Characters newly introduced to series:
Sargeant Jason Dasher - an employee of Daedalus
Dr. Roth- doctor employed by Daedalus
Archer- guard at Daedalus/an Origin
This novel is told from both Katy and Daemon's perspective. Katy awakens in the Daedalus facility in Arizona (Area 51) and is told that she needs to cooperate and that once they show her what they are really about that she will WANT to cooperate. She doesn't at first and they blast her with onyx until she does.
Daemon is being held in the Luxen village near their hometown in West Virginia, but escapes to go after Katy. He drives straight to the Daedalus facility in Mount Weather, knowing he will be captured but hoping they will take him to Katy if he agrees to cooperate. Luc has told him that if Daemon will get him a sample of the LH-11 vaccine Daedalus has that he will make sure Daemon and Katy are able to escape Area 51 since he has contacts there.
Katy is taken by Dr. Roth to an exam room, and proceeds to explain that Daedalus is doing great things in medical research with the assistance of hybrids and Luxen, and they have managed to create a compound which is helping to cure cancer and other diseases. He informs her there are Luxen who want to see humanity fall, and that although some Luxens have been assimilated into society (such as the Blacks), he then tells her the Luxen are the cause of the war that destroyed their planet and will do the same to Earth, and Daemon and Dee are actually part of this latter category. Below is a direct quote from the book where Dr. Roth explains this:
His eyes met mine. “How many Luxen do you think there are, Miss Swartz?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” Daemon had once mentioned how many he thought
were here, but I couldn’t recall the amount. “Thousands?”
Dasher spoke with authority. “There are roughly forty-five thousand inhabiting Earth.”
Whoa, that was a lot.
“About seventy percent of that forty-five thousand have been assimilated. Another ten
percent can be trusted completely, like those in the other room. And the last twenty
percent? There are nine thousand Luxen who want to see mankind under their thumbs—
nine thousand beings who can wield as much destruction as a small warhead. We barely
keep them under control as it is, and all it would take for a complete upheaval of our
society is for them to sway more Luxen to their side. But want to know another startling
number?”
Staring at him, I had no idea what to say.
“Let me ask you a question, Ms. Swartz. Where exactly do you think Daemon Black,
his family, and his friends fall?”
“They aren’t interested in subjugating a house fly!” I barked out a harsh laugh.
“Insinuating that is just ridiculous.”
“Is it?” He paused. “You can never really, truly know someone. And I am sure when
you first met Daemon and his family, you never would’ve assumed what they are,
correct?”
He had me there.
“You have to admit that if they were so good at hiding the fact they weren’t even
human, how good they must be at hiding something as invisible as their allegiance,” he
said. “You forget that they are not human, and they are not, I can assure you, a part of
the ten percent that we trust.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I didn’t—couldn’t—believe what he said,
but he had said all of this without an ounce of scorn. As if he were just stating facts, like
a doctor would when telling a patient he had terminal cancer.
He turned back to the window, lifting his chin. “It is speculated that there are hundreds
of thousands of Luxen out there, in space, who traveled to other points in the universe.
What do you think would happen if they came here? Remember, these are Luxen who
have had little to no contact with mankind.”
“I...” A shiver of unease traveled up my spine and across my shoulders. Turning my
attention to the window, I watched a Luxen flicker into his true form. When I spoke, I
didn’t recognize my own voice. “I don’t know.”
“They would obliterate us.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, still not wanting to believe what he was saying. “That
sounds a little extreme.”
“Does it?” He paused, sounding curious. “Look at our own history. One stronger
nation takes over another. The Luxen’s and even the Arum’s mentalities are no different
from ours. Basic Darwinism.”
“Survival of the fittest,” I murmured, and for a moment I could almost see it. An
invasion of Hollywood proportions, and I knew enough about the Luxen to know that if
that many came here, and they wanted to take over, they would.
They begin testing Katy by trying to make her fight other hybrids who haven't developed correctly and are a bit cuckoo like Carissa was in the last book. When Katy won't fight them, they bring in Blake and he ticks her off so much that she does fight him and ends up accidentally killing him when she blasts him backwards into a wall. The doctors of course, are pleased.
Nancy has made a deal with Daemon and agrees to let him see Katy in exchange for his cooperation. They fly to Area 51 and Daemon and Katy reunite.
They make Katy cut her hand to show that Daemon can heal it and he does, but later on they come and get Katy without Daemon knowing and a gruesome scene takes place where they strap her down to a table and cut her back to pieces, down to the bone, and then bring Daemon in to heal her again. He does and he and Katy vow to get out as soon as possible.
One day while they are being held captive everyone starts freaking out talking about a threat in building B, and a little boy appears. He goes all Carrie on everyone and is able to kill a few of the soldiers and turn their weapons to ashes before they capture him again. We find out kids like this are called Origins, and they are the result of a Luxen and Hybrid who was a successful mutation breeding, and then the kids are raised by Daedalus. Daedalus is pretty much growing their own army.
Katy manages to steal a vial of the LH-11 one day when Dasher, Roth, and Nancy are trying to get Daemon to heal a mortally wounded Daedalus soldier (who VOLUNTEERED to mortally stab himself in the name of the research wtf?).
Katy and Daemon are planning to release all the Origins to wreak havoc in the compound while they escape. When they get in the elevator after stealing the LH-11, Asher, who is always present and has become a friend to Katy and Daemon even though he's a guard, tells them that their plan is doomed to fail but he can help them, as he's an Origin too and wants to get out just as badly as they do. Turns out Asher is Luc's contact in the facility.
After they release the Origins and epic battle ensues and they escape. Luc and Paris show up at the crappy motel Asher told them to go to and Daemon and Katy go with them to a large house where Luc has been staying.
Matthew, Dee, Dawson and Beth, Ash and Andrew are there and it's a happy reunion. Matthew tells them that they have been staying at this house because he's been friends with the owner for years and Dee and Dawson were determined to come up with an escape plan to get Daemon/Katy out but they escaped before they even got the chance.
After a few happy days (in which Daemon and Katy go get married in Vegas with their new identities Luc made them), all hell breaks loose when Matthew calls Nancy(why?!) and turns Daemon and Katy back in. When Luc realizes this he attacks Matthew and Matthew says he did it to "protect the family", and that Nancy said the rest of the family could live free and happy if he did it, so he thought sacrificing a few for the greater good was the best route to take.
Dawson freaks out and kills Matthew and they all make an escape. They head out of Vegas but Daedalus is already there and is stopping vehicles and checking each one at a checkpoint. Not seeing a way out, the Luxen decide to cause a scene by revealing themselves and in the commotion they will escape. On a side note, I at first didn't realize why Daemon didn't just do his "stop time" thing so they could run away, but the cars were stuck in traffic and all that's around them is desert so it wouldn't have done any good, as they would have died of dehydration probably before they made it out of the desert.
It doesn't work out as planned though and Ash, Andrew and Paris are killed when the military and a bunch of Arum attack them at once. The rest of the group manages to escape and they go to Luc's cabin in the woods of Idaho to hide out. It's revealed at this time that the reason Beth has been not feeling well is because she's pregnant.
One night when Katy and Daemon are asleep, Katy wakes up to see Daemon in his true form glowing beside her. Dawson and Dee come into the room and say the same thing just happened to them. They all go to the window and see glowing in the woods.
When they go outside, they see that it's hundreds of Luxen coming towards the cabin. Daemon, Dawson, and Dee begin to flicker into their true form and move toward the other Luxen. Katy, Luc, and Beth try to call out to them but it's like they don't even hear them. The book ends with this passage:
Suddenly Archer was beside me and Luc was near Beth. We were backing up, but I
didn’t feel my feet moving or my muscles working. My eyes were trained on Daemon
until the others of his kind swallowed his light.
Fear coated the inside of my mouth and turned the blood into slush in my veins. In that
instant I couldn’t help but think of what Dasher had said about what would happen when
the Luxen came—and whether Daemon would stand with his own kind or with mine.
I wasn’t sure Daemon even had a choice.
I wasn’t sure I did, either.
End of book 4
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