God, she had better not be dying, or Andrew was going to kill her. Then Derek would kill him-Shit, she was losing her mind.
Andrew jerked her behind a building and covered her with his body as he looked around. “Where is he? Where the fuck is he?”
Kat leaned her forehead against his leather jacket and focused on breathing through the pain. “I’m bleeding. I don’t know how bad.”
“Shh, I know. Let me see.” He didn’t wait for her to act. Instead, he got her jacket off, tore her shirt and swore again. “Press your other hand to it,” he told her as he ripped at the bottom of his own shirt. “I know it hurts, but try to do it anyway.”
She obeyed because he sounded confident, and she couldn’t focus. Tears stung her eyes as she pressed her fingers over the spot that hurt the most. “I’m a wuss. I’m not a shapeshifter warrior.”
“Don’t think about it.” He wound a strip of fabric from his shirt around her upper arm. “There’s no safe cover here. We have to head for the car. You ready?”
Kat lied. “Ready.”
His hands slid around her body and coaxed her away from the wall, and Kat choked back a moan and gathered every scrap of nerve and will she had.
Then she walked.
She tried to walk. Andrew’s long legs ate up the ground, and she struggled to keep pace without attracting more attention than they’d already garnered. Most of the people were running toward the water —toward the body, she was sure, to gawk and stare and tell everyone they’d been there when a woman had been shot.
Two women. Blood stained Kat’s shirt, and she spent a moment hoping no one had gotten a camera phone out quickly enough to take pictures of her stumbling and bleeding. That was all they needed—to go viral online as a crazy couple escaping the scene of a crime.
She was losing her mind. Shot and bleeding and possibly stalked by a sniper, and she was thinking about the internet.
This had to be what shock felt like.
Andrew must have noticed her distraction. Closer to the lot, he practically picked her up off the ground.
“Come on. Not far now.”
It wasn’t until he dragged her past a startled woman that she realized the most terrifying truth. The old woman’s confusion rippled through the air in bright yellow and black, a swarm of angry bumblebees. The pain from her arm hadn’t disrupted the synesthesia—it was still going strong.
And Andrew was…nothing.
Blank.
Colors faded around him. By the time he got her to the car he was etched in black and white, an old-fashioned action hero cast in terrifying shadows. She couldn’t see the green of his eyes or the color of his clothes, just a thousand unrelenting shades of gray.
He didn’t ask why she was staring, just unlocked the SUV and urged her into the passenger seat. “Can you buckle up?”
She had the key clutched so hard in her right hand that uncurling her fingers revealed a deep imprint of the damn thing. She lifted her hips to shove it deep into the pocket of her jeans, then fumbled with the seatbelt.
“Kat.” His gaze was riveted to the strip of cotton wrapped around her arm. “Talk to me.”
The seatbelt buckle clicked, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Get me out of here before my empathy implodes. I can’t hold this much longer but I can’t let it go, either. Not while I’ve got enough energy left to project.”
“I’ll try.” The door slammed, and the driver’s side opened so quickly he must have run around the vehicle. “Just hold on.”
She had to. Whatever Andrew had done to her arm might have staunched the bleeding, but she clearly lacked the badass shapeshifter gene that kept them all running with bullets in them. If she let go of the empathic synesthesia, she’d shove her pain into every driver they passed. They’d be lucky to survive.
The engine rumbled, and Kat concentrated on breathing. Slow, deep breaths, while she tried to decide how best to describe the feeling of being shot. Throbbing pain was too mild, stabbing was too…sharp.
Though when Andrew spun them out of the parking lot fast enough to shove her against the door, stabbing became a serious contender. So did blinding. Agonizing.
“Sorry.” Andrew kept his eyes on the road, but the first hints of panic began to creep into his voice-and his aura. “Shit.”
“It’s okay.” That was the least convincing lie ever. “I’ve got two choices here. I can let go of this empathic trick and try to shield, but I don’t think I’ll be able to. Not while I’m hurting this much.”
“What’s the other option?”
“Controlled burnout. It’s already starting. It won’t hurt me, but I’ll be useless until tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning.” Though the giddy euphoria and vaguely stoned feeling might make being shot a little more tolerable. “You’d have to feed me and find me a place to sleep it off.”
He ground a curse between clenched teeth. “Is that safe for you?”
“It won’t hurt me,” she repeated, putting more strength into it. “But I’m going to be even more of a burden than I already am.”
He cast her a quick, disbelieving glance. “I can take care of you. If burning it out won’t hurt you, do it.
You can trust me.”
Trusting him had never been the question, but she didn’t have the energy to argue the point. Instead she closed her eyes and fought to find the half-trance again.
It was harder this time. She could smell her own blood, and if the scent bothered her, God only knew what it was doing to Andrew. Her arm ached, and it was getting worse instead of better. Fear formed a sick knot in her belly, and beneath all of it a wild, terrible excitement gathered.
They’d found something. Something big, something real. Later she’d be horrified that a woman had died and she’d been shot and Andrew had been placed into danger, but for the first time in her life, answers were within her grasp.
Or maybe she’d just found more questions. She dropped her hand to her hip and traced the outline of the key in her pocket, using the slow, repetitive motion as its own sort of ritual.
Once she found the quiet place, it was easy to lock her mind into a carefully controlled spiral. Callum might have been obsessed with a mysticism she didn’t care for, but he’d earned his reputation for being the most powerful empath on the planet. Not through strength—he’d happily acknowledged that she outstripped him in raw magic—but with a skill and control that bordered on artistry.
He’d also been a brutal teacher. Burnout was the first defense he’d taught her, and the one she’d been most motivated to learn. A nice, safe recursive loop that drilled down to the heart of her gift and exhausted her too much to hurt anyone.
With her eyes closed, she could almost see her empathy, its usual raging flames winnowed down to a cheerfully flickering campfire. Soon it would be a candle. Smoke.
She could only hope that half-drunken numbness would give way to unconsciousness before she did anything truly humiliating—like tell Andrew the truth of why she’d spent so much time avoiding him.
Chapter Four
It took him far too long to find a suitable motel, because he couldn’t drive more than three miles without checking to make sure Kat wasn’t slipping into unconsciousness.
Andrew gripped the steering wheel until it groaned in protest as he pulled into the parking lot of a small, run-down motor inn. It was impossible to tell when it had last been painted, but the white blocks and bright aqua of the doors had faded to grimy beige and pale green.
He chose it because it wasn’t a chain, which meant they might get away without giving any real personal information—including credit cards—and because it was an utter dump, which meant they might not have to answer any questions.