Power (Soul Savers) (19 page)

“Yep, that’s it,” Owen said through the speakerphone as soon
as Tristan answered the call. I was so happy to hear his voice, I bounced on
the balls of my feet like a child. “Didn’t you read the note right inside? The
one that said, ‘call me before you open the bags’?”

“First of all,” I began, “what do you mean you thought you’d
hear from us by now? We’ve been trying to contact you for over a year, Owen.
Over a freakin’ year! And then you disappear with the freakin’ Daemoni, and you
don’t have the decency to at least text back and say, oh, I don’t know, ‘Hey, I’m
alive.’ Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? And now you call up like
nothing’s wrong, asking about some delivery with
nothing
to indicate it came from you, our long lost friend and my
so-called
protector
.”

The line remained silent.
Oh, no. Did I scare him off?
It’d been so long and I was so thrilled
to hear from him but angry, too, that I’d forgotten the circumstances that had
caused him to leave. When I’d just taken out the person who he’d thought had
been his father.

“Ouch,” Owen finally said. “So-called, huh?”

Whew
. “Yeah. So.
Called. Because you’re not here protecting me, are you?”

The sound of his throat clearing came over the line. I could
picture him running a hand through his blond hair. “Right. Yeah. I guess I
deserve that.”

“So are you coming back? Or did you decide to send us some
fancy souvenirs from all the places you’ve been in the last year while we’ve
been worried sick about you?”

Owen chuckled but even through the phone, it didn’t sound
humorous. “I guess you could call the contents souvenirs of a sort. Not what
you’re thinking, though.”

“What’s going on, Scarecrow?” Tristan asked, apparently
hearing the same dark tone I did.

“Just, uh, wait until morning to open them. That’d be the
best time. And don’t let anyone else open them, okay? It’s really—” A
loud clamor sounded in the background. “I, uh, gotta go. Catch ya later.”

“Owen,” Tristan and I said at the same time, but no reply
came. The phone’s screen showed
Call
ended.

“What happened to him?” I asked, throwing my arms in the air.
“Do you think he’s okay?”

“Scarecrow can take care of himself,” Tristan answered as he
headed for our bedroom with me on his heels.

“I can’t believe him,” I groaned. “After all this time …
that’s all he says. What do you think the delivery is?”

Tristan shrugged. “We’ll find out in the morning.” He lifted
his eyebrows at the look I gave him. “Owen said wait until morning. I’m sure
there’s a good reason for it.”

“Fine, I won’t be
reckless
,”
I said as I plopped onto the bed. “But, it’d better be good, since it didn’t
even sound like he’s coming here. Which is probably in his best interest right
now, because I swear I’m going to kill him if I ever see him again.”

The next morning I couldn’t get out of our home and to the
safe house fast enough. We found the delivery in my office, and I stared at the
two beautiful wood-and-leather boxes for a long moment. Each about three feet
long and two feet high, they resembled old-fashioned travel trunks, piquing my
curiosity even more at what could be inside. The intricate carvings in the
wood, the leather adornments and the ornate silver latches made me think they
must have come directly from the Amadis Island. But what would Owen have sent
from there? And why him, when he hadn’t been there for so long? Or had he? He
didn’t tell us where he called from.

Tristan and I knelt side-by-side in front of one of the
trunks, the one with a number 1 scratched into the lid. The other one showed a
number 2.

“Guess we open this one first,” Tristan said. He jiggled the
latches but they didn’t budge.

“Don’t tell me he put some kind of spell on them and forgot
we couldn’t counter it,” I muttered.

“No. He knows what he’s doing.” Tristan studied the lid of
the trunk for several minutes, ignoring the impatient tap of my fingernails on
my leg. Finally, with deliberation, he touched three of the carved designs as
if in a certain order. The latches popped open. He grinned. “Scarecrow and I
have our ways.”

I shook my head as Tristan opened the lid. Black velvet
lined the interior, at least what I could see of it. A tray sat across the top
of the trunk, hiding the contents below. A folded piece of paper lay in the
tray.

Let me know when you get this. Take to a ‘safe’ place before opening
the bags. And be sure to open them in the morning light.
Tristan, you’ll know what to do. Owen

“Well, we don’t have to call him,” I said, lifting the tray
to reveal two leather bags. “What does he mean by ‘safe’? He sent them to a
safe house.”

I pulled back the drawstring top of one of the bags to take
a peek.

And screamed.

Tristan pushed my hand away and slammed the trunk closed.

“Did … did you see …? Was that … what I think …?” I couldn’t
get the words out as the thought of what I’d just seen sucked the air out of my
lungs.
It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t
be.
Surely I didn’t see what I thought I had. My eyes had to have been
messing with me. I mean, I’d only caught a quick glimpse before Tristan had
shut it out of sight.

“Yeah, I saw,” Tristan said through a clenched jaw. “We
can’t open these here.”

His tone and implication made my stomach roll.

“Alexis,” Sheree said from the doorway.

Tristan sprang to his feet and jerked me up with him, but my
trembling legs could barely hold my weight. With a hand on my waist, he walked
me to the door, as if he didn’t want Sheree inside, near the trunks.
Was it really …?
I swallowed down the
acid that had lurched into my throat.

“Um … are you okay?” Sheree asked, her voice distant beyond
the rush of blood in my ears.

I tried to look at her, but I couldn’t see her face past the
image of the black bag and the smooth, white—I blinked and shook my head,
trying to erase it from my mind. It didn’t go away, but danced around like a
ghost only my eyes could see. My lips parted, but no words came out. My tongue
stuck to the roof of my dry mouth.

“What’s going on?” Tristan asked, his tone sharp.

“I, uh, wanted to talk to you about Sonya, Alexis.” She
paused but I still couldn’t answer, so she went on about something having to do
with Sonya and Heather and a phone call. “It went really well, did wonders for
her, and I think she might be ready for an in-person visit.”

Her voice stopped again, and I looked at her without really
seeing her. She apparently waited for me to say something. My hand drifted to
my temple and massaged, as if that would make the vision go away.

“We can talk about it later,” Sheree said, her eyes
tightening with worry as she stared at me. “You look like you’re about to be
sick.”

“Later’s a good idea,” Tristan said, speaking for me again.

Thankfully, Sheree left us, and only then was I able to let
out the breath I’d been holding since Tristan first opened the trunk. The
breath felt good in my tight lungs, so I tried deep breathing while closing my
eyes to center myself, but on the back of my eyelids I saw my hand reaching inside
the trunk, opening the bag and then the …
No!
That’s not what it was.
It couldn’t be, because Owen would never, ever send
us such a thing in a million years. Would he?

“We need to move them,” Tristan said. My throat remained too
dry and constricted to answer, so I simply nodded.

He raised his hand and one of the trunks lifted into the
air. I swore I heard the contents inside shift and rattle. My imagination ran
wild about what could have caused that sound—if it’d even been
real—and I bit my tongue to stifle another scream. With a hand that shook
worse than a recovering drug addict’s, I lifted the other trunk with my own
power and followed Tristan out of the room.

We’d put Sonya in one of the five guest rooms in the right
wing, so, purposely avoiding Sonya’s wing and Sheree, Tristan took us down the
left side. We passed the two master suites, continued to the end of the hall
and turned right into the rear wing. Three bedrooms and a bathroom were back
here, most recently used by the previous owners’ nanny, live-in maid, and chef.

I called this wing the dungeons, not only because it was the
remotest part of the mansion, but also because Tristan, following Mom’s
instructions, had bolted heavy silver chains to the concrete walls and attached
silver cuffs on their loose ends. The rooms were furnished similarly to the
others, with beds, nightstands, chairs, and table lamps, but the chains on the
walls and the carts in the corners housing medical supplies made the rooms
anything but homey. Instead, they felt as though we’d somehow merged a hotel
room, a mental facility, and a torture room in the cellar of an old castle.

The eerie environment didn’t help the foreboding feeling in
my stomach.

We took the trunks into one of these rooms and set them on
the floor. Tristan closed the door, then grasped me by the shoulders. The look
on his face told me I’d really seen what I thought I had. My body began to
tremble again. Or perhaps it had never stopped.

“
Ma lykita
, it’s
okay to be afraid,” he said softly, looking into my eyes, “but I need you to be
brave. You remember the definition of courage, right?”

My head bobbed once. Not only had he and Charlotte pounded
their definition into me while I trained back on the Amadis Island, but we also
drove it into Dorian’s memory every time we worked with him.

“Feeling fear, but doing what’s necessary anyway,” I
whispered.

“Right. I need you to be courageous, because you need to see
this. It won’t be the last time you’ll come across something like this, and
there’s a chance you won’t be in a safe place next time.”

“Then it really was … was a …” I tried to swallow but my
throat refused to cooperate. “… a person’s hand?”

He nodded. I felt all the blood drain from my face.

“Oh, dear God.” No way did a person fit in that trunk, not
whole anyway, which only meant … “
Holy
hell!
Who is it? Is the rest of him in these trunks?”

In answer, Tristan lifted the lid of the first trunk and
pulled out the leather bags. With a solid determination I could never muster,
he withdrew the hand, which remained attached to an arm, and I knew immediately
it didn’t belong to a “he,” but to a “she.” The skin was whiter than snow.

“A vampire?” I whispered.

“Remember what you learned? To kill a vampire, you must cut
it up and burn the pieces. If you don’t burn them …” Tristan pulled out the
other contents of the bags from that trunk, laying out another arm and the top
of a naked torso with perfect, full breasts. The pieces, all of them rock hard,
started trembling in place, as if the floor under them quaked. Then …

“Oh. My. God.” I threw my hand over my mouth.

The body parts were
moving
.
Moving! The sound of stone scraping across the ceramic tiles screeched like
nails on a chalkboard as the pieces inched across the floor on their own
volition. They slid toward each other, as if each one was magnetically pulled
to the others.

Tristan fingered the top of the other trunk to unlock it and
lifted the lid. He pulled out more bags, these containing hips and butt,
thighs, calves and feet, and placed them near the rest, the display
representing a morbid piecemeal of a human form. Somehow in my daze, I pulled a
blanket out of the closet and was about to throw it over the naked female’s
chopped up body.

“Wait,” Tristan said, holding his hand up to stop me. “You
have to let it finish first.”

He stood and turned his back to give the … the thing …
privacy. He pulled me into his arms but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the
macabre scene. Each white, stony body part made its way to the others and
latched on with a sick, sucking sound like shoes pulling from mud. The body
melded itself back together until it was whole. Well, almost whole.

“Where’s … where’s her head?” I whispered. The form ended at
the shoulders with only a stub for a neck. The whole thing began to vibrate,
quivering on the floor as if it knew it was missing a vital part but didn’t
know where to find it. My own body shook and my voice came out as a shriek,
escalating with hysteria. “She doesn’t have a head. Where’s her head? Oh, my
God, it’s not here! She doesn’t have a head, Tristan!”

A faint
pop
sounded and suddenly Owen stood in the corner of the room. His eyes immediately
went to the body on the floor, and he nodded in appreciation.

“Last piece,” he said, holding up another leather bag, a
round object the size of a basketball shaping its bottom. My stomach churned
again.

I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t squeal my happiness at seeing
him. I couldn’t scold him for his gruesome delivery. I couldn’t do anything. I
simply stared in a daze as he moved toward the snow-white vampire. His body
came between us, thankfully blocking my view as he pulled the …
Oh, God, the head
… out of the bag.

But I did catch a glimpse of the hair.

My eyes trained in on the long, silky locks as my brain
processed what I’d just witnessed and what I saw now.

Long, silky,
white-blond
hair. The newly re-formed vampire let out a long sigh—and even it was
musical.

I gasped.

“No. Fucking. Way.”

My mind tried to decide whether to thank Owen for capturing
Vanessa or to demand from her where my necklace was. My body didn’t wait on the
decision, but acted on its own. One moment, I stood in Tristan’s arms and
peeked around his shoulder. The next, I had the vampire-bitch by the upper-arms
and slammed her against the concrete wall.

Her head flew toward mine with a head-butt, but I blocked it
with a hand in her face. Of course, this meant loosening my hold on her body,
which she took advantage of. She did a spin-and-duck move under my arm, freeing
herself completely from my grasp. I swung my leg in a roundhouse that pounded
into her ribs but she caught my foot before I could kick her again. I flipped
out of her grip and lunged at her. We flew into the steel medical cart and
crashed to the floor, medical tools and supplies clamoring around us. She
grabbed my throat and her ice-blue eyes held mine as she punched me in the
cheek. I zapped her with a shot of electricity. She pulled her knees under me
and shoved me hard with her legs, and I flew backwards like a ragdoll. My head
and back cracked against the wall.