CHAPTER 13
“I have to leave. They won’t let me leave, will they? Not while he’s hurt and I did it.”
“Lexi, calm down. Breathe.” Marge guided Lexi toward the bed, then went back to close the door. “If you hyperventilate I’ll have to get a paper bag.”
“What did I do, Marge? What the hell did I do?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen anything like it. Christan is—I thought he was invincible, but Robbie will bring him back.”
Lexi wasn’t as confident. She pushed agitated fingers through her hair, forcing herself to think.
“What was that explosion?”
“Harassment. An attack would be obvious by now. I don’t think they’ll be back.”
“Unless they realize Christan’s lying on the floor because I did something to him.”
“Lexi,” Marge cautioned, remaining calm. “Arsen has called in other warriors. Robbie says if they shift they’ll be here in half an hour.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me before we left the room. Didn’t you see me pause?”
Lexi hadn’t seen anything except Christan, unmoving on the floor, and the anger on Arsen’s face. Yes, she had seen that anger. It frightened her. Unable to remain sitting, she began to pace from the bed to the window and back again. Marge remained silent. Lexi realized there were bits of white plaster in Marge’s hair and blood on her face.
“You’re hurt.”
“A small cut. Robbie will tend to it.” Marge smiled, and the connection to her warrior was obvious. It ripped at a place inside Lexi that was viciously tender. She gripped her hands together to keep them from shaking.
“If you want to go to Robbie, please go. I won’t try to leave.”
“I know that. You aren’t a coward, even when you’re terrified.”
“He was so angry.” Lexi wrapped her arms against her waist, working through the events. The disbelief in Christan’s eyes. His pallor and the amount of blood on the floor. The seconds she stared at his chest willing him to take the next breath. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him. He was in my mind and I wanted to push him out.”
“Arsen will see that. Robbie already knows whatever you did, you were only protecting yourself.”
“I thought he was dead when Robbie was bending over him.”
“Robbie was talking to Christan telepathically,” Marge said. “Warriors will shift instinctively when they’re wounded, but it can kill them.” She pulled Lexi close for a fierce hug before stepping back and moving into a take-charge mode. “I’ll find out what’s happening. Do you need anything?”
Lexi said no, her eyes bleak. With a nod Marge left and closed the door behind her. Through the window, Lexi caught the flash of movement, and moments later she heard strong male voices, along with booted feet crunching across a littered floor. Then the scrape of chairs being righted, and the sound of a table moved. Lexi wanted to reach for the imprints that were settling in the other room, but she was afraid of what the earth might reveal.
They left her alone, even Marge, and when the door opened an hour later, it was Arsen who walked into the room. Gone was the surfer boy persona, throwing twigs into a fire. This man was hard with the experience of centuries in his eyes. He’d bled and fought at Christan’s side and he would not be swayed against a purpose he judged as right. No matter who was at fault. Lexi stood at the window and watched him approach with that same lethal intensity they all wore like second skins. She didn’t doubt Arsen’s loyalty, nor Robbie’s, or any of the men still moving around on the other side of the wall.
“How is he?”
“Alive.”
Lexi’s knees trembled, but she remained straight with her back to the light. The anger on Arsen’s face told her she hadn’t been forgiven. “What do I need to do?”
“For what?”
“So you won’t look at me like that.”
Arsen turned away and prowled with a restless energy. “I’m angry right now. This is my fault. It was too soon, but I thought he had enough time out of the Void. I thought you—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. The tiny cuts on her hands burned as she rubbed her palms against her jeans. She rubbed harder.
“It was my miscalculation,” Arsen was saying. “I underestimated the effect Kace would have—"
“Stop.” She waited until he looked at her. “I can’t be around him, you see that now. You have to let me go back to Rock Cove.”
“No can do, Slick. You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Give me a break, Arsen.” She couldn’t call him Bucko, not now, not after what she’d done. Maybe not ever.
“No one blames you,” he said.
“You don’t need to. It was stupid personal fight in the middle of an attack and I left him vulnerable, all of you—”
“He’s safe, Slick. That flash-bang was a diversion. This area is secure.”
“It was still unforgivable.” Lexi walked to the bed, perched on the edge. After a moment Arsen joined her, his weight dipping the mattress. He reached over and took her hand, studied the new memory lines. Dread lay heavy in her throat.
“It’s Christan, isn’t it?” she asked. “I seriously hurt him, didn’t I?”
“He’ll be all right.”
“We hurt each other, Arsen. I don’t understand why, but it will only get worse.”
“I still can’t let you leave.”
Arsen pulled out his phone, manipulated the screen and then held it out to her. There were photos. Lexi frowned as she tried to make sense of them, scrolling with dawning recognition. Her cottage, trashed. The door torn from the hinges. Her bedroom, her sanctuary, grotesquely ruined. The linen headboard—it took a minute to realize it was a cat nailed upside down. Blood dripped and pooled on the pillow where she laid her head, and with increasing horror she recognized the cat—little more than a kitten. He lived in the woods behind the cottage, feral but always eager for the food she left out, gaining confidence until the day he curled in her lap. A sob choked in her throat.
Arsen gently took the phone from her hand. “We’re already cleaning it up. In a month or two you’ll have a whole new interior from the studs up. Everything will be fresh.”
“Will it look the same?” She scrubbed the tears from her face. Angry. So… angry, for the cat that was not a kitten but still trusted too much.
“The important things will be there.”
“Do you even know what they are?”
He probably did; he’d been watching long enough. But things were not memories and she could never get those moments back no matter how hard she squeezed the bits of glass, stroked the driftwood. They were as ephemeral as an email account that remained open even though it never received mail.
“Who did it—do you know?”
“Not yet. But we will.”
“They killed a helpless cat.”
“And they’ll do the same to you.” Arsen took her hand again, stroking as much for her comfort as his own. “Your personal possessions are being packed up as we speak. Your cottage will be secured until you want it again.”
“I have a business to run, clients who expect information on their locations.”
“We already have your laptop. Ethan ran remote security scans and changed the tracking programs, so all your emails and internet searches will originate from Rock Cove. You’ll have a private cabin at our compound in the Wallowa Mountains. It’s not far from here.” He moved slightly. “No one will find you, Slick. You’ll be safe there. From everyone. You can recover from this.”
She looked into that surfer’s face and realized she’d never had a friend like him in her entire life. His eyes were such a deep, clear blue, rimmed with the faintest shards of silver and gold—and she’d never bothered to look until now. Guilt filled her, for her self-absorption. She would do nothing to cause him problems.
She needed him to forgive her.
“Tell me how to make this right.”
“I can’t, because I don’t know,” he said.
Lexi took a deep breath. “Then help me.”
“With what?”
“Teach me things. If I can’t go home, then I have to learn how to fight. How to hold off Christan’s mind games.”
“Teaching you to fight is no problem.”
“And the mind defense is?”
“Lexi.” Arsen hesitated. “Trust is a hard thing to reacquire, and we’re immortals. Our idea of trust differs from yours.”
“Christan invaded my mind. He put that one word there, and he read my thoughts.”
“Listen very carefully,” Arsen said. “Christan can take any memory he wants and put something else in its place, create nightmares that can’t compare to what you’ve already experienced—I’ve watched him do it, and you don’t want that kind of power in your head, not if he intends to use it.”
Unnerved, Lexi waited to hear what else Arsen had to say. “Christan told us what he did, that he was in your mind, provoking you. In all honesty, I’ve never seen him be as reckless as he’s been these past two days.” Arsen studied her face. “But whatever this is, you have to get past it. You are bonded mates, and what happened an hour ago, when you used that one word against him? That shouldn’t have been possible.”
She shivered, and it was evident in her voice. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him, Arsen, but I did and it proves why I can’t trust him in my mind, not ever.”
“I understand. But they trashed your cottage and they’ll do it again, only you’ll be the one nailed to the bed.” Lexi started to cry and Arsen put his arm around her, pulled her against his side. “I’m not trying to frighten you, but Christan may be the only one who can protect you.”
“I trust no one, Arsen.” Lexi wiped the moisture from her cheek as she straightened away. “And what I need to know is whether you’ll teach me how to defend myself or not. Because if you won’t, I’ll ask Robbie and he’ll do it because of Marge. You know he will, and you also know it would be more effective if you did it. So, do you have my back against him or not?”
Arsen looked at her for a long moment, and Lexi could see him working through the options by the way his eyes changed. She felt a pang of sympathy, but not enough to take back the request.
He still hadn’t decided and she played her last card.
“If you don’t teach me, I’ll leave.”
It took five more minutes before he answered.
“You can head toward the river, ten miles from here. If you’re a strong swimmer, and lucky, you’ll get across. Then it’s another twenty miles to the nearest town. Stay on this side of the canyon and it’s fifty miles. As the crow flies. Assuming you could change into a crow and actually fly, which you can’t. So… good luck with that.”
The image of the cat nailed to her headboard flashed back, but at least he was giving her a choice.
“You’re getting pretty good at the arguments, Bucko.”
“Been around a long time, Slick.”
Lexi turned in his direction, made her final offer. It sounded like her first. Arsen was kind enough not to point it out.
“If I stay, you teach me to fight and to resist the mind games.” Arsen lifted his eyebrow, and she added, “And that thing that shouldn’t have been possible but it was? What if I can’t control it next time I’m angry?”
Arsen thought about it. Lexi counted her breaths, in for six beats, out for eight.
“Okay,” he said. “Just don’t let Christan know what I’m doing.”