by Kristie Cook
We collapsed to the floor, and the clash of the opposing powers rocked us back and forth. I pushed my Amadis power against her Daemoni energy, and it pushed back. Hard. The iciness of the evil slid into my veins, but I willed the warmth of love to melt it, boil it, evaporate it. But just as I felt warm again, more ice prickled its way in. I fought it, again and again and again. The darkness only seemed to strengthen.
Tristan said—or perhaps simply thought—something about night. Had that many hours already passed? Nightfall would explain the increased struggle. If the sun had set, the Daemoni power in Vanessa would no longer be at its weakest. So I gathered my own strength and willed it into her, fighting, fighting, fighting.
Until I could fight no more.
What did Charlotte say about becoming too drained? I couldn’t remember now. My brain was too fuzzy. Something about being drained of my energy was bad. Very bad.
I closed my eyes as I tried to focus on the goodness still within me and share it with Vanessa. Visions that weren’t mine appeared in my mind. Images of corpses, pale faces with vacant eyes, savaged throats . . . Vanessa’s kills. With each flash of an image, she experienced a mix of remorse and glee. And then there was only blood. Blood everywhere. I felt her thirst, her present need to feed, her desire to feed on me.
No! I tried to yell at her, but it came out weakly. Vanessa . . . you’re stronger . . . than . . . the desire. You . . . can . . . fight it.
I felt her try, felt the thirst diminish a bit. Then a somewhat familiar vision popped into my mind, although I saw it from a different perspective—Vanessa’s. We’d just flashed into the fight at the beach house right after I’d gone through the Ang’dora, and Vanessa got her first look at me after the change. Anger and hatred boiled up within her again, mirroring her feelings back then, but more than anything she felt envy. And not only because of Tristan.
“You have everything!” she’d thought. “Everything! How do you get it all and I get nothing? I was supposed to have it all! ME!”
Her current feelings escalated to nearly pure hatred, and her mind filled with various ways to kill me. I fought back, pushing what Amadis power I still had into her, pulling the evil energy away from her. But my power was weak and the Daemoni energy too strong. The ice stabbed into my veins again.
The next thing I knew, I no longer held Vanessa in my arms. My head came back to the darkly lit room to find Owen holding her instead, securing her limbs tightly against her convulsing body so they wouldn’t flail. I was across the room, in Tristan’s lap, his arms around me.
“No!” I jumped to my feet, away from him. “Don’t you do this! Don’t you take the power.”
“I’m not, my love. I’m not.” He reached up for my hands. “I’m giving you what you need.”
The energy of his love flowed through my hands and up my arms. When I didn’t feel a pull, as I did when he’d tried to leech the Daemoni power out of me before, I relaxed and let him pull me back into his lap. He wrapped his arms around me again and pushed his love through every place where our skin touched. Under different circumstances, I would have been tearing our clothes off for the increased skin contact.
“Is it working?” he asked after a while.
“Yeah,” I murmured with my eyes still closed as I continued to picture his naked body against mine. Even the thought of it seemed to build my power even more, so I had a good reason for the naughty vision.
“Good. She needs you,” Owen said, and the image vanished. I reluctantly opened my eyes.
“Patience,” Tristan told him. “You insisted on Alexis doing this by herself, so she needs to go slow. I won’t let this kill her.” When Owen opened his mouth, Tristan added, “Either of them, if we can help it. But you know my choice if one needs to be made.”
Owen stared at us long and hard, then finally muttered, “Let’s hope we don’t have to choose.”
Vanessa’s seizures had died down, but she began to moan.
“Seth,” she cried, tears seeping between the lashes of her closed lids. Tristan’s old name wasn’t a cry of desire, though, at least not in a lustful way. Longing filled the sound, and deep sadness. The image came to me clearly.
Through her eyes, I watched from a distance as Tristan took hold of my mom’s hands. He gazed at her face with complete trust. Her lips moved, and her voice traveled to our vampire ears: “You’re sure this is what you want?”
Tristan nodded. And then they both disappeared.
“No!” Vanessa cried. “Don’t leave me! Take me with you!”
Probably unintentionally, she shared her intense feelings of abandonment, loneliness, loss as “her” Seth went with my mom to be converted. “I want to go, too,” her mind whispered. But then her anger overwhelmed her once again. Anger at Seth and even more at my mother for taking him away . . . and for leaving her behind. Why would Mom leave her behind, though? If Vanessa really wanted to convert way back then, why wouldn’t Mom do it? Vanessa’s thoughts answered for me: she wasn’t ready to voice it aloud then. She still hadn’t been sure that’s what she wanted. So instead, she let anger and hate rule her life for another thirty years. That was her comfort zone.
I went to her again and took her out of Owen’s arms and into my own. Another wave of pain engulfed both of us, but not quite as bad as before. As our energies fought, her memories continued to fill my mind, as though we moved backwards through her life. More kills, more dead faces, more blood.
And then . . . in Vanessa’s mind, we sat with a familiar person draped across our lap, holding his shoulders in our left arm, his head lolled back on a limp neck and his white-blond hair falling to the sides. Victor, Vanessa’s brother, wore what seemed to be the fashion of early Victorian London, and he was dead. Tiny streams of blood leaked out of two puncture-wounds on his neck, and the taste of it lingered on our tongue. Regret combined with the thrill of revenge filled Vanessa’s thoughts as she gazed at her brother.
“How dare you!” yelled an icy male voice, the owner unseen in our vision. “Don’t let him die! Turn him!”
Vanessa had changed her own brother? I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing, but I could feel the truth coming from her.
A wave of pain wracked through us both, and the vision disappeared. We rode the crest, and as it receded, more memories flooded back. We lay on a bed in a room with brown, stone walls, where shadows danced from flickering candlelight. Or perhaps our vision made the room flicker as pain roiled through us. Not current pain—at least I didn’t think so—the sensation was dulled by time. Vanessa’s breaths labored in our lungs, and we felt weak, so weak. “I’m dying,” she thought, convinced of it.
Then we must have been lying on a bed as another familiar face loomed over us—that of the vampire who had demanded I stop writing, the one I thought had been my own character Claudius when I had believed he was only a dream. But we weren’t dreaming now. We were remembering.
“Your weakness is abhorrent! Now you will be strong and more suitable,” said the same voice that had ordered Vanessa to turn Victor rather than let him die. The vampire standing over us hadn’t spoken, though. The sound had come from our right.
Our eyes drifted over to a man’s silhouette standing at a window. His back was to us as he stared into the blackness beyond, but Vanessa knew him, knew him well. Her father? No, I didn’t think so. But somewhat of a father figure. At least, he might have been, but as the vampire’s mouth clamped onto her neck, she only felt hatred toward the man at the window. He was taking everything she ever wanted away. She would have rather died.
With the renewed anger and hatred, the Daemoni power boosted once again. We fought it together, but Vanessa weakened to it quickly. I gave her all the goodness I could muster, but I, too, began to drain again. And once more, I found myself back in the present room, shivering in Tristan’s lap.
“I’m s-so c-c-cold,” I stammered between chattering teeth. The Daemoni power had come closer to overpowering me than I’d realized. Tristan rubb
ed his hands up and down my arms, trying to warm me. “K-k-kiss. I need-d-d a k-k-kiss.”
I tilted my head up to lift my face to his, and his mouth pressed gently to mine, then harder as our lips separated and our tongues danced. Yes, exactly what I’d needed. The love was so much more powerful and so much more direct through the kiss than through the skin. He kissed me long and deep, and I pulled in his goodness.
“Don’t take it,” I said to him when we’d finally broken apart, knowing he’d understand what I meant.
“I won’t,” he promised. “The sun will be rising soon. It should become easier.”
I remained in his embrace until we felt the evil power weaken in Vanessa from the sun’s appearance outside. Then I sucked in a breath, let the Amadis power build up again, and went back to the vampire’s side.
Vanessa, I spoke into her mind. Do you remember love?
A new image popped into my mind—Tristan’s face. But he looked a little different and it took me a moment to realize I saw him through Vanessa’s eyes for the very first time, over two hundred years ago. Her heart swelled, and she knew she loved him at first sight. I squelched the jealousy creeping into my own heart and focused on my patient.
That’s right, I said, my inner voice shaking. Remember love.
But the Daemoni power fought back, and suddenly we were upset again. Seth had just rejected us. “But we’re supposed to be together,” Vanessa cried silently as he walked away without a backward glance. Our heart ripped apart into pieces, shards cutting into our soul. But then resolve mended our wounds, and determination to have him filled us. Her desire grew into more than love and lust, but into a selfish need to prove herself right. I didn’t understand what that meant, but knew, as the evil power started building again, I needed to get her back on track.
Love, Vanessa. Think of love—those you’ve loved, those who have loved you.
I thought it worked as an image of teenaged Victor filled our thoughts. Both he and Vanessa were pre-vampire now, yet . . . not completely human. What were they, if not Norman before they were changed? A question I couldn’t worry about now.
Vanessa had loved her brother, and I refocused my thoughts on him, but I also felt jealousy in her, especially as Victor turned and joined a man who was only a foggy figure at the fringe of our vision. As he turned, I thought it could have been the same man who’d been at the window, calling her weak and allowing her humanity to be taken away. A white-blond ponytail hung down his back, just as one trailed down Victor’s. The man draped an arm over Victor’s shoulder as they sauntered off, leaving Vanessa to feel abandoned, outcast, lonely, crying in the corner of a cavernous room with the only light flickering from torches on the wall. She only wanted to be loved and included, but neither of them seemed to care, strengthening my belief that the man probably wasn’t her father. Perhaps a sperm donor, but not a father. Not to her, anyway.
Vanessa felt the hurt and jealousy again, feeding the evil energy. The Daemoni power within her took on a new urgency, growing stronger and more intense. I built up my own power, readying myself to fight it. This could be it. Final battle coming soon.
Vanessa’s thoughts lost their cohesiveness. Images of living in a castle mixed with the wonder of being brought to live there dissolved into earlier memories of a crumbling cottage that had once been their home. The vision of a pretty woman’s face—their mother?—filled our minds now, and I knew Vanessa did love her.
That’s right. Focus on love.
A high shrieking sound pierced my ears as the evil energy protested, building and growing, becoming a gigantic dark cloud enshrouding Vanessa, trying to fill the entire room. The air froze around us, the chill seeping into my bones.
I’d been right—this was it. The final battle for Vanessa’s soul.
Chapter 16
That’s right, Vanessa. Remember love. You can be loved! You can love again!
Vanessa’s mom or caregiver or whoever she was spoke sweetly to her, and although I couldn’t hear the words, I encouraged Vanessa’s mind to latch onto the kind voice. I focused on my own love, my goodness, the Amadis power within me, creating that bubble inside me and growing it until I could contain it no more.
Vanessa shrieked as the evil energy exploded from her, and I cried out, too, as my Amadis power burst from me once again. The powers collided and fought around and inside us. Vanessa’s body trembled and quaked and seized in my arms.
Fight! I screamed at her. If you want this, you’ll fight it. And you’ll win! Let goodness win, Vanessa. Release the darkness. You can do this!
And she fought. Even as she drew on my power, my heart swelled with pride and conviction. My soul burst with love for her, for her determination, her perseverance to overcome what had dwelled inside of her for so long. I pushed as hard as she pulled. And we were winning. Winning! The Daemoni energy warred against us, but the Amadis power was stronger.
But she kept pulling with vehemence, strengthening her goodness with mine, until I had no more to share. And still, she tried to pull more, eagerly lapping it up like blood, draining me as if she were feeding off me. In some distant corner of my consciousness, which was fading quickly, I felt a stream of love pushing into me.
Tristan? What was he doing? I was still connected with Vanessa. The powers were still battling it out. If he held on, if the energies . . . Shit. What did Charlotte say would happen? I still couldn’t remember. Bad, though. Very bad.
The clashing energies suddenly withdrew and separated. They each built up, two clouds, one black and the other bright-white, growing, churning, intensifying. Electricity charged through every cell of my being. And as if they actually had minds and planned the assault, the energies charged at one another.
The crash of the collision pierced my ears, and the pain rattled my bones.
Vanessa screamed. So did I.
Then I lost it. Lost everything. I had no more to give, no more to keep me in the battle.
Everything fell silent. Went black.
Then gray.
Then muted sounds. Heavy breathing. Sobbing. Whimpering. A soothing voice trying to quiet another.
My consciousness slowly returned. I lay on the floor. No. On Tristan’s lap. His face came into focus above me, his eyes filled with concern.
“Is it over?” I asked, my voice a hoarse whisper. He nodded. The relief lasted only a moment as the memory of Charlotte’s warning shot through me. If I allowed my energy to be drained during a conversion, the evil energy would be transferred, not eliminated. And Vanessa had drained me. I bolted upright. “Oh, no! Did you take it? Did you take the dark power?”
He shook his head. “No, my love. I’m good.”
“Owen?” My head twisted, my focus shooting across the room until it landed on him, with a very limp Vanessa in his arms.
He shook his head, too. “I’m fine.”
I studied Vanessa’s face—relaxed, even more beautiful in its serenity.
“But it worked?” I asked.
“I feel no evil energy left within her,” Owen said. “Not even a trace.”
“Really?” I couldn’t believe it. Six months since her conversion, Sonya still had traces of Daemoni power. And she’d only been Daemoni for a few years. Sheree said that was normal, that the residual energy could linger for months or even longer. How could Vanessa be eliminated of it already? I crawled out of Tristan’s lap and over to Owen and Vanessa to see for myself. I pressed my hand to Vanessa’s chest, over her heart, and assessed her.
Owen was right. Not a trace. I had done it. I’d converted Vanessa. Freakin’ Vanessa!
“You did well,” Cassandra said softly.
Thank you, I told her.
“It was all you, Alexis. You and the power you’ve been given.” With that, her presence disappeared.
To be one-hundred-percent positive the vamp wasn’t hiding anything, I tapped into her mind. The voice of the woman from her vision—the one I’d told her to latch onto and remember—floated through
her thoughts:
“Hidden daughter of enemy and ally will offer strength and valor to the worthy. Yet first, she must unite with son of power and war. Only when together will they anchor victory over foe.
“That’s your prophecy, Vanessa. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.”
Vanessa’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of my gasp, and she looked at me without focus then up at Owen above her. Her gaze sharpened, and she clawed at her throat.
“So . . . thirsty,” she croaked, and all three of us—Tristan, Owen, and me—stiffened for a moment. Then Owen stretched out his arm, obviously planning to give her his wrist.
“Wait!” I said. “Do we really want to do that?”
Owen eyed me. “She needs to drink.”
“But your blood is too powerful.”
Owen glanced at Tristan and back at me. “It’s the weakest blood here. We have no other options, do we?”
I grimaced. “Yes, we do. Let’s do this right.”
“Sheree will notice missing supplies,” Tristan said.
“I know, but too bad. She’s going to find out sooner or later anyway.” I stood, a little too quickly—pinpricks of light danced across my vision. I, too, was still weak. Tristan caught my wobbly frame and sat me down in the wingback chair.
“I’ll get it,” he said, and he disappeared.
I didn’t know how Sheree would take Vanessa’s presence, now that the vampire was nearly converted. Sure, she had much faith-healing to go through, but I was still amazed that she held no trace of Daemoni power. She was less Daemoni now than Sonya. So maybe Sheree would feel that and forgive the vampire for her past. After all, forgiveness was part of being Amadis, and she knew that as well as anyone. It was part of her teachings. And if I could forgive Vanessa, hopefully Sheree could, too.