Kristie Cook - Wrath

And nobody—not even a dozen men with automatic assault rifles—could stop me from getting to my son.

Just as I was about to make the leap, though, something hard slammed into my side. The breath whooshed out of my lungs. My vision went dark.

Only for a moment. Like a blink. And when I could see again, I was lying on the ground, face up, sucking in a breath of air. Tristan blocked my view of the night sky, hovering over me with his hands on each side of my head and his knees on each side of my legs. He’d flashed me away from the gate. I guess there was someone who could stop me.

Using only my mind, I pushed him away and sprang to my feet.

“What the hell did you do that for?” I yelled.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled back as he suddenly appeared right in front of me, towering over me. “Innocent people, Lex? What’s the matter with you?”

“I was almost through!”

“And how many would you have killed in the process?”

“As many as it took.”

He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “You need to calm down. This isn’t you.”

No, it wasn’t. But at the moment, I didn’t care. “I just need to get there.”

I flashed again. Hit another wall. Landed on my ass in a foot of snow.

“You can’t get through,” Tristan repeated, grabbing my hands and pulling me to my feet. “I’ve already checked the border from the coast to Minnesota. The Daemoni knew we’d come and must have sent their mages out.”

I yanked my hands out of his grip. “Isn’t this what they want, though? Don’t they want to lure us right back there?”

“They probably want more of a head start. I don’t know. But that’s exactly why we can’t go there.”

“I don’t care if it’s a trap!” I seethed.

“Alexis—”

“That was my house, Tristan,” I yelled. “My safe house to guard and protect! My people! And they somehow found their way in, killed our mages, made a mockery of us. Of me. And they TOOK. OUR. SON!”

A rush of blood thundered in my ears as rage consumed me, the pressure in my head forcing my eyes to squeeze shut. My chest felt like iron crushing every last molecule of air out of my lungs.

“I will find him,” I said, quietly because I had no air to force the words out with the vehemence that made my body quake.

“I know.”

“And I will kill every single asshole who tries to stop me.”

“And I will help you.”

I opened my eyes with this declaration and finally looked at Tristan. He still stood right in front of me, his feet shoulder width apart and his arms crossed over his chest, his muscles bulging with tension. I looked up at his beautiful face hardened into stone with the same fury I felt. His hazel eyes were like marbles, the gold in them sparks of fire.

His vow was what I needed. To know he stood by my side, that he would do whatever it took to get Dorian back and to make the Daemoni pay. I’d been afraid this had broken him. Or that he’d given in because everyone said losing Dorian was inevitable; we just didn’t know when or how. Now we did. But I’d never give up.

I refused to allow this to happen. It wasn’t Dorian’s time. We were supposed to have years still to figure out how to break the curse that sent all Amadis sons to the Daemoni. I would fight for every one of those years, for every day, for every hour I could have with him in the meantime. And I needed to know Tristan would, too.

This knowledge allowed me to finally suck in the breath my body desperately needed.

“And they will be very slow and painful deaths,” Tristan added.

“Damn right,” I said with renewed anger. “So how do we get there?”

“We do it the right way.”

“Which is?”

“Not alone. We need an army, Alexis.”

“We don’t have time for that!” I began shaking as the rage threatened to overwhelm me. “Every hour counts. Every minute. We don’t have time to gather even a small team, let alone an army.”

“You’re thinking in human terms.”

“He is human, Tristan! At least, in a lot of ways. He’s growing and changing all the time. A day feels like forever to him. And I don’t want to think about what they could be doing to him.” I ended my rant with possibly the longest string of profanity to ever leave my lips.

Tristan clutched each side of my face, making me stop and look up. “Dorian is valuable to them. They won’t hurt him. They’ll treat him like a prince. Try to win him over.”

“Even more reason to hurry. I can’t stand the thought of Dorian being exposed to their lies and deceit. To their evil . He’s only a little boy! And, my God, what about Heather? She’s an innocent Norman who shouldn’t be involved. What will they do to her ?”

Tristan grimaced, having no answer. At least, not one I’d want to hear.

The feral energy within me couldn’t be suppressed. I strode back and forth alongside the invisible wall, and pressed my hand to different parts of the shield, looking for a weak spot. Although I couldn’t see the barrier except for a waver in the air here and there, the wall felt like stone under my palm. Maybe we could have broken through if Owen were here where he belonged, helping us instead of Kali, the damn traitor . . . . Well, that line of thinking only pissed me off more. If Owen had to go down with the rest of them, then so be it.

I stopped in my tracks with that thought and looked toward Tristan, but without seeing him, lost in my own mind. He must have discerned something in my expression, because he rushed to me and gathered me into his arms.

“I’m no better than them,” I choked out around the lump in my throat. “All I can think about, see with my eyes and in my head, feel with an intense and sickening delight is . . . murder.”

I trembled in his arms, his touch still not comforting me as it usually did.

“I know, ma lykita . I know.” He tightened his hold on me, to the point where it should have hurt but I was too numb to feel it. I would have welcomed the pain. “I felt it, too. But I know from experience it will subside. The irrational rage will eventually dissolve.”

“But I don’t want it to,” I admitted. I wanted Psycho Alexis, with all of her rage. The fury. The irrationality of it. The overwhelming hate.

That feeling drove me to do what needed to be done.

“You can’t let your emotions control you,” Tristan reminded me. One of my weaknesses. One of many.

But I couldn’t afford to be calm right now. To be rational. To think things through and respond rather than react. Dorian couldn’t afford it.

“Otherwise, you’ll go flying into situations you can’t handle,” he continued. “Situations that will get innocents killed. Get you and me killed. And then we’ll be no good to anyone. Including Dorian and Heather.”

More anger bubbled within me. Anger that he was right. Charging into Hades, the Daemoni’s underground city headquarters where the Ancient Demons themselves lived, would definitely get us killed. I would gladly sacrifice my life for my son, but the end goal was to release him from their clutches. I would die trying to do so, but I’d sure rather my last breath be drawn knowing he was free.

Shit . Rationality was already setting in.

I pulled away from Tristan and threw my hands into the air. “So what do we do now?”

“We build an army. Gather intelligence and create a plan. We arm ourselves in every possible way. Then we act. We take every one of them down and get our son. Or at least die trying.”

“So, what? Go to the Amadis Island?”

He shook his head. “We need to go back to the safe house first. That is your house. Our house. We need to take care of it and not leave Blossom to clean up the mess by herself.”