Wrath (20 page)

“Hi, honey,” she said, her voice still full of happiness. “I thought I’d give you some much-needed good news. Your safe house on Captiva pulled in a whole nest of vampires in Tampa. Sixteen of them converting!”

My whole team cheered loudly.

“To hope, faith, and a little perseverance,” Charlotte said as she raised her wine glass after I hung up with Mom.

“A
lot
of perseverance,” I said as I lifted my own glass.

“To love conquering all,” Tristan said with a wink in my direction. I dazed out for a second, missing Jax and Blossom’s toast.

“To good always wins,” Vanessa said as her ice-blue eyes locked on mine and a small smile played on her lips. She tipped her glass of blood up and didn’t break our gaze as she drank.

The pit of my stomach tightened. Her thoughts were innocent, but I couldn’t help but wonder: What was she trying to say with her little statement?

***

I woke up the next morning in the closest thing I had to a good mood since the day Tristan lost his mind to Kali nearly six months ago. Happy didn’t quite describe my feelings—I wouldn’t be happy until my son was home where he belonged. But definitely more hopeful than I’d been in some time. The victory with the wolves had meant a lot more to all of us than I realized. A lighter, more playful atmosphere enveloped the whole team.

“Blossom, I think today is the day,” I said to her after lunch. “I feel it. We’ll break through today.”

“Let’s do it then,” she said, and we headed for the room where I’d given birth to Dorian. She said his presence lingered more strongly there than in the room that had been his nursery. “Can I tell you something first?”

My heart skipped. I could tell by her tone we were moving into girl talk and all I could think was what a crappy friend I’d been to her. Again.

“Of course,” I said with a little too much enthusiasm.

“Jax and I . . . well, your cake idea worked, if you hadn’t noticed, and I, uh, well, I think he might be the one,” she finally blurted as we entered the bedroom.

I stopped in my tracks and spun on her. “Blossom! Are you serious?”

She smiled shyly and gave a little shrug. “I don’t know . . . we seemed to click right away, you know? And he’s so kind but determined to protect you and me both, and well, he’s nice to look at. Even with the scar. It’s kind of sexy.”

I chuckled. “Do you know how that scar got there?”

She giggled. “Yeah. He told me Tristan gave it to him. But it sounded like he deserved it. Jax can be . . . well, he’s Jax. But I think I love him.”

“I’m sure the accent has nothing to do with it.” She seemed to have a thing for those.

“Oh, my God. You should hear him talk dirty with that accent of his!”

I clapped my hand over my mouth to cover a laugh. “I don’t want to know that!”

“Yes, you do. Doesn’t Tristan ever talk dirty to you in all those different languages he knows?”

Hmm . . . funny how I’d never thought about it. He was holding out on me! That would have to change. Next time, I swore I’d make him do it. Whenever next time might be . . .

I wrapped my arms around Blossom’s shoulders. “I’m happy for you. Jax is a great guy.”

“You don’t think a were-croc and a witch is, I don’t know, kind of weird?”

I leveled my gaze at her. “Blossom. Of course it’s weird. Every word you just said is weird if you don’t live in our world. But this
is
our world, and weird is normal. Besides, with the way things are right now, any kind of love is good. The world needs it.”

I was happy to know it was love, too, and not a passing infatuation or flat-out lust. They made a great couple, even if it was weird.

She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “Thanks, Alexis. Your blessing’s important to me.”

I blew it off by pulling us to the floor in the center of the room, right in front of the queen-sized bed I’d spent a straight eight months in. Mom and Rina had knelt in this very spot, helping to ease Dorian out of my body when I passed out during his delivery.

“Suburbs today, right?” Blossom asked as she crossed her legs and made herself comfortable.

We’d ridden all over the east side of the metro area and downtown right before our big win, and I’d scoured the area for mind signatures then.

“Yeah. This side of D.C., though,” I answered. “But not too far west. I just did a scan the other night when we got the wolves.”

“Okay, so Maryland?”

“Sure. Why not?” Of course, we’d already searched Maryland and Northern Virginia—the entire D.C. area and beyond—more times than I could count, but the chance of discovering something new always remained. Even if we didn’t find Dorian, the Daemoni mind signatures in the area numbered in the thousands—it was a politicians’ city, after all—and we never knew when we might stumble upon something useful.

We grasped each other’s hands and closed our eyes, and Blossom began her spell. My good mood faltered, though, as we mentally traversed over the Maryland suburbs and nothing new caught our attention. We skimmed over the tens of thousands of mind signatures, looking only for the familiar ones we sought or the pricks of those belonging to Daemoni, but I should have known the afternoon made the timing bad. Too many awake Norman signatures and too many sleeping Daemoni ones. My optimism waned, and Blossom must have felt it because she began pulling back with me.

When the situation allowed, we tended to bring our minds back in a slow fashion, meandering our way to our physical selves so when we opened our eyes, we weren’t completely disoriented. So we floated lazily over the state line and into Fairfax County, and we’d almost reached home when something piqued my interest. My breath caught.
Could it be?
I almost dismissed it—the mind signature was way too close, in an area we’d scoured time and again. I mentally went back to where I’d caught the proverbial scent and searched more closely. Focused in on the specific twang that had grabbed me. And . . . there.

My son.

Chapter 20

Dorian!
I exclaimed.

“
Mom? Is it really you? In my head?
”

I choked back a sob at the sound of his voice.
Yes, little man, it’s me.

“
Really? Because I thought I heard you before, but you never answered me.
”

I’m sorry. I . . . I lost you. Are you okay?

“
How are you in my head, Mom? How are you talking to me?
”

You know how you can fly? It’s kind of like that, but this is something I can do.

“
Okay
,” he accepted easily. I wondered what they’d been telling him, if he knew all about the Amadis and the Daemoni. But that wasn’t important at the moment.

Dorian, are you okay?
I asked again.

“
I guess. But I miss you and Dad lots. Uncle Owen said I can’t see you.
”

My jaw clenched.
Are you with Owen right now?

“
Not right this minute. But he’s usually around. He’s acting all weird, and I want to go home, but he won’t let me. Are you coming to get me?
”

Oh, baby, we are! But we don’t know where to find you. Do you know where you are?

“
Not really. A stupid, boring room where I always am.
” He glanced around, and I peered through his eyes to see a small room with gray commercial-grade carpet, a twin-size bed, and a TV with a game console hooked up to it, probably to keep Dorian quietly entertained.

Have you been there the whole time?
I asked.

“
Not always. Sometimes we go places. There’s a big lake outside the building and sometimes Uncle Owen will take me out there. But not for long. And never when Kali’s around.
”

A growl rumbled in my throat.
Can you picture in your mind what it looks like outside? The building and the lake?

He fed me a picture, but nothing was familiar. After all of the miles we’d put on the bikes, we’d never been past that place before. How would we—

“Got him,” Blossom murmured under her breath.

Unable to control myself, I jumped to my feet and let out a squeal.

As always when we tried to locate Dorian, Tristan had been nearby, and he must have heard us, because he appeared in the room in a flash. I kept my mind linked to Dorian’s as they looked up the location—only eight miles away. Eight freaking miles. How long had he been so damn close? The desire to kill Kali and do some serious harm to Owen became a fervent ache.

We’re coming, Dorian
, I promised him.

The seven of us jumped on the motorcycles and peeled away from the safe house. Charlotte muffled the loud engines so we could get as close in as possible. We turned down a street nearly hidden by heavy lines of trees—no wonder we’d missed it in all of our searches—and approached a parking lot at the end. I recognized the three black-brick office buildings set in a horseshoe shape around a lake as the same scene Dorian had shown me.

“What the hell?” Tristan muttered.

A small sign stood at the entrance to the parking lot:

United States of America

Department of Defense

He pulled the motorcycle off the road and parked it in the trees, and the rest of our group followed.

“What’s Dorian doing here?” Blossom whispered.

“We might not want to know,” Char answered, her voice dark and heavy.

I could only imagine one reason the DoD would want Dorian—they’d consider him no different than an alien life form—but why would Kali do such a thing? What was in it for her?

“It could be a front,” Tristan suggested.

My mind had already been open to new signatures, but none had been threatening or close, so I hadn’t paid them much attention. I now zeroed in on the only ones nearby. All of them were Norman and in the same building, the one directly in front of us and farthest away from the entrance, and they were all on the same floor—where Dorian was. Then I found several others—all Daemoni but similar in quality to Dorian’s, although much older. And then . . .

“Owen,” I whispered.

“
Mom?
” Dorian spoke in my mind. “
Are you still there?
”

Yes, little man. We’re coming.

“
Mom! Don’t leave me again!
”

I’m still here, Dorian. Almost there.

“
Mom! Please!
” Anguish and tears filled his mental voice, and all I wanted to do was reach out and grab him. “
No. Please. I don’t want to go!
”

He actually shouted aloud now, meaning he pled with someone else. It had to have been Owen. I took off in a blurred sprint for the front of the building.

I’m coming, baby. I’m coming, Dorian!

But before I reached the building, I slammed into an invisible wall. White-hot pain knifed through my brain, bringing me to my knees. Kali. She was here, too. I clasped my hands over my ears and doubled over my knees as I tried to push her out of my head, but my mind began to gray out. Then went blank. As did my vision.

I didn’t think I’d actually passed out this time, but the next thing I knew, Tristan and the others stood next to me. Vanessa sprinted away, toward the far end of the parking lot, but after what I didn’t know. Pressing the heel of my palms to my temples, I squeezed my eyes shut and forced my mind to focus inside the building. But Dorian’s mind signature was gone. Kali and Owen seemed to have disappeared, too . . . as well as one of the others, one of the Daemoni who had been there.

“Shit!” I scream-sobbed. “We were so close!”

“
Amadis royalty
,” I heard in my head, coming from someone in the building. “
I feel it in my blood.
”

“
I feel it, too. They’re close. But they can’t help us. We’re locked up like fucking lab animals.
”

They weren’t only thinking, but spoke to each other. Daemoni being held prisoner. At a building that may or may not have belonged to the DoD. Why? And what did Kali have to do with it?

We
can
help you
, I dared to tell them.
Just tell me what’s going on.

An evil laugh cackled in my mind. “
You can’t help us, princess! Even if we wanted you to, we can’t ever go with you.
”

“
Not that we want to
,” another added, his voice vaguely familiar from a distant memory, but I couldn’t grasp it.

They growled more words at each other, but they were incoherent in my mind.

“I don’t know what they’re doing in there, but I don’t think locked up Daemoni is a bad thing,” I said as I tried to push myself to my feet, but Tristan’s hands were heavy on my shoulders.

“Are you okay?” he asked with a raised brow. “You slammed into the shield pretty hard.”

“It wasn’t only the shield. Kali was in there, too, but she pushed me out. I’ll be fine.” I lifted my brows until he finally let me up. “We just need to figure out where they went.”

“I tried to catch them,” Vanessa said as she ran up to our group, “but Kali or Owen put up a cloak. They disappeared from sight.”

I swallowed down the sob threatening to explode. We’d been so damn close. So close to holding our son again. So close to killing the bitch sorceress and her traitor son. My eyes cut guiltily over to Char, glad she hadn’t heard my stray thought. She paid no attention to the rest of us, but glared at the black DoD building with hard sapphire eyes, her jaw muscle popping in and out as she seemed to grind some kind of thought between her teeth. I thought about peeking to see what she was thinking, but decided to give her privacy. I didn’t really have to wonder too hard about it—she wanted to kill Kali as much as I did.

We pulled back into the woods and kept surveillance on the building throughout the night, in case they all came back, including Dorian. When it started to look like they might not return at all, we took shifts watching while the remainder of us rested at the safe house. At some point between my first and second shift, an unknown Daemoni warlock had come in and strengthened the shield, blocking the mind signatures inside from me. The stronger shield also meant no one could flash in or out without us knowing. The only people who came and went, however, were Normans dressed in either security coats or civilian clothes. What were they doing in there? And had they already done it to Dorian?

I held onto his word that he was okay. I hoped he would have told me if they had been running some kind of tests on him or something. Surely in the short time we were connected he would have brought that up. But maybe that had been Kali’s plan—to deliver Dorian to the Normans who were so interested in learning more about us. But what would be her motivation? Why would she hang around? Why would she take him out now when we’d found him?

Tristan suggested the Daemoni had taken the building over from the DoD, who may have had nothing to do with any of it. This theory seemed like another good possibility, given the evidence, but still—why would Kali and Owen keep Dorian there? Was it like Lilith and Bree, when Kali had kept them in the Everglades, right under our noses simply because she could? Or was there more to it?

The only way to get answers was to find them all.

Every time Blossom and I were at the safe house together and both of us well rested, we did our search, but Kali had caught on. Whatever had caused her to lift the cloak long enough for us to come as close as we did must have been a mistake she wouldn’t make again. But we also weren’t feeling any kind of nudge to move out of the area. We were essentially stuck in limbo until something broke again.

Without a clue or a prod or anything, we began debating among the team whether to make a charge on the building. If we couldn’t find Dorian, then we could at least find out who the others in the building were and what was going on in there.

“From what Alexis could tell before they put the shield up, they were all Daemoni,” Tristan said. He leaned against the railing of the wooden deck outside, where we’d all gathered for a drink to go with our afternoon debate. I leaned against him, his arms wrapped loosely around my shoulders, a beer in his hands in front of me. “The most obvious and best option is they’re the Summoned brothers and their offspring. The ones Rina told us about.”

“Unless they’re fools who were caught by the Normans in their traps and checkpoints,” Vanessa countered. She hopped up onto the railing, and gracefully swung down to sit on it, giving no regard to the fact that we were twenty feet above ground. “And they’re probably being tortured and prodded like freak aliens.”

“Which means they could have Amadis in there, too,” Sheree said. She sat on a cushioned lounge chair, gnawing on her fingernails.

I shook my head. “I’m positive they were all Daemoni. Besides Dorian, of course. And the Normans who have been coming and going since.”

“They could be keepin’ the Amadis someplace else,” Jax suggested before taking a swig of his beer. He, too, sat on the railing, his legs swinging in front of him.

“And torturing and prodding
them
,” Blossom added as she moved to stand between Jax’s legs. “We have to find out. We can’t leave them there.”

“Unless they
are
all Daemoni,” Char said. She sat under the umbrella’s shade over the outdoor table, an elbow on the glass top and her head resting on her hand. “Then I’m with Alexis—let’s leave them there. Better than on the streets, especially if we can’t convert them.”

“They said we couldn’t save them,” I reminded them all.

“Because they’re probably the Summoned brothers,” Tristan said again, bringing us full circle.

I rocked forward on my feet and placed my hands on my hips. “Well, in that case, we need to find Dorian first anyway. Rina said he’s probably the key to finding the brothers. Maybe even saving them.”

Everyone’s eyes darted around as they thought about what our next step should be.

“You two keep trying,” Tristan finally said, “and the rest of us will create a plan. In the very off chance that I’m wrong.”

I jabbed him with my elbow.

“What? I’m rarely wrong. If ever.”

“I know,” I said with a small smile. “I agree with you. But . . .”

“If you
are
wrong . . .” Blossom continued.

“We can’t take the chance there are Amadis locked up somewhere, too,” Char finished, “being treated like animals.”

So Blossom and I tried her spell one more time while they created a strategy to make our move on the DoD building.

And the break we needed came. We locked on to Dorian again.

He was with Owen, and they were on the move. Once again, we all rushed for the motorcycles. My heart stuttered for a moment when I sensed them quickly approaching our direction. Could Owen actually be bringing him to us?

No. They went right on by us. But now we knew where they were, and we sped after them. Owen drove a white two-seater Mercedes-Benz, practically flying down the country roads. We closed in on him, but he sped up. Right when Tristan said to make our move, another sports car flew out in front of us. A black BMW, right on Owen’s tail. Kali and someone else—another Daemoni—were inside. Tristan eased off the gas, and everyone else eased back, too.

“What the hell, Tristan?” I demanded. “Let’s get him!”

“Give me a minute,” he said as the cars pulled farther away from us. “We don’t know who’s with Kali, and she and Owen are pretty formidable by themselves. We don’t want Dorian involved in the crossfire.”

I groaned with frustration, but when the two cars rounded a corner and we could no longer see them, I couldn’t hold back a minute longer. If only I were driving. “Come on, let’s go before they get away!”

Tristan must have agreed because he gripped the accelerator and twisted, pushing the motorcycle to its top speed. Our knees practically slid over the ground when we made the tight turn. The two cars were about two hundred yards ahead, then . . . they disappeared. But not like they were suddenly cloaked. The cars disappeared front to back, as though they drove into or through something. But nothing was there.