Dark Power

by Kristie Cook

  “You start driving lessons tomorrow,” Tristan muttered.

  When we turned onto the road that would take us to the causeway to Sanibel, Sonya moaned next to me. Her eyes slowly opened. Her hand went to her throat.

  “Thirsty,” she groaned.

  Heather turned in her seat to look at her sister. Her eyes widened with alarm.

  “Thirsty,” Sonya said again, more insistently this time, her eyes locked on the only norm in the truck.

  “Take care of her, Alexis,” Tristan said.

  Before he could explain, Sonya threw herself toward Heather. I caught the vampire just in time and wrestled her back to her seat.

  “What do I do?” I asked, struggling to keep the vamp pinned down.

  “You’ll have to stab her,” Tristan said.

  “What?”

  “With your dagger. Right in the heart.”

  “No!” Heather and I both shrieked.

  “Dammit, Alexis, do it! You won’t kill her. You know that.”

  “Why can’t you—” Use your power, I was going to say, but he caught me off.

  “Because I might hit you.”

  Sonya thrashed under me, and now her eyes locked on my throat. Crap. If she drank any of my powerful blood, all hell would break loose. My heart slammed against my rib cage as I drew out my dagger. I pulled in a deep breath as I lifted it and blew the air out as I plunged the blade down, squeezing my eyes shut at the last moment.

  Heather screamed.

  Warm and wet splatters peppered my face.

  Sonya fell limp, her eyes staring at me without seeing. After three tries, my hands shook so badly, I finally managed to push her eyelids closed.

  We zoomed through the toll plaza, and I was thankful for the SunPass we had to automatically pay the toll. I could only imagine what a booth attendant would think if they got a good look at the truck, inside and out. At some point when this all settled, Tristan would be pissed.

  With shaking hands, I wiped the blood off my face, then retrieved my cell phone and scrolled through the numbers until I found Charlotte’s. Just my luck that she didn’t answer.

  “Char,” I said to her voicemail, my voice trembling as much as my hands, “I have a problem and . . . uh . . . could really use your help. We . . . um . . . we can get started on that training any time now. Like—right now.”

  I pressed End and stared out the window at the darkness underneath us as we crossed the bridge to Sanibel. Heather sobbed, and I reached up to smooth her hair, but she jerked away from me.

  “It’s all my fault,” she cried. “I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “Shh. She’ll be okay,” I said. “We’ll take care of her.”

  She looked at me with a swollen, wet face, trying hard not to let her eyes drift toward her sister, who sat limply behind Tristan with a dagger in her heart. “Are . . . are you sure?”

  “Yes, this is what we do,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.

  Tristan stopped in front of our house. “Take care of her, Lex. I’ll take Sonya. Meet me there when you’re done.”

  “No,” Heather said, shaking her head. “I’m going with her.”

  “You can’t,” I said. “This . . . you don’t want to be there. Trust me.”

  “I’m not leaving her!”

  I slid out of the truck, opened the front passenger’s door, and grasped Heather’s shoulders. “Please don’t fight me on this. It could get really ugly, and Sonya won’t want you to see her like that. If you love her at all, let her be for now.”

  Her eyes flitted to the backseat, and immediately returned to me as if she regretted looking back there. She probably did. It was a gruesome sight. With obvious reluctance, Heather half-slid/half-fell out of the truck and into my arms. I walked her to the door of my house, and Tristan took off.

  Blossom, I thought as I stood outside my house, watching Heather go inside. I didn’t have time or the energy to go in and try to pretend everything was normal on behalf of my son. The witch appeared outside with me, and I told her what happened.

  “Crazy,” she said. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  I shrugged. “I have to be, don’t I? If Char arrives—”

  Blossom squeezed my arm. “I’ll send her right over. Don’t worry about a thing here. I’ve got Dorian and Heather taken care of.”

  “Don’t let her out of your sight,” I said, worried about Heather’s mental and emotional state.

  “I promise.”

  With a nod, I flashed to the courtyard of the new safe house, one of the oldest mansions on Captiva that the Amadis had procured. The main part of the mansion faced the beach with the island’s main road running between the estate and the sand. From the street, the mansion appeared to be two stories tall, with a grand stone staircase leading to the front door. In back, however, was a courtyard with a pool and the first “floor” was an outdoor kitchen for entertaining. What you couldn’t see from the road were the two perpendicular wings that connected to each end of the main house and another wing in back, creating a nearly perfect square. The rear, right corner, however, was open, where the driveway entered a parking area.

  The kitchen, a dining room, rooms for gathering and entertainment, a conference room, and offices were part of the main house. Five guest rooms made up the right wing, and two master suites and a smaller room were in the left wing. The rear wing was meant for live-in staff, but I called it the dungeons.

  Once I’d signed the purchase papers on behalf of the Amadis for the safe house, new shipments arrived almost every day to furnish the mansion. But not only standard furniture. Besides regular beds, dressers, and sofas, the shipments included hospital beds with silver restraints, thick iron chains coated in silver that Tristan had to bolt into concrete walls, and a variety of medical equipment. Rina, Mom, and Charlotte together had been making preparations for my training and my new role, but so far, the safe house had no live occupants. Until now, anyway.

  Tristan’s truck sat in the driveway, and he was pulling the vampire out of the backseat when I appeared.

  “My poor truck,” he muttered as he carried Sonya inside, and something about the way he said it made me want to chuckle.

  “I think it could use a good detail,” I said, stifling another giggle with this understatement of the year as I rushed to the house to open the door for him.

  Neither of us cared about the truck, of course, but this little exchange was some kind of way to make everything that had happened tonight less real. Or perhaps more real. After staring death in the face several times and still not believing everyone had survived, we needed a moment to ground ourselves in the stupid little things before carrying on with more life-and-death decisions.

  We took Sonya to a guest room in the right wing, and Tristan laid her down on the bed, then began cuffing her wrists and ankles. Only when she was secured did he pull the dagger from her heart. Several beats pounded in my chest as we waited, and I began to wonder if we’d made a big mistake. What if she didn’t wake up? What if the silver had been too much for her? She was a relatively young vamp, maybe too weak to survive such an assault. Except I knew better—the only way to truly be rid of a vampire, regardless of how young, was to burn the body.

  As if my self-confirmation had been her cue, her eyes flew open as she let out a gasp, and she immediately started thrashing against her restraints. Tristan’s palm flew up and she stopped, paralyzed. Only her eyes moved, wide and wild, like a trapped animal.

  “I’m doing what I can,” he said quietly. “You know my lack of experience with conversions, my love. This is all you now.”

  He actually had more experience than I did, considering he’d gone through it himself. But he didn’t have the Amadis power to execute a conversion—his strengths lay elsewhere. Such as keeping Sonya still so she didn’t hurt herself or me.

  I swallowed and nodded. My eyes studied Sonya, who stared at me with nothing but terror in her face. I can do this. I’ve started i
t before and hopefully Charlotte will get here in time. I took a step to approach the bed.

  My heart jumped at the sound of running footsteps echoing behind me. Had I not locked the doors? Did the Daemoni find us already? I spun around and moved into the hallway, hand up, ready to throw lightning.

  Chapter 7

  “You’re worse than your mother, always getting into things too big for your little self.” Char’s voice came out of the darkness before the rest of her did.

  A familiar face framed with long dark hair and topping a tall, thin body came up right behind Charlotte.

  “Sheree?” I asked with disbelief. She grinned, and I was amazed at how much it lit up her face. The last time I saw her, she was lying on death’s doorstep. She looked so radiant now.

  “Rina thought you’d be happy to see her,” Char said to me. “Sheree has turned out to be an excellent faith-healer. She’ll take over when we’re done.”

  Char pushed past me and into Sonya’s room, taking in the scene of the tied up vampire with a bloom of crimson staining her top. The warlock shook her head with obvious disapproval. “Looks like I got here just in time.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “I wasn’t sure what to do, but we couldn’t abandon her.”

  “Of course you couldn’t. You did the right thing. So . . . let your training begin.” Charlotte moved to the bed and wrapped her hand around one of Sonya’s and told me to do the same.

  “I’ll, um, show myself around,” Sheree whispered from the doorway, and I sensed her slip out of the room.

  “Push your Amadis power into her and remind her of love,” Char instructed. “Rina uses her telepathy, and it helps a lot. Use yours to share images the patient can relate to. Then you need to get her to state her desire to convert.”

  I started talking to Sonya in hushed, soothing tones, as Mom and Rina had done with Sheree.

  “Sonya,” I said, “I want you to think about Heather, okay? Focus on Heather, your little sister. You love her, right? You still feel that?”

  Her mouth clamped with fear, Sonya blinked once, which I took for a yes. I pushed an image of Heather into her mind.

  “She loves you, too,” I said. “She’s waiting for you, so you can be together as sisters again.”

  I didn’t think it possible but Sonya’s eyes widened even more, white showing all the way around her irises. Her whole body trembled as though she tried to fight Tristan’s paralyzing power.

  “We can’t be sisters again! I’m a monster,” she yelled.

  “Shh, calm down,” Char said soothingly. “Don’t worry about that right now. Just think about how much you love her. How you would do anything for her.”

  The vampire’s body slackened.

  “One step at a time, Alexis,” Char said. “And don’t forget the Amadis power.”

  Sonya’s reaction had caused me to slacken my power without realizing it. I pushed it into her hard, and her body tensed again as she screamed.

  “Sonya, do you want this?” I asked.

  “It hurts,” she shrieked.

  “I understand. If you don’t want it, I can stop.” I eased back on the power.

  “No! Don’t.” She panted. “Please, don’t stop.”

  “So you do want this?” I asked again.

  “Yes. I want this.”

  “You have to state it,” Char said.

  “I want it. I . . . want . . . to be . . . Aaaaah.” She screamed again, as if it hurt her to say the word. “I want . . . to be . . . Aaaamaaadis. I . . . don’t want . . . to be . . . evil.”

  Her eyes rolled up into her head, showing how much saying those words had drained her.

  “Why?” Char persisted, and I remembered Mom had asked Sheree the same thing.

  “Convince us,” I said, mimicking Mom’s next words.

  Sonya whimpered. Her eyes refocused on us. “Because I love my sister. And I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore. I . . . I . . . I made a big mistake. I should have never asked for this.”

  Her last words were barely audible as her voice trailed off. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “If you listen to her thoughts, you’ll know if she’s sincere,” Char told me, and I opened my mind to allow her to hear Sonya as well.

  “I’m no better than our father. Worse even.” Her regret and despair gripped me. Char nodded.

  “Now we get serious,” the warlock said. “Push. Hard.”

  I gathered all the Amadis power I’d been building inside of me for the last couple of months and pushed the ribbon of energy down my arm and out my palm into Sonya. Char’s eyebrows pulled together, and her eyes tightened as she did the same. Sonya started shaking and convulsing against Tristan’s power.

  “Let go, Tristan,” Char said through gritted teeth. “We need her loose. Alexis and I can handle her.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tristan give Charlotte a doubtful glance, but he eventually lowered his hand. Sonya whipped about for a few minutes, but I was physically stronger than I’d been with Sheree and could hold her down. Eventually the convulsions stopped, and her body went limp.

  And then I felt the evil energy building inside her. Memories of the last time we did this and the consequences flooded my brain.

  “Get out, Tristan,” I ordered.

  He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Get out!” I nearly yelled this time. “I’m not letting you take it again.”

  I wouldn’t risk the chance of the evil power leaving Sonya’s body only to find a new home in him as it had done before. Granted, freshly escaped from the Daemoni’s clutches for over seven years and implanted with dark magic, he’d been what Rina had called an open vessel at the time. He had practically welcomed the evil energy inside of him. But no way would I jeopardize that happening again. He’d been acting too weird lately as it was, especially when we were around the Daemoni.

  “Go,” Char said, backing me up. “You’re not helping, and Sheree can use you. She’ll need help gathering supplies.”

  Tristan wrapped his arms around me and pressed his lips against the top of my head for a long moment. The full strength of his love finally flowed out of him while awake, boosting my power. Maybe he could help. I let the thought pass, though, not wanting to have to go through again what we did last year.

  “Call me if you need me,” he murmured.

  “I don’t know what that was about, but you can’t waste your energy arguing,” Charlotte said after Tristan left.

  “When I tried to do this with Sheree, I took in her Daemoni energy, and Tristan took it from me because it almost consumed me.”

  “That was before your Ang’dora, right? You and your power should be strong enough now to eradicate the Daemoni energy. There should be no transfer this time. Unless—oh, bloody hell. Here we go.”

  Just as the words came out of her mouth, I sensed what she did. Sonya felt as though she might literally explode with the dark energy building inside her. The color in Charlotte’s face drained, and the muscles and tendons in her neck pulled taut as she strained against the power. I tightened my grip on Sonya’s hand and pushed goodness into her with every bit of force I could muster.

  A shriek of pain pierced my ears. Sonya’s body bucked and writhed, and it was all I could do with my full strength to keep the vampire on the bed. A long string of profanities flew out of her mouth punctuated with more screams as visions of her life as a vampire flashed through her mind.

  Then all at once, she fell calm again. Seemingly unconscious.

  Char rubbed her forehead against her arm, mopping off the sweat. “That was the first wave.”

  “How many waves will there be?” The evil energy still swirled within Sonya, perhaps not as strong, but definitely still there.

  “As many as it takes until the evil power is gone. Everyone’s different.”

  “So we’re in for an all-nighter.”

  “Yep. Probably longer.
/>   “I’m so glad you’re here. I have no idea what would’ve happened if I’d tried this by myself.”

  “You’ll be able to do it solo once you learn the basics. Number one rule: don’t let yourself wear out. That’s where trouble comes in.”

  “That’s what you were about to say before? There should be no transfer of energy unless . . . ?”

  “Unless you’re drained. But don’t worry. It shouldn’t happen with you.” She rested her head against her shoulder as her hands remained stretched out to grip Sonya’s forearms, maintaining skin-to-skin contact. “You have more Amadis power than any of us, including Rina. You just need to know what you’re doing. Are you seeing the visions?”

  “Of her past and her victims? Yeah. I hate them. All that death and darkness.” I shuddered. “Do you ever get used to them?”

  “Me?” Charlotte chuckled. “I don’t see them. Only Rina can, so I assumed you could, too.”

  “Really? Huh.” I thought about this for a moment. “I could share them if you want.”

  “Ugh. No, thanks. I see enough of what they do in real time.”

  Wave after wave crashed over Sonya, each hit weakening both her and us. Tristan sat with me in between, sharing his love to boost my power before each round. But I always made him leave when I felt a new wave coming on. In case I wasn’t powerful enough. Once morning came and brought the sun, Sonya’s energy diminished considerably, and we began to make true progress.

  “They’re weaker during the day, especially the young ones,” Charlotte said as Sheree wiped a cool, wet cloth across the warlock’s forehead and the nape of her neck. “It’s always better to try to start this in the early morning. Unfortunately, since the Daemoni prefer to come out at night, that’s usually not possible.”

  When the room began darkening again with dusk, Charlotte’s cell phone rang. Sonya’s body had given up its fight a long time ago, so Char had no problem leaving me alone with her, pumping Amadis power into the vampire’s depleted veins, while she took the call.