“I can’t leave you alone for two seconds, Kitten.”
She launched herself forward, and I caught her around the waist. Her entire body trembled. “I came up here to study, you know, because I figured I’d get more work done, and I had a glass of orange juice with me.” Her words came out in a jumbled rush. “And Carissa—Carissa was here.”
“How did she get here? I didn’t see her.”
Kat’s eyes were wide with shock as she shook her head. “She’d been here while I was downstairs. She was waiting for me, and I thought she was sick at first, you know, like she didn’t know where she was, because she hasn’t been in school. But she wasn’t sick. Oh my God, she was—”
“Okay. Slow down for me, Kitten.” My gaze flickered over her, landing on the burned spot in the floor. My stomach sank. If Carissa had been here, she wasn’t here anymore. “What happened to Carissa?”
Kat shuddered. “She attacked me. Like legit attacked me.”
Very few things surprised me nowadays, but this did. Carissa was a quiet, shy girl, the exact opposite of their other friend Lesa. A book was the only thing I could picture Carissa attacking. Maybe a bug. But a small bug.
“She didn’t even seem to know who I was. She was like the Terminator, Daemon—the Terminator. And she just kept coming at me. I asked her to stop. I told her I didn’t want to hurt her, but she wouldn’t stop.” Tears filled her eyes, and my stomach sank as I thought about the burned spot on the floor. “She wouldn’t stop.”
“It’s okay.” I folded an arm around her shoulders. “You didn’t have a choice. You were defending—”
“I didn’t kill her.” Kat broke free of my hold and stumbled back a step. She swung, throwing her arm out to the burned spot. “I didn’t kill her, I swear. She— She self-destructed, Daemon. She—oh my God—she imploded like a bomb.” Spinning back toward me, she lifted her hand and wiped at the blood under her lip. “She was mutated—she was a hybrid.”
That absolutely made no sense and raised so many damn questions. “Okay. All right. Let’s get you downstairs.”
Kat stared at me like she didn’t understand what I was saying. Pained, I took her hand and led her out of the room and down the stairs. Once in the living room, I sat beside her on the couch. Cupping her cheeks, I tapped into the Source and took care of the minor injuries.
“I don’t understand what happened,” she said. “She was normal last week. Daemon, you saw her. How did we not know this?”
My jaw tightened. “I think the better question is why did she come after you?”
She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t know.”
That was an answer that I didn’t even have. How did Carissa end up mutated? It would have to have been one of the Luxen from our colony. There weren’t many around our age, but they didn’t venture out from the colony often. How did this person meet Carissa? And why did she go after Kat? Because maybe someone from the colony hadn’t mutated her. There was another explanation.
I frowned. “She could’ve known a Luxen—known the truth and knew not to tell anyone. I mean, no one inside the colony knows that you’re aware of the truth.”
“But there are no others around our age,” she said.
“None outside the colony, but there are a few who are only a couple years older or younger than us in the colony.”
She looked away, swallowing hard. “You don’t think…”
“That Daedalus took her and forced a Luxen to heal her like with Dawson?” Anger punched through me. “I seriously pray that’s not the case. If so, it’s just…”
“Revolting,” she said hoarsely, shoving her shaking hands between her knees. “She wasn’t there. Not even a flicker of her personality. She was like a zombie, you know? Just freaking crazed. Is that what unstable does?”
Kat was completely healed, at least physically, but I was reluctant to remove my hands. I was afraid she was going to shake to pieces. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to my side.
“God, she…she died. Does that mean…?” Kat swallowed again.
I gently squeezed her. “If it was one of the Luxen here then I’ll hear about it, but we don’t know if the mutation held. Blake has said that sometimes the mutation is unstable, and that sounded pretty damn unstable. The bonding only happens if it’s a stable mutation, I believe.”