“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.

25

{ Katy }

“Daemon?” My heart was pounding against my ribs, but it felt wrong—it felt worn out and sluggish. Fire traveled up and down my back, but I knew I wasn’t hurt. It was Daemon.

Oh God, it was him.

I slid my hand over his chest, crying out as my hand came back soaked with the reddish-blue blood. “Oh. No . . .”

My name was called out. So was Daemon’s, but I didn’t look to see what was happening. My eyes were locked with Daemon’s. His lips, leached of all color, moved, but there were no words.

This wasn’t happening!

This could not be happening!

We hadn’t survived everything that we’d faced, on top of an alien invasion, for Daemon to die like this.

“No! No. No!” I searched for the source of the wound, but he’d taken the shot in the back.

It hadn’t been a normal gun.

Daemon’s form started to flicker, and horror kicked me in the chest. I grabbed his cheeks as my lungs desperately tried to force air in. His eyes were closed. “Open your eyes! Dammit, open your eyes!”

My legs started to shake with the effort to hold myself up in a kneeling position, and then Archer and Dee were there, and I couldn’t help but think of that horrible time in my house, when the situation had been flipped and it had been me lying on the floor. Then we thought we were purely connected, and if one died, so did the other, but now we knew the truth.

I ignored the pain roaring through my body and the weakness creeping into my muscles, invading my very being, followed by coldness, a chill of death. My overworked heart turned over.

“No!” Dee cried out, dropping down by Daemon’s head. Her hands landed on her brother’s shoulders and she immediately shifted into her true form. Her light was brilliant, much like an angel’s halo.

“Fix him, please.” My vision blurred as I started to tilt toward the ground. “Please, please fix him.”