by Kristie Cook
But still her body convulsed. Pinkish foam started bubbling from her mouth, followed by liquid blood.
“Kali’s killing her!” I gasped.
“Help her,” Heather screamed as Blossom held the girl to keep her from running to her sister.
“Blossom, muffle us,” Tristan ordered, then he said to me, “Your dagger. If she really has a faerie stone in her, it’s the only way.”
Seeing this, I had no doubt she did. And if by chance she didn’t . . . well, she deserved this anyway for what she’d done to us all. I pulled my dagger out, fell to my knees, and plunged the blade into Sonya’s chest, not for the first time. The vampire’s scream matched her sister’s. I dug the blade around until the tip hit something hard, and with a twist of the knife and a sickening slurping sound, a small stone flew out of the hole I’d carved into her chest. I caught it in my free hand as I withdrew my dagger. Sonya’s skin immediately began to heal, and her body fell still. Tristan released his power from her, but she didn’t move.
We waited, all of us silent and our breaths held, for seconds that turned into minutes. Heather whimpered her sister’s name. The vampire stirred, and her eyes finally opened. They were clear and blue again as they found my face. She held her hand up, my necklace dangling between her fingers.
“How long have you had that stone?” I asked as I snatched my necklace out of her hand.
“Convert me,” she whispered. “For real this time. I want to be converted, and when I tell you everything, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
I pressed my lips together as Tristan’s hand squeezed my shoulder, then I stuffed my necklace and the other stone into my pocket before leaning back and crossing my arms as I studied her. I hadn’t left her mind, so I knew Kali was gone, and now I focused in on Sonya’s intentions. My hand reached out and wrapped around her forearm, and I pushed Amadis power into her. She didn’t even flinch.
“It’s all in my mind and my soul still,” Sonya said to me. “Everything you and Sheree gave me, everything you taught me. Only my heart was blocked before. Now it’s open to you.”
I narrowed my eyes as I pushed the power harder. She seemed to grab a hold of it, gulping it in almost as hungrily as she’d drink blood. When I felt satisfied with her response, I gave Tristan a nod. He took Sonya in his arms, I took Heather, and we all flashed back to the safe house.
Heather sucked in a deep breath when we appeared. “Wow. That was . . .”
“Weird?” I finished for her as I set her on the ground.
“Very.”
As soon as we were in the safe house, the new team Charlotte had brought took over Sonya’s conversion. Although having a norm here made some of the Amadis uncomfortable—Heather wasn’t supposed to know about them—I wasn’t about to send her home where she’d be vulnerable. Everyone would have to get over it because she would be staying at the safe house, too.
We told Charlotte what had happened—the little bit we knew so far—and we all shared theories about the holes in Sonya’s story. We wouldn’t really be able to fill those gaps, though, until the vampire had fully converted. I agreed with her: she needed to be converted, for real this time, before I’d believe anything that came out of her mouth.
Tristan and I returned to our home for the night, but sleep eluded us. Although Dorian was just one little boy, his presence made the house a home, and I didn’t like being here without him. We lay in bed, holding each other in meaningful silence, sharing our love and our pain wordlessly until we both succeeded in drifting off for a couple of hours.
The sun had barely risen before Tristan, Charlotte, and I had settled into my office to regroup when a conversion team member knocked on the heavy wooden door.
“Sonya wants to talk to you,” the gray-haired witch said after I’d opened it for her. “All of you.”
“She’s done already?” I asked with disbelief.
She nodded and pushed her glasses up her nose. “There’s no trace of Daemoni in her. We’ll need to spend more time with her, of course, and it’ll probably be a few months before she can be left to her own decisions, but all of her energy is Amadis.”
Wow. Had Sonya actually been telling the truth about wanting to convert but not being able to? I pulled the stone out of my pocket and scratched the dry blood off with my thumbnail. While mine was ruby-colored, this one that came from Sonya was a dark emerald green. And while mine tended to warm when I touched it, this one grew cold. Charlotte peered over my shoulder.
“Definitely looks like a faerie stone,” she said. “I can sense magic on it, but not mage magic. That’s power from the Otherworld.”
“Huh. If we’d only known . . . ” Without finishing my sentence, I rushed to the vampire’s room and held the stone on display between my index finger and thumb. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”
Sonya’s dark eyes glanced at the stone, up at me, then at something on the blanket covering her as she sat in her bed. The same bed where she’d spent months, pretending to convert.
“I was scared,” she finally said, and after a pause, she began babbling again. “I was scared you would throw me out for trying to fool you, and I thought I was stronger than the damn thing, and then the conversion seemed to be working. Sheree kept saying I was doing so well, that it always takes time, so I really thought I was overcoming the stone, and once I did, then I planned to tell you.”
“Whoa,” I said, my brows pushed together. “You’re not making any sense. What does it have to do with your conversion?”
“Start from the beginning,” Tristan suggested. “Where did you get it?”
“Right. Back to when I was still with the Daemoni.” Sonya grimaced on the word and then nodded. “So one night, a few days before you guys and Heather came to Fort Myers Beach to see me, my nest leader said Lucas had an important mission for me, and he took me to meet Kali. She told me to go to you and say I wanted to convert, but she said I would only be pretending. She had a plan so the conversion wouldn’t work, she’d told me, but they wanted me to gather valuable information for them. That’s what she said anyway, but apparently they were scamming me, too. Anyway, I really did want to convert, which was why I was okay with the whole thing. I’d hoped her stupid plan would fail. When I agreed to do it, she pressed some kind of rock into my chest, over my heart. It sunk down, beneath the skin.”
“The faerie stone,” Tristan said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Sonya said. “They called it a loyalty stone, but obviously it was more than that. I . . . I didn’t know how bad it would be. If I had any idea this could have happened, I would have never done it. I swear to you. I had no control that night. I couldn’t help it.”
I studied her face as I searched her mind, but I couldn’t find anything to contradict her words. I didn’t know if I could ever fully trust her again, but I, too, could only feel Amadis in her. She had to have been telling the truth about this.
“So tell us everything that happened the other night,” I said. “The whole story.”
Sonya’s eyes came up to my face again, then her gaze traveled behind me to the doorway. I sensed the whole gang waiting there—everyone who would probably be on my team. We all moved farther into the room.
The vamp swallowed, then began. “Kali stopped me from sharing my memories, so now you’ll know if she’s really gone. She didn’t want you to believe me.”
“Believe what?” Charlotte asked.
“What really happened here.”
Sonya’s memories of the night of the attack—only three nights ago, though it already felt like years—played in her mind, and I watched and shared them with the others while Sonya told the story aloud.
“Lucas took control of me first. He made me kill the mages, but that’s all he wanted from me. After the shield fell, I was compelled to go out to the beach. But that was Kali controlling me, just like she’d done yesterday. She’d taken over control from Lucas, and she stood out there, waiting.” Sonya’s eyes flitted over to t
he curtained window, as though she could see through it and out to the beach. Her voice came out quieter. “Then Owen showed up, too. He was kind of bloody, and he had Dorian in his arms. Kali let out a funny noise—almost like a squeal of happiness. Then those two disappeared with Dorian, leaving me alone on the beach. I was so scared. Scared of Kali. Scared of you guys. I got as far away as I could before I did anything worse.”
“But you kidnapped your sister,” Blossom said. “Your mom was freaking out!”
Sonya nodded. “I had to. Kali became so engrossed with Owen and Dorian, she forgot about me. Lucas seemed to, as well, but I didn’t take anything for granted. I was scared of what they’d do to Heather, so I had to get her away to keep her protected.”
“Yet there you were with her and several Daemoni vamps,” Tristan said.
“Vamps who wanted to turn her,” Blossom pointed out.
Sonya shook her head. “They’re not like most Daemoni. Lesley’s a little more evil than the others, but none are really bad. They wanted to turn Heather for her own good. Her own safety, so she’d be strong like the rest of us. That’s all. In fact, I’m pretty sure Alys wants to convert, but she was probably too scared to say so.”
“Who the hell cares,” I muttered under my breath, but everyone must have heard me because the room fell silent, and all eyes turned toward me.
My mind remained focused on what she’d said about Owen and Kali—what she’d shown to us—and hurt and anger had bloomed. Again. Biting my tongue before I unleashed on anyone what was truly meant for Owen, I flashed to my office.
“Alexis?” Tristan had appeared right next to me. “That was—”
“Rude? Yeah, I know.” I blew out a breath. “But trust me, it was better for me to disappear and get away than to explode like I wanted to. Heather is here and safe. We need to find Dorian, but to do so, we need to figure out who we’re really looking for, not talking about a bunch of Daemoni vamps we don’t even know.”
He stepped in front of me, placed a hand on each side of my face, and tilted my head upward to look at him. His touch had its normal calming effect on me, and his eyes held mine until I relaxed.
“You don’t believe Sonya?” he finally asked as his hands slid to my shoulders.
“I don’t know what to believe,” I admitted. “She seemed sincere. Her memories seem real. Do you believe her?”
“It is hard to swallow.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Lucas had my dagger last, and then here it was, where Dorian should have been. Where Sasha was left to bleed out.”
“Lucas could have given it to Kali to test it for magical powers.”
“And Owen would have brought it back to you,” Vanessa said, her voice small as she stood in the doorway with Blossom, Sheree, and Charlotte behind her.
I turned on her. “You’re still taking his side?”
Whether Sonya spoke the truth or not, Owen had definitely betrayed us. She shouldn’t have been defending him, as far as I was concerned. Vanessa came into the office, leaned her butt against the wall, lifted one foot against it to brace herself, and scowled at the floor. Sheree, and Blossom filed in, too, followed by Char, who waved her hands to muffle the room so we could have some privacy.
“Even if Owen had some good reason to take Dorian, I can’t imagine him doing that to Sasha,” Sheree said quietly. I couldn’t imagine it either, but then I couldn’t help it, and the vision sickened me.
“Maybe he didn’t,” Vanessa said, and before I could fly at her, she held her hand up. “Victor pretty much admitted to being there, too, remember?”
“And you believe him?”
“He had the fresh scars.”
“They could have been fake.” I knew how far-fetched the idea sounded. Victor was a vampire, after all. There weren’t too many things—or creatures—who could leave scars on him. Although, shifters could, so my theory wasn’t entirely impossible, if he’d had a friend nearby.
“Why would he fake it?” Sheree asked. “What’s the point?”
I didn’t have an answer. “I don’t pretend to know how the Daemoni think, but I do know they like to deceive and play games, no reason needed. Besides, Sonya said Owen’s arms were bleeding, too.”
“Maybe they weren’t bleeding, but were smeared with someone else’s blood,” Blossom suggested. She made a face. “There was plenty of it around.”
“And Lucas could have given Victor the dagger before he sent him here and took control of Sonya,” Tristan said.
I peered up at him. “You just said Lucas could have given Kali the dagger. So which one is it?”
His gaze slid out of focus for a moment and then came back on me. “They’re both strong possibilities. I don’t have enough information to determine a best answer.”
“You sound like a freaking robot,” I muttered as my hand rubbed over the back of my head. “So what are we going to do? Was it Victor or Owen? Kali or Lucas?”
“Could have been both,” Charlotte said, and she grimaced. Pain flickered in her eyes, her feeling of betrayal having to be a hundred times worse than mine. “They could have been working together, all of them sent by Lucas.”
That answer seemed to make the most sense based on what both Victor and Sonya had told us, but something about the whole thing bothered me. More than the fact that neither of our sources was very trustworthy. Even if we could trust them, there were too many unanswered questions. Like, why make Sonya create such a bloodbath when Kali and Owen together were powerful enough to break our weaker mages’ shield? Were they trying to make some kind of statement? Possibly. But I couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to it. If we were missing something important.
“Do you think Kali could have put one of those faerie stones in Owen?” Sheree asked, her words floating on hope that seemed to suddenly fill the room. All of us wanted to believe in Owen. Including me.
“That would explain a lot,” Blossom said. “But he’s a pretty powerful warlock.”
“He’s too powerful.” Charlotte sighed, as though she wanted to believe the possibility, but couldn’t bring herself to allow our hopes to live on. “She wouldn’t be able to force a stone in him. He’d have to want it.”
“And he’d never want it,” Vanessa added, her voice glum, full of defeat. “He’d never allow anyone to control him like that. Not after what Kali did to Martin. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it on his own volition.”
Charlotte’s narrowed eyes studied the vampire closely. I didn’t have to hear her thoughts to see her suspicion of how Vanessa would know this about Owen. Char didn’t know the two had had some kind of weird relationship going on before all of this went down.
“I have to agree,” Char finally said. “Owen’s too stubborn and thick-headed to allow it.”
“So you think he willingly did this to us?” I asked, my voice thick, my chest tight and heavy. “And worked with Victor?”
Vanessa blew out a sharp breath. “I don’t know about Victor. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what he said and what he didn’t. On the one hand, he flat-out said he was there, and he made a point of you seeing the scars Sasha would have left.”
“But he also made a point of showing Owen dropping the dagger next to Sasha and taking Dorian,” I reminded her.
“Right. But on the other hand, if he’d had anything to do with taking your son—the big trophy besides you and Tristan—he’d have been bragging all over hell and back about it. We’d have never heard the end of it.” She wrinkled her nose with disgust. “Then again, Victor’s not as stupid as I’ve always made him sound. He’s a pain in the ass and a spoiled brat who always gets to do whatever he wants, which usually consists of parties and girls. Lucas trusts him for a reason, though, and now that things are getting serious, he probably is, too. Victor said all kinds of things, but there was a lot he didn’t say, and any of it could be lies anyway. He could be covering something much bigger, for all we know.”
“That’s comforting,
” Blossom muttered.
“Bottom line,” Tristan determined, “both said Kali has Dorian, and Owen is probably with them.”
“We need to find him,” I said. “Them. All of them. Dorian, Owen, and Kali. I owe the faeries anyway.”
I snorted. How ironic. I supposedly owed them because I asked them to help Owen. And now he was on my shit list, too.
“It’s time to head out,” I said.
“Are we still going north?” Blossom asked.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. A full day had passed since we’d done the spell. “We should try again. The direction might have changed by now.”
Charlotte’s brows lifted as she cocked her head.
“Blossom worked a tracking spell yesterday,” I explained to all of them. “We didn’t get a lock on Dorian, but we did feel a push that he’s north of here.”
“Did Sophia or Ms. Katerina have anything to say about it?” Charlotte asked.
I frowned as I debated what to tell her, unsure of how she’d react to our plan. Surely she’d want to pursue her son and the sorceress who destroyed her family, but would she defy Mom and Rina’s orders? I knew it wouldn’t be the first time she ignored the council—there was a reason she and Mom were such good friends—but our orders weren’t only from the council.
Tristan must have decided the best solution was to tell her because he opened his mouth before I did.
“They haven’t given us a specific direction or area, but our primary mission is to do conversions and build our army. We’re not officially authorized to find Dorian,” he finished, and everyone in the room frowned, including Charlotte.
“That could possibly change if they know Kali has him,” Char suggested.
“Possibly,” Tristan said, “but bringing it to their attention could just as easily cause them to give us more specific orders. Orders that won’t help us and could actually hinder us. I think it’s best that we stick with the plan Alexis and I have already started.”