by Kristie Cook
I grabbed the vampire with my other hand and electricity poured out of my palm directly into her body. Her form lit up with a bluish glow. Then smoke began to rise. Her skin started turning purple, and a saccharine stench filled the air. The sweet smell of Daemoni death.
“Alexis!” Tristan’s arms came from behind me, and his hands wrapped around my wrists and tightened until I could no longer push my powers out. “We don’t kill.”
“They have our son,” I snarled, glaring at the vamp whose hair had fried off as her crispy body twitched at my feet. “Where is he?”
She gave a minute shake of her head.
“WHERE. IS. HE?” I screamed.
“I . . . I don’t know,” she stammered.
“Where are the Summoned?”
She replied with only a whimper. Her mind showed only fear.
“Let her go,” Tristan murmured in my ear.
I glowered at the vampire as she stared at me with a tinge of hope in her eyes. I felt something else from her that I really didn’t want to feel, but I couldn’t deny it. Her soul still had hope. My own soul dared to hold love for this evil bitch.
With a groan of frustration, I pulled my powers completely within me. The vamp scurried away on her hands and knees.
“That’s your problem,” a male vamp called out from the edge of the woods. “You Amadis don’t have it in you to do what you need to. You’ll never win like this!”
He cackled along with a few others before they ran into the woods. I scowled at them until they disappeared from sight, my jaw clenched and my fists on my hips.
“He’s right,” I muttered. “We’re too good to win.”
The Daemoni had taken off, but we hadn’t been able to save any of the cops. At least their souls had still been Norman before they’d died. We had to get out of here before more authorities came looking for them. Although we now knew their precinct supported our side, we didn’t need the delay caused by their questions and reports.
“Thank you so much,” I breathed as I hugged Bree goodbye.
“Try to keep yourself out of trouble,” she said. “I don’t know how many times they’ll let me keep doing this without demanding something in return. And you better capture that sorceress’s soul soon to repay the favor already owed, or there will come a time when none of us will be allowed to help you.”
I swallowed and nodded. Damn. For as long as they lived—forever, as far as I knew—the faeries had no patience.
That night we camped by a stream in the woods, staying out of sight of the Normans and the Daemoni. Blossom and Charlotte created tents for us as shelter, and Blossom and I sat inside one, searching again. She chanted her spell under her breath, and I opened my mind. Once again we were nudged north.
As we pulled our minds back in to our own location, I sensed new mind signatures that were alarmingly close. And alarmingly Daemoni. Had they followed us? They couldn’t see us . . . unless they had a Norman with them who had some kind of new trap that messed up Char’s cloak. But they weren’t attacking. I focused in on their minds and recognized them—Alys and Lesley, the vampires who’d been with Sonya and Heather when we found them.
Blossom and I exchanged a look, and then both of us crept downstream, Sasha at our heels, until we came close enough to hear their conversation.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Lesley’s voice hissed.
“I can’t believe you aren’t,” Alys replied. “You’re better than this . . . this so-called life.”
“I like this life. We have no rules. We do what we want. And soon—have you heard what they’re giving us? The world! And you want to give that up for what? A soul you only think you have but you lost when you were turned?”
“My soul is not lost,” Alys snapped. “Neither is yours. You heard Sonya—we still have hope. Isn’t it worth it?”
Seeing the perfect opportunity in front of us, I crept in closer to analyze the situation. The two blond vamps sat on opposite sides of the stream. Alys’s long legs were pulled up to her chin, her butt balanced on a rock on the side nearest to us. Lesley straddled a boulder on the other bank, one leg swinging impatiently back and forth.
“I think you’re crazy,” Lesley said, and she hopped to her feet. “But if that’s what you want to do, if you’re willing to leave me all alone, then I won’t stop you.”
“You don’t have to be alone—”
“But you can’t stop me from living the life I want. Good luck and goodbye.” And with that unceremonious farewell, the shorter vampire blurred away.
Alys sprang to her feet, staring into the direction Lesley had gone, but not following. No time like the present.
“Alys?” I called out so I wouldn’t frighten her. A surprised vamp could be a deadly thing.
She spun on me. “What are you doing here?”
I moved closer to her, Blossom right on my heels. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Her tongue slid over her lips, and she pulled her bottom one between her teeth to gnaw on it for a moment.
“I want to convert!” she blurted. Her face paled, if possible, and she wrung her hands as she continued. “I’ve wanted to for a long time, and I know I should have said something before, but I was scared. Now we have no home because Lesley and I got kicked out of our nest at FSU for not turning any students. We’ve been living in the wild ever since. She always wants to stalk campers, says it’s a cheap thrill, and we don’t drink them dry, but I can’t do it anymore. I’m starving, but I’m so done with this life. Please . . . please help me!”
If only they were all so easy. Since they weren’t, I had to do what I did next. Without giving her warning, I jumped at her and dug my dagger into her chest, twisting and maneuvering it around, looking for a foreign object. Alys tried to hit and swat at me, but Blossom held a spell on her that made the vamp’s appendages uncooperative, and Sasha grew into the size of a St. Bernard and bared her teeth in a growl. The vampire fell still. When I didn’t find a faerie stone buried in her chest, I launched myself several yards away, putting a safe distance between us. But the vampire didn’t come after me; she only stared at me with her fangs extended and disbelief in her eyes.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I had to be sure before we went any further. You can thank your friend Sonya for it next time you see her.”
Alys glared at me for one long moment, and I checked her mind to see if she’d changed it. She probably hadn’t expected an Amadis daughter to be so brutal. Then again, maybe word had spread about me and my impulsive stunts. Either way, she retracted her fangs and her body relaxed.
“Do you think I’ll get to see Sonya soon?” she asked. “She was a pretty cool friend.”
Chapter 16
“There’s a safe house in North Carolina, right?” I asked when we returned to the campsite.
Everyone jumped to their feet, sensing the Daemoni vampire who followed behind Blossom and me, Sasha trotting alongside us, back in her everyday form.
“What’s going on?” Charlotte asked as she eyed Alys.
“Easiest conversion we’ve had yet,” I said. “She’s Sonya’s friend, and she’s ready.”
“Um . . . more than ready,” Alys said from behind me.
“Sure she doesn’t have a stone?” Tristan’s mind had gone right to where mine had.
I threw my shoulders back with pride. “Already checked.”
Then I grimaced, disgusted with myself for being proud of thinking like a Daemoni. Sure, we had to be preemptive, which required anticipating their moves and schemes, but I shouldn’t have been so happy with myself. What did that say about me? I didn’t want to know because guilt would lead to inaction, which would lead to never finding our son.
“I think there’s a small safe house in Charlotte?” Sheree mused.
“You mean my city?” Char snickered. “Yeah, there is. I’ll give the caretaker a call to let her know we’re coming. You’ll love Terry.”
The drive to Charlotte took almos
t a full day because we once again had to take the back roads. I rode my own bike so Alys could ride with Tristan and he could keep his power on her. Sheree rode with Char this time. I tried to suppress my annoyance that we had to do a little jog south, rather than head north, but I didn’t want to drag Alys all over the eastern seaboard while she was still Daemoni and, therefore, a potential danger.
We arrived in Charlotte in time for dinner.
“Something smells delicious,” I couldn’t help saying as soon as we walked into the two-story home and got over the whole bowing thing with Terry, the witch who managed the safe house. The scrumptious fragrance of garlic, basil, and other herbs had me literally drooling for real food, and I had to wipe my hand over my mouth.
“Pasta with Italian sausage. My specialty,” Terry said. The witch was a pixie of a thing, shorter even than me, with short-cropped gray hair and crinkles around her hazel eyes. “We’ll get you settled and then you can eat before getting started.”
“Good idea.” I knew I’d need the energy.
Although the darkness of night would be falling soon—meaning Alys would be at her strongest—Char agreed we’d start after dinner. She said Alys was weakened already and obviously committed enough to doing this that she didn’t expect a big fight.
Terry first took us to a conversion room where we left Alys under Sheree’s watch, and then she showed us the rest of the house. Although not a mansion, the safe house was still large, with five bedrooms, including one for Terry. She only had one other resident: a Were who’d been badly hurt in a fight a few days ago and needed a safe place to fully recuperate. Fortunately for us, three others had recently departed, headed to an Amadis colony in the Outer Banks.
The caretaker tried to give up her master bedroom for Tristan and me, not because there weren’t enough rooms for all of us, but because of the whole royalty thing. We wouldn’t have it, though, and since I’d be spending most of my time with Alys anyway and Tristan always stayed near me during conversions, we didn’t allow an argument.
Terry entertained everyone during dinner with stories and jokes that she laughed at herself, and her laugh was so contagious, you couldn’t help but laugh along with her. But part of me had checked out of the conversation, wanting to take care of Alys, make sure we’d be leaving her in good hands, and then get back on the road. Dorian still needed us.
Dread weighed down my heart when we returned to Alys’s room, knowing what we had to put her through when she’d been so nice and forgiving already. Besides Sonya, she was the most docile convert I’d ever had, and I was glad we didn’t have to chain her to the bed.
* * *
Although Alys complied with everything we asked of her, the Daemoni in her wasn’t quite as willing to acquiesce to us. Char and I sat with her for forty-eight hours straight, removing the evil from Alys’s soul. Because Terry’s small safe house was really meant to be a haven for injured or battle-weary Amadis, not a center for conversions, she didn’t have a full conversion team on staff. So we had no choice but to stay for several weeks while Sheree helped the vampire through her faith healing.
In the meantime, the rest of us rode out on short trips, searching the area for more potential converts, as well as for Dorian and his probable captors. While we were out, Blossom and I would do our thing in various locations. The nudge to go north had disappeared, though, and nothing replaced it. Unfortunately, Blossom didn’t know if the lack of direction meant Dorian’s presence on the scrap piece of blanket I still carried had weakened too much, or if we had moved within proximity to him and his captors. When she consulted with Terry and Char, the mages didn’t have an answer—neither were experts with this spell, but they believed both options were possible—but if we were close, the cloak over our son remained powerful. We ran into an Amadis intelligence team, but they had no news to share. Mom also gave us updates, although nothing useful for our mission.
A couple of weeks in, we received a call about a Daemoni attack. We all went out and although we could have had six new converts, we only managed to bring in two. As in two more Char, Sheree, and I needed to stay for, which kept us in Charlotte even longer.
At least Blossom learned a lot, and not surprisingly, she was better at the first part—the transformation—than the faith-healing phase. She could keep talking to them and giving Amadis power through their internal fight, but she’d go off on too many tangents when it came to discussing faith and what it meant to be an Amadis.
The house quickly became too cramped, so everyone on my team, except Tristan and me, checked in to a hotel a block away, though they spent the majority of their time at the house. Especially meal times, because we ate quite well. Terry loved to cook, and with Tristan and me in the kitchen, too, when we had the chance, we could whip up some truly gourmet meals. When the time finally came to leave, I would miss her. But I couldn’t wait to get back on the road.
Memorial Day weekend passed and the heat of a southern summer set in when we finally thought we were ready to leave, but then Terry received a strange phone call.
“That was one of ours, a were-lynx who’s a detective on the local force,” Terry said, her eyes lit with excitement as her gaze traveled over Tristan, Charlotte, and me while we sat at the large farm-style kitchen table after lunch on an early June day. “Lucky for us, she was called in on a bizarre case. They demolished an old bank downtown and found two bodies buried in the foundation.”
“Really?” I asked, my curiosity piqued, although I wasn’t sure why this news made us lucky.
“They both had silver stakes still jammed in their hearts,” she continued.
Tristan raised a brow. “Sounds like Daemoni vamps who were put down.”
“Exactly!” Terry said enthusiastically. “That’s why she called me. And what’s really crazy is they’ve been there since 1913. Everyone threw a fit about tearing the building down because it’s a historical landmark, but a sinkhole formed behind it, and they were afraid the building would collapse. But who knew there’d be bodies in there?”
“So what does this mean?” I asked. “If we pull the stakes, they’ll revive?”
“You know the only way to permanently kill vampires,” Tristan said, which I took as a yes.
“They’ll need lots of blood.” Vanessa came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “Lots of it. They’ve been dry for a century.”
Her whole body shuddered as she imagined going without blood for so long.
“How do we know they’re Daemoni?” I asked.
“It’s an educated guess because the stakes are silver, which probably knocked them out so the attacker could get them into the foundation,” Tristan said.
My own body mimicked Vanessa’s, shuddering at the thought of being buried alive.
“So if they’ve been down this long, we could convert them, couldn’t we?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the Daemoni energy be weak?”
“Bingo!” Terry said, tapping her nose with her index finger. “Perfect timing with you still here.”
“Actually, it depends,” Vanessa cut in. “When I was full-on Daemoni, if somebody put me down for that long, I’d be pissed and I’d want some serious revenge. I’d be killing every mofo who got in my way. Screw converting.”
Tristan analyzed the situation. “If whoever put them there is still alive, they’d have to be Daemoni or Amadis. It’s possible for an informed Norman to have done it, but it’s been a hundred years. They’re long dead by now.”
“And no Amadis would have done such a horrible thing,” Charlotte said.
“So our biggest risk is the attacker was Daemoni when they did it, but have converted to Amadis since then. And now these vamps could go after one of our people in revenge,” I concluded. “Otherwise, they’d go after Daemoni, and I, personally, don’t have a problem with that. Or, maybe they could be happy we revived them and will convert, especially if the Daemoni put them in there.”
Charlotte drummed her fingers on the table. “There’s
only one way to find out.”
“Pull the stakes and give them blood,” Vanessa replied. “And if they try to go bat-shit crazy on us, we can just stab them again and find another freshly poured foundation.”
Charlotte gave her the stink eye. “Or handle them the way we do all Daemoni, and if one of our own is in danger, we make sure they’re protected.”
Terry gave us the address and her van, and Tristan, Charlotte, and I drove downtown to retrieve the bodies. This was one mission nobody else on my team really wanted to be a part of, which I didn’t understand. My curiosity had me nearly bouncing in my seat with a perverse excitement. The Daemoni must have heard the news, too, because several of them swarmed around the area. Charlotte cloaked our van once we pulled into the parking garage next door, then kept us cloaked as we made our way to the lanky woman cop standing in the pile of rubble.
We’re here, I told her silently, making her jump. Sorry. I thought you knew about me.
“Of course.” She gave only the briefest of bows, thank God, otherwise a full-blown knee-drop would have given us away. “There’s only one left. The Daemoni already got the other before I could stop them.”
She pointed to a large wooden box, surprising me. I guess I hadn’t expected them to be in coffins, but to be more like concrete statues.
Thanks. We’ll take it from here.
“No, thank you. They’ve been creepin’ me out since the minute they called me in. My skin won’t stop crawlin’.” She shivered as though to emphasize her point.
Do you need a mage to alter anyone’s memories? Char fed me the question so we wouldn’t weird the lynx out any more than she already had been with the mind-speak.
“No, ma’am. We have a wizard who oversaw the demo. We’re good.”
Charlotte set a cloak over the box, and Tristan used his power to raise the makeshift coffin and direct it to the van. We were in and out without the Daemoni knowing. Now we only had to hope the guy didn’t go psycho on us when we revived him.
“I’ve made room in the basement,” Terry said, leading us downstairs.