What the hell? “Kat—”
“No. Don’t interrupt. I don’t want to see you in pain, and just thinking about you going through what that feels like makes me want to hurl.”
“I can handle it.”
Our eyes locked. “I know you can, but that doesn’t change how horrible it’s going to be to see you go through that,” she said patiently. “But I’m not asking you not to do it.”
Hell.
I saw what she did there.
Pushing off the counter, I pivoted as I dragged my hand through my hair. Kat placed her book aside and hopped off the counter. “I don’t want to argue with you, Daemon, but you can’t say it’s okay for me to watch you go through this and not you.” She came to where I stood and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I know this is coming from a good place, but just because it’s getting ugly, I can’t back out. And you know you’re not going to. It’s only fair.”
Hell.
“I hate your logic.” I placed my hands on hers, though. The idea of seeing her repeatedly in pain made me sick, just like it made her ill, but I…I had to let her make her own decisions. Shit. I hated it. But I couldn’t control her. “And I’m really going to hate this.”
Kat squeezed me.
“The only good thing is that I’m going to hold Buff down and make him kiss onyx over and over again,” I said after a moment.
She choked out a laugh. “You’re sadistic.”
“And you need to study, right?” I asked. “It’s school time management—not Daemon time management, which blows, because we’re alone and it requires more effort for them to interrupt us over here.”
She pulled free. “Yeah, I need to study.”
I stuck out my lower lip. “All right, I’m leaving.”
Kat looped her arm around mine and led me to the front door. “I’ll text when I’m done, and you can come over and tuck me in.”
I was going to do much more than tuck her in, because her momma was working. “’Kay.” I kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be waiting.”
Kat wiggled her fingers bye as I headed back out into the chilly late-afternoon air. As I stepped off the porch, I saw that Matthew’s and Andrew’s cars were gone. Blake had left when I’d escorted Kat to her house. I walked past my car, stopping when I saw an odd glint along the driver’s door. What in the hell? Was that a scratch?
I stalked over to the side and ran my fingers over the thin white line that stretched from the handle to the center of the door. When I realized it was just dust from the salt on the road, I smiled. I was going to need to wash my baby soon.
Wheeling around, I started back to my house. I was halfway there when I felt my heart rate unexpectedly kick up, skyrocketing into what I imagined a heart attack felt like. Tensing, I pivoted on my heel and my gaze flickered up.
The window of Kat’s bedroom lit up with a flash of intense white light tinged in red. There was another flash and another. Shit. Energy burst through me as I raced over to her house. Throwing open the front door, I flew upstairs, reaching her bedroom in a second.
I came to a complete stop, my mouth dropping open as I stared at the catastrophe that was her bedroom. Papers were everywhere. Books lined the floor, some torn apart. Others burned. The mattress was on its side and her desk chair flipped over. Smoke wafted from her—oh no, her new laptop.
Kat stood in the center of the mess, among a pile of clothes, her hair windblown. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Red splotches, like strawberries, marked her cheeks.
“I can’t leave you alone for two seconds, Kitten.”
She launched herself forward, and I caught her around the waist. Her entire body trembled. “I came up here to study, you know, because I figured I’d get more work done, and I had a glass of orange juice with me.” Her words came out in a jumbled rush. “And Carissa—Carissa was here.”
“How did she get here? I didn’t see her.”
Kat’s eyes were wide with shock as she shook her head. “She’d been here while I was downstairs. She was waiting for me, and I thought she was sick at first, you know, like she didn’t know where she was, because she hasn’t been in school. But she wasn’t sick. Oh my God, she was—”
“Okay. Slow down for me, Kitten.” My gaze flickered over her, landing on the burned spot in the floor. My stomach sank. If Carissa had been here, she wasn’t here anymore. “What happened to Carissa?”
Kat shuddered. “She attacked me. Like legit attacked me.”
Very few things surprised me nowadays, but this did. Carissa was a quiet, shy girl, the exact opposite of their other friend Lesa. A book was the only thing I could picture Carissa attacking. Maybe a bug. But a small bug.
“She didn’t even seem to know who I was. She was like the Terminator, Daemon—the Terminator. And she just kept coming at me. I asked her to stop. I told her I didn’t want to hurt her, but she wouldn’t stop.” Tears filled her eyes, and my stomach sank as I thought about the burned spot on the floor. “She wouldn’t stop.”
“It’s okay.” I folded an arm around her shoulders. “You didn’t have a choice. You were defending—”
“I didn’t kill her.” Kat broke free of my hold and stumbled back a step. She swung, throwing her arm out to the burned spot. “I didn’t kill her, I swear. She— She self-destructed, Daemon. She—oh my God—she imploded like a bomb.” Spinning back toward me, she lifted her hand and wiped at the blood under her lip. “She was mutated—she was a hybrid.”
That absolutely made no sense and raised so many damn questions. “Okay. All right. Let’s get you downstairs.”
Kat stared at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. Pained, I took her hand and led her out of the room and down the stairs. Once in the living room, I sat beside her on the couch. Cupping her cheeks, I tapped into the Source and took care of the minor injuries.
“I don’t understand what happened,” she said. “She was normal last week. Daemon, you saw her. How did we not know this?”
My jaw tightened. “I think the better question is why did she come after you?”
She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t know.”
That was an answer that I didn’t even have. How did Carissa end up mutated? It would have to have been one of the Luxen from our colony. There weren’t many around our age, but they didn’t venture out from the colony often. How did this person meet Carissa? And why did she go after Kat? Because maybe someone from the colony hadn’t mutated her. There was another explanation.
I frowned. “She could’ve known a Luxen—known the truth and knew not to tell anyone. I mean, no one inside the colony knows that you’re aware of the truth.”
“But there are no others around our age,” she said.
“None outside the colony, but there are a few who are only a couple years older or younger than us in the colony.”
She looked away, swallowing hard. “You don’t think…”
“That Daedalus took her and forced a Luxen to heal her like with Dawson?” Anger punched through me. “I seriously pray that’s not the case. If so, it’s just…”
“Revolting,” she said hoarsely, shoving her shaking hands between her knees. “She wasn’t there. Not even a flicker of her personality. She was like a zombie, you know? Just freaking crazed. Is that what unstable does?”
Kat was completely healed, at least physically, but I was reluctant to remove my hands. I was afraid she was going to shake to pieces. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to my side.
“God, she…she died. Does that mean…?” Kat swallowed again.
I gently squeezed her. “If it was one of the Luxen here then I’ll hear about it, but we don’t know if the mutation held. Blake has said that sometimes the mutation is unstable, and that sounded pretty damn unstable. The bonding only happens if it’s a stable mutation, I believe.”
“We need to talk to Blake.” She cleared her throat with a shake of her head. Her mouth worked for several seconds. “Oh…oh God, Daemon…that was Carissa. That was Carissa, and that wasn’t right.”