Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (23 page)

“
Baby Cakes
?
Is that a name?”

A petite female
suddenly appeared in the room with us, tossing her straight brown
hair over her shoulder and jutting out a narrow, jean-clad hip.

“Did you call?”
she asked as she unzipped her leather jacket.

I looked at Tristan and
back at her.

“This is Baby
Cakes,” Tristan introduced. “A faerie who’s been …
kind
enough to help us.” He sounded like the word ‘kind’
had been hard for him to spit out. “This is her place.”

“
One
of my
places,” she corrected. “Sorry it’s nothing much.
This part of the world is so … bleh. Not my favorite place,
but I keep it because you never know when it could come in handy.
Like right now.”

She gave me a kind
grin, but I certainly didn’t trust it. She was a faerie after
all.

“So did you need
something?” she asked. “It’s pretty ugly in the
Otherworld, and I don’t want to miss anything. It’s quite
entertaining really. Bree sends her love, by the way. She would have
come, but she’s … a little busy.”

“No, no, we’re
fine,” I said hurriedly, squeezing my hands together before I
rudely shooed her away. She seemed nice enough, but faeries equaled
trouble. We didn’t need any more trouble. Thankfully, she
popped out of sight without another word. “Great. So we’ll
owe her big time for this. Now back to what you said. What do you
mean still waiting? Char and them? Hopefully they’re not
flashing after knowing we got caught, so they’re probably not
even in Prague yet.”

“Yes, we’ll
owe her, but we didn’t have a choice. And it’s been over
a week since we saw Solomon, Char, and the rest, Alexis. They’ve
had plenty—”

“Whoa, whoa,
whoa. Another
week’s
gone by?”

“Nine days
actually. Since we arrived in Moscow.”

I pressed my palms to
my eyes. I couldn’t believe we’d lost so much time. That
meant it had been nearly a month since the Daemoni first attacked the
Normans. A month that the Amadis hadn’t been protecting them as
well as we should have been. My failure counts just jumped to epic
levels.

I told Tristan about
everything we’d discussed in the coffeehouse—the
conversation about the world going to hell with natural disasters,
war preparations, bombings, and more.

“Of course, that
conversation never really happened. Please tell me the world’s
not as bad as that.”

“Mmm … To
be honest, pretty much all of it’s true, some of it worse now,
from what we’ve been able to find out.”

I threw myself back on
the mattress and stared at the ceiling. “How can that be?”

“You must have
heard the sorcerers talking about it, or maybe they had the
television on, and you incorporated it into your subconscious.”

“The parts about
the Amadis and the portals?”

“Probably things
you figured out yourself and attributed to us in your imagination. If
you’re right about the portals, Owen can get us out of here as
soon as he’s up to it.”

“Unless it was
wishful thinking.”

I sat back up and
stared at the curtained window, wondering what went on out in the
world even as we spoke. How bad had the war become? My poor people,
fighting for their lives and for the Normans out there, when I’d
accomplished nothing but failure.

“The Amadis are
probably compromised,” I said quietly, hating myself as the
words came out. How had I not known that had been a mirage? How much
had I actually said? “If I’d been talking to myself about
our plans, like you’re saying, that Jeana bitch probably knows
them now, too.”

“Guess we’ll
find that out soon enough, when we’re back on the road.”

“Does that mean
we can get moving soon?” Vanessa asked from another room.
Tristan and I hadn’t exactly been whispering, but she’d
apparently been using her vamp ears to eavesdrop.

“She needs to
drink?” I asked.

“She’s
refused to leave Owen’s side and has been giving him her blood
to help him heal. I gave her some of mine right before we escaped,
but let’s just say that will only happen again in case of
emergency.”

I looked at him with my
brow raised.

“She was like a
fruit fly on crack with the strength of an elephant, hulk-smashing
everything in her wake.”

I laughed at the
visual. “That had to have helped you guys.”

“Yes, but I have
no idea the extent of damage done on the way without her even meaning
to. It’s probably the only reason she’s made it this long
without more blood, though, especially with as much as she’s
given Owen.”

“I can feed her.
And yes, dear sister, we’re leaving soon,” I said,
knowing she’d been listening to our conversation.

As soon as Owen felt up
to it and the time of night was right, we said a prayer, he opened a
portal, and we stepped through, hoping like hell we appeared in
Prague … or anywhere other than Hades.

We did arrive in a dark
alley near the safe house in Prague, but it was not the city I’d
always dreamt of visiting.

Hell had already been
here.

“What have they
done to my beautiful city?” Vanessa nearly cried the words out
as we walked the silent cobblestone streets, taking in the sights.
Not the kind we wanted to see.

Ever since seeing a
photography book of Prague when I was in junior high school, I’d
wanted to come here. I’d imagined then all the stories this
place would inspire. I immediately recognized the famous Charles
Bridge. Open only to pedestrians, it was where local artisans sold
their goods and musicians played under the life-sized bronze statues
of saints and legends. At least, that’s what the photographer
had written about the place. Now, half of those statues stood with no
heads and a whole chunk of the south side of the bridge had been
blown away. Billows of smoke rose from the towers at either end, as
well as from buildings around the city. The pitched roofs of some and
round domes of others looked like giants had punched holes through
them.

“I used to sit up
there at night and watch the tourists, picking out my dinner,”
Vanessa said nostalgically, pointing to the top of the tower at the
end of the bridge. “This was one of my most favorite places in
the world.”

“Not Key West?”
I asked, genuinely curious.

“Eh.” She
shrugged. “Key West and South Beach were fun for partying, but
believe it or not, I didn’t really enjoy them. They’re
too new. Too shiny. Nothing romantic about them. Not like this place
is … or was.”

As we walked through
most of old town, my telepathy gradually returned, and we declared
the city to be deserted. At least this part of it. We saw no one. We
sensed no presence of life, except for a few Normans huddled up in
buildings here and there, too afraid to come out in the open.

“It seems to be
evacuated,” Tristan said.

Owen put his hands on
his hips as he looked around the block. We stood in front of the
hotel where Solomon had told us to meet them. What remained of it,
anyway. Tendrils of black smoke still rose from a large pile of
rubble and ash. The charred odor made my nose twitch. Owen’s
mouth twisted, and the three lines between his brows appeared, as
they did when he fell into deep thought.

“Well, Solomon
said something about Köln, right?” he said. “Maybe
they went there next, since there seems to be no evidence of anyone
here, let alone anyone on our side.”

Tristan and I looked at
each other, but we had no argument, and since Dorian and Vanessa went
where we went, Owen created a portal. Within a few seconds, we’d
left the sad state of Prague and entered an improved situation in
Köln, which, I learned, was the German word for Cologne. Where
we arrived, in the shadows of a huge, gothic cathedral and surrounded
by a major shopping district, the area was dark, even the large train
station to our right. However, lights shone in the distance, which
meant the entire city hadn’t been destroyed and abandoned.

We sensed nobody inside
the cathedral and found no one on a search. Without knowing what else
to do, we walked several eerily quiet blocks to another church and
never passed a single soul. The Normans hid inside the buildings,
with many streets and the entrances to apartment buildings blocked
off, as though they’d barricaded themselves in. As if the
monsters couldn’t still get to them if they really wanted.

“We’re
pretty much lost without Solomon,” I said. “He said to
see the archbishop, but since he wasn’t at that cathedral, he
could be anywhere.”

“Including dead,”
Vanessa said helpfully.

A small person stepped
out of a dark shadow, and all of us went into defense stance.

“Relax,”
Baby Cakes said. “I come on Bree’s behalf. She said to go
to London.”

We all glanced at each
other, as if none of us knew how to respond.

“How can we trust
you?” Tristan finally asked.

“I helped you
before, didn’t I? If you didn’t have my place to crash,
these two would be dead.” She motioned to Owen and me.

“All the more
reason you wouldn’t help us again,” Owen pointed out.

She shook her head. “So
ungrateful.” But then she shrugged. “I can’t blame
you, of course. My kind can be a bit of a pain in the ass, can’t
we?”

That was an
understatement.

“Anyway, you can
choose to trust me, or you can wander around here like idiots,
wasting more time. Your call.” She disappeared.

As though her last
words triggered something in Tristan’s mind, he pulled his cell
phone out. The electrical power in Baby Cakes’ apartment had
been intermittent, so we’d only been able to partially charge
our phones, which hadn’t mattered much anyway, because we
couldn’t pick up a signal.

“Can we trust
her?” Owen asked.

“She talked a lot
about Bree,” Vanessa said. “While you two were out of it.
She definitely leans toward the Amadis side.”

“I trust her,”
Dorian said, and I wasn’t sure how helpful that was. On the one
hand, he was just a kid, regardless of how old he looked—older
and older every day. On the other hand, he’d been through hell
and back and didn’t return too trusting of people. Pretty much
the opposite. He had a sense for the Daemoni, too, which may extend
to all evil.

“Tristan?”
I asked.

“Yeah, she seemed
to know Bree,” he murmured distractedly as he jacked with his
phone. He held the device out to me. “Hold this for a sec.”

I snatched the phone
from him, more to get his attention, and the screen immediately lit
up. He grabbed it right back, knowing how I usually fried the things
to a crisp.

“Thanks, babe.”
He studied the screen before it blacked out again. “We go to
London.”

“Are you sure?”
I asked. “We could be walking right into a trap.”

“We don’t
have much to lose.” He held the dark phone up and waved it in
the air. “Besides, Solomon says so.”

“You heard from
Solomon?” Owen asked, moving closer as if he could see on the
screen.

“He sent a text
two days ago. They were headed to London. That’s all I could
see before the phone went down.”

“Well, then,
Owen, lead the way to London,” I said.

We not only walked into
a different country, but seemingly into a different world. We’d
barely arrived when a gray-haired man swung a sword at us and blew a
whistle at the same time. Another man and a woman, dressed in
military uniforms, ran down the street toward us.

The older guy spit the
whistle out and yelled, “Over here, over here.”

The soldiers lifted
their weapons, and the civilian Norman took off.

“We won’t
hurt you,” I called out, holding my hands up and stepping in
front of Dorian.

They shot anyway. We
flicked the bullets away before they hit us and ran. More shots fired
after us, but missed. Vanessa led the way and ducked into a shop.

“Cloak us,”
she hissed at Owen as two grungy-looking women in the shop held
knives in each of their fists and ran for us. We disappeared right in
front of them and hurried back outside.

Air raid sirens
suddenly blared. People ran chaotically through the streets, yelling
and wailing as they found shelters. Owen led us in a sprint through
London in the direction of the safe house, the only place we knew to
meet the others.

“It’s just
like World War II,” Tristan muttered, and jet planes zoomed
overhead, punctuating his point.

A few seconds later,
the bombs began to drop, many too close for comfort. The ground
quaked under our feet, knocking us off balance. The explosions were
deafening, making my ears ring. Shots were fired from somewhere down
the street, but I didn’t know if they were aimed at us or not.

“It’s right
up here,” Owen yelled, his voice muffled as he pointed to a
block of row houses two streets ahead.

We came half a block
closer when a bomb slammed into our destination, exploding the row
houses into bits of concrete, brick, and wood. I threw my arms over
my son, and Tristan dropped us both to the ground, using his body to
cover us. We lifted our heads just enough to look around. A soldier
came running down a cross street, blowing a whistle. No, not a
soldier, a policeman.

“This way,”
he yelled to nobody in particular, motioning his arm toward the
direction he just came from.

Normans began scurrying
out of homes and shelters and running toward him. He waved them down
the road and yelled at more to come.

“Hurry!” he
shouted, and he looked our way, although he couldn’t see us.
“More planes are coming. Anyone else?”

“We should at
least check it out,” Tristan said. “See where they’re
taking the Normans.”

We sprang up and jogged
down the street.

“I don’t
trust it,” Owen said.