The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,115

disappeared into the recesses of the farmhouse as we entered through a cleared-out mudroom. Different types of awareness swept through me. There was definitely a Luxen here. I could also feel what I now recognized as an Origin, and the sensation that accompanied a hybrid, but my skin was prickling in a peculiar way. I felt something else. It lay on the tip of my tongue, tasting like summer in the streets. Heated asphalt.

Leaving the mudroom, I entered a narrow hallway, and I wasn’t thinking about unexplained sensations or tastes.

Guns.

That was the first thing I noticed. Actually, pretty much the only thing I noticed. A llama could’ve belly-danced in front of me and I would’ve only seen the guns.

So. Many. Guns.

Rifles of every length and caliber leaned against the wall of the hallway, enough to arm a—wait. I did a double take. Was that a rocket launcher?

A scream of pain tore through the house, snapping my attention forward. Jeremy took off, his boots smacking off the worn hardwood floor.

I didn’t see the kitchen I crossed through as my steps slowed, every part of me fixated on the tableau in the dining room. A room that had presumably once hosted family gatherings, holiday parties, and had once been a place of joy, but it would be hard to remember that seeing the tragedy playing out in the room now.

Out of everyone in the room, I saw Luc first. It was as if every cell in my body knew where to find him. He was at the side of a trestle table, his hands planted on a chest that looked oh so wrong. I couldn’t see his fingers under the intense white glow of the Source, but I saw the blood smearing his forearms. Stark concentration marked his face as he stared down at the man, who bucked and withered.

“Stop fighting it. Come on, man, stop fighting it,” Luc ordered, his jaw clenching.

An older man stood at the head of the table, snow-white hair sticking out from under a straw hat, with a grip on the fallen man’s head that said he’d seen a lot in his day. Tendons popped along the sun-spotted forearms revealed by the rolled-up sleeves of his bloodstained denim shirt.

Blood. There was so much of it, running down Spencer’s sides, pooling onto the table, and spilling onto the floor.

Doc Hemenway rushed forward from behind Luc, holding what reminded me of an air pump combined with a giant syringe. Except for Luc, everyone in this room was human, but there were Luxen here. There were others, and there was something else in this house. That feeling had not only lingered but intensified. I didn’t want to bother him, but instinct told me he needed to know.

Luc, I called out to him. I feel something strange.

His eyes lifted to mine for a brief second. What?

There’s something different here. My palms started to sweat.

“Who’s in this house?” Luc asked.

“Two human girls,” the old man answered. “That’s all. Zouhour is with them. They’re pretty freaked out.”

There was definitely something other than a human girl in this house.

Whatever you’re feeling, it’s going to have to wait. I’m losing the battle with this guy, Luc responded directly to me, and he was right. Anything and everything else had to wait.

“I just need you to get the bleeding stopped,” the doc said as she leaned around Luc, jabbing the end of the pump in the pool of blood forming in the sunken cavity of Spencer’s stomach. “Then I can see what we have going on here.” She pulled back the handle of the syringe, and the pump filled with deep, red blood.

“You don’t have a whole lot going on here,” Luc bit out. “He’s got several arteries blown out—” A wave of white light rolled over Spencer, and his back bowed. “And every damn time he moves, he tears the goddamn one I just fixed.”

“His aorta still has to be intact or he’d already be dead.” The doc stepped back. “Keep him alive for ten minutes, Luc. I need ten minutes for the Fuse to filter this blood and get it into a bag.” She glanced down at the tool she held. “Thank God for innovation.”

The ghost fingers along the back of my neck intensified.

“Not sure all the innovation in the world can help him at this point,” Grayson’s droll voice stated from behind me less than a minute later. I looked over my shoulder at him. Was he the Luxen I sensed? I didn’t