by Kristie Cook
“All right,” I croaked around the lump in my throat. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say, but I couldn’t let him hurt himself or anyone else. “If we put him in the shackles in one of the rooms, can you shield it or something so he can’t flash out of them?”
“Sure, but will the chains hold him?”
“He installed and tested them himself, so let’s hope so.”
The fire in Tristan’s eyes had died by the time we had his wrists and ankles locked in shackles in the room next to Vanessa’s, but mine burned even more with tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, taking a step toward him.
He shook his head. His voice came out low and hoarse. “Don’t be. It’s necessary.”
I reached out to touch his shoulder but he jerked away as far as he could, the metal chains jangling noisily against the concrete wall.
“What are they doing to you?” I asked.
He closed his eyes, and his expression became one of shame. “I don’t know. They’re in my head . . . or my heart. I think I’m feeling what they’re feeling.”
“What are they feeling?”
A growl rose from his chest. “Hate. Anger. A desire to kill. Toward you. Toward me. Anyone and everyone, actually.” Another growl. “I can barely control it.”
His body violently thrashed again. His back arced away from the wall while his head threw back, cracking against the concrete. His hands burned a bright reddish-orange, and I knew he must have been controlling the urge to shoot more fire.
I turned on Owen. “How did this happen? How did they get to him? You were supposed to have him shielded and cloaked!”
“I did. I . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody was around. I have no idea how they knew we were even there.”
“Did you at least find the pendant?”
The defeated look on his face told me. “We tore the place apart, but it was nowhere—”
“Alexis!” Sheree came running into the room. She stopped short at the sight of Tristan. Blinked. Swallowed. Slowly turned to me, as if trying to remember the urgent matter she’d apparently needed to share. “Um . . . someone’s here. Someone’s at the door! Not Amadis, but not Norman, either.”
Daemoni! They’ve come for Vanessa. Or Tristan! Those thoughts immediately shot through my mind, but I couldn’t sense Daemoni. Nothing more than the trace that still came from Sonya’s room. I felt out beyond the mansion for the mind signature. Strangely familiar, but in that unidentifiable way . . . no thoughts to latch onto.
“Must be a faerie,” I muttered. I looked at Owen, and he nodded.
“I’ll stand guard here,” he said. “Holler if you need me.”
I ran for the front door, Sheree on my heels, and peeked out a side window. An old woman stood on the front steps, wrapped in raggedy cloaks. I could barely see through the illusion—a few golden strands in her hair, gold flecks in her flat eyes.
I yanked the door open, grabbed the old woman’s arm, and pulled her inside. Then I threw my arms around her. “Bree! Thank God you’re here!”
“You mean thank the Angels,” she said, hugging me back. “They sent me.”
She stepped back from my embrace and transformed into her real self.
“The Angels sent you?” I repeated, confused. I thought the Angels only communicated with the Amadis matriarch. On the other hand, as a faerie, Bree was more of the Otherworld than she was of ours, and although she’d been an outcast since agreeing to become Tristan’s mother, she had closer ties to the spirits of the Otherworld, including the Angels, than the rest of us. Well, besides the connection between Cassandra and me, which remained inexplicable.
“Well, in a roundabout way,” Bree said as she shook out her golden hair. “They didn’t directly tell me, but I think I know what they did to the stone. Where’s Tristan? Can we talk?”
I grimaced. Did I want her to see Tristan, her son, chained up and behaving like a madman? But if she could help . . .
“Um . . . er . . .” I started unsuccessfully and tried again. “If you know what they did, maybe it will help us figure out what to do. Tristan is . . . well, a bit of a mess right now.”
Bree nodded, showing no surprise. “In the heart?”
My eyes widened. “Yeah, sort of. I guess that’s what it is. Why?”
“Has he been near the Daemoni lately?”
“Yes. And when he came back—”
“Take me to him. You both need to know.”
I led Bree, with Sheree following us, to the room where Tristan remained chained to the wall, Owen keeping an eye on him. Bree didn’t gasp at the scene as I’d thought she would—as I still did even knowing what to expect—but she shook her head.
She walked over to Tristan and placed her hand on his arm. He growled, but at least he didn’t thrash about as if trying to attack her.
“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked, his voice rough, barely human sounding.
“I believe so,” Bree said. “The faerie stone—when the Angels took it, I believe they enhanced it—”
“We already know that,” Tristan snarled, clanging his chains with impatience. “We need to know what they did before the Daemoni figure it out.”
Bree cocked her head. “You don’t think they know yet?”
“If they did, you’d probably all be dead by now,” Tristan answered. “They’re angry and frustrated. I can feel that as if they’re my own feelings, and it’s maddening. So no, they don’t know.”
“Good,” Bree said. “I think I do know, especially after seeing this. I believe the Angels wanted to be sure you know when you’re loved. That you feel your soul mate’s love when she is in possession of the stone so you wouldn’t doubt it. So whoever has the stone . . . that’s whose feelings you are experiencing.”
The room fell deathly silent as this news settled in.
“So Tristan is feeling the Daemoni’s emotions right now?” Sheree asked.
Bree nodded. “Whoever has the stone . . . that’s what he’s feeling. At least, anything toward himself or those he’s around.”
More silence as we continued to think about it. Tristan spoke up first.
“It makes sense.” His eyes turned on me, no longer full of murder, but not exactly full of love, either. “What do you think kept me going while they had me all that time? We talked about a connection between us. And if you think about it, this unexplained anger goes back to when you first lost the stone—when Vanessa grabbed it.”
I understood. We’d fought a lot ever since then, and at one point, he’d even stopped believing that I loved him at all. “You felt what she did.”
He nodded, and then his chains clanged again as his body writhed in frustration, and he let out a string of profanities.
“Why is it so bad now, though?” I asked. “I mean, last time we went to South Beach . . .”
I trailed off when everyone but Tristan stared at me without comprehension. Right. They weren’t aware of the full story of our trip. Well, maybe Tristan had told Owen, but Bree and Sheree didn’t know. Rather than telling the whole story for them, I opened my mind and shared the memory.
“Was that Vanessa in control then?” Sheree asked afterward.
“The question is who has it now,” Owen said, deflecting Sheree’s accusation.
“Your trip must have created the link with a mage. Someone with powerful magic,” Bree said, and Tristan nodded in agreement.
My breath caught. “Kali?”
“No,” Tristan grunted. “Not that strong.”
That was a bit of a relief.
“But as long as this mage has it,” I said, “Tristan will always feel what she’s feeling, rather than the truth around him or within him.”
“It will likely become stronger, too, the longer one person possesses the stone. The connection will strengthen,” Bree added.
“Well, that’s just fabulous. Until we find the stone, my husband will hate me.”
“You’re forgetti
ng the worst part,” Tristan snarled. We all turned our eyes on him. “If they figure this out, they’ll use it to their advantage. I’ll become their personal killing machine right in the heart of the Amadis. Exactly what they’ve always wanted.” He locked his gaze on mine, and a jolt ran up my spine with the intense look in his hazel eyes. “And guess where they’ll want me to start?”
With me, of course. He gave me a nod of confirmation. Instead of fear, though, anger welled inside me. Would he ever be free of their control? I inhaled a slow breath, then let it out even slower.
“Okay, then,” I said, lifting my chin and squaring my shoulders, “we find the stone, and we get it back. Fortunately, we have a new friend who probably knows who has it now and ought to be quite helpful.”
I strode out of Tristan’s room, turned right, and crossed the five yards to Vanessa’s door. Owen suddenly stood in front of it. I raised my eyebrows at him.
“I doubt she’ll cooperate,” he muttered.
My eyebrows shot even higher. “Before I agreed to convert her, you said—”
“I said she had something you wanted. A weapon. Another soldier for your army.”
I didn’t miss how he said “your army,” not “our army.” I told myself it only meant that he acknowledged my leadership position. I hoped that was all he meant.
“And as part of my army, she will do her duty and tell us what she knows.”
“Listen. She’s pretty sensitive about the pendant. She felt some kind of, well, connection to you and Tristan through it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course, she did. Isn’t that what Bree just said?”
But then the deeper meaning of what he said came to me. A connection not only to Tristan, but to me, too.
“She’d felt the love, Alexis. Projected it to herself, I guess.”
I tilted my head as I studied his face. “That’s what made her decide, isn’t it? How she knew for sure that she wanted to convert?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. But that’s what she told me when she came to me.”
“Came to you where?”
He pressed his lips together and looked away. Closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them again, but still stared at the wall behind me. “It’s a long story I don’t feel like reliving. But yeah, she knew where to find me.”
A current of pain flowed under his words, and I had the feeling Vanessa had rescued him from something before he rescued her. And whatever she’d brought him out of, it hadn’t been pleasant.
“Owen . . . ?” I placed my hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”
I tried to move into his line of sight to catch his eyes, but his gaze dropped from the wall behind me to the floor, which he scowled at. Eventually he looked at me with a smile. As fake as can be. “Just peachy. No need to worry—”
“You’re lying,” I blurted. “I see it on your face. You’ve always been there for me, Owen. It can go both ways, you know.”
His left eye twitched as he brightened his smile. “I’m fine, Alexis. The best thing you can do for me is take care of her.”
“Owen—”
His voice came out in a near growl. “Drop it. Worry about Vanessa, about Tristan, but not about me.”
“Then at least tell me, you and Vanessa . . . ?” Did he feel the same way about her as she did him? He shrugged noncommittally. I tapped my finger against my temple. Understanding my message, he leaned closer to me, and his voice came out very softly.
“You really don’t want to see what’s in here. Trust me.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I felt as though he tried to tell me something I wasn’t grasping. The temptation to actually read his mind nearly overwhelmed me, but I wouldn’t do that to him. Not about this. It was his business, and if he wanted to tell me, he would. He must have seen this in my eyes, because he straightened.
“So,” he said, as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened. “Vanessa. The pendant. I’m just sayin’ that she might get a little . . . anxious . . . over the whole thing.”
“Too late to worry about me, warlock,” Vanessa’s voice called from inside her room. As Owen opened the door and we both stepped inside, I wondered how much of our conversation she’d heard. Probably all of it. The vampire gave us an annoyed look from the chair she sat in next to the bed. “How can you so easily forget about vampire hearing? But thanks for looking out for my oh-so-precious feelings.”
Owen glanced sideways at me, and I knew immediately he remembered her keen hearing. He wanted her to hear us. Well, not my probing questions, which is probably why he’d avoided answering them, but the part about showing that he still protected her. I shook my head at him before turning to the vampire.
“So the pendant?” I demanded, cutting to the chase. Her attitude—and Owen’s behavior—had already raised my hackles. “Do you know where it is?”
“Nope,” she said without a tinge of the anxiety Owen was so worried about. But she didn’t expound, so I peeked into her mind, catching a glimpse of a memory of someone ripping the necklace away from her. I gasped, and she narrowed her eyes at me, realizing I’d entered her head. “They took it from you? When?”
She stuck her bottom lip out in a pout. “Before you came to South Beach last time. I . . . I was going to warn you then, but the local nest surrounded us, and I had to get out of there.”
“And you couldn’t have mentioned this all the time since you’ve been here?”
She shrugged. “What was the point? When I told you I didn’t know where it was, I was telling you the truth. That’s all you needed to know, for your own good.”
“For my own good? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Owen and Tristan risked their lives to go get it! Now all of our lives are at risk. You knew it wasn’t at your place, and after everything we’ve done for you, you let them go anyway.”
“Nobody asked me, now did they?”
My muscles bunched to fly at her and choke the living crap out of the bitch, but Owen grabbed me around the waist.
“Where was your vampire hearing then?” I spat at her. “Surely you heard plans, and now Tristan’s like this for no reason.”
She held her hand out in front of her face and studied her nails. “I thought there’s a reason for everything. Isn’t that what you and the tiger are always preaching?”
I inhaled deeply, trying to control my anger, and shrugged Owen off of me.
“Are you going to help us or not?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“Not. Just forget the idea of getting your hands on that stone.”
“I can’t forget it! We need it. Our lives—including yours—are at stake.” I stared at her, waiting for her to do the right thing, but she simply stared back at me. I rocked back on my heels. “I think you’re bluffing. You know where it is.”
“No, I don’t. A warlock took it from me to deliver to more powerful hands, not the mage coven in South Beach.”
“But if it’s not there, then how did they affect Tristan so badly?”
Vanessa narrowed her icy eyes, finally showing at least some interest. She spoke slowly, deliberately. “Very powerful, very dark magic. The mages in South Beach only needed to be energized by a source of extreme power. A sorcerer or sorceress, who could be anywhere in the world.”
Well, at least now we were getting somewhere.
“Kali,” I said. “Is that who they took it to?”
“No, that wasn’t the plan, at the time anyway. And you better hope it doesn’t get to her or she to it. After Lucas and the Ancients—” she practically spit the words as if they tasted bad on her tongue “—Kali’s the most powerful, most dangerous, most formidable Daemoni.”
My turn to shrug. “We beat her once. She can’t be all that bad.”
With vampire speed, Vanessa suddenly stood right in my face, so close her breath fluttered my hair as she spoke. “In your house, surrounded by your people. And now she’s pretty fucking pissed off after what you did to her. Don’t underestimat
e her.”
I took a step back and threw my hands in the air. “Okay. Whatever. At the moment, I don’t care about her. I care about the stone, and you said she doesn’t have it.”
“Yet. She doesn’t have it yet, or you’d know it. But you’ll never be able to retrieve the stone now, so you may as well kiss it goodbye.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a bit of a problem with that idea,” I said. “We don’t have a choice. I’m sure you heard, with those vampire ears of yours, what’s going to happen if we don’t get it back.”
Vanessa nodded. “Yeah, I did. Killing machine and all that.”
My eyes bugged at her nonchalant attitude. “Yeah, all that. We have to do something, Vanessa. Just tell me where the stone is, and I’ll get it myself.”
She let out a dry chuckle.
“Don’t you get it? You’re supposed to be so smart.” She shook her head in mock disappointment, then she stepped back into my space. “What Mr.-Not-in-Control-of-Himself so conveniently forgot to mention is that even if they don’t figure out the value of the stone right away, they do know two things: you need it and you’ll come after it.”
I pulled up straight at this. Crap. Crap, crap, crap on a crap-flavored biscuit.
“They’re using it as bait,” I said.
Vanessa nodded as she looked at me with those piercing blue eyes. “So, princess, you can spread ’em wide or bend over. Either way, you’re fucked.”
Chapter 20
Vanessa’s crass words clenched my gut and twisted until I felt sick, not because of their vulgarity, but because of their truth. What are we going to do? Although Tristan had calmed down, he wouldn’t let me release him from the shackles. He proved why any time someone came too close to him—he’d work himself into a frenzy, bucking and writhing against his chains and lashing out, even snapping with his teeth. I couldn’t leave him like that forever, though, and if the Daemoni really gained control and he lost it completely, the chains may as well have been made of straw. He’d break right through them and have at us all he wanted. And for that to happen was only a matter of time.