by Kristie Cook
You know it is! Let go, Alexis. Let it all go. Find comfort with us.
“NO! Please, God, help me!” I begged.
The voice fell silent.
I trembled so hard, the bed shook under me. My pulse thudded in my ears, but at least I heard nothing else. I opened my eyes and remained in a ball, staring at nothing and praying for the voice to stay away. The energy in the room settled, as did the pounding in my chest. My blood finally warmed, and the shivering stopped.
But fear still wrapped itself around me. Nothing like this had ever happened before. I was half Daemoni, but not evil. Rina assessed me every time she saw me and said the evil was repressed, virtually non-existent. So what the hell just happened?
Was the state of my mind bringing out the worst of me? Or was the worst in me causing the changes in my state of mind? Rina hadn’t assessed me since last summer. Had something changed since then? Was something going on that my subconscious mind knew but I didn’t? Could, for some unknown reason, the Daemoni blood be suddenly strengthening? I remembered the lights in Dorian’s window—the two little fires. Had those been my own eyes? I shuddered again.
This afternoon and evening with Dorian had been good. Too good. Almost as if I’d swung into a maniacal state from the chaos of this morning and yesterday. And now I had to pay for it. The conversation with Mom and Owen . . . the realization of just how bad everything was . . . an Evil Alexis trying to push her way out . . . I would really lose my sanity at this rate, if I hadn’t already. I just hoped the good side would win, that Mom would lock me up before I did anything . . . horrible.
I couldn’t move. I felt drained of all energy. I lay there, with the light still on, and squeezed my eyes shut. I needed to see the beautiful face. I just wanted to go back to the way things were, when I could count on the same dream, seeing him every night. I had my miserable moments then, but I was mostly just foggy, and I missed the fog. If I never found Real Alexis again, I preferred Foggy, who was a hundred times better than all these other alter egos.
The memory-dream tried to replay but even my subconscious mind couldn’t focus—couldn’t make his face clear. I woke up at 3:39 sobbing and my body burning. It didn’t ache with soreness from the running. It actually burned as the muscles repaired themselves from the strain I’d put them through. When I finally fell back to sleep, the memory-dream didn’t start again. The slideshow on the mountain played instead . . . and every time my love’s face started to surface, Owen’s pushed it away. And the images of Owen weren’t really memories. They looked more like . . . possibilities.
No, no, no! I’m not only forgetting . . . Oh, hell no! He can’t be replaced!
Awake at 5:28. I lay in bed, though, the aberration of last night still frightening me. The state of my mind seemed to be deteriorating, and the council’s demands had apparently been too much for my fragile psyche. I felt even closer to the edge of an abyss—my toes curling over its lip, my body leaning forward for the fall. Only Dorian and that wispy thread, frayed and in danger of snapping, kept me from the plunge. That tiny bit of hope.
Please, baby, I need you. I need you, not anyone else. What if they . . . ? I couldn’t bear to complete the thought . . . but then I couldn’t help it. Would they force me to mate with someone else? Could I do that? Could I ever be able to tuck this part of me away and force myself? I didn’t think so. Not without undeniable proof that my husband was . . . gone, really gone. But what if proof never came? Time alone seemed to be enough proof for the Amadis. When Rina joined our souls, though, she said nothing and no one could ever sever our union. Not distance, space, or time.
The more I thought about everything, the less any of it made sense. Rina said we were made for each other. The Angels had specifically created our souls to unite with each other. How could there ever be anyone else? Such an idea went against everything the Amadis had been banking on since I was born. Were they wrong? Were our souls not really one? Did they honestly believe that now?
Physical pain shot through my chest, taking my breath away.
The pain answered my questions. Of course we were meant for each other. Of course our souls were united. There could never be anyone else. So . . . what on earth went wrong? Why was I here, alone with no daughter and a son who supposedly shouldn’t exist? Why did I feel like I was losing our connection, his memory? Losing my freaking mind? Why was all of this happening? Nothing made sense.
I literally rolled out of bed, nearly falling to the floor. I glanced at the bag containing my new running clothes and shoes, untouched since I bought them. They held no interest for me now. What a waste of money. I knew that urge to run was a fluke. Yesterday’s strange burst of energy had dissipated, but my mind felt wide awake.
So I trudged into my office, turned my laptop on, and plopped into my chair to wait for it to boot up. As soon as it did, my email opened. I didn’t want to even look at my inbox. No one emailed me except my agent and my editor at the publishing company and right now, their emails would only be complaints or demands for new chapters. Chapters I still didn’t have. I moved the mouse to click the X and close the email program, when something caught my eye. A new message from Rina.
Very strange. I couldn’t remember ever receiving an email from Rina. She wasn’t exactly the technological type. I knew she used email out of necessity with Mom, but only rarely. So this must be important. I double-clicked the message.
“Alexis, I understand it is difficult for you to try to move on, and I truly wish your situation was different. I wish I could make it better for you, but, unfortunately, there is nothing I can do. I do hope I can help you get past this, though, because it is in the best interests of the Amadis and humankind. I believe the attached video may help you let go of your past and accept your future.”
I stared at the message for several minutes, trying to understand it. The words didn’t sound like Rina’s, and I just couldn’t believe she would deliver such a message in an email. This was all out of character. It must be really bad. A lump grew in my throat with this realization. Whatever the video showed, it was something she couldn’t tell me on the phone or even deliver through Mom. So bad, neither of them could even voice it. I instantly knew I didn’t want to watch the video. Yet, acting on its own accord, my trembling hand moved the mouse to the file and double-clicked.
Ian, the ugly Irish ogre who’d dropped the bomb on me about the Amadis plan for my marriage, appeared on the screen. He stood in a darkened room, a spotlight trained on him, wearing black leather pants, a black trench coat, and no shirt. His red hair provided the only real color to the scene. His lips pulled back, exposing his crooked teeth, whether in a grin or a snarl, I couldn’t tell.
“We know ya want to go to the media,” he said in his Irish accent, “to protect your lil lassie’s reputation. But ya might want to think twice ’bout that. If you do, if you acknowledge Seth’s existence in any way, heads will roll.”
He cackled his disgusting laugh as the recording cut to another scene. This one had all the appearances of a group of terrorists with a hostage, just like those seen during wartimes. Several men dressed in Middle Eastern tunics, sabers hanging from their leather belts, stood in a circle around someone unseen. Those in front of the camera moved to the side. My breath caught.
“Oh, no,” I gasped.
The shirtless hostage knelt on his knees, a burlap sack over his head. One of the terrorists—a Daemoni, I assumed—held his saber to the hostage’s neck. I had no way of knowing for sure without seeing the face, but the build seemed close to right, too close, from what I could remember. And then I saw it. My hands flew to my mouth. The blood drained from my head, coagulating into a ball in the pit of my stomach.
Just below the curve of the knife, on the hostage’s chest, barely visible over his heart, a darker pigmentation against the rest of his pale skin. When our souls were joined in marriage, it had burned bright red. The Amadis mark. Choking, gasping sounds gnarled in my throat, the scream unable to pass the h
uge lump.
“You tell the world anything, we show them this,” Ian spoke in a voiceover.
“Alexis!” a voice screamed. A very familiar voice. One I had heard only in my dreams for over seven years. It careened into a wail of tortured agony, making my heart stop.
Then the Daemoni with the saber jerked his arm. The camera’s view dropped, but unlike the news producers who cut away from the gore at this point, it angled in on the round shape of the burlap sack, now rolling on the floor in a pool of blood.
Chapter 4
I felt completely numb. I sat completely still, only my finger moving on the mouse to click the Play button over and over and over again. My brain refused to register what I saw as I watched it replay, as if I watched some amateur video staged in Hollywood, fake blood and all. But slowly, the reality of it slithered its way into my mind.
And all I could think was, It’s not him.
“Mom?” Dorian asked, running into my office sometime later and making me jump.
I slammed the laptop shut. I couldn’t let him see that. He couldn’t know about the video at all, even if he was old enough to handle the gore. Because it wasn’t real. And that hostage wasn’t his father.
I opened my arms, and he climbed into my lap. I held him tightly against my chest, the pressure of his body like a catalyst to keep me breathing.
“Alexis,” Mom called from down the hall. I could tell she rushed toward us with each syllable sounding closer. “Rina’s email account’s been hacked. Don’t open—”
She cut herself off as she charged into my office and saw me. Something on my face must have told her I’d seen the video because her own face crumpled with what should have been my pain. I simply shook my head. She pulled in a deep breath and rearranged her expression.
“Come on, Dorian, honey, Uncle Owen’s making you breakfast,” Mom said. My arms fell numbly to my sides as she pulled Dorian off my lap. He ran off for the kitchen.
“It’s not him,” I whispered.
Mom closed the door, came over to me, and swiveled my chair around to face her. She squatted in front of me, her hands on my knees.
“Honey—” she started.
“It’s not him,” I repeated, louder now.
“We don’t know—”
“I said it’s not him!” I threw my hands to my face. My body began trembling again. My head shook back and forth. “It’s not him. I don’t know how I know. I just do. It’s not him, Mom. It can’t be!”
She rubbed her hands over my thighs. “I know, honey. I mean . . . I don’t know. I just know what you’re feeling. I know it’s hard to believe.”
“I don’t believe. I know! Don’t you? Can’t you feel the truth?”
She sighed. “You know I haven’t been able to feel anything about him at all. And we haven’t been able to find anything. We’ve tried to send soldiers in, but, if the Daemoni do still have him, we have no idea where.”
I stopped shaking as I listened. She’d never given me so many details.
“They lie so much, we never know what to believe. And Rina’s heard nothing from her other sources about any of this.” She sighed again. “And this video . . . we’ve never been able to figure out if it’s him or not. Our people examined every frame and couldn’t determine if it was even real, let alone who the hostage was.”
I dropped my hands from my face. “What do you mean? You’ve seen this before? You’ve known about this?”
She grimaced. “We’ve had this video for a few years.”
“A few years?” My jaw dropped open.
“When the media did that whole character bashing about your having Dorian so young and out of wedlock, we were going to make an official statement. But then the Daemoni sent this video, threatening to send it to the media worldwide if we said anything at all. We decided it best for you and Dorian that we just keep quiet. Ignore the rumors and let them run their course.” She paused, then added quietly, “No one wanted you to see this.”
“Until now.”
“We don’t know who sent it or why.”
“It’s obvious why! The council wants me to move on, and they thought this would convince me. Well, they’re wrong. It doesn’t mean a damn thing to me!”
The next thing I knew, I sat at the head of my bed, my arms wrapped around our wedding picture, and my knees drawn up in a ball. I didn’t remember if I had walked here purposely or had fled to the refuge of my room. I didn’t even know how long I’d been sitting here, rocking back and forth, whispering, “No, no, no.”
Mom insisted they didn’t know who sent the video, that the Daemoni could have hacked into Rina’s email. But the timing was too convenient. All Owen had to tell them after our little discussion last night was that I wasn’t ready to move on yet, and then the council—at least one person—thought they could rush me into acceptance with this.
But the idea backfired. Because I absolutely refused to believe my husband was beheaded in the video. In fact, with the way the camera cut away from the hostage and then the angle of the view . . . I couldn’t be certain there was even a head in the sack rolling on the floor. The scene really could have been staged, just theatrics, as Mom seemed to imply. But someone obviously wanted me to see it . . . and to believe it.
How stupid could they be? Did they really think I would be so easily convinced? Our connection was too strong. Or is it? I froze at this thought. I’d been losing him in my memory and now even in my dreams. Our connection had actually been quite weak lately. Mom knew that. Owen had probably figured it out. They said they hadn’t told anyone, but now someone on the council knew and tried to take advantage of my weakness. Tried to shred my hope, as if slashing that grotesque saber right through my thread of hope.
I squeezed my eyes shut and saw the images in the video. It could be convincing, actually. Quite convincing. Especially with the Amadis mark on the hostage’s chest. And his voice . . . beautiful and horrible at the same time . . . screaming my name.
“It’s not him,” I whispered again. Even I could hear the doubt in my voice. I shook my head. “No. It’s not him. I won’t believe it!”
I felt something inside me start to crack, about to break. Probably break me down for good. Psycho Alexis tried to work her way in, blackening my heart and my thoughts with grief and anger. Then a rough growl in the back of my mind marked Evil Alexis also wanting to take control. I shook my head again, more violently this time.
I just need to feel you again. I know you’re there.
Then a thought occurred to me, rushing me to the back of my walk-in closet. I pulled out his bag, tore open the zipper, and stuffed my face inside, inhaling deeply, trying to smell him, to bring back his memory, to feel him and know he still lived. The scent was so faint. After wearing his shirts every night for over a year, I’d finally packed them in here, his scent washed out of them.
But I felt his physical presence with each touch of his belongings. I rummaged through the contents. Papers and keys for the beach house lay at the bottom of the bag. The letters I’d written to him over the years, too. Letters where I reminded him of his promise and where I made my own promise—that I would come for him after the Ang’dora if he didn’t come back first. Letters I could never send. I read them each twice, and my chest, where my heart should have been, throbbed with pain. Then I came across the envelope he’d given me at the safe house. I had never bothered to open it.
I ripped through the envelope. It contained some important looking documents I couldn’t focus on and a car title—the title to his Ferrari Spider, signed over to me, as if he’d known he wouldn’t make it back. His Ferrari. Since we’d had it in the Keys with us on our honeymoon, it hadn’t exploded with the rest of his belongings when the Daemoni blew up his house. We had used it as our escape car to the safe house. He had flashed away when he left the final time, leaving it behind.
The Ferrari sat in the extra garage. Not knowing I even had the title to it, I’d never done anything with the ostentatious sp
orts car. I could never bring myself, through all these years, to even look at it. I knew Owen, along with Dorian (he loved his daddy’s car), took it for a spin every now and then and kept it maintained. Mom kept the tags and insurance up-to-date.
I tore through the house and dashed across the driveway to the extra garage. There it sat, red and shiny like new, obnoxious and beautiful as ever. Owen had taken good care of it. I circled the car, running my fingers over the horse emblem just as I had the first time I’d seen it, and stopped at the driver’s side door. This was not my side. I’d never driven the thing. I took a deep breath, popped the door open, and slid inside.
My hands caressed the tan leather seat and steering wheel, trying to feel the true owner’s presence. I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, imagining that I could feel him sitting here right where I sat, his warmth and power surrounding me. And I felt even more convinced he was not in that video, his voice was edited in . . . they did not kill him years ago. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, my arm crossed over my stomach, focusing on the conviction. It’s not him.
Then I suddenly had the incredible urge to go again. The need overwhelmed me. I frantically searched the workshop bench in the garage and finally found the key in a drawer. I left, tires screeching out of the driveway.
Driving felt good. Driving fast felt amazing. I sped down the highway, wondering if I drove as fast as he did. My senses felt so keen, so alert, I didn’t feel like the car moved very fast at all as I weaved around traffic on the interstate. The needle on the speedometer hovered at 110. I drove for nearly an hour and headed home when the gas gauge fell to a quarter-tank . . . and only then because I hadn’t brought my purse.
What is wrong with me? Wild impulses were taking over my life. The messed-up dreams . . . the anger and irritability . . . the impulses . . . the physical urges . . . the hallucinations . . . the voices . . . and now the fake video. Everything was crashing down on me at once. I considered again that I was finally losing it. Mom must have thought the same thing.