Echo
The cool breeze batted my face as I slumped against the warmth of Blaine’s body, feeling the muscles work in his stomach with every turn and bend in the road. Fatigue worked its way over my eyes, and the lethargy threatened to pull me under. A hand settled over mine, squeezing my fingers ever so slightly.
“Don’t fall asleep on me, love,” Blaine’s voice ordered to my thoughts.
I forced my eyes back open, but couldn’t seem to concentrate on any of the scenery until we rumbled our way up to the familiar gates.
“No, everything’s fine,” he said, turning off the engine. I hadn’t even realized Blaine was talking on the phone. “Yeah, I’ll call you a little later. Okay… Bye.”
I tried to get off the bike and wound up stumbling to the ground.
Blaine caught me before I face-planted into the asphalt. “Hey.”
He held my arms, steadying me in his hold. Before I could lift my gaze to him, his lips met mine. I wanted to pull away, but it felt so good. Warmth spread into my limbs, and the relief was immediate. It was like a shot of epinephrine, jolting me awake instantly.
Blaine pulled away, taking the sensation with him. “Feel better?”
I staggered back a step. Not out of exhaustion, but pure confusion. “What the hell was that?”
“I transferred some of my energy to you.” Before I could respond, he simply turned and trotted up to the front porch like it was nothing, disappearing inside the darkened foyer of Haven Crest Manor.
Trying to get my head straight, I followed after him, noting that my legs were no longer weak. He’d offered more than just ‘some’ of his energy.
“Close the door,” Blaine ordered, seeing me lingering in the entryway.
I did as he commanded, putting the lock into place as he disappeared down the corridor. Blaine returned a moment later with a bottle of Johnnie Walker in hand. He shrugged off his jacket and haphazardly tossed it at the chair in the corner before unbuttoning his shirt.
I could only imagine I looked like a deer caught in headlights as I openly gawked at the sight. “Uh…what are you doing?”
“Taking my clothes off.”
“I can see that. Why?”
“Well, in my experience, I find it makes things simpler when they’re not in the way.”
“Excuse me?” My eyes practically bulged out of my head, watching him unscrew the bottle of whisky and take more than a healthy swig.
Who the hell did this guy think he was?
Sure, he saved my ass back there, but that didn’t mean I was obligated to give him sex in return! And by his continual alcohol intake, it wasn’t exactly flattering that he apparently needed to be drunk off his ass to be with me.
Blaine merely cocked a brow. “Can you come over here? I can’t do this by myself.”
“What?”
“Well, I mean, I can,” he shrugged, “but it’d be a hell of a lot better if you helped.”
“You can’t be serious.” I whirled around, ready to storm upstairs.
“What? You afraid of a little blood?”
“Am I…what?” I turned back around and outright gasped as Blaine shrugged off his unbuttoned shirt. “Oh my God!”
Blood stained the length of the outside of his chest, coming from the inflamed circular hole in his shoulder.
“You were shot?”
“Yeeeeeah.” His featured twisted further in confusion, and I knew immediately when it had happened. He’d thrown me to the pavement on the bridge just as they started shooting at us. “What did you think I was talking about?”
“Uh…nothing.”
Understanding must have settled in, because he smirked. “Give me a hand, please.”
“Aren’t you just going to self-heal?”
“It’s not that easy. The bullet didn’t exit, which means—”
“The wound will heal around it if you don’t get it out.” I cursed under my breath.
“The damn thing hurts like a Mother as it is. I don’t want it stuck in there.” Blaine dragged out a large camping sack from the floor of the coat closet and began rummaging inside it. “We have to be quick about this.”
He pulled out a nylon rollout bag armed with various knives and headed into the bathroom, taking a seat on the ledge of the counter. Blaine grimaced, dousing the wound with whisky, before he plucked out a long, thin blade from his cutlery collection.
I hesitantly stepped into the doorway, but immediately recoiled as he held out the handle of the knife to me.
“Ready?”
“What? No!”
He groaned. “You said you’d help.”
“No, I didn’t!” I clarified. “And you said ‘help.’ This isn’t helping; this is waaaay beyond that.”
“Well, the bullet’s stuck in my right shoulder, and it’s impinging it. I can’t raise my hand up high enough, which is a problem since it’s my dominant side. I’d rather not do this with my weaker hand.”
Bile threatened to rise in my throat as I looked between the blade and the wound. I nearly threw up in Bio once when we had to dissect a squid.
“Then don’t think of me as a squid,” he gnashed, clearly able to hear my thoughts. “And I certainly don’t want you dissecting me either. I just want the bullet out. And it doesn’t have to be pretty.”
I wanted to help, but I didn’t think me retching would be helping him any.
“You ever play Operation as a kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, think of it just like that. But instead of a heavy-set naked guy with a red light bulb nose, it’ll be a devilishly handsome scoundrel with a six-pack.”
I glared at him.
“I’ll strip all the way down, too, if that’ll help.”
“It won’t,” I gritted.
“Please. If I don’t get it out now, I’m gonna have to stab myself open later after I’ve healed. I’m already in agony, and I really don’t want to go through this all over again. I trust you.” He peered at me with pleading eyes, and I wanted to kick myself for what I was about to say.
***
That ‘trusting’ sentiment quickly dissolved as his teeth grinded into the towel Blaine had lodged into his mouth to muffle his screams. It’d been ten minutes, and I still couldn’t recover the bullet.
He finally yanked the cloth from his mouth with a laborious gasp as I pushed the knife deeper into the wound. “You’re a bloody butcher!”
“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s not like I’m digging around in here for fun,” I snapped, still trying my best to hold down the contents of my stomach.
He gave a pitiful groan. “I’d take Leatherface over you right about now.”
“Hey, if you want me to take a chainsaw to you, just say the word. I’d be more than happy to at this point.”
“You don’t see it at all?”
“No, and it’s getting harder for me to move around in there.”
“Shit. The wound’s closing up.” Blaine slumped sideways against the wall, the empty whisky bottle dangling from his fingertips. The new position gave me a clear view of his back in the mirror, and I groaned at the sight. “Do I even want to know?”
“I think I found your bullet…”
He cocked his head up at me, following my line of vision behind him. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
One look in the mirror, and the circular bump protruding under the skin on his upper back was unmistakable.
I wasn’t sure if his accelerated healing pushed the bullet all the way through to the other side or if perhaps I had during my excavation, but I nevertheless apologized.
Blaine wasted no time dousing the back of his shoulder before snatching up a larger knife. In one swift motion, he pressed the blade to his skin and completely swiped away the portion covering the bullet head. Blood immediately gushed from the wound, and I raced toward the toilet, ready to gag.
“You okay to do this?” he called out.
To hurl? Yes.
I tried composing myself again as I resurfaced to the counter. “What do you need me to do?”
“Pull the bullet out.”
“How?”
“Just use the knives like chopsticks. Get a hold of the bullet on each side and pry it out as far as you can. Then just dig it out with your fingers.”
Yeah, that was all. No biggie…
He turned around in front of the counter so that he was faced away from me, and I shuddered at all the blood trickling down his back. Uselessly trying to clean up the mess with masses of tissues, I finally found the bullet beneath all the profuse carnage. To my surprise and utter relief, the bullet eased right out that I didn’t even need to use my fingers…thank God. The bullet clanged onto the floor, and I had to use hand towels to help soak up the blood pooling down his back. Between the bullet wound and the carved up flesh, I had to fetch more.
“Who’s Danika?” I asked upon returning.
Blaine grimaced as I pressed the fresh towel to his back. “It’s complicated.”
“I’m sure I can keep up.”
He didn’t say anything at first, keeping his gaze fixed on the floor.
“Was she his girlfriend, or something?”
“Or something.” Blaine gave a grievous sigh, resigning himself to the situation. “Dani was his fiancée and high school sweetheart.”
“And Mr. Reynolds…he killed her?”
“Evidently.”
“But Val said he never had a mate—”
“She wasn’t his mate, but he loved her. And she was a human.”
“Then why would Nathan kill her?”
“Reapers see themselves as a necessary evil. They do whatever they have to in order to stay five steps ahead of Hell. But you have to ask yourself, if you forfeit your own humanity in order to combat them, are you really any better than those you’re fighting against?”
I could tell it was a question he’d ask himself more than once, seeing the muscles work in his jaw. And the knot in my stomach only grew.
“A couple years back,” he said, taking another brief pause, “some Reapers found out my brother was the next Crown Prince. They ambushed him at his house, not realizing he wasn’t alone. Dani had already been waiting for him inside for when he got off work. By all accounts, everybody assumed she didn’t know what he was, because she appeared to be human. But when she tried to intervene, the Reapers there discovered she was allergic to the silver they were using on Val to take him away.”
“So she wasn’t human?”
“She was. What most Reapers don’t know is that human women develop our demonic weaknesses when they’re pregnant with our children.”
I dropped the bloodied rags in my hands.
“She’d just found out the week prior, but they didn’t believe her. From a Reaper’s standpoint, the best case scenario was that she was demonic and lying about the pregnancy. Or the worse case: she was still something demonic and carrying the child of a Dark Prince. Either way, she was a threat.” Sadness flickered in those pale eyes. “I wasn’t lying when I said Dark Mages could turn off their emotions. Val managed to escape, but he was too late to save Danika. After that, he couldn’t cope with it—any of it. He did the only thing he could think of. Now, he prides himself on being a high-functioning sociopath. The only feeling he claims to experience is the thrill that comes from hurting others, and that’s his only real motivation, to tear down the people who hurt him, no matter the cost.”
“That’s not true. I mean, he definitely enjoys tormenting other people, but he wouldn’t have reacted like that when he saw Reynolds if he didn’t truly care.”
“Just don’t tell that to Val. He doesn’t like being accused of having sentiment.”
“He does realize that if he didn’t care, it wouldn’t bother him if we suggested it, right?”
Blaine laughed quietly. “What can I say? My brother’s a stubborn son of a bitch.”
“I think that’s a familial trait.”
His eyes lifted, finding mine in the mirror.
“You have a nasty habit of taking bullets for me,” I clarified, pressing another fresh towel to his back. “Thank you, for both times. But I am curious, why didn’t you just use that invisible shield you created when Donovan tried shooting you?”
“That was kind of a freak accident. I’d only ever made it that one time. And with you, I guess I panicked. I wasn’t about to risk your life trying to make the shield again, so I did the only thing I could think of.”
“The blood’s beginning to clot.” I grabbed the bandages Blaine had handy in his first-aid kit. Though, I really wouldn’t call it that. It was more of a miniature hospital, chalk full of gauze, shears, scalpels (which probably would’ve been more useful in recovering the bullet), along with antiseptic wipes, pads, and even a suture kit. Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to sew, seeing as how the wound was already healing. Given the amount of energy we’d both used, I suspected it was going to take him a little longer than usual.
“Given any thought on what you’re going to say to Blackburn?”
“As far as…?”
“You don’t find it the least bit odd that his father, an angel, just so happens to be involved with the very people who want you dead?”
“No, I don’t,” I said flatly, shooting him a dark look. “And I’m not doubting each and every last one of the points you brought up in the limousine ride either, because I’m a gullible idiot.”
My anger flared as I pressed a fresh bandage to Blaine’s back, and he cringed. My runes still hummed lowly, but they thankfully didn’t have enough power to do any serious damage. It still probably hurt like hell though, making me grimace.
“Sorry,” I lamented, taking better care this time as I secured the bandage down with tape. “I just want this to be over, you know; I want to go back to being normal.”
“No, you don’t.”
My TLC suddenly came in short supply as I slapped the last of the adhesive tape around the wound. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not saying you don’t think you want that, but deep down, you really don’t.” There was no hint of amusement in his voice. He firmly believed that.
I threw the discarded wrappers into the garbage and prepared to storm out of the bathroom when Blaine’s hand caught my wrist, hauling me back to him.
“Don’t,” I warned.
“I heard you, in the darkness…”
All the rage inside me vanished, replaced by panic.
“…When Reynolds’s men took you.” His fingers were suddenly tracing the base of my back, and I shuddered at the goose bumps left in its wake, feeling them cascade all the way up to my neck. “You couldn’t hear me, but I could still hear you, ever so faintly. You called to me, pleaded with me to find you.”
Tears pricked behind my eyes at the very mention, at the reminder of how utterly pathetic I had been against Nathan’s men. I had never felt so weak, so helpless in my entire life.
Both his hands tightened on me. “You are not weak,” he whispered. “Don’t ever believe that. Everything you need is already inside you, Kat. You just need to stop fighting it. Allow the energy to become a part of you.”
I couldn’t even open my mouth to speak, struggling to hold back the tears threatening to spill out over my lashes. I can’t.
“All you’ve asked for—all you’ve begged for—these past two months is to be normal again, and you got your wish that night. No power, no discernible hint of our bond. But it didn’t give you freedom.” His breath stirred my hair as he drew me closer. “All you wanted in those moments was to have it back.”
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Because he was right.
“As much as you claim to hate the darkness in you, you secretly revel in it.” The inexpressible warmth in his voice was like sinking into a hot bath. It eased into my bones, my muscles, offering me the sweetest relief. “I felt that primal thrill rise inside you when you sensed I was coming. That darkness you hate, the thrum of it coursing through your veins, it’s not evil. It’s an extension of you. And you felt that tonight. The moment you stop resisting your true nature, it’ll stop lashing out against you to break free. Let it become a part of you.”
“And what will I become?”
“What you were always meant to be: a fighter.”