by Kristie Cook
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
“In your head.” He tapped his finger against my forehead.
I sucked in a breath. “Oh, no! I can’t! I can’t hear or sense anyone. You’re sure you don’t have the room blocked?”
“Even if I did, you’d be able to hear me.”
I groaned.
“That explains why you didn’t share everything with me like you usually do when you let go. I missed that.”
I pressed my face into the soft area where his shoulder and pectoral muscle met. He meant how I could mentally share my orgasm with him and he could share his, but this development was far worse than that. I’d lost touch with my ability before, but not so thoroughly. And something as intense as that orgasm should have broken through the obstruction the sorcerers had apparently lodged into my brain.
“My telepathy is our advantage,” I said. “What if it doesn’t come back this time?”
He brushed a hand over my hair, pushing it back over my shoulder. “It will, ma lykita. The Angels gave that gift to you for a reason. They wouldn’t take it away.”
I hoped he was right. But I couldn’t help but think that maybe this was my punishment. If the Angels planned to fire me, to throw me to the other side, they wouldn’t allow me to keep such a powerful gift, would they?
Had the Angels given up on me? Had God? I couldn’t blame them if they had. Maybe this had been their plan all along, and one by one, the good people of my team would make it to Heaven before it all ended. Maybe all of our bad luck really was part of the apocalypse that the Normans theorized about.
Was this really the beginning of the end?
If so, my ancestors apparently didn’t want me to know, because they remained completely silent about everything.
“We have to stick with our plan, which means going to Virginia,” I told my team, which had gathered in the cafeteria the next morning after breakfast had ended and everyone else had moved out. I’d called them together for a meeting to regroup on our plans. “That’s what Solomon would want.”
“And you want Owen to open a portal right to the DoD building?” Vanessa asked.
“No, of course not,” I answered. “For one, I’m not taking Dorian into what will surely be a fight.”
“So the safe house?” Blossom asked.
“We have no idea if it’s really safe,” Charlotte said. She sat on the edge of a table, showing no signs of being shot yesterday. Vanessa must have given her a good dose of blood to help her heal.
“Kristen said there are a few cells of A.K.’s Angels in the U.S.,” Tristan said. “One of those is probably the safest place we can go first. They might panic when we arrive, but hopefully they’ll see Alexis before they fire.”
“We only know the exact location of two.” Ammi’s voice came from the opposite side of the bunker, spoken softly but carrying to our ears anyway. “Sorry, but I can’t help but hear you.”
“Why don’t you come here then,” I said, and the mages, the only ones who couldn’t hear her, gave me strange looks, wondering to whom I spoke. Ammi appeared in the doorway a moment later, her dark eyes wide.
She wrung her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I’m still getting used to these new ears.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We need your help. Tell everyone what you just said.”
She nodded and relaxed as she came farther into the room. “We only know where two of the cells’ exact locations are. There was a cell in Washington, D.C., which I think is right where you want to go, but the last we heard, they hadn’t found a permanent, or even semi-permanent safe place. They’d been moving around every night. We don’t know if they’re even still a unit.”
“Where are the two you know about?” Tristan asked.
“One’s in California and the other in Florida. I think Florida is nearer to Virginia? Sorry. I don’t know my American geography very well.”
“Florida?” I mused out loud. “Where in Florida?”
“On the left side. Cape something . . . it began with an H. I’d never heard of it before. I think it’s a really small town.”
Tristan and I exchanged a look. What were the odds?
“Cape Heron?” I hedged.
“Yes! That’s it! How did you—oh, wait. That makes sense you would know. They said you wrote your first book there. That’s why they went there.”
I pressed a palm to my forehead and blew out a soft snort. My fans were lovely, but a little weird. Who goes to a town an author once lived in because they thought it would be a safe place? Especially when said author was Public Enemy Number One, or whatever ridiculous name they’d christened me?
“I guess we go there first?” I asked Tristan.
“Anywhere will be risky, but when we show up out of thin air, your supporters will be less likely to shoot at us. We’ll just have to make our way up to Virginia.”
“First, we have to hope they’re still there and not overtaken by the Daemoni, or worse, a Norman farm,” Sheree said.
“Cape Heron’s too small for the Daemoni to worry about, and full of retirees,” Tristan replied, and he didn’t need to explain further, but the visual came to me anyway of what the Daemoni did to old people.
“You’re okay to move on?” I asked Charlotte one more time before we made our final decision.
She smiled. “Good as new. Probably better than I was before I got shot. And trust me, that’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. Your mom would . . .” She trailed off, and her smile faltered. “We had some interesting times, she and I. I’ll just leave it at that.”
I threw my arms around her neck, and she wrapped hers around me. “You’re the closest thing I have to a mom now, Char. Don’t leave me, too.”
“Like I said yesterday, I don’t plan on going anywhere any time soon. You and Owen and this whole lot need me.” She gave me a final squeeze, then grabbed my shoulders and pushed me away. “Now, let’s get back to work and win this war.”
Chapter 20
I mentally called out for Dorian, but my head still refused to function properly. That bitch Jeana may as well have cut off my arm. She would’ve wished she had if I ever saw her again, because I’d be assaulting her with lethal doses of Amadis power. I didn’t know if such a thing as too much goodness existed, but I could hope so for someone like her and Merrick.
Once we were ready for our next adventure, we said goodbye to Ammi, Kristen, Olivia, and the rest.
“As soon as we’re gone, seek out the other Amadis,” I told them. “They’ll most likely be on sacred ground, but probably more on the outskirts of the city. They’ll sense Ammi is one of them when you’re near, and you’ll feel them, too. Give them this.”
I pressed a folded up note into Ammi’s palm, and she closed her fist around it. The encrypted message inside would ensure they knew the note came from me, with an order for them to come help my Angels here and train them.
“Be safe, Alexis,” she said as she wrapped me in a hug. “I hope we’ll get to see you again.”
“Trust me, so do I. You’re one of mine now, you know.”
Her face broke into a huge smile, as if she’d just realized what her transformation and conversion really meant.
Tristan had figured out the coordinates to the address Ammi and Kristen had for the Cape Heron cell, and Owen opened a portal. The other side—a dark and dingy interior—didn’t look like anything in Cape Heron I remembered, but I stepped through first anyway, hands up and ready to fire in case someone shot at me. Four surprised faces stared at me instead, two of them quite familiar. Now we knew who had told everyone A.K.’s real name.
“Alexis!” one of them squealed, and the young woman launched herself at me. I couldn’t help but return her embrace, holding her close, happy to see her alive. And still human.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Heather,” I said.
She squeezed me tighter while trying to jump up and down. “I can’t bel
ieve you’re here! You found us! Did you find Dorian? Oh my god, Tristan! Blossom!”
She released me and flew over to tackle Blossom with a hug, while her sister strode over to me and hesitated.
“How are you, Sonya?” I asked. “Still good?”
She nodded vehemently.
“Always,” she said, and I swallowed her into a hug. When she stepped back, she indicated the other two young women who’d been sitting on the floor with them. The quintet had been gathered around a cardboard box with two cans of food sitting on it. “This is Teal and Teah. They’re cousins, and big fans of yours, too. Not like Heather and me, though. A lot less creepy.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Sonya had once been one of those fans who had my publicist worried that she’d kidnap me and break my foot so I couldn’t escape. Heather wasn’t quite as intense as a fan, but when she figured out we could help her sister, she’d stalked our house until I agreed to do what we could for the vampire. Sonya’s initial conversion failed because of a stone Kali had given her that had been the precursor to the ones in the Summoned sons now. During our search for Dorian, we’d been able to remove the stone and convert Sonya completely. We’d lost touch with the girls when the Daemoni decided to take over the world.
The cousins unfolded themselves and rose to their feet, both tall, with brown hair, bright blue eyes, and warm smiles. They stood with shoulders touching each other, staring at us shyly. I reached my hand toward them, and when they shook my hand, I noticed their tattoos, similar to the ones everyone had in London. The taller one, I thought she was the one named Teah, caught me looking at the ink, and lifted her wrist for me to see better.
“We all have them,” she said, and the other girls showed off theirs.
“They have them in London, too.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe—”
“Wait,” Sonya said, stopping me. “You found the London group? A.K.’s Angels?”
“They were the ones who told us to come here,” I replied.
“What are you doing back in Cape Heron, anyway?” Tristan asked.
“Who would have thought, right?” Heather said. She looked around the small apartment we had piled into, her nose wrinkled. “We used to live here with our asshole dad. Our mom . . .”
She bit her lip.
“She didn’t make it,” Sonya finished for her, and my heart broke for them. “She was showing a condo at Fort Myers Beach the night the Daemoni came out. If I’d known, I could have protected her.”
I slid my arm back over her shoulders. “Their evil is not your fault. Not anymore.”
She nodded, her only reply.
“What brought you here?” Tristan asked again.
“The Amadis all left Captiva,” Heather said. “They said the war was starting, but Sonya wouldn’t leave me.”
“Some of them started acting really weird, talking about converting to the Daemoni, and no way would I take Heather into such chaos, so we stayed behind. When we saw Lucas smack-talking lies about you on TV, we knew what we could do to help. We got online on the forums and helped start A.K.’s Angels,” Sonya said. “Teah and Teal had been here on vacation, and got stuck. They found us on the forums, too, so we picked them up.”
“Thank god,” Teal breathed. “We would have been dead if we’d tried to go home.”
“This was supposed to be our meeting place for lots of people,” Heather said.
“Where are they?” I asked, knowing another body couldn’t possibly fit in this apartment now that we’d arrived.
“Some took off. Others . . .” Sonya frowned. “It’s been really hard here, Alexis. We expected part of our group to be back three days ago. We were going to give them one more day, and then we were gonna take off.”
“Where did they go?” Owen asked. Sonya looked at him as if realizing for the first time that he stood among us. Her lips twitched with a smile, but then she saw Vanessa and looked away.
“Looking for survivors. And food. There was a lot of gunfire the other night, though. I’ve been out searching, but haven’t found them. I didn’t want to get too far away, in case the gangs came back here.”
“Gangs?” Blossom asked.
“Yeah,” Heather said. “The gangs have been worse than any supernaturals around here. They come in and loot all the businesses and houses, stealing our food and anything else we need. That’s why a bunch of our people left. We had this whole apartment building full of A.K.’s Angels, and now they’re all gone.”
“All except us,” Teah said as she plopped down by the box-table. She looked at a can of food longingly, and then her gaze swept over us.
“Go ahead and eat,” I encouraged. “We’re all good.”
“Mom,” Dorian said quietly from the back of our group.
I rolled my eyes. “You just ate, Dorian.”
“Dorian?” Heather asked, pushing her way through to him. “Oh my god! Look at you!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, and her face flushed a bright pink. Then she threw her arms around him.
“I’m so glad you’re okay! I’d been so worried about you,” she cried.
His return hug appeared awkward at first, but they eventually must have remembered that they’d been each other’s best friends for a while, and they both relaxed. They went off to a corner of the kitchen together, jabbering away as they caught up with each other.
I looked at Tristan. “What do you think?”
“I think we should look for their friends, then we’ll take off.”
I nodded my agreement.
The scene greeting me when we opened the door about knocked me to my knees. The apartment building sat on the corner of a side road that intersected with Fifth Street, the main business district of the town. Looking a little to the right from here, I could see all the way down Fifth until it ended at the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. Immediately to the left of the apartment building, a residential area of low-income housing spread out. This part of town had been occupied by some elderly who’d lived in Cape Heron for decades, but mostly by the blue-collar service personnel who’d served the snowbirds and tourists at the restaurants, bars, shops, and hotels.
Everywhere I looked, windows were broken out, and some doors hung askew from their hinges. Cars sat abandoned on the side of the road, some with jags of glass shards where their windows and windshields used to be. An older model truck was completely burnt out, nothing more than a shell, and a VW Bug sat crumpled into the trunk of an oak tree, its driver side door still open. One business’ picture window had been boarded up with plywood with the words “No Food or Water” spray-painted in big red letters on it. Next to it, another piece of plywood said, “We stoled theres and its gone” with an arrow pointing to the first one and a crude image of a hand with the middle finger sticking up.
My heart grew heavier and heavier as I made my way down Fifth Street toward the block where the Book Nook, Mom’s bookstore, had once been. Over ten years had passed since I’d walked this same road, and so much had changed, yet much had stayed the same. At least, it appeared that had been the case up until the last few weeks.
The October afternoon sun beat down on me and glared off the windows and metal lampposts as it had back then when my life was really just getting started. The row of bars and restaurants, including Mario’s Pizza, still stood where they had then. Another block down, the shops started—clothing boutiques, antique shops, novelty stores, art galleries . . . at one time, a bookstore. If people strolled the sidewalks and cars crept slowly down the street, honking at me to get out of the way . . . if windows weren’t knocked out and doors unhinged . . . this place would be exactly as I remembered. Maybe there had been some fresh coats of paint added since then, but no significant alterations.
I, however, was not the same.
I’d been a girl then. Naïve, hopeful, ignorant. A little cynical about my own life, but optimistic about the world in general. I’d seen and experienced a lot in some ways, but Mom had kept me sheltered fro
m certain parts of life. Especially our parts—the Amadis, the Daemoni, the fact that supernatural beings existed, that the worst kind of darkness walked the world in human-like form. I had hopes and dreams like any other girl with plans for a future that included a career, a family, and true love.
Now, I was still naïve and ignorant in way too many ways, but definitely not that same girl. I had true love, a family, and a career, but none of it had happened the way I’d planned. I’d lost my love for seven years, given birth to a boy who should have never been born the way he was and whose life would always be in danger, and had somehow become leader of a society of creatures that went beyond human understanding. I had no more hope for my life or the world in general. Survival was the best I could offer now. I was no longer that little girl.
I was a soldier. A warrior.
A killer.
Last time I walked this street, I skipped along in shorts and flip-flops, on my way to help Mom and Owen at the store, or to meet Tristan at Mario’s where I’d thrown a dart at him or at the coffee shop where he’d first called me Sexy Lexi. As I passed that shop now, the memories of innocence, hope, and excitement of first love washed over me . . . and drained away when I caught my reflection in the window.
No, I most certainly was not the girl I’d been back then. My face might have appeared to be the same age, but now I was a woman, wearing fighting leathers with a dagger on my hip and a knife in my combat boot. A variety of lethal powers sizzled at my fingertips, and my fist alone could kill somebody.
I stopped and inhaled a deep breath before turning to my right, toward the place where Mom’s store had once stood. Even it looked the same, somehow, with the big picture window Heather and Sonya’s sperm donor had run his car through. I walked over to it and held my hand to the glass, focused on my reflection at first, but then on the interior of the store. Not much had been ransacked here. I supposed looters had no use for books.