by Kristie Cook
“Do it,” she snapped, clutching my jaw harder and jabbing the knife into my skin.
“He’s unconscious, possibly dead. I can’t read his mind,” I hissed through gritted teeth as a line of searing pain drew across my lower abdomen.
“These ovaries of yours are quite precious, aren’t they? How badly do you want to keep them?” She dug the blade in deeper, causing me to yelp.
But my skin and even my leathers closed up right behind the knife. I forced a smile through the lingering burn. She lifted her upper lip in a snarl.
“She heals right away, Merrick,” she said. Who was Merrick? The soldier in the corner?
“What can we hurt?” the man’s voice from before asked, and I was pretty sure the voice didn’t belong to the soldier. It still sounded distorted and came from the direction of the desk. I glanced over there. Oh, how lovely. She had us on video-chat. “Or should I say who?”
Jeana lifted her red painted lips into a grin and held her hand in the air as she took a step back from me. She snapped her fingers, and she suddenly held a body in a chokehold, the knife against his cheekbone.
“Dorian!” I cried. Would she really kill him for this? Did she not care about him and his potential role with the Daemoni as much as Lucas did? Or was this a ruse?
“Mom,” Dorian said, and his lips moved with more words, but the crash of glass and metal and the loudest roar I’d ever heard drowned him out.
A winged wolf the size of an elephant dropped from the ceiling and landed on her paws next to Jeana and Dorian, her foot-long fangs bared and the fur along her back raised on end. Her black tiger stripes, normally hidden, stood out in stark contrast against her thick white fur. She leaned forward and growled, but she didn’t immediately attack the sorceress holding her master.
Jeana smirked. “That’s right. You just stay back, you oversized mutt.”
Sasha snarled and snapped, but not close to enough to hurt the sorceress. Jeana’s taunting grin grew. She thought the lykora obeyed her, but Sasha knew her intentions, and apparently Jeana didn’t intend to truly hurt Dorian. At least, not for the time being. That could quickly change, so I played along anyway.
“Okay, okay,” I said pleadingly. “I need him conscious, though. And I can’t do anything with this mental block you have on my head.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she tightened her hold on Dorian. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to fall for that? I’m not letting you in my head.”
“I can’t read anyone’s mind right now. I can’t even feel them. I didn’t know you had that soldier over there until you pointed him out. Your block is keeping me from getting into anyone’s mind, including Owen’s.”
Jeana cocked her head. “You’re lying.”
I tried to shift, and the screaming aches through my arms and the rest of my body brought back the exhaustion. I slumped in the cuffs, and my hair fell into my face. I rolled my eyes to look up at her through the strands. “I guess you don’t want to know badly enough.”
Jeana’s dark eyes studied my face for a long moment, and then suddenly the stabbing pain in my brain disappeared. Without letting go of Dorian, she kicked Owen’s shin with her pointy boot, jostling him awake. Or to some level of consciousness anyway. He let out a groan. I let out a mental yell.
Tristan! Where are you? I screamed for him, searching for his and Vanessa’s mind signatures as far as my feeble mind could reach, while also trying to pull thoughts from Jeana’s mind. My brain felt so meager, though, along with the rest of me. All I could catch was something about Sasha, and then she slammed me out, making me gasp and squeeze my eyes shut from the pain.
“Alexis, here,” Owen whispered into my mind. He shared a thought, what I could only assume was a spell.
Owen, no.
“Trust me.”
I tried to glance sideways at him, but my eyes were too swollen to see him. I could feel a certain sureness from him, though, as weak as he was.
My eyes peeled open, and I glared at the bitch holding my son at knifepoint. “I was trying to show you something, you stupid bitch.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits, and then she released the block again. Hoping like hell he knew what he was doing in his semi-conscious state, I shared Owen’s thoughts with her. Her eyes began to widen. Her mind opened further, and she drank it all up. I could practically hear her purring.
“Got it, Merrick,” she said, and her breath puffed out in white tendrils in front of her. She pulled back in shock. The air around us grew chilled, and frost spread across her skin, starting at her hands . . . where they touched Dorian. Was he doing that? Jeana murmured some kind of incantation, but it failed to stop the growing frost.
I lifted my head and gazed in awe at my son. His face was full of concentration, his brows drawn tight, his lips puckered. The frost spread from his body and thickened into ice as it grew over Jeana. What a powerful ability he’d developed, and I hadn’t even known! When her arms became frozen into place, he slipped out of her grip and flew upward, through the hole in the roof Sasha had created. I sensed him land close by and wished he’d go farther . . . far, far away from this bitch. And I wished Sasha would go with him, but she stayed planted in front of Owen and me.
“Jeana?” Merrick called through the laptop. “What’s going on, darling?”
The sheet of ice encasing the figure in front of me snapped and cracked as the sorceress broke out of her frozen cage.
“Nothing,” she snapped as she shook off the last pieces of ice. “I’m on my way. But wait for me before you release the kraken. I want to watch.”
She turned on her heel and jerked her head to the side. The pick jammed into my mind again, blocking everything out and making me scream with its forcefulness. My knees gave out, and my body sagged, causing the cuffs to dig against my already raw wrists. Jeana clapped her hands, and a door opened. Footsteps sounded across the floor on the far end of the warehouse as I watched her open a portal, step through it, and disappear. The soldier in the corner stepped out of the shadows at the same time two of his comrades strode up, all of them dressed in gray camo and combat boots. The three of them marched in proper form for the last ten yards. Their glassy eyes stared straight ahead, but really seemed to see beyond our heads, even as they lifted their military-issued guns to point at our chests.
Sasha growled as she moved over to stand protectively in front of Owen and me. The soldiers blinked in unison and furrowed their brows.
“We said to shoot!” Merrick yelled from the screen in the corner.
As one, the soldiers moved forward and looked as though they were going to fire. Sasha growled again and took one step toward them. They stopped and looked at her.
“Fire, you imbeciles!” Jeana shouted, now also from the computer. She came on screen, but her body was turned away from the camera. They must have had the controller wherever they were, a Summoned son or descendent issuing the orders. Which meant Lucas had handed the controller over to the two mages. I wondered if he knew about their plot against him, or if he was too arrogant to believe they’d try.
Owen’s hands flicked above his head. I tried to swing my head over to look at him, to see if he was giving me some kind of signal. I couldn’t hear his thoughts, couldn’t sense anyone’s mind signatures anymore, and the pain in my brain and the rest of my body prevented me from turning enough to see him well. His hands twitched harder, though, and a gun flew out of one of the soldier’s hands . . . and straight at mine. I grabbed for it, fumbling as I tried to get a grip on it. The soldiers stepped forward again, even the unarmed one. My fingers finally took ahold, one of them unintentionally on the trigger. Shots sprayed at the ceiling and then at the floor, and the soldiers all dropped then sprang upwards like cats to avoid the stray bullets as I awkwardly tried to maneuver the deadly weapon. If I hadn’t already been trembling from pain and exhaustion, my hands positively quaked now. I was almost glad when the thing fell and clamored to the floor.
The mages on the scree
n yelled all kinds of obscenities, and the soldiers made another attempt to shoot us, but Sasha stopped them again. They wouldn’t hurt her. They couldn’t hurt her—her blood ran through their veins and they’d always be more loyal to her than to any controller. And they had to get through her to get to us.
I tried gathering all of my strength to break out of the cuffs or even to break the chains away from the wall, but I still had no power, no energy, no strength. I yelled for help, and the sorcerer laughed in response. Owen barely moved next to me, apparently having used his only bit of energy to summon the gun. And I’d gone and messed that up.
“Help!” I screamed again, ignoring the burning in my throat, at the same time a body dropped through the roof.
Dorian landed right next to me and held his hands on the cuffs above my head. Almost immediately, the cold seeped into my skin, refreshing on the raw cuts encircling my wrists. The cuffs grew colder, frozen, and then began to crack. As soon as I broke out of them, I fell over. Dorian squatted and froze off the cuffs on my legs.
“Get Owen,” I gasped as I crawled for the lost gun, then pushed myself to my feet. I stumbled toward the soldiers. “Drop your weapons.”
I sounded and probably looked very far from threatening, so when they didn’t obey, I didn’t blame them, and wouldn’t have even if they were in their right minds. Sasha let out a low rumble. They dropped their guns and fell to their knees, their hands on the backs of their heads. I looked sideways at Sasha. Had she ordered them to do that?
I lowered my gun and freed my dagger from my hip, rubbing my thumb over the stone to make it appear. “Sasha, I have to get the stones out. It’s for their own good. Hold them there or whatever you do, okay?”
“I got them, Mom,” Dorian said from my side.
I looked over my shoulder, wavering on my weak legs as I did so. Owen, barely conscious, was freed and propped up against the wall, which he slowly slid down in a slouch. Dorian held his palm out and blasted what looked like snow at the norms. They froze. Literally. Dorian took their guns, and I lurched over to the first soldier. With what felt like my last bit of strength, I jabbed my dagger into his chest and dug the chip of stone out. I let it fall to the floor as I shuffled to the next one, while the first guy began what sounded like a confused string of Russian profanity. When I dug the second stone out, that Norman stared at me with confusion and relief.
“I . . . very sorry,” he said in broken English.
I moved to the next, barely able to hold myself up anymore. When my knife pierced his skin, doors burst open from everywhere around us. More soldiers poured in, guns up, shouting at the three in front of me. A new guy held the barrel of his gun at the first soldier’s temple. He dropped and scurried on his hands and knees until he found the stone chip I’d just taken from him. He pressed it back into his bleeding wound.
“No,” I tried to shout but only whispered.
Another “NO!” tore through the room, though, as the second guy jumped to his feet. Shouting no, no, no, he dashed across the room for the nearest door. Another super-soldier gunned him down.
“No,” I tried again. I watched him fall, then my mother, then him, then my mom, the images flashing back and forth until he hit the ground, lifeless.
I wanted to scream. Instead, I nearly passed out.
Dorian caught me from behind as I went down, and the dozen or so new Normans pointed their guns at us. Someone shot off a blast. Sasha whimpered, and at the same time, every single Norman’s left shoulder twitched and dropped. Apparently not severely injured, Sasha grabbed Owen in her mouth and flew for the hole in the ceiling. All the soldiers began firing.
Not at Sasha, of course. At me.
Dorian tightened his hold around me, and lifted me up, up, up as I fired down, barely able to see where I shot through the gray creeping in on the edges of my vision, but nonetheless seeing clearly the men who dropped when my bullets hit them. My sight blurred and wavered as my mind tried to black out, but I couldn’t unsee the scene below. Norms dead. Human blood spilled.
What had I done?
Dorian flew us out of the warehouse, and the cold air blasted in my face, the only thing keeping me conscious. We soared several dozen feet in the air across a snowy field lit by moonlight, to where I didn’t know and didn’t have the energy to ask.
“Alexis?” The beautiful, familiar voice called from far away.
“Tristan?” I murmured.
“Dad?” Dorian asked.
I tried to pinpoint where the sound came from.
“Dorian!” Tristan had spotted us. Dorian turned to our right, and I caught a glimpse of Sasha following with Owen still in her mouth.
We landed on the snow, and I fell from my son’s grip into my husband’s arms. And finally, I allowed myself to pass out.
“He needs more to heal.”
“You need to drink before you give him any more blood.”
“How am I going to do that? Are you offering up?”
“You can have some of my blood, Aunt Vanessa.”
I pushed away the cobwebs in my head, trying to make sense of this strange conversation going on in hushed tones, not close, but not far away either. My head ached. My tongue felt five times its normal size and my mouth way too small for it. And I swore it must have soaked up every drop of moisture it could to grow so big, because I felt as though I could spit sand. My eyelids slowly peeled open, feeling gritty over my eyeballs, and when filtered sunlight greeted me, they snapped back closed. I groaned from the pain in my head.
“Lex?” A breeze of air whizzed over me, and a large body dropped next to me—I sensed his presence but refused to open my eyes again to see, even though my husband’s beautiful face waited on the other side. “Are you awake, my love?”
“Mmm,” I managed to moan. “Thirsty.”
Something hard immediately pressed against my lips, and I parted them. Wetness poured in. I could barely swallow, my throat so sticky at first, but I thought my mouth would simply soak up the water anyway like a dried-up sponge. Eventually, my tongue shrank to normal size, my throat worked properly, and I gulped down as much as he would give me. When he pulled the glass away, I whimpered.
“Too much at once will make you sick.” He wrapped his arms around me and held me. I leaned against him, my neck barely able to hold up my throbbing head. “Are you healed up? Besides the dehydration?”
I mentally scanned my body. I seemed to be okay. Physically, anyway. “All but my head. How’s Owen?”
“He’ll be fine. Your ears were bleeding before.”
I could only respond with a soft grunt. If Owen was okay, I didn’t care about anything else at the moment. “Just want to sleep.”
I snuggled closer against his body, inhaling his glorious scent that made everything feel better. Well, everything but my head. And my heart.
“You’ve been sleeping for two days.”
That should have raised some kind of alarm, but I ignored it. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be in this world.
“I killed them.”
One of Tristan’s arms tightened around me, and a hand stroked down my hair and back. “I know, my love. Dorian said you had to.”
I shook my head, even though it hurt. “Didn’t mean to. Didn’t want to.”
I pressed my face into his shoulder and cried.
“You did what was necessary to protect yourself and your son.”
“If I’d had any power, I could have—”
“But you didn’t. You did what you had to do.”
I allowed myself more tears for the men I had killed, because they deserved more than I could ever give. They had families, parents, and maybe spouses, their own children even. The only thing I could do for them now was to ensure their families didn’t die unnecessarily. To protect the Normans from the Daemoni.
But they weren’t the only souls I cried for. “Those poor children.”
“The children on the train?”
“We killed them. B
rought them to their deaths.”
“We don’t know that for sure. They could have been rescued.”
I finally pulled away and peeked open my eyes to stare at my favorite face in the world as though he were on drugs. “We saw the zombies at the train station . . . eating . . .”
He pushed his brows together and shook his head. “No. We didn’t get there. We were caught in the flash, remember?”
My lids opened wider. “You mean the zombies were real, but we never made it back to the train station?”
He nodded. “When the zombies overwhelmed us, I tried to flash us back to the train station, but no, we didn’t make it. That’s when the Daemoni grabbed us.”
“That doesn’t mean the children aren’t dead, though.” I dropped my head and stared at my hands in my lap. We sat on a thin mattress on the floor in an otherwise empty room with white, sheer curtains on the window, where gray light of an overcast day poured in. “And it’s our fault. We took them all the way there when the train engineer abandoned them.”
“Vanessa thinks the Norman engineer had been under Daemoni control, somehow or another, and was forced to take the children there. To feed them to the zombies. We thought we were helping them.”
“The hunter knew.”
“But we didn’t. How could we expect such barbarity? We can’t take that blame, Alexis.”
I forced my lungs to draw in a long, slow breath to settle the sobs, and then scrubbed the tears from my face.
“We have to stop the Daemoni. I’m failing them, Tristan. The Amadis and the Normans.”
“We’ll stop them, ma lykita. One way or another.”
I nodded, but I didn’t see how. I’d barely survived one stupid sorceress.
“Our son was freakin’ awesome,” I said. “If not for him and Sasha . . . Owen and I probably wouldn’t have made it. He can freeze stuff, Tristan. And people too. It was so crazy.”