As I took a step toward her, Eric hurried into the room, then knocked off the rubber tip of his cane, revealing the deadly steel point. “What happened?”
Allie rushed into his arms, and my heart twisted as I looked at the two standing together, father and daughter looking so much alike.
I’d lost Eric years ago, and it had almost broken me. For these last few months, I’d been living with the fear that I was going to lose my second husband, too.
Now, though…
Well, now I had hope.
“He spoke.” My voice sounded strange to my ears. Lost. Amazed. “He squeezed my hand, and he spoke.”
Eric’s good left eye went wide, the right hidden under a patch. “I’m going to get a doctor.” He turned and hurried out of the room as Allie blinked at me. “He said be careful. He said I wasn’t—”
I watched as she gathered her emotions. “Mom, am I supposed to be careful? Or are people supposed to be careful of….”
She let the sentence trail off, but it didn’t matter. I knew what she meant. I moved to her side and took her hands in mine. “Sweetie, he’s in a coma. He shouldn’t be talking at all. Who knows what he’s thinking or saying? It doesn’t mean anything.”
That was a lie. Of course, it meant everything.
“Does this mean he’s waking up? He was gone, but he said something. He must have seen something. He knows something,” she repeated, her voice rising with fear. “Mom.Mommy.Stuart knows something about me. That must be it, and what if it’s that I’m—”
“Sweetie, no.” I tilted her chin so that she was forced to look me in the eyes. “What happened to your dad ... what you’re going through ... I know it’s all hard. But you are not evil. It is not inside you. We’ve been over this, baby. That isn’t the way it worked.”
Her mouth twisted and she pulled roughly away from me. “We don’t know that for sure. We can’t.”
“I do,” I said. “I know exactly what you are, and that’s wonderful and strong and good.”
I meant the words with all my heart, but in truth, she was right. We didn’t know anything about her. Not really. We thought we did. We were pretty damn sure, in fact, and even the Vatican agreed that Allie was just Allie, albeit with some handy-dandy superpowers.
But we couldn’t be positive. After all, no one could be sure of what was buried inside any person walking this planet. What they wanted, what they were capable of. I’ve fought hundreds of demons, sure. But that’s hardly the extent of the evil in the world. As much as I wished otherwise, most serial killers and terrorists and other bad guys are just human, and there was no way to know if they had that darkness simply by looking. The same with folks living their normal life. We couldn’t know if the good inside outweighed the bad. Not until they were tested. Sometimes, not even then.
And that’s just a regular person. Allie was different. Made different. And the not knowing has been driving me crazy. How could I live not knowing what my baby was? What she needed? What she might become?
But that was a problem for any mom, not just a mom with a daughter who’d been the product of a secret program to breed a super-strong Demon Hunter. In my heart, I knew there wasn’t anything evil about her. But I also knew myself well enough to know that my heart wasn’t always right.
Thankfully, I was pulled out of my spinning thoughts when Eric hurried back through the door with the doctor.
“I understand that Stuart spoke?” The physician looked at me, his eyes reflecting that he thought I was nuts.
“He did. Yes. He really did.”
I heard his dubioushmm, but couldn’t see his face, as he was already at Stuart’s side, checking his vitals. I watched as he poked and prodded my husband before checking the readout of the various machines attached to Stuart’s head and body.
“He squeezed my hand,” I said, wanting to make sure this doctor knew everything. “And he said to be careful.”
When the doctor turned from the machine to face me again, the disbelief was clear in his eyes. He thought I was nuts.
“What?” I pressed. “What does the machine say? Is he awake now?”
“Nothing has changed.” His tone was gentle. As if he was dealing with a crazy person.
“But he spoke.Somethinghas changed.”
“I heard it, too,” Allie said. “He talked. Maybe he woke up for a little bit?”
“It’s very rare to temporarily awake from a coma,” the doctor explained, as if talking to kindergartners. “Just as the odds of ever waking grow smaller as more time passes. Stuart is already—”
“We know,” I snapped, not wanting to hear again that my husband would probably never wake up. “Except he spoke. I heard him. Allie heard him.”
