by Lexi Blake
“Or Zack?” Dev looked around like he was expecting more people. “We need to talk, and we can’t actually leave this plane yet. Kelsey can take you home, but Daniel and I have a job to do.”
They were moving way too fast. I wiped the tears from my eyes. “Trent’s not here and neither is Zack. I hope they know what’s going on by now, but I can’t be certain. They weren’t in the room with us.”
“Of course they know, Z,” Daniel insisted. “Myrddin understands what to do. He’ll go directly to Zack. With Dev and I out of touch, Zack is the third in command. Well, normally he would call Marcus, but he knows Marcus is missing, too, so he’ll get Zack on it.”
I was surprised that Daniel hadn’t gotten his hands on Dev yet. I’d expected a nice reunion between the two of them since Danny had long ago abandoned any notions of shame when it came to our threesome. After so much turmoil, I expected Danny to be affectionate. But my vampire husband held back.
Kelsey stepped forward, her eyes going wide. “Myrddin?”
“Yes, I assumed he was the one who figured out it was the painting,” Dev said. “How did he manage to get you here? And why you, my goddess? Daniel, you should have left her at home. It’s not safe here.”
“I didn’t defy Danny to come to your rescue. I was perfectly willing to stay behind. I fell through the painting, too, and Myrddin led us right to it,” I explained.
“Uhm, it’s cool that you’re obviously all back together now, but does someone want to explain to me why there are two Summers?” The young man with the shock of blond hair fully got my attention with that question.
“Summer?” It felt like the whole world had gone still.
Dev put his hands on my shoulders. “Yes. I found her. Or rather she found me. She’s here on this plane and she’s so lovely. Dean is right. She looks very much like you. But Daniel, we need to find her. She’s been arrested, along with Marcus.”
“Arrested?” I was going to have a heart attack. I could feel one coming on.
“For stealing.” Kelsey had one brow raised over her left eye. Her extremely judgey brow.
“It might be a good thing since I believe it is the only reason Marcus didn’t violate our daughter,” Dev said with a whole lot of judgment of his own. “Now I understand part of Grayson’s prophecy, but I believe he got the intent of the wording wrong. When he said Summer is coming, I don’t think that’s what he meant.”
Kelsey snorted and normally I would have laughed, but my daughter was here. My daughter was here and apparently with Marcus.
“Are you telling me Marcus is trying to screw my thirteen-year-old daughter?” Daniel asked, baring his teeth.
But not his fangs. He was staying calm, and that was good because I was getting a little angry, too.
“Where is he?” I would see if that Italian’s dick grew back.
Kelsey’s hands had come up. “Whoa, parental units. Your girl’s way past the age of consent, and she seems to be right there with him. Dean, how old is Summer?”
“She always says she doesn’t really have an age, but according to her she spent seventeen years on her home plane and then roughly another eleven moving around,” Dean said. “She’s not that much older than me. If you’re her parents, you should deal with that vampire. He’s taking advantage of her. She’s far too young for him.”
“Marcus is two thousand years old,” Kelsey pointed out. “If he’s hanging out for a chick his age, the pickings are slim. And no one thought I was too young for him. Dev there practically pushed me into bed with him.”
“I assure you Gray and Trent both thought he was too old for you,” Dev replied.
Their bickering was lost on me as my mind whirled. My daughter was twenty-eight? God, I’d known she would age. I knew I would have lost that time with her, but twenty-eight hit me hard.
Daniel was at my side, his arm going around my waist. “It’s all right, Z. It’s okay. We still have a chance to meet her. She’s here. Does she…”
Dev’s lips curled up. “Hate you? No, not at all, though she might if we don’t get her out of jail. And I was being a dick about Marcus. They’re intensely compatible. I felt it the moment he realized she wasn’t Zoey. There was a connection between them I felt like a physical tug. You understand what this means?”
“It means Marcus has a fate and her name is Summer.” Kelsey looked ready to defend her mentor.
“I just want to see her.” And apparently get her out of jail. “I’m surprised they have a jail here. If Summer was the girl in the painting, was she running from the police? And who were those men…the dead ones? Were they after her?”
It was too much to deal with. I had to bring our problems down to the one I could solve. Getting my daughter to safety had to be my priority. My daughter was here. Dev had seen my baby girl and she was alive and apparently a criminal.
She was alive.
Kelsey seemed to understand I needed answers. She sobered, putting her hands on my shoulders and speaking without an ounce of her normal sarcasm. “I believe she was the female figure in the painting. She was running from a paramilitary group led by a man named Turi. I don’t know who that is because I haven’t had a chance to fully interview her yet. I took care of them. There’s something happening on this plane, something they call the convergence. I don’t know a lot about that yet either. Marcus hadn’t fed in days. Summer went to feed him in private. During that time, a mercenary group arrested her. She’s wanted for several thefts across the planes, including stealing a book of prophecy from a witch plane. I have that book, my queen. She stole it because she’s mentoring this young man.”
Kelsey being calm helped me to be as well.
“They took her to the Vampire plane,” the young man Kelsey had referred to as Dean said.
“What the hell is the Vampire plane?” Daniel asked.
“It’s a plane of existence where vampires evolved as the dominant species,” Dev explained. “But they’re different from our plane’s vampires. I’ll explain it all after we get help. We need to move quickly. Dean, how long can we expect that door to remain open?”
Kelsey stared at me, ignoring what was going on around us. “His name is Dean and his mother is from our plane. She was kidnapped and taken to the Vampire plane when she was pregnant with him. Summer believes he has a great destiny back on his home plane.”
A chill went through me because we’d talked about this before. I’ve learned that trying to shift destiny when you’re not a nexus point can be tough. Somehow things come back together. Marini had tried to change Daniel, to use him when he’d known Danny could become strong. He’d sent Danny back to me with the thought that I would be his weakness. But I’d been the one to take Marini down, not Daniel. Had Myrddin made the same mistake? Was that what Gray had been trying to tell us all this time? What had he told me? I had to lose in order to win…
“I would like to get to know him,” I said carefully.
Kelsey nodded. “I think that’s an excellent idea. I’m going to do the same.”
It seemed like Kelsey had figured out a lot, and maybe we were here for a reason.
“We’ve got another hour and a half before the door closes.” Dean was tall, his body a lanky boy’s, though he was obviously on the cusp of manhood. “But like I said, we’re too far away. We’ll barely make it back to the brugh before nightfall if we don’t go soon.”
“That won’t be a problem now. We’ve got plenty of time, though you’ll need to give us explicit instructions. I don’t want to get lost. Dan, when do we expect Zack to get here?” Dev asked. “Did you set a meet-up time?”
I had some questions, too. “How long have you been here? How much time did we lose?”
Dev turned my way and his expression softened. “Are you worried about that? Not even a day has passed since I got here. It’s the same for Marcus. I was only a few moments behind him, though I know he had to have fallen through hours before me. I believe time is slower here.”
&nbs
p; “It’s night on the Earth plane, but you’ve only been missing for a day. So the differential isn’t bad.” My children wouldn’t lose too much time. It made me breathe more easily. We could get Summer and then figure out how to get out of here, and maybe the kids wouldn’t worry too much. I had to assume Gray was with them, and Trent as well. Gray knew what had happened. Jacob did as well. Even if Myrddin didn’t help us, I had to believe Gray would protect our children. After all, his own son was with them.
And he’d asked about talking to Albert. He’d known.
I needed to believe that things would work out. They always had. If I had to lose this minor battle to Myrddin in order to win the war, then that was what I would do.
“What do you mean you can’t fly?” Dev was asking.
I had missed the exchange but turned to where my husbands were facing off.
“Something’s wrong with me,” Daniel said. “I’ve felt…odd since I came through the doorway. I still ache from where I hit the ground.”
“You should have healed almost instantly,” Dev replied.
“I can’t get my fangs to come out.” Daniel looked to me. “And I’m not hungry. Not for blood. My stomach…I haven’t felt my stomach rumble in years. I forgot how it feels.”
“He’s having some problems with the transference.” It was the only thing that made sense. “I think the doorway did something to me and his body is taking over.”
“Why would a human body take over for someone else’s?” Dean asked. “Should I go deep and see if he’s got the same weird thing the Fae dude has on him?”
“He isn’t human,” Dev explained, putting his hands on Daniel. “But he is connected to our wife on a level most people can’t understand.”
“Nah, he’s human,” Dean said. “I read auras and his is perfectly human. Not that I’ve met many, but enough to know the difference between a human and a vamp. Summer’s mom is different, but not exactly like Summer is. She reminds me of my mom.”
“Daniel, why is your skin so warm?” Dev had his palm over Daniel’s neck. He slid it into the T-shirt Danny wore. “And your heart is beating oddly.”
I was about to touch him when the whole world seemed to go odd. Bile rose in my throat as the world around me seemed to bend in on itself. The ground felt like it shifted and I looked down. I suddenly wasn’t standing on fresh grass. There was marble beneath my feet and we weren’t alone. A host of what looked like sidhe were suddenly in my space. I say sidhe because of what they were wearing. Flowy gowns for the lithe, lovely ladies and tunics and pants for the long-haired men. I was in some sort of palace. And I was still here with my husbands. Arwyna flew to my shoulder, clinging there.
“Daniel,” Kelsey screamed over the sound of rushing wind. “You got the queen?”
Danny’s eyes had gone wide, but he immediately took my hand and reached for Dev’s. “I have her. What’s happening?”
“It’s the convergence,” Dean yelled. I wasn’t sure if he’d noticed, but Kelsey had moved to his side. She had a hand out like she was going to try to catch him if something went wrong. “It’s a bad one. Just breathe and we’ll be fine. Hopefully there won’t be a void.”
A void didn’t sound like a good thing at all. I found myself trapped between my husband’s bodies, their arms wrapping around me, trying to protect me. The wind was a terrible sound, and it seemed to rush in from all sides. I could see it was the same in that other place we found ourselves in. The men and women there were holding onto each other as well.
All except one. A woman stood strong and tall in the middle of what looked to be a ballroom or a meeting hall. She was wearing a simple gown that showed off her lithe figure, her honey-blonde hair on her head, and she stared straight at me, green eyes locking on mine. She held out a hand and started moving toward me. Somehow in all the chaos, this woman could move with purpose.
And her purpose appeared to be me.
Was that who I thought it was? It was odd, but she appeared to not be at all affected by the phenomena. I held on to my husbands as it felt like we were in a hurricane. I noticed vines had wound themselves around us, creeping up our legs to hold us all as we swayed in the winds.
Just as suddenly as the winds and world collision started, it stopped and I could breathe again.
“Wait for it,” Kelsey yelled, though there was no need for it now. “Don’t let those plants go back into the earth yet. Not until we’re sure. I don’t want to face that thing again.”
But I did because I couldn’t be completely certain about what I’d seen. Who I’d seen.
“Daniel, I think I saw Haweigh.” I was almost certain I’d seen the same faery who’d spared my life and taken my daughter with her when she left the plane.
“Dan?” Dev had a startled look on his face that rapidly turned to panic.
I twisted my head and realized Daniel wasn’t conscious.
The plants that held us together retreated back into the ground and Daniel fell. Dev was on his knees before I could manage to move.
“Daniel?” I dropped down beside him.
“I think he got hit by something when the winds started up,” Dev said, touching Danny’s forehead. There was a cut and swelling there that should never have happened.
“Why isn’t he healing?” I asked, my heart starting to pound. I wasn’t used to ever seeing Daniel vulnerable. Daniel was Superman.
Dev touched Daniel’s chest and his eyes were grave as he looked at me. “Zoey, Daniel’s human.”
Chapter Nineteen
Kelsey
Hours later, long after the sun had set, I looked at the ruins around us and wondered if we wouldn’t have been better off staying in the field where the undead apparently partied. “What the hell happened here? Tell me this isn’t the place we’re looking for.”
If it was then I was probably way off the path and we were all screwed.
But then if Daniel was suddenly human, we were screwed anyway.
“Years and years ago this place was raided by goblins,” Dean explained as we approached what appeared to be a bombed-out house. “It was being used as a sanctuary for a bunch of refugees, or so I’ve been told.”
I wasn’t sure how we were going to be safe here. “Most of these places don’t even have roofs.”
I glanced back and Donovan was on his feet, though that knot on his head seemed to get bigger.
Daniel Donovan was kind of the be-all, end-all authority figure in my world. Sure, at first I’d thought he was a major asshole, but the king and I had settled into a nice relationship. I had his back and knew when things all went to hell he would come riding in and save the day.
I was used to the king. Now I saw a man and he looked lost.
“I can build a shelter,” Quinn said. “Don’t worry. Some of these structures look basically sound. Bris and I can grow a roof that will function to keep us safe. It’ll be all right.”
Since the moment that we’d realized something was wrong with the king, Quinn had been a rock. He had to be because I was afraid the queen was out of it. Zoey had gone quiet, helping Daniel to his feet and shuffling along beside him as the sun had started to go down. We’d barely made it out of the woods as the moon had risen.
I couldn’t imagine how the queen was feeling.
I was wondering if I was going to have to stick a sword through the king so that he could be a king again.
“Just wait for it.” Dean walked ahead of me and then disappeared entirely.
I held up because I didn’t think I should do two disappearing acts in one day.
“Where did he go?” Zoey asked.
“It appears there’s some sort of magical barricade over the place,” Quinn said, moving forward. He put a hand out and seemed to be searching. “Yes, I can feel it. It’s likely how Summer managed to stay hidden from the mercenaries for so long.”
Dean’s head popped back out. “Are you guys coming? Erna says she can likely heal the human.”
I watched Dan
iel’s jaw tighten, but he moved forward. “Yes, let’s see if she can figure out what the hell’s going on.”
He disappeared along with Dean.
“You have to be careful,” Zoey chided, following him in.
I stopped Quinn at the edge of the barrier. The whole time we’d been walking, I’d been thinking the problem through. There was one simple solution. “You going to stop me if I have to do it?”
Quinn didn’t misunderstand. It seemed he’d figured out the solution, too. “Not at all. I would greatly prefer it was you who kills Daniel and allows him to turn again, but first we have to figure out what’s happening. We can’t simply stick a sword in him and hope he’s a vampire again.”
“His DNA hasn’t changed.” At least I hoped it hadn’t. That was a problem that was way beyond my skill level.
“We don’t know anything about the condition, yet,” Quinn replied. “The minute I’m certain Daniel will turn, poke away. We need the king.”
Dean’s head made a reappearance. “Uh, the dampening doesn’t work both ways. We can totally hear you.”
I sighed and walked through. The queen was staring at me, a frown on her face and her arms crossed over her chest.
“You are not killing Daniel.”
“Hear me out,” I said.
She sent me what I like to think of as her “mom” look. It stopped many a child from doing stupid things. “No.”
“Zoey, it might be the best way,” Daniel said quietly.
I found myself standing in front of a pretty cottage. It obviously had taken some damage but unlike the rest of the village, someone had fixed this place up. Night had fallen and a warm glow came from the windows. It was some pretty sweet magic that hid this place from the outside world. I had to wonder if it would have fooled my wolf. Or Daniel when he was a vamp. They had super-enhanced senses. I would have to check and see if I could sense it when I opened mine.
