by Kristie Cook
“So, what? Go to Amadis Island?”
He shook his head. “We need to go back to the safe house first. That is your house. Our house. We need to take care of it and not leave Blossom to clean up the mess by herself.”
The scene of the crime. I didn’t think I could face it.
But then, seeing it all again would keep the feelings fresh. The rage I needed to hold on to. Just picturing the scene in my mind—the mages’ blood smeared on the walls, Sasha’s feathers strewn about the room—shot more fury through my veins.
“Fine,” I said, still mad, but calming. I peered up at him. “You really checked the border that far already?”
“I’m not running on my last bit of energy like you are,” he said. “And I’m much more experienced. Why do you think it took me a while to catch up with you?”
“So you wanted through, too. You were trying to get to Hades just like I was.”
“At first, yes. But I’m also more experienced at gaining control of my rage than you are.” He grimaced. “I have to be or innocent people would have been dead by now.”
He was too dangerous to be running around like a loose cannon. I obviously was, too. Who knew how far I would have taken it if Tristan hadn’t stopped me? I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I could have killed anyone, including innocent norms, and not cared. And then I really would have been no better than the Daemoni.
I did need time to simmer down.
We flashed back to Florida, slower than we’d come because I was so drained. The fatigue left, though, when we arrived in the safe house, and as I’d hoped, the ire returned, though more quietly.
We appeared in the foyer, where Blossom paced, her cell phone at her ear. She halted both her steps and her words when she saw us.
“I’ll call you back,” she said into the phone before hitting the END button. “I’m sorry, Alexis. I didn’t start cleaning up yet. I had to call my Aunt Sylvie and make sure she and the coven were okay.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Are they?”
“Yeah, they’re fine. This seems to be an isolated incident.”
With another nod, I turned toward the common room. I stared at the blood and the mages’ decimated bodies with my hands balled into fists at my sides and my eyes burning.
“They deserve a proper Amadis send-off,” I said through a clenched jaw.
“A fire outside will draw attention,” Tristan said from beside me. “But we can take them out on the water.”
I gave a cursory nod. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
I glanced around one more time, capturing the scene clearly in my memory so I could share it with Mom and Rina and anyone else who needed the details, as gruesome as they were.
“Alexis,” Blossom mentally called out, triggering my telepathy. I reached out with my mind to where she still stood behind me, in the doorway between the foyer and the common room. “They’re scared.”
Not understanding—the mages were dead, how could they be scared?—I turned toward her. Behind her stood several of the local Amadis.
“But they want to help,” she added.
Somehow, through the anger and the need to have my son back in my arms, I found focus and managed to give orders. A were-shark from Captiva owned a boat we could use, so he, Tristan, and I took the mages’ bodies several miles out on the Gulf and gave them the best Amadis send-off we could. By the time we arrived back at the mansion that afternoon, Blossom and the other remaining mages had the blood magically cleaned.
All of the local Amadis had gathered in the so-called safe house, either seeking direction or camaraderie. I wasn’t sure which.
Why are they here? I asked Tristan. It’s not safe anymore.
“They’re here for you. For us. And it’s safer in numbers.”
Damn. All I wanted to do was formulate a plan for rescuing my son and then execute it—sooner rather than later.
I can’t deal with this right now.
Tristan nodded, then spoke aloud so everyone could hear, “There’s plenty of room for everyone, and we’re safe as long as we each take shifts.”
“Are the Daemoni coming back?” someone asked.
“Not likely,” Tristan answered. They have what they want. He hadn’t said the rest, but I knew that was what he meant. “But we’ll take no chances. We need any mages who can help to put up a shield and volunteers to take shifts.”
A section of the small crowd parted, and a big tiger waltzed out. Sheree, volunteering. She, two vampires, and a were-panther each took a wing to prowl for the first shift while the mages worked together to put up as powerful of a shield as the witches and wizards could muster. A warlock would have helped to strengthen it, but there weren’t any in the colony. Not since Owen had left.
The sun began to set again by the time Tristan, Blossom, and I could gather in my office to start planning a search and rescue. I dropped into my chair, crossed my arms over my desk, and lay my head down on top of them.
“You look exhausted,” Blossom said.
“You need to regenerate,” Tristan added.
“I’m fine,” I muttered.
“Yeah, right. You’re about to pass out whether you like it or not,” Blossom said.
I let out a dark chuckle. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t possibly sleep with my son and Heather out there.”
“You may not be ‘only human,’ but you can’t last forever,” Tristan said. “You’ll be of no use if you don’t have all of your energy.”
“How long has it been, anyway?” Blossom asked. “Three days now since you slept? Four?”
I lifted my head and glared at them. “Why are you ganging up on me? I seriously can’t sleep right now. My mind won’t shut off, even if I tried. But I don’t want to try. I want to find Dorian.”
Tristan and Blossom exchanged some kind of look, then Blossom flicked her wrist, and a faint purple light flew at me. My mind suddenly became hazy and my body floppy. Did she put a sleeping spell on me, that . . . witch! Through the fog that began to settle in, I felt Tristan carrying me. Down the hall, to the left wing, to the suite where we’d left Dorian. The smell of blood no longer lingered, and Sasha’s baby-powder scent hung heavily in the air instead. The lykora lay on the bed, a few small, white feathers sprouting from her back where her wing had once been.
Tristan set me in the middle of the bed, next to Sasha, and he lay behind me. I didn’t want to sleep, but a small part of me knew Tristan and Blossom were right. I needed to regenerate if I was going to have the energy to save Dorian. Just a few hours, I told myself, then we start.
“Ma lykita, you’ve been strong all this time,” Tristan said quietly from behind me as he laid his arm over my waist and pressed his hand against my stomach. “You can cry now. Let it out. I’m here, my love.”
But I didn’t want to cry. For once in my life, tears evaded me. I refused to grieve this loss, because it wasn’t a loss in my eyes, in my heart. It was a call for war, yes. But not a loss. I wouldn’t allow it.
Besides, I was too mad to cry, even in my exhaustion, and enmity would carry me through to do what needed to be done.
As I curled my body around Sasha’s, though, I realized the outrage within me had changed. I no longer felt irrational and blinding fury that dulled all other emotions. But that was okay. I really didn’t want to be Psycho Alexis. This, what I now felt in every cell of my body down to the core, was better. My anger had condensed and solidified into a cold, hard stone settling within me. Something I could control and hold on to for the long term to keep me going and focused on the goal.
Wrath.
That’s what I felt. And there was nothing worse than the wrath of a pissed-off mother.
Chapter 2
I woke up thinking it had all been one long, terrible dream—going to Hades, meeting Lucas, running for my life to escape his wolf pack, and then coming home to my worst nightmare. When I opened my eyes to find a tiny Sasha cuddling next to me, her new wing half-grown, the turmoil of emot
ions slammed into me again. My first thought went to Dorian.
Judging by the lack of daylight seeping under the heavy curtains, the complete regeneration my body felt, and Tristan sleeping by my side, I figured I’d awoken in the wee hours of morning, which meant Dorian had already been gone for twenty-four hours. Where was he? What was he doing? Who had him? Were they treating him like a prince, as Tristan expected? Did they have him in a cave in Hades, feeding him lies on a silver platter? What thoughts ran through his mind? Was he scared? Dorian wasn’t afraid of anything, but he had to be terrified now. He had to know that whoever took him hadn’t been sent by Tristan or me. He had to know he’d been kidnapped by the bad guys we’d warned him about.
And was Heather with him? She hadn’t been here at the safe house, but she’d also disappeared at the same time. That’s what Blossom had figured, anyway, when Heather’s mom had called, looking for her daughter. Sonya, Heather’s older sister and a vampire who was supposedly trying to convert, had killed our mages here and left at the same time, too, so it was a good possibility she’d taken Heather. Why she would do such a thing, I couldn’t fathom, but I also had no idea why she’d done any of this to us, especially after everything we’d done for her. Maybe if Heather was with Dorian, they could at least help each other through this, but trying to imagine what they could both be going through broke my heart.
Why hadn’t we prepared more for this? We’d let Dorian practice his flying ability, but not enough. We never tested what other powers he might have possessed, knowing the more they developed, the more the Daemoni would be attracted to him. He knew Aikido, but Lucas knew a lot worse. Dorian would never be a match for him or his cronies; Heather didn’t have a chance. And if Dorian did manage to escape, he wouldn’t know the way home or to Amadis Island. He didn’t know there were safe houses he could go to around the world. I hadn’t even let him have a cell phone yet. I didn’t see the point of it since he was never supposed to be alone, and I didn’t want to spoil him. How stupid of me!
His only hope would be Heather. If they were together. If she was even alive.
My second train of thought went to Vanessa. Was she really my half-sister? The reality of that shock still hadn’t completely sunk in, making it difficult to believe it was true. What had happened to her last night anyway? She had run for the water when we first arrived at the horrible scene, staying far away from all of the blood, and I hadn’t seen her since. Where had she gone?
My mind searched the mansion for her signature, but didn’t find it. I expanded the search over Captiva Island, but it wasn’t until I reached the opposite side of Sanibel, the adjoining island, when I found her. She wasn’t alone, either. A Daemoni accompanied her, and a familiar one at that.
Oh, hell no. I bolted upright in bed.
“Tristan,” I hissed, shaking his leg. “Wake up!”
Sasha sprang to her feet and, sensing my anxiety, began to grow. I took her head into my hand and scratched behind her ears, trying to be gentle through my impatience.
“No, girl, it’s okay,” I said. “You’re not ready yet. I’ll be okay.”
Her dark eyes stared into mine, and she whimpered, then her body began to shrink into its natural toy-dog size. She curled up on the pillow, and I scrambled out of bed and began dressing in my leathers. I didn’t remember Tristan taking them off of me, and someone had already cleaned them.
“What’s going on?” Tristan asked as he moved out of bed, too slowly for my liking.
“Hurry up and find me.” I didn’t have time to wait for him in case they took off, so I gave him a mental picture of where I was going, grabbed my dagger by its hilt, and flashed.
Vanessa and Victor both jumped when I appeared right next to them at the top of the Sanibel lighthouse, on a landing below the light itself. The vamps weren’t used to being snuck up on.
“How the hell . . . ?” Victor wondered.
“I warned you,” Vanessa sneered, but I didn’t care who she warned or what about. I’d deal with her later.
I lunged for Victor, knocking him against the metal railing that kept us both from plunging nine stories to the ground below. His back bowed over the railing as the tip of my silver dagger pushed into his chest above his heart. Amadis power flowed through the weapon while electricity charged from my other hand. I kept both powers at moderate levels only because I needed information before I killed him.
“Where’s my son?” I demanded, practically spitting each word in his face.
His mouth contorted, stretching scars that marked his normally smooth and pale skin.
“I don’t know,” he hissed as his ice-blue eyes darted around nervously.
“Liar.” I dug the point of the dagger further into his flesh. He let out a small yelp. “But if you really don’t know, I have no reason to keep you alive.”
“Give me that fucking dog of yours and maybe I’ll tell ya,” Victor said, throwing me off guard a little. He must have seen the flicker of confusion in my eyes. “Look what she did to me!”
His arms twitched at his side, drawing the moon’s glow to more scars on his hands and forearms.
“You were in the safe house,” I said, and hatred rushed forth again as his vision of him fighting Sasha filled my mind. I increased the current through my hand, electricity crackling between us accompanied by the sound and smell of singeing skin. “TELL ME WHERE HE IS!”
Victor began to tremble, and I pushed the dagger in deeper. The electric power charged through his body and into the railing. Vanessa jumped back with a small whimper—she must have been touching the metal that now carried the current.
“Alexis,” Vanessa said quietly from behind me, “he’s our brother.”
“Shut the hell up,” I yelled at her.
I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t erase from my mind the image he’d given me of his fight with Sasha. I couldn’t ignore the fact he’d been there when Dorian was taken. He had probably taken him himself. The desire to plunge the dagger all the way in, twist it around, and grind at his heart until the organ was nothing but pulp became too strong to resist.
But the Amadis in me was even stronger. As the trembles of Victor’s body became quakes and his eyes rolled into the back of his head so only whites showed, the guilt of what I was doing to him jolted through me.
As did the reminder that Vanessa was here, secretly meeting with him.
I pushed myself off of Victor and flew at her.
“You did this!” I screamed as my body plowed into hers.
We skidded across the concrete landing before coming to a stop at the edge with Vanessa on her back and me straddling her, my hands at her throat.
“You set us up, didn’t you, you bitch? Got us far away from here so Victor could take Dorian?”
“No—” she tried to choke out.
“Lies! That’s all either of you know how to speak! This whole thing has been a ruse, hasn’t it? Lies and deceit everywhere. You didn’t care about me getting out of Hades except to come back and see this, did you? Are you even my sister, or was that a lie, too?” Holding one hand on her throat, I held my dagger to her heart, ready to give her a taste of the pain I felt.
But someone yanked me off of her. I swung and kicked at Tristan as he held me from behind. The vampire bitch scrambled to her feet.
“Where is he?” I yelled as my gaze bounced wildly between the vampire twins. “What did you do with my son?”
Vanessa’s blond hair swished as she shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
“Bullshit. Tell me, or I will kill you!” I fought harder against Tristan, but his grip remained iron-tight.
“Calm down,” he murmured against my ear.
“I swear I had nothing to do with this,” Vanessa said, her blue eyes sparking as she jerked her head toward her brother. Our brother. Supposedly. “Ask him.”
“Lies,” I said again.
“Why would she be here?” Tristan asked, his voice still low in my ear.
“Why would she hang around if the worst they can do is already done?”
“I don’t know. Why are you still here?” I spewed at Vanessa.
She threw her hands in the air. “I have nowhere else to go. I’m Amadis, Alexis.”
I stopped thrashing against Tristan, mostly because I knew he had a point. If everything had been a setup, why had she even bothered to come back here with us? Why was she still here?
“And, like it or not, I am your sister,” she added. “Your half-sister. By blood, anyway.”
I glared at her, not trying to break free from Tristan’s hold because I didn’t quite trust myself if he let go, but I did sheathe my dagger.
“If you’re Amadis, then what are you doing here with him? What happened to you since we got home?”
She narrowed her icy eyes at me, except they weren’t really icy now. More like cool water. “I’m Amadis in my heart, but that doesn’t mean I feel like a part of everything yet. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Half your crowd is scared and crying, and I don’t do the weepy thing. The other half is ready to fight—which I will do—but they want nothing to do with me. So sue me for not jumping right the fuck in.” She tossed her hand toward Victor. “I sensed him nearby—a twin thing we have—and it was the only idea I had that might help.”
“We’ve already had this discussion,” Sheree said as she laid a long-fingered hand on my arm. Where had she come from? She towered over me, so she had to duck her head to catch my eyes with her brown ones. She was stark-naked, which meant she’d been in her tiger form, probably why I hadn’t noticed her mind signature before. Or maybe because I’d been so focused on the lies before me. Which wasn’t a good thing, not being alert of my surroundings. “I had to give up my watch shift to protect Vanessa from everyone else. We talked for a while. But then she left, and I changed and followed her here. I stayed down in those shadows—” her eyes flitted to a wild growth of trees and brush on the ground “—watching as she jumped all over Victor right before you got here, trying to get the truth out of him.”
