Touch (Denazen #1)(23)

“He was hurting you,” Kale said calmly, looking down at my fingers on his wrist. His sleeve had ridden up so my hand rested on bare skin. Turning, he glared at Alex with disgust. “He was going to strike you.”

That got a reaction. Alex’s face flushed red, and his fists clenched tight at his sides. “Strike her? What the hell is wrong with you?” He stared. “I’d never hit her!”

Kale wasn’t looking at me anymore. It was all about Alex. “You were hurting her,” he snarled, stepping forward. “It hurts to be grabbed like that.” His voice was low and dangerous. It sent a chill down my spine—and not the scared type, either.

“It’s fine, Kale. Alex wasn’t going to hurt me. He was surprised, that’s all. Right, Alex?”

Alex’s eyes drifted from Kale’s face to my fingers still restraining his wrist. “What’s his touch do?”

I guess he knew me well enough to know that if it had been simply a matter of Kale pummeling him, I would have stepped back and enjoyed the show. Maybe gone to get popcorn. The fact that I’d stopped him said enough.

“Death touch,” I said, easing my fingers off Kale’s wrist. Instead of letting my hand fall to the side, Kale laced his fingers with mine.

Alex took it all in, lips pressed tight. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “You do.” He meant grabbing me—I meant something else. “How do you know about Denazen?”

Alex waved his right hand at a discarded soda can sitting on one of the bar stools across the room. The can shot forward, rocketing into the wall next to Kale’s head. Kale didn’t flinch.

“Telekinetic.” Of course. And the cheesy plot thickens. God. Someone kill me now.

“There are many of you,” Kale snorted. “When one disobeys, they retire you and pull in another. There is nothing special about you.”

A wicked smile spread across Alex’s lips. “Yeah? Well at least I can touch—” He looked down at our intertwined hands. “Wait, didn’t you say—?”

“When he tried to kill me, we found out I was immune.” I said it mostly for shock value. Boy did it work.

Alex froze. The vein on the side of his neck bulged and the top corner of his lip curled upward as he squinted his right eye. I knew that look—the Elvis, I used to call it. There were times that look and the fire that came with it could turn my knees to soft-serve ice cream. Now? It made me angry.

“Tried to kill you? Dez, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

“We need to find the Reaper.”

Alex shook his head. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Like I said, we’re looking for the Reaper. Do you know where we can find him or not?”

The stubborn set of his jaw told me he wanted to argue, but I guessed he knew better. Very few people won an argument with me. I’d learned from the best.

“I don’t know where he is, but there are some people that might.”

I waited, but he said nothing. “Well?”

I could tell he wanted to yell, but he kept it under control. That was new. Self-control wasn’t something the guy had in spades. “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”

I glared right back. “Why should I? You didn’t feel the need to tell me you were screwing that college girl behind my back.”





9


I’d met Alex Mojourn right after I turned fifteen. It was right before he dropped out of school. He was seventeen and a junior, having been left back at one point in grade school, and I was a sophomore.

Honor student, bookworm, good girl—these were all terms used to describe me back then. I was shy and kept to myself—didn’t have many friends. I did my homework, and obeyed all the rules. But for some reason, Alex took notice of me. When he deemed me worthy of his attention, well, I just about fell all over myself with excitement. We started dating—he took me to parties, we hung out with all his friends.

He was my first boyfriend, my first love, my first kiss—my first everything. When I was sixteen, I caught him undressing some bimbo from the local college in the back room of Roudey’s, and he became my first heartbreak.

We’d seen each other plenty since then, mainly because we traveled the same raver circle. Each time, though, we’d stay on opposite ends of the room. Seeing him was hard. Talking to him, that was even harder. Finding out he’d lied about something else? Pretty much devastating.

But was that good enough? Of course not. Fate seemed to have it in for me, because we had to meet him again, later that night.

After a bit more arguing—and no apology for past transgressions—he finally agreed to introduce us to the people he knew. We set it up to meet him inside the park behind the pool hall at nine o’clock.

There was no other choice.

“Tell me more,” Kale said as he sat next to me on the grass. We’d left the pool hall and grabbed sodas and sandwiches from a sandwich shop in town and settled under a large pine tree behind the building.

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me what it was like to grow up here.” He glanced from the sky to my face, a little sad. “Free.”

“How about we have a conversation that doesn’t involve me doing all the talking? You can ask me a question, then I get to ask you one.”