by Kristie Cook
So I picked up the phone with a sigh, sat up straight, and called Heather instead.
Chapter 18
“Telepathy, huh?” Heather asked me as she sat on the couch in my office and stared up at Tristan and me.
I’d never told her about my gift before because even our kind, who knew the ability existed, had issues with it. Vanessa served as a prime example. But Tristan had pointed out that we could use it to our advantage during this supervised visit.
“I’m not going to listen to your every thought,” I said, “but if you feel frightened or simply uncomfortable, you can silently tell me.”
She squinted her eyes as she considered my suggestion. “Because if she knows I’m afraid, it would upset her.”
“She’ll smell your fear as soon as you feel it,” Tristan said, “and yes, she’ll feed off of it. But if you don’t panic, it’d be a lot easier to get you out of there. If you feel at all that you don’t want to be there, silently tell Alexis.”
“Okay,” she said simply. “Now, can I see her?”
Tristan and I flanked her sides as we took her to Sonya’s room, where Sheree waited outside the door. I’d wanted Owen there, as well, but we’d decided he’d better stay with Vanessa, just in case she caught a whiff of Heather’s human scent and freaked out. Sheree stepped inside and closed the door for a minute or so, then opened it wide.
Sonya sat on her loveseat, dressed in street clothes and a smile. Heather lurched forward, as if to run to her sister, but caught herself.
“It’s okay,” Sonya said, her grin widening as she spread her arms open. “I promise not to bite you.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Heather ran into her older sister’s arms. They laughed and cried and talked at the same time, overjoyed to be reunited. I couldn’t help smiling myself, and a peek out of the corner of my eye caught Tristan grinning, too. With everything we’d been through with Sonya—the ups and downs, the mood swings, the worry that she’d never complete the conversion, and the more permanent concern that she may never be able to live in Norman society again—this made everything worth it.
They chatted on and on, sometimes pulling Sheree, Tristan, and me into their conversation, but mostly reminiscing about childhood memories. Sheree eventually made herself comfortable in the chair by the bed, and Tristan and I shared the chair by the loveseat, me in his lap. We talked and laughed, not realizing how much time had passed.
“Alexis!” Owen’s voice called into my mind.
Yeah?
“Sun goes down in an hour. Things could get bad fast.”
It’s going really—
“Sonya’s not the only vampire in the house.” If the words didn’t alarm me, the warning in his tone did.
I jumped out of Tristan’s lap. “Sorry, girls, but time’s up.”
Heather looked up at me with puppy-dog eyes. “Just another hour. Please?”
“Or two?” Sonya asked.
“Maybe I could stay for din—” Heather stopped herself as she realized what she was about to say—or possibly offer. Her hand flew to her mouth, and her eyes grew wide as Frisbees.
Sonya laughed. “I don’t want you for dinner!”
“No, but we’re taking no chances,” I said. “Sunset isn’t far off.”
And that was so the wrong thing to say.
Heather understood the exact meaning of my words, and, with no warning, her fear spiked. Sonya’s nose twitched, and her face became stone at the scent. Her hand went to her throat, and her eyes changed, growing deadly serious. Tristan and I both moved, grabbing Heather by the arms and pulling her away from the vampire, but then Sonya exploded into laughter.
“Kidding!” she screeched.
We all froze and stared at her for several loud heartbeats, then Heather burst into a fit of giggles.
“You . . . were always . . . so good . . . at getting me,” the younger girl gasped, doubling over. “I’ll never forget . . .” And completely relaxed again, she delved into a story from when they’d gone camping with their grandparents.
“Alexis,” Owen called out again. “Seriously. If you don’t get that norm out of here now—” His voice went from mental to audible, but since our minds were connected, I still heard him. “Vanessa! Relax!”
Oh, crap! Through Owen’s eyes, I saw Vanessa blurring around her room in an angry maelstrom. The warlock knew powerful magic—he’d restrained Tristan for hours, after all—but again, I’d take no chances with Heather.
“Now!” I barked, grabbing Heather’s upper arm once again and pulling her back toward the door. “Sorry, but no time for goodbyes.”
The effect I’d had on Heather before was nothing compared to now. The sour smell of pure fear filled the room.
“Get her out of here,” Tristan shouted even as I dragged Heather out of the room.
I glanced over my shoulder at them. Sonya, fangs out and eyes glowing red, pushed against Tristan and clawed at his shoulders as she tried to get to her sister. As if Heather wasn’t already afraid. As loudly as her heart pounded now, every vampire and shifter on the island would hear it. Tristan paralyzed Sonya, but a feral growl still rumbled from her chest, and her upper lip curled in a snarl. Sheree rushed to us and helped me get Heather out of the house and safely away from both vampires.
“I’m so sorry,” Sheree murmured as we deposited a trembling Heather into the passenger seat of her own car.
“Don’t,” I said, shutting the car door and hurrying around to the driver’s side. “It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”
“But I—”
I held up my hand. “You suggested what you thought best, but I made the ultimate decision. Now get inside and see who needs you more. My bet is on Sonya.”
I couldn’t believe I’d said that, but it was true. Perhaps by willingly giving her soul up to become immortal, she’d sealed the deal for herself. Or perhaps we weren’t trained well enough to do what we needed for her. With that thought, I couldn’t help but blame Charlotte and mom and Rina, too, for this fiasco.
I jumped into the driver’s seat, fished Heather’s keys out of her purse, and drove her back to my house. Blossom and Dorian were just setting the table for dinner when we walked in. By now, Heather’s fear had dissipated, replaced by anger. She spun on me as soon as I closed the backdoor.
“What was that all about?” she demanded. “One minute we’re having a good time, and the next, you’re dragging me out of the room.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to ignore the stares from Blossom and Dorian, who both stood on the other side of the kitchen island. “I had to get you out of there, though.”
“Why? She was fine! You freaked out for nothing. You could have at least let us say goodbye.”
“It wasn’t for nothing, Heather.” I wanted to tell her the truth about Vanessa being there, too, but I couldn’t for everyone’s safety, including hers. “You have to trust me. I did everything for your best interest.”
“Whatever,” she huffed before turning on her heel and heading for the family room.
“Don’t walk away,” I said to her back.
“You’re not my mother. Don’t tell me what to do.”
I stared after her in shock. She’d never spoken to me—to any of us—like that before. She’s a teenager. She’s hurt. She misses her sister. I looked at Blossom, who looked back at me, and Dorian, who stared toward the door Heather had left through.
“Let’s eat,” Blossom said with a smile too big to be real. “I made lasagna.”
The three of us had barely dished out the food and begun eating when Heather decided to join us. She ate quietly at first, probably embarrassed by her outburst, but eventually joined in the conversation. By the time she left for home later in the evening, she was over it all. She didn’t even ask me when she could see Sonya again. That made me sad for both of them.
Tristan arrived home much later, and I sat at the table again, watching him eat lasagna at ten o’clock at night.
Tristan swallowed the bite he’d been chewing and took a swig of wine. “I had a couple of beers and a talk with Owen. We’re taking a trip to South Beach.”
“South Beach?” I asked, bewildered. “Wait. Oh, no, you’re not. You’re not going anywhere near there and the Daemoni!”
“It’s not as bad as we’d thought, remember?”
“I don’t care! It’s bad enough. Do you want them to take control of you?”
“Of course not. But I’ll have Scarecrow with me this time, and he can shield and cloak me. They’ll have no idea I’m even there.”
I gnawed on my lip as I considered this—a much better arrangement than what Tristan and I had when we’d gone. “I still don’t like it. Why do you even need to go?”
“Vanessa had a place in South Beach when Owen met up with her again, before, well, before he brought her here.”
Although Tristan had tried to avoid bringing up the gruesome memory, my stomach clenched at the reminder of Vanessa’s arrival and what Owen had done to her. I just couldn’t imagine my Owen—my sweet, protecting, normal Owen, anyway—slicing her into pieces.
“What do you mean when he met up with her again?”
Tristan shrugged. “I guess they’ve had an on-again-off-again thing going for a while. That memory you’d seen of Victor’s—they were on then. But Owen left for a while and Vanessa went back to the Daemoni, tried the South Beach gig but her heart was elsewhere.”
“You mean with Owen?” My nose wrinkled as my mind tried to visualize them together. The idea of them as a couple was still too absurd for me to accept. Obviously for Owen, too, since he still flirted with every female in sight.
“With Owen. Maybe with the Amadis, too. You were right—she’d been wanting this for a long time, but she had a hard time convincing Owen that she meant it. He didn’t bring her here on a whim, Lex. You need to cut him some slack.”
“I know,” I admitted as I stared at my hands in my lap. “I worry about him, though. I’m glad you had a chance to talk to him. Does he hate me?”
“Of course not. But I think he’s having a hard time figuring out how to handle you. A lot has changed with both of you since the trial last year.”
I sighed, feeling bad for my behavior toward Owen. I loved him like a brother, and I’d let my frustration with his choices get the better of me, rather than showing my unconditional love.
“So,” I said, “why on earth do you two need to go to South Beach? What’s so important at Vanessa’s old place, assuming her stuff is even still there? I mean, we’ve bought her new clothes. If she needs anything else, we’ll get it, too. Everything’s replaceable. Nothing warrants this risk—”
“Except your pendant.”
“What? Really? Did Vanessa finally admit to having it? Did Owen find out where it is?”
“No, but we’re going to search her place. We’ll go in undercover, find the pendant, and get out as fast as possible,” Tristan said before he took another bite of pasta.
My excitement deflated. “But Owen told me he looked already.”
“He said he tried to look, but didn’t have time to go through everything. He thinks, as possessive as he’s seen her with it in the past, that since she didn’t have it on her, she must have hidden it somewhere obscure. She wouldn’t take the chance of someone else finding it.”
“She’s definitely hiding something,” I agreed, and their plan started sounding better to me. “You’re all right with Owen? I mean, you trust him?”
“With my life, Lex. I know he’s different than he used to be, but he’s still Owen.”
“Then you trust him with mine?”
He placed his fork on his plate, crossed his arms on the table, and leaned closer to me. “You’re not going.”
“Why not? You need my telepathy.”
“No, we don’t. We don’t plan on coming into contact with anyone.”
“Yeah, well, plans go awry, remember?”
“You’re not going, Alexis. For once, don’t argue with me.”
“I can’t just sit here, waiting for you to return. I’m not doing that again! Last time you did that to me, you didn’t come back, remember?”
He grimaced. Then he reached his hands across the table and took hold of mine. “You promised me you wouldn’t be reckless anymore. I need to know you’re safe here and that Dorian is, too. Besides, someone needs to stay, in case anyone comes sniffing around for a long, lost vampire. Or two.”
“Then you stay, and I’ll go with Owen. It’s not me the Daemoni are trying to control.”
“Sonya and Vanessa need you, my love. Owen and I can’t do what you can for them.”
I stared at him for a long moment, but no further argument came for me. My breath huffed out with resignation. I would be left behind. Again.
The following week, I paced my office at the safe house, my hand twisting and pulling at my hair. Giving themselves plenty of daylight to work with, Tristan and Owen had left at dawn this morning and said they’d be home within a few hours. Winter’s early dusk was only an hour away now, and they still weren’t back.
“This isn’t good,” I muttered to Sheree, who sat on the couch, chewing on her nails. “There’s no way it should have taken this long.”
“Think positive, Alexis. They’re virtually unbeatable, right? I’m sure they’re fine.”
“But they’re not invincible.” My voice had risen several octaves with the panic growing in my chest. I couldn’t stop thinking about the last time they’d left me for enemy territory, when Owen had come back but Tristan hadn’t. My chest tightened, and tears pricked my eyes. “They shouldn’t have gone, not by themselves, what were we thinking? I should have never let—”
I froze. The agitated mind signatures appeared on my mental radar at the same time crashing and banging echoed down the hall from the main part of the safe house. The shifter and I exchanged a look, and then I was gone. I blurred to the foyer and skidded to a stop in the doorway of one of the common living areas. My heart stuttered at the scene.
Owen and Tristan were apparently in a standoff.
Tristan’s arms wrapped tightly around his own torso as if bound in an invisible straightjacket, and murderous flames filled his eyes. He growled and thrashed about, throwing his body at Owen, who dodged each attack. Tristan’s body kept hitting the walls and crashing into furniture, destroying everything in his path. Owen circled him, his hands up, working his magic against Tristan.
“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded.
“He’s flipped a freakin’ switch!” Owen answered while keeping his full attention on Tristan.
As if noticing me for the first time, my husband turned his enraged eyes on me, growled again, and threw himself at me. But I didn’t duck away. Instead, I wrapped my arms around him and rolled with him, doing my best to diminish the impact for both of us. The Daemoni obviously had control of him—which meant distance was no longer a factor—so I pushed my Amadis power into him. He didn’t react as expected.
“That won’t work!” he snapped, but I couldn’t tell if he mocked me or actually tried to help.
Tristan! I yelled into his mind. His body calmed. It trembled violently, but he no longer fought me. Again I tried sharing Amadis power.
“It’s not Daemoni power doing this,” he said. “It is . . . but . . . not in me.”
The strain in his mental voice scared me. He could barely fight off whatever controlled him.
Just don’t forget you love me and I love you. No matter what. You don’t want to hurt me. You don’t want to hurt anyone here.
He nodded. His body relaxed even more. But as soon as I released my embrace and moved to get up, he started thrashing about again.
“You lie! You’re a lying whore,” he silently yelled.
My head snapped back as if he had physically smacked me. What are they doing to him? He moved as if to attack me again, but Owen held him back with magic. The muscles in the warlock’s neck and shoulder strained with the effort, so I raised my own hands and did what I could to help. I didn’t have Tristan’s power to paralyze, but I could control objects to a certain extent, almost to Owen’s level. We couldn’t back off in the slightest, though, because Tristan could easily overpower both of us if he wanted to.
“What are we going to do?” I asked Owen.
“We can’t hold him like this forever. I can bind him to the fridge again,” he said, reminding me of a similar situation two years ago at the beach house in the Keys, right after I’d gone through the Ang’dora.
I shook my head. “I can’t do that to him again. Besides, this is different—”
“Yeah, he’s not only after you this time. He seems to hate all of us.”
Sheree appeared in the doorway, and Tristan’s body jumped against our power, trying to lunge for the were-tiger. Owen and I were able to hold him back, which told me Tristan fought the impulse, too. If he’d given the attempt his full potential, we’d never been able to hold him off.
“Get out,” I yelled at Sheree before she got hurt. She simply stood there with wide eyes. “Go!”
Her eyes snapped to me, then she scrambled off.
“We can’t do this forever, Alexis,” Owen said. “Decide.”
Decide? Decide to tie my husband up? How could I do that?
The smell of burning flesh interrupted my thoughts. My eyes bugged at the sight of smoke rising from Tristan’s sides.
“What’s he doing?” I cried, though it was obvious—he was shooting himself with fireballs.
Chapter 19
“Owen, make him stop,” I shrieked. “Do something!”
Owen flicked his hand, and Tristan’s arms jerked away from his body and lifted to his sides so that now he looked as though we were crucifying him on an invisible cross. A lone fireball fell from his hand to the tile floor, no power behind it. Without looking away from Tristan, I stepped forward to stomp the flames out. Tristan’s flesh stopped sizzling. Through the holes burned into his shirt, I noticed his skin already healing.