by Kristie Cook
I tried to remember the visions I’d seen on that balcony at the beach house in the Keys, when I’d been trying to convert Sheree and Tristan had taken the evil into his body.
“He burnt down whole villages. There was blood on his hands. And lots of their faces . . . the faces of his victims.” Tears burned my eyes, blurring the stars above into smudges of light.
“Well, he did always take the credit—or the blame, whatever you call it now. But Lucas used to come back from battles completely pissed. He’d rant and rave about what a pussy the so-called warrior was for not showing his domination over everyone.” Vanessa snorted. “And then other times, Lucas would brag about how he got to rape all the women because Seth wanted none of them.” She shook her head. “Disgusting, really, to hear that from the man who was—” She paused for a moment, as if editing her thoughts. “From Lucas.”
I lay in silence, letting the relief wash over me and through me, cleansing my soul from that worry.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” the vampire continued. “I’m sure he was responsible for many of their deaths. But rape and torture of women and children? That was beneath him.”
I could accept that. After all, I already knew he had a dark past, including murder and other heinous acts. I’d forgiven him for it all, but still . . . somehow, knowing he didn’t partake in the Daemoni’s favorite past-time, as Vanessa had just described it, made me feel better. And thinking about him doing the right thing, even when he was at his worst, made me love him and miss him that much more.
“We should get going,” I said, forcing myself upright.
Vanessa sat up again, too, and eyed the dried blood on my torn pant leg. “What a waste,” she muttered.
My mouth twisted into a grimace. “Do you need to feed?”
“Well . . . I was just shot. And we have our longest leg ahead of us.”
I pushed my sleeve up far enough and slid my dagger across my wrist. She only pulled a few swallows before closing the wound up with her tongue.
“That’s enough?” I asked. I hoped so. My body probably couldn’t handle more, especially when there wasn’t exactly a Burger King or Publix anywhere around.
“I’m good. At least, I am if we can rest for a while longer. What about you?”
“Does it matter?”
She looked around at the barren landscape. “Good point.”
We lay down and watched the pattern in the sky slowly shift for a couple of hours before returning to our journey.
The moon never seemed to move as we followed it over the frozen tundra of Siberia. Several hours later, we finally stopped flashing outside of a remote village near the Taymyr Peninsula. With Vanessa in the lead, we hunted the area until we took down a mountain goat, then lugged it to an abandoned cabin—if you could call the rickety structure a cabin—where we’d fuel up and regenerate. We settled in a little after midnight local time, and we would stay until sunrise. Today was the day we’d go to Hades, and we’d both need our full strength. That meant Vanessa would get another meal of me, and I’d need a sizeable amount of the goat that she showed me how to cook over a fire.
Even after being shot, my body aching from all the flashing, and my belly a little full, I couldn’t sleep. And it had nothing to do with my surroundings, because when I closed my eyes, the cabin disappeared and I was home with my two men. My heart ached with longing for them. Tears seeped through my lashes. If I make it through today, I’ll see them again soon.
I’d already decided that if we survived this insane stunt, we’d flash non-stop to the nearest airport, call Mom, and have the Amadis jet pick us up and take us straight home. First, we had to survive. And the reminder of what would come in only a few short hours sent my heart into a gallop.
“Maybe if I drink now, you’ll pass out again,” Vanessa suggested after a couple of hours of fighting sleep. She must have heard my heart pounding, sensed my unease. “You’ll be no good if you don’t rest.”
Her idea worked. She drank. I ate. Then I passed out. She woke me a few hours later, the gray light of dawn seeping through the cracks in the walls. I stretched, feeling renewed and even better after eating more of the mountain goat.
“So,” Vanessa said, standing at the door of the cabin, watching the sun rise from behind the mountain. “You ready for this?”
Ready to meet the enemy? Ready to face my likely death?
“Not in the least,” I said, joining her.
“Well, then. Here goes nothing.” She paused, then added with obvious reluctance, “Keep your mind open to me.”
We went over her plan once more, then moved out. I unsheathed and exposed my dagger, ready for anything, and the feeling of power rushed through me.
I’m going to need you now more than ever, Cassandra.
“I am here as always, but you already have the power you need. Look to yourself, Alexis. The power you and I share resides in your heart and soul.”
What does that mean? She didn’t answer, but I felt her with me, and for now, that’s all that mattered.
Wanting to avoid as many people as possible for obvious reasons, Vanessa took us the “back way” known by only the Daemoni elite. As soon as we stepped inside an icy cave, the secret entrance to the underground city they called Hades, my skin prickled and crawled. Every cell of my being, all the way to my soul, sensed that we’d entered enemy territory. The waves of evil energy strengthened as we descended down a dark tunnel carved into the earth, wide enough for Vanessa and I to walk side-by-side, but Tristan and I probably couldn’t. The air grew colder the farther down we went, but also heavier, pressing down on me until I thought I might suffocate. The energy thrummed in my head, and I could easily imagine the world collapsing in on us.
“You should have warned me you’re claustrophobic,” Vanessa said.
I’m normally not.
“Then you’re letting their dark power get to you. Just breathe.”
I nodded and tried to focus on the fact that we’d been lucky so far—we hadn’t encountered a single Daemoni yet. But then I couldn’t help but think how convenient that was. Breaking into the enemy’s compound shouldn’t be this easy. Where were the guards? The locked gates and doors? The ear-piercing alarms to alert them of intruders? Of course, they might not need such mundane security measures. Perhaps we had already set off magical alarms, and they were just waiting in secret foxholes to ambush us.
Unless . . .
“Wow, you have serious trust issues, don’t you?” Vanessa broke into my thoughts, already knowing where they led. “I have the Amadis mark now. The silver didn’t debilitate me. I took a bullet for your ass—three of them, actually—and I haven’t killed you myself yet. When will you start trusting me?”
But why aren’t they coming? Why haven’t they stopped us yet?
“Because they’re arrogant assholes. It probably hasn’t even crossed their minds that anyone but their most revered would enter this way. They’d never imagine that I’d betray them. If they even know we’re here, they believe what you were just thinking, that I’m leading you right to them. But you’re both wrong.”
I still couldn’t help but think she was setting me up, but I repressed those thoughts, hiding them away from her. I still needed her help, and making her angry wasn’t the best way to get it. I couldn’t mask my racing heart so easily, but hell, we walked through the lair of my enemy. It’d be racing no matter what.
The packed-dirt floor finally leveled out as a soft light in the distance grew closer. We were almost at the end of what I was about to determine an endless tunnel. Just as the corridor widened into a large room with sconces of fire on the walls, Vanessa pulled me against the wall. Little particles of dirt crumbled away as we pressed against it.
“Anyone?” she asked.
Although I’d kept my mind open to mind signatures and knew there were none nearby, I mentally scanned the area again. And bit back a gasp. Two strange vibrations in my mental realm, one nearby and one several hundred
yards away. My first thought was shifters in their animal forms, but no, shifters still had clear mind signatures with their human brains. These were more like something trying to be a mind signature, but not quite . . . there. Faeries? Possibly, but I didn’t think so. It was more like they hid behind veils, as if cloaked. I focused harder, trying to break through the veils, and finally the signatures became clearer. I knew them both.
Kali, I answered Vanessa. But that’s not all.
Chapter 25
I peered over Vanessa’s shoulder with a small smile as the owner of the closer mind signature came around the corner, although at first, he couldn’t physically be seen. When he came to stand in front of us, he removed the cloak.
Before I could do the same, Vanessa jumped at him and threw her arms around his neck.
“Shhh,” Owen whispered as he extricated himself from the vampire’s embrace. He tapped his blond temple, and I opened my mind for all of us, although a sense of unease prickled the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right here.
Have you been following us the whole time? I asked.
“I knew you’d lead me right here,” he answered with a smirk.
“And you made it!” Vanessa said. “When I’d told you about the village before, I never thought you’d actually find it.”
“I’m not stupid. I waited there, knowing Alexis wouldn’t resist your offer.”
My eyes tightened as that feeling of unease grew. So are you here to help us? Or do you still have your own agenda?
Owen peered at me for a moment. “If you’re here to find the sorceress, our agendas are the same, aren’t they?”
With a clear connection to his mind, I knew that’s all he thought about. Not anything about this being some kind of trick or set-up. Not from Vanessa, either. But the thought still niggled its way under my skin.
Yeah, I guess so.
If we were here only for my personal agenda, I’d do everything I could to avoid Kali and just get my pendant back. But I needed to find her to find the pendant, and besides, I had the faeries’ agenda, too. If Owen felt the need to kill the sorceress once we found her, well, he’d be helping me out. My fingers traced the strap of the backpack that held the little jar for Kali’s soul. The faeries must have given it some kind of protection for it to have survived in one piece after everything I’d already been through.
“Wait,” Vanessa said. “Does Kali even have the stone?”
I tried to latch onto the sorceress’s thoughts and share them, but the powerful mage wasn’t stupid. She knew how to block me. Which meant she knew I was here?
“More like she doesn’t trust anyone,” Vanessa said. “She probably shields herself at all times, especially this close to the Ancients.”
“She’s the best place to start,” Owen said. “Anyone else nearby?”
I shook my head.
Are you going to cloak us? I asked Owen.
“It will make moving more difficult. We need to be able to see each other, especially if we get ambushed.”
I nodded with understanding. At least, most of me understood, but a tiny part of me still suspected.
“As long as you keep your mind open to new approaches, we’ll be fine,” Vanessa said.
Let’s get on with it then.
Staying close to the wall, we crept our way in the direction of Kali’s mind signature. The large room ahead was a junction of four tunnels, including the one we’d just come down. We went through the opening to our immediate right.
“I’m not surprised this is where she is,” Vanessa said. “She’d stay away from the crowds.”
From there, we blurred to Kali’s location, a small room carved into the earth. A fire blazed in a grate on the far side and more sconces hung on the walls, lighting up a workbench with scattered vials, herbs, and old books with ancient-looking handwriting.
A young-looking woman with bright red hair that flowed thickly down her slender back had been sitting at the workbench, but she’d jumped up just as we’d arrived, an emerald green cloak, the same color as her eyes, billowing around her. Kali’s mind signature came from this woman—the body she must have taken over now. Her snake-like eyes fell on Owen.
“I knew you’d come,” she said. But rather than fear or concern, joy filled her voice.
And Owen smiled back at her as he fell to one knee and bowed his head.
“Of course,” he said. “You’ve always been my one and only master.”
Owen, stop it! I yelled at him. She’s controlling your mind.
“No, Alexis,” he answered. “This is all me.”
My jaw dropped as Kali took two steps to stand in front of Owen, her eyes never leaving him, while Vanessa disappeared into a blur. So this was their plan? They’d both been serving the Daemoni and Kali all along? My muscles automatically braced for Vanessa’s impact, but she didn’t come at me. She continued blurring around the room.
“She’s distracted. Search!” Vanessa ordered me.
I couldn’t move for a moment, frozen with disbelief as Kali stroked Owen’s hair and cheek. The sorceress then lifted her hand, and Owen obediently rose to his feet.
“Hurry!” Vanessa shrieked.
I snapped out of it and followed her lead, moving around the room at a blazing speed, rifling through everything on the table in a matter of seconds.
“Stop them!” Kali barked, and Owen waved one hand while twisting the other in the air.
A current of air blew past me, and I slammed into an invisible wall, forced to stop, and at the exact same time Vanessa slammed into the other side. We both stumbled backwards, but quickly regained our footing. Owen’s hand waved again, then he moved in between us, where the invisible wall had been, a palm out directed at each of us. Kali stood in front of us all, a wicked gleam in her green eyes.
The sorceress flicked her hand the same way I’d seen Owen do when summoning something, but nothing happened. She narrowed her eyes and did it again, but still nothing moved. She rushed over to the table.
“Where is it?” she hissed. Objects started flying through the air as Kali searched. Owen took several steps back, his hands still aimed at us, and glanced over his shoulder.
“Looking for this?” Vanessa dangled the pendant between her fingers, the ruby-colored faerie stone flashing in the firelight, before tossing it at me. My heart leapt. I could have kissed Vanessa.
As I reached out my hand to catch the pendant, Owen’s wrist twisted, and the stone’s trajectory changed. It landed in the warlock’s hand. With a bow of his head to the sorceress, he dropped the pendant into the front pocket of her robe. My heart, which had been soaring, plummeted.
Owen, how could you? No answer but a cold, sapphire stare.
“Well done, my son,” Kali said to Owen, and when he dipped his head in another bow, my stomach lurched. “Now what to do with you two? I don’t appreciate thieves.”
“The pendant is mine,” I said. “You’re the thief.”
Kali’s mouth turned up in a beautiful but dreadful smile. “I think I feel like playing.”
She turned the heat of her full gaze on me, and a piercing pain shot through my head, as if an icepick had been buried into the back of my skull. The agony blinded me and nearly brought me to my knees. My heart bruised the inside of my chest as it raced, but when my hand reached to my head, no weapon protruded. I clamped my mouth shut, silencing my scream, and gritted my teeth through the pain. Kali preferred mind games. Not me, bitch. Straining with intense focus, I eventually raised my mental shield I used to block out others’ thoughts. The pain disappeared.
Thwarted, Kali’s face twisted with anger, then she shot her glare at Vanessa. The vampire’s mouth screwed into a painful grimace that eventually gave way to a spine-tingling scream. Her hands clawed at her chest, and blood poured over the top of her leather halter as she fell to her knees.
“Stop it,” I yelled as I lunged for Vanessa. I caught the vampire in one arm and, with the other, raised my dagger at the sorcere
ss. “Stop now!”
Kali eyed the silver blade—the one that had caused her to lose her body the last time it had pierced her—and laughed. But the blood that had been all over Vanessa disappeared as if it had never been there, and the vampire stopped screaming, though she still trembled against me. Magic had made us both believe the mirage, but I knew from my own experience the pain felt very real. Knowing the sorceress could inflict such mental agony was more frightening than if she’d physically attacked us.
“You’re right. Why waste my time with you, when I can do this?”
She lifted her hand, waved it in the air, and the fire-lit room disappeared. We suddenly stood in the middle of the main road of Captiva Island with the safe house on our right and the beach on our left. Oh no! Tristan came barreling down the front stone steps of the mansion, shooting fire from his hands back at the safe house. The mansion exploded, its roof blowing into pieces, windows shattering, and flames jumping high in the air. With fire-filled eyes, he ran down the road toward the island’s small business district, shooting more fireballs with one hand and causing trees to crash on houses and cars with the other.
The scene disappeared, and we were back in Hades.
But my heart was still in Captiva. A storm of emotions roiled through me, taking my breath away. My son. Blossom and Sheree and Sonya . . . the colony and the norms . . . Had Tristan already done all of that? Or had she just given him the orders? Either way, she’d shown that she knew the power of the stone, and it sat right now in her pocket, giving her control. What was meant for love would now be used with the darkest of purposes. This was all for nothing. We’re all dead. But then my mind focused like a laser beam on a single thought. Not if she’s dead first. With the hope that killing her would sever her connection with Tristan, I twisted the dagger’s hilt in my hand and threw it. Just like last time, it spun end-over-end in an arc, but this time, it landed in her chest.
Kali’s mouth shaped into a surprised O as her hands flew to the dagger buried hilt-deep in her chest.
“Get. Her!” she hissed, and the next thing I knew, Owen’s hands were around my throat, and my feet dangled in the air.