by Kristie Cook
Rina joined him at the door, winding her arm with his. Mom stepped behind her and Tristan and I stood behind Mom. Tristan took my hand as Owen led us through the door and down a short hallway. Seeing Mom alone between Solomon and Rina and Tristan and me made my heart ache for her. She'd given up any chance for a real mate–one who could handle her love and passion–to stay with me in the normal world. She'd had a handful of Norman boyfriends throughout my childhood, but none could give her true companionship. Even if she could have revealed her true identity, they would have never understood … and never survived.
We stopped at a doorway as Owen stepped inside and announced the matriarch's entry. Wood scraped against stone–the sound of people rising to their feet–and then silence reigned. Rina and Solomon led us inside. Pillars lined the long sides of the rectangular room and on the walls at each end hung a large, ornate cross centered between two angels. But not peaceful, praying angels or cute cherubs–these angels brandished swords, daggers and other weapons, their expressions fierce and their muscles large and defined, as if tensed for a fight.
At the center of the room stood a giant, round, wooden table with throne-like seats surrounding it. In front of all but five chairs stood an Amadis council member, their heads bowed. Rina and Solomon led us to the empty seats. Solomon sat on Rina's left and Mom on her right. Mom and Tristan indicated I was to sit between them. Owen stood behind me. I felt as though I sat at King Arthur's Round Table right in the middle of Athena's temple.
As soon as the five of us took our seats, everyone else sat down, too.
Rina launched the meeting with a prayer, followed by swearing Charlotte in as "the second's chosen confidante." I'd gone through the Ang'dora and also had Tristan by my side, so Mom no longer needed to give me her full-time attention and protection. She would become a more permanent fixture on the council and, apparently, had chosen Char to be her personal advisor. Rina then introduced me to the council and Tristan officially as a member of the royal family. As soon as she said this, the room temperature seemed to drop a degree or two while the air thickened. I thought I'd imagined it until–
"Ms. Katerina," murmured a man across the table from me. Well, not a man. A vampire, with dark, shoulder-length hair swept back from his lovely face, and an accent that rolled the "r" in a way that would make most women's thighs tense.
"Yes, Armand?"
"Are you sure–"
Rina didn't let him finish. "I am aware of your feelings. You have made them clear to me. And yes, I am sure. Do not forget we have given you a second chance."
Armand pursed his lips and stared at the wooden table. Rina had effectively silenced him. The tension remained in the air, however, and I had a feeling Armand wasn't the only one who had an issue with Tristan and his place at the table or in the family. Whoever I'd heard in the village was definitely one of these people at this table. I scanned the unfamiliar faces until my eyes landed on one I had seen before–the first guy, the blond Were, who had called Tristan a traitor. His dark eyes narrowed at me for a brief moment. It was time I went to work.
But Rina immediately distracted me when she mentioned a coronation ceremony–as in the official crowning of Tristan and me. In front of a crowd of strangers. My insides squirmed. The conversation didn't last long, but my stomach still spasmed as Rina moved on to the next subject.
"Are there any regional updates since our last meeting of a few days ago?" she asked.
A woman of Asian descent, wearing a silver kimono and a ridiculous green hat the Queen of England would admire, stood first and delivered her report. I listened, taking time to become acclimated to the council before starting my task. That was my excuse anyway, but to be honest, nerves kept my mind from going there. The council members–not just creatures from my books, but the most powerful ones of our society–were intimidating enough. What if I screwed up? What if my wall fell and everyone found out what I was doing? I didn't have the best control under ideal circumstances, and now I'd been thrown to the wolves. Part of me wanted to know what was going on, but the other part hid like a coward.
The Asian woman said the Daemoni had pulled back, with the last two attacks in China and Vietnam nearly twenty-four hours ago, about the same time Vanessa found Tristan and me in the Aegean Sea. Finding us was easy for the vamp–she'd drank my blood, creating a connection between us. It wouldn't last, though. As she burned through my blood, consuming it as a fire consumes fuel, the connection would weaken and disappear. That's what Tristan had told me, anyway.
Other council members simply said they'd experienced the same in their regions, although two had suffered rogue attacks. One this morning had delayed two council members.
Amadis all over the world were on edge, knowing attacks could resume at any time, and the council briefly discussed options for fighting back, but I tuned them out. The Ang'dora had enlarged the capacity of my brain, or, at least, allowed me to engage those parts most humans never do use, but I still had difficulty following the conversation, being unfamiliar with my new world–or with war strategy, for that matter. I observed my subjects a little longer, needing to gain a better understanding of them before tapping into their minds.
Besides Solomon and Armand, the French vampire who'd been shut down by Rina, the only other vampire on the council was Julia, who I recognized from the Keys. As Owen had mentioned, Julia definitely appeared to be a closer advisor to Rina than the rest of the council, besides Solomon. Rina looked to her often and I suspected they exchanged silent communication frequently, though Julia never spoke aloud. The dark-haired vampire had eyed me during the meeting's opening, more closely than everyone else, scrutinizing me just as she had done at the beach house. She still felt wrong to me, though I couldn't explain the feeling.
Armand, it became apparent, oversaw the Amadis equivalent of the police–the group who ensured Amadis people managed themselves responsibly, whether within the Amadis society or while mainstreaming in the Norman world. In other words, that they didn't bite or curse people.
My gaze skimmed over the were-animals, who were nearly as mesmerizing as the vampires and easier to identify than I expected. I couldn't distinguish by sight exactly what kind of Were each was–by possessing animal bodies, the Ancients had created a Were bloodline in the form of every predatory animal on Earth. I thought one woman may have been a bird, perhaps an eagle or falcon. With thin limbs but powerful-looking shoulders and chest, round eyes and a long nose, she certainly looked like a bird.
I identified the mages easily, too–not only because they obviously weren't vamps or Weres, but while in the village, Tristan had pointed out their eccentric tastes, including their fashion styles. It wasn't so easy determining what kind of mage each was–a female witch, a male wizard, or a more powerful warlock. All I knew was they weren't sorcerers because according to Owen, the Amadis didn't have any.
"Martin," Rina said, the name catching my attention, "your intelligence update, please."
The man sitting next to Charlotte stood and I bit off a small sound of surprise. I'd expected to see an older version of Owen, but my protector definitely took after his mother, except his stature, which was exactly like his father's–tall with long, sinewy muscles wrapping their lean frames.
"Yes, Ms. Katerina," Martin said, giving her a nod. He scrubbed his hand through his shoulder-length, black hair, just as Owen would do, and, like Owen, three lines appeared between his eyebrows when he pushed them together in thought. The resemblance stopped there, however. Besides his dark hair that was nearly opposite Owen's blond, Martin's blue eyes were several shades lighter than Owen's and set into a fine-boned face that made me think "pretty boy."
Martin pressed his long-fingered hand down his white, button-down shirt, as if straightening it, pushed his shoulders back and lifted his chin. He spoke with a faint trace of an Irish accent and lilt, as if he'd had many years' practice in hiding it. "As we expected, the Daemoni are preparing for war. Their attacks on Amadis villages may have stopp
ed for the time being, but they're making plans to grow their army."
The statement sent a chill up my spine. Building their army meant attacking and infecting Normans–changing them into vampires and Weres. Of course, that meant the Amadis must fight back by converting the newly turned as quickly as possible, saving their souls and growing our own army at the same time.
"They won't let Tristan–or Alexis–go easily, of course," Martin added. "They will fight for them, harder than ever. Since we have them protected here, they appear to be in the midst of making plans for flushing them out. I recommend we keep them here on the island as long as possible, for their protection."
"I disagree," Armand said. "They need to mainstream. The boy is getting old enough to remember what he sees here. He cannot know our secrets, since he will …"
I didn't hear the rest of Armand's sentence–I didn't have to, though, to understand he and others would want to protect the Amadis secrets from Dorian, their future enemy.
Rina broke into my mind.
"Alexis," she said, again sounding as though she yelled in my head, automatically grabbing my attention. "Have you started?"
I pressed my lips together and wiped my palms on my dress as tendrils of anxiety slithered in and around me.
"Focus on the mages," Rina instructed. "They are the only ones who could block me. You do not need to worry about the others."
I pulled in a deep breath, tried to blow out the tension inside me and commanded myself to proceed. The discussion of when we'd need to mainstream resided in one part of my brain, while I used another part to conjure my cloud. I envisioned enlarging the black cloud beyond my head, which took more effort than ever before, probably because nerves tried to hold it in. With effort, I pushed it out to enshroud Charlotte, who I thought would be a good start. Nice and safe.
She wasn't completely focused on the conversation either, but silently cussed at Mom for dragging her onto the council with all of its hellishly boring meetings, when she could be out fighting. Although, she also admitted to herself, she was happy to be paired up with Mom again and couldn't wait for the paybacks Mom owed her for this meeting. Paybacks that involved margaritas on the beach and working with me. Hmm … what does that mean? I couldn't linger on that last thought, though, and forced the cloud to Martin, but didn't stay long with him, either–his mind was focused completely on the discussion, and he was Owen's dad, after all. A pang of guilt stabbed at me for invading his parents' thoughts in the first place.
My head already began to ache as I concentrated on moving my cloud along to Armand, and then, following Rina's instructions, onto the next person, the were-falcon (a brief dip into her thoughts confirmed my theory of her being a bird). As everyone else discussed exactly how long we should stay on the island, I continued coercing my cloud around the table, taking my time with the mages. I learned nothing from their thoughts.
"We do not know for sure about the boy," said a beautiful woman with raven hair and eyes, and skin the color of smooth caramel. Wearing an intricately embellished, gold sari, I figured she came from India and discovered she lived part of her life as a leopard when I checked her mind. I couldn't help the intrusion, although she wasn't a mage, after that statement about Dorian. Did she know something the rest of us didn't?
"Of course we do, Chandra," said the Italian blond man I'd seen in the village earlier. They had called him Savio and, I learned now, he was a were-shark. He and Armand were definitely on the same team, a team against Tristan. And, apparently, against Dorian. I didn't like the French vamp and the Italian Were. Not one bit. "You are always optimistic, but all boys go to the Daemoni. That's how it is, how it's always been."
"There is nothing wrong with having hope," Chandra thought, but she didn't respond aloud to Savio's dismissive statement. I supposed she didn't know anything, but simply wanted to hope, as I did.
"We will give them as much time as they need. Alexis needs to learn our ways before returning to the Norman world," Rina said, putting that line of conversation to a temporary end. Surely they'd give us a move-out day sooner or later.
Although I hadn't learned anything useful, I needed a mental break and allowed my cloud to disintegrate before my head exploded.
"As long as they're trying for a daughter, who cares where they are?" Minh, the Asian witch with the green hat, asked. If she hadn't been talking about me, I would have giggled with surprise at this little, soft-spoken woman bringing up the topic of sex. But she was talking about me. And her topic wasn't sex, not really. It was the daughter I'd failed to give them.
The next daughter was a hotter topic than I expected. Everyone had something to say. They were more concerned about this subject than anything they'd discussed so far, even more than they were about the Daemoni's preparations for war. After all, without a daughter to rule in the future, the Amadis would fall, regardless of what the Daemoni did. Having to face everyone in person made me feel worse than ever about this failure.
Armand went so far as to demand proof that Tristan and I were proactively working on this.
"Armand, you are not in France at the moment," Martin said. "That is not an appropriate question."
Armand banged his fist on the table. "We deserve to know."
"We are working on it," Tristan said. "I personally guarantee it."
My face heated and surely became redder than the tomato on Minh's hat. To add to my complete embarrassment, Solomon spoke up as a witness to confirm we were, indeed, working on it. Once again, I wanted to crawl under the table and never come out again.
My head pounded. The concentration of listening to everyone's minds, the frustration of not learning anything and the tension of this topic were like hammers taking turns on my brain. I felt so inadequate, in more ways than one, and didn't want to disappoint Rina again. Since I hadn't brought her the next daughter, I could at least do better with my so-called gift. So I tried once again, painstakingly pushing the cloud to only the mages, besides Owen, Charlotte and Martin.
The conversation heated, though, making concentration on anyone's thoughts difficult. Voices grew loud and hands waved about as everyone's emotional investment in this became clear. I tried to ignore the feeling of being personally attacked, even as my breaths grew shallow and my soul felt as though they physically pounded it. Just focus on your task. Don't worry about them. Tristan will take care of it.
But it was too much. The emotions–mine and everyone else's–overwhelmed me. My wall I kept so carefully in place crumbled. The thoughts came crashing in, wave after wave beating at my mind, swirling and tumbling about, pulling me under. I couldn't distinguish thoughts from spoken words, let alone specific voices, except those I was most familiar with.
"Give them two years."
"Too long. One year."
"No, six months."
"There are other possibilities to consider, too."
"Not Tristan. Never right. Shouldn't be here. Owen … the right mate."
I gulped for air. My heart raced. I had no idea what thoughts Rina could hear or if she totally depended on me, but I was failing. A silent scream to her or Tristan or Owen that I needed help clawed at my mind, but I held it back, afraid I'd lose control and everyone would "hear" me, ruining everything.
"We don't need deadlines or other possibilities," Rina said. "Tristan and Alexis are supposed to be together, their souls are made for each other. We must trust the Angels. They have told me there will be a daughter after Alexis."
"I feel that truth. Tristan and Alexis have a daughter in their future," Mom added.
"Not good enough. We need a daughter now!"
"We must take this into our own hands."
"Stupid women. Basing everything on their feelings and non-existent messages from the Angels. Of course Alexis won't get pregnant. We already have the girl. We just need to keep her hidden a little longer …"
Chapter 3
I gasped, choking on a swelling rage. My eyes burned with angry tears and my throat constr
icted. The words ricocheted around my mind like an angry wasp desperate to find its way out. "We already have the girl. We already have the girl." I gripped my chair tightly, trying in vain to control the tremors racking my body. Trying to control the urge to jump to my feet and demand answers. But I couldn't say anything. I couldn't even acknowledge the words. I had to bear the sting each time they hit me.
Tristan laid his hand on mine, and I took his and squeezed it hard. I couldn't breathe. My vision swam. I have to get out of here. Now! I knew there was a way to escape, but the how wasn't coming to mind. My brain lost all function as it remained stuck on those five words. I looked at Tristan with desperation. He nodded and took me in his arms. The air whooshed out of my lungs and the meeting room disappeared.
We appeared in our suite at the mansion, and I sucked in a lungful of oxygen and fell to my knees. My heart still raced and my body still shook. And my mind still reeled.
"Holy … shit," I whispered between pants. "Holy. Shit."
Tristan sat on the bed in front of me. He placed his hands on my shoulders and studied my face.
"You heard something?" he asked. I nodded, slowly, my eyes bugging. "What?"
We already have the girl. The words echoed in my head.
Before I could share them, though, a pop came from the sitting room. I froze. What had we left behind? I'd lost all control at the end. I might have shared everything I'd been hearing with everyone else. If whoever had blocked Rina–the traitor–knew I'd heard that thought and came after me … but no. Tristan didn't hear what I heard. And I recognized the familiar scent in the front room.
"Owen," Tristan and I both said as my protector appeared in the open doorway to the bedroom.
"At your service," he said. "Is everything okay?"
"Do they know anything?" Tristan asked.
Owen shook his head. "Sophia told them Alexis gets all whacked out about the next daughter and she probably needed air." He peered at me and then Tristan. "Well, not those exact words. I think she said, 'especially sensitive.' So … what happened?"