Molly carefully adjusted the clothing on the Barbie she carried. “They were hungry.”
Careful not to knock her off the bed, he managed to get himself to a sitting position just as he heard Braxton in the hallway. A minute later he appeared in the doorway.
The second Molly spotted him she scrambled down and ran over to him. “Did you bring me back a treat, Uncle Braxton?”
“Uncle?” Jesus, how long had he been out of it?
Braxton shrugged. “We’ve all had some time to kill.”
“Braxton thinks I’m prettier than a princess, Daddy. A real one, not pretend.”
He smiled at her, the sight of her sweet face easing the tension in his body. He looked at Brax. “How long have I been in here?”
“Two days.”
“I told them you’d wake up today.” Molly scampered back up on the bed. “You just needed a really long nap first.”
“You freaked everyone out for a while there, man.”
He arched a brow. “Careful or I’ll think you’re not pissed at me anymore.”
Guilt crept across Braxton’s face, setting off alarm bells in Drew’s head.
“Where’s Blair?”
Braxton glanced at Molly. “I bet your dad is really thirsty. Why don’t you go and ask the nurse in the hall about a drink for him, okay?”
The little girl beamed at the assignment.
“She’s a sweet kid,” Braxton mused when she bounded out the door. “You should have said something.”
“It’s taken some getting used to.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t pick up some glimmer of it before now.”
“Where’s Blair?” he asked again, his heart thumping faster with every second Braxton avoided the subject.
“You don’t remember what happened?”
“Not really.” Blair had jumped out at the light and he remembered pulling over and going after her, then…nothing.
“She called Rae in a panic, said you were hurt. Said she was sorry. When Darcy got there she was already gone.”
Gone?
He closed his eyes, digging at his memory. They’d been in the park, and her eyes… Christ, they’d turned silver at the edges. No. She couldn’t be gone. “You don’t know where she is?”
“She took as much money as she could out of her account, but I know she would have had emergency money stashed at home too. She packed and left on her own. We know she called the clinic yesterday to see if you’d woken up yet, but we still haven’t been able to locate her.”
Drew threw back his covers. He had to find her. She’d been so damn scared. Hadn’t known what was happening. “She bottomed out.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” But if she came to and called Rae then that meant she’d come out of it all right, had come through the worst of it. “Where are my clothes?”
“Tearing out of here won’t help anyone, least of all you. You’ve been out cold for two days, Drew.”
“I need to find her.” That was step one. Step two would be throttling her for running away on him, which he was pretty damn sure he’d covered the other night. Step three would be kissing her within an inch of his life.
And all of that hinged on getting out of here and finding her.
Drew stood and as soon as his feet hit the tiles, his legs buckled.
Braxton darted forward, locking an arm around Drew’s waist before he hit the floor and embarrassed the hell out of himself.
“If you two want to be alone, I can come back later,” Darcy said from the door.
Yeah, disaster averted.
He didn’t need to look down to know his hospital gown had been yanked up in the process.
Molly stepped into the room, took one look at him and Braxton, then held out her hand to Darcy. “I told you.”
Laughing in total disbelief, Darcy dug a five-dollar bill out of her pocket and handed it to his little girl.
Drew wasn’t even going to ask, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to look at Braxton. “Anytime, man,” he prompted.
Braxton had the decency to lower him back to the bed instead of dropping him where he stood.
He slumped back on the bed, glaring at Braxton when the other Destroyer acted like he was about to tuck him in. Molly hopped back up on the bed, sipping on a juice box.
“What happened to a drink for me?”
“You can’t have anything until the doctor comes,” she recited, barely taking a breath before sucking hard on the straw.
He returned his attention to Braxton, clamping down on the fear that wouldn’t do him any good. “We need to find her.”
Braxton looked grim. “We will.”
Everything hurt. Her head, her body, her heart.
For days Blair had alternated between chills so fierce she couldn’t stop shaking long enough to leave the shower and hot flashes so intense she kept waiting for her skin to blister. Yet each time she finally caved and reached for the phone to call someone to come and get her, she managed to get a grip. When she’d dragged herself to her feet that day in the woods, leaving had been the only way to guarantee she wouldn’t hurt anyone else, at least until she was certain the demon essence wouldn’t consume her completely.
Staring at the resort room’s ceiling, she pushed off the blankets she’d been huddled beneath for the last couple of hours. Coming here had been a spontaneous decision, the memory of her night with Drew somehow calming the worst of the storm stirring inside her. Had she been thinking clearly she would have headed far away from people. Instead she found herself trapped here, afraid to leave.
She gave the door to her room a passing glance, dismissing the idea of stepping beyond the threshold the second it crossed her mind. The potential for emotional backlash from anyone she crossed paths with wasn’t worth the risk.
How had they all done it? How had her brother? She’d been so busy being frustrated and hurt that Brax had kept the truth from her that she hadn’t stopped to imagine what it must have been like for him in the beginning. To have so many voices trapped in his head, forced to hide it from his family to protect them. It was no wonder he had grown a little distant over the last few years.
God, she missed him. He’d been leaving messages on her work voicemail, probably her cell too. She hadn’t wanted to turn it on—after she’d finally found the damn thing buried in her bag after all—in case he could track her through it somehow. Every time she heard his voice, heard him promise that Drew was fine and that she’d be fine too, she almost believed him. But as much as she wished her big brother could make everything better the way he had when she used to fall off her bike or cry after being dumped by a boy she liked, this was different.
Blair tensed as waves of anger twisted along her nerve endings. Seconds later, raised voices echoed in the hallway. She was on her feet and halfway to the door before she could stop herself, lured by the energy the turbulent emotions awakened inside her.
She gripped the handle and wrenched the door open, surprising the couple who stood in the hall. The man’s eyes narrowed and he stopped in the midst of grabbing the woman opposite him as though to shake her.
“Problem?” she inquired, days’ worth of tension snapping off her tongue.
His cheeks flushed an angry red. “Mind your own business.”
The woman ducked her head, started to retreat only to freeze when the man glared at her.
“Are you okay?” Blair asked the brunette, noticing what looked like an earlier bruise peeking out from the cuff of her shirt.
“She’s fine,” the man barked.
“Clearly,” Blair drawled, a deep, dark satisfaction curling through her with every wave of heightened emotion rolling off the man.
“Let’s go.” He snagged the woman’s arm, dragging her after him.
The brunette winced but didn’t fight him.
“Hey,” Blair called out.
“Fuck you,” the man snarled over his shoulder.
A vicious spike of energ
y snapped inside Blair, and she started down the hall after them.
The man whirled to face her. “What part of mind your business—” He jumped at the explosion of thunder that almost shook the building. He darted a look at the window at the end of the hall.
Angry slashes of rain rattled the glass and bursts of lightning arced across the darkened skyline. He took a step back, dragging the brunette in front of him as though the hellish weather was seconds from shattering the window.
“Leave her alone.” Shadows blurred across Blair’s vision, then it suddenly sharpened with a clarity that brought every detail into perfect, startling focus.
Fury tightened the man’s face as he looked back at Blair. His eyes widened. “What the fuck?” He released the brunette, shoving her away from him as he scrambled backwards.
Blair smiled at the rush of fear that tangled with the man’s anger, and another burst of thunder cracked overheard. “I’d stay indoors if I were you,” she warned.
The man tripped over his own feet trying to flee. When he vanished around the corner, Blair faced the woman. “Are you okay?”
Relief, uncertainty—and fear?—resonated from the brunette. She nodded, easing away from Blair, but thankfully in the opposite direction the man had fled. She shook her head. “Your eyes,” she whispered, then bolted.
Blair frowned at the woman’s retreating back, the energy inside her calming to match the dissipating storm outside. Her eyes?
She strode back to her room, closing the door behind her and moving straight into the bathroom to stare at her reflection.
“Oh God.” Gone were her blue eyes, replaced by black pools rimmed in silver.
She gripped the edge of the vanity and squeezed her eyes shut, willing them back to normal. Seconds ticked off in her head and she waited for her knees to give out or for the chills to return.
Nothing. Nothing but a stillness inside her she hadn’t felt in days.
It was as though she’d dropped off the face of the fucking planet.
What good were the network’s extensive resources if one woman could manage to hide for so long?
Drew didn’t want to think about what that might mean. Shadow Demon activity had been unusually quiet, both locally and around the globe. It was starting to make everyone damn twitchy, especially Rae.
Speak of the devil, he thought, as she stormed down the hall. When she noticed him at his desk, her steps seemed to slow, become more measured, but there was no masking the annoyance branded on her face.
What was up with—
Parker strode down the hall after her, but instead of trailing in Rae’s office, he disappeared into the private quarters he was using temporarily and slammed the door.
“Is it just me, or do the two of them really rub each other the wrong way?” Gage mused.
Darcy paused next to them without commenting, but the glimmer of knowledge in the other agent’s eyes told Drew she’d picked up on something significant between the pair.
He tossed his pen aside and rubbed his hands down his face. How long could Blair stay in hiding? How long could she hide from herself?
More importantly, how long could he use her absence as an excuse to put off giving Rae a solid answer? Surprisingly, she hadn’t pushed him for one. He just couldn’t figure out if that was because she assumed he would have already left the network by now if he was going to, or because she knew he was just buying himself a little more time before he had to walk away.
“This might cheer you up.” Darcy handed him a printout.
He scanned the sheet and gave her a bland look. Given the stack of files on his desk, which he’d been ignoring for the better part of two weeks—exactly how long Blair had been gone—he didn’t think he needed to point out that paperwork wasn’t a priority for him.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s meteorological data. That area—” she pointed to a corner on the small gray-scale map, “—is seeing a lot of very irregular storm activity.”
He leaned forward, studying the sheet. Why did the name of the area sound so familiar—
Son of a bitch. “No temporal activity in the vicinity?” He needed to be sure before he got his hopes up, though his gut had already made up his mind for him.
“None.”
He bolted to his feet. “I’ll call if I find her.”
Blair pushed her toes a little deeper into the wet sand, drawing in a deep, cleansing breath. The shower earlier had driven the other guests off the beach, leaving her to enjoy the peace and tranquility alone, and only feeling a little bit guilty about why that was.
In the last two weeks she’d come to appreciate the calm after the storm, the sense of renewal it brought. A clean slate.
Her slate.
And undoubtedly a messy one. Clumps of sand stuck to her skin, her clothing was drenched, and she wasn’t even going to think about the state of her hair.
She smiled to herself, thinking it had been way too long since she’d worried about anything as trivial as a bad hair day. Too long since she’d felt like herself. She stretched her arms behind her and leaned back, tipping her face up to the sun that broke through the thinning clouds.
Peace. The closest she’d come to it in weeks.
Sensing movement down the beach, she straightened and looked to see who had decided to brave the outdoors once more.
A man waded in the water up to his knees.
Blair scrambled to her feet, taking three steps back as her eyes and heart argued against the sight in front of her.
His attention was trained on the horizon where sunlight glimmered beneath the edges of clouds that had broken and drifted away. She heard the soft sound of thunder in the distance, but calming the storm inside her had become easier.
Drew turned in her direction, yet made no move to leave the water.
How had he found her? She’d never kidded herself about flying under the network’s radar forever. Still, she’d somehow assumed it would be Brax who finally tracked her down.
Not the man she’d almost killed.
And she had no doubt she was capable of it. Not anymore.
She took a tentative step toward him. Then another, stopping when she reached the edge of the water. “As confident as I’d like to be, you do know that water and lightning don’t mix, right?”
Drew grinned, and she nearly whimpered. She wanted to throw herself in his arms, but didn’t dare, not after what she’d done to him. She’d lost that right the second the energy inside her had used him as some kind of conduit.
He left the water, the rolled cuffs of his pants wet from the lap of the waves. He searched her face, and she gave herself over to what he was feeling. Fighting that had been partly where she’d gone wrong, and it had taken her encounter with the couple in the hall to prove that. She didn’t want to feel other people, but trying to close it down only made the energy build inside her all the more. Embracing and filtering their emotions seemed to satisfy the wild part of her she refused to be afraid of any longer.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” The last word caught in her throat.
“Takes more than a little shock to take me out of the game.”
She shook her head. “Don’t.” What she’d come so close to doing—there were no excuses for that.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“No? I’m pretty sure I was the only one present capable of that kind of voltage.”
He grinned, reminding her of the night they’d met. “Bragging now, are you?”
“Do not make light of this.” She could handle his anger, his frustration, but she knew from the threads unraveling quickly inside her that she couldn’t take his forgiveness. “I nearly killed you.”
“But you didn’t.” He took a step in her direction, moving so quick she had no time to avoid him. He cupped her cheek, and she squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation of shocking him.
A heartbeat passed. Then two. When she opened her eyes she found him staring at the lingering clouds overhead. “What
are you doing?”
“Waiting for the sky to fall.” Drew frowned. “Huh, barely a ripple.” He leaned in, rubbing his jaw along hers, his breath rushing across her skin. “Must be losing my touch.”
He opened his mouth over hers. Slow. Hot. Deep.
In one fell swoop he knocked her world off its axis, reducing her to a trembling mess that could do nothing but rope her arms around him and hold on for dear life. God, she’d missed him. Missed the way he smiled against her lips when he knew he had her. Missed the way he took her from shivery and sweet to hungry and fierce.
The raw edges of his passion skimmed along her nerve endings, and she instinctively reeled it in, letting it roll under her skin like a hot wave.
He pulled back just enough to catch her bottom lip in his, softening the drugging kiss. “Don’t tell me that wasn’t worth even a little thunder?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, tipping her chin up and deepening the kiss, and like he’d thrown a switch on his emotions, they rose fast and hard inside her.
Days ago the intensity would have driven her under. Now she took it and ran with it.
“That’s better,” he murmured in between the soft booms of thunder that echoed in the distance. The kiss turned lazy, his fingers massaging the nape of her neck. “Ready to go?”
The question came at her like a wall of water rushing from the sea to slam into her.
Her spine straightened. “I can’t.”
Defeat flashed across his face, followed swiftly by stubbornness. “Let me help you.”
“You can’t.” Hadn’t he figured that out yet? Hadn’t he learned what happened when he kept trying?
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
“Yes, I do.” The last two weeks had also taught her how similar she was to Shadow Demons. She couldn’t lie and pretend she hated using the emotions of others to learn to control her ability. But accepting that about herself wasn’t nearly as scary as worrying no one else would be able to come to terms with it. “Everything is different. I’m different.”
Drew’s lips twitched. “I can’t believe you’d try brushing me off with the old, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ line.”
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