Wrath

to wake, too, then suddenly more vampires were popping into the room. The whole Daemoni nest came for their newborns.

“We need to get out of here,” Charlotte said.

A female vamp squealed with glee when she realized who we were, and then she soared for me. Others followed suit, and Charlotte and I had no choice but to fight our way out of the apartment.

Tristan, we could use your help, I called out to him. He barged into the doorway and started blasting the vamps with his power. Charlotte and I tried to go for the remaining newborns, but the Daemoni protected them closely.

“Let’s just go,” Char said.

With the mage coven so close and not knowing what kind of traps were around, we couldn’t flash back to the vans, but could only run at top speed. Of course, the vampires were nearly as fast as us, and then other Daemoni blocked our way. A white crocodile clamped his jaw over one of them and shook it side to side. A tiger lunged into the alley and attacked another. Blossom shot spells as fast as she could while Tristan carried her since she was the slowest of us all. With his free hand, he blasted those he could reach with his power.

“We don’t have any more,” Charlotte called out to the safe house vamps by the vans when they came in sight. “Go! Just go, go, go!”

They jumped into the vans and peeled out, carrying off only four of the twelve newborns. Charlotte and Blossom shot spells at the vampires chasing us, and lightning jolted out of my hand as we ran for the bikes. Vanessa plowed into a Daemoni and ripped his arms off, slowing him down. As soon as we were on the bikes, Charlotte cloaked us, and Tristan blasted a wall of his power at them, knocking them several yards away, giving us the chance we needed. Not close enough to find us and cloaked from their vision, they scrambled after us blindly, and we were able to get away.

I didn’t let out my breath of relief, though, until we were back at the safe house.

“I can’t believe we only got four of them,” I growled as we headed inside to begin the real work of the conversions. “I thought we were doing well.”

“We were for a while,” Charlotte said. “But this wasn’t unexpected. It happens every time. Four’s not bad. It’s a third.”

“Which means they gained twice as many as we did. We’ll never build an army that can beat them at this rate.”

“Have faith,” Char said. “We don’t need to be as big as them. Only better.”

The conversions of the vampires took another three days of work from my team. With the converts who were already there, the safe house was at near capacity, which meant before long, they would need to use the house where we were staying. That reinforced my belief that we needed to move on and let the Atlanta team do their thing here. Of course, this meant a lot of new Daemoni wouldn’t be converted simply because we didn’t have room. Without a place to help the converts, we’d never be able to keep up. We needed to beat the Daemoni to the Normans and prevent them from being turned in the first place. That wouldn’t help our numbers, but would at least protect the humans. But we were already at a disadvantage and couldn’t protect them until we had a bigger army. We were in a Catch-22 situation.

“I guess we should head north now,” Charlotte said the evening we’d finished with the vampires as she, Tristan, and I sat around the living room. Vanessa was watching a movie in the family room, Sheree had stayed at the safe house working, and Jax and Blossom were . . .

Where were they? They’d been spending a lot of alone time together lately, but Blossom hadn’t said anything to me yet, which wasn’t like her. Of course, Dorian and our missions consumed all of my waking thoughts—and most of my sleeping ones, too. I wasn’t being a very good friend, and I’d have to find a way to make it up to her. Someday, when life and death, including my son’s, didn’t preoccupy me.

“Actually, we need to hit Savannah first,” I replied to Char’s suggestion. I’d been right about the distraction of the conversion allowing my mind to think more clearly about our problem. “We should have gone there a long time ago, really. Where else is there a better opportunity for answers?”

“Savannah’s pretty dangerous,” Tristan reminded me. “Is it a risk we want to take?”

“It doesn’t matter. You know we need to. Mom still feels Dorian is here in the Southeast. Maybe Blossom and I aren’t feeling any more nudges because we’re so close as it is.”

This argument had grown old. Tristan and I had already discussed it several times and knew we needed to go. Of course, we hadn’t found signs of Dorian anywhere near there when Blossom and I had tried while sitting in Sundae’s office, but time had passed. Maybe he’d been brought there now, since Savannah had such a heavy Daemoni presence. Probably not, but even so, people there might know things. People who might be thinking about him and his location.

“And the risk to our team?” Tristan asked again.

The question led to the whole reason why we hadn’t yet mentioned going to Savannah to anyone else: Our group was too big to sneak in, but definitely not big enough to take on all of the Daemoni there.

“You know the answer,” I said.

He rubbed his neck and nodded. Charlotte’s eyes bounced between the two of us for a moment before the answer dawned on her.

“No way in hell,” she said.

“If we’re by ourselves, Tristan and I can get close enough for me to scan thoughts without being seen. And if we are seen, well . . . we’re the strongest of our group.”

“And you’re royalty! Sophia and Rina would have my ass if something happened to you,” Charlotte said. “You can’t simply flash out of there unless you want Pastor McCorkle bailing you out again. I’ll go with you so we at least have a cloak.”

“They’ll sense your magic,” Tristan said.

“Let them,” Char replied. “Like you said—we’re the strongest of our group.”

Tristan and I exchanged a look. She was right—after him and me, she was our strongest. And the three of us, with her cloak, would be better than the two of us alone and visible. If Owen were here, we’d take him with us. Well, at one time we would have. Now the bastard would probably turn us in. Char was his replacement, which meant she’d be going with us on this mission.

“What about me?” Vanessa asked from the doorway. “You know I can help.”

And here came the problem Tristan and I had anticipated: Everyone would want to go, regardless of the risk. They’d known of the danger they’d be in when they volunteered for the team, and they all wanted to help. Whether to actually find Dorian or to protect me, though, was still a little up in the air. Vanessa, however . . . I think she wanted to prove herself every chance she could get, and I appreciated her effort. In more ways than one. Except now.

“You didn’t want to go near Savannah before,” I reminded her. “A little too risky, remember?”

“That’s when we were already captured. When I thought we’d be delivered straight into their hands. But I did go into Savannah before. To find out where your pendant was.” She leaned against the decorative pillar at the entrance of the living room and crossed her arms over her chest. “I know exactly where to take you, where you’ll be safe so you can scan all the brains you want.”

Blossom appeared behind Vanessa, and I let out a sigh. Here we go.

“I’ll stay back,” she said. “Jax and I can hang out here.”

Thank God. She’d been the one I’d worried about most. She wanted to do everything possible to help us, but I hated having her in the middle of fights, and things could get especially nasty in Savannah.

“I’ll convince Sheree that she needs to stay at the safe house,” Char said.

And so it was decided—the next morning before dawn, the four of us left for Savannah.

As we approached the small city, the evil energy of the Daemoni swirled around me like a dark mist, so heavy it hung palpably in the air. When Vanessa and I had been here barely over a month ago, the evil hadn’t felt this thick. At that time, I’d been so worried Vanessa had set me up, only fear had coated my skin. A small part of me still thought she could be tricking us, but none of me felt fear now. The tight ball of anger that sat in my heart expanded and whirled in my chest, overtaking all other emotion. These assholes here shouldn’t be allowed to live. Not when their leaders had my son. Once again, I considered the dark magic that could potentially annihilate all of them. If only it didn’t come at such a great cost.

“Alexis, if you don’t gain control, I’m not taking you in there,” Tristan said in my