I followed him to the door. “I’ll text when I’m done and you can come over and tuck me in.”
“’Kay,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “I’ll be waiting.”
And knowing that had me all warm and fuzzy. Wiggling my fingers at him, I closed the door and went back to the kitchen, grabbed my stuff and a glass of OJ. Happy that an all-out brouhaha was avoided with Daemon, I went upstairs and bumped open my door.
I came to a complete stop.
A girl sat on my bed, hands folded primly in her lap. It took me a moment to recognize her, because her hair hung in limp strands around her pale face and her almond-shaped eyes weren’t hidden behind purple or pink glasses.
“Carissa,” I said, stunned. “How…how did you get in here?”
She stood wordlessly. Her hands extended out. The overhead light reflected off a bracelet I also recognized—black stone with fire inside.
What the hell…? Luc had that stone. Why would—?
Static crackled in the air and there was a smell of burned ozone a second before whitish-blue light radiated from Carissa’s hands. The bracelet was no longer a concern.
Shocked into a stupor, I stared at my friend in disbelief. “Crap.”
Carissa attacked.
Chapter 24
The bolt of energy slammed into my history textbook, burning a hole right through. It fizzled out before it could touch me, but the book casualty told me what I needed to know.
Carissa was not a friendly.
And that little display of the Source was not a warning.
I dropped the book and darted to the left as she lunged at me. OJ sloshed over the side of my glass, covering my fingers. Why was I still holding it? My brain was so not catching up to this turn of events.
She shot toward me, and I did the only thing I could think of in that moment. I threw the glass at her face. Glass shattered as she stumbled back, raising her hands to her eyes. Sticky liquid and glass coursed down her cheeks, mixing with tiny flecks of blood.
I bet that stung like a bitch.
“Carissa,” I said, backing up. “I have no idea how this happened, but I’m a friend—I can help you! Just calm down. Okay?”
She wiped at her eyes, flinging liquid against the walls. When her gaze met mine, there wasn’t an ounce of recognition in it. Her eyes were frighteningly empty and vast. Like months had been washed away, and I was nothing to her. There was zilch going on behind those eyes.
My eyes had to be deceiving me or I was dreaming, because she was definitely a hybrid and that didn’t make sense. Carissa didn’t know about aliens. She was just a normal girl. Quiet and maybe a little bit shy.
But she’d been out with the flu…
Oh, dear baby kittens… She’d been mutated.
Her head cocked to the side, eyes narrowing.
“Carissa, please, it’s me. Katy. You know me,” I pleaded. My back hit the desk as I eyed the open door behind her. “We’re friends. You don’t want to do this.”
She stalked toward me, like that freaky female terminator after John Connor.
And I was so John Connor.
I drew in a breath, but it got stuck. “We go to school together—we have trig and we eat lunch together. You wear glasses—really funky glasses.” I didn’t know what to say, but I kept babbling, hoping to somehow reach her, because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. “Carissa, please.”
But she apparently had no qualms over doing some damage to me.
The air charged with static again. I lurched to the side as she let go of the Source again. The tail end of it singed my sweater. A smell of burned hair and cotton wafted into the air as I spun toward my desk. There was a low whine from the desk and then smoke billowed out of my closed laptop.
I gaped.
My precious, perfectly brand new laptop I cherished like one would a small child.
Son of a mother…
Friend or not, it was so on.
I lunged at Carissa, taking her down to my bedroom floor. My hands went around her hair and lifted. A stream of dark strands billowed, and then I slammed her head down. There was a satisfactory thud and she let out a low squeal of pain.
“You stupid—” Carissa tilted her pelvis up, wrapped her legs around my hips and rolled, gaining the upper hand in seconds. She was like a damn ninja—who knew? She slammed my head back much harder and damn, did paybacks suck. Starbursts clouded my vision. Sharp pain exploded along my jaw, momentarily startling me.
And then something inside me snapped.
Blistering rage welled up, coating my skin, setting a fire to every cell in my body. There was a heady rush of power centered in my chest. It flowed like lava through my veins, reaching the tips of my fingers. A veil of whitish-red fell over my eyes.
Time was slowing down again to an infinite crawl. Heat from the vents blew the curtains out, and the flimsy material reached toward us and then stopped, suspending in air. The small puffs of gray and white smoke froze. And in the back of my mind, I realized that they weren’t really frozen, but I was moving so fast that everything appeared to have been stopped.
I didn’t want to hurt her but I was going to stop her.
Arching back, I slammed both hands into her chest. Carissa flew into my dresser. Bottles of lotion rattled and fell over, clunking off her head.
I leaped to my feet, breathing heavily. The Source raged in me, demanded to be tapped into, to be used again. Holding back was like daring not to breathe.
“Okay,” I gasped. “Let’s just take a moment and calm down. We can talk this out, figure out what’s going on.”
Slowly, painfully, Carissa climbed to her feet. Our eyes locked and the absent look in hers sent shivers to my very core.