“So, you don’t want to punch me with your brain.” He blinked. “A surprisingly weird thing to say out loud, actually.”
Her lips pursed, like she was trying to hold back a laugh. “Hey, your brain doesn’t want to hit me either. If you pull those punches any harder, they’ll be going backwards.”
Not admitting it would mean lying to himself as well as her. “I guess we’re even, then.” He’d killed a man with his bare fists, and she’d done the same with her psychic ability, so no wonder they were loath to use those weapons against one another.
“Enough.” Zola gestured to Andrew. “Your instincts will not let you strike at her with strength she cannot meet. So you will watch her with Walker. See what she can do. And then…” The lion smiled, wide and predatory. “You spar against us.”
Walker appeared behind Zola. “What’s up?”
She nodded to Kat. “Andrew must see of what she is capable, so that he may fight at her back.”
“You’re supposed to come kick me around,” Kat said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I can’t punch Andrew. He’s too pretty.”
The lion laughed. “I should be offended, especially since you look happy enough to smash my ugly face in.”
Kat caught Andrew’s gaze and smiled at him like they were the only ones in the room, wide and open and lopsided. “I’m happy.”
“Uh-huh.” Walker shook his head with a laugh. “Bring it, Gabriel.”
She did fight harder, that much was obvious immediately as she ducked a blow and whirled away.
Walker was moving more slowly than usual, but the fact remained that Kat was human. She would never be as fast as a shifter, no matter how much she trained.
It was easy to see Zola’s influence in her movements, and that she’d been trained in a very different style. Defensive, her focus on evasion, until Walker lunged toward her.
Her left hand fisted as her eyes narrowed, and Walker stiffened. His foot came down too soon, at an awkward angle, and Kat struck fast, slamming into the back of his knee hard enough to send him to the floor before she hopped away.
Next to Andrew, Zola lowered her voice. “She is good, finding the right moment where a small push can devastate. But she does not press her advantage. Her instinct is always retreat.”
And it always would be. If necessary, she’d protect herself and others, but her first choice would be to extricate herself from the situation. “She’s still human, Zola. Without someone at her back, retreat is her best option.”
“Now, at her back, she has you.” Zola was tall enough that she didn’t have to tilt her head back very far to meet his eyes. “She knows how to push. You know how to finish what her push has started.”
“Teamwork.” The more he thought about it, the better it sounded. “How’s it working out for you and Walker?”
“Soon enough, you will see.” Her gaze shifted back to the fight, and her mouth softened. “For him, I have even learned more English. What will you learn for Katherine?”
A simple answer, despite how long it had taken him to come up with it. “Everything.”
“Good.” Her fingers brushed his arm. “I am proud of you. Of the work you have done, to learn. I have taught many, many students…but you are the best.”
“The most determined,” he corrected, though her words elicited a smile. “You just happen to be the best teacher.”
“Mmm, flattery will help you little.” She lifted her voice. “Enough. Walker?”
He turned, a question in his eyes. “What do you think? A demonstration, or should we jump right in?”
Before Zola could answer, a distinctive musical tune drifted up from Andrew’s bag. “Figure it out while I grab this call,” he said, already crossing the floor.
It was Patrick’s number. Andrew flicked the screen to answer, his heart pounding. “Did you find something?”
“Yeah.” Patrick’s voice sounded numb. “Bodies. A whole lot of them. It’s not quite Jonestown, but it is one ugly, ugly mess.”
“What?” Keeping his tone modulated was an impossibility, and Kat and the others turned to frown at him. “Say that again.”
“It looks like a mass-fucking-suicide up here. At least one of the bodies is the astral projector Anna saw in the woods.”
So they’d found the cult—maybe. Andrew reached for his keys. “Where are you?”
“Outside an abandoned church a few miles off of I-10. Just north of Pass Christian.” Patrick cleared his throat. “They found out Anna and I were coming, I’m guessing. This scene is fresh, and way too big for any of my contacts to cover up.”
“I’ll call Jackson.” If anyone knew how to route that sort of investigation, it would be him. “Sit tight, but you and Anna keep your eyes peeled for trouble. We’re on our way.”
Kat was breathing too fast when he hung up. Zola and Walker stared at him—but then, they would have heard Patrick’s side of the conversation. Kat watched him too, her eyes unblinking. “Something happened?”
“They found the cult.” He dropped beside his bag on the bench and grabbed his shoes. “Get your clothes. We’re going to Mississippi.”
“I need to go in.” Kat’s voice was resolute, unyielding.
Jackson and Mackenzie stood outside, and Andrew raised a hand in greeting as he engaged the parking brake. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The way Patrick described it…” He grimaced. “It’s not going to be pleasant.”
“I know.” Kat rubbed her hands against her jeans and stared ahead. “I don’t like dead bodies. They’re so empty they echo, and it feels wrong. But I need to see it. I need this to be over in my head.”
“I can tell you,” he insisted. “When I get out, I mean. Kat, really—think about it, okay?”
“I am. I did.” She finally shifted in the seat to meet his eyes. “Death doesn’t give me nightmares. Not like killing or feeling someone die.”
The kind of death Patrick had described was enough to give anyone nightmares, but he knew how she felt. Some things couldn’t be told, only experienced. “All right.”
Jackson opened Kat’s door as Andrew rounded the vehicle. “We’ve got to make it quick,” he told them. “A buddy of mine has the right authorities on the way, and anyone who doesn’t want to make a statement needs to be gone by the time they get here.”
“I don’t think we’ll be hanging out.” Andrew closed his hand around Kat’s. “Ready?”
She nodded and tightened her fingers until her grip bordered on painful. “Is Anna inside?”
“With Patrick,” Mackenzie confirmed. “They’re getting pictures and whatever else they need.”
This close to the small block building, the scent of burning flesh was strong enough for a human to detect. Andrew had to fight not to recoil from the doorway, but there was no turning back. Answers lay inside, information they needed.
It certainly looked like a tiny country church, with rows of long benches and a small pulpit—the kind of place that preached fire and brimstone. Andrew shuddered and blinked against the acrid smoke that hung heavy in the air and stung his nose.
Anna rose from where she knelt by the stage, a haunted look in her eyes. “Patrick’s in the back. That’s where the—where the bodies are.”
Kat took a breath. Took another, and this one was shallow and unsteady. “I’m never going to be this person, am I?”
Andrew pulled her close and buried his nose in her hair, inhaling her clean, sweet scent. “It’s a bunch of burned bodies, sweetheart. No one is this person, not really.”