Power (Soul Savers) (3 page)

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. Tristan’s arm around me was the
only thing keeping me upright as my knees gave out from under me. Whatever had
happened between him and me tonight became a distant memory—we would need
each other in the days to come.

The late spring breeze whipped at the hem of my skirt,
promising to bring a thunderstorm within the next few hours. Salty sea air
filled my nose and coated the back of my throat as we stood on the edge of the
cliff, saying our farewells. My hair lashed at my face, but the tears that
stung my eyes rose from the deeper pain in my heart. Grief and the boulder of
guilt that had replaced my insides made it difficult to breathe.

Tristan stood tightly against me, his hand intertwined in
mine, returning the squeezes I gave every few minutes. Reassuring me that he
didn’t hate me. “It’s not your fault,” he’d told me numerous times over the
last two days, and I’d tried to make the statement my mantra. Still, I couldn’t
help but feel that it was all my fault.

Mom stood at the head of our group, leading us in the prayer
that we’d said and heard much too often these last few months. Bree stood on
the other side of Tristan and Solomon to my right. No one else had come to this
private funeral, but only one major absence bothered me.

Owen had missed them all, of course, but since this one hit
closer to the heart, I’d hoped he’d make an appearance. But no. Still no word
from him since the other night. Perhaps he was unable to make it. Perhaps we’d
be holding his funeral next.
Don’t think that
way. No news is good news.
That’s what everyone kept telling me. After all,
if the Daemoni killed or even held Owen captive, they’d certainly be bragging
about it.

Trying to push Owen out of my mind, I refocused on Mom and
the pyre she stood next to. The body lain out on top, with her hands folded
over her stomach, looked so tiny, so helpless, so vulnerable. So still. The
tears brimmed the rims of my eyes and slid down my cheeks. I’d tried so hard to
help her. I gave her as much Amadis power as I possibly could over the months,
trying to fill her with goodness and eradicate the darkness within her. Trying
to draw her out of her coma. But giving her all I could still hadn’t been
enough. I hadn’t saved her.

Even if Tristan didn’t hate me, I didn’t understand how Bree
could not. She’d given up her own world, the Otherworld, and her faerie life to
serve the Angels and give them Tristan, only to lose him to the Daemoni when he
was six years old. Lilith had been her everything for the past three hundred
years. And now her daughter, Tristan’s sister, was gone. Because I’d failed. I
shouldn’t have been at that stupid nightclub the other night. Maybe if I’d been
here right before she died, I could have done something at the last minute.

Mom finished the eulogy, and Solomon moved forward with a
match as long as a chopstick. Tristan let go of me, stepped up and placed a
hand on Solomon’s arm.

“Please. Let me,” Tristan said, his voice low and gruff.

Solomon returned to my side as Tristan moved to the pyre. He
lifted his hand to Lilith, caressed her forehead and smoothed her blond hair
away from her face, so peaceful now, so much like Dorian’s when he slept. Tristan’s
other hand faced the pile of logs and twitched. A flame shot out of his palm
and ignited the wood. I dropped my head and closed my eyes, too much of a
coward to watch. When Tristan returned to my side, though, I forced myself to
give Lilith all that I had left to give her.

Mom, Bree, Tristan, and I lifted our hands and the burning
pyre rose from the ground. We sent it over the edge of the cliff and let it
hover there for what felt like hours, waiting, but nothing happened. In the
other funerals, the pyre—body and all—had disappeared before
incineration.

We’d given Lilith an Amadis send-off, but she apparently
wasn’t Amadis enough for the Angels to take her in the same way they had the
others.

Because I had failed.

Plumes of black smoke with a tinge of purple began to darken
the sky in front of us as the flames grew bigger and licked at the frail little
body. A sob caught in my throat, choking me.
I can’t watch this.
I forced myself to keep my eyes open.

“Lower her to the sea,” Bree whispered. “Please. She would
like that.”

With our powers, we carefully lowered the flame-engulfed
pyre to the sea below and silently watched.

“
Ms. Alexis! Ms.
Alexis!
” Ophelia’s voice cried out.

I automatically turned toward the woods that separated this
part of the island from the mansion, although the sound came in my head. Panic
immediately swept over me at her urgent tone. Ophelia served as the head of
staff at the Amadis mansion and often babysat my son.

Dorian?
I asked
her in response.

“
He is fine. He is
fine. It is Ms. Katerina! Please, send Ms. Sophia. Now!
”

My heart stuttered at her desperation, and if the grief of
Lilith’s death hadn’t already swallowed my ability to breathe, news about Rina
did. I mentally passed the message to everyone else. Mom’s head snapped toward
me, her eyes wide. Then she disappeared.

I looked up at Tristan. He gave my hand a squeeze, leaned
over and pressed his lips to my temple.

“Go,” he said. “Solomon, too. Bree and I’d like to be alone,
anyway.”

A popping sound behind me meant Solomon didn’t wait to be
told twice. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave Tristan’s side. Not with that
look darkening his beautiful hazel eyes. He’d kept telling me he’d never known
Lilith as a sister, that he didn’t feel the same kind of grief, but I knew he’d
hoped to develop a relationship with her, and that hope was now incinerating in
the flames below.

I lifted my hand to his cheek, and he leaned into my palm.
“I don’t want to leave you, though.”

“My love,” he whispered, “Rina might need you. You must go.”

And although he didn’t say the words, I thought them:
Don’t fail Rina, too.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. With another
look at the blaze floating on the sea below, I said a silent goodbye to Lilith
before flashing to the mansion on the other side of the island.

Bedroom suites had a special shield that only allowed their
owners to flash inside them, so I appeared in the hallway of Rina’s wing. Her
suite door stood wide open, and I rushed through the ornately decorated front
room, into her bedroom of browns and beiges, dimly lit by a few candles and
lanterns set upon the antique furniture.

Ophelia, the ancient witch, stood at the end of the bed,
wringing her wrinkly hands, her severely creased face pulled tight with worry.
Julia, the dark-haired vampire who rarely left Rina’s suite, paced along the
near side of my grandmother’s bed. Solomon’s cornrows hung around his face as he
watched Rina from his stance on the far side. Mom sat on the bed in front of
him, holding Rina’s hand and whispering to her.

And Rina’s eyes shifted to me.

Rina’s eyes shifted to
me!

They were open! For the first time in eight months, almost
to the day, Rina’s beautiful, mahogany eyes, so much like mine and Mom’s, were
open on her own volition.

“Rina!” I gasped, a new sob filling my throat. Tears of joy
replaced those of grief as I hurried to her bedside, nearly knocking Julia out
of my way.

As I knelt beside her bed, stretched my arm across the dark-chocolate
brown duvet and took Rina’s hand into mine, Mom looked over at me with pursed
lips. Surprised by her dim expression, I glanced at everyone else. Julia still
paced. Ophelia continued to wring her hands. Solomon’s eyes were tight, the
corners of his mouth pulled down. Why weren’t they overjoyed?

I studied Rina’s face, which normally looked maybe six or
seven years older than mine but now appeared as though she’d aged decades. She
stared at me, her face expressionless and her eyes vacant. Her dry lips parted
but formed no words. She blinked, then her brows pushed close together, as though
she concentrated hard on trying to speak.

“Lil … ith … good,” she grunted. Then her eyes fluttered
closed again. We all froze and watched my grandmother’s body with bated breath,
waiting for her to open her eyes again, but she didn’t.

“She’s just sleeping,” Mom said after a few minutes of
monitoring Rina’s vital signs. “She didn’t slip back under.”

A collective sigh of relief whooshed around the room.

Julia sunk down onto the end of the bed and stared at the
clasped fingers in her lap, and Ophelia dropped her hands to her side, only to
anxiously twist them into the hem of her apron.

“Is she … okay?” I asked.

Mom shook her head, and her chestnut hair, pulled into the
ponytail swung across the nape of her neck. “I don’t know. She didn’t respond
normally. She couldn’t even speak. Julia, what happened?”

The vampire slowly lifted her head and looked at Rina. “I
was sitting right here. As always. Praying for her to wake up, as always. And
then … well, she did. Her eyes slowly opened and she eventually focused on me.
That’s when I called for Ophelia to retrieve you. She looked around the room,
as if lost. Confused. Even when she saw you.”

Mom nodded. “Yes, I noticed that, too.”

“She … she does not recognize us?” Ophelia asked, her voice tight
with worry.

“She has been unconscious for eight months,” Mom said.
“Although Tristan and I have thought her brain waves appeared fairly normal,
she may have trouble returning to us completely. At least at first. We don’t
know the extent of the dark magic’s effects on her.”

Before we’d defeated Kali at Tristan’s trial, she had
blasted Rina with a powerful spell. At least, we thought we had defeated Kali.
We truly had no idea what happened to her soul after leaving Martin’s body. Or
what happened to Martin’s body, for that matter. It had disappeared before
anyone had noticed its absence.

Lilith and I had been hit by a similar spell in the Florida
Everglades, but somehow I had recovered. Lilith never had. Hopefully, Rina
will, although she’d been hit at a much closer range than either Lilith or me.

“Now that she’s come out of it, maybe I can reach her mind,”
I suggested as I gazed at Rina’s once again still face. My telepathy had been
useless with both her and Lilith before. Their brains were too far under to
reach.

Mom nodded, and I gave it a go. Rina’s mind signature
definitely felt different than it had the last several months, as if it had
more substance, but still not the same as it had been before. And when I
followed it to her thoughts, they were thin, gauzy, like a mist trying to take
shape but unable to solidify. I concentrated harder, as if I could focus her mind
for her, but, of course, I couldn’t.

“At least she
has
thoughts now,” I said. “I just can’t tell what they are.”

“Well, that’s better than the complete blank you were
getting before,” Mom said.

“I hope they clear.” I squeezed Rina’s hand, giving her as
much Amadis power as I could. Between sharing it with her and Lilith for so
long, however, pushing all that I had into them to heal their bodies and souls,
I was drained.

“Alexis, you need a break,” Mom said. “I’ll stay with her
today and tonight.”

“I’m fine,” I said, laying my head on Rina’s bed. “I just
need to rest a little.”

“You need to
sleep
,”
she corrected. “You need to recharge and regenerate.”

“Rina needs me,” I said sleepily.

“She needs your full power. Go. Get some real sleep. Spend
some time with your family. You need it.”

I opened my mouth to protest. I didn’t care what I needed.
Not when I’d failed Lilith because I hadn’t given her enough of what she
needed. Not when I could still fail Rina.

“Your
family
needs
it,” Mom said, cutting me off. “
Rina
needs you to do it.”

She knew how to get to me. I sighed with resignation, but
couldn’t bring myself to move from Rina’s bed. It wouldn’t have been the first
time I’d slept in her bed, but as long as I did while keeping my hand tightly
around hers and feeding her my Amadis power, I’d never truly regenerate. Mom
was right. I was depleted. Exhausted. Too tired to even move.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in my own bed.

A large, hard body pressed against the back of mine and a
heavy arm draped over me and held me tightly. I wrapped my hand over Tristan’s
and entwined my fingers with his. A thick, strong river of his love washed into
me, filling every cell as though I’d immersed myself under a waterfall of
emotion. Besides sleep, this was exactly what I needed. I drew on his love with
a hunger I hadn’t realized I’d had, as if my soul had been starving for this
connection.
How blessed I am to be his
,
I thought as my power began to rebuild within me.

Then Tristan stirred, and his mind signature brightened with
consciousness as he awoke. And the strength of the love flowing from him diminished
into a narrow stream.

That thought pricked at my heart.
Why would his love lessen?
That couldn’t be right.
No, not an actual lessening. Just normal
restraint. We all do it.
Of course that was it—consciousness kept his
emotions in check. Tristan was so good at controlling his emotions, but I’d
never before realized how much he kept his love hidden, even from me.

“Good morning,
ma
lykita
,” he whispered against my ear.

I peered around the darkness of our suite.

“It’s still night.”

“Hmm … I’d say about 3 a.m. Technically morning.” He rolled
away from me, onto his back. I turned over and saw his eyes still closed, and
laid my head in the soft crook between his shoulder and chest.

“Still night,” I said, closing my eyes. His mind signature
relaxed again, and his current of love strengthened. I drank it in as I drifted
to sleep.