over the whole bowing thing with Terry, the witch who managed the safe house. The scrumptious fragrance of garlic, basil, and other herbs had me literally drooling for real food, and I had to wipe my hand over my mouth.
“Pasta with Italian sausage. My specialty,” Terry said. The witch was a pixie of a thing, shorter even than me, with short-cropped gray hair and crinkles around her hazel eyes. “We’ll get you settled and then you can eat before getting started.”
“Good idea.” I knew I’d need the energy.
Although the darkness of night would be falling soon—meaning Alys would be at her strongest—Char agreed we’d start after dinner. She said Alys was weakened already and obviously committed enough to doing this that she didn’t expect a big fight.
Terry first took us to a conversion room where we left Alys under Sheree’s watch, and then she showed us the rest of the house. Although not a mansion, the safe house was still large, with five bedrooms, including one for Terry. She only had one other resident: a Were who’d been badly hurt in a fight a few days ago and needed a safe place to fully recuperate. Fortunately for us, three others had recently departed, headed to an Amadis colony in the Outer Banks.
The caretaker tried to give up her master bedroom for Tristan and me, not because there weren’t enough rooms for all of us, but because of the whole royalty thing. We wouldn’t have it, though, and since I’d be spending most of my time with Alys anyway and Tristan always stayed near me during conversions, we didn’t allow an argument.
Terry entertained everyone during dinner with stories and jokes that she laughed at herself, and her laugh was so contagious, you couldn’t help but laugh along with her. But part of me had checked out of the conversation, wanting to take care of Alys, make sure we’d be leaving her in good hands, and then get back on the road. Dorian still needed us.
Dread weighed down my heart when we returned to Alys’s room, knowing what we had to put her through when she’d been so nice and forgiving already. Besides Sonya, she was the most docile convert I’d ever had, and I was glad we didn’t have to chain her to the bed.
Although Alys complied with everything we asked of her, the Daemoni in her wasn’t quite as willing to acquiesce to us. Char and I sat with her for forty-eight hours straight, removing the evil from Alys’s soul. Because Terry’s small safe house was really meant to be a haven for injured or battle-weary Amadis, not a center for conversions, she didn’t have a full conversion team on staff. So we had no choice but to stay for several weeks while Sheree helped the vampire through her faith healing.
In the meantime, the rest of us rode out on short trips, searching the area for more potential converts, as well as for Dorian and his probable captors. While we were out, Blossom and I would do our thing in various locations. The nudge to go north had disappeared, though, and nothing replaced it. Unfortunately, Blossom didn’t know if the lack of direction meant Dorian’s presence on the scrap piece of blanket I still carried had weakened too much, or if we had moved within proximity to him and his captors. When she consulted with Terry and Char, the mages didn’t have an answer—neither were experts with this spell, but they believed both options were possible —but if we were close, the cloak over our son remained powerful. We ran into an Amadis intelligence team, but they had no news to share. Mom also gave us updates, although nothing useful for our mission.
A couple of weeks in, we received a call about a Daemoni attack. We all went out and although we could have had six new converts, we only managed to bring in two. As in two more Char, Sheree, and I needed to stay for, which kept us in Charlotte even longer.
At least Blossom learned a lot, and not surprisingly, she was better at the first part—the transformation— than the faith-healing phase. She could keep talking to them and giving Amadis power through their internal fight, but she’d go off on too many tangents when it came to discussing faith and what it meant to be an Amadis.
The house quickly became too cramped, so everyone on my team, except Tristan and me, checked in to a hotel a block away, though they spent the majority of their time at the house. Especially meal times, because we ate quite well. Terry loved to cook, and with Tristan and me in the kitchen, too, when we had the chance, we could whip up some truly gourmet meals. When the time finally came to leave, I would miss her. But I couldn’t wait to get back on the road.
Memorial Day weekend passed and the heat of a southern summer set in when we finally thought we were ready to leave, but then Terry received a strange phone call.
“That was one of ours, a were-lynx who’s a detective on the local force,” Terry said, her eyes lit with excitement as her gaze traveled over Tristan, Charlotte, and me while we sat at the large farm-style kitchen table after lunch on an early June day. “Lucky for us, she was called in on a bizarre case. They demolished an old bank downtown and found two bodies buried in the foundation.”
“Really?” I asked, my curiosity piqued, although I wasn’t sure why this news made us lucky.
“They both had silver stakes still jammed in their hearts,” she continued.
Tristan raised a brow. “Sounds like Daemoni vamps who were put down.”
“Exactly!” Terry said enthusiastically. “That’s why she called me. And what’s really crazy is they’ve been there since 1913. Everyone threw a fit about tearing the building down because it’s a historical landmark, but a sinkhole formed behind it, and they were afraid the building would collapse. But who knew there’d be bodies in there?”
“So what does this mean?” I asked. “If we pull the stakes, they’ll revive?”
“You know the only way to permanently kill vampires,” Tristan said, which I took as a
“They’ll need lots of blood.” Vanessa came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. “
Her whole body shuddered as she imagined going without blood for so long.
“How do we know they’re Daemoni?” I asked.
“It’s an educated guess because the stakes are silver, which probably knocked them out so the attacker could get them into the foundation,” Tristan said.
My own body mimicked Vanessa’s, shuddering at the thought of being buried alive.
“So if they’ve been down this long, we could convert them, couldn’t we?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the Daemoni energy be weak?”
“Bingo!” Terry said, tapping her nose with her index finger. “Perfect timing with you still here.”
“Actually, it depends,” Vanessa cut in. “When I was full-on Daemoni, if somebody put me down for that long, I’d be pissed and I’d want some serious revenge. I’d be killing every mofo who got in my way. Screw converting.”
Tristan analyzed the situation. “If whoever put them there is still alive, they’d have to be Daemoni or Amadis. It’s possible for an informed Norman to have done it, but it’s been a hundred years. They’re long dead by now.”
“And no Amadis would have done such a horrible thing,” Charlotte said.
“So our biggest risk is the attacker was Daemoni when they did it, but have converted to Amadis since then. And now these vamps could go after one of our people in revenge,” I concluded. “Otherwise, they’d go after Daemoni, and I, personally, don’t have a problem with that. Or, maybe they could be happy we revived them and will convert, especially if the Daemoni put them in there.”
Charlotte drummed her fingers on the table. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“Pull the stakes and give them blood,” Vanessa replied. “And if they try to go bat-shit crazy on us, we can just stab them again and find another freshly poured foundation.”
Charlotte gave her the stink eye. “Or handle them the way we do all Daemoni, and if one of our own is in danger, we make sure they’re protected.”
Terry gave us the address and her van, and Tristan, Charlotte, and I drove downtown to retrieve the bodies. This was one mission nobody else on my team really wanted to be a part of, which I didn’t understand. My curiosity had me nearly bouncing in my seat with a perverse excitement. The Daemoni must have heard the news, too, because several of them swarmed around the area. Charlotte cloaked our van once we pulled into the parking garage next door, then kept us cloaked as we made our way to the lanky woman cop standing in the pile of rubble.
