I unlocked the truck with my key fob and Brand opened my door for me before going around to his side. I watched his face in the rearview mirror, how he flinched as he looked at the damage, feeling it like my truck was his.
Brand got in on the passenger’s side and I started the engine. We sat through two red lights before he spoke.
“So, I told you already that we met at a class.”
“You and Daphne.”
Brand nodded. “Right after I got back from Afghanistan. I wasn’t sleeping. I was out walking the streets, drinking, looking for trouble. It’s hard, you know? One day you’re trying to put bodies back together – guys you know, guys you can’t even recognize anymore. And then they tell you ‘that’s it!’ and you’re on a plane and a few hours later you’re at the airport and someone screams and you hit the floor and it’s just someone’s kid happy to see grandpa. People are looking at you like you’re crazy. And then the best part – they register the military gear, and they take a few steps back. Like you’re gonna go off on them. When really, you’re just scared as hell.”
“Scared that one of them is going to call security?”
Brand laughed. There was no humor in it. “Scared that you are gonna go off on them.” He looked out the window. “Scared that it’s always gonna be like that.”
I reached over and squeezed his hand. “So the class?”
“Yeah. I got picked up one night, but the cop was a Marine. Instead of taking me in, he told me about this class. For fucked-up people like me. Like Daphne. People who couldn’t forget what they’d been through.”
Brand laughed again, the same humorless way. “Bunch of us just trying to find ways to get over it. Talking, MDMR therapy, behavior modification. Those were the official ways.”
“And the unofficial?”
“Drugs. Pot, ecstasy, LSD. Worked for some. Worked for Daphne. So she took me out a few times to the raves where it was easy to get. Like I said, I tried X, but it didn’t help. Just made me crash all the harder after.”
Brand let go of my hand and rolled down the window. Warm night air drifted in. “What did help me were the raves themselves. The release that came from the energy, the people, the music, even the lights. I could feel something again. Something besides a panic attack.” Brand looked away from the window and back at me. “That’s why I wanted to take you.” He stroked the side of my face. His voice grew husky. “After what you went through this winter.”
Right. The time I lost everything that made me a Sekutar. The time he saw me weak.
“Why? You don’t think I’m fine now? Because I am.”
“I’m not saying that.” He pulled his hand away.
“I’ve fought gods. I can kill one. I don’t need a…a crutch.”
Brand sighed. “I have no doubt in your abilities. In you.”
Shit. What did I just do? Brand opened up to me, to make me feel better about his relationship with Daphne…no. No. This had very little to do with her. He hadn’t talked about Daphne before, not because he was trying to hide his feelings for her. But to hide something about himself. What he felt was his own weakness.
But just now he was brave enough to show me something about himself. His desire to connect with me in yet another way, through a shared period of weakness. To show me we’re the same kind. And I shut him out once more. To prove what?
I reached for Brand’s hand again. “Babe, I’m sorry. I’m making this about me and it’s not.”
He rubbed his thumb over the backs of my knuckles. “It’s why I became what I am. A Sekutar warrior, like you. They promised me the night terrors would go away. They said they could fix it. But I think it’s still there, only I can’t feel it, like you can’t feel fear.”
Oh, but I did now, ever since I’d lost my powers. I got them back, mostly. But the fearlessness I enjoyed never came back. Not quite. I did everything I could to hide that fact.
Brand went on. “So I’d train at DGI, go up against another Sekutar knowing I might be killed, and I wasn’t afraid. But that night in my bunk? The sweat would just pour off my body while I shook.” He barked out a laugh. “But hey, I felt no fear, right?”
“DGI wizards lied to you. Big surprise there.”
“They did and they didn’t. Anyway, that’s why I went looking for your Sekutar training videos. To see how you managed to lose your fear. To imitate you.”
He’d been open with me. I couldn’t lie to him.
“I do feel fear sometimes. Ever since last winter.” We came to another red light and I looked at Brand. “I didn’t want you to know.”
He looked back at me, nearly expressionless. “All these months together and you didn’t let me in on that. You are one difficult woman to love, Kelly Chan.”
It was the first time he’d said the word. And he was absolutely right. I didn’t make it easy for someone to love me.
So I gave him back what I could. “I was afraid when I thought you’d been electrocuted.”
He grinned. “What? You don’t want a little extra sizzle in our sex life?”
The light changed and I turned my head before he could catch the little smile on my face. “You are such a dork.”
“Well, this dork was worried about you, when that bloodsucker bit you. Especially since you’d been stabbed with the tonfa.” Brand ran his finger over the place on my neck where the fangs sank in. His touch was more clinical than sensual. “Not a mark, though.”
I moved my head so he wouldn’t feel me shiver. The thought of becoming a vampire, of tuning into something I wasn’t…well, I couldn’t think about something like that for long. I had places to go and things to kill.
“I’m fine. As you can see. It takes more to make a vampire than a little bit of blood.” Of course, that rule is for mundanes.
Brand didn’t take the hint. “But the blood affected you. You heard the music like they do. I lost you there for a sec.”
“I said. I’m fine.”
“You are now, but doesn’t the transformation take a day or two?”
I slammed on the brakes. “I don’t know how it works for Sekutar. But goddammit, if I turn you can do me the favor of taking my head off, okay?”
Brand put his hands up. “Whoa. Okay, I’m sorry. Still getting used to you being afraid of things.”
I sighed, shook my head, flipped off the asshole honking his horn behind me, and drove the last block to Saint Joe’s.
What did it matter if I turned? I’d already changed, and I didn’t like it.
I drove a block past the hospital and parked on the street instead of in the lot. Less conspicuous that way. We waited for Kess and Mikk to appear after they took Ramona and Grandma to the ballroom, and bring us straight in to the hospital rooms through a shadow. Ugh.
But what if the trip didn’t disorient me the way it usually did? Would that be a sign that I was infected? Great. I hoped that the Kachina rain washed away the vampire taint. I did feel better after. Maybe another Kachina could cure the Children of Kokopelli? I’d ask Ramona and her Grandma when we got to the ballroom.
Brand seemed lost in his own thoughts, too. And no wonder. I was being an asshole. “Thanks for telling me what happened.”
“Whatever.” He didn’t look at me.
Ouch. New tactic. “Maybe a Kachina can cure Daphne.”
He looked sideways at me. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Ramona would have said something. Or her Grandma. Seems she knows more about them.”
“It’s worth a try. We didn’t exactly get time to ask her.”
Brand finally turned to me. “Let me be the one to escort Daphne, okay? With Mikk.”
I’d planned on doing it myself, in case she changed. Brand shouldn’t have to kill a friend. But he looked determined. I didn’t want to piss him off further. “Sure. Fine.”
“Thanks.” His expression softened. He stroked my arm with the back of his hand before his fingers found mine. “Thanks for letting me handle things my way. For understanding why I’m doing this.”
“I’m not jealous. Not anymore, I guess.”
His lips quirked up for a second.
“It was just the vape fumes affecting me anyway. Brand, we’re gonna be fine after this. Whatever happens.”
He squeezed my hand, then let go. “Yeah.”
I almost said the words then, but couldn’t. Love still felt like weakness.
Brand glanced in the rearview mirror. “Here they come.”
“You ready?”
He nodded and got out of the truck. I grabbed our katanas from the back. Kess and Mikk walked up to us from a nearby shadow. I explained the change in plan, that I would go with Kess, and Brand with Mikk. We walked back to the shadow. Kess took my arm, I took a deep breath, and for the first time ever, I hoped I was in for a rough ride.