Wrath

“You tell me.”

“It’s impossible, isn’t it? Are you sure the lightning wasn’t playing tricks on your eyes?”

“We’ve been watchin’ that locale for days,” he said, leaning toward me. “We’d heard through the grapevine of freaky stuff like this happenin’. Wanted to see for ourselves, and, finally, there ya’ll were. Right outta nowhere!”

I rolled my eyes. “We were simply out for a walk.”

“In the weather? It’s rainin’ calves and hogs out there.”

I shrugged. “Our car broke down.”

“And where were ya’ll headed?”

I paused, trying to remember my Georgia and South Carolina geography from our time in Atlanta. I didn’t remember much from that era of near insanity. “Statesboro?”

His brow rose. “Lemme get this straight. Your car broke down while ya’ll were headed for Statesboro, and you decided to walk there?”

I widened my eyes and lifted my brows to portray innocence. “Exactly.”

He sat back in his chair. “Statesboro, huh? Or do you mean Walterboro?”

“Um . . .” Was that near Hilton Head, too? I had no idea.

He shook his head. “It don’t matter. Either one would be a hell of a long walk in the rain.”

“We like the rain. Thunderstorms are beautiful.”

“So ya’ll think you were gonna walk over forty miles in it?” He cocked his head as he studied my face. I couldn’t come up with any more lies. Lying wasn’t exactly my strong suit. “So, what are you, you and your friend? How do you do it? What else can you do?”

I didn’t answer him. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him anyway, and I could have showed him some things I could do—like give him a shot of electricity—but that was exactly what Mom and Rina had warned me about. When he finally accepted that I wouldn’t answer, the metal feet of his chair scraped against the linoleum as he pushed it back and stood up. His hands gripped the edge of the table, and he leaned over me.

“Well, then, I guess ya’ll get to spend the night with us,” he said as though he’d delivered a horrible threat, “and we’ll decide what to do with you and your friend in the mornin’.”

Now that could have been horrible, if they decided to call the Daemoni, but I wasn’t sure yet what they planned to do. They weren’t sure yet, according to their thoughts.

Taking a risk, I went for a different angle.

“All you need to know is we’re the good guys. If we wanted to hurt you, we would have already,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and non-threatening. “Your facilities aren’t built to contain us, though.”

He leaned over closer to me, his eyes became slits. “I’d like to see you try to break out. We have silver ammo.”

So he did know something. But not enough. I smiled. “Then give us your best shot. The silver only works against the bad guys.”

He pulled back and cocked his head again as he glared at me. Then without a word, he strode out of the room.

A few minutes later, I let another officer escort me to a small cellblock, where the fumes of human urine mixed with body odor hung heavily in the air. They separated Vanessa and me by one cell, as though it would keep us from conspiring against them. There were only three cells, though, so I supposed they had no choice.

“Do I get my phone call?” I asked the guard as he shook the barred door, making sure I was locked in. I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. They thought these bars and walls could hold us, so they really didn’t know much.

“Ya’ll ain’t human. You don’t get no human rights,” he snapped, and I stared after him with my mouth hanging open as he walked through the door to the offices beyond.

“We’re flashing out of here, right?” Vanessa asked me as I sat down on a wooden bench, the only furniture in the cell besides a round metal toilet in the corner.

Ugh. I dropped my head into my hands and massaged my temples while listening to the rhythm of her pacing. I could not believe I was actually in jail. I’d never been sent to the principal’s office as a kid and never even had a speeding ticket. And I hadn’t done anything wrong this time, either, yet here we were, locked up like criminals. I’d given up on wanting to be normal years ago, but I never imagined being imprisoned because I wasn’t.

As much as I want to, we can’t, I replied. I promised Rina I’d cooperate, and I will . . . as long as my patience lasts, anyway.

“Where do you think the others are?”

I chewed on my lip with worry about Blossom, Jax, Charlotte, and Sheree, and the pilot, too. I already knew the co-pilot hadn’t survived, and I had to believe Tristan made it out fine, because if he hadn’t . . . no, I wouldn’t go there. Dorian’s disappearance was bad enough. I would not think about anything happening to my husband. He’s okay. He’s Tristan. The stone in my chest would surely alert me if something were wrong with him.

But what about the others? Had they all survived? If so, where had they landed? I couldn’t sense any of their mind signatures in my range, and I wondered if they’d been caught in a different trap. Were they being held prisoner somewhere else? My breath caught in my throat with a thought. What if the Daemoni had captured them? What if their captors took them straight to Savannah? Oh, God. What if they appeared right in the middle of Savannah, a minor cluster for the Daemoni? We’d never see them again. Not alive anyway.

Unless Tristan appeared with them. And Charlotte may have been powerful enough to get them out, too.

Not knowing about the others wore my patience thin. Vanessa and I had to get out of here. I had to find out what happened to everyone else. I had to get a hold of Tristan. If only my telepathy could reach a few hundred miles farther. The only minds in my range were the couple of Normans in the police station and a couple thousand Normans in the sleepy town beyond. I studied the cops’ minds to try to grasp onto something that could be helpful. Finally, a thought about the local pastor doing an exorcism skittered into the guard’s mind. Mom had said many clergy would know to help us, and I had a whole list of them in my head that I’d memorized while waiting to leave the Island.

I banged on the bars and yelled for the guard. After several minutes, he finally stepped through the door.

“What?” he growled, though his Norman growl sounded more like a whine compared to what I was used to.

“I’d like to see Reverend Stephens, please,” I said sweetly.

“You know Rev. Stephens?” he asked with surprise.

“Yes,” I lied straight through my teeth. Hopefully, he knew me. Or at least knew Rina.

The guard eyed me for a minute then disappeared again through the door. I paced the stupid little cell as I waited for Rev. Stephens. And waited. And waited. Maybe the guard hadn’t called for the good pastor after all, but a search of the guard’s thoughts told me he had. The reverend didn’t understand my urgency, apparently. He needed to hurry up. Promise or no promise to Rina, Vanessa and I would be getting out of here soon, whether we flashed or walked out. I understood public relations was important for the Amadis in this war, but I could only restrain myself for so long. The lives of my team and my son were at stake.

Besides, as long as we remained here, we were sitting ducks for the Daemoni.

Finally, a tall, lanky African-American man with dark, wrinkly skin and a head full of wiry gray hair walked through the door and down the corridor along the jail cells. He eyed Vanessa with curiosity as he passed her, and then came to a stop at my cell.

“Do you know the Amadis?” I asked him, getting straight to the point.

He squinted his eyes with confusion.

“Katerina Ames?” I asked with a trace of hope, but he shook his head. I started going through a list of the clergy names, monitoring his thoughts to make sure he told me the truth.

“Oh, yes,” he finally said. “I do know McCorkle. Who doesn’t now? He’s well known throughout the Southeast.”