by Kristie Cook
I stopped, ready to take her on by herself. But she blurred right past me. Surely she had to have smelled me, but she didn’t even hesitate. She headed straight for the others.
I stood in the middle of the dark street, flabbergasted for a moment. But I knew what I had to do—I couldn’t let Owen fight unassisted. My heart raced harder, and my hand shook a little as my thumb slid over the stone in the dagger’s hilt to expose the weapon. It would be stupid to do this alone, but if Tristan didn’t get his act together, I’d lose the opportunity to recover my pendant and my protector.
“You are not alone.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the soft woman’s voice in my head, vaguely familiar but not mine. However, it wasn’t attached to any mind signature around. And although the internal voice didn’t belong to me, I somehow knew it came from inside me.
“You have what you need within you, Alexis. I am here.”
The voice did anything but comfort me. Memories of Psycho and Evil Alexis came to mind instead, and I wondered if I was losing my sanity. I’d slowly but surely become used to voices in my head since the Ang’dora, but this was different. I hadn’t sought it out. I released my hold on the dagger’s hilt and massaged my temples.
Get a grip. You’re just panicking.
I drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. The voice didn’t return. Hopefully, it had been some strange fluke, my subconscious finding a different way to try to calm me. My mind remained quiet, even as I reached out again to track the nearby mind signatures.
The fight between Owen and the Daemoni had escalated, and Vanessa was about to land in the middle of it all. A yelp of pain in the voice of my protector shot through the quiet night, and my body immediately responded.
Tristan, I’m going in without you. I called out as my legs carried me down the street. I reached out to the other Amadis soldiers, as well, ordering them to join us. Tristan finally appeared by my side. Owen, we’re coming!
“Leave me alone, Alexis,” Owen barked in my mind just as we rounded the corner to the fight. Just as the Amadis appeared, too. And just as the Daemoni flashed out of sight, Owen on their trails, and Vanessa on his. But we were physically too far away to catch hers.
“Owen,” I shouted as I reached out for their mind signatures. They were gone. Not on the island at all. They could be anywhere in a hundred-mile radius. I spun on Tristan and pounded him with my fists. “Where were you?” I yelled at him. “What is wrong with you? If you’d been here—”
He grabbed my wrists and pulled me to him, and the rest of the Amadis slipped away into the shadows, not wanting to be a part of this. “I know, ma lykita. I’m sorry.”
I jerked backwards out of his grasp. “You’re sorry? Don’t you think you took that ‘let’s pretend we’re not together’ thing a little too far? And now Owen and Vanessa and my pendant are gone. Again! It’ll probably be another eight months before we get another chance, Tristan. Eight. Months!” I threw my hands in the air with my violent frustration. “Actually, we’ll be lucky to ever see Owen again considering what he just flung himself into. What the hell, Tristan?”
He looked at me with guilt-filled hazel eyes, the gold flecks dim. He scrubbed his hands over his face and exhaled slowly.
“I don’t know.” He rolled his neck and his shoulders, then stared at something off to the side, avoiding eye contact with me. His jaw muscle twitched. “An off night for me, I guess.”
“An off night?” I echoed, my words dripping with venom. “You don’t have off nights. You are the warrior who’s supposed to be ready for anything and everything. Remember that? Besides, you sure didn’t look off to me. In fact, you looked to be pretty on with all those women.”
His gaze returned to me. “I admit I lost focus, but not because of them. Because of you. I didn’t like the damn act, especially when that guy put his hands on you. Then I was pissed and . . . I don’t know. Not right.”
“We’re supposed to be a team, Tristan. I need you.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded. Whatever had happened in that nightclub, he knew he’d been wrong. But he obviously had nothing else to say, so I broke my eyes from his, and my gaze traveled around the street where we stood. Stucco houses glowed white in the moonlight, and many flights of stairs twisted and wound around the homes, leading to those at the top of the hill. Not a single person sat outside on the various verandas and rooftops; no one climbed the steps. I opened my mind but Daemoni and Amadis alike were gone.
“Let’s just go,” I said with a groan.
I didn’t know what to think about Tristan’s behavior. We were on a mission. How could Tristan—Tristan, the experienced warrior—become so distracted? We’d fought side-by-side before. He couldn’t blame me, especially when he pretty much ignored me when I needed him most. But what else could have been going on?
We flashed to right outside the Amadis Island’s shield, then swam the rest of the way in. The physical exertion quieted my anger and frustration with Tristan, and then I completely forgot about it when a new idea occurred to me.
“Were they there for Owen?” I asked once we stood on the beach of the Amadis Island, dripping wet. I’d thought Vanessa was corralling me into the arms of the enemy, but she’d shown no interest in me. Had Owen been the one they wanted? But why? “What if …?”
I couldn’t finish the thought of what may have happened to him.
“I’ve told you before. Scarecrow can handle himself,” Tristan said, taking my hand. “Remember, he’s pretty damn powerful, even for a warlock.”
How could I forget? His extraordinary power was exactly why he was gone. He’d disappeared the day he learned the source of all his power: Kali, the evil sorceress whose spirit had taken over the body of Owen’s father, Martin.
I shook my head. “I still don’t get it. Why would he throw himself into the middle of so many of them? I don’t care how great he is, that was plain stupid.”
“You know why. He still needs time.”
I let out a harrumph. Everyone, including Mom, kept saying Owen was a grown man and needed to work things out the way he felt was right. Although the Amadis had rules, each member had free will. Well, everyone but us daughters, since the council tried to control us at every chance they could, but we’re a different story. As for Owen, if he wanted to abandon us to deal with his own issues, he could choose to do so. And apparently, that’s what he chose, still. But he’d been so close to home. There had to have been a reason he showed up on that island tonight. He had to have been thinking of coming back. But if that were true, why would he follow the Daemoni when they’d left the island?
I kicked a stray rock on the path from the beach to the mansion, thinking about how much I missed my protector, my friend. Tristan missed him, too, I knew, and Dorian constantly asked about his uncle. But the way Owen had snapped at me earlier—he didn’t sound worried about my safety. Rather, he made sure I knew the door to his life remained closed. Why did he shut us all out when he needed us most? Because he’s a man. That’s all I could figure.
As we walked into the mansion, I expected to find it quiet and dark with Mom sitting in Rina’s quarters and Bree staying with Lilith. Dorian slept in his room—I sensed his dreaming mind signature. But Mom wasn’t in Rina’s suite. She came rushing from the sitting room, tears streaming down her face.
“Alexis, Tristan,” she croaked, her wet eyes flitting between us. Her hand covered her mouth as she shook her head. Mom rarely cried. Something was terribly wrong, and considering both Rina and Lilith had been on the brink of death for so many months, it wasn’t hard to guess what. And Mom had been down here, waiting for us, while Bree was noticeably absent.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. Tristan’s arm around me was the only thing keeping me upright as my knees gave out from under me. Whatever had happened between him and me tonight became a distant memory—we would need each other in the days to come.
Chapter 2
The l
ate spring breeze whipped at the hem of my skirt, promising to bring a thunderstorm within the next few hours. Salty sea air filled my nose and coated the back of my throat as we stood on the edge of the cliff, saying our farewells. My hair lashed at my face, but the tears that stung my eyes rose from the deeper pain in my heart. Grief and the boulder of guilt that had replaced my insides made it difficult to breathe.
Tristan stood tightly against me, his hand intertwined in mine, returning the squeezes I gave every few minutes. Reassuring me that he didn’t hate me. “It’s not your fault,” he’d told me numerous times over the last two days, and I’d tried to make the statement my mantra. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that it was all my fault.
Mom stood at the head of our group, leading us in the prayer that we’d said and heard much too often these last few months. Bree stood on the other side of Tristan and Solomon to my right. No one else had come to this private funeral, but only one major absence bothered me.
Owen had missed them all, of course, but since this one hit closer to the heart, I’d hoped he’d make an appearance. But no. Still no word from him since the other night. Perhaps he was unable to make it. Perhaps we’d be holding his funeral next. Don’t think that way. No news is good news. That’s what everyone kept telling me. After all, if the Daemoni killed or even held Owen captive, they’d certainly be bragging about it.
Trying to push Owen out of my mind, I refocused on Mom and the pyre she stood next to. The body lain out on top, with her hands folded over her stomach, looked so tiny, so helpless, so vulnerable. So still. The tears brimmed the rims of my eyes and slid down my cheeks. I’d tried so hard to help her. I gave her as much Amadis power as I possibly could over the months, trying to fill her with goodness and eradicate the darkness within her. Trying to draw her out of her coma. But giving her all I could still hadn’t been enough. I hadn’t saved her.
Even if Tristan didn’t hate me, I didn’t understand how Bree could not. She’d given up her own world, the Otherworld, and her faerie life to serve the Angels and give them Tristan, only to lose him to the Daemoni when he was six years old. Lilith had been her everything for the past three hundred years. And now her daughter, Tristan’s sister, was gone. Because I’d failed. I shouldn’t have been at that stupid nightclub the other night. Maybe if I’d been here right before she died, I could have done something at the last minute.
Mom finished the eulogy, and Solomon moved forward with a match as long as a chopstick. Tristan let go of me, stepped up, and placed a hand on Solomon’s arm.
“Please. Let me,” Tristan said, his voice low and gruff.
Solomon returned to my side as Tristan moved to the pyre. He lifted his hand to Lilith, caressed her forehead and smoothed her blond hair away from her face, so peaceful now, so much like Dorian’s when he slept. Tristan’s other hand faced the pile of logs and twitched. A flame shot out of his palm and ignited the wood. I dropped my head and closed my eyes, too much of a coward to watch. When Tristan returned to my side, though, I forced myself to give Lilith all that I had left to give her.
Mom, Bree, Tristan, and I lifted our hands and the burning pyre rose from the ground. We sent it over the edge of the cliff and let it hover there for what felt like hours, waiting, but nothing happened. In the other funerals, the pyre—body and all—had disappeared before incineration.
We’d given Lilith an Amadis send-off, but she apparently wasn’t Amadis enough for the Angels to take her in the same way they had the others.
Because I had failed.
Plumes of black smoke with a tinge of purple began to darken the sky in front of us as the flames grew bigger and licked at the frail little body. A sob caught in my throat, choking me. I can’t watch this. I forced myself to keep my eyes open.
“Lower her to the sea,” Bree whispered. “Please. She would like that.”
With our powers, we carefully lowered the flame-engulfed pyre to the sea below and silently watched.
“Ms. Alexis! Ms. Alexis!” Ophelia’s voice cried out.
I automatically turned toward the woods that separated this part of the island from the mansion, although the sound came in my head. Panic immediately swept over me at her urgent tone. Ophelia served as the head of staff at the Amadis mansion and often babysat my son.
Dorian? I asked her in response.
“He is fine. He is fine. It is Ms. Katerina! Please, send Ms. Sophia. Now!”
My heart stuttered at her desperation, and if the grief of Lilith’s death hadn’t already swallowed my ability to breathe, news about Rina did. I mentally passed the message to everyone else. Mom’s head snapped toward me, her eyes wide. Then she disappeared.
I looked up at Tristan. He gave my hand a squeeze, leaned over, and pressed his lips to my temple.
“Go,” he said. “Solomon, too. Bree and I’d like to be alone, anyway.”
A popping sound behind me meant Solomon didn’t wait to be told twice. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave Tristan’s side. Not with that look darkening his beautiful hazel eyes. He’d kept telling me he’d never known Lilith as a sister, that he didn’t feel the same kind of grief, but I knew he’d hoped to develop a relationship with her, and that hope was now incinerating in the flames below.
I lifted my hand to his cheek, and he leaned into my palm. “I don’t want to leave you, though.”
“My love,” he whispered, “Rina might need you. You must go.”
And although he didn’t say the words, I thought them: Don’t fail Rina, too.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. With another look at the blaze floating on the sea below, I said a silent goodbye to Lilith before flashing to the mansion on the other side of the island.
Bedroom suites had a special shield that only allowed their owners to flash inside them, so I appeared in the hallway of Rina’s wing. Her suite door stood wide open, and I rushed through the ornately decorated front room, into her bedroom of browns and beiges, dimly lit by a few candles and lanterns set upon the antique furniture.
Ophelia, the ancient witch, stood at the end of the bed, wringing her wrinkly hands, her severely creased face pulled tight with worry. Julia, the dark-haired vampire who rarely left Rina’s suite, paced along the near side of my grandmother’s bed. Solomon’s cornrows hung around his face as he watched Rina from his stance on the far side. Mom sat on the bed in front of him, holding Rina’s hand and whispering to her.
And Rina’s eyes shifted to me.
Rina’s eyes shifted to me!
They were open! For the first time in eight months, almost to the day, Rina’s beautiful, mahogany eyes, so much like mine and Mom’s, were open on her own volition.
“Rina!” I gasped, a new sob filling my throat. Tears of joy replaced those of grief as I hurried to her bedside, nearly knocking Julia out of my way.
As I knelt beside her bed, stretched my arm across the dark-chocolate brown duvet and took Rina’s hand into mine, Mom looked over at me with pursed lips. Surprised by her dim expression, I glanced at everyone else. Julia still paced. Ophelia continued to wring her hands. Solomon’s eyes were tight, the corners of his mouth pulled down. Why weren’t they overjoyed?
I studied Rina’s face, which normally looked maybe eight or nine years older than mine but now appeared as though she’d aged decades. She stared at me, her face expressionless and her eyes vacant. Her dry lips parted but formed no words. She blinked, then her brows pushed close together, as though she concentrated hard on trying to speak.
“Lil . . . ith . . . good,” she grunted. Then her eyes fluttered closed again. We all froze and watched my grandmother’s body with bated breath, waiting for her to open her eyes again, but she didn’t.
“She’s just sleeping,” Mom said after a few minutes of monitoring Rina’s vital signs. “She didn’t slip back under.”
A collective sigh of relief whooshed around the room.
Julia sunk down onto the end of the bed and stared at the clasped fingers in her lap,
and Ophelia dropped her hands to her side, only to anxiously twist them into the hem of her apron.
“Is she . . . okay?” I asked.
Mom shook her head, and her chestnut hair, pulled into the ponytail swung across the nape of her neck. “I don’t know. She didn’t respond normally. She couldn’t even speak. Julia, what happened?”
The vampire slowly lifted her head and looked at Rina. “I was sitting right here. As always. Praying for her to wake up, as always. And then . . . her eyes slowly opened and she eventually focused on me. That’s when I called for Ophelia to retrieve you. She looked around the room, as if lost. Confused. Even when she saw you.”
Mom nodded. “Yes, I noticed that, too.”
“She . . . she does not recognize us?” Ophelia asked, her voice tight with worry.
“She has been unconscious for eight months,” Mom said. “Although Tristan and I have thought her brain waves appeared fairly normal, she may have trouble returning to us completely. At least at first. We don’t know the extent of the dark magic’s effects on her.”
Before we’d defeated Kali at Tristan’s trial, she had blasted Rina with a powerful spell. At least, we thought we had defeated Kali. We truly had no idea what happened to her soul after leaving Martin’s body. Or what happened to Martin’s body, for that matter. It had disappeared before anyone had noticed its absence.
Lilith and I had been hit by a similar spell in the Florida Everglades, but somehow I had recovered. Lilith never had. Hopefully, Rina will, although she’d been hit at a much closer range than either Lilith or me.
“Now that she’s come out of it, maybe I can reach her mind,” I suggested as I gazed at Rina’s once again still face. My telepathy had been useless with both her and Lilith before. Their brains were too far under to reach.
Mom nodded, and I gave it a go. Rina’s mind signature definitely felt different than it had the last several months, as if it had more substance, but still not the same as it had been before. And when I followed it to her thoughts, they were thin, gauzy, like a mist trying to take shape but unable to solidify. I concentrated harder, as if I could focus her mind for her, but, of course, I couldn’t.