Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (24 page)

We stopped within yards
of the policeman, who continued to blow his whistle and call for
civilians. Only a few more stragglers came running. A crowd had
gathered at the far end of the street he directed them down, where an
eight-foot-high, barbed-wire-topped fence stood.

Vanessa stiffened.
“Nope. Never. No fucking way.”

I glanced around at the
war-torn neighborhood, wondering what we should do. Familiar shapes
emerged from a partially standing building, and although covered in
white ash, I recognized them right away.

Blossom! Charlotte!
Sheree!
I mentally yelled for them and wondered at first if my
telepathy had stopped working again because they didn’t
respond. But all three of them stopped in their tracks, causing Jax
and Solomon to halt, too.

“
Alexis? Is
that you?
” Blossom nearly squealed in my head, making me
cringe.

“Owen, they can’t
see us.” I tugged at his shirtsleeve.

He turned to see who I
meant and immediately removed the cloak.

Our reunion would have
been joyous if the cop didn’t start blowing his whistle in a
panic as he scampered down the street. Others jogged toward us—not
unarmed cops, as they were in England, but well-armed soldiers.
Oversized, beefed up, frightening ones. The kind that looked like
they may have had some lykora blood.

“Come with us,”
one of them said to us as they ran. “We offer shelter and
safety.”

“Hell no,”
I muttered.

“You are
required
to come,” he said, and they raised their guns to point toward
us. “You come, or we’ll shoot.”

“Good luck with
that.” Owen said as he waved his hands to cloak our group. “We
need to get out of here.”

The heavy steps of the
soldiers followed us for half a block, apparently expecting us to
show again. When we didn’t, they started shooting. Someone
obviously watched and controlled their trigger fingers.

“This way,”
Solomon said, turning us down a narrow road to our left.

More planes soared
overhead. The soldiers behind us stopped firing and retreated.

“To that church,”
Solomon said, and we began running as more bombs fell.

We crashed inside and
slammed the wooden doors shut. Charlotte ran down the center aisle of
the sanctuary, toward a door in the back.

“There are
usually bomb shelters downstairs,” she said, and we all
followed her.

Through the door was a
corridor with two passageways and several more doors leading off of
it. We checked each one until we found steps leading downward into a
cellar apparently used for storage. Metal racks lined the stone
walls, the shelves stacked with boxes and cans.

“It’s
food!” Dorian said excitedly as his eyes scanned the boxes. He
looked at me, as if actually asking for permission, but Owen didn’t.
He broke open a package and dug in.

“I don’t
see how they can eat.” Blossom sidled up next to me, the ground
and building trembling around us.

I looked up at her, and
our eyes locked for a brief moment before we swallowed each other
into hugs.

“I’m so
glad you’re okay,” she said, her voice watery and choked.

“You, too.”
I squeezed her tighter.

Sheree came over and
joined our group hug. “We were so worried. All of the Amadis
thought we’d lost you. Solomon had to send word to make sure
nobody showed signs of mourning. We just had to hope you were okay.”

The building above us
shook again, and chalky dust rained down. We pulled apart, and I went
to join Tristan, taking a seat next to him on the floor. He ate
pudding out of a plastic cup with his fingers. He held a dark brown
glob out to me, but I shook my head. The chocolate tempted me, but I
couldn’t bring myself to suck on his fingers with everyone else
around.

“These aren’t
biscuits, they’re cookies!” Dorian said when he opened a
package and looked inside. He stuffed at least three in his mouth at
once before holding the bag out to me. I did take a couple of those,
nibbling on the crumbly goodness, too afraid to devour them—my
stomach growled and clenched at the same time.

“Please tell me
these bombs aren’t meant for us,” I said to nobody in
particular.

“It’s
Normans against Normans,” Solomon said. “It’s been
going on since we’ve been here. An hour or two of air raids,
then twelve or so of peace before they begin again.”

“Who’s
doing them?” Tristan asked.

“Everyone. I’ve
spotted planes from France, Germany, Italy, Iraq, China, and Japan.”

“Geez,” I
muttered. “World War III really has started, hasn’t it?”

“We haven’t
seen or heard anything from the U.S. or about it,” Blossom
said. “Information only travels by word of mouth anymore, and
nobody here seems to care about the Americans. I’m hoping we
can go there next, and it’s not so bad. I mean, who would bomb
the U.S., right?”

“The Daemoni,”
Solomon said.

“Yep,”
Vanessa agreed. “It’s the Daemoni making all of this
happen. The U.S. won’t be safe for long.”

“We need to find
where Lucas has the Summoned, and that’s where we’re
going, regardless,” I said.

We caught each other up
on everything we’d been through and learned while we’d
been separated. Solomon had been able to reach a few other council
members before the networks started failing. No region was doing
great, but they managed to hold themselves together, at least as of
two days ago. Conversions had increased, but not nearly at the
accelerated rate the Daemoni turned Normans. Eventually they’d
have to stop, though, or they’d extinguish their own food
source, especially with all the Normans dying by their hands, at war,
or by the not-so-natural disasters.

The group had gone to
Prague from Moscow, but couldn’t reach Solomon’s contacts
before war broke out there. Then they went on to Cologne and stayed
there for a few days, hoping we’d show up.

“I have not been
able to reach anyone else, but we learned a lot of chatter from the
Daemoni channels regarding London and the rest of England,”
Solomon finished. “We thought this would be the best place to
start the search for the Summoned. I’d about given up that you
would ever see my message to come here, and we’d left the safe
house just tonight.”

“Did we have
people there?” I asked.

Charlotte shook her
head. “No. They evacuated those in need of protection to
outside the city when the bombs started dropping. The rest scattered
to help the Normans, and hopefully gather some of the newly turned.”

I nodded and swallowed.
I didn’t know if I could handle a pile of Amadis deaths on top
of the Norman ones I’d already dealt with in the last
twenty-four hours. Tristan sat with his back against the wall, one
knee bent up with an arm rested on it, and the other knee pulled in
on the floor. I scooted closer to him, leaned my head back against
his shoulder, and closed my eyes. Dorian sat on the other side of me
and lay against me, so I draped an arm over his shoulder and across
his chest.

Life sucked. War
sucked. No doubt about it. But for the moment, I could be thankful to
at least have my two men and my closest friends still alive and back
by my side.

My people, however,
were another story. And so were the Normans.

We couldn’t rest
here for long.

As soon as the building
stopped shaking for more than thirty minutes since the last blast, we
crept our way upstairs. Unable to see through the stained glass
windows, Tristan and I went over to the doors, and he opened one just
enough to peek through.

The street was
deserted, covered in dust and ash and littered with big chunks of
concrete, pieces of roofing, and shards of glass. At least, the
street appeared to be empty of life, but Tristan and I looked at each
other, both of us hearing the beating heart about twenty-five yards
away. A whimper followed.

“We have to help
them,” I said.

He nodded, and we ran
out without telling the others, knowing half of them would follow.
Vanessa and Jax did anyway. We found a middle-aged woman more than
half-buried in the rubble, so we hadn’t been able to see her
from the church.

She looked at us, her
eyes grew wide, and she screamed.

“Shh, no,”
I said. “We’re here to help.”

I moved closer, and she
yelled louder. She tried to wriggle away, but a large beam pinned her
leg to the asphalt. I wasn’t sure if she screamed even louder
from the pain or the fear shining in her blue eyes as she stared at
Vanessa and me making our way down to her because the guys were too
big to fit in the small crevices.

“Shut. Up!”
Vanessa said, but the woman ignored her.

“We’re
trying to help you out of here,” I said, “but please
stop. You’re going to draw attention.”

“HELP ME! THEY’RE
OVER HERE!” She screamed, and then she glared at us with wild
animal-like eyes. “You’re them. I know it. You’re
not touching me, you evil, horrible whores!”

Vanessa growled while
at the same time lifting the beam off of the woman. I grabbed her
under the pits and pulled her away, then slid one arm under her neck
and the other under her legs and picked her up.

“Stop!” a
man yelled the moment I crested the pile she’d been buried
under.

“You stop.”
Tristan held his hand up, palm out. The man couldn’t move, and
by the look he gave the woman, I thought he must be her husband.

“We’re
helping her,” I said as I carried her over to him.

His eyes grew as wild
as hers when I approached. “No! I … I know who you are.
Put my wife down!”

I bent over and laid
her on the ground. When I came up, I stared down the barrels of
several guns trained on me. Soldiers had come from nowhere—well,
probably from the compound down the road, but we hadn’t noticed
their arrival. My damn mind was on the fritz again.

I held my hands up in
the international signal of surrender, but yelled at them. “We’re
only trying to help, you idiots! That’s what we do. We
protect
you from the true evil ones. We just saved her life!”

“Or infected
her,” her husband spat, still not helping the woman in front of
his feet. He didn’t even bend over or look at her to inspect
her injuries. He feared that he’d catch what we supposedly had.

“She has a broken
leg and probably internal injuries,” Tristan said. “Get
her some help, for God’s sake.”

He lifted his chin
infinitesimally, signaling Vanessa, Jax, and me, and we all blurred
away before something stupid happened. Something stupid happened
anyway. The soldiers fired their mother-effin’, god-forsaken
guns at us. I was so tired of being shot at. And although I should
have been immune to it by now, every time, my mother’s bleeding
body came into view. Every time, I watched her die again and again
and again. It was all I could do to not turn and shoot a few electric
bolts at them.

They’re just
Normans. They don’t know what they’re doing.

I wasn’t so sure
about that last part—they didn’t have that glazed-over
look in their eyes. They didn’t appear to be under control of
some third entity. But I kept telling myself that anyway before I did
something just as stupid as them.

We slammed the church
door shut behind us, and I stomped down the center aisle, glaring at
the angel statues in the corners and the image of Jesus on the cross
depicted in stained glass straight in front of me, behind the altar.

“Why?” I
demanded. “Why can’t we just do what we’re supposed
to do? Why are You making this so hard?”

No answer came. Not
that I expected one. I was beginning to feel like we were completely
on our own down here.

“Alexis,”
Tristan murmured as he laid a strong, warm hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t
want to hear everything happens for a reason,” I snapped,
shrugging him off. “
We’re
here for a reason. We
supposedly have this purpose we’re supposed to serve. But every
time we turn around, we’re being shot down.
Literally
.
I’m so damn tired of being shot at!”

I strode out of the
sanctuary, into a small room to the side. I didn’t know
anything about Catholic churches, or churches in general. Mom taught
me the Bible herself, and not just because we moved around a lot. She
hadn’t said so then, but I was pretty sure now she hadn’t
wanted my education—my training—to be tainted by human
interpretation. Because humans were pretty fucking stupid sometimes.

So I sat in the middle
of three short pews in whatever kind of room this was supposed to be.
A table full of unlit candles stood in front of the first pew.
Another image of Christ hung on the wall, this one three-dimensional.
I dropped my head into my hands, covering my face, not wanting to see
Him or Him to see me.

“Lex.”

I jumped at the voice,
thinking it belonged to Jesus at first. Sheesh. I peeked through my
fingers at Tristan in the doorway.

“I need some time
alone,” I said. “Before I lose my sh …” I
couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud in a church,
especially with Him still staring down at me. “My mind. We have
no place to go from here. Every time we step outside, we’re
shot at. The Normans don’t want our help. They only want to
kill us. We have nowhere to go and no way to get there even if we
did.”

“Answers will
come,” he promised.

“Oh, I’m
sure you’ll figure out something brilliant, but for now, I need
to be alone.” I flicked my finger and shut the door. And
immediately felt guilty for it, so I didn’t get mad when he
stopped it from closing all the way and came inside. He sat down next
to me, wrapped his arms around me, and pressed his lips to my temple.

“I’ll give
you your space, but first I have to tell you how much I love you.”
He rose, strode out of the room, and shut the door behind him.