The Legend of the Eight: The Hunted (Book 5)

17: Two AM

SEVENTEEN: TWO AM
FEBRUARY 26
KATE DIAMOND

HE STOOD THERE WITH HIS hands at his sides and a cruel grin on his face. He was taller than she remembered and looked like he hadn't slept in days—if not weeks. He was alone which was a relief but lines of purple lit up through his skin, assuring her that the man who stood before them wasn't Damon. At least, not the Damon they knew.

It was two in the morning and outside, a rainstorm blew through Purgatory foreshadowing a larger storm to come. Kate stood by the back of the living room, staring across at the door where Damon stood on the porch. He cocked his head to the left and then again to the right, cracking his neck in several places.

"It's late," he said in a hollow voice. Chills rushed down Kate's spine when she heard it. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Damon," Wil said after clearing her throat. She stood from the floor, abandoning her work with the moss spores, and approached him at the door, standing just inside of it. "Please," she pleaded. "It's me. It's Wil."

"If this is the part where you try to appeal to the Damon you knew, you're out of luck," he told her coldly. "He's gone."

"Gone?" Kate asked in a whisper and at the door, Wil made a face.

"We'll get him back," she said confidently.

But the man outside the door—the one who looked and sounded and knew them like Damon—chuckled and then took a step forward, toeing the threshold but never crossing it.

"Look at me," she said sternly, her emerald eyes narrowing. "You don't want to hurt me."

Damon glowered down at Wil when he said,

"I. Don't. Care. About. You."

She shook her head. "You don't mean that."

"Of course I mean it," he glared, taking another step and backing her into the house.

Kate look down to see Damon's boots now inside the living room. Beside Kate, Liam stretched a protective arm across, keeping her back. Once he passed through the door, Damon stretched his arms out and smiled.

"Ah..." he breathed, smiling when he did. He turned his hands over and the purple in his veins grew brighter. "There's that Purgatory magic I've been hearing so much about. Looks like I'm connected to it now too."

Kate's heart raced and her blue eyes darted around the room in search of anything that might take Damon out. It was only a matter of time before he would attack.

He took another step towards Wil and she backed into a table against the back of the couch. Her hand slipped behind her, slowly feeling around, and Damon reached up to caress her cheek. Kate watched her sister's hand wrap around the neck of a lamp on the table—the brass one with the green shade.

"It's a shame I don't remember this," Damon said of their relationship. "I bet you were a real fr—"

Mid-sentence, Wil snatched the lamp and swung it hard, colliding against the side of Damon's face. The shade broke off, landing somewhere by the fire, and Damon fell to the ground, unconscious from the blow.

"Well that's enough of that, don't you think?" she said, standing over his body with the mangled remains of the lamp in her hand. She smirked at it victoriously.

Kate stepped around Liam's arm and grabbed the pair of iron shackles they found in the barn. They were used to contain a werewolf during a full moon transition. Surely they'd work to restrain Damon while they waited for Dr. K and his cure.