“All of this . . . all of this is because of what happened to you?” she asked, shaking her head slowly. Disbelief colored her tone. I didn’t blame her. I was also shocked.
Taking over the world was at least something to aspire to. This? This was just nasty hatred and revenge and . . . yeah, crazy. How he managed to get so many Luxen behind him was beyond my understanding. How could they not have seen through what he was? Though hell, I had never seen him for what he was.
“You’re doing this just because of what was done to you,” Kat repeated.
“And what they did to others of my kind.” His eyes flashed again. “And what they would’ve continued to do, even after dismantling Daedalus and their projects.”
“But there are people who would’ve never done anything like that. Who would’ve welcomed the Luxen,” she argued. “You can’t judge an entire race of beings on what a small percentage of people have done.”
“Already have,” he replied.
Jesus. There were no words for this.
“That’s insane!” Kat’s cheeks flushed with anger, and damn, she was right. “That’s worse than how the Luxen feel about the Arum and vice versa. That’s absolutely—”
Ethan moved faster than even I could track for a moment. One second he was sitting, and the next second he was right beside Kat, his fingers curled around her throat.
I shot up from my chair, knocking it over. My form began to shift. Let her go.
His grip tightened on her neck. “Take one step toward me. Shift or summon the Source, and I will snap her neck. Let’s see if you can heal her from that.”
My heart—dammit—my heart stopped in my chest as I stared at them. He had me by the throat because he had my whole world in his hands. I forced the shift to back off and said one word I thought I’d never utter to the bastard.
“Please.” I swallowed hard, but the words came out easier than I could’ve ever imagined. “Please don’t hurt her.”
Ethan sneered into her face. “You beg for a human who wouldn’t do the same for you?”
“I’d do anything for her.”
“And I would do . . . the same for him,” Kat gasped out, her hands curling inward in her lap. “And I would . . . never be as batshit crazy as you.”
“Kat,” I warned.
Ethan’s fingers tightened, and she jerked. “Excuse me?”
“You are worse . . . than the Luxen. You’ve judged billions of people for something they didn’t do.” Her voice cracked. “You hurt my mother. She never did anything to you, and you probably don’t even know her name.”
“That bitch?” Ethan spat back. “She isn’t even worth knowing her name.”
Several things happened at once. Blue light flared from the outside, a halo that lit up all the windows and danced over the walls. The sound of giant wings beat at the roof. There were shouts from almost every direction.
Ethan lifted his head, brows furrowing in a look of confusion.
Kat kicked her chair back, swinging one leg up. Her foot connected with Ethan’s midsection. She wrenched back and he stumbled against the table. I shot toward her, grasping her by the shoulders before she could fall. I hauled her up and away from Ethan as I shifted.
The windows facing the front yard, over the sink, exploded. I spun Kat behind me, blocking her from the shards of flying glass.
Men in black with face shields landed in the kitchen like something straight out of an action flick, their boots crunching on the broken glass. Well, I assumed the military had arrived or a SWAT team had just busted up in the wrong house. The massive weapons they hoisted—PEP guns—told me my first assumption was correct.
I backed Kat up, not wanting her to get caught in the whole lot of bad that was about to go down, but I wasn’t the only one worried about getting out of the middle of this.
Ethan spun, and the bastard ran.
{ Katy }
Too much emotion was swirling inside me. I was like a tornado, about to wipe out everything in my path. My senses were on overload and I was overwhelmed by everything that had happened—was happening.
Men had just rapelled into the house, through the win-dows.
Mom was dead.
The whole world had been upheaved on its axle. All because of revenge. That was all. Nothing important. Just crazy revenge, and it had changed the entire world—my world. There was no point behind this. No real reason.
When Ethan turned to run, I didn’t stop to think about it. I didn’t hesitate as I reached behind me, yanked on the butt of the Glock—the modified gun. It happened so quickly. I took aim as the men shouted at Ethan.
He was already at the sink, about to Houdini himself out the window, and I knew if he got outside we’d never find him. We’d have to start all over and he’d never pay for everything he had done.
I took aim at his head and pulled the trigger.
All of this happened within one or maybe two seconds, and the months and years leading up to it were over in a heartbeat.
Ethan toppled over face-first onto the kitchen floor.
Done.
Dead.
It was over for him in the span of time it took to move a finger. What had happened to my mom would’ve taken longer, would’ve been more painful. Ethan is lucky, I thought numbly. He was there one second and then gone in the blink of an eye.
My hand shook as I lowered the gun, and I was vaguely aware of Daemon staring at me and the strange men turned in my direction, their faces hidden behind shields, but I could feel their stares.
Ethan was dead.
It wasn’t the same with the Luxen. There was no light show before he died. Ironically, he left this earth like the humans he hated—like the humans he was actually a part of, and how messed up was that? His mother had been a hybrid—part human. Did he hate himself, too? Why was I even thinking about this? Because it didn’t matter.
I tried to take a breath, but it got stuck, and I felt cold and then hot, too hot.
One of the men turned, a gloved hand rising to the side of his helmet. There was a burst of static and he said, “They’re here.”
At first I thought he meant the Arum, but the pulses of light that suddenly lit up the outside told me that wasn’t the Arum.
“Go! Go!” ordered one of the SWAT-looking guys.
The men—five of them—went out the same way they’d come in, through the windows. Dumbly, I wanted to point out the door a mere few feet from them, but then Daemon was reaching for me, going for the gun I was still holding.
I jerked back from him, tightening my grip on the gun.
“Kat . . .”
My gaze swung over Ethan to the dead Luxen who had assimilated my mom, and as I stood there, shouts rose from the outside. Although it was daytime, it looked like lightning striking horizontally. Daemon cursed, his attention divided between me and where his sister was, and I made the decision for him.
“This is not over,” I told him in a voice that was pitched too high.
He took a measured step toward me, and his chin dipped as his gaze collided with mine. “It is for us, Kat. It is.”
“No.” It wasn’t over. There was too much building in me, a reckless amount of energy and anger and a thousand other emotions. “No.”
“Kat—”
I spun around and raced out of the kitchen, toward the front door. Daemon was right on my heels as I threw open the door.
Chaos.
A dozen or so Luxen had streamed out from the thick cluster of trees surrounding our homes, and with them were at least three Origins. I couldn’t see Dee or Archer, but there were bodies littering the ground, both human and Luxen. Blasts from PEP weapons and from the Source zinged back and forth across the yard. There were more Luxen than humans standing, and in their true forms, their light was as bright as the sun breaking through the clouds overhead.
It was an all-out war scene, very much like what had gone down in Vegas. The trees closer to the yard were singed, and a few of the bare branches were burning, billowing black smoke into the air. A distinctive burned smell lingered in the air, curdling my stomach.
The Luxen were lobbing bolts at the men in black like they were throwing baseballs, one after another. One struck a man in the chest, spinning him back and onto the ground near the porch. The PEP weapon hit the ground and fired, sending a deadly blast in our direction.
Daemon shoved me to the side as the blast from the weapon cracked into the storm door behind us, shattering the glass.
Out of the corner of my vision, I saw Archer dart across the driveway, firing off rounds from the gun he held in his hand—the same kind I’d used on Ethan. He hit the Luxen, taking shots like a total badass. One went down . . . and then another and another. Their forms flickered in and out while one hit the ground, light fading into the shell of something sort of human.
Then I saw Dee behind Mom’s car. Every couple of seconds, she stood and sent out a blast of the Source in the direction of the Luxen.
Daemon moved around me as an Origin raced toward the porch, rearing back as white light wrapped down his arm at an alarming rate. Daemon vaulted the railing, tackling the Origin before he could do a thing.
Damn, he was like a ninja, totally badass, too.