called out to me. But I couldn’t do my part and get to you.” Guilt dripped from his voice.
She loosely fisted his shirt with one hand while combing her fingers through his hair. “That wasn’t your fault.”
Shame snaking through his system, Keenan opened his eyes. “You could be dead now. Worse, you could be one of Enoch’s fucking puppets.” Just the thought of her shuffling toward him, her eyes empty, her face pale and slack, made his stomach lurch.
There would have been only one thing that Keenan could have done for her—destroy her, just as she’d destroyed those other corpses tonight. But it would have killed something inside him to do it. Something that never would have healed.
Khloé was laughter and mischief and life. Enoch was intending on snuffing that out. The worst of it was … Enoch could do it without ever again touching her, because she was already ill, and it was getting worse.
Every moment of every day, it played on his mind that she was riddled with a fucking infection—one he had no way of fighting. Not without divine help. Literally. And so far, he’d had no luck getting it for her.
He felt like he was letting her down. Felt like the biggest fucking failure. What good was all his power and training if he couldn’t protect the person who mattered most to him?
His demon didn’t do “guilt,” so it felt none of the shame that assailed Keenan. But the entity was all eaten up by the powerlessness that taunted them both. It had no intention of losing Khloé but, like Keenan, it could almost feel her slipping away.
Earlier, he’d paced outside her house with the others who’d gathered there on noticing the shield. He’d struck it with power over and over, but the shield hadn’t once faltered. Not even when he, Jolene, and the sentinels worked together to try taking it down. They’d needed Khloé for that—the person inside it.
“You have no reason to feel guilty, Keenan. Nothing that happened tonight was on you. What went down was bad, I know, but you’re missing the positives. His plan was an epic failure. He didn’t manage to trap me. He didn’t manage to kill me via his puppets or even severely wound me. I saw how much that infuriated him when I spoke to him—the defeat was hard for him to take.
“We have a better chance of making him surface again now. If he comes at me directly, we’ll all be waiting for him. And, more importantly, I’ll have the blade with me—Grams even gave me a knife sheath to strap on my thigh so that I can carry the blade at all times, but I prefer tucking it inside my boot. He doesn’t know about the knife yet, which gives us an advantage.”
Keenan curved his hand around the side of her neck. “It should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. You’re forgetting one very important thing. If he manages to rip that blade from your hand and stab you with it, there’ll be no healing your wound. The steel is fatal to all demons—that’s the only reason it can kill him.”
A line creased her brow, and he could see she hadn’t thought of that. “But I’m more at risk from dying at his hand if I don’t get rid of him fast,” she said. “There’s only so many times he and I can do the same dance before he gets lucky and manages to kill me.”
“I know. That’s exactly why, from now on, I’ll be shadowing you whenever you go somewhere. No, don’t argue. I know you’re powerful, and I know it’ll be hard for him to get to you here. But I won’t be able to function if I don’t at least escort you from place to place. I don’t trust anyone else to protect you as vigorously as I will.” He stroked his thumb down the column of her throat. “Give me that peace of mind. I need it.”
She would have fought him on it, but she could see that he really did need it. And since it wasn’t as big of a deal to her as it was to him, she sighed and said, “I don’t think it’s necessary, but fine. You want to follow me around, knock yourself out. But don’t whine when you get bored.”
“You’re many things, Khloé, but you’re never boring.”
“Why, thank you.”
He took her hand. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
*
Khloé ambled along the footpath, passing house