Daemon cursed again. “Definitely not. I can feel them pecking away at my head. They’re calling out to me and I’m not answering.”
“Which is making them mad?” asked Archer, frowning as he slammed on the gas, causing the tires to squeal.
“Yep.”
“This whole Luxen two-way-radio thing is really weird,” I said, because someone needed to say it.
“You have no idea.” Daemon popped forward, stretching between the two front seats. Archer shouted and scowled at him, but he was a man on a mission. With his hands grasping my cheeks, he kissed me.
The contact was so sudden and unexpected that I sort of just sat there as he got all kinds of friendly with my mouth.
“Seriously? Kissing her right now is what we need to be doing when we have pissed-off aliens on us?”
“Kissing her is always the right thing to do.” He pulled back and gripped the seats. “We need to stop and take care of them. It’s not like we can outrun them, and we don’t need them following us right to the Arum.”
Archer sighed. “This isn’t going to be fun.”
I was still sitting there, lips tingling, like a dork.
“Oh, this is going to be tons of fun.” Daemon glanced at me. “You ready to play, Kitten?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Sure. Okay.”
Daemon chuckled. “Let’s do this.”
Archer jerked the steering wheel to the right, bringing it to an abrupt stop along the side of the highway. Car doors opened, and as much as it sucked, I was the last one to get my damn seat belt unbuckled and to scramble out of the SUV.
“Keep low,” Daemon ordered.
Huh? When he saw the look on my face, he motioned for me to crouch. I shot him a dirty look. “What? I’m not a freaking ninja.”
“I’ve seen you fight.” Archer strolled around the front of the Explorer like we were walking into a gas station or something. “You could be part ninja.”
I gave him a quick smile. “Thank you.”
“You’d be a hot ninja,” Daemon said, winking when I looked at him. “I need you two to stay back for a moment.”
Yeah. I so wasn’t going to listen to that, but before I could prance into the street, Archer grabbed my arm. “For real,” he said, holding me in place. “Stay here.”
I started to pull free, but the Hummer crashed through a vehicle and the deafening thunder of clanging metal forced me to stand still.
The Hummer was barreling down on us as Daemon walked right out to the middle of the road, head bowed as he stretched out his arm. Concentration marked his expression.
He made a striking image as he stood there, legs spread wide and shoulders squared. Like a god about to meet a Titan head-on.
A shimmer of white enveloped him, and from where I stood, I could see his veins light from within, a bright white that followed a network of lines across his cheeks and down his throat, disappearing under the collar of his shirt, and then reappearing along his arm.
I’d seen him like this before, not all out, but when he’d stopped the truck that almost turned me into roadkill.
Daemon was freezing time.
The Hummer halted suddenly, pitching the occupants forward as the air around the car hummed with power. He’d stopped the car—but he couldn’t freeze the Luxen inside. It didn’t matter how many times I’d seen him do that, I was awed by the ability. A lot of energy had to be sucked up to freeze time, and I’d only done it once by accident.
Daemon jerked his hand back, and it was like the Hummer was attached to an invisible string. He’d unfrozen time, and the force of the vehicle snapped back, but it was a little too much for a thing called gravity.
The Hummer went up on the front two wheels in a perfect handstand and hovered there for a second, and then tipped over with the force of an elephant. Metal crunched as the roof caved.
“Boo-yah,” Archer murmured.
The Luxen didn’t stay down long. The doors groaned, and then flew off in a burst of whitish-red light. They came out—five of them—rushing toward us in their human forms.
“I got this,” Daemon said as he crouched down, preparing for the massive impact of the five Luxen.
“What the hell?” I looked at Archer.
He nodded. “Yeah, we aren’t just standing here while he has all the fun.”
Archer let go, and I darted away from the SUV, toward the fray, just as a hood was ripped off a nearby sedan and shot across the wall like a giant knife. It hit one of the Luxen, cleaved him right in two, and there was no coming back from that, alien or not.
Damn.
I skidded to a stop when I saw Archer’s downright evil grin. “Score.”
“That was pretty cool,” Daemon said, catching one of the Luxen by the waist. Lifting him up, he literally power-bombed the sucker in the road. Asphalt cracked. Shimmery blue liquid splattered across the road.
Yuck.
One Luxen veered off, charging me. Summoning the Source, I lifted my arm and concentrated on what I wanted to happen. Back in the day, when I was first getting used to the Source, it involved a whole lot of stuff smacking me in the face or crashing to the floor.
Now?
Not so much.
When the Luxen was less than a few feet from me, I flung her against the side of a semi-truck. There was a sickening crunch that I wanted to forget, but I had to hold on to it. Lunging forward, before the tool got back on her feet, I let the Source whip through me. It slammed into her chest, above the heart, like a lightning bolt. The Luxen lit up like a firework that fizzled out quickly.
Daemon had the one he’d power-bombed by the shoulders. He brought his knee up, making contact in the chest. Bones snapped and the Luxen howled. I turned as Daemon’s arm cocked back, and the Source whipped down his arm.
I came face-to-face with Archer and the Glock he held in his hand. Our gazes collided, and fear exploded in my chest like buckshot. My breath caught in my throat as I froze. All I could see was the barrel of the gun, and then the spark as the trigger was pulled. I braced myself for the pain of metal ripping through my skin and bones.
Except it never came.
A body thunked on the ground behind me, and I spun around, gasping as I saw a Luxen facedown in the road in a pool of shimmery liquid.
“Bullet to the head,” Archer said. “Even they don’t get up from that.”
“That’s cheating,” Daemon said as he whirled around, taking out the last Luxen with a blast from the Source, pinning him against a nearby truck.
“Whatever.” Archer shoved the gun behind his back. “I’m all about conserving energy where I can.”
Pushing the hair out of my face, I surveyed the grim scene. “That’s all of them?”
Archer looked around. “I’m thinking it is for now.”
For now? I wasn’t sure I could go another round as I turned to where Daemon stood. My heart spasmed in my chest. Bluish-red liquid seeped out of the corner of his mouth. I jerked toward him, rocked. I hadn’t even seen him injured. “You’re hurt!”
“I’m fine,” he assured me, but the sight of him—of Daemon bleeding—rattled me to the core. “Took a hit, but it’s cool. In a couple of minutes it will be like nothing happened.”
That did very little to ease the panic building.
“He’s truly okay,” Archer threw in. “He’ll heal fast, especially since it’s daytime.”
I didn’t quite get what he was saying at first, but then I remembered Daemon explaining all that time ago how the sun did wonders for the Luxen, while copious amounts of sugar worked for hybrids.
“We’ve got to hurry.” Daemon grabbed my hand, tugging me back toward the Explorer. “More will feel us traveling, and it’s only a matter of time before they figure out what we’re doing.”
And that would be bad—really bad.