Showered and changed, we headed downstairs just in time to eat leftover bacon and eggs. The food was cold and Archer and my sister were staring at us like they knew exactly why it took us so long to come downstairs, but I didn’t care. There was an edge of sadness to the soft smile Kat wore as she watched them, but she was smiling, and I had given her what she wanted when she needed it.
After she finished eating, she excused herself and stood. From behind my chair, she leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’m going to step outside for a few. Okay?”
I started to follow her but realized that she probably wanted a few minutes alone and told myself to keep my ass in my chair. As she turned, though, I caught her arm and tugged her down until I could capture her mouth in a deep, scorching kiss that probably sent her mind back to what went down between us in the bedroom.
Archer coughed. “We’re not standing here or anything.”
“Whatever,” I murmured as I let Kat go, and she surveyed the room with a red face. Giving an awkward wave, she turned and hurried out of the kitchen. I leaned back in my chair, shooting Archer a look that said, Shut up.
He raised his hands as he backed away from the table and then grabbed the trash, going right to where the can was under the sink, in the cabinet. I frowned. “You’re awful familiar with my kitchen.”
Archer snorted.
“How is she?” Dee asked as she sat beside me.
I sighed. “As can be expected.”
Sympathy poured into her eyes. “I didn’t know Ethan had her mom killed. I swear. I would’ve said something if I did.”
“I know.” I patted her arm. “Kat knows that, too.”
“Totally sucks,” Archer said, closing the cabinet door and straightening. “Probably good to get away from here.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, hoping she’d open up soon about what she was feeling. I knew from personal experience how that kind of pain and hurt could tear someone up. “I’ll see—”
Archer’s cell phone went off in his pocket. Frowning, he pulled it out and quickly answered. “What’s up, Luc?” he asked as he turned back to the sink and grabbed a dish towel.
Who knew Archer was so domesticated? I looked at my sister, and she was grinning at him like he was the second coming of something great.
“What?” Archer turned to us slowly, frowning. “No. Not at all.”
I sat up straight, on alert.
His eyes met mine. “Yeah, I know what you planned to do. It’ll still happen.” There was a pause, and sudden unease formed in my gut. “I’ll call you if anything comes up here.”
I was standing, and so was Dee by the time he disconnected the call. “What’s going on?”’
He slipped his phone into his pocket. “Nancy was sighted.”
“What?” The question boomed out of me. “A little more detail.”
Archer walked over to the table and gripped the back of a chair. “Luc doesn’t know the exact time frame. Sometime yesterday evening. With everything going on, word just got back to him. It was near Georgia. Maybe she was looking for us.”
“Shit,” I said, not liking the sound of that and knowing that this . . . this shit really wasn’t over. Not with her. . . .
“He’s ticked off. He planned on killing her.”
“What?”
“You heard me correctly. Once this was all over, he wanted to take her out himself. He never had any intentions of releasing the Origins back to her.”
There wasn’t a single part of me that was unhappy to hear about those plans, and I didn’t care how bad that made me look.
Archer scrubbed his jaw. “God, that woman could literally be anywhere and I’ll tell you what, she’s a loose cannon—” He cut himself off as he whirled around and looked at the clock on the wall. “Georgia . . . it didn’t take us that long to make the trip— Oh, shit.” He whipped around.
I was already racing toward the front door. There had been more than enough time for Nancy to make her way here, but I couldn’t imagine that woman would be stupid enough to try to seek vengeance on us. I threw the door open and rushed out onto the front porch, scanning the yard. A burst of air left me as I spotted Kat in front of her house. She was on her knees, her hair up in a knot, pulling the weeds out of the flower box. Frankly, she was ripping them out.
She looked up as I jogged over to where she was. Without saying a word, I reached down and hauled her up, pulling her into my arms and squeezing the ever-loving daylights out of her.
“Hey.” Her voice was muffled. “Is everything okay?”
Holding on to her, I lifted her up off her feet. “Yeah,” I said against the top of her head. “I just missed you.”
“I’ve only been gone a few minutes.”
I lowered her to her feet, not sure how to tell her about Nancy or even if I should bring it up. That might be wrong as hell, but God, I didn’t want to mention that piece of bad news. Not with everything she’d just gone through and the fact that I knew she was trying to focus on a future she hadn’t believed possible days before.
“You are so weird sometimes,” she said, grinning as she looked up at me. “But I still love—” Whatever she was saying ended in a shout of warning.
Time slowed as I whirled around, and sure as hell, there was Nancy looking like a mess, dark hair standing out in every direction, that god-awful suit wrinkled. There was a gun in her hand, but it didn’t look like a normal pistol. Instead it looked like a Glock that had been manipulated into something else.
Something really deadly.
There was a moment when my brain registered what was happening, what was about to go down, and that moment felt like an eternity as my gaze met Nancy’s and the hatred in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. She wasn’t going to kill me.
No.
She wanted me—one of her ultimate prizes—to suffer.
The gun wasn’t pointed at me.
Nancy smiled. “You ruined everything.”
The time it would take to summon the Source, a handful of seconds, wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Before that thought was even finished, I was moving. My hands circled Kat’s arms as she raised a hand, preparing to tap into her ability. I took her down as a spark of blue light flared, followed by a low popping sound.
My eyes met Kat’s.
Shouts exploded from my nearby house and I heard Dee scream—a mixture of horror and the kind of fury that ended lives. There was a blast of the Source, a short howl of pain, and the sound of Nancy hitting the ground—dead.
And then there was silence.
I looked down, between our bodies. The front of her cream-colored sweater looked wrong, like it had been splattered with a paintbrush dipped in red and . . .
“Kitten?” I gasped out.
It wasn’t her blood.
Thank God, it wasn’t her blood.
But I didn’t understand what had happened. I hadn’t even felt it. How strange was that? I’d never been shot before, but I figured it would have to hurt the moment the bullet ripped through me, but it didn’t.
Now my back and chest were on fire.
“Daemon?” she whispered.
Oh shit.
My lungs tried to expand but seemed to get stuck. I didn’t look away from her eyes as I lifted myself off her, tried to stand, but realized that my brain wasn’t connecting to my legs. I went down on one hand, feeling the warm wetness traveling down my stomach. My arm gave out and I landed on my side.
Kat was suddenly above me, and I was on my back and all I could see were her beautiful gray eyes—eyes that had become my whole life, probably before I even realized they had.
But those eyes were wide with fear and shining in a way that made me want to touch her, to make sure she was okay. I managed to lift my arm and trail the tips of my fingers across her cheek, but I couldn’t hold it up. It was like dead meat.
“Daemon!”
I tried to respond, but all I could do was focus on those eyes. As she leaned over me, her sweet lips so close to mine, my name on her tongue, I thought that if I had to die, if this would be the end, then at least I was seeing her and nothing else.