by Kristie Cook
Jax put a hand on Blossom’s shoulder. “Stop a minute to breathe, woman.”
The witch inhaled a deep breath and blew it out. “Sorry, but there’s so much to tell, and I know Alexis has been scared to death, and you need to know what’s going on. So anyway, they were on their way here, but they’ve been a little delayed.”
My heart stuttered. “What’s wrong?”
“They found a newborn vamp on the side of the road,” she explained. “Charlotte couldn’t just leave him there.”
“Of course not,” I said as my heart returned to its normal rhythm, but then I realized what it meant. Hours, maybe a day or more, before they could hit the road again.
“Tristan told Bree to tell us he’d call when he had further info,” the witch added. “Or send her again, I don’t know.”
“Well, then, I guess we go in for a drink?” I asked, not knowing what else to do. Besides control my urge to punch something again. One thing after another. At least everyone was okay, but we were never going to find my son at this rate. Blossom, do you think we could try your tracking spell while we’re waiting?
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug so small only I noticed the gesture. “Maybe if there’s some place quiet here. It’s a Were den, though, so don’t get your hopes up.”
As soon as we walked inside, the loud din of conversation fell to complete silence. Vanessa had entered first, followed by Blossom and Jax, with me trailing in behind. I could feel the animosity in the air as the Weres in the bar sniffed, sensing we were Amadis, but not wolves like them.
“Who do you think you are, stealing my pack’s bike?” bellowed a female voice as a figure rushed across the room. A tall, thin woman with raven hair, obsidian eyes, a flannel top tied into a knot between her breasts, and holey jeans that hung on her narrow hips stopped in front of Vanessa, her face dangerously close to the vampire’s. She apparently didn’t know who Vanessa was. Or maybe she didn’t care. She didn’t look like she’d be scared of too much in this world. “And don’t deny it. I get a call that it’s gone. I look out the window and there it is. And here you walk into my bar. The only people who don’t belong here.”
My team parted as I pushed my way to the front of them, knowing I needed to take responsibility for this misfortune (and planning how I’d get Vanessa back for this). More dead silence passed, followed by a loud ruckus with the scrape of bar stools against a wooden floor as everyone dropped to their knees, their heads down. The woman, who only a moment ago had been yelling at Vanessa, saw me and also went down.
“What the hell’s goin’ on here?” a familiar voice called out as he came from what I assumed to be the kitchen behind the bar. I had to suppress a chuckle at his seemingly standard entrance when I was around. The large man, wearing a vest that showed off his burly muscles, hurried around the bar and to my group, then also dropped to a knee. “Ms. Alexis. Surprised to see you in these parts.”
“Trevor! What are you doing here?” I asked as soon as he rose and the others in the bar followed.
“Sundae,” he said, addressing the woman next to him, “you better let me handle this.”
Her dark eyes skated over each of us, and she let out a growl before striding back to the bar.
Trevor led us to a nearby table and shooed away the guys who had been sitting there. They quickly scattered and found a new table at one end of the building, near the dartboard, but their eyes never left us. Never left me, to be more specific. Booths lined the outside wall of the place, and at the other end was the only area with much light—a lamp hanging over a green felt-covered pool table. A couple of men leaned on their pool sticks as they watched us. Well, me, again. Sometimes, like with Rick, being Amadis royalty came in handy, but most of the time, I hated it.
“I banded up with the Georgia pack,” Trevor said in answer to my question, “and opened a second shop up here. We all gotta do what we gotta do these days. So what brings you here?”
“Long story,” I said as I sat on a stool at the bar-height table. “Tristan’s on his way, but it could be a few hours.”
Trevor’s hard gaze traveled over the others, lingering on Vanessa as a low growl rumbled in his chest. He narrowed his brown eyes at Jax. “You were the Were in the Everglades last year. You met some of my boys.”
Jax gave a curt nod. “That be me, mate.”
Trevor turned back to me. “Did you really steal a ride from Sundae’s pack?”
“We didn’t know,” I answered before Vanessa could open her mouth. “We had to get out of that town and—”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said with a nod. “But keep an eye on these guys or Sundae will kick them out on their asses.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sundae, the leader of the Georgia pack. The woman you just met? My shop’s out back, but this place is hers. She and her pack don’ like outsiders, but since it’s you and all . . .” He shrugged, and then lumbered toward the rear of the building, where he’d come from.
Sundae came over to our table.
“Glad to have you, Ms. Alexis,” she said, her voice hard as she emphasized my name—delivering the message that the rest of my team wasn’t quite as welcomed. Her sweet name sure didn’t match the threat of the wolf simmering below her surface. “I apologize for my temper a moment ago.”
She didn’t sound at all remorseful.
“No, I’m sorry we took the bike.”
“Oh, please. If I had known it was you, I wouldn’t have acted like I had. My pack is always at your service.”
I somehow didn’t quite buy that.
“Don’t worry. We’re not planning to stay long,” I said as warmly as I could manage.
“You’re welcome as long as you need to,” she said, the edge in her voice softening. A little maybe. Her gaze swept over my companions. “All ya’ll. We’re not used to others, and everyone’s a little on edge with all the shit going down in Savannah.” Her eyes flicked to Vanessa. “And having a newly converted vamp around, especially her, makes us a little . . . prickly.”
Vanessa sat back in her stool, crossed her arms, and rolled her eyes. I glared at her. You can at least try to convince them, especially after stealing her bike!
She sighed and then put on a syrupy smile as she leaned toward Sundae. “You really have nothing to worry about. I’m matriarch-certified and everything. The motorcycle was a simple misunderstanding.”
Sundae’s dark brown eyes fell on me.
“It’s true,” I said. “Rina, um, Katerina assessed her. We’re all on the same side here.” I hoped. “And we can repay whatever you need for the bike.”
The werewolf snorted, dismissing my offer. “So, then, what can I get ya’ll to drink? Besides blood. We ain’t that kind of dive.”
Her newly adopted tone sounded kinder, but her words still bit—she trusted Vanessa less than I did. A tap into her mind showed me Sundae would be keeping a close eye on the vampire the entire time we were here. She made that thought loud and clear, but hid anything else she may have been thinking behind a wall of mundane mind-chatter.
That was the problem with telepathy, at least my ability. People’s thoughts didn’t come conveniently—I couldn’t exactly pick out the precise thought I needed, but could only hear what ran through their minds at the moment—and often they didn’t even come coherently. When they knew about my ability, like most of the Amadis and the Daemoni did, they carefully filtered their thoughts or found ways to obscure them. Some people had become quite good at doing so, effectively shutting me out.
Jax, Blossom, and I ate a lunch of fried bar food while Vanessa watched with her nose slightly crinkled. She didn’t need blood yet, which was good. I hoped Charlotte knew where we could obtain more mage blood, since the supply Rina had given her was somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean or smattering the shores of the Outer Banks. Gross. I’d hate to be the Normans on the beach that day.
“So you landed in a swamp?” I asked Jax and Blossom to make conversation as I eyed them. �
��You don’t look or smell like it.”
“Don’t you love magic? These enchanted clothes are great! Of course, I had to clean up the rest of us.” Blossom waved a French fry around her head, indicating her clean hair, and grinned. “But yeah, we did, right in the middle of a mucky old swamp. Jax gave me a ride to land. Thank God and the Angels he was there!”
“Thank God and the Angels you helped me flash,” Jax said to Blossom. Something in the way they looked at each other gave me pause. Did Blossom feel the same attraction Jax had made loud and clear to Rina?
“And Bree helped you get here?” I asked, still trying to make sense of Blossom’s earlier deluge of words.
“She gave us a message from Tristan,” the witch said. “I guess the faeries in the Otherworld felt bad for us or something, since we had no way to contact each other. They allowed her to come to our world and help out.”
“Hmm . . .” I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Bree, a faerie, had done us a favor. Would we have to pay her back now, too? Or did we get a free ride with her, considering Tristan’s her son? Thinking about faeries brought Lisa and Jessica to mind, and I patted my leather jacket. The jar they’d given me for Kali’s soul remained tucked away inside, seemingly intact. Good. Because Kali was going to pay for this. All of it.
We still hadn’t heard from Tristan by the time we finished eating, so I asked Sundae if she had a quiet place Blossom and I could go to try her spell once again. We followed the Were through the kitchen and into a small office with a window that looked toward the side of the property. I thought there’d been a lot of bikes out front, but there were dozens more out here, perhaps over a hundred. Several mind signatures floated in the rear building, which apparently wasn’t part of the bar, but not enough for all of those motorcycles.
The desk in the office overflowed with paperwork, but a small couch against the wall provided the space Blossom and I needed. She pulled out her scrap of Dorian’s blanket, and I pulled out my own, just to smell it. To inhale his scent, which, admittedly, wasn’t that of a little boy anymore and normally not the best smell in the world. But it brought me closer to him somehow.
“Let’s begin,” Blossom whispered, her voice thick with sadness. I chose to hold onto the wrath instead. If I didn’t—if I let the grief take me—I’d break. And a Broken Alexis would be useless. Even Psycho Alexis was better.
I closed my eyes and opened my mind to Blossom’s. Once we had a connection, I took my mind farther out as she chanted her spell under her breath. Nothing nudged us north or in any other direction. My mind expanded more, reaching out as far as I could go, skipping over the thousands of mind signatures in all directions. Blossom’s chanting became more urgent as I pushed even farther. I thought I felt another slight nudge north, but I couldn’t be sure, so I tried expanding my whole radius, stretching my mental boundaries as far as they would go. Blossom’s voice fell quiet. I squeezed my eyes tight with concentration, and all sound, all senses—the whole world—ceased to exist around me as I reached as far as I possibly could.
And there.
A pull.
I strained for the distant mind signature. Forced myself to follow it. Almost touched it. And—
“AAAAAAHHHHHH!” A scream. A voice I couldn’t distinguish as either male, female, or even human. Cold pain knifed into my head, like an ice pick stabbing into my brain.
All mind signatures disappeared. My mind went completely blank. And so did the world.
I came back to reality with my eyes still squeezed shut, my hands over my ears, and my body curled into a ball on the couch in Sundae’s office. A soft moan came from my own throat, though I didn’t realize it was me at first.
“Alexis.” Blossom’s voice, a soft whisper near my ear. I opened my eyes to find her on her knees on the floor in front of me, her hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Slowly I pulled my hands from my ears, only to find blood on them. Blossom reached for some tissues from a box on the desk and handed me a couple. I pressed them against my ears, and they came away with more blood. There must have been a small trickle from each one. Blossom used another tissue to dab at my lip—more blood, from my nose. My brain still felt like an ice pick was lodged into it.
“What happened?” the witch asked, her voice shaky and her eyes wide. I tried to sit up, but she held me down. “Take it easy. Something . . . wrong just went down, I think.”
“Did you hear it?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
Blossom shook her head. “I couldn’t get anything this time. I think my swim in the swamps may have washed too much of Dorian out of my blanket scrap.”
“You didn’t hear it through me?”
“I think you blocked me out somehow,” she said quietly.
“I don’t think it was me. I think . . .” I sat up, ignoring her insistence that I stay down. My nose and ears had stopped bleeding, though the pain in my head remained. “Someone felt me in their mind, and they didn’t like it. They were really powerful and tried to push me out . . . or something. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
“Who? A guy? A woman?”
“I don’t know. The mind signature felt so far away, I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman or even if it was human.”
Blossom’s brow lowered as she studied my face, her eyes still filled with concern. “I don’t like what it’s done to you. Maybe doing this spell isn’t a good idea.”
I grabbed her wrist with my hand as near panic rose in me. “We can’t give up, Blossom. This could be our only way to find Dorian!”
She studied my face for a long moment as I silently pleaded with her.
“Okay, but if it happens again . . .”
“I’m sure it was nothing,” I said a little too quickly. “I mean, my mind can only reach maybe eight or ten miles out, so it probably won’t happen again once we’re out of here. We’ll be far away from them. And really, it could have been my own mind doing it because I tried to push too hard. I’ll be more careful. So don’t worry, okay?”
I didn’t tell her that with her spell, I was able to reach farther. Probably more like forty or fifty miles out. If she worried too much and thought she was making it worse, she might not try again, and we had to keep trying.
“Fine, but we don’t do it again until we’re far away from here,” she said as she pulled her arm from my grip.
“Deal,” I agreed.
A knock on the door was followed by Sundae entering her own office.
“You have a phone call,” she said to me, and she pointed at the phone on the desk. “You can take it right here.”
Blossom discreetly took the bloody tissues from my hand and followed Sundae out of the office.
“What happened to your phone?” Tristan demanded as soon as I picked up. “It rang, but you didn’t answer. I’ve been worried as hell about you.”
Chapter 12
Hearing Tristan’s lovely voice again sent a thrill through me, though the furious tone of it should have made me pee myself. It probably would have scared anyone else, but I knew the worry behind it. We’d been separated before. Our son was missing. We couldn’t help but worry about losing each other again.
“Sorry. It, um, broke.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him I broke it myself during a minor temper tantrum. “I’m glad you found me, though, and everyone’s okay. I was worried, too, you know.”
“I know, ma lykita,” he said, his voice softer now. “You’re right—we’re all okay, and that’s what matters. We’ll see each other in a few hours—”
“You’re still so far?” My heart sank. I didn’t think they’d started that far away, and I’d hoped he’d been calling to say they were almost here. We seriously needed to talk. And I seriously needed to feel his arms around me.
“We’re headed for the Atlanta safe house with this new convert. You’ll have to meet us there.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to hide the disappointment I felt. “You have Sasha, right?”
; “Erm, no. I thought she was with you.”
My heart plummeted again and formed a pit in my stomach. “I haven’t seen her since the fight with the Daemoni.”
“She’s tough, Lex. I’m sure she’ll show up soon.”
“How will she know to find us in Atlanta, though? Maybe we shouldn’t go so far away.”
“We don’t know where she flew to. She could be in Atlanta. She’ll sense the Amadis out wherever she is.”
I blew out a sigh of resignation. I had a hard time picturing the sweet little dog we usually knew as being able to fend for herself for so long. To be able to travel so far. But, of course, she was more than the sweet little dog we usually knew, and I had to keep that in mind.
“So any ideas on how we get to Atlanta?”
I could have probably figured it out on my own, but when you have someone who could see the best solution, why take the time and brain power? Especially after what my poor brain had just been through.
“Trevor will set you up,” he answered. “Just be careful, my love.”
“Of course. I can take care of myself, but I have others here, too.”
“I won’t stop worrying about you until you’re in my arms again.”
“Well, that goes for both of us.”
“See you soon.”
Not soon enough, I thought as I hung up. A knock sounded on the door, and I waved my hand to open it.
“So, you need some transportation,” Trevor said as he strode into the office, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. He chuckled at the look on my face. “I spoke with Tristan before we sent the call back here. How ’bout I give you something so you don’t have to steal this time? Get your group and come ’round to the rear of the building.”
I returned to the bar to retrieve everyone, and we went outside and out back, passing all of the motorcycles.
“Can you ride one yourself?” Trevor asked me. My eyes widened. This was what Tristan meant by the Were hooking us up?
