Slowly, painfully, Carissa climbed to her feet. Our eyes locked and the absent look in hers sent shivers to my very core.
“Don’t,” I warned. “I don’t want to hurt—”
Her hand snaked out, lightning quick, caught my cheek, and spun me around. I hit the bed on my hip and slid to the floor. A metallic taste burst into my mouth. My lip stung and ears rang.
Carissa grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked me to my feet. Fire burned my scalp, and I let out a hoarse scream. She forced me on my back, wrapping her hands around my neck. Slender fingers dug into my windpipe, cutting off air. The moment I couldn’t breathe brought me back to my very first run-in with the Arum, reviving the sense of desperation and helplessness as my lungs were starved for oxygen.
I wasn’t the same girl as then, too afraid to put up a fight.
Screw that.
Letting the Source build inside me, I let it go. Stars exploded in my room, dazzling in their effect as the blast knocked Carissa back into the wall. Plaster cracked but she remained on her feet. Wisps of smoke streamed from her charred sweater.
Good God, the chick wouldn’t go down.
I rolled onto my feet, trying one more time to reach her. “Carissa, we are friends. You don’t want to do this. Please listen to me. Please.”
Energy crackled over her knuckles, forming a ball, and in any other situation, I’d be jealous of how easily she’d mastered the ability in what seemed like a nanosecond, because last week…last week she’d been normal.
And now I didn’t know what or who stood in front of me.
Ice filled the pit of my stomach, forming shards around my insides. There was no reasoning with her. No chance whatsoever, and the realization cost me. Distracted, I didn’t move fast enough when she released the ball of energy.
I raised my hands and screamed, “Stop!” Throwing everything I had into the single word, picturing the tiny light particles in the air responding to my call, forming a barrier.
Air shimmered around me as if a tub of glitter had been dumped in a perfect line. Each speck glowed with the power of a thousand suns. And in the back of my mind, I knew that whatever was going on should’ve been able to stop the ball.
But it broke through, shattering the glimmering wall, slowing it down but not stopping it.
The energy smacked into my shoulder and pain exploded, momentarily robbing me of sight and sound as it knocked me down, my legs over my head. I landed on my stomach on the bed with a loud oomph. Air rushed from my lungs, but I knew I didn’t have time to let the pain sink through.
I lifted my head, peering through strands of tangled hair.
Carissa stalked forward; her movements were fluid and then…not so much. Her left leg started to tremble and then quake violently. The shudder rolled up the left side of her body and only the left side of her body. Her arm flailed and half her face spasmed.
I pushed up on weak arms, scooting across my bed until I toppled off the side. “Carissa?”
Her entire body began to quiver like the earth shook only for her. I thought maybe she was having a seizure, and I stood.
Sparks flew from her skin. The stink of burning cloth and skin singed my nostrils. She kept shaking, her head flopping on her boneless neck.
I clamped my hand over my mouth as I took a step toward her. I needed to help her, but I didn’t know how.
“Carissa, I—”
The air around her imploded.
A shock wave tore through my room. The computer chair overturned; the bed lifted up on one side, suspended; and the wave kept coming. Clothing flew from my closet. Papers swirled and fell like sheets of snow.
When the wave reached me, it lifted me off my feet and flung me back like I weighed nothing more than one of the floating papers. I hit the wall beside the little stand next to my bed, and I hung there as the shock wave surged.
I couldn’t move or breathe.
And Carissa… Oh my God, Carissa…
Her skin and bones sunk in as if someone had hooked up a vacuum to the back of her and kicked it on. Inch by inch she shrank until a burst of light with the power of a solar storm lit the room—lit the entire house and probably the entire street, blinding me.
A loud, deafening pop sounded and as the light receded, so did the shock wave. I slipped to the floor, a heap among piles of clothing and papers, dragging in air. I couldn’t get enough oxygen, because the room was empty.
I stared at the area where Carissa had once stood. There was nothing but a darkened spot on the floor, like what Baruck had left behind when he was killed.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing of the girl—of my friend.
Nothing.
Chapter 25
I felt the warm tingle on the back of my neck numbly, and then Daemon stood in the doorway, brows lifted and his mouth hanging open.
“I can’t leave you alone for two seconds, Kitten.”
I sprung from the mess of clothing and threw myself in his arms. All of it came out in an incoherent babble of words and run-on sentences. Several times he slowed me down and asked me to repeat myself before he got the general gist of what went down.
He took me downstairs and sat beside me on the couch, his fingers moving over my bottom lip as his eyes narrowed in concentration. Healing warmth spread along my lips and across my aching cheeks.
“I don’t understand what happened,” I said, tracking his movements. “She was normal last week. Daemon, you saw her. How did we not know this?”
His jaw tightened. “I think the better question is, why did she come after you?”
The knot that had been in my stomach moved upward, settling on my chest and making it hard to breathe. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t know anything anymore. I kept rewinding every conversation with Carissa, from the first time I met her up until she was out of school with the “flu.” Where were the clues, the red herring? I couldn’t find one that stood out.
Daemon frowned. “She could’ve known a Luxen—known the truth and knew not to tell anyone. I mean, no one inside of the colony knows that you’re aware of the truth.”
“But there’s no other Luxen around our age,” I said.
His gaze flicked up. “None outside the colony, but there are a few who are only a couple years older or younger than us in the colony.”
It was possible that Carissa had always known and we didn’t. I’d never told her or Lesa, so it took no leap of the imagination to think that Carissa knew but never told anyone. But why did she try and kill me?
Entirely possible that I wasn’t the only person around here who knew what lived among us, but dear God, what went wrong? Had she been hurt and a Luxen tried to heal her? “You don’t think…” I couldn’t finish the question. It was too sickening, but Daemon knew where I was going with it.
“That Daedalus took her and forced a Luxen to heal her like with Dawson?” Anger darkened the green hue. “I seriously pray that’s not the case. If so, it’s just…”
“Revolting,” I said hoarsely. My hands shook so I shoved them between my 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 instability does?”
Daemon moved his hands away and the healing warmth ebbed off. When it did, so did the barrier that had kept the truth of everything from really breaking free and consuming me.
“God, she…she died. Does that mean…?” I swallowed, but the lump was pushing its way up my throat.
Daemon’s arms tightened. “If it were 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.”