“There’s no way of knowing what would’ve happened.”
“Don’t pretend that you don’t know,” he spat. “That punk knew what he was doing. I saw it in his eyes. I just didn’t know what it meant then.”
I looked away and then faced him. “There has to be a true want behind the healing for it to work. Anything else won’t do the job…or at least that’s what we’ve learned.”
“That’s mystical BS.”
“Is it?” My gaze drifted over him. Yeah, I was being a bitch, but he locked me in a cage, tortured me, and had slept with my mom to get what he wanted. I felt sympathy for the guy, but in a twisted way, he’d gotten what he deserved. “Sure doesn’t seem that way.”
“You’re so cocky, Katy. The last I saw of you, you were screaming your head off.” He smiled again, his head wobbling on his neck.
And there went my sympathy. “What do you want, Will?”
“I told you.” He stood awkwardly, swaying to the left of the table. “I want revenge.”
I arched a brow. “Not sure how you’re going to pull that off.”
He placed one hand on the counter, supporting himself. “This is your fault—Daemon’s fault. I made a deal. I held up my end of the bargain.”
“Dawson wasn’t where you said he was.”
“No. I had him released from the office building.” His smug smile came off as a grimace. “I had to give myself more time to get away. I knew Daemon would come after me.”
“No. He wouldn’t have, because he really didn’t know if it worked or not. If so…” I stopped.
“We’d be joined, and there’d be nothing he could do?” he supplied. “That’s what I hoped.”
I watched him place a hand on his bony hip, all at once grateful that Mom would never see him like this. Will would remind her of Dad. Part of me felt like I should help Will sit down or something.
He bared yellow teeth. “But you two are joined, right? One life split into two. One of you dies, so does the other.”
I snapped to attention. My stomach lurched.
He caught my reaction. “If I had to pick what I’d want to accomplish here, it would be to make him suffer, to live on without the thing he cherishes most, but…he’s not going to die instantaneously, right? He’ll know—and those seconds of him knowing…”
His intentions sunk in slowly. A buzzing filled my ears and my mouth dried. He wanted to kill us. With what? His evil-eye power?
Will pulled a gun out from underneath his loose shirt.
Oh, yeah, that would do it.
“You can’t be serious,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’m as serious as they come.” He took a breath, and his chest rattled a death sound. “And then I’m going to sit here and wait for your pretty mom to come home. She’s going to see your dead body first and then she’ll see the business end of my gun.”
My heart tripped up. Ice water slipped over my skin. The buzzing roared now. Like a switch being thrown inside me, something else took over. It wasn’t timid, gullible Katy who followed him into a car. It wasn’t the one who stood in the kitchen seconds ago feeling sorry for him.
This was the girl who stood before Vaughn and watched the life seep out of him.
Maybe later I would be bothered by how quickly the change came over me. How easy it was for me to go from the girl who’d just bought her prom dress and flirted with her boyfriend to this stranger who now occupied my body, ready to do anything to protect those I loved.
But right now, I didn’t care.
“You’re not going to hurt Daemon. You’re not going to hurt me,” I said. “And you are sure as hell not going to hurt my mother.”
Will lifted the gun. The metal looked too heavy for his feeble hand. “What are you going to do, Katy?”
“What do you think?” I took a bold step forward, my brain and mouth propelled by this stranger. “Come on, Will, you’re smart enough to figure it out on your own.”
“You don’t have it in you.”
Calmness settled over me, and I felt my lips spread into a smile. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
Up until then, I hadn’t known what I was capable of, not truly, but seeing Will, staring down the barrel of that gun, I knew exactly what I was capable of. And as wrong as it may be, I was okay with what I was going to have to do.
Completely accepting of it.
There was a part of me that was scared of how easy that acceptance was and I wanted to cling to the old Katy, because she would’ve had a problem with this. She would’ve been sickened by this and the words I was saying.
“You do look a little ill, Will. You might want to get checked out. Oh, wait.” I widened my eyes innocently. “You can’t go to a regular doctor because even though the mutation obviously didn’t stick, I’m sure it changed you and you can’t go to the DOD, because that would be like suicide.”
The hand around the gun trembled. “You think you’re so smart and brave, don’t you, little girl?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps, but I do know I’m completely healthy. What about you, Will?”
“Shut up,” he hissed.
Stepping next to the kitchen table, I eyed the gun. If I could distract him, then I could take him out. I really didn’t want to test the whole stopping-a-bullet theory.
“Just think of all that money you paid, and it didn’t even work out in the end,” I said. “And you’ve lost everything—your career, your money, my mom, and your health. Karma’s a tool, isn’t it?”