“Rune.” His voice softened. “What are the nightmares with Darian about?”
I let my hands drop. “The worst memories I tried to bury and never told you about. He tried to freeze my lungs from the inside, for foreplay. All the shit I tried to block out is being pushed to the front of my mind again.”
“I’m so sorry, Roo.” His jaw tightened. “Ihatehim.”
“Get in line,” I huffed. “I killed him, and I still hate him.”
“I should’ve known.”
“You couldn’t have.”
“Mom called me earlier,” Tibby murmured. “Before the briefing. She just got a report from the Human Council.”
My stomach dipped. “About what?”
“The humans who got dosed with your stolen DNA. Remember how Drecken said their bodies wouldn’t hold it for long?”
I nodded once. “Yeah, the humans came at me for my DNA again. I figured they’d used the last of it.”
“They did,” Tibby confirmed. “They spread your power into at least thirty humans. Maybe more. But it’s failed, thankfully. Your DNA is seeping into them irreversibly, disintegrating them at a cellular level. Their human bodies can’t contain it. It’s eating them alive from the inside out. They’re losing control of the power they stole, and they can’t fix it. From Mom’s intel, the last human with your DNA is already dead.”
A slow, vicious satisfaction curled in my chest. “They tried to make themselves into monsters with my venom, and now it’s killed them.”
“Yeah,” Tibby said. “Pretty much.”
“Good.”I nodded. “Fuck them.”
He huffed a short laugh. “That was Mom’s reaction, too. We theorize that the humans who hit us at the lake came for your DNA again because they no longer have viable samples. Whatever they stole originally has burned out. They didn’t make any lasting replicas.”
“So they wanted another sample,” I summed up. “Fucking assholes.”
“Absolutely,” he agreed. “But on the bright side? It means they’re desperate. They’re running out of options.”
I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m relieved that they don’t have my DNA anymore, but that’s a pretty big fuck-up for them to make.”
“But they did,” Tibby said firmly. “You’re my sister, Roo. We will not let them get your DNA a second time. Besides, you’re bonded to six powerful supernaturals. As if they’d let it happen.”
I shot him a feral grin. “Iwouldn’t let it happen again.”
He nudged my shoulder with his. “See? You’re going to be fine.”
We sat like that for a moment, just my brother and I.
I’d always wanted to be on the same squad as Tibby when we both graduated, and now we were. Granted, I hadn’t graduated just yet, but I was close.
“What scares me the most,” I whispered, “is that we’re leaving the Bizarre with nothing. No killer. No answers. Not even a fucking lead. Just a kelpie on the edge of snapping because everyone thinks he’s a murderer, and there’s a pattern we know will repeat before we can stop it.”
“I know,” Tibby murmured. “This is a first for me, too, but we’ll be back. When the killer slips and gets sloppy, it’ll be our squad to take that fucker down.”
“And until then?” I asked, glancing over at him.
“We train and chase a hundred other issues, but we will wait for another body to wash up in that lake. Then, we will follow every piece of evidence to the fae responsible.”
“And we kill him,” I muttered.
“We hand him over to the Supernatural Council for them to decide. I’m sure that fucker will be locked up in Apex Penitentiary or expedited back to the fae realm,” he told me logically.
I huffed.
