by Kristie Cook
The witch nodded her understanding. Although Mom and Char had worked with her on the Island, this could be her first real attempt. Nothing like trial by fire—that’s how I had learned, first with Sheree and then with Sonya and Vanessa.
The two vamps from the safe house would stay by the vans, keeping watch on this end. My mind would be kept busy as I tried to stay connected to each of the guards while we did our thing.
A few minutes later, Tristan, Vanessa, Blossom, and I followed Charlotte around the corner and into an alley that ran through the middle of the block. We were surrounded by apartment buildings, most of them rundown and empty. Char shook two fingers in the air, signaling a second floor apartment in the first building to our right. I directed my mind up to it and found a dozen mind signatures. They all felt Norman . . . almost. They were still going through the transformation, and their signatures came faintly, almost dead, but with a hint of vampire lacing through them. If we accomplished this before dusk, not only would they be weak from the sun, but also from the transition. Once night fell, however, their transition would be basically complete, and they’d wake up all kinds of pissed off. And thirsty. Very thirsty.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t simply sweep them away unconscious so they woke up at the safe house. They had to want to keep the goodness still inside them. So we crept upstairs and into the apartment, finding them all out cold, scattered on the living room floor. Charlotte and Vanessa grabbed a woman and Tristan and I grabbed a man, and we carried them outside before forcing them awake. These first two were easy—they were boyfriend and girlfriend and attacked without warning. They still had so much love for each other, making their decisions easy. After I checked with Sheree and Jax that the coast remained clear, we took them to the vans where they sat and waited. They didn’t even have to be staked.
The next two weren’t quite as easy, but not difficult either. Charlotte and I had to talk to them for a while, Blossom listening closely, as we tried to explain what had happened to them and what their choices were. Eventually—finally—they agreed to come with us, but as we came closer to the vans, one started freaking out, which caused the other to flip out, too. Tristan plunged a stake into our vamp’s heart, but Vanessa hesitated over hers. Before the newborn could get away and alert the Daemoni of our presence, Charlotte staked her with the silver.
“Sorry,” Vanessa whispered. “I remembered what it felt like.”
This excuse of hers tumbled around my mind as we rushed back to the apartment. Was that compassion she felt? Or remorse for herself? I tried not to worry about it as we pulled the next two out.
And then things went bad. In a hurry.
Chapter 13
Charlotte’s guy started screaming like a woman giving birth as soon as he roused from his slumber and saw us, which woke my guy up fully. Mine had a small build for a man, so he’d nearly completed the transformation. Which meant he was thirsty. He dove for my neck without hesitation.
“Stop!” I ordered as I pushed him off and he tried to fight me.
He didn’t stop. His hands flew out in front of him and grasped onto my shoulders, and he yanked me towards his face, his fangs out. I kneed him in the stomach and shoved him off of me for the second time. He tried to dive for me again, but Tristan paralyzed him.
Char’s newborn saw this and started screaming again. Then he sprang upwards. Whether he knew what would happen or not, we’d never know, but his new force flew him to the top of the building. He barely landed on the edge and tumbled off. Not knowing any better, he only screamed as he plummeted to the ground and landed with a loud crack on his back. When he discovered he hadn’t died, he sprang to his feet and ran off yelling in a panic. Char and Vanessa ran after him.
“It . . . it worked?” the new vamp in front of me asked after witnessing the circus-like scene. His eyes widened and filled with malice as he answered his own question. “It really worked! We’re vampires!”
“You wanted this?” I asked, my stomach sinking.
“Hell yeah! Who wouldn’t?” He tried to move against Tristan’s power but was unable to. His eyes narrowed as he glared at my husband. “What the hell are you doing to me? I’m gonna fuck up your girl if you don’t stop.”
Tristan simply rolled his eyes.
“Shut up and listen to me,” I said. “Did you really want this? Do you understand what it means?”
“I’ve been wanting something like this since I was a kid—a chance to get back at all those bullies. They’ll never see it coming. I’m not exactly, well, him.” He nodded up at Tristan’s imposing figure. “But now it doesn’t matter.”
I tried to talk him out of it, tried to convince him that what he had to give up for his revenge wasn’t worth the time he’d give those bullies, but the idiot refused to listen. We went round and round, but he’d made up his mind long ago, as soon as he thought vampires might truly exist. And he became more and more irate as the pain of the thirst filled his eyes.
“We can’t force him,” Charlotte said, appearing by my side. “Let’s move on. We don’t have much more time. That dumbass out there will be bringing their creators down on us any minute.”
“Good! You all deserve to fucking die, keeping me like this, and I can’t wait for it,” the guy in front of me said. His tongue darted out and swiped over his lips. “I bet you taste good, sweetheart.” His gaze slid down to my hips. “Can’t wait to bite into that thigh—oof.”
The guy’s head swung back, smacking against the brick building. Tristan’s fist had darted out so fast, none of us had seen it coming.
“Guess we’ll have to take care of you first,” the newborn snarled as he glared at Tristan.
Tristan chuckled, and then he leaned over, his face only inches from the vampire’s. His voice came out in a low growl. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Don’t think for a minute that you’re truly at the top of the food chain now.”
Uncertainty flashed in the vamp’s eyes, but only briefly before the orbs hardened into marbles. I scanned his mind to make sure he didn’t want to come with us. He really didn’t know anything about this world he’d become a part of, but he believed wholeheartedly the lies he’d been told. I shook my head at Charlotte.
Maybe eventually when he realizes the truth, I told her, but not now.
“Hold him here, Tristan,” she said, “for as long as we can get.”
“Glad to.” Tristan lifted the side of his mouth in a smirk. The new vampire hissed, but could do nothing else.
After checking the area again and finding no new mind signatures, Char and I went in for another pair, but they woke up before we managed to drag them out of the room. They broke free and took off. The others began to wake, too, then suddenly more vampires were popping into the room. The whole Daemoni nest came for their newborns.
“We need to get out of here,” Charlotte said.
A female vamp squealed with glee when she realized who we were, and then she soared for me. Others followed suit, and Charlotte and I had no choice but to fight our way out of the apartment.
Tristan, we could use your help, I called out to him. He barged into the doorway and started blasting the vamps with his power. Charlotte and I tried to go for the remaining newborns, but the Daemoni protected them closely.
“Let’s just go,” Char said.
With the mage coven so close and not knowing what kind of traps were around, we couldn’t flash back to the vans, but could only run at top speed. Of course, the vampires were nearly as fast as us, and then other Daemoni blocked our way. A white crocodile clamped his jaw over one of them and shook it side to side. A tiger lunged into the alley and attacked another. Blossom shot spells as fast as she could while Tristan carried her since she was the slowest of us all. With his free hand, he blasted those he could reach with his power.
“We don’t have any more,” Charlotte called out to the safe house vamps by the vans when they came in sight. “Go! Just go, go, go!”
They jumped into the vans a
nd peeled out, carrying off only four of the twelve newborns. Charlotte and Blossom shot spells at the vampires chasing us, and lightning jolted out of my hand as we ran for the bikes. Vanessa plowed into a Daemoni and ripped his arms off, slowing him down. As soon as we were on the bikes, Charlotte cloaked us, and Tristan blasted a wall of his power at them, knocking them several yards away, giving us the chance we needed. Not close enough to find us and cloaked from their vision, they scrambled after us blindly, and we were able to get away.
I didn’t let out my breath of relief, though, until we were back at the safe house.
“I can’t believe we only got four of them,” I growled as we headed inside to begin the real work of the conversions. “I thought we were doing well.”
“We were for a while,” Charlotte said. “But this wasn’t unexpected. It happens every time. Four’s not bad. It’s a third.”
“Which means they gained twice as many as we did. We’ll never build an army that can beat them at this rate.”
“Have faith,” Char said. “We don’t need to be as big as them. Only better.”
The conversions of the vampires took another three days of work from my team. With the converts who were already there, the safe house was at near capacity, which meant before long, they would need to use the house where we were staying. That reinforced my belief that we needed to move on and let the Atlanta team do their thing here. Of course, this meant a lot of new Daemoni wouldn’t be converted simply because we didn’t have room. Without a place to help the converts, we’d never be able to keep up. We needed to beat the Daemoni to the Normans and prevent them from being turned in the first place. That wouldn’t help our numbers, but would at least protect the humans. But we were already at a disadvantage and couldn’t protect them until we had a bigger army. We were in a Catch-22 situation.
“I guess we should head north now,” Charlotte said the evening we’d finished with the vampires as she, Tristan, and I sat around the living room. Vanessa was watching a movie in the family room, Sheree had stayed at the safe house working, and Jax and Blossom were . . .
Where were they? They’d been spending a lot of alone time together lately, but Blossom hadn’t said anything to me yet, which wasn’t like her. Of course, Dorian and our missions consumed all of my waking thoughts—and most of my sleeping ones, too. I wasn’t being a very good friend, and I’d have to find a way to make it up to her. Someday, when life and death, including my son’s, didn’t preoccupy me.
“Actually, we need to hit Savannah first,” I replied to Char’s suggestion. I’d been right about the distraction of the conversion allowing my mind to think more clearly about our problem. “We should have gone there a long time ago, really. Where else is there a better opportunity for answers?”
“Savannah’s pretty dangerous,” Tristan reminded me. “Is it a risk we want to take?”
“It doesn’t matter. You know we need to. Mom still feels Dorian is here in the Southeast. Maybe Blossom and I aren’t feeling any more nudges because we’re so close as it is.”
This argument had grown old. Tristan and I had already discussed it several times and knew we needed to go. Of course, we hadn’t found signs of Dorian anywhere near there when Blossom and I had tried while sitting in Sundae’s office, but time had passed. Maybe he’d been brought there now, since Savannah had such a heavy Daemoni presence. Probably not, but even so, people there might know things. People who might be thinking about him and his location.
“And the risk to our team?” Tristan asked again.
The question led to the whole reason why we hadn’t yet mentioned going to Savannah to anyone else: Our group was too big to sneak in, but definitely not big enough to take on all of the Daemoni there.
“You know the answer,” I said.
He rubbed his neck and nodded. Charlotte’s eyes bounced between the two of us for a moment before the answer dawned on her.
“No way in hell,” she said.
“If we’re by ourselves, Tristan and I can get close enough for me to scan thoughts without being seen. And if we are seen, well . . . we’re the strongest of our group.”
“And you’re royalty! Sophia and Rina would have my ass if something happened to you,” Charlotte said. “You can’t simply flash out of there unless you want Pastor McCorkle bailing you out again. I’ll go with you so we at least have a cloak.”
“They’ll sense your magic,” Tristan said.
“Let them,” Char replied. “Like you said—we’re the strongest of our group.”
Tristan and I exchanged a look. She was right—after him and me, she was our strongest. And the three of us, with her cloak, would be better than the two of us alone and visible. If Owen were here, we’d take him with us. Well, at one time we would have. Now the bastard would probably turn us in. Char was his replacement, which meant she’d be going with us on this mission.
“What about me?” Vanessa asked from the doorway. “You know I can help.”
And here came the problem Tristan and I had anticipated: Everyone would want to go, regardless of the risk. They’d known of the danger they’d be in when they volunteered for the team, and they all wanted to help. Whether to actually find Dorian or to protect me, though, was still a little up in the air. Vanessa, however . . . I think she wanted to prove herself every chance she could get, and I appreciated her effort. In more ways than one. Except now.
“You didn’t want to go near Savannah before,” I reminded her. “A little too risky, remember?”
“That’s when we were already captured. When I thought we’d be delivered straight into their hands. But I did go into Savannah before. To find out where your pendant was.” She leaned against the decorative pillar at the entrance of the living room and crossed her arms over her chest. “I know exactly where to take you, where you’ll be safe so you can scan all the brains you want.”
Blossom appeared behind Vanessa, and I let out a sigh. Here we go.
“I’ll stay back,” she said. “Jax and I can hang out here.”
Thank God. She’d been the one I’d worried about most. She wanted to do everything possible to help us, but I hated having her in the middle of fights, and things could get especially nasty in Savannah.
“I’ll convince Sheree that she needs to stay at the safe house,” Char said.
And so it was decided—the next morning before dawn, the four of us left for Savannah.
As we approached the small city, the evil energy of the Daemoni swirled around me like a dark mist, so heavy it hung palpably in the air. When Vanessa and I had been here barely over a month ago, the evil hadn’t felt this thick. At that time, I’d been so worried Vanessa had set me up, only fear had coated my skin. A small part of me still thought she could be tricking us, but none of me felt fear now. The tight ball of anger that sat in my heart expanded and whirled in my chest, overtaking all other emotion. These assholes here shouldn’t be allowed to live. Not when their leaders had my son. Once again, I considered the dark magic that could potentially annihilate all of them. If only it didn’t come at such a great cost.
“Alexis, if you don’t gain control, I’m not taking you in there,” Tristan said in my mind. “If you’re not focused, you’re nothing but a liability.”
I’d ridden on the back of his motorcycle this time instead of on my own, and he felt my rage escalating. I inhaled deeply, but the Daemoni energy gagged me, and I blew it out quickly. So I focused on the feel of my body against his, on the rumble of the bike underneath us. He shared with me a sexy image of the two of us together, which partially annoyed me—how could he think of that right now?—but succeeded in distracting me.
I’m fine, I said after a moment, and I was.
“For the record, I can think of you naked anytime,” he said. “Especially in times like this when I need the distraction myself.”
Thanks for the tip.
“My pleasure.” I could feel him smirking. “Maybe when we get out of here, we can act on it.�
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Hmm . . . it would be nice to have some time alone.
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
My lower belly warmed, making the distraction a complete success. My temper came back under control, and I wanted control now. Because I would wait to unleash my wrath onto those who truly deserved it: Lucas and Kali. We had no further information about which one took Dorian, but I didn’t care. They’d both done enough to hurt the people I loved to deserve everything I could give them.
Vanessa directed us to a church on the outskirts of town, close enough for me to reach the central area of the Daemoni’s keep—down by the river, home to the bar and tourist scene, as well as the port, where freightliners docked. We crept inside the church, but it had apparently been abandoned. Go figure. Charlotte put up a shield and cloak over the entire building, then I sat in one of the wooden pews, closed my eyes, and opened my mind.
I scanned the entire area first, reaching as far as I could possibly go, which proved to be much farther than I could a month ago. Our training had apparently been working. Holding onto a small thread of hope, I searched for Dorian’s mind signature, but didn’t find it. In fact, I found only a handful of child mind signatures in the whole city. What had the Daemoni done to all the children? A sick feeling crawled along my spine, making me shudder.
I searched for Lucas and Victor, and Kali and Owen, too, but none were here.
So then I began sweeping through the Daemoni minds, skimming over their putrid thoughts, stopping only when something sounded interesting. Very little did. My mind was open to Tristan, Charlotte, and Vanessa, so they could stop me if they heard something I didn’t.
“Whoa, back up,” Vanessa whispered at one point. We’d just heard the word summoned from a vamp by the docks and Virginia from another with him.
“What the hell is this guy talking about? He’s a fucking idiot,” the first vamp thought.
“I’m tellin’ you, man. It’s in Virginia,” the second guy said aloud, but the first only snorted in response before moving the discussion on to the jewels in the crate at their feet.