Power (Soul Savers) (7 page)

My heart rate instantly spiked.
Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
What had I been thinking? Charlotte
had told me to stay on the plane for a reason. We were already greatly outnumbered,
and now I was completely alone with Victor and the other vamp only steps away.

“
The girl. You came
for the girl. And I told you, you’re not alone.
” I tried to push the voice
away, but unfortunately, I couldn’t silence it. “
Take care of the girl, Alexis!
”

But at least she had reminded me of my purpose for being
here.

I ran my thumb over the amethyst in the dagger’s hilt,
revealing the silver blade, and withdrew it from its sheath at my hip. Feeling another
surge of power from it, I ran and lunged at the trio. I landed on Victor’s
back, and he yelped with surprise. His friend immediately ran off, but I didn’t
care about him as long as he left the girl alone. Victor, on the other hand,
had something to tell me, whether he wanted to or not.

He squirmed and bucked, trying to throw me off, but I held
on tightly, my thighs gripping his waist and my arms around his shoulders. His
hand grabbed my wrist and if he squeezed any harder, he’d pulverize my bones
into powder. The pain loosened my grasp, and he flipped me over his head. Right
before I’d slam to the ground, I twisted in the air and landed on my feet,
facing him. He lunged at me without thinking about it first, and I moved barely
fast enough to dodge his punch. He fought with instinct, no thoughts for me to
hear before he acted, and I wasted precious time parrying his blows. When he
swayed off balance after a missed punch, though, I made my own move and landed
again on his back, this time holding the silver blade against his neck. He
froze.

“That’s a good boy,” I said, still hanging onto him. I
peered over his shoulder at the girl who’d been paralyzed with fear during our
brief fight. With long dark hair and dark eyes, tall and thin, she reminded me
so much of Sheree. I thanked God I’d been able to stop the attack on her. “Go.
Now! Get whoever you came here with and go far away from this place.”

Like Sheree had done so long ago, the girl finally scrambled
to her feet and stumbled down the alley. Victor made another attempt to throw
me off. The blade slid across his skin, and he grunted from the contact with
the silver. He froze again.

“Your sister’s right. You really are an idiot, aren’t you?”
I asked.

“Get the hell off me,” he growled.

“Answer a question for me, and I’ll think about it.”

“You already ruined my dinner. I have nothing to tell you.”

I pressed the blade harder against his throat. He whimpered.
“I just want to know where Vanessa is.”

 
“I don’t know.”
Victor stiffened even more under my muscles, but I hadn’t done anything to
cause it.

“I suggest telling the truth,” Tristan said from behind us.
My chest felt as though a wide belt had suddenly loosened its tight hold on me,
and I took my first real breath since leaving the plane. I was no longer alone.

Tristan moved around to the front of us, his palm facing out
toward Victor’s chest as he stood several yards away—far enough that if
he flashed, Victor couldn’t follow his trail. Overcome with happiness to see my
beautiful husband in person, I grinned, fighting the urge to jump into his
arms, because if I did, Victor could flash away, and we wouldn’t be able to
follow him. The look he gave me in return was murderous.

“I
am
,” Victor
managed to get out between stiff lips. “Haven’t seen her in months.”

Really?
I’d always
thought they were inseparable—I’d never seen them apart. Except … the
last time we saw her …. I tried to remember if Victor had been among the
Daemoni on the Greek island, but I hadn’t inspected their mind signatures
closely enough.
Doesn’t matter
. He surely
had to at least have an idea of where she hid, and there was only one way to
find out.

A mental shudder ran through me as once again my mind made
its way into Victor’s icky head. If he knew where Vanessa was, though, he had
no thoughts about her now. But then he accidentally recalled a memory—a
very recent one—of Vanessa standing in a dark alley similar to this one,
she and a blond guy in each other’s faces, their noses only inches apart. A
very familiar blond and not Victor himself. In fact, the vampire hissed at the
memory.

What the …?

Tristan raised an eyebrow at me. I gave him a slight shake
of my head.
He doesn’t know where she is.

“
Let’s go then.
”

To the plane?

“
No,
I told Charlotte to take off. Go home.
”

With a nod, I sprang from Victor’s back and landed next to
Tristan. In a flash, we appeared in our garage, which gave us a few moments
before we were bombarded by an eight-year-old.

“Victor was telling the truth?” Tristan asked, his voice
harsh. I stopped myself from throwing my arms around him when I saw sparks of
anger in his eyes.

“Um … not exactly. It hasn’t been months since he’s seen
her, like he said … in fact, it was only last week in Key West. But get this …”

Victor’s memory, now my memory, played in my mind, and I
shared it with Tristan. Vanessa had turned from the blond male in the alley to
look at Victor. She lifted her lip in a snarl, and her musical voice warned
Victor to lay off.

“He’s
mine
,” she
hissed, and the memory faded.

“She was with …
Owen
,”
I said with disbelief. But I couldn’t decide if seeing them together shocked me
more, or if the vision of him tilting his head, as if
offering
his neck to her, did.

“That’s … unexpected,” Tristan agreed. “At least we know he
survived it.”

“We know nothing, Tristan! She could be slowly sucking him
dry, and he’s letting her. Victor was pissed she wouldn’t share him and all the
power in his blood.”

“She doesn’t exactly have a reputation for sharing,” Tristan
muttered, which reminded me of the last time I’d heard her declare someone as
hers—me.

Only, I had to admit, there was something different about
the way she said it this time. Murder filled her voice when she spoke of me.
Something else, something just as passionate yet different, colored her tone
when she spoke of Owen.

“Oh, no! What if he’s letting her kill him on purpose? What
if he’s suicidal?”

“Nah,” Tristan said, but he stroked his chin as if he wasn’t
so sure. “No,” he said more firmly. “Besides, Vanessa won’t kill him. He’s too
valuable. It’d be more likely that she’d infect him. Or perhaps convince him
that he’s already Daemoni because of his ties to Kali.”

Exactly my fear. “He’d rather be
dead
than be a vamp or any kind of Daemoni. We need to find him.
And if he’s converted, we need to save him.”

“And if he doesn’t want to be saved?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed.

“Alexis, that’s part of preparing for your role. You need to
be able to face that possibility.”

“We’re talking about Owen, though. He doesn’t really want to
be part of them.”

“You have no idea what’s going through his mind right now.”

I put my fists on my hips. “You’re wrong. I
do
have an idea. I know what it’s like
to find out your sperm donor is evil. I don’t know what the physical ties are
between him and Kali, but he has her magic. He was essentially raised by her
without knowing it.”

“So it’s a little different than finding out someone you
never knew is your enemy. Owen might handle his news differently than you
handled yours.”

“He can’t
want
to
be evil, Tristan. Not Owen!”

“And if he does? Can you kill him if it comes to that?”

I turned my back on him and crossed my arms over my chest.

“We can’t let it come to that,” I said, then I strode out of
the garage and headed for the house.

Tristan’s hand clamped on my shoulder, and he spun me
around. “We’re not done yet.”

But apparently we were, for the time being anyway, because
Dorian’s voice rang from inside the house and the backdoor flew open.

“Mom’s home!”

I rearranged my mental focus and put myself in Mom mode right
when a not-so-little boy came sailing at me. Using his own special skills, he
slowed in mid-air to avoid a collision—he was already big enough that he
could have easily bowled me over. I wrapped my arms around him as he embraced
my neck.

“I told you I’d come home,” I said. “Did you miss me?”

“Lots! But Blossom’s been here and she does everything for
me. And she’s made cake every day! I think I want to marry her. Is that okay
with you, Mom?”

I chuckled. “Isn’t she a little old for you?”

He shrugged. “Nah. And she’s beautiful.” He paused. “But so
is Heather. She’s younger. Maybe I’ll marry her instead.”

I knew Blossom—the cake-baking witch with blond hair,
big eyes and a spell-enhanced chest, who had become a good friend—but I
didn’t know Heather. The name rang some kind of bell in my mind, but I couldn’t
immediately place it.

“Who’s Heather?” I asked him.

“She’s been helping Dad and Blossom. She’s here right now.”
Dorian tugged at my hand to pull me inside, but my feet remained planted
outside the door. I looked over my shoulder at Tristan.

“Heather?” I asked.

His angry scowl transformed into a guilty grimace.
Jealousy’s green tentacles tried to slither around my heart, but then the image
of a handwritten note appeared in my mind, a letter I’d received right after
the trial, signed by Heather. She’d been the girl whose dad I’d punched in the
nose ten years ago, and a few weeks later, he’d driven his car into Mom’s
bookstore. She’d written me to ask for my help, believing that her sister
Sonya, who had stalked me, the author, had become a vampire.
Ah, crap.
I wasn’t in the best mental or
physical state to take this on.

“Sorry,” Tristan muttered. “I should have given you some
warning. She was sitting on the front step the day Dorian and I arrived, and
she hasn’t left since.”

I drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Come on, Mom,” Dorian said, still tugging on my arm.
“You’re letting the bugs in.”

I reluctantly crossed the threshold and into my
home—the place I’d lived in for only a few months and had been gone from
twice as long. It didn’t feel quite like home at the moment. Especially knowing
my two men had been here earlier with the two women sitting at my dining table.
Well, one woman and one girl. The unfamiliar one, with shoulder-length, brown
hair and blue eyes, couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.

“Hi,” she said with a little wave of her hand and a wide
smile that showed nearly all of her pearly whites. “I’m Heather.”

Before I could get a word out, Blossom sprang out of her
chair and threw her arms around my neck. “Alexis! It’s so good to see you!”

Then she jerked out of my arms and started mumbling
apologies for her behavior as she dipped into a curtsy.

“Oh, stop that,” I growled, grabbing her arm and pulling her
into a hug. She let out a joyous laugh.

“Don’t worry, Heather’s all right,” Blossom whispered in my
ear. “I’ve been watching her.”

I gave her a squeeze of appreciation.

For some reason, I’d expected Heather to immediately jump
all over me about helping her sister, but she didn’t. Rather, she acted quite
mature for her age, making small talk about my trip and how she and Dorian had
spent the day. After a while, she and Blossom left.

“I thought you said Heather hadn’t left since you’ve been
here,” I said to Tristan after we put Dorian to bed, grimacing at the
accusatory tone of my own voice.

Was I reading too much into the fact that she finally
decided to leave once the wife came home? She certainly had a crush on Tristan,
the way she looked at him. But was there more than that? Sure, Tristan was
way
too old for her, but then again, I’d
been only eighteen when he came looking for me.
Stop being petty! Totally different situation.

“Don’t worry—she’ll be back tomorrow.” His annoyed
tone reassured me.

“You don’t like her?”

“She’s a good kid. She’s been really helpful with Dorian.
But she’s, well, very persistent.”

“Persistent with what?”
Ugh
.
There it was again—that tone of suspicion.

A smile danced on his lips. “About her sister.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” I nodded. “She didn’t say a word of
it to me, though.”

“Because Blossom threatened her life to give you time to
settle in.” Tristan came up to me and lifted my chin with his thumb. His eyes
were alight, the gold dancing beautifully, a stark but nice contrast to how
they’d looked earlier. “Do I sense a little jealousy,
ma lykita
?”

I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his chest,
unable to look into his eyes. “Stupid, I know. I … I feel weird in my own home,
I guess. Like it’s not even mine. I just want to get back to normal.”

“Normal?” he asked with curiosity as he wrapped his arms
around me.

“Heh. Yeah,” I said. “Whatever that is.”

Except having his arms finally around me was the best normal
I could ask for. I pressed my hands against his ribs and slid them around to
his back, pulling him closer, wanting to eliminate the last millimeters of
space between our bodies after the thousands of miles that had separated us for
the last two weeks.

 
“I’m so glad
you’re home,” he said, his voice thick.

“Me, too,” I whispered, my hands wandering southward to the
hem of his shirt, and underneath. His muscles tightened under my touch. “Does
this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”

A low growl rumbled in his chest, but he didn’t let go of
me. “We’ll talk about it later.”