"It"s awful. So glad I don"t have to worry about that."
"So how do you and the others get blood?" I asked as we left the bathroom, and she led me back toward the dining area where Tristan and Owen still sat at the large table in the middle of the vast s.p.a.ce. I"d probably help Sheree later, but at the moment, I didn"t think my body or soul could handle it. Especially my soul. An ironic thought of how I myself needed faith healing tried to niggle its way in, but I pushed it out as I listened to Vanessa.
"I"ve been out a lot with Owen, so he"s been my supplier." She gave me a little grin. "My favorite, of course. Well, besides you or Tristan. But we do have a blood bank here, over there with suppliers of other goods." She nodded her head sideways, toward our right.
"Like a marketplace? With money?"
"No money. Everything"s based on need and barter right now. All on the honor system. If we grow much bigger, though, we"ll need to figure out something better."
"We?" I asked.
"Charlotte pretty much runs the place, but we all help her with big decisions like that. Your council at work."
Huh. I would have never thought ...
"Show me everything," I commanded.
Vanessa and Owen started us back in the kitchen, this time introducing Tristan and me to the people they knew, who in turn introduced us to the others. Most were Normans, besides Blossom and two other witches who directed the rest of the staff. Jax was nowhere to be seen.
"Jax oversees deliveries," Owen explained when I asked about him after we left the kitchen through a door that faced the same bathroom I"d been in minutes ago. "We"ve decided to save as much power as possible, so we don"t use the golf carts and forklifts Brogan has stored up front unless necessary. Don"t need them as long as we have mages, vamps, and Weres to do the heavy lifting."
Next to the bathroom was the marketplace Vanessa had just been telling me about, looking like a makeshift flea market. The section blocked off for it was quite large, although most of it remained empty. A few stands were cl.u.s.tered together alongside the dining area, made up of plastic tables and cardboard boxes with sheets and blankets hanging between them to separate the "shops." The blood bank was here, along with a kiosk with dried herbs and other reagents for the mages. A witch and several older, Norman women sat in a larger booth, busy at work mending clothing and blankets or knitting and hand-sewing new pieces.
"As long as we can find them material, they"ll work all kinds of magic," Owen said as he pulled out a couple b.a.l.l.s of yarn from the inside of his jacket and tossed it into the basket next to one of the women. She gave him a wrinkled smile, adoration filling her gray eyes.
"Explains why you raided the yarn basket at the house next to ours," Tristan said. I hadn"t even noticed Owen had done that when we"d been back at the Keys, looting the homes. "I thought you"d taken up a new hobby."
"Har-har," Owen retorted.
"This young man here saved my granddaughters" lives," the woman said to Tristan and me. "I"ll make him anything he ever wants."
"How old are they?" I asked her.
"One"s six and one"s eight. They"re the sweetest things. Their mama and daddy had gone out for food when the big bombs dropped. We ran for the old fallout shelter my husband, G.o.d rest his soul, had put in our backyard back in the day. My son and his wife never came home. We"d eaten our last bite of food two days before this young man came along."
"Oh, wow." I sighed, my heart hurting for what they"d had to go through.
"They"re doing as good as can be expected," the grandma said. "They"re over at the school with the other kids, many of them in the same situation-one or both parents gone. But at least the young"uns made it. Gives us hope for a future." She shifted one of her knitting needles into the other hand and reached out to lay her palm on my belly. "You"re bringing us more hope, child."
My brows furrowed. How did she know?
She grinned. "Word travels fast around here."
She reached for my hand now and gave it a squeeze. I noticed she had an A.K."s Angels tattoo on her inner wrist. Her smile widened, showing a capped tooth toward the back.
"I"m a new fan. Once I learnt how so many of these folk found each other, I was curious. Especially when they said they learnt how to survive because of your books. You bet I"ll be making my girls read them as soon as they"re old enough."
I didn"t know what to say except thank you. The shocks to my system were never-ending today.
We let her return to her work, and Owen and Vanessa stopped us by the Medical section, where Carlie and another woman doctor ran the hospital that had a surprisingly decent setup, if not all of the equipment they needed.
"This was the residential area where Brogan had originally bunked his guests," Carlie explained after we greeted each other with excited hugs and exchanged the two-minute versions of our stories. "The larger rooms he used to reserve for families are what we use for surgery and admin. The single rooms allow the patients privacy."
"I guess you get a lot?" I asked.
She nodded. "Enough. We require all of the humans to spend a few days in quarantine when they first arrive to make sure they don"t bring in anything contagious. And we constantly have hunters in here." She made a face. "I had to st.i.tch up James" a.s.s once after he"d sliced it open on a broken window. It was gross."
"Ugh." I suppressed a shudder. "I"m so sorry."
She shrugged. "Having no anesthetic at the time made it better."
I shook my head and laughed. "You"re a little evil, aren"t you?"
"Only to a.s.sholes."
Once we left the Medical area, we walked around the dining s.p.a.ce and entered the School Zone. Like the marketplace, the section was divided with cardboard and sheet walls, each with kids surrounding plastic tables and boxes. In the room with the children about Dorian"s age and a little younger, a familiar face greeted us.
"Alexis! Tristan!" Heather jumped up from her four charges and rushed over to hug us. She looked around, as though searching for someone else, and frowned. Her voice came out in a whisper. "I"d hoped the rumor wasn"t true about Dorian. I"m so sorry."
"We"ll get him back," I said firmly while the backs of my eyeb.a.l.l.s p.r.i.c.ked.
"I"m glad you"re both okay." She looked over her shoulder at the two girls and two boys at her table. "I better get back to work."
"Teacher, huh?" I asked, forcing a smile. "It seems fitting."
She let out a small chuckle. "I guess. I do my best. It"s three parts teaching and one part grief counseling, though. These poor kids ... but at least they"re still alive. We have hope."
I bit my tongue, holding back a sigh while we checked out the rest of the school. We found Teah and Teal, the cousins who"d been with Heather and Sonya in Cape Heron, teaching other cla.s.ses. I counted forty-two children between the ages of three and fifteen. Vanessa said anyone over fifteen was put to work, and there were a handful of toddlers and infants who stayed with their parents. Sure, seeing that children had survived gave me the tiniest bit of hope, but compared to how many had died ... I couldn"t accept the optimism everyone here seemed to embrace. The events of the day had improved my outlook, certainly, but there was a reason I"d woken this morning with a heavy heart.
"This is the part you"ll both love," Owen said as he led us to the area marked Training. At least three-quarters of the mind signatures in the entire place were here. "What Brogan had built before."
"Except this part. This is the boring stuff," Vanessa whispered as we pa.s.sed by the sections closest to the rest of the compound. Shelves of books and photo alb.u.ms lined the cinderblock wall that separated the Training section from the dining area. "Horticulture and plant identification, which I guess is necessary for the Normans so they don"t eat poisonous plants, although nothing grows anyway, so I don"t know if it really matters."
"Also so they can learn how to grow food," Owen added, apparently hearing her, and Vanessa shrugged. "Brogan collected a huge library of information for everything from first aid-" he pointed to a s.p.a.ce where a dummy lay on a card table surrounded by gauze, dental floss, and other items "-to shoemaking to making your own batteries to welding. There are cla.s.srooms over there to our right for when something special comes up. Some of the best stuff is how to recycle the junk we create and scavenge into useful items. Without magic!"
"Yeah, who knew," Vanessa muttered teasingly.
We paused by the gym area, where several people worked out on treadmills, stair-climbers, and stationary bikes or lifted weights, before heading toward the back. The first insanely huge room we entered, the size of four footb.a.l.l.s fields and walled off on all sides, was the archery range. People of all ages, from sixteen up to sixty, men and women both, target practiced with compound bows and crossbows. An instructor walked behind them, adjusting stances and holds for better aiming. After that, we peeked into the shooting range, which was even bigger than the archery range and where the walls were padded to absorb a lot of the sound, but it was still necessary to wear earm.u.f.fs.
"I keep a m.u.f.fle spell on that place," Owen said once we left. "Otherwise, we"d all be suffering migraines."
"Do they have silver bullets?" Tristan asked.
"Not for practice, but in the armory. That"s why we scavenge anything silver. In the back is a machine shop with a forge." He stopped in front of a large, open section covered in mats. "I expect you"ll be spending some time here."
Dozens of paired-off people practiced martial arts, kickboxing, wrestling, and boxing. Brogan walked among them, stopping now and then to correct someone"s form.
"He has a strict training regimen," Owen said. "He"s pretty good, and Mum helped for a while, but she"s been too busy with managing everything and conversions. I think you, Tristan, can do even better."
Tristan crossed his arms over his chest as he watched and nodded. "They"re not doing badly, but they can do better with a little help. Do they all train in weapons, too?"
"Of course," Vanessa said before she strode off to show a woman how to angle her hand to hit her partner"s weak spot dead-on.
"Who do they plan on fighting?" I asked. "They can"t even go above ground, can they?"
"The air"s clean in some places," Owen said. "We"ll explain when we can all sit down together. There"s a lot to figure out."
"I know there"s a lot we need to discuss," I agreed, and I lifted my arms to indicate the Normans surrounding us. "But these people aren"t a part of it. They need to stay down here, where it"s safe. Because they really may be the only hope for the future."
"They want to fight, Alexis," Owen said. "Look at them. Look at the determination on their faces."
"They can"t fight our war," I protested.
"It"s not just your war," Brogan said, suddenly by my side. "These people have lost everything. Their homes. Their businesses. Their ways of life .... Their loved ones. They-all of us-have just as much vested in the war against those Daemoni sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes as you do, if not more. You won"t be able to stop us from fighting with you."
I tried to push my hand through my hair, but it got caught up in the ratty tangles. "Those people can"t fight. They"re human. There"s no way they can defeat the Daemoni."
"You know that"s not true," Tristan said. "If we can train them properly, they"ll be prepared."
I stared at him for a long moment before shaking my head. "No way. We"ve already lost enough humans and Amadis. What are we going to do? Take the few hundred here to face the hundreds of thousands of Daemoni and their Demons? I don"t think so. You and I have one more battle to fight for our son, Tristan, but we"re not leading these people into another war that can"t be won."
"Ye of little faith," Owen said as he clipped his walkie-talkie to his belt. I"d only noticed him talking into it out of the corner of my eye. "It"s not just us here. There are people and Amadis around the world."
I rolled my eyes and snorted. "Bulls.h.i.t. Tristan and I have been around this world. You"re the first and only souls we"ve found that don"t belong to the Daemoni and their volunteer servants."
"You"re wrong, Alexis. Let"s go see Mum, and you"ll see proof. A messenger has just arrived."
As we headed back to the front of The Loft, I reached my mind out to find the new arrival"s signature in the same room we"d been in earlier at the Intake section, and I frowned. Robin, the were-falcon who I"d kicked off my council, was with Char.
"Ms. Alexis?" Robin"s greeting was a mix between a chirp and a squawk when I walked through the doorway, and she immediately dropped to a knee with her head bowed.
I entered the command post farther and tilted my head as I studied her. Was she kissing up to me now? She"d been one of Rina"s council members to put Tristan on trial, and then when I took reign, she hadn"t exactly been supportive. She"d questioned my methods and abilities too much for me to feel comfortable with keeping her on my council, so I"d dismissed her, along with a handful of others. And now here she was, bowing to me. I wasn"t sure what to make of it. Her thoughts matched her actions, but she"d expect me to check them and would prepare for it, so that didn"t mean much.
"Please, get up." I circled around her to Charlotte"s side.
Robin rose to her feet, but rather than look down her long nose at me with her round, beady eyes as she usually did, she gazed at the floor.
"I"m very happy you"re safe and sound," she said quietly. She paused, but as if she"d been waiting to say her next words for a long time, they came bursting out of her. "And I apologize greatly for my actions before. I should have believed in you."
I let out a harrumph. "But you were right. I failed."
Her head snapped up, and she looked at me with widened eyes. "You saved the Norman soldiers. You did exactly what you said you"d do. What needed to be done to protect the Normans."
"Protect them? They were far from protected. And I haven"t stopped Lucas and the Daemoni. Human lives have been lost. Amadis, too. The world is only worse."
"Well, the war continues, but that"s how war is. It must get worse before it can get better. You told us that. And you will have victory in the end."
I narrowed my eyes and gnawed on my bottom lip. Who was this woman, and what happened to the real Robin? I would have asked if I hadn"t been able to feel her very authentic mind signature. She was definitely Robin the were-falcon who"d once served on the Amadis Council.
"So you have news for us?" Owen asked as he turned one of the plastic chairs around and sat on it backwards, propping his elbows on the table in front of him.
"Wait another minute before you start," Char said to Robin. "We"re not all here. I"ve sent relief for Blossom and Sheree so they can join us."
A few minutes later, my team had a.s.sembled around the U-shape of conference tables in the command post. My. Team. Just thinking the two words lifted my heart after so many months of thinking I"d never see them again. Of thinking they were dead. This room, with its cheap, plastic furniture and whiteboard-covered walls, was a far cry from the grand room of the Amadis Council Hall, but we were all here. That"s all that mattered now. Tristan and I stood with Charlotte and Robin at the front of the room, and I looked at each of their faces-Blossom and Jax, Vanessa and Owen, Sheree-and smiled, fighting tears of happiness to have us reunited.
"Stupid hormones," I muttered as everyone watched me wipe my eyes, earning a chuckle.
"So have you found anything since the last time you were here?" Charlotte asked Robin, whose gaze had jumped to my midsection. Tristan and I quickly moved over to lean against the front of the closest table so she could face us all at once, and I self-consciously wrapped my arms over my belly.
"I"ve found several groups of Normans and Amadis spread through the United States," she announced, and I gasped.
"Alive and ... normal?" Tristan asked. "Not possessed or serving the Daemoni?"
"Not including them, yes," Robin answered. "There are many of those, but there are also many pockets of people in hiding, just like those here. Many are in underground, sealed-off compounds like this. In some areas, they"ve been able to go to the surface for short amounts of time, so I was able to find them. A lot have Amadis mages keeping them cloaked and protected."
"Wow," I breathed, but then the air caught in my lungs. "Dorian?"
The word came out as a demand, and Robin bit her thin lip. I wanted to shake her.
"Have you seen Dorian anywhere?" Tristan asked.
She shook her head. "I thought he ..." She looked at Char, Owen, and Vanessa before her gaze came back to us. "He left ... right?"
"We don"t know where he is," I said. "There"s no evidence he"s crossed over to them yet, but we found no trace of him either."
"I did overhear a couple of Daemoni say he was with a faerie. I don"t know where, though. They also said Lucas is waiting on Dorian, because he can"t force his decision. So there"s nothing for the Daemoni to do right now, but enjoy their victory. And that"s exactly what they seem to be doing."
A faerie? Was that what the matriarchs had meant by a neutral party? Wasn"t that just dandy. We could only hope the faerie was actually unbiased and didn"t have Daemoni leanings. Maybe Dorian would even fall for the faerie magic and never want to leave. If only that were a real possibility, but I highly doubted it. Too much was at stake. He was probably with a male faerie for that very reason. At least he wasn"t with Lucas. Yet. At least he was alive. As far as we knew.
I sighed, fighting back more tears. d.a.m.n hormones. "How many people? Norman and Amadis?"
Robin lifted her broad shoulder in a shrug. "It"s hard to say. I"ve found a few larger groups like this one that are a mix of Norman and Amadis. And a lot more smaller ones that are one or the other. The ones with Amadis who can spend longer times on the surface say their groups grow every day as they find new survivors or Daemoni who want to convert."
I straightened up at this. "Have you happened to have found one in Arizona? In a big cave?"
"Oh, yes, that"s one of the largest groups. How"d you know?"
"Um ... rumors ... the Angels ... you know." She didn"t need to know everything, but it couldn"t have been that surprising that I"d heard from the Angels. She knew Rina used to receive messages.
She c.o.c.ked her head for a moment, eyeing me, but appeared to dismiss whatever question she had. "Well, the Arizona group has a whole network of connected caves. They"re pretty established and constantly growing."
"Really?" Huh.
She shifted her weight on her bird-thin, jeans-clad legs, and nodded. "I"m sure there are many, many more. It"s difficult to scope areas out very well when you"re a target as the only bird in the sky, so I know I"ve missed some. And I"ve flown as far south as Mexico, where another Amadis were-falcon has been searching. There are more in Central and South America, which means there must be groups all over the world."
Now I shook my head, and my shoulders dropped as I slumped against the table again. "Tristan and I have been all over Europe and Africa. There was n.o.body except Daemoni."
"Are you sure?" Robin asked. "They"re hiding very well, for good reason. Deep underground."