by Kristie Cook
“I think he can do more than that, but yeah, he’s pretty awesome.”
I sighed. “It just means he’s that much closer . . .” I didn’t want to think about what the future held for Dorian. I hadn’t abandoned my mission of breaking the curse that led all the sons to the Daemoni. “Where were you and Vanessa? Where are the others? Have you talked to them?”
“Vanessa and I woke up chained up in an abandoned factory right outside of Moscow, about seventy miles from where we found you. We broke free, figured out where they had you—”
“How’d you do that?”
“From the Norman soldiers, the few minutes they were lucid in between the time we cut out their stones to when they were forced to put them back in.”
I blew out another frustrated breath. “That happened to us, too. One of them refused to put it back in, and the others killed him. We have to find the controllers and remove their stones before we can do anything for the Norman soldiers. We can’t let them kill each other like that.”
“They don’t know what they’re doing. They didn’t know what they were doing when they shot at you.”
“I know. Why do you think I feel so horrible about what I did?” I’d never be able to erase from my mind the image of those soldiers lying in pools of blood because of me. I could try folding it up and tucking it away, but I had a feeling memories like that didn’t like to stay in storage. They’d haunt me forever, which I deserved. “Did you find out where Char and everyone else are, too?”
He shook his head. “The norms didn’t know. Vanessa and I had to focus on getting to you as fast as we could. We’ve been hiding out here since with Baby Cakes until you and Scarecrow recovered. We haven’t been able to get a hold of them and haven’t heard from them, either. I’m hoping they’re still waiting for us in Prague.”
“Baby Cakes? Is that a name?”
A petite female suddenly appeared in the room with us, tossing her straight brown hair over her shoulder and jutting out a narrow, jean-clad hip.
“Did you call?” she asked as she unzipped her leather jacket.
I looked at Tristan and back at her.
“This is Baby Cakes,” Tristan introduced. “A faerie who’s been . . . kind enough to help us.” He sounded like the word ‘kind’ had been hard for him to spit out. “This is her place.”
“One of my places,” she corrected. “Sorry it’s nothing much. This part of the world is so . . . bleh. Not my favorite place, but I keep it because you never know when it could come in handy. Like right now.”
She gave me a kind grin, but I certainly didn’t trust it. She was a faerie after all.
“So did you need something?” she asked. “It’s pretty ugly in the Otherworld, and I don’t want to miss anything. It’s quite entertaining really. Bree sends her love, by the way. She would have come, but she’s . . . a little busy.”
“No, no, we’re fine,” I said hurriedly, squeezing my hands together before I rudely shooed her away. She seemed nice enough, but faeries equaled trouble. We didn’t need any more trouble. Thankfully, she popped out of sight without another word. “Great. So we’ll owe her big time for this. Now back to what you said. What do you mean still waiting? Char and them? Hopefully they’re not flashing after knowing we got caught, so they’re probably not even in Prague yet.”
“Yes, we’ll owe her, but we didn’t have a choice. And it’s been over a week since we saw Solomon, Char, and the rest, Alexis. They’ve had plenty—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Another week’s gone by?”
“Nine days actually. Since we arrived in Moscow.”
I pressed my palms to my eyes. I couldn’t believe we’d lost so much time. That meant it had been nearly a month since the Daemoni first attacked the Normans. A month that the Amadis hadn’t been protecting them as well as we should have been. My failure counts just jumped to epic levels.
I told Tristan about everything we’d discussed in the coffeehouse—the conversation about the world going to hell with natural disasters, war preparations, bombings, and more.
“Of course, that conversation never really happened. Please tell me the world’s not as bad as that.”
“Mmm . . . To be honest, pretty much all of it’s true, some of it worse now, from what we’ve been able to find out.”
I threw myself back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. “How can that be?”
“You must have heard the sorcerers talking about it, or maybe they had the television on, and you incorporated it into your subconscious.”
“The parts about the Amadis and the portals?”
“Probably things you figured out yourself and attributed to us in your imagination. If you’re right about the portals, Owen can get us out of here as soon as he’s up to it.”
“Unless it was wishful thinking.”
I sat back up and stared at the curtained window, wondering what went on out in the world even as we spoke. How bad had the war become? My poor people, fighting for their lives and for the Normans out there.
“The Amadis are probably compromised,” I said quietly, mentally kicking myself as the words came out. How had I not known that had been a mirage? How much had I actually said? “If I’d been talking to myself about our plans, like you’re saying, that Jeana bitch probably knows them now, too.”
“Guess we’ll find that out soon enough, when we’re back on the road.”
“Does that mean we can get moving soon?” Vanessa asked from another room. Tristan and I hadn’t exactly been whispering, but she’d apparently been using her vamp ears to eavesdrop.
“She needs to drink?” I asked.
“She’s refused to leave Owen’s side and has been giving him her blood to help him heal. I gave her some of mine right before we escaped, but let’s just say that will only happen again in case of emergency.”
I looked at him with my brow raised.
“She was like a fruit fly on crack with the strength of an elephant, hulk-smashing everything in her wake.”
I laughed at the visual. “That had to have helped you guys.”
“Yes, but I have no idea the extent of damage done on the way without her even meaning to. It’s probably the only reason she’s made it this long without more blood, though, especially with as much as she’s given Owen.”
“I can feed her. And yes, dear sister, we’re leaving soon,” I said, knowing she’d been listening to our conversation.
As soon as Owen felt up to it and the time of night was right, we said a prayer, he opened a portal, and we stepped through, hoping like hell we appeared in Prague . . . or anywhere other than Hades.
We did arrive in a dark alley near the safe house in Prague, but it was not the city I’d always dreamt of visiting.
Hell had already been here.
Chapter 14
“What have they done to my beautiful city?” Vanessa nearly cried the words out as we walked the silent cobblestone streets, taking in the sights. Not the kind we wanted to see.
Ever since seeing a photography book of Prague when I was in junior high school, I’d wanted to come here. I’d imagined then all the stories this place would inspire. I immediately recognized the famous Charles Bridge. Open only to pedestrians, it was where local artisans sold their goods and musicians played under the life-sized bronze statues of saints and legends. At least, that’s what the photographer had written about the place. Now, half of those statues stood with no heads and a whole chunk of the south side of the bridge had been blown away. Billows of smoke rose from the towers at either end, as well as from buildings around the city. The pitched roofs of some and round domes of others looked like giants had punched holes through them.
“I used to sit up there at night and watch the tourists, picking out my dinner,” Vanessa said nostalgically, pointing to the top of the tower at the end of the bridge. “This was one of my most favorite places in the world.”
“Not Key West?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Eh
.” She shrugged. “Key West and South Beach were fun for partying, but believe it or not, I didn’t really enjoy them. They’re too new. Too shiny. Nothing romantic about them. Not like this place is . . . or was.”
As we walked through most of old town, my telepathy gradually returned, and we declared the city to be deserted. At least this part of it. We saw no one. We sensed no presence of life, except for a few norms huddled up in buildings here and there, too afraid to come out in the open.
“It seems to be evacuated,” Tristan said.
Owen put his hands on his hips as he looked around the block. We stood in front of the hotel where Solomon had told us to meet them. What remained of it, anyway. Tendrils of black smoke still rose from a large pile of rubble and ash. The charred odor made my nose twitch. Owen’s mouth twisted, and the three lines between his brows appeared, as they did when he fell into deep thought.
“Well, Solomon said something about Köln, right?” he said. “Maybe they went there next, since there seems to be no evidence of anyone here, let alone anyone on our side.”
Tristan and I looked at each other, but we had no argument, and since Dorian and Vanessa went where we went, Owen created a portal. Within a few seconds, we’d left the sad state of Prague and entered an improved situation in Köln, which, I learned, was the German word for Cologne. Where we arrived, in the shadows of a huge, gothic cathedral and surrounded by a major shopping district, the area was dark, even the large train station to our right. However, lights shone in the distance, which meant the entire city hadn’t been destroyed and abandoned.
We sensed nobody inside the cathedral and found no one on a search. Without knowing what else to do, we walked several eerily quiet blocks to another church and never passed a single soul. The norms hid inside the buildings, with many streets and the entrances to apartment buildings blocked off, as though they’d barricaded themselves in. As if the monsters couldn’t still get to them if they really wanted.
“We’re pretty much lost without Solomon,” I said. “He said to see the archbishop, but since he wasn’t at that cathedral, he could be anywhere.”
“Including dead,” Vanessa said helpfully.
A small person stepped out of a dark shadow, and all of us went into defense stance.
“Relax,” Baby Cakes said. “I come on Bree’s behalf. She said to go to London.”
We all glanced at each other, as if none of us knew how to respond.
“How can we trust you?” Tristan finally asked.
“I helped you before, didn’t I? If you didn’t have my place to crash, these two would be dead.” She motioned to Owen and me.
“All the more reason you wouldn’t help us again,” Owen pointed out.
She shook her head. “So ungrateful.” But then she shrugged. “I can’t blame you, of course. My kind can be a bit of a pain in the ass, can’t we?”
That was an understatement.
“Anyway, you can choose to trust me, or you can wander around here like idiots, wasting more time. Your call.” She disappeared.
As though her last words triggered something in Tristan’s mind, he pulled his cell phone out. The electrical power in Baby Cakes’ apartment had been intermittent, so we’d only been able to partially charge our phones, which hadn’t mattered much anyway, because we couldn’t pick up a signal.
“Can we trust her?” Owen asked.
“She talked a lot about Bree,” Vanessa said. “While you two were out of it. She definitely leans toward the Amadis side.”
“I trust her,” Dorian said, and I wasn’t sure how helpful that was. On the one hand, he was just a kid, regardless of how old he looked—older and older every day. On the other hand, he’d been through hell and back and didn’t return too trusting of people. Pretty much the opposite. He had a sense for the Daemoni, too, which may extend to all darkness.
“Tristan?” I asked.
“Yeah, she seemed to know Bree,” he murmured distractedly as he jacked with his phone. He held the device out to me. “Hold this for a sec.”
I snatched the phone from him, more to get his attention, and the screen immediately lit up. He grabbed it right back, knowing how I usually fried the things to a crisp.
“Thanks, babe.” He studied the screen before it blacked out again. “We go to London.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “We could be walking right into a trap.”
“We don’t have much to lose.” He held the dark phone up and waved it in the air. “Besides, Solomon says so.”
“You heard from Solomon?” Owen asked, moving closer as if he could see on the screen.
“He sent a text two days ago. They were headed to London. That’s all I could see before the phone went down.”
“Well, then, Owen, lead the way to London,” I said.
We not only walked into a different country, but seemingly into a different world. We’d barely arrived when a gray-haired man swung a sword at us and blew a whistle at the same time. Another man and a woman, dressed in military uniforms, ran down the street toward us.
The older guy spit the whistle out and yelled, “Over here, over here.”
The soldiers lifted their weapons, and the civilian Norman took off.
“We won’t hurt you,” I called out, holding my hands up and stepping in front of Dorian.
They shot anyway. We flicked the bullets away before they hit us and ran. More shots fired after us, but missed. Vanessa led the way and ducked into a shop.
“Cloak us,” she hissed at Owen as two grungy-looking women in the shop held knives in each of their fists and ran for us. We disappeared right in front of them and hurried back outside.
Air raid sirens suddenly blared. People ran chaotically through the streets, yelling and wailing as they found shelters. Owen led us in a sprint through London in the direction of the safe house, the only place we knew to meet the others.
“It’s just like World War II,” Tristan muttered, and jet planes zoomed overhead, punctuating his point.
A few seconds later, the bombs began to drop, many too close for comfort. The ground quaked under our feet, knocking us off balance. The explosions were deafening, making my ears ring. Shots were fired from somewhere down the street, but I didn’t know if they were aimed at us or not.
“It’s right up here,” Owen yelled, his voice muffled as he pointed to a block of row houses two streets ahead.
We came half a block closer when a bomb slammed into our destination, exploding the row houses into bits of concrete, brick, and wood. I threw my arms over my son, and Tristan dropped us both to the ground, using his body to cover us. We lifted our heads just enough to look around. A soldier came running down a cross street, blowing a whistle. No, not a soldier, a policeman.
“This way,” he yelled to nobody in particular, motioning his arm toward the direction he just came from.
Normans began scurrying out of homes and shelters and running toward him. He waved them down the road and yelled at more to come.
“Hurry!” he shouted, and he looked our way, although he couldn’t see us. “More planes are coming. Anyone else?”
“We should at least check it out,” Tristan said. “See where they’re taking the norms.”
We sprang up and jogged down the street.
“I don’t trust it,” Owen said.
We stopped within yards of the policeman, who continued to blow his whistle and call for civilians. Only a few more stragglers came running. A crowd had gathered at the far end of the street he directed them down, where an eight-foot-high, barbed-wire-topped fence stood.
Vanessa stiffened. “Nope. Never. No fucking way.”
I glanced around at the war-torn neighborhood, wondering what we should do. Familiar shapes emerged from a partially standing building, and although covered in white ash, I recognized them right away.
Blossom! Charlotte! Sheree! I mentally yelled for them and wondered at first if my telepathy had stopped working again because they didn’t respon
d. But all three of them stopped in their tracks, causing Jax and Solomon to halt, too.
“Alexis? Is that you?” Blossom nearly squealed in my head, making me cringe.
“Owen, they can’t see us.” I tugged at his shirtsleeve.
He turned to see who I meant and immediately removed the cloak.
Our reunion would have been joyous if the cop didn’t start blowing his whistle in a panic as he scampered down the street. Others jogged toward us—not unarmed cops, as they were in England, but well-armed soldiers. Oversized, beefed up, frightening ones. The kind that looked like they may have had some lykora blood.
“Come with us,” one of them said to us as they ran. “We offer shelter and safety.”
“Hell no,” I muttered.
“You are required to come,” he said, and they raised their guns to point toward us. “You come, or we’ll shoot.”
“Good luck with that.” Owen said as he waved his hands to cloak our group. “We need to get out of here.”
The heavy steps of the soldiers followed us for half a block, apparently expecting us to show again. When we didn’t, they started shooting. Someone obviously watched and controlled their trigger fingers.
“This way,” Solomon said, turning us down a narrow road to our left.
More planes soared overhead. The soldiers behind us stopped firing and retreated.
“To that church,” Solomon said, and we began running as more bombs fell.
We crashed inside and slammed the wooden doors shut. Charlotte ran down the center aisle of the sanctuary, toward a door in the back.
“There are usually bomb shelters downstairs,” she said, and we all followed her.
Through the door was a corridor with two passageways and several more doors leading off of it. We checked each one until we found steps leading downward into a cellar apparently used for storage. Metal racks lined the stone walls, the shelves stacked with boxes and cans.
“It’s food!” Dorian said excitedly as his eyes scanned the boxes. He looked at me, as if actually asking for permission, but Owen didn’t. He broke open a package and dug in.
“I don’t see how they can eat.” Blossom sidled up next to me, the ground and building trembling around us.