Purpose (26 page)

Another growl rumbled in Tristan’s chest.

“Please help me,” she whispered, her eyes
pleading with us.

“It’s a trick, Owen!” Tristan barked. “What
the hell are you thinking?”

“No,” she said, her eyes looking wild with
protest. “Please. I don’t want to be them. I never did. What they
did to me…I hate that life.
You
have to know, of all
people.”

Tristan’s hand never moved, but his eyes
exploded in flames. “Of all people, I know the trick of
pretending
to want to change.”

“And you
did
want to change, Tristan,”
Owen reminded him.

“She’s not me!”

Owen stood to his full height, only a couple
of inches shorter than Tristan. His eyes looked hard as sapphires
as he glared at his best friend. “You’re not the only one who hates
that life. We’ve converted many who never wanted to be like them,
but were forced against their wills.”

They stared at each other, as if in a
stand-off. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the woman. Her stringy
hair draped around a dirt-smudged face. Her high cheekbones and
angular jaw might have given the impression of strength at any
other time, but right now she looked scared and weak. Actually, she
looked downright pitiful. I could hardly believe that just a minute
ago she’d been a deadly beast.

“This is what we’re supposed to do,” Owen
finally said to Tristan, breaking the silence. “This is part of
being Amadis. It’s our obligation to help her, to save her
soul.”

“It’s not what
we
do, Owen!” Tristan
bellowed, making me jump and pulling my attention away from the
girl. “Not you or me. That’s what Rina and Sophia and some of the
others do. Not us! We can’t do it! And you’re putting Alexis’s life
on the line.
Your
job is to protect Alexis!”

Owen’s eyes darted to me, to the woman and
then back to Tristan. “She’s been here since yesterday morning.
She’s had plenty of opportunity if she wanted to do anything.”

Tristan’s eyes narrowed as he leaned toward
Owen. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but I would
have sensed her.”

“I had her under a separate shield, blocked
from you. But I couldn’t guarantee both shields would hold while I
was gone, so I put her under this one right before I left.”

Tristan responded with a long growl deep in
his chest. His anger frightened me. If he lost control, he might do
something he would regret later. He had every right to be angry
with Owen, of course. This Were’s presence could have posed a
danger to us…if she weren’t so damn pathetic looking.

Tristan rocked back on his heels.

“You could have warned us,” he finally said
to Owen, anger still in his voice but not as heated as it had been.
“I still think it’s a trap.”

“
He’ll never believe me. Night’s coming.
They’ll come looking for me. I’d rather him kill me than go back to
them.”

I continued watching the young woman as she
trembled on the ground, Owen’s light blue shirt fluttering around
her. Her eyes turned to me and focused on mine. She seemed to plead
with me for understanding.

“Tristan, I think she might be for real,” I
said quietly.

“
Yes! She’ll do it! She can change
me!”

“Alexis—”

I held my hand up to stop him and tried to
indicate with a lift of my eyebrow that I heard more than our
spoken words. I wanted nothing more than to block out this woman’s
thoughts. I was already tired of people entering my brain, with no
way to control it. I didn’t know why some thoughts were so loud and
clear and others were annoying hums and buzzes. I really wished it
would all go away, that I could at least turn the ruckus off at
will. But I couldn’t. And this woman didn’t know I could read her
mind. She wouldn’t be trying to get to me through telepathic lies.
Her thoughts were real.

“Please help me,” she whispered, her eyes
still holding mine.
“Please say she believes me. Please, please,
please!”

“We’re supposed to help her, right?” I asked,
looking at Owen. I knew little about the Amadis, but Rina once said
the Daemoni tried to destroy human souls and our job was to protect
them, to save them. Owen nodded. “How?”

His body noticeably relaxed. “I hoped you
could—”

“Are you
crazy
?” Tristan growled. “She
can’t do anything! She’s not ready!”

My eyes went wide and I shook my head. “Owen,
I don’t…I can’t….”

I didn’t know what he expected me to do. I
had no idea how to convert souls. I knew Mom used her power of
persuasion and I also knew the physical actions she used to lead
people to do as she said. But I didn’t know how she actually
persuaded them. I didn’t have that power. At least, I didn’t think
I did.

“She just needs Amadis power right now, to
keep her subdued,” Owen said. “I’ll call for Amadis help when we
leave for Atlanta in the morning. For now, just share your
power.”

I stared at him with disbelief. The girl’s
eyes jumped back and forth between us, her expression mixed with
hope and fear. I felt bad for her and wanted to help her. But what
Owen asked…I didn’t know if I could do it.

“She’s not strong enough,” Tristan said and I
looked at him.

“You said you could feel it,” I reminded
him.

He shook his head. “Not enough to do what
this…this
thing
needs.”

“Please,” the girl said. “Just try.
Anything.”

I looked at Owen and he nodded. Then I looked
at Tristan. The fire in his eyes had died down to just sparks. He
was coming around.

“She’s not a thing. She might not be exactly
human, but—”

“She’s evil!” Tristan said.

“Which is why I have to try,” I said to him
and then I looked at the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Sh-sh-sheree.”

“I make no promises, Sheree,” I said. “I have
no idea what I’m doing. And if you try anything, these two will
stop you in an instant. Understand?”

Her head twitched again, but she still
couldn’t move it. I wasn’t willing to take the chance of asking
Tristan to lift his power. He might be right. This could truly be a
trick. I just took the twitch as a nod of understanding. I raised
my right arm and turned my palm toward her, pushing that warm
energy out of it.

“AAAAHHHH!!!” She screamed. Her body
convulsed as if in agonizing pain, even against Tristan’s power. I
jumped back, jerking my hand to my chest.

“No! Don’t…stop!” She begged through panted
breaths. “It hurts…but…it’s working. I can feel it.”

I tried again, but even I could tell the
energy came weakly. I barely felt the pull through my arm and out
my palm. Sheree trembled, her face twisted in pain, but the
quivering quickly slowed. Tears fell down her cheeks. I strained,
pushing harder, but nothing more came. I, too, began to shake, all
of my muscles feeling like jelly.

“That’s all I have,” I said weakly. “I’m
sorry.”

“That’s all you can project,” Owen said.
“It’s harder from a distance. Maybe if you touched her, held her
hand, like Rina does….”

“No!” Tristan roared. His free hand twitched
and I soared into the circle of his arm. He held me tightly against
him. “You’re not going anywhere near her! She could kill you,
Alexis. Hell, for all we know, you could kill her.”

“I don’t care,” Sheree said, her voice rough
and pleading. “They’re going to kill me anyway, after this. I’d
rather die trying than die…evil…damned to Hell.”

Her words struck me like a mallet hitting a
gong, reverberating throughout my body and into my soul. If she
died right now, would she be damned to Hell? I didn’t know the
answer, but that wasn’t a risk we could take. We had to help her.
Her soul lay on the line.

“You can handle her easily if anything
happens,” I said to Tristan.

“You have no idea what the process is like,”
he said through clenched teeth. “It’s draining. It sucks your
energy dry. Both of yours. And you’re already unstable as it
is.”

“But between the three of us, we can at least
help her fight it,” I said. “You can help me.”

Tristan looked at Owen. “Why don’t you just
call for someone right now? Someone who can handle this
better?”

“The Amadis are all fighting. There are
attacks everywhere, remember? The closest ones are finishing the
battle I just left to make sure you two were okay.”

Tristan swore under his breath. He looked
down at me and I raised my eyebrows in a silent plea. He gave in
with a groan.

“Let’s get out of the damn trees, at least.
Owen, take the Were to the balcony. And Owen…” Tristan paused until
he knew he had Owen’s full attention. “I swear, if anything happens
to Alexis, you will live a long life full of painful regret. I
personally guarantee it.”

Owen inclined his head in acknowledgement,
then helped Sheree to her feet. Her knees knocked together and I
was surprised she could hold herself up. She looked so weak. She
pulled the shirt tightly together in the front, but she was so
tall, Owen’s button-down shirt barely reached far enough to cover
the important lower parts.

Tristan strode off toward the house, his hand
wrapped around mine, tugging me along with him. He slammed the door
as soon as we were inside.

“I can’t believe this,” he growled. “This is
insane.”

“It’s not for long. We’ll get help,” I said.
“Right?”

“I just don’t get it. This is not like Owen.
He wouldn’t jeopardize your life like this. What is he
thinking
?”

I gently pushed on Tristan’s chest, backing
him against the kitchen counter. He slumped down and pulled me into
his arms. I placed my hands on each side of his face.

“He’s thinking like an Amadis,” I said.

“No. He’s thinking with his dick.”

“Tristan!”

“There’s no other way to explain it.” He put
his own hands on the sides of my face and pulled it up toward his.
His lips pressed down on mine, but he broke off too soon. “I think
we’re too much for him.”

“I wasn’t done kissing you.” I’d felt
something besides normal desire when he kissed me, so I crushed my
lips on his. The longer we kissed, the stronger I felt. His love
boosted my Amadis power. I finally pulled back, though, before I
passed out from lack of oxygen. I forced myself to remember how to
breathe. “That’s how we’re going to do this. She needs to feel love
again.”

“Then let Owen give it to her. We’re busy.”
His lips left an electric trail down my chin, around my jaw and
down my neck. His hands slid over my back, one traveling lower,
squeezing my cheek. My hands glided along his head to the ponytail
and pulled him back.

“I don’t think it works like that,” I
murmured over the pounding of my heart. “She needs
love
. Not
lust.”

“Mmm…it makes me feel better.” A small smile
tugged at his delicious lips and, to be honest, I wanted to let him
take me right there on the kitchen counter. Apparently, he wanted
the same thing because his thought of lifting me up and yanking off
my panties floated in my mind. But Owen paced the balcony outside,
making impatient sounds with each turn. Tristan sighed and gave a
sideways glance out the sliding glass doors. “At least he put some
clothes on her.”

I peeked out the window. Sheree sat on the
balcony floor, her knees pulled to her chest in a ball. Seeing her
human form in a different setting made it even harder to believe
she shifted into a killer cat. She still wore Owen’s shirt, the
sleeves rolled up to just above her wrists, and she now wore a pair
of red-and-blue-plaid boxer shorts, as well. I couldn’t have
provided any better. Not only were nearly all of my clothes dirty,
but she was tall and thin. I was short and, at least when I came
here, fat. My own shorts only fit me by rolling the waist several
times or with a pin. They would fall right down to her ankles.

“Is that what started this? Her being naked?”
I asked.

He chuckled. “No, my love. Seeing your naked
body through that little dress is what started this.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Is that another power
you haven’t told me about? X-ray vision?”

“No. I don’t need x-ray vision to know what
you look like under there.” He tapped his temple with his
forefinger. “I have the memory firmly locked in right here. A very
nice memory.”

“A very distracting memory.”

He shrugged in concession. I moved to break
free of his embrace, but he tightened his arm around me. With his
other hand, he lifted my chin to look me in the eye. The green of
his eyes was clear and deep, but the gold sparked, on the verge of
flames.

“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured. “In
fact, I really prefer that you didn’t.”

“Tristan, what would you have done if you had
decided to leave them, but my mom hadn’t been there for you right
away? You’d already made the move, they knew what you were doing,
but you were there with no immediate options.”

“I would have fought them when they
came.”

“Exactly. And you would have crushed them.
Don’t you see she can’t do that? You can see how weak she is. And
all those bruises…they’ve already beat the hell out of her. She
thinks they’ll come looking for her.”

“If they’re all fighting right now, she’s the
least of their worries.” He sighed and leaned his forehead against
mine. “I guess that means it’s the best time to do this. But you
must know I won’t hesitate to kill her if she does anything to
you.”

“I know.” I kissed the tip of his nose. “I’m
counting on that.”

I took his hand and led him to the glass
doors.

“But only if there’s no hope for her,” I
added. He sighed with resignation.

As soon as I opened the doors and stepped
onto the balcony, a wave of cold air blew over me, causing a chill
to run down my spine. It wasn’t because the air temperature had
become nippy. Early April in the Keys provided ideal temperatures
with highs in the low eighties and even now, with the sun beginning
to set, it had to be at least seventy-eight degrees. That cold
blast came from Sheree.