by Kristie Cook
Tristan came up behind me and peered inside, too.
“I thought the Daemoni blew this place up,” I said.
“That’s what we had to tell you so you wouldn’t be tempted to come back here,” Owen answered from behind me. “Looks like someone’s kept the old Book Nook running since then. At least, before now . . ..”
I turned on him. “Mom’s place?”
He pressed his lips together, and I didn’t wait for more of an answer. I ran. One block north and three blocks west. I came to a halt where the driveway met the sidewalk—at about the same place Tristan would stop the bike to let me off.
Mom’s cottage.
A traditional Florida-style home from the middle of the last century sitting on a block of others just like it. Ancient banyan and oak trees stood in front of most of the houses, but not Mom’s, allowing me an unobstructed view of the front porch, where Tristan had given me numerous goodnight kisses. Where Mom had tried to stop us from seeing each other.
My heart seized, aching with the memories of her in this place. She’d loved it so much, along with her bookstore. Why couldn’t life have stayed like it had been then? So simple, it had seemed. A bright and shiny slice of time compared to today’s darkness. And now Mom was gone. In fact, everyone in this town was apparently gone.
The silence was eerie.
Part of me wanted to go inside, but I was afraid of what I might find. More memories of Mom and life as it could never be again? Or the bodies of whatever Normans had moved in when we left?
I turned for the beach instead. Tristan took my hand, and we walked in silence under the canopy of leaves until the road ended. We crossed the little boardwalk, and finally sound filled the air as waves crashed on the sand and seagulls cawed at each other. We walked out on the beach to our favorite spot. Sat down in our favorite position—Tristan behind me, my back pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, and his chin resting on my shoulder. We watched the sun lower over the horizon, spraying golds, oranges, and peaches against the clouds, the light blue sky, and the water.
“It’s like this little piece of the world has been left untouched,” I said quietly.
“I’m sure much of the world has been,” Tristan said. “We’ve only seen the bad parts so far.”
“We can only hope.” The phrase sounded empty, as hollow as the little bit of hope I held on to.
“Do you know the exact spot we’re sitting in?” he whispered against my ear, sending chills over my skin.
I couldn’t help my smile. “I will never forget our first kiss.”
I twisted around, just like I had that October evening so many years ago, and when he leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, I let out a zap of electricity. On purpose now, unlike the first time. He pulled back and grinned before coming in again for a real kiss.
“As long as we can do that, we always have hope,” he murmured once we pulled apart.
“Everyone’s probably looking for us, since I can’t—” I twirled my finger by my temple. “Since I’m broken.”
“I can hear them from here, and you’re right.”
We reluctantly stood up and hurried back toward downtown. My whole team, who was supposed to have been looking for Heather and Sonya’s friends, were searching the area for us. We took the brunt of a few evil eyes when we returned.
“There’s absolutely nobody in this town,” Vanessa said as we walked back to the apartment building. “No life, no smell of fear on the air, no heartbeats anywhere.”
“Nope. Nobody,” Sheree agreed.
“Unless they come back,” Heather said.
She stood in front of the door of their first floor apartment, rubbing her hands over her upper arms. Since the sun had set, a light chill had come in on the air. With Sasha at his feet, Dorian leaned against the doorjamb next to Heather, standing at about the same height and no longer looking ten years her junior. I wondered if he remembered telling me that he wanted to marry her someday, back when he was a typical boy with a crush on his babysitter. Did he still feel that way? He stood with his body turned toward her, as if to say yes, but his eyes and face spoke differently. They were filled with a darkness, a sorrow that no boy his age should know. I wanted nothing more than to hug him, to comfort him, to take him back to his innocence, to the childhood stolen from him when it had barely begun.
“The gangs?” Charlotte asked, yanking me back to reality.
“Yeah,” Teah said. “There are still plenty of places for them to loot, and there hasn’t been enough of us to fight them off anymore.”
“We should probably just get out of here,” I said. “What do you think, Tristan?”
He nodded. “We need to do what we came for.”
“Do you want to come with us?” I asked the four remaining members of this cell of A.K.’s Angels.
They looked at each other and shrugged.
“Where are you going?” Teah asked.
“Like it matters. We can’t hide out here anymore,” Teal said. “The question is how.”
“Northern Virginia,” I answered.
“Oh! The D.C. cell,” Heather said excitedly.
“Would you happen to know where to find them?” Tristan asked.
“Not really,” Sonya replied. “They were trying to bug out of downtown D.C., with the politicians and Daemoni being all butt buddy and BFFs with each other. Last we heard, they thought they’d found a place somewhere on the edge of the city, or maybe the suburbs.”
And that was entirely helpful.
“You don’t know where?” Charlotte asked.
“Not a clue,” Teal said. “We lost contact with them right after that. The night the power and the phones . . . everything . . . went down and never came back.”
“The night the world crashed and burned,” Heather said.
The heaviness of the statement weighed down on all of us, and the girls seemed to have been distracted from the question. I asked them again if they wanted to come with us.
“Yeah, we’ll go with you,” Sonya said, making the decision for the group. “Maybe we can find them.”
“Where to, boss lady?” Owen asked me. “All I can think of is the safe house, but that could expose our people there.”
“If there’s anyone there,” Blossom muttered.
“It’s our safest place to appear,” Tristan said. “And the Amadis there were supposed to have moved out.”
“Except it’s a safe house,” Sheree said. “There are all kinds of reasons for them to stay.”
“Then we’ll figure out something,” Tristan said. “It’s the only place I feel safe taking my wife, my son, and the rest of you without knowing what we’re walking into. It’s our best option.”
He nodded at Owen who opened the portal. I couldn’t help but notice the warlock seemed to strain a little, and it took him longer to create the opening this time. He hadn’t rested or eaten since we left London and arrived here, and I could only imagine how much energy a portal required. After all, typically only sorcerers possessed enough power to create them.
We showed up in the foyer of the safe house mansion in Fairfax, Virginia, where we’d been less than two months ago while searching for Dorian. Only then, there had been several new converts and a staff. Now it was dark and empty. Abandoned. Other than being gloomy and quiet, it appeared to have been unscathed. Paintings still hung on the walls, the antique furniture looked undamaged, and the marble floors were clean and polished. Apparently, no looters had found it yet. Everyone but Vanessa and Sonya went straight for the gourmet island kitchen. The dark wood cabinets were still loaded with non-perishables, lifting our spirits.
Once we filled our bellies and caught a few hours of rest, we made sure Sonya and the norms, including Dorian, settled in, put Sasha on guard duty with the vampire, and left to scope out the same Department of Defense building where we’d found Dorian and the Summoned a few months ago. It was one of three five-story structures, all belonging to the DoD, that fo
rmed a squared-off U-shape with a lake in the middle of it. We stepped through the portal into the pitch black of the parking lot at the top of the horseshoe, the only light from the moon and stars overhead. I’d never seen Northern Virginia so black—usually a yellow glow from street lamps, headlights, and buildings lit up the night, obscuring the millions of stars that shone now as if someone had tossed a massive jar of glitter against the black blanket of sky.
No sooner had my eyes adjusted to the darkness when the entire building in front of us erupted into a thunderous explosion . . . and my head felt as though it exploded along with it.
Chapter 21
I thought at first they’d been watching us. Expecting us. Jeana and Merrick, maybe Lucas, too. The timing had been so perfect—as soon as my entire team had come through the portal and it closed behind us, the pick plunged into my brain, causing me to grab my head and double over. My team circled around me in the parking lot, and a moment later, we were knocked to our hands and knees with the explosion.
The ground shook, and heat blasted out at us. The building and the sky lit up bright as daylight as a huge ball of fire blossomed above the structure and then dimmed with an orange radiance casting over the entire area. Tristan lunged on top of me, pushing me closer to the ground, as glass, metal, concrete, and who knew what else rained down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. My ears rang and thudded, blocking out any other sound. Flames danced out of broken windows and soared high into the sky, devouring what remained of the building. The acrid smell and taste of smoke filled my nose and mouth.
And through it all, I picked up on the mind signatures. They’d been absent and my head quiet, so I noticed immediately when they returned. Besides my team, three others popped up, but two blipped out before I could latch on and identify them. The third had become familiar to me, and my heart stopped at how faint it came.
“Noah’s in the fire!” I yelled. At least, I thought I did. The ringing in my ears prevented me from even hearing myself. The pain in my skull kept me from trying to mind-speak it. I pushed against Tristan’s weight to rise to my hands and knees, and he sprang off of me, pulling me up with him.
“Owen and I will go,” he said. “You stay here.”
At least, that’s what I thought he’d said, figuring it out as Owen waved his hands around the two of them, and then they raced through the parking lot toward the building. As they passed a few burning cars at the front of the lot, I could only hope Owen had shielded them with some kind of fire protectant, because they headed straight into the flames.
“Tristan!” I shouted and tried to run after him. The rest of my team tightened their circle around me, though, preventing me from passing through. They watched our surroundings carefully, but I sensed nobody around. Gritting my teeth, I pushed past the ache in my head to locate Noah’s fading mind signature, as well as Tristan’s and Owen’s.
He’s in the far, west corner, I told them, hoping they could hear me. They moved in that direction, which I took as a good sign. Then I realized Noah seemed to be above them. On the second floor, I think? Is there still a second floor?
Moments passed. Maybe they couldn’t hear me. Maybe we should go in. Vanessa and I would be fast enough to run through the flames without being burnt. Maybe. My muscles bunched, ready to spring.
“There’s a second floor back here,” Tristan finally said, followed by, “We found him.”
My body relaxed. Slightly. At least I could breathe again.
Is he still alive? I couldn’t imagine how he would be after that explosion, and I was losing his mind signature. I couldn’t latch onto any thoughts. More agony sliced into my brain as I tried harder. And then I lost them all.
“Something’s wrong,” I told the rest of my team, and I gripped the closest arms to me—Charlotte’s and Jax’s. Once again, my muscles prepared to bolt. “They’re gone!”
I lunged, trying to dash for the building, but Char and Jax both grabbed at me, holding me back. When I fought against them, Vanessa put me in a chokehold.
I squirmed against her iron-like grip. “We have to go after them!”
“Whoa,” Char said. “You’re not going in there.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“What are you going to do, princess?” Jax asked. “Walk right into those flames? They were protected.”
“And now they’re gone! Vanessa and I—”
“Wait,” Blossom interrupted. “They’re gone, or all of us are? You know, in your head?”
I blinked at her. Then realized what she meant.
“All of you,” I admitted when I noticed my head had gone completely blank again. At least, the part that saw the mind signatures. The rest of my brain went ninety-miles-an-hour as I wondered what happened to Tristan, wished I had Dorian’s or Mom’s capabilities to manipulate the water in the lake behind the building and put the fire out, and watching and praying for Tristan and Owen to come out alive, hopefully with Noah.
“So maybe they’re okay,” Sheree said.
“Or maybe they’re dying, waiting for us to come rescue them,” I bit back.
Charlotte scrunched her lips together as she stared at the fiery building. “Give them sixty seconds. Then someone will go in.”
The minute passed painfully slow—it may as well have been a year—and had almost expired when finally they appeared. All three of them, Owen and Tristan dragging Noah’s unconscious body between them, their faces smudged black with soot so only their eyes showed. Vanessa freed me, and I ran to them. To Tristan, who grabbed me with one arm when I threw myself at him.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” I ordered as I clung to him.
“We’re fine, ma lykita.” He turned his head enough to plant a kiss on my cheek. “But now you know how it feels.”
I let out a harrumph and released my grasp on him to cross my arms over my chest as I fell in stride next to him.
“If you were trying to protect me, you know that won’t work for long. I nearly went in after you.”
He blew out a breath as he tugged on Noah’s shoulder. “Yeah, that’s why we gave up the search for anyone else. So you wouldn’t do that.”
I frowned. “You can’t choose my life over anyone else’s. Lucky for you there was no one else in there.”
“Lex, I will always choose you over everyone else.”
My heart—invariably weak when it came to him—did a little flip.
Then Owen said, “We all will. We’re sworn to.”
They dragged Noah’s body farther out into the parking lot, away from the burning building, before flipping him over to lay him on his back. His heart still beat, slow and faint, and he remained unconscious, even after we tried to jostle him awake.
“Hold him, Tristan,” I said as I exposed my dagger and slid it out of its sheathe at my hip. “This could be our one chance.”
I kneeled next to the prone body and lifted my dagger. Noah’s eyes flew open right when I was about to stab the blade into his chest to dig out the stone. They were dark and murderous, and his body strained, but even as big and strong as he looked, he couldn’t budge against Tristan’s power.
“Do. It.” The words came out in pants through a clenched jaw, sounding as though he had to force each one out against his own will. Then his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his body twitched and convulsed.
“They’re trying to control him,” I said, “but I think he’s fighting them off.”
Since I couldn’t read his mind, I wasn’t exactly certain about that, but that was how it looked.
“Then hurry, before they win control,” Tristan said.
I grasped my dagger with both hands and plunged it into Noah’s chest, right above his heart. He groaned, and his body jerked just the slightest bit. If I didn’t hurry, he could possibly break through Tristan’s power, especially if he had the force of the sorcerers working on it. I twisted the tip, poking around, then finally it hit against something hard. With another twist and a flick of
my wrist, the stone popped out and rolled across the asphalt.
Noah’s body immediately fell still. His eyes lost focus, the lids fluttered closed, and his face went slack. But his heart still beat, slowly but steadily.
“Let’s get him to the safe house,” I said.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Charlotte said.
“We can chain him up. Bind him with magic.” I flicked my hand toward Owen. “If he can hold Tristan down like he has before, he can surely contain Noah.”
“I don’t know if we can convert him, Alexis,” Sheree said.
“Not against his will, but he wanted me to cut that stone out. I’ve seen hope in Noah. We have to try! For Rina, if nothing else.”
I’d already lost Solomon, her true love. I’d do everything I could to save her son. To save Mom’s brother.
Owen grunted and groaned as he made the portal that took us back to the safe house. As soon as I passed through, I immediately ran up the stairs to check on Dorian, Heather, and the others. Everyone but Sonya and Sasha were asleep in the luxurious beds. The vampire sat by a fire, reading, and Sasha lay on Dorian’s bed with one ear lifted and her tail twitching when she saw me.
Not wanting to disturb them, I tiptoed away and went downstairs to wait with the others for Noah to regain consciousness.
Tristan and Jax had taken Noah to the basement, to a room used for conversions where he could be chained up. The seemingly barbaric treatment was for everyone’s protection, including his own. Although he was passed out now, he’d likely be irate and violent when he woke.
In the meantime, we all sat in darkness, in the same living room where we’d gathered years before, when the men left for the fight that took Tristan away from me. I remembered the powder blue carpet, the darker blue, velvet upholstered couch and chairs that nobody had sat in then, the sounds of a battle behind the heavily draped picture window. That had been the last time I’d seen Stefan alive, and the last time I’d see Tristan for seven years. I stared at the door to the library off the side of the room, where Tristan had said goodbye to me and our unborn baby.