BROKEN BLADE (6 page)

But I was sensitive to magic and the power of the ward death’s left me reeling. As I stumbled against the bar, I was painfully aware of the roar echoing through the bar.

The doors opened and spat Damon’s bloodied form at my feet.

I backed up, determined to get something between us.

Something. TJ. Goliath. Anything or anybody.

But TJ had disappeared.

And I was alone with Damon.

Chapter Four

He spat a mouthful of blood on the floor and then looked up at me.

“If you’re going to take off running, now is your best chance. I’m going to need a few minutes to get back on my feet,” he said hoarsely.

I darted a look at the back door. I could do that. Completely.

You can’t keep hiding
.

Wanna bet?
  Hiding was my specialty. I excelled at it. I was good at it. And lately, I was more comfortable with it than I was anything else, even my weapons.

He groaned and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the ceiling for a minute and then sat up. His arm was hanging wrong. His fingers were getting discolored and swollen and just looking at him made me hurt. As he climbed to his feet, I backed another step away.

I didn’t want to see him.

He took a deep breath and slammed his shoulder against the wall. I winced and looked away.

When I looked back, he was flexing his hand and rotating his shoulder. The color of his hand was returning and I had to wonder—just
what
kind of wards had TJ put up and why hadn’t anybody else been hit like that?

“She had set them up against me,” Damon said quietly. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for almost a month and that living mountain out there has been telling me to give you time.”

He slid me a look. “Give you time…but you never leave. Then when you do, you take off running from me. So then I tried to come in here and it turns out TJ had new wards put up specifically to keep
me
out. They’ve been kicking my ass every time I tried.”

My heart tripped a little as I focused on my feet. That sounded like TJ. Shooting him a look, I saw the blood still running wet down his face even though the wounds were already knitting back together. Setting my jaw, I grabbed one of the clean towels from the stack we kept on hand and threw it at him. If he bled all over her floor, TJ was mean enough to ask
me
to clean it up.

He caught the towel and swiped the blood away. “Kit—”

“I don’t want to talk,” I said quietly. Even hearing his voice hurt. 
Looking
at him hurt.
Thinking
about him hurt. I couldn’t handle talking to him. I jerked open the cooler where we kept the beer and grabbed a Corona. Popping the top, I guzzled half of it before I’d let myself try to say anything else.

Why wouldn’t he just
leave
?

“I know you feel like you have things you want to say to me,” I said quietly. “But I can’t handle hearing anything yet.” I drained the other half of the bottle and pitched it. “Next time, before you get yourself bloodied for nothing, maybe you should call before you waste your time trying to come after me.”

I started for the back door.

His words froze me. “Coming after you is never a waste, Kit. And I’m not giving up.”

“That’s too bad for you. I have.” I kept walking. I needed to get to Paulie’s. Needed to get this next one—the last one—done.

I’d told myself when I had the scars covered I’d see about starting my life again. I’d see about trying to remake myself. But even looking at one thing from my past left me shattered.

How could I possibly rebuild anything?

* * * *

“I...” Paulie’s voice paused in the middle of the tattooing.

I floated in a haze of pain, heat and horror. I’d thought the fang would be the worst, but this was so much more horrible than I’d ever imagined.

“Close your eyes, Kit,” Paulie said, her voice full of magic and power. Even as I struggled past the veil of her magic, I couldn’t.

Voices raged around me.

I don’t have to break you to fuck you up…
Xavier. The witch who’d cut the bond with my blade.

You’re mine now
... Jude.

Useless waste...
Fanis. My grandmother. The woman I’d fled from when I’d been fifteen.

Good-bye
. Damon.

It wasn’t just
one
piece of my past, it seemed. It was
everything
. I hadn’t had any idea what I’d face when she put the broken blade on me, but I hadn’t been prepared for this.

Behind my eyes, I saw the swirling silver of my blade, spinning brighter, brighter, but I couldn’t reach her.

Something touched me and I screamed.

“Shhh,” Paulie murmured. “It’s me, Kit. We need to finish it. It’s worse with this one. We weren’t prepared, were we?”

I sobbed.

“Do I need to stop?”

“No!”

Hands pressed on my shoulders as I struggled. Strong, too strong—

“Then be still,” Paulie said. “Let’s be done with this.”

I felt the hot burn of blood on my neck, the brush of a cloth as it was wiped away. The ache and misery as memories beat at me.

Nobody will come.

I don’t have to break you.

Useless
.

“Shhh,” Paulie said again.

It was an awful, horrible spiral that lasted forever and in desperation, I retreated.

I wasn’t even aware when she finished.

Cold and shivering, I floated in a numb haze, keenly aware of the burn in my neck. Somebody wrapped something warm around me. I shivered and huddled deeper into it.

And I felt the warm prickle of energy slamming against my skin.

Recognition slammed into me and I rolled off the chair to crouch next to it, ignoring the screaming pain in my neck as I stared at Damon. I was only vaguely aware that I was wearing his jacket.

He sat in the chair on the opposite side. The chair where Paulie’s assistant had been each and every time I’d come out of this weird, magical haze. He held a bloodstained cloth in his hands, one he twisted around his hands, over and over.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” I asked. My voice was a hoarse croak.

“I heard you scream,” he whispered. He wouldn’t look up from the cloth. Muscles bunched in his hands as he continued to twist it and then it shredded and he stopped. For a moment, he looked confused and then swore, surging up off the chair to pace. “I was trying to tell to myself I needed to leave. Needed to give you more time. And I heard you scream.”

He turned his head and I didn’t look away in time. The impact of his gaze, dark gray and haunted, hit me square in the chest. “What the fuck, Kit?”

Shaking my head, I forced myself upright. My legs shook as I took a few steps away. Out in the main room, I could see Paulie and her assistant. They looked terrified. “You didn’t have to frighten them,” I said quietly.

“I heard you. Screaming. You think I
care
if they are scared?” The energy around him shivered, hot and tight for a moment and then he stopped, blew out a breath. “Why are you torturing yourself like that?”

Torturing myself
.

Turning away from him, I moved over to the mirror and stared at my neck.

It was done, I realized.

Finally. The tattoo was still inflamed, the redness even more stark considering how pale I was but there was no denying the sheer beauty of what she’d done.

I couldn’t see the broken sword but maybe that was best. And it didn’t matter. What
did
matter was the fact that I couldn’t see those marks. I couldn’t see where Jude had all but branded me as his plaything.

Even though I
knew
where they were, the artistry of her design, the cleverly placed lines and swirls hid the marks.

“Why?” I asked quietly, turning to look at him after a long moment of studying my reflection. “Because now when I look in the mirror, I don’t see the scars he put on me that marked me as his toy. I don’t see
him
every time I see my own reflection. Maybe I can look at the mirror and start to see
me
again.”

Something flashed through his eyes and an eerie green rolled over his gaze, the skin tightening around his mouth. Turning away from him, I went back to gazing at the mirror.

I saw the images of everything that had cut into me, the things that had left bruises on me, battered my heart and my soul. The things that had broken me.

And I also saw me. Now it was time to start rebuilding myself.

“I see me.”

Chapter Five

TJ slipped a phone number in front of me three weeks later.

“What?”

“It’s a job.”

I crumpled it up and threw it in her face. “No,” I said calmly as I went back to pulling a beer.

It was finally quieter in her place. Most of the regulars were werewolves and some roughneck offshoots. Offshoots were the odd magical breeds like me. I thought the guy in the corner might be part mer-something. Water kept trickling over his flesh when he thought people weren’t looking. And he smelled like seaweed.

Even with the weird smell in the air, I was happy the cats were no longer crowding into the bar.

Very happy.

I could almost breathe.

And I’d been coasting along just fine until TJ had thrown that number in my face.

“It won’t pay a whole lot, but if you don’t take the job, nobody else is going to, and the poor girl is out of luck.” TJ talked like she hadn’t heard my
no
. Even though I knew she had. “I just hope she doesn’t try to go down there herself. She tried talking to Sam one time and—”

“Sam.”

The bottle of Redcat I’d been putting up shattered in my hand. The fumes of the alcohol were strong enough that I felt a little dizzy and it didn’t help that the potent stuff was also seeping into the cuts on my hand from the bottle I’d busted.

“Damn it, Kit, that bottle was half full!” TJ snapped, wheeling herself over to me. She went still when she saw the blood on my hand and glanced up.

I felt the skin on the back of my neck crawl but there wasn’t any upward spike in the tension in the air. It was early and no more vamps had come back into the bar since that day a few weeks ago. Still, never hurt to be safe. Swiping one of the bar towels from the counter, I wrapped it around my hand to staunch the blood.

“You can’t do that, kid,” TJ muttered. “You’ll heal with glass in there.”

She grabbed my hand despite my attempts to pull away—wheelchair or not, she was still a werewolf and had the strength to match.

I held still as she grumbled and reached for the first aid kit under the bar. “What are you rambling on about?” I asked. “You said Sam.”

Sam
.

I could still hear the sound of her voice in the back of my head.
Sorry, honey. He doesn’t want you anymore
...Those were some of the last words I’d heard before I disappeared into darkness. They’d haunted me during those weeks. Even now, even now when I tried to console myself to the empty mess of the life I’d always expected to live, they haunted me.

A prickle of heat danced in the palm of my hand. But it could have just come from the booze. Could have been from the pain as TJ dug out the slivers of glass.

But rage pulsed inside me.

Aside from that night with the vampire, it was the first fiery whisper of real rage that I’d felt.

I’d felt everything from despair to self-pity to disgust and I’d contemplated all the options that seemed to be fitting—staying here with TJ. Leaving and trying to start over elsewhere. Suicide had trickled in a few times during those first few days, but it hadn’t lasted for too long. I’d survived Fanis. I’d handle this; I’d get through it.

Lately, all I’d felt was just listlessness, though.

The burn of anger was almost welcome.

Sam.

Gritting my teeth, I waited until TJ had finished digging the slivers out of my palm. Then I turned, looking out over the bar. A couple of the regulars were tucked in the back, bent over a worn out deck of cards. They were TJ’s men. Not employed by her, but they were hers. Unless TJ said otherwise, they saw nothing. Heard nothing. Said nothing.

“What does Sam have to do with anything?” I asked quietly.

TJ didn’t answer and when I turned my head to look at her, she was watching with a little bit of a smile on her face. “You’re pissed off.”

I sneered. Turning away from her, I headed back to the counter. I needed to get to work on inventory. Inventory—

Something twisted inside me and I felt like screaming.

“Kit.”

TJ laid the paper down on the counter, smoothing out the creases. “She doesn’t need much help...just somebody who’ll run interference with the cats for her. She needs to talk to the boy who used to own the phone. It’s a quick job, although I’m telling you, she can’t pay much of anything. Sam would have been able to tell her, but she won’t and now the girl is too afraid to call again. It’s an easy job, almost as easy as checking inventory.”

I swallowed. “Then why don’t you do it?”

“Because I’m not losing myself here. Because I’m not the investigator.” She nudged the paper. “You are. You’re not meant for working in a damn bar, Kit.”

I picked up a box-cutter. I had shit to do.

Half way across the floor, I turned and stormed back to the bar. I slammed the box-cutter down and grabbed the number. “How the hell do I get in contact with her?”

* * * *

For the first time in months, I had to leave Wolf Haven.

When I walked outside and found my car sitting there, my heart lurched up into my throat until I thought I just might choke on it. Instead of letting myself do it, I walked around and jerked the door open.

“That’s a girl.”

I glanced at Goliath before I went to duck inside.

“TJ said you might freak out about the car.”

Others might not realize what he meant, but I knew. Anything and everything associated with Jude was going to give me bad moments, and as stupid as it seemed, and as unfair as it seemed, the damned car was associated with Jude now, too.