Night Blade (31 page)

Hide…have to hide...

“Not
now
!” Goliath roared and he slammed a massive hand down on Damon’s head, shoving him into the ground.

Doyle rose and paced between us, that striped body cutting off my view.

“Kit. Come with me now,” Colleen said, reaching down and grabbing my arm.

I just huddled there. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

His eyes. I could still feel the weight of his eyes cutting in me.

Had he seen—?

I plucked at the high neck of the sweater, holding it up over my throat as I looked around, staring out into the night. At anywhere but here. The sweater. I needed something with a higher collar, something to hide what Jude had done. Needed it higher, had to keep the marks on my neck covered. He’d chewed me up, marked me well and good and I needed to hide it—

“Kitasa,
come with me
,” Colleen said again, dragging me upright and walking.

The men on the rocky forest floor were still struggling but despite Goliath’s massive size, Damon was getting the better of him.
Come…yes. Colleen. Go with Colleen. That sounded good
—

“Kit!”
Damon rasped out. And his voice sounded broken. “Baby girl…”

I sobbed and nearly fell.

A hand caught me and I froze.

“I’m sorry, Kit, I just…”

Chang. I looked up and saw him staring at me. Just like all of them. Everybody. Staring.

Staring at broken, ruined Kit.

Carefully, I backed away from him, shaking my head. “Colleen. Get me away from here,” I whispered. “I can’t…”

Her arm came around my waist.

“I know, Kitasa. I know.”

* * * * *

Silence reigned in my head.

Colleen found us a sheltered spot in the trees and she cast a fire.

It didn’t burn from wood.

It hovered about the ground, spinning out of her magic and warming at least my body, even if it couldn’t touch anything else.

Her hands hovered over my ribs, my arms, my belly, careful not to touch any part of my skin as she checked the injuries she’d managed to coax out of me. “His healer is decent,” she said reluctantly. “There’s no lingering damage, no scars except…”

I twisted away from her and hunched up my shoulder, pulling the collar of the sweater higher to block them from view. In a broken, stilted voice, I whispered, “Can you get them off?”

“No,” she said softly. “They’ve already healed. The only thing that might remove them would be surgery and that’s not always an easy option with us.”

Us. Witches and aneira, others with bodies that were more than human but not quite something else. Our bodies didn’t take well to non-natural forms of healing. Sometimes it worked just fine. I knew one witch had attempted to have scars from an attack removed, and she’d arrested on the table.

She’d died because she wanted her scars removed.

I thought it might be worth it.

Colleen touched my hand. “Warriors learn to carry scars.”

The silence in my head had never seemed so terribly loud. “I’m not a warrior anymore,” I murmured.
I’m nothing
. My hand seemed to so terribly empty and I so terribly needed my blade.

“You
are
,” Colleen said, her eyes flashing in the firelight.

No. I wasn’t. And the emptiness of my hand was just more proof of that. I twisted my wrist, popped it, longed for that reassuring weight, but it was just…
gone
. And in the back of my head, the music that had always comforted me was so painfully silent.

I’d never felt more alone, more empty in my entire life.

Unable to think about that, I shifted my gaze back to Doyle.

The tiger was pacing ever closer, like he was trying to work up the courage to come up to the fire, but not sure he was ready to do it yet.

“How long are we going to be here?” I stared at the house where hell had held me trapped. Where it had broken me.

“Until they convince Jude to leave without a fight.” She drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. “We can start to head out. Anytime you’re ready. We’ll have to walk, but we can do it. Quickest way out is by heli, but we didn’t want to make the noise, so we hiked in.”

I shuddered. Walking through there didn’t bother me. But I was very much bothered by the idea of walking away from here without knowing that he was locked away.

Colleen shifted her foot over and nudged me with her toe. Just that light touch made me want to cringe and I think she knew it. I also think that was why she did it. To show me she could touch me and that I wouldn’t break.

But she was wrong. I was already broken.

“If you have to see him in the box, then you have to see it. It won’t take any more than a few hours at best. Banner doesn’t have the kind of patience for prolonged…debates,” she said the word slowly and with relish. “If he fights too much, Justin will just issue the kill order.”

Banner
.

“How is Banner involved?”

“Kit…” She stared at me. “Sweetheart, almost everybody got involved. Once we knew what had happened…” She shrugged. “The Assembly, in general, wouldn’t come after him, but they took a clear step back when we told them we were coming after you. Es told them that Whittier House might be ended when we were done and if any of the vampire clutches had a problem, they could take it up with the whole of the Order of Witches.”

I pressed my face to my knees.

They’d come for me.

“Justin knew something was wrong first,” she said.

Branches crunched.

I tensed, but managed not to flinch as I lifted my head and watched as she came to sit down next to me. “He went looking for you after you didn’t call him back,” she said quietly. “He found your car. Your phone. It was only the next day. I…”

A taut silence fell before she finally said, “Kit, I’m so sorry. He told me that you’d mentioned something about Damon and…he said you’d fought.” She swallowed.

I could feel the pain in her, but just hearing his name was a bitter strike inside me. “It’s over,” I said woodenly.

Her hand caught mine as another one of those roars ripped through the night. I started to shudder and she tugged me close. “Shhh. Come on, Kit. Anyway, I told him that maybe you’d taken off for a few days. Gone to Wolf Haven and he told me to get bent. You don’t disappear without your phone, your car. So we started looking. Called Goliath. TJ. They hadn’t heard from you, so they start looking. You know TJ and she won’t leave, but she’s tearing up the internet and Goliath is tearing up central Florida. He’s the one who went to Damon.”

“He didn’t need to bother.” I turned my face into her neck. “No point in him pestering the Alpha with this—”

“Kit—”

Colleen’s voice hissed out my name and she shoved me behind her.

It didn’t last for very long, the scant protection of her body. Colleen yelped as she went skidding across the ground and I found myself just a breath away from Damon. On his hands and knees in front of me, the look on his face something I couldn’t even understand.

“That big fuck didn’t need to
bother
me?” he growled. “No point in pestering the fucking Alpha?”

I inched away, dropping my gaze to my knees.

Hide…have to hide
…I eased backward, slowly bit by bit, only to freeze when he roared and slammed a fist into the frozen earth.

“Damn it, Kit.” Something that might have been tears glimmered in his eyes. “Did you really think I wasn’t coming for you?”

The scars at my neck throbbed. Burned.
Marked…ruined…

It’s over, baby girl…

The words sounded in my head and something that might have been the first flickers of anger tried to rise, but under the grief, under the fear, the shame, those embers only flickered, then they died.

Staring into Damon’s eyes, I shook my head and forced the words out. I needed him to get away from me.
Now
. “There was no reason for you to come. It was over, remember?”

“Baby girl…” He reached out a hand to touch me.

The sight of that hand made me flinch. Strong, beautiful hands…and even the thought of being touched by him, by
anybody
now filled me with fear.

Broken. Ruined.

Bitterness well inside me and I surged upward. He moved with me and I was trapped. Trapped between the warmth of his body and the trees at my back and everybody gathered around us. “I can say it now.” Now that nothing stopped me, the words came spilling out of me like poison. “The job’s done. Nothing binding me or tying my throat into a knot if I try to speak the words I’d wanted to say from the beginning. I was trying to save
you
.”

A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I know. Kit, I’m sorry—”

“You’re
sorry
?” I stared at him, shaking my head. “You’re
fucking sorry
? I had a couple of days at the most and if I didn’t find them some justification, Banner was going to put an execution order out on you. And I couldn’t
say
anything because I’d been bound. I couldn’t say a word. My lungs froze up and it was pain on end just to
think
about saying any of the words burning inside me…but oh, okay…
you’re sorry.”

His lids drooped low, shielding his eyes. “Kit—”

“Shut
up
!” I shrieked. The sound of it startled me, echoing all around us. Staring at him, I shook my head again, backing away as much as I could. “You wanted me to talk to you then, and I
couldn’t
. I can do it now so just
shut up
. Do you have any idea what that was like for me? I had that job weighing down on me and the only things I knew for
certain
…I couldn’t tell
anybody
so no way to ask for help in clearing you and if I screwed it up, you were dead.”

Spinning away, I shoved my hands into my hair, cradling my head. I felt like I was going to come apart into ten thousand pieces. “I couldn’t say
anything
,” I whispered again. “The
one
time I tried to give a warning was to Chang, after you’d walked away. I wanted to make sure you’d stay in the Lair until Justin told me it was all done and I had to stab myself in the fucking leg just to get the vaguest warning out.”

Somebody out in the circle of bodies muttered something. It might have been Chang. I didn’t know.

I heard somebody move and the sound of it sent fear scurrying through me. Spinning back around, I tried to find the source of the sound, but saw nothing. Great…just great. I’m back to jumping at shadows. Cringing at the smallest bump in the night.

“I did it for you.” I stared at him. “I tried to protect
you
the way you’re always trying to protect
me
. And you walked away.”

Damon just stood there and his eyes locked on my face.

“But I still tried to call,” I whispered as the agony ripped loose. “I still had the phone in my hand from calling the Lair when I realized I had a dart in my chest. All I wanted to do was tell you I was sorry…” I reached for the neck of the sweater, the scars feeling scratchy and raw.

“Kit, please….would you just…”

I had to make myself do this. He needed to stop. For the past few hours, while Justin did whatever he had to do inside that house, I had been hiding and cringing away while Damon stalked my steps. Maybe he needed to understand. Maybe he needed to see.
I
knew what had been done to me.
I
knew how broken I was.

“You were smart to end it when you did, Damon. Maybe it was sheer dumb luck on your part, but it’s best for you.” I tugged at the neck of the sweater. “I understand that you feel guilty, or angry, or upset. But it’s not going to be enough to help you see past what he made me into.”

“You’re still
you
,” Damon said. One big hand closed into a fist and his eyes glittered as he stared at me.

“No. I’m not.” Tugging the neck of the sweater down, I craned my neck to the side. On the other side, I had the marks Damon had given me. Jude had been careful not to touch those. I think he took some sort of perverse pride in marking up the other side, and mark it, he had. A map of scars marred my neck and there was nothing neat about them. “Two weeks as a vamp’s bloodwhore, Damon. His
thing…
his
toy
. I’m so far from me, I don’t think I’ll ever find my way back.”

“
I’ll
find your way,” he rasped.

“You can’t…and what’s more,
I
don’t want you around me right now.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to breathe around it.

Damon took another step. “Kit, for fuck’s sake…
please
.”

“No.” I backed away, stumbling this time. Yet again, Doyle was there. I sank my hand into his fur and knelt beside him. Anything to avoid looking at the man still hovering too close to me.

Doyle bumped his head against my chest, once, twice. After he did it a third time, I slowly wrapped an arm around his neck. “Thank you,” I whispered against the warmth of his body. “I don’t know why you came after me, kid, but thank you.”

He wrapped himself around me and when somebody moved toward me, he growled.

“Don’t,” I whispered. I stroked a hand down his back. “You need to go to your Alpha, okay, kid? Just leave me alone with Colleen, okay? I need to be alone.”

He just twined himself tighter around me and continued to stare past me. And he wasn’t leaving.

Gradually, I realized the others had.

Gradually, I realized it was just us.

Me, Colleen, and a boy who’d shapeshifted into a tiger…a boy who’d somehow managed to track me across a continent.

Colleen settled against my back, her head on my shoulder.

“You’re still you, Kit,” she whispered.

“No, I’m not.”

I really wished everybody would quit telling me that.

* * * * *

“They’re moving him.”

Goliath appeared out of the snowy night.

Doyle nudged my chest again and I pushed my hand against him. “You need to go back to your clan,” I said quietly. In the past hour, I’d made myself look away from the protective circle of Colleen, Goliath and Doyle and I realized there were nearly twenty cats there, not including Doyle.