by Lisa Edmonds
I rubbed my face. “Not yet. Are you somewhere you can talk?”
“I’m at home,” he said shortly. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know where Aden is, but I know who took him and why.” Briefly, I explained what I knew about Bell’s recruitment of nulls and how Aden might have found out about it. And then I told him what happened at Jana’s house—leaving out Nora’s name.
When I finished, Allan went nuclear. “How the hell did he even know how to find someone from Bell’s cabal?” he demanded. “He’s twelve, for fuck’s sake.”
“I’m not exactly sure yet, but I have camera footage of Aden getting into a car at the convenience store near Jana’s house this morning at about nine-twenty. The car may belong to his former babysitter.”
“So this babysitter might have taken him somewhere to meet Bell’s people?”
“It’s possible. If I can find her, she might be able to give us some answers.”
“You swore to me that you’d get my son back,” he said harshly.
“And I will. That hasn’t changed.”
“You screwed up and now they’ve got Jana too. How do you propose to get them back from a cabal? They’ve got an army and you’re one cocky bitch whose mouth is writing checks you can’t cash.”
“Look, you’re pissed, I get it. Yeah, I lost one battle today and I’ll be sorry about that for the rest of my days. But I’m going to get Aden and Jana back, I promise you.” I took a deep breath. “The silver lining is that Aden is probably safer now than he was before. If they have Jana, he’ll do as he’s told, I’m sure. That means they won’t hurt him or Jana. I’m not trying to downplay what happened, but my biggest fear for Aden was that they would hurt him to try to get him to follow orders and that’s less likely now.”
“Yeah, this is some great fucking news,” Allan snapped.
I couldn’t blame him for being angry. “I think you need to pack a bag and stay somewhere else and keep your head low. They might come after you too if Jana tells them who Aden’s father is.”
“Let them try.”
I sighed. “Allan, the person who came to Jana’s house shot her partner twice in the head when he became a liability and then blasted me through not one, but two walls. She has blood magic and is the most powerful air mage I’ve ever met. Now, imagine they send her plus a couple more mages and a dozen soldiers. Null or not, you can’t fight them all off. If they get you, you’re not only one more thing they can use against your son, but imagine if they find out you’re a null like Aden. You’re more powerful than him. They’ll go from using Jana to get Aden to do what they want, to using Aden to get you to fall in line. Do you want to watch them torture your son?”
“Fuck no,” he said automatically.
“Then take my advice and hide out somewhere until I call to tell you that I’m ready to make a move to get Aden and Jana back, and then we’ll go in together. Meanwhile, keep trying to find out where Bell might have these nulls hidden, but be smart about who you ask. Use burner phones and leave your own phone at home. Don’t take your own car and take a couple of days off from work so they can’t get you at Nyx.”
“It ain’t my first time on the run,” he said shortly. “You find my kid and Jana, or you’ll have me to answer to.” He ended the call.
I put the phone on the bed and took several deep breaths. Then I called Natalie.
That conversation went about as well as I’d expected. Natalie blamed herself for letting Aden overhear her talking with Kyra and then cried. I preferred Allan’s cussing to Natalie’s tears. Being cursed out just made me more determined to fix the situation. Listening to Natalie cry made me feel like garbage.
When we disconnected, I curled up on the bed. Unlike the bed in the master bedroom, the guest bed didn’t smell like Sean. The simple faint aroma of fabric softener eased some of the tension in my shoulders and the uneasiness in my stomach.
My thoughts went to Charles. My feelings about him were far more complicated than I could articulate to Sean or anyone else. I was angry at him for getting the cuff I’d needed to save Sean and trading it for a drink of my blood, not to mention he’d bitten me once before, without my consent or knowledge, while I lay in a coma. While the transaction for the cuff had been difficult, I was more angered by his scheming to get the cuff than his bite. Drinking from me without my consent while I was defenseless was unpardonable, though. I knew I’d never be able to forgive him for that.
And yet, I had to admit we were alike in many ways. I’d realized that after the cuff incident. I’d freed Sean from the cuff by putting on the matching artifact and then having Valas kill me, causing both cuffs to fall off. She’d brought me back, obviously, but I hadn’t warned Sean about what I was going to do, and he and his pack thought I had died.
Sean had forgiven me, but in the interim I came to realize I had only slightly more capacity for empathy than the average vampire. I’d plotted and schemed to get the cuff off of Sean, even going so far as to arrange my own death and resurrection, without a thought to how feeling me die would affect Sean and the rest of the pack. I’d thought the end justified the means, and it was only after Sean nearly ended our relationship that I’d realized how wrong I’d been.
And then there was my reaction to Charles’s bite. I wished I could say I’d hated the experience, given how painful it was and how I’d ended up having to trade the bite for the cuff I needed, but that would be a lie. The bite had been excruciating because I hadn’t allowed him to give me any pleasure to offset the pain, but even then I’d known on some level I liked it too. It wasn’t just because of the pain, because pain by itself didn’t arouse me, but I’d found myself enjoying Charles’s bite and I knew it was because of him.
I should hate him for everything he’d done to me, and I did, but I felt something else for him too, something that might have been fondness for someone only slightly more messed up than me.
Someone rapped quietly on the door. “Alice, are you awake?” Sean called. “I brought some tea that might help your stomach.”
My tummy, which had been feeling better since I came upstairs, started churning again. “Okay,” I said, curling up a little tighter on top of the covers.
The door opened. Sean came in, carrying a mug. “Did you make your calls?”
“Yes, thanks.” I grimaced and forced myself to sit up against the headboard. “And thanks for the tea.” I took the mug from him and blew on the hot liquid. It smelled like peppermint. I didn’t feel like eating or drinking anything, but hopefully the tea would help, so I forced myself to sip it. “Is Ben still here?”
“Yes. He’s hanging around, helping me keep an eye on things. Someone else will take a turn later, whenever we get back.” Sean sat on the side of the bed. I drew my knees up to my chest to make more room for him. “I promise not to invite the whole pack over until you’re recovered.” He smiled, but when I didn’t smile back, it faded. “What else can I do to help?”
I drank some tea. “Nothing I can think of.”
“What about your magic? You don’t have much, do you?”
I shook my head.
“And with Malcolm still recovering, you can’t draw more from him.” He met my eyes. “Do you want my help to regenerate your magic?”
My stomach cramped. “No,” I said, more harshly than I’d intended. “No, no thank you,” I amended, softening my tone. “My stomach really hurts.”
“I can be as gentle as you need me to be. It’s absolutely your decision, but I don’t like you being so vulnerable.”
For a moment, I was tempted, despite my upset stomach. Maybe if we took it slow and I let him do most of the work—
My stomach cramped again, so painfully this time that I thought I might throw up. I made a sound that was part groan, part sob. “No. Please go away.” I said it without thinking.
He looked stunned. “You want me to leave?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my face. “I don’t know why I said tha
t. Losing Jana to Nora Keegan, Malcolm being mad at me, Bell and Ezekiel Monroe showing up at my house, Charles being sick…I’m just not myself.”
He flexed his hands, a sign of how tense he was. “I want to help you. You know I can’t just sit by idly while you’re hurting. Let me at least take some of this pain from you.”
As an alpha, Sean could take pain—physical or emotional—from members of his pack who were hurt or grieving. Because we’d shared magic, he had been able to use that ability to help me, taking my discomfort during healing spells and even my cravings for a drug called Black Fire so I didn’t become addicted to it. At first I’d thought he was simply able to dispel the pain, but I’d found out he felt it instead. Ever since, I’d been reluctant to let him take my pain, since the idea of someone suffering on my behalf, especially Sean, was as difficult for me to accept as my hurt was for him.
I shook my head. “It’s not that bad.”
His eyes glowed bright gold. “Don’t lie to me. We have an agreement; you don’t tell me you’re fine when you’re not.”
“I didn’t say I was fine—just that it’s not so bad that I need help. This pain from the healing spell can’t last much longer. I’m going to regenerate my magic and then try to rest a bit before we go to see Charles.”
“How are you going to regenerate your magic without help from either Malcolm or me?”
“By siphoning power from a ley line.”
He stared at me. “That’s like trying to get a drink from a fire hose. There has got to be a better, safer way.”
“I’ve done it before. Not for a while, granted, but desperate times and all that.”
“Alice, it’s your body and your choice, but I’m trying to understand why siphoning power from a ley line sounds like a better idea than sex with me.” He was getting angry. “I may not know much about your kind of magic, but I do know what you’re proposing is dangerous.”
“It’s not that it sounds like a better idea than sex,” I told him, though some part of me argued that it did. “I need a lot of power, more than sex can give me. I’m at practically zero now, and I need to be at one hundred percent to help Charles, not to mention in case Bell decides to say to hell with Monroe’s threats and send people after me. You want me to be as strong as possible, right? The ley lines are the best and fastest way to do that.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. He wanted my magic fully restored, but that desire battled with his concern.
“I’ve been using ley lines for power all my life,” I reminded him when he didn’t reply. “I’ll be fine.”
“If you say that’s what you have to do, then that’s what you have to do. I don’t like it, but I understand.” He studied me. “I’d also like to understand why you brought your things to the guest room instead of leaving them in our room.”
I blinked. “Our room? You mean your room?”
“No, our room. Our room, our bed, our space that we share.” He crossed his arms. “You’ve rejected me in every way you could today since the party and I’m starting to think there’s something you need to tell me.”
“There’s nothing I need to tell you that has anything to do with this. I don’t feel well and I’m worried about everything that’s going on, and that’s all it is.”
He reached out to touch my leg. I forced myself to sit still as his hand rested on my knee.
“You used to love touching me and being touched,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what’s changed, but I feel like I don’t know what’s in your heart anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I did feel like something had changed between us, but I couldn’t say what it was, when it started, or why.
I finished the tea and held out the mug. “Thanks again for the tea. I’m hoping once my magic is back to normal my stomach will stop bothering me. Maybe all this worrying lately gave me an ulcer.” I managed a small smile.
He took the mug and rose. “I’ll leave you to it, then. If you want to be at Vaughan’s house at sunset, we’ll need to leave in a little less than an hour. Will that give you enough time to do what you need to do?”
“It should.”
He headed for the door. “I’ll keep Ben company in the meantime. Let me know if you need me.”
“I will. Thank you.”
He paused in the doorway, clearly reluctant to leave. I saw hurt in his eyes, and worry, and anger too. For a moment, I felt a twinge and I almost reached out for him, but the impulse faded.
“Be careful, Alice,” he said. He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Taking a drink from a fire hose was probably the best analogy I’d heard for siphoning power from a ley line.
Thankfully, I’d done it enough times that I felt fairly certain I could manage the process with minimal danger, but I hadn’t used a ley line this way since leaving my grandfather’s cabal. One of the reasons I’d chosen this city as my destination when I ran away from Moses was it was located at the intersection of two powerful ley lines. If my grandfather ever found me, I could use those lines to protect myself. As an earth mage, I had a natural affinity to the lines and could do more with their power than non-earth mages.
I lay on the bed, holding a large crystal in each hand I could use to offload energy if I ended up conducting too much. When I used the lines to boost my natural magic, I grabbed them with my earth magic and hung on, becoming a conduit for their power. To siphon energy at a low, steady rate, however, what I needed to do was more like touching the tip of a finger to the line and then controlling the flow of power. Learning how to do that had taken years of painful practice.
“Okay, kids, don’t try this at home,” I muttered.
I squeezed the crystals in my fists, closed my eyes, and focused on the sizzle of the closer and less powerful of the two lines. Carefully, I reached out and gently touched the line.
The burst of power seared every nerve and I clenched my jaw to keep from screaming. The pain was far more intense than I’d expected, probably because I’d really put my body through the wringer today.
The ley line pushed at me, trying to turn me into a conduit. I kept the valve almost closed and allowed only a trickle of energy through. When I felt like I had control over the flow of power, I opened the valve a bit more and let the ley line’s energy fill me up.
Unlike when I drew power from Malcolm, siphoning energy from the line was painful and required all of my focus. Any lapse in concentration would be disastrous and potentially deadly, so I kept my mind blank and focused on the uncomfortable sensation of ley line energy filling my body. My magic swelled and grew, replacing the unpleasant hollow feeling with a prickly fullness.
Just as I reached the point when I was ready to close the valve and release the line, my mind conjured up an image of Sean’s expression at the moment I’d inexplicably told him to go away. I’d hurt him and I didn’t understand why. My stomach cramped and I lost focus for a moment. That was all it took for the flow of energy to surge.
Fortunately, I shut the valve almost instantly and the crystals in my hands took the majority of the surge, but they filled immediately and the power backed up into my hands. The overflow felt like someone took a blowtorch to both of my palms and I couldn’t hold back a short scream as magic flared around my hands.
I had to release some of the extra power somehow before it caused nerve damage. If I’d been at home, I would have simply offloaded it into my house wards, but I hadn’t put any wards on Sean’s house. All I could think to do was grab the circle helping Malcolm regenerate and dump the energy into it. Then I let go of the crystals and focused on breathing.
When I opened my eyes, I was startled to find Sean standing next to the bed, his eyes glowing bright gold. He must have heard my scream and come running. He knew better than to touch me when I used magic, but I was sure holding himself back was difficult.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry about the yell. I got a surge of power, but I cont
ained it.”
He gestured at the bed. “Mostly, anyway.”
I pushed myself up to sit against the headboard and stared. “Oh, no.”
The flare of magic around my hands had turned the bedding to ash where my hands had been. A closer inspection revealed my magic had burned all the way into the mattress. “Oh, no,” I said again. “I’m so sorry, Sean. I’ll replace everything.”
He sat on the bed. “I’m a lot more worried about what the surge did to you.”
“I’m fine. Really,” I added when he frowned. “I used those crystals to contain the extra power and offloaded what was left over to Malcolm’s circle. It hurt, but no damage to me, just your bed.” I showed him my hands, which were unscathed except for some redness where I’d been holding the crystals.
“Do you feel better?”
I nodded and rubbed my stomach. “My tummy is still acting up, but that should go away soon now that I have magic again.”
He started to brush my hair back from my face, but I tucked the loose strands behind my ear. He touched my arm instead. “Do you want something to eat before we leave?”
I sighed. “Not really, but if I’m going to use magic to help Charles, I need some food. We can pick something up on the way.”
“I’m not sure fast food is the way we want to go with your stomach still upset. I can make you a sandwich and a salad.”
“Thank you. That sounds…good.” Not really, but using magic required fuel. Nausea or not, I had to eat something. “Let me check on Malcolm while you’re getting dinner ready and then I’ll change and come down.” I looked at the burned bed and closed my eyes. “Damn it.”
“Don’t worry about the bed—I’ve been meaning to get a new one anyway. I’ve had this one for a long time.” He smiled. “Luckily, my bed has plenty of room for both of us.”
My stomach suddenly cramped again. I flinched.
Sean’s brows drew together. “Maybe you don’t need to go to Vaughan’s house tonight.”
I shook my head and slid to the edge of the bed. “Bryan said he’s not even sure if Charles will rise tonight and he’s not given to hyperbole. He should have called me days or weeks ago instead of waiting until it got this serious. Now every minute counts.” I rose and went to the bathroom to splash water on my face.
