Free Wrath by Kristie Cook Page A

whimpered her sister’s name. The vampire stirred, and her eyes finally opened. They were clear again as they found my face. She held her hand up, my necklace dangling between her fingers.
    “How long have you had that stone?” I asked as I snatched my necklace out of her hand.
    “Convert me,” she whispered. “For real this time. I want to be converted, and when I tell you everything, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”
    I pressed my lips together as Tristan’s hand squeezed my shoulder, then I stuffed my necklace and the other stone into my pocket before leaning back on my heels. I hadn’t left her mind, so I knew Kali was gone, and now I focused in on Sonya’s intentions. My hand wrapped around her forearm, and I pushed Amadis power into her. She didn’t even flinch.
    “It’s all in my mind and my soul still,” Sonya said to me. “Everything you and Sheree gave me, everything you taught me. Only my heart was blocked before. Now it’s open to you.”
    I narrowed my eyes as I pushed the power harder. She seemed to grab a hold of it, drinking it in almost as hungrily as she’d drink blood. When I felt satisfied with her response, I gave Tristan a nod. He took Sonya in his arms, I took Heather, and we all flashed back to the safe house.
    Heather sucked in a deep breath when we appeared. “Wow. That was . . .”
    “Weird?” I finished for her as I set her on the ground.
    “Very.”
    As soon as we were in the safe house, the new team Charlotte had brought took over Sonya’s conversion. Although having a Norman here made some of the Amadis uncomfortable—Heather wasn’t supposed to know about them—I wasn’t about to send her home where she’d be vulnerable. Everyone would have to get over it because she would be staying at the safe house, too.
    We told Charlotte what had happened—the little bit we knew so far—and we all shared theories about the holes in Sonya’s story. We wouldn’t really be able to fill them, though, until the vampire had fully converted. I agreed with her: she needed to be converted, for real this time, before I’d believe anything that came out of her mouth.
    Tristan and I returned to our home for the night, but sleep eluded me. Although Dorian was just one little boy, his presence made the house a home, and I didn’t like being there without him. The sun had barely risen before Tristan, Charlotte, and I had settled into my office to regroup when a conversion team member knocked on the door.
    “Sonya wants to talk to you,” the witch said. “All of you.”
    “She’s done already?” I asked with disbelief.
    “There’s no trace of Daemoni in her. We’ll need to spend more time with her, of course, and it’ll probably be a few months before she can be left to her own decisions, but all of her energy is Amadis.”
    Wow . Had Sonya been telling the truth about wanting to convert but not being able to? I pulled the stone out of my pocket and scratched the dry blood off with my thumbnail. While mine was ruby-colored, this one that came from Sonya was a dark emerald green. And while mine tended to warm when I touched it, this one grew cold. Charlotte peered over my shoulder.
    “Definitely looks like a faerie stone,” she said. “I can sense magic on it, but not mage magic. That’s Otherworld magic.”
    “Huh. If we’d only known . . . ” Without finishing my sentence, I rushed to the vampire’s room and held the stone out at her. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”
    Sonya’s dark eyes glanced at the stone, up at me, then at something on the blanket covering her as she sat in her bed. The same bed where she’d spent months, pretending to convert.
    “I was scared,” she finally said, and then she began babbling again. “I was scared you would throw me out for trying to fool you, and I thought I was stronger than the damn thing, and then the conversion seemed to be working. Sheree kept saying I was doing so well, that it always takes time, so I really