The Brightest Night Read online

  Once, I managed to kill one of those tiny cactus gardens.

  The firepit and an outdoor couch with deep red cushions sat in a small patio situated along the back of the secluded property. Faded metal signs designed as weathervanes tacked to the fence. As I wandered through the garden while Luc fiddled with the pit, I wondered who was taking care of this. The flower beds were free of weeds, and heads of the dead plants had been plucked away. Even the grass here had been relatively trimmed, and I figured the old-school reel mower propped against the fence was responsible for that.

  There had been a few fresh slices of homemade bread sealed in the kitchen pantry, and Luc and I ended up turning our burgers into bread tacos. They hit the spot.

  So did half of the second burger I ended up sharing with Luc.

  I kept expecting Zoe to show up, but she didn’t, and when I asked where she might be, all Luc said was, “I believe she is with Grayson.”

  Despite the fact I wasn’t entirely sure Grayson was at all familiar with emotions like empathy or compassion, I knew Kent’s loss had hit him hard, and I hoped Zoe was able to comfort him …

  Without causing him physical harm.

  Luc didn’t head over to Daemon’s when we finished cleaning up after our late lunch like I’d thought he might. Not that I was complaining. The idea of being alone in this stranger’s house with only my own head for company wasn’t exactly something I was looking forward to. He ended up coaxing me into the bedroom and into the bed, his arms settling around me and holding me close to his side, my cheek resting on his chest. Thoughts of the strange light I’d seen in the city fell into the background as we talked about what we’d learned from Eaton.

  It was while we were lying there and there was a lull as I stared at Diesel, the pet rock Luc had given me, that I asked something that had taken up residency in the back of my mind ever since we’d left Eaton’s. “What do you think the Daedalus would’ve done if you hadn’t accepted me when Paris brought me to you? Like, if it didn’t work, would they have kept finding people to put in your path?”

  “What?”

  I wrinkled my nose against his chest. “I know it’s random, but Eaton made it sound like you and I meeting was planned from the beginning.”

  He was quiet for a bit. “I don’t know how that would be possible, and it’s not that I doubt their ability to orchestrate some screwed-up things, but how would they have played a role in you running away?”

  “And you not knowing about it,” I added.

  “Well, there was some stuff about you that I didn’t know. You were still loud then, but you rarely thought about your father or what made you run, and I didn’t push.” His chest rose with a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter what they would’ve done if I’d turned you away. I didn’t. The rest is history.”

  “I know there’s no point dwelling on it, but it’s just—I don’t know. It’s a big what-if.”

  “What-ifs are the STDs of the mind,” he said, squeezing me when I laughed. “Seriously. They’re pointless, and they end with you wanting to take a wire brush to your brain. Don’t waste your time there.”

  I sighed. “You’re right.”

  “I always am.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s annoying when you are.” I smiled when he huffed, and then he changed the subject.

  Somewhere after discussing if Luc could take out an army of Trojans and me suggesting he could take the threat a bit more seriously, I must’ve fallen asleep.

  Because I was suddenly back in the woods outside of Atlanta, surrounded by masked men with guns, but it wasn’t raining this time, and there was no sound.

  Nothing.

  Heart racing, I looked around the small clearing at the men who did not move and did not breathe. They were frozen, arms outstretched and fingers on triggers of guns aimed at me.

  “This is a dream,” I said into the eerie silence. “I just need to wake up. I need—”

  “Only me.”

  My heart stuttered at the voice echoing above me and in me, coming from nowhere and everywhere. A voice that wasn’t mine. A voice I now recognized.

  Jason Dasher.

  Spinning around, I searched the trees and the shadows they cast, only seeing more men with guns—men I knew I’d already killed.

  “Only me,” he repeated.

  I whirled, crying out as a flare of pain lanced the back of my skull before easing off.

  “My opinions.” His voice echoed through the forest, through me and my own thoughts. Every muscle tensed in my body as my hands curled into fists at my sides.

  “My needs. My demands.” His tone steady, oddly pleasant. “My opinions. My needs. My demands. Only I matter, your maker. Do not ever disappoint me.”

  “Never,” many voices whispered back, a legion of them, and mine was one of them.

  Pressure clamped down on my chest, squeezing and twisting. I started to speak, but my mouth was so dry it was dust as the masked men shattered into glimmering, golden ash.

  A man appeared between two heavy trees, nothing more than a shadow, but I knew it was Jason. He was pulling himself out from the recesses of my subconscious, where years of memories had been buried.

  My maker.

  “No,” I bit out, hands spasming as my skin flashed hot and then cold. “You’re not my maker.”

  “I pulled you from the grasp of death and gave you life.” His voice was fingers crawling inside my mind. I could feel them slipping over me, searching for a way in. “What would that make me if not your maker?”

  “Nothing.” Each breath was too heavy. “It makes you nothing.”

  “Do not disappoint me,” he said as if I hadn’t spoken. “Not when I have such beautiful plans for you, Nadia.”

  The sound of my name, my real name, was a bomb exploding deep within my mind, shattering open the locks and bursting open sealed doors.

  Energy poured out of me, crackling through the forest and filling the air with static. Power filled the damp, musty space, licking over my skin and raising the hairs at the nape of my neck. The air warped—no, it was the trees doing the warping.

  Groaning under the weight of the energy, the seams of the sky above stretched. Fine cracks formed, and a dusting of snow drifted to my bare feet. In the back of my mind, I knew this wasn’t right. The sky couldn’t crack. The dream and the reality flashed back and forth. I was standing in a forest, and then I was on my back, in a bed, and then the hard ground was rattling under my feet. My gaze flicked up to where he stood. Fury funneled into me, a whipping, whirling storm. I wanted to kill this man, to take back everything he’d stolen and to stop him from taking any more. Every cell in my body focused on him. I needed to kill him, because all those still tightly shrouded memories were expanding and shuddering, and they filled my mouth with the taste of blood and terror, of humiliation and the throat-clogging dirtiness of defeat and hopelessness. Those repressed memories screamed in rage and pulsed with uncontrollable hatred for every dark and soul-destroying deed the most hidden parts of my subconscious remembered even if I couldn’t. They choked and smothered me, squeezing so tight until they crowded out every good feeling or thought I’d ever had and only they remained.

  I hated him.

  I hated myself.

  I hated all of it.

  The air heated, and at any moment I expected the trunks of old trees and the coiled shrubs to combust. The forest would ignite like a matchbox if that happened, taking everything in it in a fury of flames. Or the trees would simply cave in, burying us under the rubble of bark, dirt, and rock. Wind whipped through the trees, lifting my hair off my shoulders.

  “That’s it,” he said, that voice of his still in my head, still digging in, and then I was no longer in the forest, but in a room. White walls. White light. A man standing before me. Fitted, plain white shirt. Dark, olive-green trousers. Brown hair dotted with gray.

  A churning mass of shadow and light, a kaleidoscope of dark and light surrounded my arms and then my enti
re body. My feet were no longer on the floor.

  “You’re confused. Uncertain. Afraid. Most of all, you’re so very angry.”

  “Yes,” I seethed, my voice an echo of a long-hidden memory. The shadows continued to swirl around me, a white luminous glow streaking through the darkness like bursts of lightning.

  “Good. Use it.” He smiled, showing no teeth. “Take that fear and that anger and use it.”

  “Evie,” a different voice intruded, softer and warmer. “Wake up. Wake up now.”

  “Use it, or it will swallow you whole,” he said, staring at me with no fear. “And if it doesn’t, I will take back the life I gave you. I will take his life. You know I will. You know I can.”

  Opening my mouth, I screamed the rage and the terror—

  “Evie!” A hand clamped down on mine, and a jolt of electricity pimpled my skin as it shorted out my senses. The touch shattered the white room and the devil who stood before me, yanking me out of the nightmare and into reality.

  My eyes flew open, and I saw I was in the bedroom. Lit only by slivers of moonlight, I was face-to-face with the blades of a ceiling fan spinning far faster than I thought it could, given there was no electricity to power it.

  The hand on my arm was real, and it tightened, fingers imprinting on my skin. “You’re safe, Evie. You’re here. You’re awake, and you’re safe.”

  Was I?

  The choking, smothering feeling lingered as I stared at the fan, wondering how I was so close to it. “I saw him. He was in the woods with me, telling me only he mattered. That he was my maker.” I sucked in several ragged breaths. “Then I was in this room, and I saw him.”

  “You’re not there anymore, and he’s not here.” Luc’s voice remained soft and sure. “He’s nothing to you.”

  The fan spun even faster. In the darkness, the bedroom door creaked, swinging open and then closed. “He made me,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “He did not make you.”

  “You don’t understand.” My thoughts were running at a rapid clip, making sense of the nightmare that had combined multiple realties together. “He made me do things.”

  “Evie, look at me.” Luc’s voice hardened into a tone that brokered no room for argument. “Look at me.”

  Opening my eyes, I forced my head to turn in the direction of his voice. Moonlight glanced over his cheekbone, and in the low light, his hair was a mass of dark, messy waves. White lights were where his pupils should’ve been, and he was several feet below me.

  And the man in the white shirt and olive-green pants flickered in and out between us.

  “It’s Jason Dasher.” I shuddered. “I saw him, and he told me not to disappoint him. He told me to use what is inside me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. None of that matters.” Luc was standing on the bed. Only then did I realize that wasn’t moonlight on his face.

  It was me.

  My skin hummed. I could feel it now inside me, this rushing, roaring power. Pushing at my insides, at my skin and bones, stretching me. Shadow and light pulsed around me.

  It wanted out.

  And I wanted to lash out, to spin out of control. To free the vortex of fear and fury. I wanted to rage, wreak destruction. Tear down the walls until nothing stood but me, because I could still taste those sticky, blood-soaked realities.

  “You’re looking at me, Peaches, but you don’t see me,” he said. “See me.”

  I jerked as my gaze connected with his. “He said he would kill you. That he could and he would—”

  “That was before, in the past, and Peaches, he couldn’t kill me then.” He pulled on my arm, his features straining and the diamond white of his eyes flaring. My feet touched the floor, and now it was Luc who towered over me. “And he sure as hell can’t touch me now.”

  Another shudder racked me. “He was in my head. He’s in my head. He has to be for me to dream that.”

  “You dreamed that because of everything you learned, but he’s not in there. I can hear your thoughts now, and it’s only you in there, and it’s only us out here. We’re all that matter.” Luc touched his fingers to my cheeks. I flinched at the contact, at the way the power around me thickened, reaching out toward him like it was drawn to him. “And that man will never matter.”

  I trembled as he flattened his palms against my cheeks. Movement near the door had me turning—

  “Look at me, Peaches. Just look at me,” Luc coaxed, dragging his thumbs over the lines of my jaw. “It’s just Gray. He was nearby. Heard you scream.”

  Grayson was in here, in the bedroom? I tried to look again, but Luc held on. “Don’t pay him any mind. He knows everything is okay. That you just had a bad nightmare.”

  “That’s one hell of a bad nightmare,” came the bored, familiar tone of the Luxen.

  “Yeah, it is, but we all have bad nightmares,” Luc went on. “Don’t we, Gray?”

  The Luxen didn’t respond.

  “Now that he knows everything is okay, he’s on his way out. Right, Gray?”

  A heartbeat of silence and then a droll, “Right. Everything seems completely under control in here. Should I alert the locals to let them know you have everything handled?”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Luc’s lips curved up on one side, giving me that lopsided grin that was both endearing and daring. The same grin he’d worn the first time I’d met him as Evie, when his club was being raided. It was the same grin he’d had after being riddled with bullets. “Have a good night, Gray.”

  “Yeah, you, too,” he said, and I felt him withdrawing without actually seeing.

  The instinct to give chase, to stop his escape, cut through me like a swift wind. I didn’t want to do that, wasn’t even sure why I felt it, but the predatory impulse dug in deep. “I want to go after him.”

  “Who hasn’t wanted to go after him?”

  “You don’t understand. It’s like … there’s this thing inside me. It wants to go after Grayson.” I fought it as I lifted my hands, gripping Luc’s wrists. The door still swung. “But I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “I want to hurt him, but only a little. That’s why you’re better than I am.” That smile of his wrapped its way around my heart. “You’ve always been better than I’ve been.”

  “How?” A strangled laugh made its way free. “I’m about to blow. I can feel it, Luc. I thought … I don’t know. I thought we had time to fix this, but—”

  “You haven’t blown yet, so we still have time. Nothing has happened other than maybe a painting or a book falling.” His features were now cast in shadows, but I could see his brilliant pupils searching mine. “I know we can, Evie. Together. Just keep focused on me. Not the memories. Not the nightmares. Just on me.”

  Heart hammering, I struggled to do just that when I felt like a balloon seconds from popping. I willed my fingers to relax. They tightened instead, until my knuckles ached and I could feel his bones. I could feel my body tipping toward him, and I managed to stop myself. “It’s not like when I was in the woods. It feels different now.”

  “What’s in you is a part of you, Evie. It’s not a thing or an it. It’s the Source, and it’s you. Even when you don’t remember me, it’s still you,” he said, dragging his thumbs over my cheeks. “You’re just not familiar with how it feels or how to control it, just like when Luxen or Origins are young. They have some hellish tantrums. Dawson and Beth’s baby girl? Ash? She once blew out all the windows in a room because Beth wouldn’t let her climb the railings on a spiral staircase. This other time, she threw a plate of peas at the wall, and the plate and peas went through the wall.”

  “You think I’m having a tantrum? Like Ashley, who is a toddler?”

  “Ashley, who is a toddler, has more control than you do.”

  I blinked. The blunt statement had knocked some of the pressure out of me. “Wow.”

  “When I was young—a baby Origin—I had trouble controlling the Source, too. All of us did at some point.”

&n
bsp; “A baby Origin?” I whispered, finding it difficult to picture him as a small, confused child, but what formed in my thoughts was an adorable, full-cheeked little face with mischievous purple eyes.

  “Yes, I was that cute.” He’d picked up on my thoughts. “What? You know I wasn’t hatched from an egg or a test tube.”

  All I could do was stare at him.

  “You’re not having a tantrum. I think the nightmare—the memories that nightmare woke up in you—caused you to have an emotional reaction, one strong enough to call the Source to the surface.”

  I thought back to the dream, how it had felt like locks had been broken and doors thrown open. “In my nightmare—or the memory; I don’t know what it was—but he called me Nadia, and that’s when I really felt it.”

  A tremor coursed through the hands that held my cheeks so gently. “I’m going to have you tell me all about the nightmare and what you remember, but right now, I just want you to focus on me.”

  How he could sound so calm when the house trembled, when anytime a nightmare seized me, I could lose it?

  “Look at me, Peaches, and feel this.”

  Not even realizing I’d closed my eyes, I opened them. I saw where he’d placed one of my hands on his chest, above his heart. “Feel each breath I’m taking? It’s slow and deep, right?”

  I focused through the haze of panic and lingering fear. He was breathing deep and even, nice and slow. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He stepped into me, and what was inside me stretched at the closeness. Our chests brushed with his next breath. “I want you to focus on each breath I’m taking, and I want you to slow down your breathing to match mine.”

  I started to do just that, but I saw the thick tendrils of moonlight and darkness slithering from my hand, licking out over his chest as something heavy toppled over in the house. I started to draw my hand back. “Luc!”