“I’m okay,” he said. “Keep going.”
Drawing in a shallow breath, I nodded. The energy pulsed around his arm, but it didn’t do what it did before, climbing up his skin as if it were trying to swallow him whole. My gaze flew to his face.
Luc lifted his brows. “Feels like you’re tickling me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Kind of tingly.” Those eyes of his deepened in hue as tiny sparks of the shadowy-white light danced over his skin and then disappeared, either fading out or seeping into him. “I kind of like it.” He bit down on his lower lip as his eyes drifted shut. “A lot.”
I flushed to the roots of my hair.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” grunted Eaton. “I don’t want to know what you’re doing to him, but you aren’t hurting him. Let’s move this along.”
Jerking my hand back, I willed the Source to fade out. Luc, on the other hand, slowly opened his eyes, his grin pure wickedness. The taut lines around his mouth had disappeared. “When we get done here, I’m going to make sure you know how to heat up water. I’m really looking forward to a bath later.”
The flush spread, and muscles low in my stomach trembled. Luc and I hadn’t done it since that night. It wasn’t for lack of trying. We spent almost all day working on the Source, and then there was everyone else. Whenever we were alone, it didn’t last. Whether it was Zoe or Grayson appearing or someone who needed Luc for something, which was, like, every evening, by the time Luc returned, I was passed out, and when I woke in the middle of the night, he looked too damn peaceful to wake up.
Though I doubted he’d mind.
“Promise?” I asked.
“Pinkie—” His head swung toward the closed double doors. “We’re about to have company.”
Case in point, I thought wryly, and we weren’t even alone. I followed his gaze, sensing absolutely nothing—
Fists banged on the door. “Eaton! You in there? We got a problem—a big one,” a voice I didn’t recognize called out from the other side of the door. “Like, a really giant one.”
I turned back to Luc. “How in the world do you do that?”
“I’ve got talents,” Luc replied. I was willing to bet whoever was out there was human.
Sighing, the general ambled to his feet, letting the stuffed banana fall to the floor. “When is the problem ever small?” he grumbled.
Luc made it to the door before Eaton took a step, and when the door opened, my early suspicion was confirmed. A young human man with deep brown skin stood there, no transparent aura to be seen. Blood splattered his light gray shirt and olive-green cargo pants.
Relief saturated the man’s face when he saw Luc. “Thank God you’re here. We just got a package, and it’s a mess.”
A package usually meant a group of Luxen or others who needed safe entrance into Zone 3, and based on the blood, I had a feeling something had gone terribly wrong. I immediately thought of Heidi and Emery. They weren’t expected, but …
“Where are they, Jeremy?” Luc’s demand was as cool and calm as still water.
Jeremy’s chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “At the entry house. Doc Hemenway is heading over there now. I know Daemon is with Kat, and Eaton has medical knowledge, but you can heal, right? Zouhour is there, but—”
“She’s not going to be able to do a damn thing.” Eaton dug into the pocket of his jeans. Keys clanked together as he snatched them up. “Who’s down?”
“Spencer.” Jeremy’s hands opened and closed at his sides. He glanced in my direction but seemed to not see me. “It’s not good, man. Not at all. His chest—” He sucked in a sharp breath, his voice ragged when he spoke next. “It’s bad.”
I had no idea where the entry house was or who Spencer was, but when Luc sent a quick look over his shoulder at me, I said, “Go.”
He nodded once, and then he was gone in the time it took me to blink.
“Come on.” Eaton wheeled around, heading for the door. “I’ll drive us over there. Faster than walking, and you can tell me what the hell happened.”
Sending me another questioning glance, Jeremy unclenched his hands and rubbed his palms over the hips of his pants. “I’m not exactly sure. We were expecting Yesi and her group back this morning, transporting three unregistered, and friendlies, but only Spencer and the two friendlies arrived. He was hurt, and all I was able to get out of one of the unregistered was that they were ambushed at the state line.”
“ART officers?” Eaton stopped at the door, looking back. “You coming? Or do you want to stay here and move this stuffed banana around some more?”
Unable to hide my surprise or my unwillingness to move a stuffed banana around, I snapped forward. “I’m coming.” Catching up to them, I followed the two out of the door and the stale, dusty air.
“Assuming it was ART,” Jeremy answered. “They’ve been picking up more and more patrols in Oklahoma and Louisiana. Got some of us thinking they may know something is going on here.”
Eaton didn’t respond to that, so I asked, “Are friendlies humans?”
“Yeah.” Jeremy swallowed. “You know, like allies in war? A military thing, I guess. Or that’s what I heard.”
“Makes sense.” I watched Eaton cut through the weeds that had broken through the asphalt, his limp evening out as he waded toward an old UTV like the one the doc had. I glanced over at the young man. “I’m Evie, by the way.”
“Jeremy. But you probably already know that.” A brief smile as he extended his hand and then jerked it back. “Sorry. Blood.” He climbed into the back of the cart as Eaton jammed the key into the ignition.
I scrambled into the passenger seat, and not a second after my butt hit the thin, rain-rotted cushion, the cart jerked into motion. He gunned it, throwing me back against the seat. The next heartbeat, he hung a sharp left. Reaching above me, I grabbed the bars before I slid right out of the cart and ended up in what looked suspiciously like a continent’s worth of poison ivy. The cart zoomed between the warehouse and a chain-link fence, the space barely wide enough to fit the cart. My wide-eyed gaze swung toward Eaton as the wheels bumped over rocky terrain and then hit the asphalt of the road in front of the warehouse. He picked up speed and the wind caught strands of my hair, blowing it back from my face.
He sped down the road, past the rusted-out cars. When he whipped the vehicle left, he narrowly avoided colliding with a truck that must’ve been a bright, cherry red at one time. White-knuckling the bar, I pictured myself flying out and face-planting in the road at any given second. Heart thumping, I almost missed the movement. Something darted out from behind the truck, running behind the work van with faded letters. The glimpse had been quick, but I saw bright auburn hair.
Nate.
The bag of food I’d left out had been there the following morning, but it was gone the next time the sun rose, and I’d been so very hopeful that it had been Nate who’d retrieved the food and not a strong squirrel who’d carried it off.
I almost shouted for Eaton to stop the vehicle, but if he did, there was a good chance we’d all go flying into the air. Not only that, I didn’t want to delay getting to someone who sounded gravely injured.
Cranking my neck, I tried to see if Nate reappeared, but he seemed to have vanished. At least he was still alive. That was good.
“Evie?” Eaton snorted, shaking his head as he one-handed the steering wheel of the cart and sped down the steep hill.
I turned toward him. “What?”
“Makes me laugh when you introduce yourself and answer to that. One of these days…,” the general said. He spun the wheel, and the cart went up on two wheels. Under the rumble of the engine, I heard what I thought was the Lord’s Prayer coming from Jeremy. “You’re going to take back the power the name you were born with gave you.”
22
It was strange how something I’d been trying to figure out could leap right out of General Eaton’s mouth and smack me upside the head.
Take back the pow
er the name you were born with gave you.
Kat had said there had to be something Luc had done that snapped me out of it in the woods. There was something he’d said. It was the same thing that had pulled me out of my sleep.
Nadia.
He’d used my real name, or as Eaton would say, the name I was born with. And that wouldn’t be such a big deal except that the Daedalus hadn’t trained and programmed me when I’d been Evie.
I’d learned everything when I’d been Nadia.
There had to be a connection there.
What, I had no idea, and right now wasn’t the time to figure it out.
I was trying to stay alive.
General Eaton drove like we were in the safety of a steel tank, and Jeremy had definitely been reciting a prayer. Several times I almost flew right out of the vehicle, and I was only seconds away from joining in on that prayer when we bumped over a meadow where grass was as tall as the sides of the cart.
I half expected a damn velociraptor to pounce on us.
Except it wasn’t a dinosaur from Jurassic Park that almost took us out as we cleared the tall grass but a slow-moving cow getting her late lunch on.
I almost died three times in the ten minutes it took us to get where we were going.
The entry house turned out to be a farmhouse, one that was still operating based on the cattle Eaton dodged with impressive ease. When the cart slammed to a stop beside a similar one, I jumped out of that thing with speed that even impressed me.
“Doc Hemenway is here.” Jeremy looked like he might vomit as he poured himself out of the back of the cart. He looked down at his stained clothing. “Good. That’s good.” He was trying to convince himself, and all I could think about was the blood covering him and what kind of wound would cause that.
My steps slowed as I neared the back door. The home looked normal, but at the same time, it seemed to pulse as if it had a heartbeat. Or as if the bones of the house were having a hard time containing whatever was inside. I hadn’t felt anything like that before, not with a Luxen or an Arum. “Spencer is a … friendly?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Jeremy’s voice was hoarse. “Yeah, he is.”
Eaton was stalking toward the open back door, the limp all but gone now. “Where are they?”
“In the dining room.” Jeremy motioned me to follow.
Eaton had already disappeared into the recesses of the farmhouse as we entered through a cleared-out mudroom. Different types of awareness swept through me. There was definitely a Luxen here. I could also feel what I now recognized as an Origin, and the sensation that accompanied a hybrid, but my skin was prickling in a peculiar way. I felt something else. It lay on the tip of my tongue, tasting like summer in the streets. Heated asphalt.
Leaving the mudroom, I entered a narrow hallway, and I wasn’t thinking about unexplained sensations or tastes.
Guns.
That was the first thing I noticed. Actually, pretty much the only thing I noticed. A llama could’ve belly-danced in front of me and I would’ve only seen the guns.
So. Many. Guns.
Rifles of every length and caliber leaned against the wall of the hallway, enough to arm a—wait. I did a double take. Was that a rocket launcher?
A scream of pain tore through the house, snapping my attention forward. Jeremy took off, his boots smacking off the worn hardwood floor.
I didn’t see the kitchen I crossed through as my steps slowed, every part of me fixated on the tableau in the dining room. A room that had presumably once hosted family gatherings, holiday parties, and had once been a place of joy, but it would be hard to remember that seeing the tragedy playing out in the room now.
Out of everyone in the room, I saw Luc first. It was as if every cell in my body knew where to find him. He was at the side of a trestle table, his hands planted on a chest that looked oh so wrong. I couldn’t see his fingers under the intense white glow of the Source, but I saw the blood smearing his forearms. Stark concentration marked his face as he stared down at the man, who bucked and withered.
“Stop fighting it. Come on, man, stop fighting it,” Luc ordered, his jaw clenching.
An older man stood at the head of the table, snow-white hair sticking out from under a straw hat, with a grip on the fallen man’s head that said he’d seen a lot in his day. Tendons popped along the sun-spotted forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his bloodstained denim shirt.
Blood. There was so much of it, running down Spencer’s sides, pooling onto the table, and spilling onto the floor.
Doc Hemenway rushed forward from behind Luc, holding what reminded me of an air pump combined with a giant syringe. Except for Luc, everyone in this room was human, but there were Luxen here. There were others, and there was something else in this house. That feeling had not only lingered but intensified. I didn’t want to bother him, but instinct told me he needed to know.
Luc, I called out to him. I feel something strange.
His eyes lifted to mine for a brief second. What?
There’s something different here. My palms started to sweat.
“Who’s in this house?” Luc asked.
“Two human girls,” the old man answered. “That’s all. Zouhour is with them. They’re pretty freaked out.”
There was definitely something other than a human girl in this house.
Whatever you’re feeling, it’s going to have to wait. I’m losing the battle with this guy, Luc responded directly to me, and he was right. Anything and everything else had to wait.
“I just need you to get the bleeding stopped,” the doc said as she leaned around Luc, jabbing the end of the pump in the pool of blood forming in the sunken cavity of Spencer’s stomach. “Then I can see what we have going on here.” She pulled back the handle of the syringe, and the pump filled with deep, red blood.
“You don’t have a whole lot going on here,” Luc bit out. “He’s got several arteries blown out—” A wave of white light rolled over Spencer, and his back bowed. “And every damn time he moves, he tears the goddamn one I just fixed.”
“His aorta still has to be intact or he’d already be dead.” The doc stepped back. “Keep him alive for ten minutes, Luc. I need ten minutes for the Fuse to filter this blood and get it into a bag.” She glanced down at the tool she held. “Thank God for innovation.”
The ghost fingers along the back of my neck intensified.
“Not sure all the innovation in the world can help him at this point,” Grayson’s droll voice stated from behind me less than a minute later. I looked over my shoulder at him. Was he the Luxen I sensed? I didn’t think so unless he’d been in another part of the house. Grayson didn’t take one peek in my direction as he propped a shoulder against the doorframe. He pulled a Blow Pop out of his pocket.
Jesus, he had to be the most unhelpful Luxen known to man.
Doc Hemenway shot Grayson a look that should’ve fried him on the spot. “If it weren’t for three intelligent and compassionate human women who wanted to make sure developing countries could transfuse blood without electricity, Spencer would be dead and I would be shoving my foot so far down your throat, you wouldn’t be able to think of a sucker again without shuddering.”
My eyes grew as round as saucers.
One side of Grayson’s lips curved up in a smirk right before a cherry Blow Pop went into his mouth, but then Spencer reared up again, and Luc’s curses signaled another spurt of fresh blood.
“Jeremy, get over here and grab one of his legs!” Eaton shouted, going for the one that was curling. “Evie, grab his arm. Now!”
I did as ordered, grabbing the man’s arm and pressing it to the table. Ignoring how cold and clammy and all-around wrong his skin felt, I got an up-close and personal look at the wound. “Dear God,” I whispered, stomach churning. His skin was ripped open. Skin peeled in strips, revealing shattered cartilage and torn muscle.
“Don’t look at it, Peaches.” Luc’s voice was soft as the Source flared. “Look at me. I�
��m pretty to look at.”
The old man holding Spencer’s head snorted.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the mangled mess. “What did this? A grenade?”
“If it was a grenade, pretty sure he’d be dead,” Grayson commented. “Well, he’d be deader.”
“Thanks for the clarification, Captain Douchebag,” I snapped, and the doc looked up across from me.
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.” She smiled again. “We should become friends.”
Spencer pushed against my hold as I said, “I’d like that, Doctor—”
“Call me Viv,” she reminded me. “Everyone else does.” She pinned Grayson with another blistering look. “Except you. You call me Dr. Hemenway.”
“I wouldn’t dare think of calling you anything else, Dr. Hemenway.”
“Get ready,” Luc said, his pupils flipping white before he closed his eyes. His veins lit up under his skin, starting at his cheeks and then fanning out across his face, down his throat, and then out from under the sleeves of his shirt. He was really pulling on the Source. An aura spilled into the air around him, outlining his body in white. Static charged the atmosphere, and I inhaled, tasting life.
My breath halted.
God, the kind of power Luc wielded was mind-numbing, but something different was happening inside me. It felt like the Source inside me had tightened into a tiny ball, and now it was unraveling, opening up, and it built, not in the back of my throat or in the pit of my stomach but in the center of my suddenly aching, empty, and cold chest. Pulse pounding, my grip started to loosen, but Spencer’s entire body tensed as if he’d come into contact with a live wire. I snapped out of it, pressing his arm down as Viv did the same across from me. The scream pierced my ears and brought tears to my eyes and …
And then I felt a wall of ice press against my back.
Goose bumps pimpled my skin, and Luc’s eyes flipped open. His all-white pupils expanded as his gaze met mine. Breathing halting in my throat, I looked over my shoulder. Grayson was stepping aside as a mass of rippling, stretching shadows pulsed in the kitchen, so dark and deep it could be a black hole. No, not shadows. A man. A man made of shadows and skin a shade of alabaster that somehow managed to appear devoid of blood without looking ghastly. His hair was so black that under the glow of the gas lamp, it tinted blue like a raven’s wing. With strong jaw and straight nose, features hard, as if he were carved out of granite, he was handsome in the same way Grayson was, remote and cold. Perhaps even cruel.
The Brightest Night Page 28
