Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (14 page)

His hands gripped my
hips as I slid up and down, both of us moaning and groaning as the
friction sent spikes of pleasure up through my belly and out across
my body. Then his palm slid forward and up over my breast, while the
other slid down my front, causing chills to sweep over my skin. I
leaned back against him, arching my head over his shoulder as his
fingers stroked and my hips rocked and his breaths came hot on my
ear, sending wave after wave of pleasure until my insides exploded
again. I screamed his name and he yelled out mine as we both came
together, quaking and convulsing and losing ourselves into the other,
becoming one soul, one body, one entity of love.

I’d nearly
forgotten how beautiful and primal we could be together when I didn’t
have to hold back. The sense of freedom overcame my mind, body, and
soul now that the mental wall had fallen, and our lovemaking became
so much more through the night as we slammed our bodies against walls
and into the ceiling, doing all those things we couldn’t do
when others were around.

And I no longer cared
that everyone knew what we were doing even if they couldn’t
hear us. Because Tristan was right—we needed this night
together. It would be our last for a long time. Maybe forever.

The time to move out
arrived quickly. News on the television and the web became unreliable
as governments and the Daemoni censored the media. We couldn’t
even access any networks in some countries, and others contradicted
each other’s reports. The world was quickly descending into
Lucas’s orchestrated chaos.

We spent a few days
consulting with our generals, so to speak, ensuring they were capable
of handling the Daemoni and the Normans on their own within their
regions. Our intelligence teams began to report back that the Daemoni
believed the Amadis was falling apart. As soon as rumors began that I
was no longer in control, we started packing up and making plans.
Solomon had a few places for us to visit in Europe to try to secretly
align with some Normans, although he warned us that he couldn’t
guarantee anyone would come through.

“We’re
leaving in eight hours,” I called through Dorian’s door
while knocking on it at the same time. “Are you packed?”

The door flew open, and
my son stood there with wide eyes, taller than me but looking like a
frightened child.

“You’re not
making me go with the others, are you?” he asked, panic lacing
his voice. Sasha stood next to him, the size of a Husky instead of a
toy dog. Her stripes vaguely showed through her thick white coat.
Dorian’s anxiety had her on edge.

“No, little—”
I paused. He wasn’t exactly a little man any more. “No,
Dorian. Of course not. You’ll be with Dad and me.”

He looked away, at some
point over my shoulder, and nodded, but I couldn’t help but
notice how his bottom lip trembled in the most minute way.

“Dorian.” I
stepped closer to him and put a hand on his upper arm. Sheesh. It was
thicker with muscle than it should have been at his age. “What’s
wrong?”

“I … I
just don’t want you guys to leave me,” he said. He
averted his eyes for a moment, and then threw himself at me, like the
little boy he should have been. “Don’t leave me again,
Mom.
Please
.”

I kicked the door
closed, wrapped my arms around him, and held him tightly. “No,
never, Dorian. I could never leave you. They
took
you,
remember?”

“Because you
left! What if they come back again?” His body shook in my arms,
and fear weighed heavily in his words as he sobbed against me.

I gripped his shoulders
and gently pushed him away from me, then walked him over to his bed.
We both sat down, and I held him again.

“Dad and I will
keep you safe,” I promised.

“You can’t
forever, though.” He drew in a jagged breath, then pulled away
and scrubbed his eyes as if I didn’t already know he’d
been crying. He scooted away on the bed until his back pressed
against the wall, then he tucked his legs up with his knees under his
chin. He stared at the wall across the room, but his mind was
elsewhere, and I looked to see where.
There
. At the DoD
building, where Kali and Lucas had been holding him. Threads of panic
ran through this mind, although I could grasp no coherent thoughts.

“Dorian, what did
they do to you?” I asked, not for the first time. He’d
never given me an answer before, but he’d never been as open as
this either. Maybe he’d tell me this time.

“Nothing,”
he muttered, his voice rough.

And maybe he wouldn’t.

I scooched my way back
to sit next to him and placed my hand on his leg. “I think they
did. You know you can tell me.”

He shifted away from
me. “They didn’t
do
anything. Just told me stuff.”

“Like what?”

When several moments
passed and no answer came, I looked into his mind again while
watching his face. His jaw muscle popped.

“Get out of my
head,” he growled. Well, that was new. He could sense me in his
mind now. “How come when you want to, you can just let yourself
into my head, but when I needed you, when I tried to warn you about
them coming, you ignored me?”

I sighed at his
accusatory tone. “I’m sorry. The way it works is weird. I
was focused on the meeting, and I felt you, but didn’t realize
it was you or what you were saying until it was too late. I have to
have my mind open to you all the time to be able to hear you
whenever.”

“And it’s
not?” he sneered.

“No, Dorian, it’s
not. I try to give you privacy.”

“Except just
now.”

“Except when you
have me freaking out about how you’re doing and you won’t
talk to me, yes.” I cocked my head to the side to look at him.
“I’m so worried about you, Dorian. And I don’t know
how to help you if you won’t talk to me.”

“I’m fine,”
he mumbled.

“No, you’re
not. And how could you be? They’re horrible, evil people who
kidnapped you!”

He rolled his eyes.
“Uncle Owen kidnapped me, and he took care of me. He made sure
nobody hurt me.”

“Just being away
from us had to have been traumatic.” I placed my hand on his
shoulder and squeezed.

“Yeah. It sucked.
But I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, Mom.”

“I can’t
help it. You’re still my baby.”

He snorted. “Right.”

I watched him for a
long moment, feeling the sadness emanating from his body as though it
leaked out of his soul.

“What did they do
to you?” I asked again. “And don’t tell me nothing
because you came back half-a-foot taller and half grown up.”

He shrugged. “That
pretty redhead asked what I wanted more than anything in the world.
When I said to go home, she said it had to be something else, so I
said to be big and strong like my dad. And she said okay.”

Bile rose in my throat.
That “pretty redhead” had been Kali, possessing a young
witch’s body. And of course she’d put a spell on him to
make him grow—the sooner Dorian went through puberty and gained
his powers, the sooner the Daemoni would have him. That was their
plan anyway. I’d do anything in my power to stop that plan.

“What else?”
I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Dorian …”

“Seriously, Mom.
Nothing. Just told me stuff, but it was stupid. I don’t believe
it. A lot of it, anyway.”

I studied him again and
peeked into his mind, but he concentrated on the ranks of characters
in his favorite video game so he wouldn’t think about the stuff
they told him. He’d already figured out how to keep me from
accessing his memories and thoughts.

“Well, don’t
believe any of it,” I finally said. “They lie. They don’t
know how to tell the truth.”

“Right,” he
said. “Except it’s true that Dad used to be one of them,
and your own father leads them? The jerkoff who
murdered
my
mimi?”

“Watch your
mouth,” I said automatically.

His eyes cut sideways
at me. The look in them caused me to pull back. He had the same hazel
irises as Tristan, and I swore I could almost see flames in the
pupils now.

“Yes, that’s
true,” I admitted quietly.

“So not
everything
they said is a lie.”

“Tell me what
they told you, and I can tell you which ones aren’t true.”

He blew out an angry
breath, and then sprang across the bed and to his feet, as if a
switch had been flipped, making him suddenly irate. “Just
forget it, Mom! I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Dorian—”

“Leave me alone!”
he shouted so loudly, I felt the vibration in my bones. He flicked
his hand, and the door flew open—another newly acquired power.

I narrowed my eyes and
walked right up to him. “Don’t you talk to me that way. I
am still your mother.”

“And if you care
about me at all, you’ll just let me be. Don’t make me say
the things they told me!”

Realization dawned on
me then, and I could easily conclude what “stuff” they’d
told him. The same things they’d told every Amadis son—the
Amadis didn’t care about him, he’d always be treated like
dirt here, the Daemoni would become his new family and they’d
worship him like a king. That the Amadis would kick him out and want
nothing to do with him. No wonder he’d been so scared that
Tristan and I would leave him. They’d already planted the seeds
in his mind of what they thought his future would grow into if he
stayed with us. This explained his mood swings, too.

“Dorian, don’t
believe them. Nothing has to be the way they said.”

“No, but it will
be,” he said under his breath, but I heard him loud and clear.

“Dorian,” I
gasped.

“Just leave me
alone, Mom.” He sounded weary now. “I’m not going
anywhere, except with you. Just let me pack.”

I stared at him for a
long moment, but finally nodded. “You can only take a
backpack.”

I strode for the door,
vowing to myself to make sure he knew he was always wanted here with
Tristan and me.

“The Daemoni have
already dug their dirty, disgusting claws into our son,” I told
Tristan a little while later while we checked our weapons in our
suite. I only had my trusty dagger, inherited from Cassandra herself,
and a knife I kept in my boot, but Tristan had all kinds of things
hidden here and there among his leather fighting gear. Not that he
ever used them. He mostly relied on his supernatural powers.

“Did you really
expect anything different?” he asked.

I frowned as I looked
at him. “I expected them to tell him lies, which I guess they
did, but they also told him the truth about you and Lucas. And they
already started their whole spiel about how he belongs to them.”

“I know, Lex. He
told me.”

My brows rose. “Really?
He talked to you about it? And you didn’t tell me?”

A feeling of betrayal
niggled at me under my skin. I couldn’t decide whom I felt more
betrayed by, though—my son or my husband.

He chuckled quietly.
“Yeah, he came to talk to me. I figured he’d tell you
when he was ready.”

I grimaced. “Well,
then. He wasn’t exactly ready to tell me anything at all. I was
happy to get out of him what I could. Why would he tell
you
everything?”

Tristan set the silver
throwing star he’d been polishing on the bed and strode over to
me. He wrapped his arms around me and planted a kiss on the top of my
head. “Because you are his mother, and he doesn’t want to
disappoint you.”

“And you are his
idol.”

“I’m also a
guy, and he knows I’m not perfect. Especially now that he does
know about my past with them.”

“But why would he
disappoint me? It’s not like he’s done anything wrong.”

“Because he
thinks it’s inevitable that he
will
do something wrong.
That he’ll leave us. He’s already feeling guilty about
it.”

“Oh.” I
pressed my cheek against Tristan’s solid chest and considered
this for a moment. “Well, he has nothing to feel guilty about
now, and all he has to do when the time comes is say no.”

“
Ma lykita
,
it’s not so cut and dry. He will have a decision to make, and
only he can make it. Our boy is carrying a heavy load on his
shoulders.”

“He doesn’t
have to. He just has to know this is where he belongs.”

“Yes, my love,
but be prepared that no matter what we do, we might not be able to
change anything. Or maybe we do by pushing him the wrong way. He
needs space to learn and grow and be able to make the decision for
himself. And he needs love and trust to do the right thing.”

I made a face, but
eventually nodded. “Okay, fine. I won’t pressure him. But
do you really think he’ll be okay?”

Tristan blew out a
heavy breath. “Honestly? I don’t think you want to know
my answer to that.”

My heart squeezed. I
knew he was right. My son would never be okay again.

But really, I didn’t
know if anyone in this world would be right again. Once we left the
confines of the mansion and the Amadis Island in the wee hours of the
next morning, I learned just how right I was about that.

The world would never
be the same again.

Since flashing was no
longer an option unless we wanted to be trapped by the Normans, or
worse, the Daemoni, Owen created a portal for our entire group to
pass through, taking us into the Italian countryside. We needed to
arrive somewhere secluded, but our target was Rome. Well, Vatican
City, more specifically. Solomon thought the Pope would still be on
our side, and therefore, his millions of followers. The problem was
getting to him.

We arrived in some
overgrown vineyards on the side of a hill, a place Savio had told
Charlotte about shortly before I kicked him off the council. He’d
said the owner of the small winery had let the place go for years
after her husband passed away, and then she died, too. If she’d
had any heirs, they hadn’t claimed the land. With no reason for
the Daemoni to expect our appearance here and no Normans around, it
provided the perfect place for us to suddenly appear.