Wrath

well, he’s Jax. But I think I love him.”

“I’m sure the accent has nothing to do with it.” She seemed to have a thing for those.

“Oh, my God. You should hear him talk dirty with that accent of his!”

I clapped my hand over my mouth to cover a laugh. “I don’t want to know that!”

“Yes, you do. Doesn’t Tristan ever talk dirty to you in all those different languages he knows?”

Hmm . . . funny how I’d never thought about it. He was holding out on me! That would have to change. Next time, I swore I’d make him do it. Whenever next time might be . . .

I wrapped my arms around Blossom’s shoulders. “I’m happy for you. Jax is a great guy.”

“You don’t think a were-croc and a witch is, I don’t know, kind of weird?”

I leveled my gaze at her. “Blossom. Of course it’s weird. Every word you just said is weird if you don’t live in our world. But this is our world, and weird is normal. Besides, with the way things are right now, any kind of love is good. The world needs it.”

I was happy to know it was love, too, and not a passing infatuation or flat-out lust. They made a great couple, even if it was weird.

She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “Thanks, Alexis. Your blessing’s important to me.”

I blew it off by pulling us to the floor in the center of the room, right in front of the queen-sized bed I’d spent a straight eight months in. Mom and Rina had knelt in this very spot, helping to ease Dorian out of my body when I passed out during his delivery.

“Suburbs today, right?” Blossom asked as she crossed her legs and made herself comfortable.

We’d ridden all over the east side of the metro area and downtown right before our big win, and I’d scoured the area for mind signatures then.

“Yeah. This side of D.C., though,” I answered. “But not too far west. I just did a scan the other night when we got the wolves.”

“Okay, so Maryland?”

“Sure. Why not?” Of course, we’d already searched Maryland and Northern Virginia—the entire D.C. area and beyond—more times than I could count, but the chance of discovering something new always remained. Even if we didn’t find Dorian, the Daemoni mind signatures in the area numbered in the thousands—it was a politicians’ city, after all—and we never knew when we might stumble upon something useful.

We grasped each other’s hands and closed our eyes, and Blossom began her spell. My good mood faltered, though, as we mentally traversed over the Maryland suburbs and nothing new caught our attention. We skimmed over the tens of thousands of mind signatures, looking only for the familiar ones we sought or the pricks of those belonging to Daemoni, but I should have known the afternoon made the timing bad. Too many awake Norman signatures and too many sleeping Daemoni ones. My optimism waned, and Blossom must have felt it because she began pulling back with me.

When the situation allowed, we tended to bring our minds back in a slow fashion, meandering our way to our physical selves so when we opened our eyes, we weren’t completely disoriented. So we floated lazily over the state line and into Fairfax County, and we’d almost reached home when something piqued my interest. My breath caught. Could it be? I almost dismissed it—the mind signature was way too close, in an area we’d scoured time and again. I mentally went back to where I’d caught the proverbial scent and searched more closely. Focused in on the specific twang that had grabbed me. And . . . there.

My son.

Chapter 20

Dorian! I exclaimed.

“Mom? Is it really you? In my head?”

I choked back a sob at the sound of his voice. Yes, little man, it’s me.

“Really? Because I thought I heard you before, but you never answered me.”

I’m sorry. I . . . I lost you. Are you okay?

“How are you in my head, Mom? How are you talking to me?”

You know how you can fly? It’s kind of like that, but this is something I can do.

“Okay,” he accepted easily. I wondered what they’d been telling him, if he knew all about the Amadis and the Daemoni. But that wasn’t important at the moment.

Dorian, are you okay? I asked again.

“I guess. But I miss you and Dad lots. Uncle Owen said I can’t see you.”

My jaw clenched. Are you with Owen right now?

“Not right this minute. But he’s usually around. He’s acting all weird, and I want to go home, but he won’t let me. Are you coming to get me?”

Oh, baby, we are! But we don’t know where to find you. Do you know where you are?

“Not really. A stupid, boring room where I always am.” He glanced around, and I peered through his eyes to see a small room with gray commercial-grade carpet, a twin-size bed, and a TV with a game console hooked up to it, probably to keep Dorian quietly entertained.

Have you been there the whole time? I asked.

“Not always. Sometimes we go places. There’s a big lake outside the building and sometimes Uncle Owen will take me out there. But not for long. And never when Kali’s around.”

A growl rumbled in my throat. Can you picture in your mind what it looks like outside? The building and the lake?

He fed me a picture, but nothing was familiar. After all of the miles we’d put on the bikes, we’d never been past that place before. How would we—

“Got him,” Blossom murmured under her breath.

Unable to control myself, I jumped to my feet and let out a squeal.

As always when we tried to locate Dorian, Tristan had been nearby, and he must have heard us, because he appeared in the room in a flash. I kept my mind linked to Dorian’s as they looked up the location—only eight miles away. Eight freaking miles. How long had he been so damn close? The desire to kill Kali and do some serious harm to Owen became a fervent ache.

We’re coming, Dorian, I promised him.

The seven of us jumped on the motorcycles and peeled away from the safe house. Charlotte muffled the loud engines so we could get as close in as possible. We turned down a street nearly hidden by heavy lines of trees—no wonder we’d missed it in all of our searches—and approached a parking lot at the end. I recognized the three black-brick office buildings set in a horseshoe shape around a lake as the same scene Dorian had shown me.

“What the hell?” Tristan muttered.

A small sign stood at the entrance to the parking lot:

United States of America

Department of Defense

He pulled the motorcycle off the road and parked it in the trees, and the rest of our group followed.

“What’s Dorian doing here?” Blossom whispered.

“We might not want to know,” Char answered, her voice dark and heavy.

I could only imagine one reason the DoD would want Dorian—they’d consider him no different than an alien life form—but why would Kali do such a thing? What was in it for her?

“It could be a front,” Tristan suggested.

My mind had already been open to new signatures, but none had been threatening or close, so I hadn’t paid them much attention. I now zeroed in on the only ones nearby. All of them were Norman and in the same building, the one directly in front of us and farthest away from the entrance, and they were all on the same floor—where Dorian was. Then I found several others—all Daemoni but similar in quality to Dorian’s, although much older. And