Opposition (Lux, #5)(13)

Rage whirled through me, mixing with frustration and a shitstorm of a thousand other emotions. I wanted nothing more than to take it all out on the douche. “You should be. And if you come around her again, if you even look in her direction or breathe on her, I will kill you.”

“Why?” His gaze started to move over my shoulder, toward the bed. I gripped his chin, forcing his eyes on mine. His form shimmered. “Are you protecting her? I can sense she’s not just a human, but she’s not one of us.”

“None of that is really important.” Skin and bone ground under my grip on his chin.

He wrenched free from my grasp. Laughing, he tipped his head back against the wall. “You’ve been with the humans too long. That’s it. You’re too human. And you think I don’t see it? That the others haven’t noticed it?”

My lips curled into a cold twist of a smile. “You’ve got to be a special kind of stupid if you think being raised on Earth will stop me from killing you. Stay away from her and my family.”

Quincy swallowed hard as he met my stare. Whatever he saw in my gaze had him backing down. My smile spread and the white glow went out from his eyes. “I’m telling Rolland,” he gritted out.

Letting go of him, I patted his cheek. “You do that.”

He hesitated a moment, and then he pushed off the wall. Stalking across the room, he left, and he didn’t look back toward that bed. Not once. Brother knew better now. Waving my hand, I watched the door slowly swing shut. The click of the lock thundered through my veins. Locking the door was pointless in a house full of Luxen, but it was such a human thing to do.

Closing my eyes, I scrubbed my hands down my face, suddenly exhausted on a bone-deep level. Coming up here might not have been the smartest of all my ideas, but there’d been no way that I couldn’t. From the moment I’d stepped back into this house, I’d been drawn to this room, and the lure was just as powerful as the pull from my own kind.

I couldn’t even think her name.

My walls were down and I tried to keep my thoughts empty, but as I turned toward the bed, it was like a punch in the stomach. I couldn’t move or breathe. I stood there as if suspended in air. Two days had passed since I last saw her, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

And it had been a lifetime—a different world with a different future.

Staring at her, I was reminded of going into Area 51 and finding her asleep after months of separation, but things had been different afterward—better, even. I almost laughed to think that being under Daedalus’s thumb was a more fortunate outcome for her, but it was true.

She was lying on her back, and it was obvious that when someone who wasn’t Dawson brought her up here, no one gave any care for her comfort. She had just been dropped there, like a sack of dirty laundry. She was lucky that they’d placed her on a bed instead of the floor.

Her sneakers were still on. One leg was bent at the knee and tucked under the other leg. The knees of her blue jeans were stained with dried blood. Her right arm was folded at the elbow and her other rested against her lower stomach. The oversize shirt—my shirt—had ridden up, exposing an eyeful of pale skin. My hands curled inward, clenching so tightly my knuckles ached.

What had Quincy been doing in this room? Was it curiosity that had drawn the Luxen? I doubted he’d seen or felt a hybrid before, and these newly arrived Luxen put Curious George to shame. But was it something else?

Christ. I couldn’t even think of all the possibilities, because none of them was good. If Rolland continued to value my presence, she’d stay alive, but after spending two days with them, I knew there were worse things than death.

I was standing next to the bed without realizing I’d even moved. I shouldn’t be in here; this was the last place I should be, but instead of turning around like I had two functioning brain cells, I sat beside her, my eyes glued to the hand resting just above her navel.

Her hand was so pale, so small. So fragile in spite of the fact she was no ordinary human. My gaze traveled up her arm. The shirt was torn and the material was charred over the shoulder, the navy blue dark with blood.

I leaned over her, placing one hand beside her still hip. Blood had seeped into the white comforter and sheets. No wonder her skin was so washed out. My heart pounded as my gaze crawled across the long lengths of brown hair that had spilled across the pillow.

My fingers burned to touch her hair, to touch her, but every muscle locked up in my body when my gaze stopped on her parted lips.

Too many memories slammed into me, and I struggled through them, my pulse ratcheting up. The only thing that seemed to dampen the roar in my veins and the tightening of every muscle in my body was the shocking scarlet swipe under the corner of her lip.

Blood.

I dragged my eyes up, feeling pressure clamp down on my chest as I saw the ugly reddish-purple bruise along her temple. When Dawson had zapped her, she’d gone down, cracking her head on the floor, and that sound still echoed through my thoughts as if taunting me. Truth was it would haunt me. Forever.

Her lashes were thick and unmoving, the skin under her eyes shadowed. There was another bruise along her hairline, but she still was the most—

I cut off the thought, closing my eyes and exhaling slowly. For some reason, I saw Archer’s face, his expression as our gazes locked the second after she had gone down. In the bloody chaos and confusion, it had been like time had stopped. Then Archer had started toward her, and I . . . I had wanted to leave her there. I knew I had to leave her there, but someone else had grabbed her.