Daemon shot off that couch like a rocket, simultaneously flipping into his true form. A heartbeat later, he had Blake pinned halfway up the wall, swathed in an intense whitish-red light that lit up the entire living room.
I craned my neck and whispered, “Holy smokes.”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Blake yelled, arms flailing in the light. “You need to check yourself. Katy wasn’t in any danger.”
There was no response from Daemon, not one that Blake could hear, anyway, but I did. Loud and clear. That’s it. I’m going to kill him.
Windows began to shake and walls trembled. The flat-screen on the TV stand rattled. All around, little puffs of plaster filled the air. Daemon’s light flared, swallowing Blake whole, and for a horrible moment, I really thought he had killed Blake.
“Daemon!” I shrieked, darting around the coffee table. “Stop!”
But then there was a crackling sound, like air heated and charged after a lightning strike. Still in his Luxen form, Daemon jerked back and let Blake go. The boy landed on his feet and staggered to the side as he rose.
Daemon hummed and started toward Blake, but I got in the middle. “Okay. You two need to freaking stop.”
Blake ran both his hands down his shirt, straightening it. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You did throw a freaking knife at me,” I shot back. Wrong thing to say, because I heard Daemon promise, I will break him in two. “Stop.”
An arm appeared in the light and fingers brushed along my cheek. The touch was soft as silk and brief, lasting only half of a second and so quick that I doubted Blake even saw it. Then his light flickered out. He stood in his human form, trembling with barely restrained rage, his eyes white and sharp like icicles. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“She wasn’t in any danger! If I thought for a second she couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t have thrown it at her!”
Daemon sidestepped me, his large hand curled into a fist. Human or alien, Daemon could do some real damage. “But there was no way you would’ve known she could do it! Not a hundred percent!”
Turning wide, pleading eyes to me, Blake shook his head. “I swear you were never in any danger, Katy. If I thought you couldn’t stop it, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Daemon cursed again and I moved, blocking him. “Who does that?” Daemon demanded. Heat rolled off his body.
“Actually, Kiefer Sutherland did. In the original Buffy movie,” he explained. When I continued to gape at him, he grimaced. “It was on TV a few nights ago. He threw one at Buffy and she caught it.”
“That was Donald Sutherland—the dad,” Daemon corrected, much to my surprise.
Blake shrugged. “Same difference.”
“I’m not Buffy!” I yelled.
A slow grin pulled at his lips. “You are definitely cuter than Buffy.”
And that wasn’t the right thing to say. Daemon growled low in his throat. “You got a death wish? Because you’re really pushing it tonight, buddy. I’m dead serious. Really pushing it. I can hold you up against that wall until you run out of juice. Can you hold me off forever? No? I didn’t think so.”
Blake’s jaw jutted out. “Okay. I’m sorry. But if she hadn’t been able to catch it, I would’ve stopped it. Just like you would’ve. No harm. No foul.”
A whirlwind of rage was building inside Daemon and I doubted I could stop him again if he went after Blake. I tensed. “I think that’s enough for tonight.”
“But—”
“Blake, I really think you should leave,” I said meaningfully. “Okay? I think you need to go.”
Blake looked over my shoulder and seemed to get it, because he nodded. “All right.” He started toward the door and stopped. “But you did great, Katy. I don’t think you realize how awesome that was.”
A low hum rattled the floors and Blake took his cue, hightailing his behind out of the house. Only when I heard the rumbling of his truck’s engine did I relax.
“No more,” Daemon said, voice low. “Absolutely no more.”
Slowly, I turned around. His eyes were still doing the glow thing. Up close, they were sort of beautiful—odd but really striking.
“He could have killed you, Kat. I’m not okay with that. I won’t be okay with that.”
“Daemon, he wasn’t trying to kill me.”
He looked incredulous. “Are you insane?”
“No.” Tired, I bent and picked up the huge serial-killer knife. As I held it, it sunk in that I had stopped a knife whizzing toward my chest. I faced Daemon, swallowing.
He was still ranting. “I don’t want you doing any more training with him. I don’t even want you near him. That boy’s got a few screws loose.”
Freezing anything was a huge deal. It was one of the most powerful uses of the Source, Blake and Daemon had both said, with the exception of using it as a weapon.
“I’m going to give him back-alley plastic surgery. I can’t—”
“Daemon,” I whispered.
“—believe he did that.” All of a sudden, he was wrapping his arms around me, hauling me against his chest. By some miracle, I didn’t stab him. “Jesus, Kat, he could have hurt you.”
Somewhat shocked by the close contact that he’d avoided since the evening he made me a sandwich, I didn’t move at first. His entire body hummed. The hand that came up, wrapping around the back of my head, shook slightly.
“Look, you’ve obviously got some control. I can help you work on it,” he said, resting his chin against the top of my head, and God, his arms, his body was so warm and so perfect. “This can’t happen again.”
“Daemon.” My voice was muffled against his chest.
“What?” He pulled back a little, lowering his chin.
“I froze it.”
His brows knitted. “Huh?”
“I froze the knife.” I wiggled free, waving the thing around. “I didn’t just stop it, but I froze it. The thing was just hovering in air.”
It seemed to hit him, too. “Holy…”
I laughed. “God, that’s pretty huge, isn’t it?”
Daemon nodded. “It is. That’s…that’s a big deal.”
Excitement thrummed through me. “We can’t stop training.”
“Kat—”
“We can’t! Look, throwing a knife at me isn’t cool. And God knows, I’m not exactly thrilled that he did it, but it worked. It really worked. We’re getting somewhere—”
“What part of ’He could’ve killed you’ don’t you understand?” Daemon backed off, which usually meant he was really, really angry. “I don’t want you training with him. Not when he’s putting your life in danger.”
“He’s not putting my life in danger.” Besides catching my fingers on fire and the knife incident—but still, the risks were worth it. If I could control these abilities and actually use them to protect Daemon and Dee, then I wouldn’t be just a human—or just a mutated human one step away from exposing them to the world.
“We can’t stop,” I reasoned. “I’ll be able to control it and use the Source, just like you and Dee can. I can help you—”
“Help me with what?” Daemon stared at me, then laughed. “Help me to fight Arum?”
Okay. I wasn’t going that far, but now that he mentioned it, why not? According to Blake, I had potential to be stronger than Daemon. Crossing my arms over my chest, I tapped the edge of the knife on my arm. “Yeah, what if I wanted to?”
He laughed again, and I wanted to kick him. “Kitten, you’re not helping me fight Arum.”
“Why not? If I can control the Source and help, why not? I could fight.”
“I think the reasons are pretty huge,” he yelled, all the humor vanishing. “First off, you’re a human.”