The cavern walls dripped with moisture from the recent rain, echoing every step that was taken by the girl who walked the Undergrounds. Her jet black hair was hidden beneath the hood of her cloak, her piercing green eyes illuminated by the light of the torch she held in her hand.
Val Linley was not here for games tonight.
Nestled between the cliff dwellings of Manitou Springs and the cave system that ran all through the mountain, the Undergrounds had been claimed by a witch coven in Manitou; a coven that Val was determined to become the thirteenth member of.
The position had been promised to her for quite some time. She was frustrated by that. Every time she would come close to being inducted and complete the tasks that were assigned to her, there was always something else that she was given to do.
That was the way Donovan worked. He loved to string them along; her more than the rest of them. Absolutely everything was a game to him.
The first few times he had pulled that on Val, she had chosen to submit and not put up a fight; but after she had recently delivered Kyla James to him on a silver plate, Val had finally had enough. She had executed her orders to perfection. She had done everything she was asked to do, and still Donovan had denied her what she was owed.
It wasn’t enough that he was holding her position in the coven for her. Val wanted it now. She was not about to let someone else come in and take what was rightfully hers; not when she had given so much for it. She would spill blood before letting that happen.
Unfortunately, what Val wanted and what she actually got were two very different things. If the witches were the ones in charge of this operation, there never would have been a hitch from the start. But the witches weren’t the ones in charge; the Nephilim were. Sick, depraved creatures who were only half-human. Selfish, vindictive beings whose blood ran red but who were hardly men. Their power was to be feared and their anger, even more. No man could hold the lust or the jealousy of these. The destruction they could bear wasn’t something to be grasped, for they were birthed for vindication, the cataclysm of all things. Angry retribution. Children of wrath. There was nothing dark enough to describe what the Nephilim were.
And they were so frighteningly beautiful that the mortals couldn’t help but be drawn to them.
Most of them were, anyway. There were a few Nephilim half-breeds (like Donovan’s slimy informant, Cerin) that gave “deformed and unfortunate” a whole new meaning. But the pure Nephilim, the children of angels and the daughters of men, these were more stunning than any human could grasp. That was why it was so easy for them to manipulate and control…because humans were enslaved to physical beauty.
Val knew how to use that to her advantage.
Her blood may have proved her humanity, but she refused to let herself be defined by such a weak and limited race. What she operated out of, what she could do, it didn’t do justice to call her human. She may not have been half-angel, but she knew how to wield power that few mortals ever could. She just hadn’t been permitted to step into it yet.
Tensing her lips as she walked into the chamber, Val was careful to keep her eyes fixed on the ground. She was not permitted to make eye contact with the others; not until she was officially inducted. Just one of the many things she resented Donovan for.
Val was almost certain that he reveled in her humility. He took every chance he got to put her in her place. Everyone knew she should have been the first witch to be inducted into the Manitou Coven, and yet no one spoke up to let Donovan know it. They were all too afraid of him.
Pathetic, sniveling cowards, Val thought. She kept her eyes on the floor.
The rocks hung heavy on the walls tonight. There was a weight there, despite Donovan’s absence, an uncertainty that made everyone who had gathered feel out of control.
Witches did not like to be out of control; Val less than any of them.
She stood along the wall with her hands folded in front of her as the twelve took their place at the circle at the center of the chamber. Jealousy burned in Val as she watched them step forward, these witches and warlocks who appeared on the outside as normal everyday people. They were not the sort that anyone would suspect of something so dark. They were normal. They were average. Not a single of the twelve stood out in any way.
Val was more powerful in the art of dark magic than all of them combined. It was in her blood; her life force…her existence. She had sold her very soul to this darkness, and as a result, she had access to what the others did not. That was why it didn’t make sense that Donovan would hold her at bay instead of utilizing her power. There wasn’t another witch or warlock here that could touch what she had.
Trying to hold back the disgust on her face so that no one could see it, Val scanned the room discreetly to see who was there. The twelve, she expected. They were not permitted to miss a meeting, even one that was called in the absence of their worshipful leader.
Val couldn’t hide her disgust any longer when her eyes fell to Balak, the towering, ebony-skinned Naphil who stood like a gargoyle at the entrance of the room. He walked slowly back and forth across the width of the chamber, his hands behind his back and his chin lifted up in picturesque arrogance.
The display was almost sad. Balak took far too much pleasure in giving orders when Donovan was gone, especially for one whose words carried so little weight. Val didn’t know why Donovan wasn’t back yet from whatever it was that he had to leave to accomplish, but his absence frustrated her all through this miserable excuse for a meeting. Listening to Balak, Donovan’s second-in-command speak to them as if he had all of his leader’s authority was irritating at the very least. Val had a difficult time standing still and keeping herself from showing what she really felt as she watched him. Balak didn’t have Donovan’s authority; he didn’t have any authority. And the fact that he was standing here acting like he did made Val want to gag out loud.
She resisted the urge, knowing it wouldn’t be worth the trouble it would cause her. Balak didn’t do well to any disrespecting him. None of the Nephilim did.
Dropping her eyes back to the stony cavern ground, Val forced her mind away from the dozen or so things she would love to say to Balak right now to knock him off of his pedestal. She also forced herself to let go of her resentment toward Donovan for leaving them here with this fool.
Donovan had called it “business,” whatever he was doing in London. To him, that could have meant anything. From what she had heard, he was dealing with some witches out there that they needed for God-only-knew what reason. Val didn’t have any idea. It made her nervous that Donovan was seeking aide from another coven instead of using the one he had the most direct charge over. Not that Val could blame him for that. Looking around the chamber at the ones who stood here, it was all she could do not to cringe in embarrassment. These twelve didn’t know how to practice dark magic any better than a junior high girl at a sleepover with a Ouija board.
Val had never been so eager to get out of the ritual chamber. Balak’s meeting had been insufferable, but it was more than that that drove her away from here. The last thing she wanted to do was face him right now. She didn’t want to talk to him.
Unfortunately, Balak did.
Val wasted no time in slipping out the entrance, but it didn’t do her any good. She had only gone ten steps when a towering Naphil who was infinitely stronger than she was grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into a hideaway room in the cave system that served as a storage space for the coven. Val gasped, but she didn’t scream. She had trained herself not to in moments of surprise. Besides, Balak’s grabbing her like this and forcing himself on her was not that surprising.
He wasn’t as careful as he normally would have been. He knew Donovan was gone, and the fear Val worked so well to control in herself nearly spiked out of control when Balak slammed her against the rocks behind her. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, but sometimes he didn’t have to try. Balak, much like the other Nephilim, often underestimated the extent of his own strength, especially in instances where his adrenaline was suddenly heightened.
Holding her down, Balak kissed her neck. “I was about driven insane in that meeting,” he breathed to her. His grip on her tightened with every word he spoke. “I wanted nothing more than to ravage you the entire time.”
Val trembled nervously and forced the tensest smile she had ever worn. Her heart skipped in abnormal fear when she felt the strength of Balak’s grip.
“I can’t stop thinking about last night,” he told her. “If Donovan hadn’t called you to that meeting, I never would have stopped…”
That was what it took for Val to shove him off. “Stop!” she hissed at him. “We have to stop this…”
Remembering back to what she had seen in Donovan’s eyes last night when he had spoken to her here in these caverns, Val was afraid of more than the forceful grip of the Naphil that was pinning her to the wall.
Balak did not look happy when she resisted him.
“If we keep this up,” she explained to him, “it’s only a matter of time before Donovan finds out.”
“He won’t find out,” Balak assured her. He grabbed her again and moved back to her neck, and Val put out her arm to block him.
“You can’t be naïve enough to believe that,” she said. “You know as well as I do that Donovan’s discernment supersedes all of ours.”
Saying it out loud like that, Val realized just how foolish she had been in taking this risk. At first it had been about gaining what she wanted from Balak, toying with that power and reveling in every minute of it. But that was before she and Donovan had gotten involved. Now she feared what he might do if he were to find out. Donovan took just about anything as betrayal, and Val knew how he dealt with traitors.
“We have gotten too close,” she told Balak. “It’s time we stop playing with fire.”
Balak didn’t agree with her. That was obvious by the way he grunted under his breath and pushed her back up against the cold stone wall. Val could feel his anger at the suggestion through his grip that held her. She didn’t want to be here anymore. More than anything, she just wanted to break free from his iron hands and get as far away from these caves as she could. She might only have known in part, but she knew what the Nephilim were capable of when they became angry, and she didn’t want to be close to that. They didn’t exactly have the best self-control when these situations presented themselves.
“Balak, please…” she said in a small voice.
Ironic that that would be the one thing that caused his grip to soften.
Balak didn’t say anything else to her as he turned away and left her there, and as Val walked away from him, she shook off her fear and told herself it was unfounded. Balak wasn’t going to do anything to her. He needed her too much. If he were to kill her, he couldn’t coerce her into sex again, and as dumb as he may have been, she knew he would realize that.
In other words, she owned him.
No, Val didn’t need to concern herself with fear over this primordial Naphil doing something rash. She had more important things to worry about, like staying unreadable to Donovan when he returned and following through with the last assignment he gave her: Causing an unbridgeable rift between Kyla James and the boy she had never deserved.
. . . . .
Falling face-down on her bed once she shut the door behind her, Kyla covered the back of her head with her pillow so it smashed her into her covers. She wanted to scream, but she knew this flimsy pillow wouldn’t muffle the sound, and as good as it might feel, it wouldn’t be worth having to explain to Caden why she was losing her mind. He already had enough questions about that.
It was so stupid. Kyla knew better than to let him get that close to her again, especially now when she was emotionally and physically screwed up on every imaginable level. She hadn’t meant to do it; Caden just had a way of getting to her like that. And as far as she was concerned, right now that really sucked.
Kyla didn’t know why it was still so hard for her to trust him, especially considering how he had so continuously proven his loyalty to her since he had returned from Nashville. But after the gaping hole Nathaniel had just gouged out of her heart by leaving her when he told her he would keep her safe, Kyla didn’t think she could take another hit like that; especially not from Caden. In so many ways, he was all she had left. So naturally, she pushed him away.
It was backwards and stupid, the logic that compelled her actions, but she could no more control it than she could control anything else. That was what frustrated her now as she sat in her room with her head pressed against the cold hard surface of her desk. She couldn’t control any of this. Nothing. And there was no feeling that left Kyla more panicked than that. As soon as control was stripped away from her, that was when bad things happened. That was when she was abandoned. That was when people died. That was when she lost whatever trace remains still existed of her heart.
Kyla isolated herself like that for days. She still went into work, but kept an intentional distance between herself and whoever she happened to be working with on any given shift, be it Val or their new manager, Morgan, or Cody Fletcher (who had just gotten a job there with her help.) Kyla was starting to regret that now. Being in close proximity or proximity of any sort with someone so connected to Caden did not make her feel any safer. But luckily they were still training Cody, so they had plenty to keep them busy without any lulls that would encourage conversation. Still, by the second training shift Cody worked, it managed to come up. Kyla’s direct avoidance of Caden’s phone calls probably didn’t help with that.
She did a pretty bad job of dodging Cody’s questions about it. Actually, she didn’t really dodge them at all; she just sort of walked away and didn’t answer him. It wasn’t like Caden didn’t deserve the silent treatment from her. After all, how long had he gone in Nashville avoiding her phone calls?
Kyla felt guilty, linking this to some sort of payback. That wasn’t what it was about at all. She had already forgiven him for that…or at least she told herself she had.
Making a face at the unpleasant thought, Kyla resumed scrubbing out the blenders in the hot soapy water at the back of the coffee shop. Doing things like this methodical, mindless scrubbing and going through the motions of any pointless, typical day helped her to cope with the sting in her chest. That was why she had picked up so many shifts since Nathaniel left. The worst times were when she was alone, which was a little ironic for her considering that that had always been what she naturally retreated to. It was also ironic that she was pushing away the people who wanted to be there for her now; Caden, Matthew, even Cody. As much as she wanted to let them close to her, she couldn’t. They weren’t safe because they couldn’t know the truth.
Actually, Kyla would prefer to stay here in the coffee shop with the girl she despised above all things than to be with anyone she loved right now. There was some kind of safeguard there with Val that she didn’t understand, something that enabled her to switch into robot-mode and go numb to it all. Even in that place, though, Kyla couldn’t escape her memory. Every moment, the image of Nathaniel’s face plagued, and every time she saw it, that sickening worry rose up in her again.
She just wanted to know that he was okay. She didn’t want to deal with anyone until she knew that. In hopes of avoiding that stabbing fear she felt at the thought of him, Kyla told herself over and over that she shouldn’t care, that Nathaniel leaving was a blessing and the safest thing for her.
He isn’t human, she reminded herself over and over. That’s the only thing that should matter. But it didn’t.
Kyla knew he was dangerous. She knew what he had told her and that he had almost gotten her killed. But no matter what Nathaniel called himself, she still only saw him as an angel.
. . . . .
Caden was agitated. He knew he had to do something, but he didn’t know what his first step should be. He had to find out what Nathaniel Blake was hiding. He had to find out what really happened on that mountain. But he also had no idea how to accomplish either of these things.
Interrogating Alexa had only gotten him so far, and even if she had backed up Kyla’s claim that Nathaniel wasn’t the one who had beaten her and left her bleeding on the trail in the woods, Caden knew from the deepest place inside of him that Nathaniel was still to blame. That one, even Kyla couldn’t deny.
Driving down Highway 24 and into the city limits of Woodland Park, Caden paid next to no attention to the way he was driving. His mind was moving faster than the wheels on his Jeep, and it wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Through every scenario he had thought through and every idea he came up with, Caden had concluded that the only play he had at this point was to talk to the one other person who wanted to get to the bottom of this as much as he did. He had to talk to Matthew James…but he needed an excuse to do it.
That was why he was speeding down the highway, trying to come up with a reason to show up at the James’ condo. He could always use the excuse that he was stopping by to see Kyla, but Matthew was smart, and chances were he would see right through that.
So what if he does? Caden thought to himself. Even if he straight-up told Matthew what he was up to, the kid would probably be more than eager to help him.
Caden knew Matthew was frustrated by this situation with Nathaniel. He was counting on that. That was why he decided to drop by the condo “to see Kyla” that night, hoping she wouldn’t actually be there so he could question her little brother without her breathing over his shoulder.
Judging by Matthew’s frustration the last time Caden saw him, Caden didn’t think it would even take effort on his part to get something out of him. Chances were, if he gave him the opportunity, Matthew would probably spill everything he knew. Caden was counting on that too. What he wasn’t counting on when he went down there was Loni answering the door.
Caden couldn’t remember the last time he had actually stood face to face with the woman. It certainly hadn’t gotten any less disturbing over time. Loni eyed him skeptically where he stood on the porch, and he thought he might have been more comfortable treading water in a shark tank.
“Is…Kyla home?” Caden asked nervously.
Loni narrowed her eyes even further. Surprisingly, she looked more sober than she normally did. Not that it improved her personality much…
Loni mumbled something to him that sounded like a “no” and without explaining any further or telling him where Kyla was, she walked back over to the basement door and trudged down the stairs, leaving Caden standing there confused.
“Okay?” he said out loud to himself as he stepped cautiously through the door.
Caden looked around to see if Matthew was there, but he didn’t see him anywhere. Then he heard the shower upstairs. It struck him as fortune when he took the variables of this situation into account. He could wait for Matthew to get out of the shower, and in the meantime he could do some investigating in Kyla’s bedroom that even her little brother was unlikely to permit. Caden didn’t give himself time to question the morality of this decision. He just slipped up the stairs and into her room as quietly as he could and started looking around for something, anything that might give him a clue about Nathaniel Blake.
Unfortunately, he found nothing.
Kyla’s room was immaculate, for one, which forced him to rummage through drawers and look through her closet, but even then he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Shutting the top drawer of her desk in frustration, Caden looked around him, desperate to find something so he wasn’t doing this in vain. His guilt was starting to catch up to him, but he kept telling himself, She forced you into this position, to try and make himself feel better about it.
Kyla was the one who wouldn’t tell him the truth, and in order to protect her, he had to know what was going on. That was why he was doing this. Even rationalizing it to himself that way, Caden still felt dirty; enough that he stopped looking altogether. That, and he wasn’t finding anything.
Seeing a notepad and a pen on Kyla’s desk, he started scribbling out a note for her to let her know that he had dropped by. Somehow he felt a little better about the whole thing if he had that excuse. Caden shook his head as he wrote on the notepad. That was a lie and he knew it. Writing her a stupid note wasn’t going to make him feel any better about the fact that he had completely violated her trust. Or about the fact that there was no trust between them at all anymore.
. . . . .
As the warm water from the shower ran over Kyla’s scarred and scathed body, she wondered if this feeling would ever go away. She tried to fight it, the images that appeared in her mind when she closed her eyes, but she couldn’t really fight what she didn’t want to lose. Those memories were all of Nathaniel Blake she had left, and even if they cut her, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting them go.
Kyla wrapped a towel around herself when she stepped out of the shower. She tried not to let her eyes pass over her reflection, but they caught the edge of the mirror anyway and made her want to wretch. The water had washed away the makeup she’d been using to cover up her scars, and when it wasn’t in place she looked particularly atrocious. Putting it into perspective, Kyla knew she shouldn’t be worrying with anything so vain when the alternative would have meant her death, but she still found herself wondering if they would ever fully heal.
Glancing down both ends of the hallway when she peeked around the corner, she saw that the coast was clear and ran for her bedroom. Slipping inside and attempting to shut the door closed behind her, Kyla screamed and missed when she saw the boy standing over her desk.
Caden jerked his head up, his face flushing a guilty shade of red when she backed up self-consciously and held her towel securely in place.
“I’m sorry,” he rambled quickly. “I didn’t know where you were so I was just leaving you a…” He stopped mid-sentence when his eyes fell on her shoulders.
Kyla could feel his gaze as it burned into her skin, and when she realized what he could see, she felt her face go white.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped at him.
“I…” Caden tried to explain, but as he stared at the scars over her chest, he seemed to have lost the rest of his words.
“Get out!” Kyla demanded. She tried to cover herself up even though she knew the effort was wasted.
Caden didn’t argue. In fact, she’d never seen him so eager to get out of her room.
Sitting down at her desk shakily once he left, she rested her forehead in her hand, telling herself she could find a way to explain this to him. Then she thought of the night of the attack when he found her on the mountain, of how adamant he had been to find out the truth and how reluctantly he had agreed to let it go.
Looking down to see what Caden had left on her desk, Kyla found a note scribbled in his chicken scratch that read:
Just stopped by to see how you were. If you need me, you know where I am. -Cade
Kyla frowned and looked out the window, watching him leave quickly. She did not know how to make this okay.
. . . . .
Caden was trembling as he drove, so shaken he could hardly keep his eyes focused enough to drive in the lines on Highway 24. His emotion was rising to the point of near-incapacitation. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to cry. So he did both.
Punching his steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckle crack open and bleed, he jerked the now-bloodied steering wheel to the right and pulled his Jeep over on the side of the road. Helplessly, he slumped over as his breath began to fail him. He could feel water filling his eyes, even if he was determined not to blink so he wouldn’t let it fall; but after the picture of Kyla’s body flashed through his mind again, he couldn’t stop it.
Tears streamed down his face as he slammed his eyes closed, wanting the image to disappear…wanting this all to go away or at least to understand.
What was happening to her?
. . . . .
Kyla didn’t have to work very hard to avoid Caden the next day. He didn’t even try to call her. At one point she actually thought she would have preferred that he would make the attempt, even if she only would have blown him off again, just so she could know that his mind was in the same place. Right now, she didn’t know where his mind was, and the thought of that scared her senseless. Especially after what he had seen.
When Kyla came downstairs that afternoon, she found Matthew playing a videogame. She hesitated for a second when she saw him and thought about going back upstairs, not wanting to face him again yet since that had been so awkward and uncomfortable every time she had since the night on the mountain; but Matthew did something he almost never did and paused the game to initiate conversation with her.
“Why won’t you talk to Caden?” he asked her point blank.
That caught Kyla off guard. She was working up what would probably end up being a really trite answer to give him when the phone rang.
It was Melissa Howell.
“Hey sweetie!” she greeted Kyla in her motherly southern drawl.
“Hey,” Kyla said back nervously. She wasn’t nervous to talk to Melissa, just nervous about what she might want.
As it turned out, she wanted Kyla to come up and babysit that night since she and Randy had a press dinner of some sort to attend in Denver and the neighbor who was going to sit for her had bailed at the last second when her own kid got sick.
Kyla hesitated, but then Melissa said, “I would have had Caden do it, but he’s at band practice with the boys.”
That changed things for her. “What time do you want me up there?” Kyla asked.
Melissa was more than grateful to have her help. When Kyla hung up the phone, she looked toward the living room and asked Matthew, “Wanna come with?”
Matthew looked toward the basement where Loni had holed herself up again. He shut off the videogame he was playing and stood eagerly to his feet.
Kyla wasn’t looking forward to the car ride up to the Howell’s with Matthew, but no matter how awkward things were between them, she still loved her little brother and had no desire to leave him there alone with Loni…at least not at any point that she didn’t absolutely have to.
The second they got into the car, Kyla decided to deal with the awkward tension that was sure to be there between her and Matthew by cranking Sleeping Giant and rolling down the windows. Matthew didn’t complain. He was becoming more and more partial to Sleeping Giant, even the heavier stuff they had that he couldn’t stand at first. That was just the way that band grew on you, though, and the reason Kyla loved them so much. Sure, there was a lot about them that tied her to her past, but she had an uncanny ability to block out things like lyrics and pretend the songs weren’t about what they actually were. Caden wouldn’t like it if he knew that she did this when she was listening to them, but then Caden didn’t like or approve of a lot of things she did. If Caden had his way, she would open up to everything again, at the cost of her getting her heart ripped out like it was before. If he had his way, she would tell him the truth about Nathaniel Blake…
Kyla shuddered at the thought. No, she told herself. That is never going to happen.
As soon as they got to the Howell’s, Melissa shoved Sadie in Kyla’s arms, kissed her cheek and thanked her profusely as she and Randy bolted out the front door. She didn’t even both with instructions since Kyla had babysat the kids so many times before, and since Melissa trusted her so fully.
Walking into the living room, Kyla saw that the twins, Jackson and Jaime, were busy fighting over who got to play with whatever toy Jackson had pulled from their toy chest, and when Kyla went over to settle the dispute, that was when she saw the little blonde girl she had been slightly afraid of seeing lately sitting at the kitchen counter watching her.
The look on Alexa’s face left Kyla unsettled; not unlike it usually did, but even more so than normal. The sideways glance the girl shot Matthew right after that was even further unsettling. Kyla tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy. Addressing it wasn’t an option since she the last thing she wanted to do was bring to light anything that had been happening lately that might make Alexa look at her like that. But the more Alexa studied her that night no matter what she was doing, the more tempted Kyla was to call her out on it.
She acted strange like that the entire night, and what was worse, Matthew was acting just about the same way. That was what really made Kyla uncomfortable. She was used to this from Alexa; not her little brother. She didn’t know what was going on with either of them.
After Kyla fixed macaroni and cheese for the kids (the Spiderman-shaped kind that made Jackson and Jamie go ballistic) she put Sadie to bed and put a movie on for the boys. And it was as she was setting up Finding Nemo that Caden came home.
It startled her to see him walk through the door, but it startled him even more to see her there in his living room. Clearly, he had been expecting their neighbor to babysit; not Kyla. That was obvious by the unreal amount of tension between the two of them from the moment he walked in. It was weighted there in the air, thick and constricting. She hated it.
Caden was polite, but he didn’t go out of his way to talk to her, and he didn’t waste any time in the house. He just grabbed a chilled bottle of A&W root beer from the fridge and took it to his room.
Kyla knew she needed to run damage control. As terrified as she was of confronting Caden right now, she was even more terrified of leaving it alone.
“Matt, can you and Lex watch the twins for me and keep an eye on Sadie for a bit?” she asked as she watched Caden walk across the backyard.
Matthew gave Alexa a glance as if asking her whether or not he should agree to it. That bothered Kyla.
Alexa didn’t make an affirmative outward gesture like a nod or anything, but something in her face must have told Matthew “yes,” because he agreed to it when he looked away from her.
“Sure,” he told Kyla. “Do whatever you need to do.”
She looked away from the window long enough to give her brother a questioning look, but she didn’t waste time with that. She just took a deep breath and made her way outside to Caden’s room.
He was sitting on his bed picking at his guitar when she walked in, and she stood there, waiting for him to say something to her.
He didn’t.
“You gonna talk to me?” Kyla finally asked him. She knew she should have started with something less abrasive, like “hey” or “how was band practice?” but his ignoring her and messing with his guitar was already doing a number on her more irritating defense mechanisms.
“I’m not the one shutting you out,” Caden said, still not setting his guitar down.
“Funny,” Kyla mumbled. “It sure feels like it.”
He didn’t respond, just kept playing, and it wasn’t a song she recognized.
“What song is that?” she asked him.
That was what finally made him stop strumming and set his guitar back on its stand in the corner of the room. He didn’t answer her.
“It’s good…” she told him.
Caden smirked and shook his head as if she had told some kind of joke.
“Caden, I’m sorry,” Kyla said. It was hard for her to force the words when she only wanted to be defensive, and he didn’t give her much grace, considering.
“I’m not looking for an apology, Kyla. I’m looking for an explanation.”
She frowned.
“Seriously, what’s with the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde routine?” he asked.
Her frown turned to a cringe and she told him, “I could try to explain, but I can’t make any promises.”
Caden didn’t like that. “Since when has the truth been so hard for you?” he asked her.
Kyla mumbled, “Since it got really complicated.”
He was quiet for a moment as he stared at her, read her. Then finally he said, “You can’t tell me this isn’t about him.”
Kyla tensed up at the mention of Nathaniel and she knew that the expression on her face gave her away, but she couldn’t hide it.
Caden grunted under his breath in frustration. “I know I told you I would back off,” he said, “but things have changed a little since that point.”
Kyla twitched uncomfortably, her eyes darting back and forth across Caden’s room so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“I would really like it if you could tell me what happened,” Caden said.
She was surprised at how calm he sounded and she knew he had to be working hard at it. “What changed?” she asked him.
That about drove him insane. Caden looked up from where he was pressing his fingers into his head with disgust on his face. “You want to know what changed?” he asked her.
Kyla wasn’t so sure she did anymore.
Caden stood up and walked over to her with a stone cold expression on his face. Then, grabbing the zipper at her neck of the jacket she was wearing, he jerked it down, pulling it off of her shoulders. “That’s what changed!” he exclaimed.
Kyla’s eyes grew wide as she stared forward in fear, but she didn’t pull away from him. She knew he had seen her scars and she knew that covering them up now wouldn’t do her any good, so she didn’t move a muscle.
Caden was fuming. He ran his fingers through his hair and paced back and forth like he always did when he was really, really mad, but Kyla couldn’t tell if he looked more like he was going to yell at her or cry.
“You’re seriously going to stand there and tell me he didn’t do that to you?” Caden asked her in a voice so strangled and choked it hardly came out.
“He didn’t,” Kyla said.
Caden pressed his lips together and shook his head. He slowly forced himself to look down at her body, and as he did he brought a shaking hand up to her. Tracing the scars at her shoulders with his fingertips, a tortured expression came onto his face. “Then Kyla,” he said, “who did?”
She flinched away from him at the thought of Donovan, at the memory of his hands all over her and his venomous breath in her face…of the pain she had felt that night as he crushed what must have been every bone in her body.
“I told you…” she tried to say.
Caden cut her off. “Yeah, and I know that was a lie. No random hitchhiker did this to you or you would have let me go to the police.” Kyla fell quiet again and Caden begged her helplessly, “Who are you trying to protect?”
“I’m not trying to protect anyone,” she insisted. “I just don’t think you would believe me.”
“You might be surprised what I would believe,” he said.
Kyla made a face and turned away from him. Seeing that he was causing her pain, (and seeming to realize for the first time since he’d jerked her zipper down that she wasn’t wearing another shirt underneath this over the black sports bra she had on) he pulled her jacket back up over her shoulders and carefully zipped it up again.
“I’m sorry,” Caden said when he realized how exposed he had left her skin. Obviously he hadn’t counted on her not wearing layers tonight. The fact that it was well over ninety degrees today should have given him an idea of that, but he was a guy and guys didn’t think about that sort of thing.
Kyla still didn’t move and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Seeing how angry it made Caden to see her like this, she couldn’t help but imagine what he would do if he had seen her before Nathaniel had healed her.
“Kyla, you can talk to me…”
She felt sick at the thought of pulling Caden into this twisted nightmare with her, just as she had told Nathaniel when he suggested that they do so. Without even wanting it to come, Kyla remembered what Donovan played through her head that night on the mountain, the images of Caden’s slow, torturous murder; and that was all it took for her to make up her mind. She knew she couldn’t risk that. Kyla could bear almost anything more than the thought of something happening to him.
“I need to get back in and watch the kids,” she told him.
“They’re fine,” Caden argued. “Matt and Lex are in there with them.”
Kyla dropped her head. “Caden, I just can’t…”
He pressed his lips together and nodded robotically, looking like he wanted to put a hole in his wall. But he let her leave.
Val Linley was not here for games tonight.
Nestled between the cliff dwellings of Manitou Springs and the cave system that ran all through the mountain, the Undergrounds had been claimed by a witch coven in Manitou; a coven that Val was determined to become the thirteenth member of.
The position had been promised to her for quite some time. She was frustrated by that. Every time she would come close to being inducted and complete the tasks that were assigned to her, there was always something else that she was given to do.
That was the way Donovan worked. He loved to string them along; her more than the rest of them. Absolutely everything was a game to him.
The first few times he had pulled that on Val, she had chosen to submit and not put up a fight; but after she had recently delivered Kyla James to him on a silver plate, Val had finally had enough. She had executed her orders to perfection. She had done everything she was asked to do, and still Donovan had denied her what she was owed.
It wasn’t enough that he was holding her position in the coven for her. Val wanted it now. She was not about to let someone else come in and take what was rightfully hers; not when she had given so much for it. She would spill blood before letting that happen.
Unfortunately, what Val wanted and what she actually got were two very different things. If the witches were the ones in charge of this operation, there never would have been a hitch from the start. But the witches weren’t the ones in charge; the Nephilim were. Sick, depraved creatures who were only half-human. Selfish, vindictive beings whose blood ran red but who were hardly men. Their power was to be feared and their anger, even more. No man could hold the lust or the jealousy of these. The destruction they could bear wasn’t something to be grasped, for they were birthed for vindication, the cataclysm of all things. Angry retribution. Children of wrath. There was nothing dark enough to describe what the Nephilim were.
And they were so frighteningly beautiful that the mortals couldn’t help but be drawn to them.
Most of them were, anyway. There were a few Nephilim half-breeds (like Donovan’s slimy informant, Cerin) that gave “deformed and unfortunate” a whole new meaning. But the pure Nephilim, the children of angels and the daughters of men, these were more stunning than any human could grasp. That was why it was so easy for them to manipulate and control…because humans were enslaved to physical beauty.
Val knew how to use that to her advantage.
Her blood may have proved her humanity, but she refused to let herself be defined by such a weak and limited race. What she operated out of, what she could do, it didn’t do justice to call her human. She may not have been half-angel, but she knew how to wield power that few mortals ever could. She just hadn’t been permitted to step into it yet.
Tensing her lips as she walked into the chamber, Val was careful to keep her eyes fixed on the ground. She was not permitted to make eye contact with the others; not until she was officially inducted. Just one of the many things she resented Donovan for.
Val was almost certain that he reveled in her humility. He took every chance he got to put her in her place. Everyone knew she should have been the first witch to be inducted into the Manitou Coven, and yet no one spoke up to let Donovan know it. They were all too afraid of him.
Pathetic, sniveling cowards, Val thought. She kept her eyes on the floor.
The rocks hung heavy on the walls tonight. There was a weight there, despite Donovan’s absence, an uncertainty that made everyone who had gathered feel out of control.
Witches did not like to be out of control; Val less than any of them.
She stood along the wall with her hands folded in front of her as the twelve took their place at the circle at the center of the chamber. Jealousy burned in Val as she watched them step forward, these witches and warlocks who appeared on the outside as normal everyday people. They were not the sort that anyone would suspect of something so dark. They were normal. They were average. Not a single of the twelve stood out in any way.
Val was more powerful in the art of dark magic than all of them combined. It was in her blood; her life force…her existence. She had sold her very soul to this darkness, and as a result, she had access to what the others did not. That was why it didn’t make sense that Donovan would hold her at bay instead of utilizing her power. There wasn’t another witch or warlock here that could touch what she had.
Trying to hold back the disgust on her face so that no one could see it, Val scanned the room discreetly to see who was there. The twelve, she expected. They were not permitted to miss a meeting, even one that was called in the absence of their worshipful leader.
Val couldn’t hide her disgust any longer when her eyes fell to Balak, the towering, ebony-skinned Naphil who stood like a gargoyle at the entrance of the room. He walked slowly back and forth across the width of the chamber, his hands behind his back and his chin lifted up in picturesque arrogance.
The display was almost sad. Balak took far too much pleasure in giving orders when Donovan was gone, especially for one whose words carried so little weight. Val didn’t know why Donovan wasn’t back yet from whatever it was that he had to leave to accomplish, but his absence frustrated her all through this miserable excuse for a meeting. Listening to Balak, Donovan’s second-in-command speak to them as if he had all of his leader’s authority was irritating at the very least. Val had a difficult time standing still and keeping herself from showing what she really felt as she watched him. Balak didn’t have Donovan’s authority; he didn’t have any authority. And the fact that he was standing here acting like he did made Val want to gag out loud.
She resisted the urge, knowing it wouldn’t be worth the trouble it would cause her. Balak didn’t do well to any disrespecting him. None of the Nephilim did.
Dropping her eyes back to the stony cavern ground, Val forced her mind away from the dozen or so things she would love to say to Balak right now to knock him off of his pedestal. She also forced herself to let go of her resentment toward Donovan for leaving them here with this fool.
Donovan had called it “business,” whatever he was doing in London. To him, that could have meant anything. From what she had heard, he was dealing with some witches out there that they needed for God-only-knew what reason. Val didn’t have any idea. It made her nervous that Donovan was seeking aide from another coven instead of using the one he had the most direct charge over. Not that Val could blame him for that. Looking around the chamber at the ones who stood here, it was all she could do not to cringe in embarrassment. These twelve didn’t know how to practice dark magic any better than a junior high girl at a sleepover with a Ouija board.
Val had never been so eager to get out of the ritual chamber. Balak’s meeting had been insufferable, but it was more than that that drove her away from here. The last thing she wanted to do was face him right now. She didn’t want to talk to him.
Unfortunately, Balak did.
Val wasted no time in slipping out the entrance, but it didn’t do her any good. She had only gone ten steps when a towering Naphil who was infinitely stronger than she was grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into a hideaway room in the cave system that served as a storage space for the coven. Val gasped, but she didn’t scream. She had trained herself not to in moments of surprise. Besides, Balak’s grabbing her like this and forcing himself on her was not that surprising.
He wasn’t as careful as he normally would have been. He knew Donovan was gone, and the fear Val worked so well to control in herself nearly spiked out of control when Balak slammed her against the rocks behind her. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, but sometimes he didn’t have to try. Balak, much like the other Nephilim, often underestimated the extent of his own strength, especially in instances where his adrenaline was suddenly heightened.
Holding her down, Balak kissed her neck. “I was about driven insane in that meeting,” he breathed to her. His grip on her tightened with every word he spoke. “I wanted nothing more than to ravage you the entire time.”
Val trembled nervously and forced the tensest smile she had ever worn. Her heart skipped in abnormal fear when she felt the strength of Balak’s grip.
“I can’t stop thinking about last night,” he told her. “If Donovan hadn’t called you to that meeting, I never would have stopped…”
That was what it took for Val to shove him off. “Stop!” she hissed at him. “We have to stop this…”
Remembering back to what she had seen in Donovan’s eyes last night when he had spoken to her here in these caverns, Val was afraid of more than the forceful grip of the Naphil that was pinning her to the wall.
Balak did not look happy when she resisted him.
“If we keep this up,” she explained to him, “it’s only a matter of time before Donovan finds out.”
“He won’t find out,” Balak assured her. He grabbed her again and moved back to her neck, and Val put out her arm to block him.
“You can’t be naïve enough to believe that,” she said. “You know as well as I do that Donovan’s discernment supersedes all of ours.”
Saying it out loud like that, Val realized just how foolish she had been in taking this risk. At first it had been about gaining what she wanted from Balak, toying with that power and reveling in every minute of it. But that was before she and Donovan had gotten involved. Now she feared what he might do if he were to find out. Donovan took just about anything as betrayal, and Val knew how he dealt with traitors.
“We have gotten too close,” she told Balak. “It’s time we stop playing with fire.”
Balak didn’t agree with her. That was obvious by the way he grunted under his breath and pushed her back up against the cold stone wall. Val could feel his anger at the suggestion through his grip that held her. She didn’t want to be here anymore. More than anything, she just wanted to break free from his iron hands and get as far away from these caves as she could. She might only have known in part, but she knew what the Nephilim were capable of when they became angry, and she didn’t want to be close to that. They didn’t exactly have the best self-control when these situations presented themselves.
“Balak, please…” she said in a small voice.
Ironic that that would be the one thing that caused his grip to soften.
Balak didn’t say anything else to her as he turned away and left her there, and as Val walked away from him, she shook off her fear and told herself it was unfounded. Balak wasn’t going to do anything to her. He needed her too much. If he were to kill her, he couldn’t coerce her into sex again, and as dumb as he may have been, she knew he would realize that.
In other words, she owned him.
No, Val didn’t need to concern herself with fear over this primordial Naphil doing something rash. She had more important things to worry about, like staying unreadable to Donovan when he returned and following through with the last assignment he gave her: Causing an unbridgeable rift between Kyla James and the boy she had never deserved.
. . . . .
Falling face-down on her bed once she shut the door behind her, Kyla covered the back of her head with her pillow so it smashed her into her covers. She wanted to scream, but she knew this flimsy pillow wouldn’t muffle the sound, and as good as it might feel, it wouldn’t be worth having to explain to Caden why she was losing her mind. He already had enough questions about that.
It was so stupid. Kyla knew better than to let him get that close to her again, especially now when she was emotionally and physically screwed up on every imaginable level. She hadn’t meant to do it; Caden just had a way of getting to her like that. And as far as she was concerned, right now that really sucked.
Kyla didn’t know why it was still so hard for her to trust him, especially considering how he had so continuously proven his loyalty to her since he had returned from Nashville. But after the gaping hole Nathaniel had just gouged out of her heart by leaving her when he told her he would keep her safe, Kyla didn’t think she could take another hit like that; especially not from Caden. In so many ways, he was all she had left. So naturally, she pushed him away.
It was backwards and stupid, the logic that compelled her actions, but she could no more control it than she could control anything else. That was what frustrated her now as she sat in her room with her head pressed against the cold hard surface of her desk. She couldn’t control any of this. Nothing. And there was no feeling that left Kyla more panicked than that. As soon as control was stripped away from her, that was when bad things happened. That was when she was abandoned. That was when people died. That was when she lost whatever trace remains still existed of her heart.
Kyla isolated herself like that for days. She still went into work, but kept an intentional distance between herself and whoever she happened to be working with on any given shift, be it Val or their new manager, Morgan, or Cody Fletcher (who had just gotten a job there with her help.) Kyla was starting to regret that now. Being in close proximity or proximity of any sort with someone so connected to Caden did not make her feel any safer. But luckily they were still training Cody, so they had plenty to keep them busy without any lulls that would encourage conversation. Still, by the second training shift Cody worked, it managed to come up. Kyla’s direct avoidance of Caden’s phone calls probably didn’t help with that.
She did a pretty bad job of dodging Cody’s questions about it. Actually, she didn’t really dodge them at all; she just sort of walked away and didn’t answer him. It wasn’t like Caden didn’t deserve the silent treatment from her. After all, how long had he gone in Nashville avoiding her phone calls?
Kyla felt guilty, linking this to some sort of payback. That wasn’t what it was about at all. She had already forgiven him for that…or at least she told herself she had.
Making a face at the unpleasant thought, Kyla resumed scrubbing out the blenders in the hot soapy water at the back of the coffee shop. Doing things like this methodical, mindless scrubbing and going through the motions of any pointless, typical day helped her to cope with the sting in her chest. That was why she had picked up so many shifts since Nathaniel left. The worst times were when she was alone, which was a little ironic for her considering that that had always been what she naturally retreated to. It was also ironic that she was pushing away the people who wanted to be there for her now; Caden, Matthew, even Cody. As much as she wanted to let them close to her, she couldn’t. They weren’t safe because they couldn’t know the truth.
Actually, Kyla would prefer to stay here in the coffee shop with the girl she despised above all things than to be with anyone she loved right now. There was some kind of safeguard there with Val that she didn’t understand, something that enabled her to switch into robot-mode and go numb to it all. Even in that place, though, Kyla couldn’t escape her memory. Every moment, the image of Nathaniel’s face plagued, and every time she saw it, that sickening worry rose up in her again.
She just wanted to know that he was okay. She didn’t want to deal with anyone until she knew that. In hopes of avoiding that stabbing fear she felt at the thought of him, Kyla told herself over and over that she shouldn’t care, that Nathaniel leaving was a blessing and the safest thing for her.
He isn’t human, she reminded herself over and over. That’s the only thing that should matter. But it didn’t.
Kyla knew he was dangerous. She knew what he had told her and that he had almost gotten her killed. But no matter what Nathaniel called himself, she still only saw him as an angel.
. . . . .
Caden was agitated. He knew he had to do something, but he didn’t know what his first step should be. He had to find out what Nathaniel Blake was hiding. He had to find out what really happened on that mountain. But he also had no idea how to accomplish either of these things.
Interrogating Alexa had only gotten him so far, and even if she had backed up Kyla’s claim that Nathaniel wasn’t the one who had beaten her and left her bleeding on the trail in the woods, Caden knew from the deepest place inside of him that Nathaniel was still to blame. That one, even Kyla couldn’t deny.
Driving down Highway 24 and into the city limits of Woodland Park, Caden paid next to no attention to the way he was driving. His mind was moving faster than the wheels on his Jeep, and it wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Through every scenario he had thought through and every idea he came up with, Caden had concluded that the only play he had at this point was to talk to the one other person who wanted to get to the bottom of this as much as he did. He had to talk to Matthew James…but he needed an excuse to do it.
That was why he was speeding down the highway, trying to come up with a reason to show up at the James’ condo. He could always use the excuse that he was stopping by to see Kyla, but Matthew was smart, and chances were he would see right through that.
So what if he does? Caden thought to himself. Even if he straight-up told Matthew what he was up to, the kid would probably be more than eager to help him.
Caden knew Matthew was frustrated by this situation with Nathaniel. He was counting on that. That was why he decided to drop by the condo “to see Kyla” that night, hoping she wouldn’t actually be there so he could question her little brother without her breathing over his shoulder.
Judging by Matthew’s frustration the last time Caden saw him, Caden didn’t think it would even take effort on his part to get something out of him. Chances were, if he gave him the opportunity, Matthew would probably spill everything he knew. Caden was counting on that too. What he wasn’t counting on when he went down there was Loni answering the door.
Caden couldn’t remember the last time he had actually stood face to face with the woman. It certainly hadn’t gotten any less disturbing over time. Loni eyed him skeptically where he stood on the porch, and he thought he might have been more comfortable treading water in a shark tank.
“Is…Kyla home?” Caden asked nervously.
Loni narrowed her eyes even further. Surprisingly, she looked more sober than she normally did. Not that it improved her personality much…
Loni mumbled something to him that sounded like a “no” and without explaining any further or telling him where Kyla was, she walked back over to the basement door and trudged down the stairs, leaving Caden standing there confused.
“Okay?” he said out loud to himself as he stepped cautiously through the door.
Caden looked around to see if Matthew was there, but he didn’t see him anywhere. Then he heard the shower upstairs. It struck him as fortune when he took the variables of this situation into account. He could wait for Matthew to get out of the shower, and in the meantime he could do some investigating in Kyla’s bedroom that even her little brother was unlikely to permit. Caden didn’t give himself time to question the morality of this decision. He just slipped up the stairs and into her room as quietly as he could and started looking around for something, anything that might give him a clue about Nathaniel Blake.
Unfortunately, he found nothing.
Kyla’s room was immaculate, for one, which forced him to rummage through drawers and look through her closet, but even then he didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Shutting the top drawer of her desk in frustration, Caden looked around him, desperate to find something so he wasn’t doing this in vain. His guilt was starting to catch up to him, but he kept telling himself, She forced you into this position, to try and make himself feel better about it.
Kyla was the one who wouldn’t tell him the truth, and in order to protect her, he had to know what was going on. That was why he was doing this. Even rationalizing it to himself that way, Caden still felt dirty; enough that he stopped looking altogether. That, and he wasn’t finding anything.
Seeing a notepad and a pen on Kyla’s desk, he started scribbling out a note for her to let her know that he had dropped by. Somehow he felt a little better about the whole thing if he had that excuse. Caden shook his head as he wrote on the notepad. That was a lie and he knew it. Writing her a stupid note wasn’t going to make him feel any better about the fact that he had completely violated her trust. Or about the fact that there was no trust between them at all anymore.
. . . . .
As the warm water from the shower ran over Kyla’s scarred and scathed body, she wondered if this feeling would ever go away. She tried to fight it, the images that appeared in her mind when she closed her eyes, but she couldn’t really fight what she didn’t want to lose. Those memories were all of Nathaniel Blake she had left, and even if they cut her, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting them go.
Kyla wrapped a towel around herself when she stepped out of the shower. She tried not to let her eyes pass over her reflection, but they caught the edge of the mirror anyway and made her want to wretch. The water had washed away the makeup she’d been using to cover up her scars, and when it wasn’t in place she looked particularly atrocious. Putting it into perspective, Kyla knew she shouldn’t be worrying with anything so vain when the alternative would have meant her death, but she still found herself wondering if they would ever fully heal.
Glancing down both ends of the hallway when she peeked around the corner, she saw that the coast was clear and ran for her bedroom. Slipping inside and attempting to shut the door closed behind her, Kyla screamed and missed when she saw the boy standing over her desk.
Caden jerked his head up, his face flushing a guilty shade of red when she backed up self-consciously and held her towel securely in place.
“I’m sorry,” he rambled quickly. “I didn’t know where you were so I was just leaving you a…” He stopped mid-sentence when his eyes fell on her shoulders.
Kyla could feel his gaze as it burned into her skin, and when she realized what he could see, she felt her face go white.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped at him.
“I…” Caden tried to explain, but as he stared at the scars over her chest, he seemed to have lost the rest of his words.
“Get out!” Kyla demanded. She tried to cover herself up even though she knew the effort was wasted.
Caden didn’t argue. In fact, she’d never seen him so eager to get out of her room.
Sitting down at her desk shakily once he left, she rested her forehead in her hand, telling herself she could find a way to explain this to him. Then she thought of the night of the attack when he found her on the mountain, of how adamant he had been to find out the truth and how reluctantly he had agreed to let it go.
Looking down to see what Caden had left on her desk, Kyla found a note scribbled in his chicken scratch that read:
Just stopped by to see how you were. If you need me, you know where I am. -Cade
Kyla frowned and looked out the window, watching him leave quickly. She did not know how to make this okay.
. . . . .
Caden was trembling as he drove, so shaken he could hardly keep his eyes focused enough to drive in the lines on Highway 24. His emotion was rising to the point of near-incapacitation. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to cry. So he did both.
Punching his steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckle crack open and bleed, he jerked the now-bloodied steering wheel to the right and pulled his Jeep over on the side of the road. Helplessly, he slumped over as his breath began to fail him. He could feel water filling his eyes, even if he was determined not to blink so he wouldn’t let it fall; but after the picture of Kyla’s body flashed through his mind again, he couldn’t stop it.
Tears streamed down his face as he slammed his eyes closed, wanting the image to disappear…wanting this all to go away or at least to understand.
What was happening to her?
. . . . .
Kyla didn’t have to work very hard to avoid Caden the next day. He didn’t even try to call her. At one point she actually thought she would have preferred that he would make the attempt, even if she only would have blown him off again, just so she could know that his mind was in the same place. Right now, she didn’t know where his mind was, and the thought of that scared her senseless. Especially after what he had seen.
When Kyla came downstairs that afternoon, she found Matthew playing a videogame. She hesitated for a second when she saw him and thought about going back upstairs, not wanting to face him again yet since that had been so awkward and uncomfortable every time she had since the night on the mountain; but Matthew did something he almost never did and paused the game to initiate conversation with her.
“Why won’t you talk to Caden?” he asked her point blank.
That caught Kyla off guard. She was working up what would probably end up being a really trite answer to give him when the phone rang.
It was Melissa Howell.
“Hey sweetie!” she greeted Kyla in her motherly southern drawl.
“Hey,” Kyla said back nervously. She wasn’t nervous to talk to Melissa, just nervous about what she might want.
As it turned out, she wanted Kyla to come up and babysit that night since she and Randy had a press dinner of some sort to attend in Denver and the neighbor who was going to sit for her had bailed at the last second when her own kid got sick.
Kyla hesitated, but then Melissa said, “I would have had Caden do it, but he’s at band practice with the boys.”
That changed things for her. “What time do you want me up there?” Kyla asked.
Melissa was more than grateful to have her help. When Kyla hung up the phone, she looked toward the living room and asked Matthew, “Wanna come with?”
Matthew looked toward the basement where Loni had holed herself up again. He shut off the videogame he was playing and stood eagerly to his feet.
Kyla wasn’t looking forward to the car ride up to the Howell’s with Matthew, but no matter how awkward things were between them, she still loved her little brother and had no desire to leave him there alone with Loni…at least not at any point that she didn’t absolutely have to.
The second they got into the car, Kyla decided to deal with the awkward tension that was sure to be there between her and Matthew by cranking Sleeping Giant and rolling down the windows. Matthew didn’t complain. He was becoming more and more partial to Sleeping Giant, even the heavier stuff they had that he couldn’t stand at first. That was just the way that band grew on you, though, and the reason Kyla loved them so much. Sure, there was a lot about them that tied her to her past, but she had an uncanny ability to block out things like lyrics and pretend the songs weren’t about what they actually were. Caden wouldn’t like it if he knew that she did this when she was listening to them, but then Caden didn’t like or approve of a lot of things she did. If Caden had his way, she would open up to everything again, at the cost of her getting her heart ripped out like it was before. If he had his way, she would tell him the truth about Nathaniel Blake…
Kyla shuddered at the thought. No, she told herself. That is never going to happen.
As soon as they got to the Howell’s, Melissa shoved Sadie in Kyla’s arms, kissed her cheek and thanked her profusely as she and Randy bolted out the front door. She didn’t even both with instructions since Kyla had babysat the kids so many times before, and since Melissa trusted her so fully.
Walking into the living room, Kyla saw that the twins, Jackson and Jaime, were busy fighting over who got to play with whatever toy Jackson had pulled from their toy chest, and when Kyla went over to settle the dispute, that was when she saw the little blonde girl she had been slightly afraid of seeing lately sitting at the kitchen counter watching her.
The look on Alexa’s face left Kyla unsettled; not unlike it usually did, but even more so than normal. The sideways glance the girl shot Matthew right after that was even further unsettling. Kyla tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy. Addressing it wasn’t an option since she the last thing she wanted to do was bring to light anything that had been happening lately that might make Alexa look at her like that. But the more Alexa studied her that night no matter what she was doing, the more tempted Kyla was to call her out on it.
She acted strange like that the entire night, and what was worse, Matthew was acting just about the same way. That was what really made Kyla uncomfortable. She was used to this from Alexa; not her little brother. She didn’t know what was going on with either of them.
After Kyla fixed macaroni and cheese for the kids (the Spiderman-shaped kind that made Jackson and Jamie go ballistic) she put Sadie to bed and put a movie on for the boys. And it was as she was setting up Finding Nemo that Caden came home.
It startled her to see him walk through the door, but it startled him even more to see her there in his living room. Clearly, he had been expecting their neighbor to babysit; not Kyla. That was obvious by the unreal amount of tension between the two of them from the moment he walked in. It was weighted there in the air, thick and constricting. She hated it.
Caden was polite, but he didn’t go out of his way to talk to her, and he didn’t waste any time in the house. He just grabbed a chilled bottle of A&W root beer from the fridge and took it to his room.
Kyla knew she needed to run damage control. As terrified as she was of confronting Caden right now, she was even more terrified of leaving it alone.
“Matt, can you and Lex watch the twins for me and keep an eye on Sadie for a bit?” she asked as she watched Caden walk across the backyard.
Matthew gave Alexa a glance as if asking her whether or not he should agree to it. That bothered Kyla.
Alexa didn’t make an affirmative outward gesture like a nod or anything, but something in her face must have told Matthew “yes,” because he agreed to it when he looked away from her.
“Sure,” he told Kyla. “Do whatever you need to do.”
She looked away from the window long enough to give her brother a questioning look, but she didn’t waste time with that. She just took a deep breath and made her way outside to Caden’s room.
He was sitting on his bed picking at his guitar when she walked in, and she stood there, waiting for him to say something to her.
He didn’t.
“You gonna talk to me?” Kyla finally asked him. She knew she should have started with something less abrasive, like “hey” or “how was band practice?” but his ignoring her and messing with his guitar was already doing a number on her more irritating defense mechanisms.
“I’m not the one shutting you out,” Caden said, still not setting his guitar down.
“Funny,” Kyla mumbled. “It sure feels like it.”
He didn’t respond, just kept playing, and it wasn’t a song she recognized.
“What song is that?” she asked him.
That was what finally made him stop strumming and set his guitar back on its stand in the corner of the room. He didn’t answer her.
“It’s good…” she told him.
Caden smirked and shook his head as if she had told some kind of joke.
“Caden, I’m sorry,” Kyla said. It was hard for her to force the words when she only wanted to be defensive, and he didn’t give her much grace, considering.
“I’m not looking for an apology, Kyla. I’m looking for an explanation.”
She frowned.
“Seriously, what’s with the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde routine?” he asked.
Her frown turned to a cringe and she told him, “I could try to explain, but I can’t make any promises.”
Caden didn’t like that. “Since when has the truth been so hard for you?” he asked her.
Kyla mumbled, “Since it got really complicated.”
He was quiet for a moment as he stared at her, read her. Then finally he said, “You can’t tell me this isn’t about him.”
Kyla tensed up at the mention of Nathaniel and she knew that the expression on her face gave her away, but she couldn’t hide it.
Caden grunted under his breath in frustration. “I know I told you I would back off,” he said, “but things have changed a little since that point.”
Kyla twitched uncomfortably, her eyes darting back and forth across Caden’s room so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“I would really like it if you could tell me what happened,” Caden said.
She was surprised at how calm he sounded and she knew he had to be working hard at it. “What changed?” she asked him.
That about drove him insane. Caden looked up from where he was pressing his fingers into his head with disgust on his face. “You want to know what changed?” he asked her.
Kyla wasn’t so sure she did anymore.
Caden stood up and walked over to her with a stone cold expression on his face. Then, grabbing the zipper at her neck of the jacket she was wearing, he jerked it down, pulling it off of her shoulders. “That’s what changed!” he exclaimed.
Kyla’s eyes grew wide as she stared forward in fear, but she didn’t pull away from him. She knew he had seen her scars and she knew that covering them up now wouldn’t do her any good, so she didn’t move a muscle.
Caden was fuming. He ran his fingers through his hair and paced back and forth like he always did when he was really, really mad, but Kyla couldn’t tell if he looked more like he was going to yell at her or cry.
“You’re seriously going to stand there and tell me he didn’t do that to you?” Caden asked her in a voice so strangled and choked it hardly came out.
“He didn’t,” Kyla said.
Caden pressed his lips together and shook his head. He slowly forced himself to look down at her body, and as he did he brought a shaking hand up to her. Tracing the scars at her shoulders with his fingertips, a tortured expression came onto his face. “Then Kyla,” he said, “who did?”
She flinched away from him at the thought of Donovan, at the memory of his hands all over her and his venomous breath in her face…of the pain she had felt that night as he crushed what must have been every bone in her body.
“I told you…” she tried to say.
Caden cut her off. “Yeah, and I know that was a lie. No random hitchhiker did this to you or you would have let me go to the police.” Kyla fell quiet again and Caden begged her helplessly, “Who are you trying to protect?”
“I’m not trying to protect anyone,” she insisted. “I just don’t think you would believe me.”
“You might be surprised what I would believe,” he said.
Kyla made a face and turned away from him. Seeing that he was causing her pain, (and seeming to realize for the first time since he’d jerked her zipper down that she wasn’t wearing another shirt underneath this over the black sports bra she had on) he pulled her jacket back up over her shoulders and carefully zipped it up again.
“I’m sorry,” Caden said when he realized how exposed he had left her skin. Obviously he hadn’t counted on her not wearing layers tonight. The fact that it was well over ninety degrees today should have given him an idea of that, but he was a guy and guys didn’t think about that sort of thing.
Kyla still didn’t move and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. Seeing how angry it made Caden to see her like this, she couldn’t help but imagine what he would do if he had seen her before Nathaniel had healed her.
“Kyla, you can talk to me…”
She felt sick at the thought of pulling Caden into this twisted nightmare with her, just as she had told Nathaniel when he suggested that they do so. Without even wanting it to come, Kyla remembered what Donovan played through her head that night on the mountain, the images of Caden’s slow, torturous murder; and that was all it took for her to make up her mind. She knew she couldn’t risk that. Kyla could bear almost anything more than the thought of something happening to him.
“I need to get back in and watch the kids,” she told him.
“They’re fine,” Caden argued. “Matt and Lex are in there with them.”
Kyla dropped her head. “Caden, I just can’t…”
He pressed his lips together and nodded robotically, looking like he wanted to put a hole in his wall. But he let her leave.
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