Wrath (21 page)

We all came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road.

“Why are we stopping?” I practically yelled.

“Yeah, what the hell?” Vanessa asked. “They’re getting away!”

“We don’t know what that is,” Tristan said through his teeth. He dismounted the bike and strode up to the place where the cars had disappeared, studying it with deep concentration.

Charlotte appeared by his side. She moved her hands in front of her, creating a ball of yellow light, then grew it larger before throwing it up in the air. An outline of what almost looked like a large door briefly appeared, a different landscape beyond it than the actual landscape in front of us. Tristan stuck his hand through it and left it there while the outline and the image beyond disappeared.

“It’s cold and wet,” he said, his brows pushing together as he held his damp hand up as proof. Here was a hot, humid day with not a single cloud in the sky.

“Huh,” Charlotte muttered. We all looked at her. “I’ve never seen a real one.”

“What?” I demanded, ready for her to deem it safe so we could go.

“It’s a portal,” Vanessa said as she walked up to it, and something caused my hackles immediately to rise.

“Of course,” Tristan said, his voice low as he tried to study what could not be seen.

Charlotte turned to Vanessa and eyed her with the same suspicion I felt. “How do you know? These are very rare. Only used by the occasional—”

“Sorcerer. Or, in this case, a sorceress. I’ve heard they could create them, then I saw one used. By Owen.” She peered at all of us as though surprised by our ignorance. “That’s how Kali got off the Amadis Island, of course. He never told you? She’d created a portal in case she ever needed it, and when she did, Owen followed her. I didn’t see Kali’s spirit come through—I don’t know if I
could
have seen it. But I was standing on the hillside in a Himalayan village when Owen seemed to fall out of a hole in the air.”

“A portal. But where does it go?” Tristan asked.

“Who cares?” I said. “Our son is there, wherever it is.”

“Right,” Vanessa agreed. “Who cares? Owen
and
Dorian are through there. We need to go!”

And that’s what bothered me. Was she here to help us find Dorian? Or had this always been about Owen for her? Owen, who had stolen our son. Was she trying to set us up by convincing us to go through the portal? For all we knew, Kali, Owen, and possibly even Lucas and more Daemoni waited on the other side to ambush us. Of course, she blocked out such thoughts if she had them.

“How do we know to trust it?” I asked her. “How do we know it doesn’t go straight into the heart of Hades? And regardless of your answer, why should we even trust you? For all we know, you have—”
Holy shit
. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner? Any of us? It would explain her behavior and my oscillating feelings about her. I flew at the vampire and tackled her to the ground. “How do we know you don’t have a stone implanted in
you
? Is this Kali trying to get us to go through there?”

I palmed my dagger and slid it out of its sheath, then swiped my thumb over the amethyst. As soon as it appeared, I plunged it into the vampire’s chest. She bucked underneath me, but my rage at her betrayal—and once again at Kali—made me stronger, and I held her down with one hand while carving at her chest with the other. I drew the blade in a grotesque crisscross pattern over her heart until her porcelain skin was nothing but a shredded mess. When I realized my knife didn’t connect with a stone—
wouldn’t
connect with one—my rage dissipated, and she finally was able to throw me off and jump to her feet.

She held a hand over her heart, holding the pieces of skin together as they healed, and leaned over closer to me.

“Some day, little sister, you’re going to have to
trust
me.” She straightened up and rolled her shoulder. “For now, I’m going after your little boy, regardless of what Owen does.”

Then she sprinted down the road. In a heartbeat, the air seemed to swallow her whole.

I slowly rose to my feet, keeping my gaze on the ground with complete embarrassment over my actions. Unfortunately, running and hiding wasn’t an option this time. I wiped my blade over my pants a couple of times, then returned the dagger to its sheath.

“I’m sorry,” I said to whoever would listen, though I still stared at the ground. “It’s just . . . she came . . .”

A warm hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed.

“She came to you about the same time,” Blossom said. “I thought of it just now, too. I can’t believe none of us considered it when Sonya told us about hers.”

“Because we all know Vanessa’s really Amadis,” Sheree said. “We know it in our hearts, including you, Alexis.”

That statement didn’t make me feel any better, but I let out a breath of relief. The regret didn’t expunge with the air, but it helped to know I wasn’t the only one who suspected. I was just the only one who attacked the vamp with a silver blade and cut her all up. The only bit of mollification was that it didn’t hurt her—too badly anyway. I finally looked up at the others. Tristan, whose opinion of me I worried most about, shook his head but lifted his arm for me to walk into.

“So, mates,” Jax said, reverting our focus to the problem at hand, “are we goin’ through?”

“We have no idea what’s on the other side,” Blossom said. “And I’m with Alexis. I don’t completely trust Vanessa.”

“Except our son’s on the other side,” I muttered as I kicked a pebble in the road.

“The portal won’t last forever,” Tristan said, “from what I’ve heard about them.”

“They
can
close on their own,” Blossom affirmed, “but usually the creator closes it. I’m surprised Kali’s kept it open this long.”

“So she’s probably waiting for us to go through it,” Sheree said. “And now Vanessa’s there by herself.”

“Kali and Owen probably set it up so we’d chase them in,” I said. “Owen knows it would work. He knows what I would do for my son.”

“I could go through first, and if it’s safe, come back to get you mates,” Jax suggested.

“Portals don’t work that way,” Char ground out between clenched teeth as she paced back and forth on the pavement, her eyes on what appeared to be the road stretching in front of us, but her mind focused elsewhere. On Owen and Kali, who were on the other side of the portal. “They’re created for a connection from point A to point B. It’s not a two-way street.”

She stopped her pacing in the middle of the road and stood with her feet shoulder-width apart. She pushed her hand through her short blond hair, then spun on her boot.

“Sorry, Alexis, but I’m going with or without you,” she said. She strode back to her motorcycle with purpose, mounted it, and cranked it over. “Are you coming with me, Sheree?”

The Were bit her lip, not answering right away.

“See you on the flip side then,” Char called over the rumble, and she sped down the road and disappeared.

“Shit,” I muttered. Charlotte was pissed. That was the only way to explain her behavior. She was going after Kali and Owen no matter what, even if it meant leaving me, the person she’d sworn to protect. “I’m going, too.”

I climbed onto my bike, which Sheree had ridden here, and cranked it over.

“Alexis,” Tristan said, already heading to his motorcycle, but trying to stop me anyway.

“You know what Char’s going to try, and we can’t let her do it alone!” I yelled over the rumble of my engine. “Besides, they have our
son
.”

I kicked the clutch, put the motorcycle in gear, and twisted the accelerator. I sped down the road and through the portal, blasting into the unknown.

Chapter 21

I experienced no whooshing of air from my lungs. No tunnel of darkness as I rode from Point A to Point B. In fact, I physically felt nothing odd as I rode through the portal and only knew I had succeeded because cold night air suddenly engulfed me and tiny raindrops sprayed my face. Well, that and because Vanessa and Char stood in the beam of my headlight when I turned it on. A rumbling behind me meant Tristan had followed me, so I pulled forward in case the rest of our group decided to do the same. Of course they did. They were loyal through and through. I just hoped I wouldn’t get them killed.

At least we seemed to be safe so far.

We shut off our engines, and I immediately searched for mind signatures, but the closest ones belonged to Normans in a town about five or so miles away. Well, besides those of animals, but they were normal beasts, too: sheep, cows, hogs, and some wild creatures. We’d been transported to a country road in the middle of nowhere, the pavement stretching north and south, and pastures spreading out in all directions. Clouds blanketed the sky, and a light rain fell on us. At least we hadn’t fallen through a hole in the air. That wouldn’t have been good for the motorcycles—or the cars Kali and Owen had been driving, which meant they hadn’t created the portal as a quick escape to somewhere random. They’d had a plan.

“Where are we?” Sheree asked, her voice small as she sat on the motorcycle Vanessa had left with us back in Virginia.

“Definitely not Hades,” I said with extreme relief.

“No. Feels like northern England,” Tristan said. I glanced over at him as he pulled out his phone and the screen lit up his face. How would he know that so easily?

Vanessa inhaled deeply. “I agree.”

Following her lead, I took my own whiff, and the air definitely smelled different. I supposed they had enough years and experience in various locations around the world to be able to tell the difference by smell and feel.

“We’re close to York,” Tristan said while studying the phone screen. “About five miles north.”

“York, England,” Charlotte said, not as a question, but as a confirmation. “I guess the bitch has a thing for the United Kingdom.”

“She did when she held Lilith and Bree captive,” Tristan agreed. “Bree said Kali found them in Ireland and moved them to various places in the U.K. before taking them to the U.S.”

Char nodded. “She left Martin as a baby in Ireland after killing his parents.”

“And I think she once had a castle in Ireland,” Vanessa said, then added, “Or was it Scotland? She’d never admit to exactly where. I’m surprised she didn’t go there.”

“Actually, it’s either southern Scotland or northern England,” Tristan said. “Lucas had me track her once, but I lost her near the border.”

“So that’s where she’s going?” I asked. “That’s where they’re taking Dorian?”

“It’s the most logical answer,” Tristan said.

I toed the kickstand to make it drop and sat back on my bike with a huff. “But neither of you know
exactly
where it is. There’s no sign of any of them—Kali, Owen, Dorian, or the other guy—
or
their minds. How do we know this isn’t a decoy? How do we know they didn’t go through another portal and are back in Virginia or went somewhere else? They could be anywhere in the world!”

“Yes, they could be,” Tristan said as he rubbed his chin. “It would be a quick and easy way to throw us off their trails. Kali would know Vanessa and I would think she went to her castle, so she could have sent us on a wild goose chase.”

I groaned, although I really wanted to punch something. “So what do we do?”

“We can’t go back through the portal,” Charlotte reminded us.

“We really only have one option,” Tristan said. “We go to the nearest town and see if we can find anything out. Maybe someone saw them drive through or—”

“You know they’re cloaked by now. Otherwise, I’d sense their mind signatures,” I said.

“Someone might still know something,” Blossom suggested.

“If her castle’s nearby, maybe someone in the village has seen her around before,” Jax offered. “Maybe did some work for her?”

“I could scan their minds from here,” I said, not liking the idea of moving, because it could mean putting more distance between Dorian and us, even if it was only five miles.

“They won’t be thinking about it unless someone’s bringing up the subject,” Tristan pointed out.

“Some of us have senses, too.” Sheree sniffed in emphasis. “Senses we can use to help you, but not from this far away.”

True. She, Jax, Vanessa, and Tristan could smell fear, desire, and even lies, and they had powerful hearing outside of people’s minds. Charlotte and Blossom had their ways, as well. And Tristan was also right about standing out here in the rain not being much of an option. It wasn’t like the sky was dropping answers on us. Only water.

So we headed for the nearest town, and my mind stayed open to other signatures the entire time. I was pleasantly surprised, yet suspicious, to find only a couple of Amadis mages in the area and no Daemoni.

“
They’re in the bigger cities,
” Tristan said as we rode. “
This part of the country isn’t populated enough for them, but it’s only a matter of time.
”

I wondered how many towns like this—unaffected so far—still remained in the world. We’d already become expectant of checkpoints in the U.S. The freakin’ United States of America, home of the free. Yeah, right. Thanks to the Daemoni and evil in high offices, the people weren’t really free anymore. They complained about their rights being taken away, but they didn’t know the half of it, what went on this very minute behind closed doors. And when they did find out? They’d have no chance in a revolution. Not when they were fighting creatures that shouldn’t exist in their world.

A sudden realization hit me that my books hadn’t been enough to prepare the Normans for the battle hovering on the horizon. Not even close. Such a paltry attempt, I saw now. Rina couldn’t have believed they’d been enough to make a difference. She must have been humoring me with her explanation of why she allowed them to be written and published. She had to have been indulging me, knowing how much I needed to write those stories to stay somewhat sane during Tristan’s absence.

Because the humans needed more. So much more.

They needed the Amadis. We needed our army.

We needed to find our son and get back to work.

We drove into York, and as we rode around the town, I thought about how the writer in me would have loved to spend time here. A palpable sense of deep history rose from the cobblestones and poured out of the ancient buildings, and a part of my mind couldn’t help but think about all of the people who had passed through these very streets over the centuries. I envisioned burly men with long beards and dressed in fur coats and boots making trades at the local merchants, and others drinking ale from steins in a local lodging house. So many stories to be told dating back millennia. But indulging in those stories—even thinking about them—was something I couldn’t do now . . . or probably ever again. Real life needed my focus. There would be no more escapes into a fictional world, for me or for my readers. Real life had become exactly that: very
real
.

As we passed a huge, gorgeous, and very old cathedral—from what I could tell through the dark, drizzly night—something golden darted out in front of us. Bree.

“This way,” she said as she pointed down a road headed north, and she disappeared. Tristan turned, and we all followed. Bree reappeared and rounded another corner, but she was gone before we reached her. We made the turn, and she appeared down the road again. Tristan, with the rest of us behind him, continued following her until we turned into a driveway in front of a cobblestone cottage. I pulled up next to Tristan and looked at him. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug, before cutting his engine and turning to Bree.

Before she could explain, two women flew out of the house, bubbling with excitement. Bree chatted with them in a language I didn’t know, but I felt pretty sure it wasn’t Earthly. The sounds were too musical, too sexy, too unnatural to have been created by sensible humans. Finally, Bree turned to Tristan and me with a small smile on her face, although her golden eyes were cautious.

“I can’t stay to help,” she said, “but Stacey and Debbie have agreed to do so. It’s the best I can do for now.”

She gave us an apologetic smile, and then made introductions before disappearing again. I frowned as I glanced around the premises, but she didn’t return.

Stacey and Debbie, the two faeries remaining in front of us, had similar features that made them difficult to tell apart: petite bodies, big blue eyes, and hair whiter than Vanessa’s, although not
entirely
white. I wondered if they were twins, like Jessica and Lisa, and if twins were common among faeries, but at this moment, I didn’t care enough to ask. Apparently Bree had only expected to find Stacey, but Debbie had been visiting, so we got a two-for-one deal. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I tried to believe it was good. After all, we’d been at a dead end before Bree popped into our realm, so anything was better than the nothing we’d had before.

“There’s defo summat goin’ on,” the one introduced as Stacey said. Her hair blended from white at the crown of her head to cotton-candy pink at the bottom, which barely grazed her chin.

“Stacey’s always naughty, but I got ’er to be’ave for a bit,” said Debbie, whose hair had shades of purple in it. Their hair provided the only way to tell the two apart. That and when they spoke—Debbie’s British accent sounded different than Stacey’s. So much for the twin theory.

“Oh, I’m not naughty!” Stacey protested with a flirtatious giggle. “Not most of the time, anyway.” She batted her eyelashes at Tristan. “And I would do anythin’ for you.”

“You mean because he’s our fambo,” Debbie reminded her with an elbow jab into the other faerie’s side, although she gave Tristan a mischievous grin, too.

He grabbed my hand and squeezed, but I didn’t worry. He was impervious to their effect, and not only because our love diluted their powers. He
was
one of them. Half, anyway. Enough to be their kin, as Debbie had said. At least, I assumed that was what she meant.

“So you do know something?” I asked, hoping to focus them on our problem.

“We were in the Otherworld with Bree,” Stacey said, her bottom lip jutting out in a pout with my let’s-get-serious attitude. “She was watching you in America, but we saw what happened here. Your lad went north.”

“That loony sorceress ’as ’im and another,” Debbie added.

“And Owen?” Vanessa asked.

The faeries exchanged a glance, their eyes sparkling as though they knew a secret. I sighed with annoyance because I couldn’t hear faeries’ thoughts.

“That sexy warlock’s with them,” Debbie finally said.

“Where, exactly?” Tristan asked.

Stacey giggled. “Go to the coast then north. You can’t miss it.”

“We can’t wait to see wot ’appens,” Debbie said, her voice laced with excitement.

And with that, the girls disappeared.

“Damn faeries,” Tristan muttered. Vanessa and Jax both snorted. Tristan let out a growl. “I’ll
never
be one of them.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and we headed back for the bikes, our only transportation. There may have been no Daemoni around, but we still wouldn’t take the chance of flashing. I swung my leg over the seat of my motorcycle, anxious to be on our way. “If they’re messing with us, the sooner we find out and the sooner we can get back on the right trail.”

Since the faeries hadn’t been completely clear in what we were looking for, we did what Stacey said and went east to the coast and then north. Tristan led the way, ensuring we stayed on the left side of the streets—I kept drifting to the right—while his GPS guided us on roads near the coast. Salty air tinged my nose and coated my lips. The light rain had let up, but a storm brewed over the sea, not far from the coast and headed our way. Lightning flashed ahead and to our right, followed by low rumbles of thunder.

An ominous feeling settled over me, causing a tingle down my spine. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rose. Then I sensed it. A Daemoni mind signature. Only one, but the first I’d found since arriving in England. I sped to the front of the pack and led the way. The electric feeling became stronger and when I saw the looming structure, I had no doubt. Stacey was right—we couldn’t miss it. We followed the road until it ended, then parked the bikes, climbed off, and stared.

The eerie structure stood another few hundred yards ahead, towering over a cliff that dropped to the sea below. The silhouette against the black, stormy sky was disorienting. In the dark, it appeared to be a large, ancient castle with a clock tower and turrets reaching several stories into the sky and looming over an expanse of lawn. But when lightning flashed and lit up the scene, the structure looked more like a skeleton of its former glory, ancient ruins of something that had once been majestic. Black and then bright light and then black again showed through the arched windows that were at least two stories high, none of them reflecting light because they held no glass.

The scene had me mesmerized. With one hand on the hilt of my dagger, I slowly started toward the castle that must have belonged to Kali. Tristan strode up next to me, and the others followed closely behind, nobody saying a word. The air felt thick and heavy, electricity humming through it, making the currents within me zing. Lightning flashed, lighting up a cemetery not too far ahead, with ancient looking tombstones that stood at crooked angles, the earth below them sagging from centuries of holding their weight. Thunder clapped almost directly overhead, making my heart stutter. Someone behind me gasped, and Blossom let out a small whimper.

“I’m not likin’ this place, mates,” Jax said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Somethin’s not right about it.”

But that was the thing. Where we were now, this far away—no, it didn’t feel right. Evil hovered nearby, the feeling heavy in the air. The castle, however, as creepy as it looked,
did
feel right. I thought it did, anyway. The structure seemed to be pulling me to it, which didn’t scare me at all. In fact, I knew I’d find relief if I could only get to it. As though it offered security. A place of refuge.