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Ryodan had dropped me off and left, seething, a few minutes ago.
I couldn’t help it. I needed to be alone. I’d gotten used to being alone. Something was happening to me and I wanted time to focus my brain on it.
I’d had to rest for five solid minutes before I could push up from the floor, leaving the shattered, collapsing club behind. I wasn’t about to let anyone pick me up and carry me out. Although I no longer felt the exhilarating, terrifying wild voltage inside me, I was taking no chances.
While I’d gathered my strength, Lor had picked through the rubble, searching for my shoes, but they were nowhere to be found, which pissed me off because I loved those shoes. I’d worn them once. The others had remained in beast form, in case the Fae decided to try to circle back for another attack, which I found highly improbable. They’d gone two years without a single threat, and we’d just killed a hundred of them, if not more. The possibility of death is something Fae avoid like humans avoid Ebola. I wanted to ponder the ramifications of our actions tonight, but at the moment all I could think about was myself.
My confusion had abated but I was still shaky and weak. Ryodan, meticulous planner that he is, had snacks stashed in the Ferrari and I’d inhaled candy bars, one after the other, before shoving half a bag of chips in my mouth.
I glanced at the mirror and raised a brow thinking, wryly, Aha that’s why they were all staring at me like that.
Blackness had taken more of my pale Irish skin. Not only was my left arm a thorny black glove, the stain had spread further into my flesh.
Exotic black flames arced up the left side of my neck, curving over my jaw, my cheek, to my temple and into my left brow. The pointed tip of one of those flames ended a mere inch from my mouth. The mouth that was suddenly acutely aware it hadn’t done nearly enough kissing.
The Nine had closed in protectively around me as we walked to the car, which I found hysterically funny, given what I’d just done. Killed a prince without using the sword, destroyed a club.
Ryodan had argued with me all the way back to Sanctuary, demanding I return to Chester’s with him. Demanding we talk.
Lacking the energy to argue, I’d looked at him and said simply, Please, I very much need to be alone right now.
I know Ryodan. Had I argued, he’d have debated me forever. But my quiet plea had taken the bite out of the wolf and, bristling with barely restrained testosterone and anger, he’d parked and escorted me to my door, saying tightly, If you need me, call. Text. Throw up a bloody Bat signal. If I don’t hear from you first thing in the morning, I’ll be on your fucking doorstep, beating down the door.
Only after I promised had he growlingly conceded to leave.
I stepped back and assessed my naked body in the mirror. I like my body. It’s strong and lean and suits me. I should be horrified by what was happening to me but I couldn’t help but think I looked kind of…beautiful. My entire left arm was covered with lovely dark thorns. I had no idea why I thought they were lovely but I did. They weren’t ugly or scary looking. They were as gently curved as the thorns on a rose, larger with slightly blunted tips. I ran my hand over them lightly and shivered. They were cold but extraordinarily sensitive, as if entire clusters of nerve-endings were nestled at the tips.
The barbs ended just beneath my shoulder but the inky blackness had seized territory on the left side of my torso as well, from beneath my armpit to my waist, shooting more of those ebony flames across my stomach and breasts. On someone else, I’d have found it wicked cool, an otherworldly tattoo, Woman of Obsidian Fire.
On me, although it was stunning, not so much.
Unless it went away, I would never again feel a man’s hands touch my breasts. Unless it went away, I would never again taste Ryodan’s kiss. Faces touch when you kiss. There was no way a man could get near my mouth with more than a chaste peck and I’m not a chaste peck kind of woman, as I’d amply demonstrated this morning.
God, that felt like a lifetime ago.
I’d have kissed him harder, longer, better, if I’d known this was going to happen by nightfall.
I forced my thoughts to focus, turned from the mirror and began to tally what I knew.
Fact: I stabbed a Hunter when I was fourteen and my hand turned black for days.
Fact: It kept happening over the years.
Fact: I’d recently developed an extraordinary superpower, the ability to shoot highly destructive bolts of lightning from my hand, capable of blowing structures apart and killing Fae royalty. I smirked a little. Ha, take that, the Nine! I’m as badass as you!
Fact: Each time I used the power, more of me turned black and icy.
I frowned. Inaccurate. The blackness hadn’t expanded when I killed Bridget. Nor when I used it to break the paralysis spell. Or had it—just not where I could see it? Staining deeper beneath my skin, opposed to wider. Were my bones black now?
Fact: When I used the power, it drained me to a degree that appeared to be increasing with use, or perhaps with the magnitude of use.
Fact: If anyone touched the black part of me, they would die. I would kill them.
“Poison Ivy much?” I muttered. That wasn’t who I’d planned to be when I grew up. She was Batman’s nemesis. I was supposed to be the Bat, only with superpowers.
Fact: If I kept using those incredible lightning bolts, it seemed highly probable I would turn entirely black. I wondered if it would affect my hair, too. Would my eyes turn black? I tried to envision myself all black. Pretty odd.
I stepped into the shower and stood under the spray pondering whether, as Shazam had suggested, I might be able to make it go away. Maybe if I never used it again the stain would retreat and I’d return to normal. It had retreated once, early on, to beneath my elbow. Was it cumulative somehow? Was its mysterious endgame inevitable and irreversible once it had begun?
