I glanced at him, and he offered his lopsided grin. But his eyes remained an ordinary human hazel. Was it the mission that had drained him? Or was he still feeling the effects of what I’d done?
A part of me understood Matt’s need to run. My brain fluttered like a moth trapped against a window. Instead, I chose the next best option.
“I need a shower.”
Mari smiled at me. “That sounds like a great idea.”
Matt ran fingers through his hair, making it stand up in tufts. Flakes of red stuff drifted down from them. “Yeah. Can’t sleep like this.”
I yanked my eyes from the dried blood along his jaw to the same stuff coating my arms, and my stomach clenched.
Not all of it was my own.
Two of the men I’d killed may have deserved to die. But the third...
I no longer had any doubt about the lethality of my talent. Which might have been okay if I had any real control over it.
Suddenly, I couldn’t look at Matt. But he draped a big arm over my shoulders.
“You okay, Angel?”
“Yeah. Fine,” I lied.
“Those blokes knew the stakes going in,” he said with remarkable intuition. “And they would’ve killed you in a heartbeat.”
That was true, and I knew it. But although my brain acknowledged the logic, it didn’t ease the pain in my soul.
A quick squeeze of rock-hard muscles around me. “Takin’ a life is never easy. Which is how it should be.”
I glanced up at him. “Had you done it—before this?”
His gaze slid away from me. “Dires—well, we live by our own rules, Angel. But the answer is yes.”
As I contemplated that, the elevator opened onto the dorm floor. The hall was filled with students rising, ready for breakfast. With a roll of his eyes, Matt removed his arm, offered me a last lopsided twitch of his lips, and pushed his way into the male washroom.
He’d killed before.
I tried to fit that fact into the easygoing big guy that I knew—and immediately reassembled the picture in my mind.
Because as much as Matt seemed so human, he wasn’t. Not at all. He lived with a beast inside him that defined everything he was. And that beast lived by a different set of rules.
I now had somewhat unique insight into that aspect because my own talent was like a separate entity that lived inside me, too. Something with its own goals and agendas.
The female side of the washroom was empty. Ten minutes later, Mari bellowed out what could have been an ogrearian folk song or a lullaby from the larger shower stall a few over from me. I doubted it was a Dorinthian top-five-hundred hit, but what did I know?
All I knew was that it was loud. And welcome. Considering that the first thing I’d done upon entering the washroom—was tell her I was a monster.
At first, her orange eyes had widened when I’d told her about my newfound power draining Aaron. And killing Darius. My courage failed me when it came to what I’d done to Matt. I just couldn’t confess that I was as likely to kill a friend as an enemy.
But the ogress had shrugged and grinned. “Wow. That’s amazing. And here you were worried that you didn’t have any special power.”
And that was that. Apparently, her pacifist views did not extend to child snatchers. And I was still her friend, but now a friend with a talent.
I wondered, though, if she would be afraid to touch me. I remembered how Matt kept flinching when I reached for him. If there were two people I didn’t want afraid of my touch, they were Matt and Mari.
The water ran red off me, and I lathered up with gusto. Several times, from crown to toes, before I rinsed and turned off the shower.
As I squeezed the water out of my hair, I regarded the stains on my sweatpants and tee shirt with disgust. I pulled on the cloak and wrapped it around my clean but naked body, then bundled them and tucked them under my arm. A row of washers and dryers lined the back wall, but I decided I would do laundry later.
