[Southern Arcana 2.0] Crossroads (16 page)
It seemed to be working, the interminable moments where no one moved. Then the front door slammed, and Andrew started, his arms tightening around Kat. Her breath whooshed out in a soft grunt of pain.
Worry snapped the leash on Derek’s self-control, and he lunged forward at the same time as Mackenzie. Andrew spun away, one fist flashing out in a dizzying jab that caught Derek on the jaw hard enough to spin him. He barely had a chance to regain his balance before Andrew swung again, this time at Mackenzie. She twisted out of the way as Kat’s voice rose, loud and edged with anger. “Back off! Leave him alone!”
Derek caught Mackenzie’s arm and dragged her away just as a shivering wave of power spilled over the front yard. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and his legs locked in place. Mackenzie began to tremble next to him, and he glanced over at Nick, who looked mostly annoyed by the wash of commanding energy.
Alec stepped into the sudden, tense silence. “Andrew Callaghan, put that girl down before you hurt her. No one’s going to touch her, but if you’re not going to take care of her, you can’t have her.” Andrew bared his teeth at Alec with an uncontrolled burst of power. The arm around Kat’s waist tightened again, and her gasp this time was louder, filled with unmistakable pain. Derek’s heart pounded as Kat drew in another unsteady breath and whispered, “Andrew, you’re hurting me.” He set her down on her feet immediately, though he kept his arm around her. “I’m sorry,” he told her thickly. “I didn’t mean to.”
Kat wrapped her arms around Andrew’s waist and relaxed against him with a trust that terrified Derek. She seemed oblivious to anyone else as she rested her cheek on Andrew’s bare chest. “You wouldn’t have done it if Alec wasn’t an asshole.”
Nick turned to Alec with an irritated hiss. “Next time, poke him a little harder. Call his mother names or something.”
Alec’s worried gaze stayed fixed on Kat and Andrew. “You’re not the one who’s going to have to smack the kid down when he starts challenging people. If I give him a goddamn inch now, I’ll have to beat on him even harder later. Maybe I don’t want to.”
“It doesn’t help Kat at the moment for you to act like you own her and force that challenge.” Derek cut through the arguing by reaching out for Nick’s arm. Andrew’s power was stronger, but the look in his eyes was familiar. Confusion and instinct tangled and torn between a desperate need to protect Kat and the fear of being the one thing she needed protection from. It was everything he’d felt with Nick those first confusing months after his change, all the emotions that had driven him to avoid her long after instinct had settled and he didn’t have to worry about breaking everything he touched.
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He caught his friend’s gaze and nodded once. “Tell me what you need.” Andrew let go of Kat and backed away. “I think…I need to go home.”
“Okay.” Derek slid his hand down Nick’s arm and grasped her hand. “Nick and I will drive you.”
“And me,” Kat said quickly. “I’m going with Andrew.”
“
No
.” Andrew took another step back and shook his head. “No, I’m going alone. I need to be— No.” Watching pain blossom on Kat’s face would have been hard enough, but with Nick standing next to him the guilt cut deeper. He’d done the same thing a dozen times. He’d pushed her away when his instincts had roused, terrified of his less-than-human urges. He’d pushed her away because he was terrified of hurting her.
He’d hurt her every time.
“Andrew.” Kat’s choked voice broke Derek’s heart. “Please…”
“Derek, you and Andrew should get in the car.” Nick dug in her pocket for her keys and held them out. “I want to talk to Kat for a second.”
He clasped the keys and took a shaky breath. “You okay with that, Andrew?” Andrew wanted to say no; it was etched on his face, in the tense set of his shoulders. “Yes.” Derek caught Nick’s gaze. “Thank you.” He didn’t know if he meant,
Thank you for taking care of
Kat
or
Thank you helping me with Andrew
or even
Thank you for giving me a second chance.
At that moment all that mattered was that Nick was there, with him. Taking care of the people he cared about.
Taking care of him.
“You’re welcome.” Her expression softened. “I’ll be just a minute.” Andrew brushed past him, arms crossed over his chest, almost in a daze. Derek followed him to the car and settled into the passenger seat, watching through the windshield as Nick spoke briefly to Kat, her hands on her upper arms. She had to look up to speak to Kat, but everything about her demeanor screamed authority.
Kat’s expression tightened, and Derek swore he saw tears in her eyes. Unable to watch any longer, he turned to the backseat. “You okay?” A stupid question, but the only one he could ask.
“Better than okay,” Andrew rasped, his eyes closed and his head against the back of the seat. “I’m a damn wondrous miracle, right?”
“You’re alive. I know better than anyone that it may not feel like a good thing right now, but it gets easier.”
“I don’t know what to think or feel yet, but I’ll take your word for it.” Derek turned around again to see Jackson slip his arm around Kat’s waist. Mackenzie laid a hand on her shoulder, and the two of them coaxed her toward Alec’s house. Derek wished there was time to sleep.
“Do you want me to tell Kat anything?”
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Before he could answer, Nick opened the car door. “Franklin’s going to meet us at your place, Andrew. You want to be at home and I don’t blame you, but you can’t be alone right now. It’s too dangerous.”
Andrew didn’t argue. “Fine. I just want to rest.”
It was a sentiment Derek understood all too well. As Nick started the car, he concentrated on summoning whatever energy he could find.
Something told him he was going to need it.
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Chapter Twelve
Derek settled one of Kat’s bags into the trunk of Jackson’s rental car and tried not to view the action as a failure. “Nick’s upstairs helping Kat get her laptop and school books together.”
“She’s got all the numbers, including the one at my parents’ lake house.” Jackson lifted the other bag and loaded it beside the first.
Derek stepped back and rubbed his hand over his chin. His stubble had grown into an actual beard over the last week, and he needed to shave before disheveled or shaggy bled into crazed mountain-man. “I know she’s better off out of it. Just gotta convince the instincts of that now.”
“I hear that’s the hard part.”
“Sure seems to be.” Derek rubbed his thumb over the suitcase, over the monogrammed initials that had belonged to his father. “She didn’t sleep last night. I thought being in her old room at my place would help, but she was up the whole night. Lied to me and Nick about it this morning and didn’t even care that we didn’t believe her. I think she’s still numb.”
Jackson cursed, quietly and under his breath. “Wouldn’t blame her. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do.”
It was scary, seeing Kat’s usually bright, energetic gaze slide over a room without focusing on the people in it. The part of Derek that had been responsible for her for so many years rebelled at the idea of sending her away when she was so clearly hurting, but the rest of him recognized the truth—things were getting bad, and Kat was safer far, far away.
Alec had put it a lot more bluntly when he told Jackson to load up his mother and Kat and take the potential human hostages out of the equation.
Derek gave the suitcase one last look before stepping back. “Maybe a few days with your parents will be good for her. I don’t do comfortingly parental very well.” Footsteps echoed on the stairs overhead, and Nick leaned over the railing, her hair swinging around her face. “Just a few more things. Kat’s locking up now.”
Even with his world in pieces and exhaustion hanging heavy around his neck, Nick’s smile made his heart jump. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” She skipped the last steps and held up two bags. “Books and computer. She didn’t even want to carry it herself.”
Crossroads
Kat relinquishing her stupidly expensive laptop to anyone else’s care was a step short of unthinkable.
Derek winced and accepted the laptop bag. “Maybe she just really,
really
trusts you?”
“Maybe.” She stowed the books in the backseat, and Derek glanced up toward the balcony that fronted Kat’s apartment and led to the stairs. Keys jingled, and a lock clicked into place, but footsteps didn’t follow.
He glanced at Nick and raised both eyebrows in silent question. She shook her head helplessly.
Derek handed the precious laptop bag off to Jackson and circled around to the iron steps. The staircase trembled as he took them two at a time, and by the time he reached the landing, Kat was scrubbing her hands over her cheeks in quick, furtive movements. “I’m fine.”
“Liar.” Two rickety plastic chairs sat to the left of Kat’s door, along with a planter bearing a plastic tree and enough cigarette butts to make it clear Kat had been smoking again in recent months. Derek ignored them and coaxed Kat to sit before kneeling in front of her. “It’s okay to cry, kiddo.” Annoyance tightened her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin, hard line. “The kiddo shit isn’t as funny as it used to be, Derek. I think I grew up a lot this week.”
She needed him to acknowledge it, that much was clear. Everything inside him struggled against allowing her that growth, but he tried. “I know, Kat.”
“Do you?” The words sounded so dark, so empty. He folded both of his hands around hers and studied her face, forcing himself to look at her. To
see
her. Some women’s features thinned out as they aged, but Kat still looked soft and young. Derek had his mother’s dark looks, but Kat had the freckles and blue eyes that her mother and Derek’s father had both shared.
They made her look young, until she lifted her face and he got the full impact of a frozen, hard gaze in red-rimmed eyes. He couldn’t begin to untangle the emotions there, though he could imagine a few—
horror, pain. Rage.
Fear. Her hands shook under his, and some instinct prompted him, recognized panic as only a predator could. Not fear of him, but of
being
feared.
“Kat.”
She pulled in on herself, and Derek felt the world shift a little under his feet. Thin ice, he was balanced precariously on thin ice and the wrong word would send them both plummeting.
“Kat, look at me.”
“No.” She trembled hard enough the chair shook with her, one of the off-balance legs scraping over the concrete landing.
“I’m not scared of you. None of us are scared of you.” A tiny lie, maybe, but as locked up inside herself as she was, he knew he could get away with it. “You saved Andrew’s life, and it hurt. I wish like hell one of us had been there to do it for you. But in this world we’re in sometimes that’s all we can do.
Mackenzie killed someone to save Jackson, and no one thinks she did anything but what she had to do.” www.samhainpublishing.com
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Tears stole down Kat’s cheeks, and her words were thick. “I want to stay. I want to help Nick. I want them to
pay
for what they did to Andrew.”
“They will. You know Alec will make sure of it. But the shapeshifters can’t do their thing until the humans are safe—and that means all of you. You, Jackson and Jackson’s mother.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t tell Jackson that Mackenzie’s secretly bundling him off to safety, huh? You know us men and our tender egos.”
It startled a short laugh out of her. It was still half-sob, but she opened tear-filled eyes long enough to glare at him. “I hate men and their tender egos.”
“You and every other woman.” He smiled and smoothed Kat’s hair back. “You have a big project due soon, don’t you? Go have your vacation and work on it, and let me take care of Andrew.” Kat lifted her hands and rubbed tears from her cheeks. “You gonna let Nick take care of you?” Nick could probably hear every word they said, and he replied knowing it. “Like I could stop her. I’m helpless when she smiles at me.”
“You are.” Kat’s tilted her head and stared up at him. “You know that, right?”
“I said it, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but do you really know? I mean, you’ve had that disturbingly intense booty-call vibe around her for years, but that’s not all it is. Not by a long shot. Not anymore.” It wasn’t something he had any intention of discussing with Kat before he’d talked about it with Nick, so he caught her hands and tugged her to her feet. “Don’t think I didn’t see what you did there. Big eyes and a wobbly lower lip won’t save you. You know the penalty for snooping.” She smiled, wide and brilliant enough that he let himself believe for the first time that she’d be okay.
She shoved her keys into her pocket and started toward the steps. “Sucks to be you. My apartment doesn’t have a swimming pool.”
“Jackson’s parents have a lake house. I bet I can get Mackenzie to dunk you.”
“Whatever.” Kat paused three steps down and turned to stare back up at him. “Thanks, Derek.”
“You bet, kiddo.”
That earned him a rude gesture and a muttered curse, and he’d never been so glad to hear his sweet baby cousin cussing like a sailor.
***
It was late, and watching her bedroom ceiling fan make its slow revolutions was making her dizzy.
Nick turned over and buried her face against Derek’s shoulder. “I can’t sleep.” His arm came around her without hesitation. “Sleep seems to be in short supply.” And no wonder, with the difficult decisions they’d all had to make over the last week. “Are you all right with Kat being so far away right now?”
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“I don’t know. I think so. It’s like I told Jackson—she’s hurting, and I’m not so good at that comforting-parent gig. Maybe she needs someone like Nancy Holt who can hug her and tell her everything’s going to be okay and sound like she knows what she’s talking about.” Nick propped her chin on his chest and stared up at his profile in the darkness. “You’ve done the best you can.”
