliding him a look, I asked, “I assume you’re here for a reason, right? Other than just to hassle me?”

  “You assume right, Kitty-kitty.” The jackass smiled and winked at me as he reached out and tugged on a lock of my hair.

  Damon growled.

  I stroked the butt of my gun and debated on whether or not I was going to put a bullet in one of them next time.

  “Behave,” I warned Justin.

  “Don’t I always?”

  “Yes.” Disgustedly, I batted his hand away when he went to touch me again. “You behave badly. Damon, where the hell is this cat?” I glanced over at the clock before I let myself meet the shifter’s burning gray eyes. “She’s going to be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Almost a minute passed before he answered me. A minute of that unyielding, unblinking stare and then finally, he glanced back over his shoulder. He said nothing; he did nothing else, just looked back out the door he hadn’t closed.

  Vaguely I felt the prickle of another’s presence rolling over my skin and then Damon moved farther into the room.

  Marcus stood in the doorway, still a lean kid with lots of attitude, lots of nerve. His father was with him and while Marcus shot me a quick look and a weak smile, the dad was another one of those idiots who was fascinated with the floor.

  “Damon,” I said, hearing the rage as it pulsed in my voice. “If that ass can’t seem to meet my eyes, then he needs to get out of my office.”

  Damon stared at me. And then he flicked a look at the other shifter. “Conley.”

  The man’s shoulders tightened but his gaze stayed locked on the floor. “Alpha, I need to be with my kid,” he said quietly.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Damon snarled. “Just look at her.”

  Slowly, like somebody had to force him physically, Conley lifted his head, bit by bit. But finally, somebody met my eyes and actually looked at me. Conley looked like he’d rather be looking at anything, anybody else, but he held my gaze.

  I gave him a sharp-edged smile. “Wow. Look at that. I still exist. Jude didn’t turn me into nothing, after all.”

  They all flinched.

  * * * *

  Clara, I thought, nearly an hour later.

  It suited her.

  Simple and sweet.

  She was sweet, although I couldn’t exactly call her simple, considering she had a shifter’s baby in her belly and the blood of something not quite human pumping through her veins. Plus, despite the fear inside her, she’d done something a lot of people wouldn’t have done. She’d taken a risk.

  The bruise on her face told me a story. She hadn’t wanted to voice it and if it wasn’t for the fact that Marcus had been getting all growly and snarly, she probably wouldn’t have said a damn thing.

  But as Marcus’s anger got worse, I managed to get her attention. Catching her hands, I crouched in front of her. Giving anybody my back these days was harder than it had ever been, but I did it and waited until Clara’s frightened eyes left the men to focus on me. “You know he’s not going to hurt you, right?”

  “I…yeah. I think so,” she whispered, nodding jerkily.

  “Good.” I squeezed her hands just this shy of too hard, keeping her attention focused on me. “Listen, these cats, they’re like most shifters and they aren’t always operating on the same cylinders that humans do. They’ve got too much of a beast in them. He’s not working with a full deck, so to speak. You got me?”

  A faint smile curled her lips. “Yeah.”

  “He won’t hurt you.” Part of me wondered if I was talking to somebody other than her. I knew what I was saying. I believed it even. But maybe I had to voice it, so somebody would understand that I knew. Even if I needed time to get around to it. “It might not be easy to accept it all right away, but he’s not going to hurt you.”

  She nodded it and shot Marcus another quick look. He wasn’t pacing and growling so much, and that helped. I flicked him a glance myself. “Now if he’d actually use that human brain of his, and not whatever Tarzan complex is in control, maybe things could settle down a bit.” Then I looked back at Clara and added, “I think it would be easier for him if you could explain what happened.”

  That’s when the fear came back. I was ready for it.

  Marcus wasn’t. And it didn’t even matter much right then that she wasn’t afraid of him. Damn it, the poor girl. Poor Marcus. Poor both of them. What in the hell was going on? Her fear spiked harder and harder and it was worse, because she wasn’t just afraid…she was hurting. I could feel it clawing at me, swarming in the air all around us and it hurt. Just sitting there hurt.

  If it was that hard on me, I knew it had to be hell on Marcus.

  But it was even harder on her, and his anger wasn’t helping.

  As she stuttered the words out, I could feel him getting angrier and it was almost too much for me to take, sitting there with my back to him as she explained. “My father,” she whispered. “He knows now. I was trying to leave…I just…” Her voice tripped, hesitated and I watched as tears flooded her eyes, saw as the pain danced across her face. “I told him I needed to leave for a while and I think he knew something was going on. He yelled at me and didn’t want me to leave. I was going to go to my room and just hide, but something about his eyes, the way he was watching me, it scared me. And I knew if I went in my room, I’d never get out.”

  Trapped…nobody is coming for you…

  Shoving those memories away, I squeezed her hands again, tighter and tighter until she looked at me. “You aren’t there
. Remember, no matter what, you aren’t there, okay?”

  A growl, low and wild, drifted through the room, and I tugged on her hands, forcing her focus back to me.

  She nodded. It made it that much easier for me to remember I wasn’t there, either. I’d gotten out. So had she.

  “He hit me when I said no. He hit me so hard, I hit the wall and our neighbors…they were worried. He’s never been that angry before and I think they thought somebody was breaking in.”

  “Let’s hear it for concerned neighbors,” I said, forcing myself to smile at her when she paused. “Keep going.”

  Behind me, Marcus growled again and I felt the punch of tension as his anger crawled and whipped across my skin. Shooting a look over my shoulder, I looked for him, but the closer person was Damon. He was no more than a few feet away. Standing guard, some part of me realized absently. Standing there…watching over me. Nobody hurts you, Kit…

  Too bad it hadn’t worked out that way. I made myself meet his eyes. “Calm him down, Damon.”

  Something not quite human stared back at me but he only nodded and then he turned away. Clara, the poor girl, was going to break my heart. She was rocking a little now, staring off at something none of us could see. I don’t think she was even aware of Marcus. “He wanted to hit me again, but they were at the door,” she whispered . “One of them is on the school board and Dad had this idea about me teaching once I got out of college.” She gave me a ghost of a smile, the kind a teenager might give another close to them in age. “Teaching, you know? I’m no teacher. He tells me that I had to go with him and tell them everything was okay. I had to help him diffuse the situation I’d created. And I told him no. I told him I wouldn’t help, and I told him that things had to stop. He just stared at me and then he said, If you leave me, I don’t have a daughter. Just like that. Just like that I’m an orphan.”

  Just like that…

  Something about the tone of her voice made it clear that the man wouldn’t be one who’d change his mind. But I didn’t want to point out to her that maybe she was better off without him if he was the kind of man who’d raise his hand to his daughter. It hadn’t been the first time. I could see that in her eyes.