Opposition

20

{ Daemon }

As the last Luxen dropped to the floor in a messy pile, I whipped around to where I’d last seen Kat and Dee. There was a massive hole in the plaster, exposing the wooden frame inside the wall, and that had also taken a hell of a beating.

They’d gone through the wall.

“Good God.” My stomach dropped as I stepped over the dead Luxen and darted toward the open doorway that led into the other room.

I kept telling myself they had to be alive—both of them—because I would’ve felt it if either of them suffered a mortal wound. It did nothing to slow my racing heart or to ease the sick feeling curdling in my stomach.

Archer was standing just outside the den, his shoulders rising and falling in deep breaths. He didn’t say anything as I pushed past him, stumbling to an abrupt stop. The room was absolutely destroyed—the couch broken, TV smashed, and vases shattered on the floor. Piles of dirt and shredded petals were embedded in the carpet.

My desperate gaze zeroed in on the middle of the room, and damn if my knees didn’t almost give out on me.

They were on a smashed coffee table, Kat on top of my sister. They weren’t fighting, but both seemed frozen. I was frozen. Then I heard it. The deep, destroyed sounds of a person breaking wide open.

Kat, her hair half in the ponytail and half out, lifted her head and shuddered, then rolled off my sister and slowly rose to her feet. She backed away, running shaky hands over her messy hair. She looked over at me with wide eyes. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth, and each breath she expelled seemed to wheeze out of her.

I started toward her, but stopped. My gaze swung back to my sister. When Kat had climbed off her, she’d rolled onto her side, curled up into a tiny ball. The sounds—the sounds were coming from her.

“Dee?” My voice cracked.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her arms folded over her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And that was all she kept saying, over and over again between the sobs.

Glass crunched under my feet as I walked to where she lay, and when I reached her side, my knees did give out. I landed next to her and gently placed a hand on her shaking shoulder. “Is it really you, Dee?”

Her sobs grew more ragged, and there was a stream of words from her bouncing around in my skull. Most of it incoherent, one giant run-on thought, but there was no mistaking what it meant.

Somehow the connection to the rest of the Luxen had been broken. I didn’t know how, but it didn’t matter.

I gathered her off the ruined table and glass and sat back, pulling her against me, and she scrambled closer, like she used to do when she was small and was afraid of everything. As I held her close, I carefully picked out the pieces of glass stuck in her hair, in her clothes.

“God, Dee . . .” I tucked her against my shoulder. “You about killed me, you know?”

She was shaking as her fingers gripped my arms. “I don’t know what happened. They came, and what they wanted was all I could think about.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes, smoothing my hand up her back. “It’s okay now. Everything is okay now.”

Dee didn’t seem to hear me. “You don’t know the things I did or what I was thinking, what I was okay with them doing to people.”

But I did. At least some of it from the short period of time I’d been around her while she’d been connected to them. The things I’d seen and heard her do were things I forced myself not to acknowledge, because they hadn’t been her fault.

And so I told her, over and over, that none of it mattered and none of it was her fault. She started spouting crazy shit, like her being evil, and the crap broke my heart. Tore me right up.

“What you did was their fault. Not yours. If you ever believe anything I’ve told you, you believe that.” I folded my hand over the back of her head, willing her to accept my words. “You don’t have an evil bone in your body. Never have, Dee. Never.”

The trembling eased a little as I held her, and I don’t know how long we sat in the wreckage, but when I opened my eyes finally, the room was a little blurry.

“It was Kat,” she said, her breath coming not as fast as it had been before. “She did it. I wanted to kill her. Oh God, Daemon, I really wanted to kill her, but . . .”

“But what?”

“As we were fighting, she kept talking to me, forcing me to remember what it was like . . . before they came.” Dee pulled back, her lashes thick with tears. “And it was about Adam.” Her breath caught on his name. “She was talking about him, and I remembered more than just the pain and the anger. I don’t know, but it just snapped, and suddenly I was looking at her and I wasn’t hearing any of them anymore. My thoughts . . . they were my own.”

I closed my eyes again briefly, promising myself that I’d repay Kat a millionfold as soon as I had the chance.

Once Dee settled down enough that I knew she was okay and wasn’t seriously injured, I looked around the room. I hadn’t realized that Archer and Kat had left. Concern for Kat worried away at me now that I knew Dee was going to be all right.

I helped her stand. “How are you doing?”

Dee wiped the tears and blood—bright red blood that couldn’t belong to her—from her cheeks with the sleeves of her dark sweater. My heart thundered in my chest as she took a deep breath. “I’m okay, but Kat . . . It got pretty rough between us. Oh God, she probably hates me now. Like really—”

“No. She doesn’t hate you. If she did, she wouldn’t have tried to bring you back. Kat loves you like a sister, Dee. In fact, she’s kind of like your sister now.”

That statement pulled Dee out of her troubled thoughts. Her nose wrinkled. “What do you mean? Because that sounds a little . . . weird considering what you and her do and all that.”

I laughed, and damn, it felt good to be standing in front of my sister again and laughing. “Kat and I are married.”

Dee stared at me and then blinked wide eyes. “What?”

“Well, we’re not really, really married, because we did it with our fake IDs when we were in Vegas— Ow!” I stepped back, rubbing my arm right in the spot where Dee had punched me. “What was that for?”

“You two got married and neither of you told me?” She stomped her foot, shimmering eyes on fire. “That’s so wrong! I should’ve been a part of it.” She spun around. “Where is she? I’m seriously going to hit her again.”

“Whoa.” I chuckled as I grabbed her arm. “Can you wait to hit her again until we make sure she’s okay?”

“Oh yeah, probably a good idea.” Then she whirled around and threw herself at me, circling her long arms around my neck, and I stumbled back a step. “You two really did it?”

Dee’s lips trembled into a small smile and not the kind I’d seen on her lately. Not cold. Totally her. “That’s amazing,” she whispered as she pulled free. “I’m happy for you—for her. But I’m still going to punch her. After we make sure she’s okay. Oh God.” Her face fell. “What if she—?”

“It’ll be okay.” I placed a hand on her back, steering her out of the living room.

First person I saw was Archer. Of course. And he wasn’t looking at me at all. Oh no. His face was pale, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. Shaken up. I’d never seen him look quite like that before, and I sure as hell didn’t want to acknowledge why.

“She’s outside,” he murmured, staring at Dee, who was also staring at him, and they were like two people who had never seen another person before. Damn. “She’s okay.”

Dee was staring at Archer, and I bit back a curse. Her voice was low in her throat. “Go.”

At least she’d forgotten about hitting Kat. I resisted the urge to warn Archer to do . . . well, to not do anything, but as I walked toward the doorway to the foyer and stopped to look back at them over my shoulder, what I saw should’ve had me going off like a rocket.

I hadn’t heard either of them move, but they were standing toe to toe, and Archer was touching her cheeks with only the tips of his fingers as he gazed into her eyes. There was something sort of poignant about the moment. Yeah, I sounded like I’d be writing love sonnets by the end of the year, but in a moment of empathy and maturity I really hadn’t realized I was capable of, I didn’t lose my cool.

She needed this—she needed Archer, and who in the hell was I to begrudge her the solace when I had my Kat?

Blowing out a breath, I headed toward the front of the house and cringed when I saw the front door across the room. Oh, Lore and Hunter were gonna be pissed.

Kat was sitting at the top of the steps, curved slightly inward. As I walked around her and down the steps so I was in front of her, she slowly raised her head and her gray eyes met mine, reached right inside me, and squeezed my heart.

“She’s okay.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

I nodded as I knelt in front of her. “Because of you.”

She shook her head.

“Yes. She told me what you did. She could’ve killed you, Kat.”

“I know, but . . . I didn’t want you to have to fight your sister, to have to hurt her. I didn’t want you to have to ever make that choice and live with what happened.”

It made me love her more than I thought possible. I placed my hands on her knees and leaned in, pressing my lips against her forehead. “Thank you. That’s not enough, but thank you is the best I got.”

“You don’t even need to say that.” Kat rested her forehead against mine and whispered, “I love you.”

I moved up to sit beside her, wanting to pull her into my arms, but I resisted because I could tell she was hurting. “Where?”

She knew what I was asking. “I’m really okay.”

“You look like you’re in pain. Come on. You know I’m going to heal you. Don’t fight me on this.”

For a moment, she stared at me, and then she stuck out her tongue, which caused me to grin. “Pretty much everywhere, especially my ribs. She threw me through a wall.”

I breathed around the flash of anger, telling myself Dee hadn’t known better so I didn’t get all “rage face,” as Kat would say. Carefully, I touched her sides and let the healing begin. “Well, I need you back to perfection, because Dee’s probably going to hit you again.”

Kat winced. “Do I even want to know why?”

“Sit still,” I said. “I told her we got married. She’s happy, but she wants to punch you because she didn’t get to be a part of it.”

“Oh.” She laughed and then cringed. “Was she happy about it? I mean, was she okay?”

“Of course.” As the heat of my ability started making its way through Kat, her eyes drifted shut and her cheek ended up on my shoulder. I liked it. Kind of made me feel warm and fuzzy with her all cuddled up against me. “She’s thrilled, actually. Just wait until I tell her we plan on doing the big, real ceremony. She might not hit you then.”

When she laughed softly, this time it didn’t end with her wincing in pain. Moving my hand to cup her cheek, I took care of the bruises there. “She’s in there with Archer now,” I said.

Kat sighed. “He’s not a bad guy.”

“He’s an Origin.”

She rolled her eyes. “Archer may be an Origin, but he’s still a good guy, and he cares about her, Daemon. He really does, and he’s been worried about her this entire time.”

Ugh.

“You know he can protect her. And he’ll be good for her, so—”

“I’m letting them be. I know she needs him, especially right now when she’s . . . Well, she’s got a lot going on in her head that she’s dealing with.”

Kat’s eyes searched mine, and then she smiled broadly. The blood on her chin didn’t deter from the beauty of it, but I smoothed my thumb over the red, wiping it away. “Wow. I’m sort of proud of you, Daemon.”

“Don’t be too proud, because I still don’t like him.”

“You know what I think?” She lowered her voice as if she were sharing a secret. “I think you do like Archer, and you just don’t want to admit that you’re in the beginning stages of a bromance to end all bromances.”

I snorted. “Whatever.”

Kat laughed again, and silence stretched out between us as my gaze drifted over her face. I started to lean in, but the sound of a car rolling up the long driveway forced us apart. It was Lore’s car.

“Uh-oh,” I murmured.

Kat cringed. “We’ve destroyed his house.”

“It was an accident,” I said, standing and moving down a step just in case Lore got rightfully upset. “He’ll understand.”

In other words, I’d make him understand.

Lore rolled to a stop next to the Explorer, and Hunter and Serena were the first out of the car, carrying a couple of bags. They rounded the porch and came to a complete stop as they saw the doorway . . . missing the door.

Hunter glanced at me. “Do I even want to know?”

“Well . . .” I started slowly.

Sighing, Hunter turned around and caught his brother by the arm. Lore had gotten a good look at the front of his house—the missing door, busted-out windows—and he was just standing there.

“We had a little problem,” Kat began.

“What did you do to my house?” Lore asked. “We left you alone for an hour tops. Just an hour. Seriously.”

If he thought this was bad, wait until he saw the inside. But then he was storming up the steps, and I figured he’d be finding out real soon as he entered the house. I placed my hand on the small of Kat’s back as we followed him in.

“Holy . . .” Lore’s voice faded off into stunned silence.

Hunter gave a low whistle as he took it in. “Damn, guys, this is kind of impressive.”

My lips twitched, but I was smart enough to wipe the smile from my face when Lore spun on us. “Someone is going to clean this up, and it’s not going to be me.”

He was handling this surprisingly well, but I figured being an Arum and all, this wasn’t the first time his house looked like a wrecking ball had gone into it.

I leaned around Hunter, scanning the last room I’d left Dee in, but when I didn’t see her or Archer in there, I glanced at the spiral staircase.

My eyes narrowed. I was trying to be open and understanding and not a dick about them, but their asses better not be upstairs. My sudden change of heart was new to me and only went so far.

Hunter placed the bags on the floor, careful of the shattered glass as he eyed one of the bodies. “This is going to be messy.”

Serena pressed close to him as she surveyed the damage. “The fact that I’m not all that disturbed by this actually disturbs me more.”

A slow grin spread across Kat’s face as she turned to the woman. “I know the feeling.”

Before the bonding moment could go any further, Dee and Archer came from the general direction of the kitchen. My relief that they weren’t upstairs making it like bunnies was short-lived.

My sister’s face was pale, and she opened her mouth, but then she saw Hunter and Lore. Her eyes widened.

Archer wrapped a hand around her shoulder. “I told you the Arum were helping us.”

“I know, but it’s one thing hearing it versus seeing it with my own eyes,” she replied.

Lore frowned as he folded his arms. “You destroyed my house.”

Dee flushed. “I’m sorry. Really, I am! It’s a lovely house and I love all the plants and—”

“He gets that,” I interrupted before this broke down into one of Dee’s long-winded rambles. “What did you need to talk about?”

She glanced back at Archer, and then it all spilled out of her. Everything in one giant breath. “It’s Ethan—he’s an Origin and the whole colony knew it. He was working with a senator and a group of Luxen in Pennsylvania. He thinks if they can get the capital under control, they’ll have everything. He wants you and Dawson either brought in or taken out.”

Ethan Smith.

Elder extraordinaire.

The memory of the first time he’d met Kat rippled through my thoughts—the way he’d looked at her with barely contained distaste. He’d never been a big fan of humans, limiting interactions with them, and while I suspected Ethan was an Origin, it still rocked me. The Luxen we grew up with had been working to take out mankind for how long? Right under our noses from the beginning?

“I bet we know who that senator is,” Serena said, visibly pale.

“That doesn’t matter.” Hunter’s voice was hard. “Because that senator is no longer an issue, courtesy of me.”

“Why?” Kat asked. “Do you know why Ethan has done this?”

Hunter snorted. “World domination? After all, it’s in a Luxen’s blood to rule and dominate.”

I shot him a look.

“I don’t know,” Dee responded, twisting a large section of her hair between her hands. “But I got the feeling it was more than just that.”

“Well, hell . . .” I dropped my hand and glanced up at the ceiling.

“Archer told me about the Arum.” Excitement hummed in her voice. “You were right, Daemon. None of the invading Luxen has fought the Arum. They’ll be able to take those bastards out like nothing.”

Archer’s brow rose at her curse word.

“But Ethan has, right?” Kat stared down at her sneakers, expression tense. “And the colony back home and the one in Pennsylvania will know how to fight the Arum—they will sense them coming, and they will—”

“They will run,” Lore finished for her.

She closed her eyes, shoulders sinking in realization. “They will hide.”

In other words, our brilliant plan of using the Arum wasn’t so brilliant anymore. It had a big old hole in it a mile wide.

Hunter looked around the group. “If you asked me for my opinion—which you didn’t, but I’m going to give it to you anyway—I’d say don’t wait on Lotho to get up there. Take out this guy before they see you coming. Because if this Ethan is as smooth and smart as you all are saying, he’s going to run when the shit hits the fan. Then what? Lotho and crew might take out most of the Luxen, but if he’s still alive, that’s a huge problem.”

Archer nodded in agreement. “It would be like slapping a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound and hoping for the best.”

He was right—both of them were. I looked over at Kat, and our gazes collided. “Going after Ethan isn’t a part of the deal,” I said to her, and I really didn’t care what the rest of the group thought. I cared about what she thought. “We were to secure the Arum and then we can go back—hell, we could go anywhere. You know what Eaton promised us. We don’t have to do this.”

Her lips parted. “I know.”

“But . . .”

Kat drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “We don’t have to do this. But if Ethan hits the road before anyone gets there or if he escapes, then what? We’re done. So you know what? Let’s finish this.”