Stained (11 page)

"Stop!" Julia cried.

The old man's wide eyes rolled into his head, and his gun clattered onto the porch. Cayne's eyes were closed, and he swayed drunkenly.

"Cayne?"

She opened her sight, and saw something that horrified her worse than the blood that seemed to cover every inch of him. Bright, silver tendrils stretched from his aura and wrapped themselves around the man, whose own brown light was becoming dimmer by the minute.

"Cayne!" Julia walked right up to him and gave him a hard push.

Immediately he released the man, and when he looked at Julia his eyes were clearer. She
wrapped an arm around his waist and steered him to the guy with the goatee.

"Cayne," she said through clenched teeth, "tell this nice man how much we'd like to borrow his car."

Chapter 15

Julia cracked the window of the pearly Audi, the fourth car they'd liberated in as many days, and glanced at Cayne.

He'd manipulated the witnesses' minds. His pretty little power didn't fix broken cars or busted buildings, but he'd convinced them to forget his and Julia's faces. He'd convinced two police cruisers to stop following them, too. And after they ditched Goatee Man's Buick, Cayne had even been able to convince someone else to donate their car.

But Julia wasn't worried about twelve frightened Utahians. Or the cops. Or a car-less woman and her son.
She was worried about the old guy Cayne had almost taken out. Yeah, he'd been injured--maybe even dying--but that didn't give him a right to leech someone else's energy. What did it say about him that he'd tried? What did it mean that he'd been
able
to try? It seemed like every hour she learned something new about him, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know what she'd find next.

They'd been idling at the helm of a wooded park for going on six minutes--Julia practicing her patience and Cayne staring out the passenger's side window. An old street lamp bathed his face in brown light, which somehow made him even more attractive than he normally was. Just when she was thinking up conversation starters, Cayne's jaw clenched, shifting the shadows on his face.

"Well?"

He sighed. "It's kind of a conditioned response."

"Conditioned."

"Trained."

Julia bit her lip. "I know what 'conditioned' means."

He rubbed tired-looking eyes, and she felt a quick twist of nerves. She could get all sweaty if she thought about the fight the wrong way, so she was trying not to think about it at all. Except the end. Where Cayne had almost killed an old person.

"I know what conditioned means," she said slowly. "I'm waiting for you to explain how that makes it okay."

Cayne's eyes found the windshield. She saw his lips quirk. He rubbed one hand over his face, wiping the expression away. "I never finished my story." He clarified: "Explanation."

"I'm listening."

He rubbed a hand back through his hair and glanced at her with a look she couldn't read. When he spoke, his voice sounded flat and out of tune. "I don't remember anything from before three years ago. I woke up in a logger's camp in Alberta. I knew my name, and I knew
Samyaza's. I had this image of him sneering. And I knew that he'd taken my memories. But I don't know why.

"I learned fast back at the cabin that I wasn't 'normal.' A few seconds after opening my eyes, I drained half the life from one of my rescuers. I didn't mean to. It was instinct."

Cayne's mouth bunched, and he was quiet. Remembering. Or maybe trying to.

"Other things came back in little pieces. It didn't take me long to start directing people's wills. And my body... I left six days after they found me near dead. In six days I'd recovered from broken limbs and ribs, serious blood loss, and I re-grew half of my right hand." He laughed, dry and low. "I was pretty sure whatever I was, I wasn't human.

"It was easy to find other Nephilim. I could...sense them. Almost like a smell." He wrinkled his nose and shrugged. "From there, it was just relearning some of what I'd lost. I found I was a Hunter about a month after I left the camp. This appeared in the middle of a fight." His fingers spread, and his wicked-looking crimson dagger materialized in his hand. "It's my blood. All Hunters have one."

Julia gaped; the blade was much freakier up close. Almost a foot long, it seemed to pulse as Cayne twisted his wrist. She opened her Sight and saw it glowing silver. She was trying to decide whether or not to prod it when, like magic, the thing disappeared.

"I spent two years trying to relearn everything. Then I went after Samyaza."

As his story sunk in, Julia felt empathy. They were, in a sense, the same. Cut off from a part of their history. Not whole. "No one looked for you? Or came after you?"

"I stayed under the radar. Not that there's any reason to believe anyone would look for me. Hunters are loners."

His eyes found hers, and Julia couldn't break the gaze. This...confusion so colored who he was, that not knowing of it had hidden a part of him. Now she wanted to laugh, or maybe hug him. Instead, she said, "So why are the other Nephilim after you now?"

"Samyaza," Cayne muttered. "If they're telling the truth, Samyaza gave the order. Probably the same night I revealed myself to him. The night I dropped in on you."

Julia had a million questions, and this time she knew he didn't have answers. But there was still one thing to address. "About what you did to the old man."

"It wouldn't have happened normally."

Julia bit her tongue. It struck her that a large part of him was probably pristine, programmed, a bundle of uninformed instinct.

"I called it a conditioned behavior because it is. It's instinct. It helps me heal." As evidence, Cayne lifted his shirt. Where a jagged gash tore his left side not twenty minutes before, there was now a large, healthy scab. "I locate the closest, easiest source of energy and absorb it."

Julia clutched the wheel.

"I get your distaste for it," he said bitterly. "But it isn't something that's easy to control."

Cayne traced the window with his thumb, silent for a moment. "I've got some friends that I would trust to keep you safe." He glanced at Julia. "We were going to see one--Andre."

Julia waited for him to elaborate, but he appeared lost in thought. Stomach sinking, she said, "So?"

"Maybe it would be better if he helped you."

"Um...are you
insane
?!"

Cayne seemed startled. "I can deal with Samyaza on my own."

"That's not the point!"

"I know." He looked up, meeting her eyes. "I'm thinking of you, too."

"How so?"

"I don't know a thing about my past. It--"

"I don't care."

Cayne shifted impatiently. "I might have hundreds of Nephilim assassins coming for me."

"And I've got the king of them after me! Maybe you remember what we found this afternoon? A bunch of dead people who have the same birthmark I do?" Julia hardened her tone. "You are
not
passing me off like an old piece of luggage."

Cayne opened his mouth, but she talked over him. "I was bait at first, I know. And I would have probably been dead without you. But when you decided to leave and I decided to go too, things changed. You said it yourself: We're in this together." Julia took a deep breath and tried to hold on to her courage. "I think other things have changed, too. I...care about you, now. As a friend. So I want to stay together.

"But you've gotta stop with the almost killing people stuff, okay? Instinct or not, you can still make a choice."

Cayne glanced at the clouded window.

"Just let me heal you next time."

Finally, he nodded, and Julia pulled away from the curb.

Chapter 16

Cayne was picky about their night's stay. It took him thirty minutes to settle on a modest motel just off the Interstate, and ten more to circle the parking lot. Finally, after he'd patrolled all three floors three times, he sent Julia into the lobby to request one of the corner rooms on the ground floor. All three were filled, but as "luck" would have it, the occupants of room 107 decided to check out minutes later.

Cayne led her into the tiny, humid room, dropped their bags by the door, and eased himself onto one of the shabby twin beds, weariness dragging on his features.

Julia saw a stack of plastic cups by the sink and hurried to fill one. She felt Cayne's eyes on her as she brought it to him.

He took the cup, and his fingers brushed hers. "Thank you."

"No problem."

He drained the cup in one gulp, rested his head on the tall cedar headboard and closed his eyes. With his head back as it was, the scar on his neck gleamed in the light. Julia wondered what it was like for him, not knowing how he'd gotten it.

After what must have been an hour, Cayne jerked awake. His face looked stricken.

"What's wrong?" Julia leaned forward as he swung his feet off the bed and hunched to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He shook his head.

"Cayne--" She started to get up.

He pushed past her and, almost clumsily, hurried for the bathroom. Halfway there, he turned and looked at her. "Dream," he muttered.
And that's when Julia realized why he was always hiding behind his hair. For a badass half-demon, the boy had
no
poker face.

The shower was off in less than five minutes. Julia pressed her cheek against the bathroom door and heard the soft swish of fabric. Then nothing. Cayne didn't come out for almost half an hour. When he did, he was calm and clean and shirtless. Julia nearly swallowed her tongue.

"That was nice."

She arched a brow, trying very hard not to look at his chest--which was, because of the many blots on his torso, totally impossible. "Oh yeah?"

Cayne nodded, stepping in front of the mirror to examine his wounds. The largest stretched from the soft skin above his hip to the middle of his rib cage. His fingers traveled its length. He gingerly pressed there, and Julia saw a faint gray knot in his aura chain. Blood daggers must have packed supernatural punch, because after what happened with the old man, a meal, a nap, and several hours, it didn't look like his wounds would heal tonight.

Julia bit her lip. "I just had a thought."

"What?"

"I don't think you'll like it."

"Oh?"