Wrath

We’re here, I told her silently, making her jump. Sorry. I thought you knew about me.

“Of course.” She gave only the briefest of bows, thank God, otherwise a full-blown knee-drop would have given us away. “There’s only one left. The Daemoni already got the other before I could stop them.”

She pointed to a large wooden box, surprising me. I guess I hadn’t expected them to be in coffins, but to be more like concrete statues.

Thanks. We’ll take it from here.

“No, thank you. They’ve been creepin’ me out since the minute they called me in. My skin won’t stop crawlin’.” She shivered as though to emphasize her point.

Do you need a mage to alter anyone’s memories? Char fed me the question so we wouldn’t weird the lynx out any more than she already had been with the mind-speak.

“No, ma’am. We have a wizard who oversaw the demo. We’re good.”

Charlotte set a cloak over the box, and Tristan used his power to raise the makeshift coffin and direct it to the van. We were in and out without the Daemoni knowing. Now we only had to hope the guy didn’t go psycho on us when we revived him.

“I’ve made room in the basement,” Terry said, leading us downstairs.

The basement was divided into two rooms, both of them looking a lot like what I called the dungeons at our own safe house, although the dark, windowless basement made it feel more like a real dungeon down here. It even smelled dank and musty, like I imagined the bowels of an ancient castle would. Silver chains with cuffs hung from the support beams overhead, and the concrete floor angled toward a large drain in the center of each room. Terry moved the bed out of the east room and replaced it with a worktable on wheels, and Tristan set the wooden box on top of it. Tristan and Char grasped the lid, and my excitement about seeing the nearly dead vamp suddenly waned. I stepped back to join Terry by the wall. With no pomp or circumstance, they lifted the top.

And the smell. Oh, God, the smell.

My stomach lurched, and we all automatically pulled back as a sickening sweet odor of mold, dust, and rotting flesh plumed from the box and hung in the air. I clamped my hand over my mouth and nose to keep from gagging. Once they recovered from the assault to their noses, Tristan and Char walked around the casket, and then stood next to each other on the far side as they studied the body. When they both made funny faces, morbid curiosity got the best of me, as it did Terry, and we both crept closer. My heart stuttered in my chest as I took in the sight. The vampire looked marginally better than my overactive imagination had envisioned, especially with that god-awful smell.

A full head of dull brown hair crowned his head when, for some reason, I’d expected only a few gray and brittle strands dangling from a skull. His sunken eyes were open and blue, staring lifelessly at the ceiling, when I’d admittedly imagined him as not having any eyeballs at all. I didn’t know why I expected such ridiculousness— maybe the writer in me had thought they’d been eaten away by worms or bugs. In fact, I’d actually thought creepy-crawly things would be skittering all over him, although I knew logically this vision made no sense since he’d been buried in concrete, not in dirt. A suit, which had probably looked smart and classy in 1913 but was now dusty and covered in century-old mildew, clothed his bony body. The jacket, vest, and button-down shirt underneath had been torn open, revealing a portion of his torso. His skin, muscles, and apparently all of his organs were dried up and clung to his bones, as though every drop of moisture in them had been sucked out by a vacuum, making him look like a skeleton covered with a grayish colored shrink wrap.

“Blood’s ready?” Charlotte asked as she leaned over him, studying the stake in his chest—a dull silver object about the size of a conductor’s wand.

“Right here.” Terry brought over an armful of donor bottles, set them on a steel table, and opened one as she stood at the head of the coffin.

“Alexis, this could be dangerous,” Char said. “I’d prefer you go upstairs.”

“Yeah, right.” I snorted. “Not a chance.”

“Ugh. You’re too much like your mother,” she muttered as she wrapped her hands around the stake. “Terry, have a bottle ready and at his lips when I pull this out. Tristan, be ready to paralyze him. Alexis, stay the hell back until we know if we have a monster on our hands. You’re not getting hurt on my watch.”

I rolled my eyes, but returned to my position by the wall. Charlotte swallowed once, and then counted to three. She pulled the stake, and my breath caught as the rod unceremoniously slipped free as though it’d been stuck in nothing more than sand. My lungs kept the air trapped as Terry separated the vamp’s lips and poured bottle after bottle into his mouth. Slowly his skin started pushing away from the bones and plumping up. His face gradually took on the appearance of a live human rather than a skeleton. By the time Terry opened the fourth bottle, the splotchy skin we could see on his face, hands, and torso became a smooth porcelain color, and his hair brightened from a dull dark brown to a shinier caramel color. Life sparked in his blue eyes, and he blinked.

His hand twitched.

His fangs slipped out.

His eyes moved slowly around the room as he took in his surroundings from his prone position.

His gaze landed on me and held, something flickering in those sky-blue orbs.

“Sophia?” he croaked.

My eyes widened and the air finally whooshed out of my lungs. Oh, crap. Did Mom do this to him? Everyone else’s focus flew to me then back to him.

“Sophia,” he said again. This time it wasn’t a question, but I shook my head.

He struggled to sit up, but he hadn’t regained his full strength yet. He settled on an elbow, still not taking his eyes off me.

“Yes,” he insisted. “You’re Sophia. But why are you clothed so oddly?”

He spoke with a heavy British accent, and his tone was not accusing or frightening, but merely perplexed.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not Sophia.”

He blinked. His jaw muscle popped. A harder edge entered his voice. “Why do you deny me?”

I looked at Tristan, but he only offered a small shrug.

“Because I’m not Sophia. I’m Alexis, her daughter.”

His brows pushed together as confusion filled his face. Then his features contorted with indignation.

“Why do you attempt to deceive me?” he demanded. “Why do you tell lies? This is not proper behavior.”

“Hey, man,” Tristan said, “be careful what you say to her. That’s my wife you’re talking to.”

The vamp’s face grew red as he twisted in his coffin to face Tristan, and his petulance turned to outrage. “Your wife? How dare you!”

Tristan raised a brow, which I knew meant his patience was wearing thin.

“Wait a minute,” I said, taking a step closer, and the vampire’s attention swung to me again. “Who are you? How do you know my mom?”

“Who am I?” he nearly yelled. “I am Winston!”

Charlotte gasped. “Oh, dear God. Get your mother on the phone.”

Did she know him? But how? Nineteen-thirteen was before Mom’s Ang’dora, which meant before she knew anything about the Amadis or Daemoni, including knowing Char.

“Now!” the warlock barked.

I cocked my head as I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed the icon to FaceTime Mom, thinking Charlotte wanted this guy to see that Mom and I were two different people. The vampire shrunk away when he saw the gadget and eyed it with a mix of suspicion and curiosity in his expression. He’d come from a different time and had no idea when he was, let alone where. But at least the interesting object had calmed his irritation with me.

“Is everything okay, honey?” Mom asked as soon as she answered. A common greeting these days. She sat at her desk, and the angle of her image made me think she’d answered on her iPad.

“Um . . . I don’t know. Do you know this guy?” I switched the phone’s camera to the back lens to show the recently revived vampire. “He says his name is Winston.”

Mom’s face blanched.