by Kristie Cook
“Mad because you found them or because you were in their head?”
“You mean, like they’re hiding something and knew who I was?”
“Maybe. They could even know Dorian’s whereabouts.”
“Huh.” My finger returned to skating over his abs as I pondered this idea. “So maybe we should go back and try to find them again?”
“Let’s see what you and Blossom can do from here first,” he said as his hand rubbed circles over my lower spine. “You said the spell nudged you north again?”
“I think so, but I could have imagined it. You’re right. We have to stay focused on Dorian. If it was Kali, then maybe he’s not with her.”
I tilted my head up to look at him, and my breath caught at his beauty. How he could still do that to me was beyond my understanding, but I wouldn’t complain.
He curled down around me and kissed me on the forehead. “We also need to see what conversion missions Charlotte comes up with around the area so we can make the council happy.”
Right. Our “official” mission.
Tristan’s lips moved along my temple and down my jaw as he rearranged us so I lay on my back, and he leaned over me. His mouth traveled over my chin, along my neck and collarbone, and to the stone over my heart. As soon as his lips touched it, warmth zinged through me.
The feeling in my lower belly brought on a realization, and I groaned. “The tea mix. It’s gone.”
“We can’t let that stop us from trying,” he murmured against my chest. “We’re still on a mission.”
“At least this one is nice,” I said in agreement.
His lips moved to my breast and made all kinds of promises of exactly how nice it would be. Unfortunately, with everyone in the house, I didn’t quite get to enjoy it as much as I would’ve liked—I held back at the last minute so I wouldn’t share my orgasm with my team.
The next morning, we all set to work right away. Charlotte, Sheree, and Jax went hunting for potential converts in downtown Atlanta, while Blossom and I sat in the middle of Dorian’s old room, Tristan nearby to keep watch. Blossom began her chant, and we pushed and pushed until everything went black in my mind.
“That same thing again?” Blossom asked when I opened my eyes. I was surprised to find my head in Tristan’s lap, my body curled in the fetal position next to him on the floor.
“No,” I said as I pushed myself up. Dizziness waved over me, and I blinked against the gray trying to cloud my vision. My brows pushed together—I couldn’t remember anything but stretching my mind as hard and as far as it would go. “I didn’t hear anything this time. Why?”
“You’re bleeding again,” Blossom said.
Tristan’s thumb wiped over the curve of my jaw and came away with a smear of red. I rubbed my finger over my upper lip, and it also showed blood.
“I’m fine,” I muttered as I wiped my finger on my leathers. “It’s not like yesterday.”
Blossom looked at me with pursed lips.
“I promise.”
Although it didn’t feel as if an ice pick were lodged in my gray matter, my head did throb, but I refused to admit it. At least it didn’t feel as bad as before, and this time nothing strange had happened. I began to wonder if I’d imagined that part yesterday.
“I think you’re trying too hard,” Tristan said. “Pushing your boundaries.”
He reiterated what I’d told Blossom yesterday, and the idea may have been truer than I’d thought.
“What else am I supposed to do? Our son is out there somewhere. We have to find him. And unless you have a better solution, we have no other way.”
He pulled me into his arms and soothed his hand down my back. “Pushing your boundaries isn’t a bad thing. I’m not saying that. Just don’t push too hard too soon. It’s like a Norman weightlifter trying to exceed his max. If he goes too hard too fast, he gets injured. You injure this head of yours, you’re no good to Dorian or the rest of us.”
So we treated my ability—and Blossom’s—as though we were training, pushing a little further each time but not to the point of my passing out. My ears did stop bleeding, but my patience wore thin. Nothing was working. Using my old house as a home base, we physically rode the streets of Atlanta, its suburbs, and beyond while I searched for Dorian’s mind signature—and Kali’s, Owen’s, Victor’s, and Lucas’s, too. But we found no sign of Dorian or any of them. We questioned new converts, but they could only tell us that both Kali and Lucas seemed to have been up to something, but they didn’t have the status to know what. Days grew longer as we moved into spring, and they turned into weeks with still no progress.
Dorian’s birthday came, and Tristan and I spent the day like every other—searching for him, both physically and mentally. But in the end, all we could do was promise that we’d celebrate it with him as soon as we had him home. I refused to let myself cry even on that day. Worry and fear of what the Daemoni might have done to him tried to squeeze my heart, but I let the wrath smother them.
Sasha never showed, either.
“We have to do something else,” I declared, thumping my fist on the table as my team stood around the kitchen one morning. “He’s been gone a damn month already, and we’re no closer.”
“Where are we supposed to go, though?” Sheree asked. “What else can we do?”
I pushed myself off the table and threw my hands in the air. “I don’t know. Somewhere. North, I guess, since that’s the little bit of feeling we get.”
Charlotte’s phone rang, and she grunted when she saw the number.
“Alexis, we haven’t really felt that for weeks,” Blossom said as she watched Char leave the room to take the call.
“Maybe you haven’t, but I have.”
The witch cocked her head, her blond hair falling over her shoulder. “Really?”
No, not really. If I’d felt anything at all, it had been only the tiniest of nudges, which I couldn’t know for sure meant anything. “Well, it’s more than anything else we know.”
“Come on, Alexis,” Charlotte said, returning to the kitchen. “We have a job that will take your mind off things for a few days, then we can regroup on this.”
“Char—” I started.
“Don’t Char me.” She stepped in front of me and crossed her arms over her chest as she pierced me with sapphire-blue eyes. Eyes like her son’s. “Sheree and I have been handling almost all of these conversions, but it’s time you get to work doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And it sounds like this is too big of a group for me to handle on my own anyway.”
I scowled.
“You need the distraction,” she said.
I looked around the kitchen at all the pairs of eyes on me. I’d missed most of the conversion attempts Charlotte had made because I’d been focused on finding Dorian, but I had promised Rina I’d make this a priority, too. So far, though, our conversion opportunities had only been onesies and twosies, enough for Char to handle with Sheree’s help. No big groups that would make a difference to the Daemoni.
“How big?” I asked, trying to let the idea excite me. Char was wrong—I’d never be distracted from my main goal of finding Dorian—but maybe going out on a conversion attempt, especially a big one like this, would give this one part of my mind a chance to rest. When I used to write and I’d have writer’s block, doing something mindless or using a different part of my brain would help me unstick myself. The overtaxed part of my mind could wander freely without pressure, and lo and behold, my brain would often trip over the solution to my problem on its own. So maybe this could work. Besides, I really did need to show some effort in this area.
“There was a vamp party in Buckhead last night,” Charlotte said. “Our guys saw at least twelve people turned, but they’ve been abandoned in an old apartment building.”
“Twelve?” I asked, my eyes widening. “Shit. They’re getting brazen, aren’t they? Wait. How are we supposed to convert so many on our own?”
“See why I need you?” she
asked before letting out a sigh. “We’ll be lucky to get them all anyway, but we have to give it a shot.”
I held my hands up. “All right. Fine. Let’s do it.”
We went over the plan, and then we moved out to a shoddy area near Buckhead. Charlotte and Blossom cloaked and shielded us when we came closer to a nest of Daemoni vamps. A coven of mages wasn’t too far away, either. I tried to keep my mind open to everyone so we could hear our enemies’ thoughts, but all the noise in their heads was too much for everyone to handle.
Rina had taught me that in battle, she’d monitor the enemies’ thoughts and direct her people with her mind, allowing everyone else to focus on their fighting. I’d experienced this myself the day Tristan disappeared. Unlike her, though, I couldn’t stay far away from the battle itself. Not this time anyway. Charlotte did need me. So when we went in, I’d have to keep part of my mind roaming the area surrounding us to listen for danger while keeping another part focused on our potential converts.
Two vans from the safe house waited for us in an underground garage near the target location with Amadis vampires as their drivers. As soon as the bikes were parked and we dismounted, one of the vamps handed us some silver spikes.
“Once they state their desire to convert, and you get them near the vehicle, they’ll need to be staked,” Charlotte said, and the blood drained from my head. “It’s the only way to get them safely back so we have more time to work with them.”
My stomach clenched. I’d done this before. I’d plunged my dagger into Sonya’s heart to keep her knocked out while Tristan drove us to the Captiva safe house the first time we tried to convert her. That had been way worse than cutting the stone out of her. Blood had spattered over my face and all over the backseat of Tristan’s truck. But it had effectively kept her out cold for the rest of the drive and up until we removed the dagger from her heart once we were ready to begin the conversion. We’d have to do the same thing over and over again today. Ugh. Maybe this would be a real distraction.
“Tristan, you stay with Alexis, and Vanessa, you stay near me,” Charlotte ordered. “Sheree and Jax, you two keep watch between here and there, and be ready to morph if necessary. A shield will attract that mage coven four blocks over, but if I do need to throw one up, Blossom, I need you ready to hold it. You come in with us so you can watch and learn. You might need to jump in. If so, just follow orders.”
The witch nodded her understanding. Although Mom and Char had worked with her on Amadis Island, this had the potential to be her first real attempt. Nothing like trial by fire—that’s how I had learned, first with Sheree and then with Sonya and Vanessa.
The two vamps from the safe house would stay by the vans, keeping watch on this end. My mind would be kept busy as I tried to stay connected to each of the guards while we did our thing.
A few minutes later, Tristan, Vanessa, Blossom, and I followed Charlotte around the corner and into an alley that ran through the middle of the block. We were surrounded by apartment buildings, most of them rundown and empty. Char shook two fingers in the air, signaling a second floor apartment in the first building to our right. I directed my mind up to it and found a dozen mind signatures. They all felt Norman . . . almost. They were still going through the transformation, and their signatures came faintly, almost dead, but with a hint of vampire lacing through them. If we accomplished this before dusk, not only would they be weak from the sun, but also from the transition. Once night fell, however, their transition would be basically complete, and they’d wake up all kinds of pissed off. And thirsty. Very thirsty.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t simply sweep them away unconscious so they woke up at the safe house. They had to want to keep the goodness still inside them. So we crept upstairs and into the apartment, finding them all out cold, scattered on the living room floor. Charlotte and Vanessa grabbed a woman, Tristan and I grabbed a man, and we carried them outside before forcing them awake. These first two were easy—they were boyfriend and girlfriend and had been attacked without warning. They still had so much love for each other, making their decisions straightforward. After I checked with Sheree and Jax that the coast remained clear, we took them to the vans where they sat and waited. They didn’t even have to be staked.
The next two weren’t quite as simple, but not difficult, either. Charlotte and I had to talk to them for a while, Blossom listening closely, as we tried to explain what had happened to them and what their choices were. Eventually—finally—they agreed to come with us, but as we came closer to the vans, one started freaking out, which caused the other to flip out, too. Tristan plunged a stake into our vamp’s heart, but Vanessa hesitated over hers. Before the newborn could get away and alert the Daemoni of our presence, Charlotte staked her with the silver.
“Sorry,” Vanessa whispered. “I remembered what it felt like.”
This excuse of hers tumbled around my mind as we rushed back to the apartment. Was that compassion she felt? Or remorse for herself? I tried not to worry about it as we pulled the next two out.
And then things went bad. In a hurry.
Chapter 13
Charlotte’s guy started screaming like a woman giving birth as soon as he roused from his slumber and saw us, which woke my guy up fully. Mine had a small build for a man, so he’d nearly completed the transformation. Which meant he was thirsty. He dove for my neck without hesitation.
“Stop!” I ordered as I pushed him off and he tried to fight me.
He didn’t stop. His hands flew out in front of him and grasped onto my shoulders, and he yanked me towards his face, his fangs out. I kneed him in the stomach and shoved him off of me for the second time. He tried to dive for me again, but Tristan paralyzed him.
Char’s newborn saw this and started screaming again. Then he sprang upwards. Whether he knew what would happen or not, we’d never know, but his new force flew him to the top of the building. He barely landed on the edge and tumbled off. Not knowing any better, he only screamed as he plummeted to the ground and landed on his back with a loud crack. When he discovered he hadn’t died, he sprang to his feet and ran off yelling in a panic. Char and Vanessa ran after him.
“It . . . it worked?” the new vamp in front of me asked after witnessing the circus-like scene. His eyes widened and filled with malice as he answered his own question. “It really worked! We’re vampires!”
“You wanted this?” I asked, my stomach sinking.
“Fuck yeah! Who wouldn’t?” He tried to move against Tristan’s power but was unable to. His eyes narrowed as he glared at my husband. “What the hell are you doing to me? I’m gonna fuck up your girl if you don’t stop.”
Tristan simply rolled his eyes.
“Shut up and listen to me,” I said. “Did you really want this? Do you understand what it means?”
“I’ve been wanting something like this since I was a kid—a chance to get back at all those bullies. They’ll never see it coming. I’m not exactly, well, him.” His eyes flicked up toward Tristan’s imposing figure. “But now it doesn’t matter.”
I tried to talk him out of it, tried to convince him that what he had to give up for his revenge wasn’t worth the time he’d give those bullies, but the idiot refused to listen. We went round and round, but he’d made up his mind long ago, as soon as he thought vampires might truly exist. And he became more and more irate as the pain of the thirst filled his eyes.
“We can’t force him,” Charlotte said, appearing by my side. “Let’s move on. We don’t have much more time. That dumbass out there will be bringing their creators down on us any minute.”
“Good! You all deserve to fucking die, keeping me like this, and I can’t wait for it,” the guy in front of me said. His tongue darted out and swiped over his lips. “I bet you taste good, sweetheart.” His gaze slid down to my hips. “Can’t wait to bite into that thigh—oof.”
The guy’s head swung back, smacking against the brick building. Tristan’s fist had darted out so fast, none of us had seen
it coming.
“Guess we’ll have to take care of you first,” the newborn snarled as he glared at Tristan.
Tristan chuckled, and then he leaned over, his face only inches from the vampire’s. His voice came out in a low growl. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Don’t think for a minute that you’re truly at the top of the food chain now.”
Uncertainty flashed in the vamp’s eyes, but only briefly before the orbs hardened into marbles. I scanned his mind to make sure he didn’t want to come with us. He really didn’t know anything about this world he’d become a part of, but he believed wholeheartedly the lies he’d been told. I shook my head at Charlotte.
Maybe eventually when he realizes the truth, I told her, but not now.
“Hold him here, Tristan,” she said, “for as long as we can get.”
“Glad to.” Tristan lifted the side of his mouth in a smirk. The new vampire hissed, but could do nothing else.
After checking the area again and finding no new mind signatures, Char and I went in for another pair, but they woke up before we managed to drag them out of the room. They broke free and took off. The others began to wake, too, then suddenly more vampires were popping into the room. The whole Daemoni nest came for their newborns.
“We need to get out of here,” Charlotte said.
A female Daemoni squealed with glee when she realized who we were, and then she soared for me. Others followed suit, and Charlotte and I had no choice but to fight our way out of the apartment.
Tristan, we could use your help, I called out to him. He barged into the doorway and started blasting the vamps with his power. Charlotte and I tried to go for the remaining newborns, but the Daemoni protected them closely.
“Let’s just go,” Char said.
With the mage coven so close and not knowing what kind of traps were around, we couldn’t flash back to the vans, but could only run at top speed. Of course, the vampires were nearly as fast as us, and then other Daemoni blocked our way. A white crocodile clamped his jaw over one of them and shook it side to side. A tiger lunged into the alley and attacked another. Blossom shot spells as fast as she could while Tristan carried her since she was the slowest of us all. With his free hand, he blasted those he could reach with his power.