Soulless (Book #2 of Hunted)

O'Dwyer

The film flickered and died. The white fog rapidly dissipated and I found myself back in Jasper Lake, back in the 21st century, and back in Keegan's car. I was slumped in the passenger seat breathing heavily and I could feel Keegan's eyes on me, watching my every move. I sat back slowly in the seat and rubbed my eyes; there were tears streaming down my face. This was the first time I had ever seen the past, and the first time every word had been so passionate and so enraged.

"What the hell just happened?" Keegan asked me. I looked up at him and as my eyes met his I felt more tears burning in my throat. I kept seeing his face, bloodstained and broken as he clung to his mother's skirts. There was a strange feeling slithering around in my chest and it hurt. It felt like my heart was being strangled by an invisible hand and I briefly wondered if this was sympathy. I was feeling for this murderer beside me. I wanted to take him into my arms and assure him that I knew how much pain he was in and I wanted to tell him that everything was okay. I wanted to comfort him and save him from the pain and madness that was slowly gnawing away at his soul. As much as he tried to hide it and, admittedly he wasn't quite as disturbed as Zane, I still saw it in his past and even now in the depths of his eyes though he tried to mask it with clever arrogance and indifference.

"My God," I whispered, staring at his face. He narrowed his eyes at me.

"What's wrong with you? Why are you staring at me?" he asked. I shook my head to try and clear it so I could say something even moderately coherent.

"I saw it. The stains on his heart. She thought you were an angel, Keegan and you killed her. You watched him gouge her eyeballs out," I said. He turned away from me and gripped the door handle.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said and I could practically hear him grinding his teeth in anger. I lunged forward and grabbed his arm before he could open the door.

"Don't pretend you don't remember, Keegan. And your mother was a witch. She saw what you had become weeks before you returned home and she told no one. She made you an amulet to protect you from the Lord of the Sun and she let you take her life and the life of her daughter and her faithless husband and the whole town. She let you and Anton terrorize all of Romania when she could've stopped you," I said, driving the words forcefully into Keegan's ears, willing him to listen.

"Stop it. You have no idea what you're getting into," he growled at me, glaring down at my hand on his arm.

"Do you know why she didn't stop you?" I asked. His arm was trembling in my hand, whether from anger or sadness I couldn't tell. He didn't say a word. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe he couldn't understand why a woman as powerful as his mother would just let him demolish an entire Romanian village.

"She loved you, Keegan. More than anything else in the entire world; you were her son. She saw something in you that she saw in no one else and she loved you for it. So much that she let you kill her. So much that she gave you everything she could with her last breath and you—"

Suddenly his hands were squeezing my upper arms, and he was pinning me to my seat with the weight of his body. The expression on his face was pure rage but his dark eyes were glossed over with the threat of tears.