Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (35 page)

Sitting next to Owen on
the couch on the far side of the room, Vanessa cocked her head. “I
hear it, too. It’s over by you.”

I jumped off Tristan’s
lap and to my feet, and he joined me.

“Sounds like a
really fast heartbeat,” he said. “A bird?”

“A cloaked Were?”
I asked, and I spun in a circle, swatting at the air in case an
invisible bat or Jax’s friend the eagle, who’d spied on
us before, watched us now.

“Hold on.”
Vanessa said as she moved nearer to me. The sound was so close to me,
but my fists didn’t land on anything. Owen and Char both
flipped a spell in my direction, but nothing showed itself. Vanessa
crouched lower, placed her hands on my shoulders to stop me, and
leaned her head down further. She bit her lip. “Tristan, come
down here.”

He knelt on one knee,
and we all fell stone-still to let him listen. He tilted his head and
leaned closer to me. Pressed his ear against my lower belly. His
brows furrowed for a moment, and then he looked up at me, his eyes
full of awe and adoration … and hope. He smiled.

“No way,” I
squeaked.

He beamed brighter as
he sprang up and scooped me into a hug, swinging me around in
circles. Everyone jumped to their feet, whooping and cheering and
congratulating each other. As if they were all a part of it. I
supposed they were.

Tristan finally set me
down, and I pressed my hands to my abdomen, still not able to believe
it. The enthusiastic commotion around me faded so all I could hear
was my baby’s heartbeat and my own. Tears filled my eyes,
threatening to spill over the rims, and not tears of joy. While
everyone else apparently wanted to celebrate, I couldn’t bring
myself to be thrilled with this major change in circumstances like
they obviously were. I just wanted to run away. To hide. To be by
myself and think. Because my mind, my heart, my soul remained stuck
on one question.

How the hell could we
bring an innocent baby into
this
world?

As if to emphasize this
predicament, a loud crack cut through the air over us, and the roof
fell to the floor.

The walls shook, and
screams came from the upstairs bedrooms.

“Dorian!” I
yelled as I ran up the stairs. The ceiling caved in over me, and a
beam dropped on the steps ahead. I hurdled it, swinging my arms as I
ran to knock away the plaster and pieces of wood falling around me. I
grabbed the doorknob and shoved my whole body into it, pulling it off
its hinges as the wall it had been attached to fell over. I threw the
door to the side and swept my arms around my son who’d been
stumbling toward the door.

“You two get out
of here,” Tristan yelled at us over the blasts that kept
hitting the mansion, knocking more parts of it down.

“I got you, Mom,”
Dorian said, and he lifted us out of the wreckage.

“Noah!” I
yelled at Tristan as we soared higher in the air. I watched him run
for the basement, Jax meeting him at the door, and when they
disappeared down the stairs, I feared I’d never see them again.

The lights of magic
spells, in various colors, streaked through the night as Daemoni
mages attacked the mansion, and Owen, Charlotte, and Blossom fought
back. My mind still remained blank, but Jeana and Merrick played a
role in this, no doubt. If not them, then another sorcerer, because
Owen and Char had had the mansion shielded.

Dorian set us down on a
branch at the top of a tall pine. Right below us stood two young
women wearing leather jackets, jeans, and knee-high boots, with hair
down to their butts, one raven-haired and the other blonde. I
recognized the dark-haired one—a were-cheetah who’d
chased after Vanessa and me in Hades. Rene was her name.

“What do you
think, Cruz?” she asked. “Shall we join the fun?”

The blonde purred.
“I’ve always wanted a taste of Seth.”

They both ran into the
clearing, transforming on the way. Cruz, the blond, changed into a
lithe jaguar as they ran toward the mansion, presumably after
Tristan. I shot a bolt of lightning at Rene’s feet, sending her
rolling across the overgrown lawn. Dorian threw a stream of water at
them that immediately iced over on contact, freezing them in place,
with Cruz’s mouth wide open in a roar.

Someone had seen where
our powers came from, though, because a spell shot in our direction,
hitting the trunk two feet below us. Dorian grabbed me again and flew
up and away right before the tree split in two. Another spell soared
at us, but Owen threw a shield around us just in time, and the light
ricocheted off the bubble and into what remained of the mansion.

“By the garage,”
I said to Dorian, pointing at three figures running from the mansion
toward the detached building. Tristan and Jax, with Noah slung
between them.

Dorian swooped
downward. As our feet hit the ground, that god-awful
ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
sound of automatic gunfire ripped through
the night. Jax threw the door to the garage open and ushered Dorian
and me in. Tristan followed and set Noah on the floor before running
back outside. I lunged for the door to follow him, but Jax held me
back.

“No way,
princess,” he said.

I pushed against the
solid bar of his arm that blocked my way, watching as Vanessa grabbed
Blossom, Sonya snatched up Heather, and they blurred toward us.
Tristan followed with Teah and Teal under his arms like oversized
footballs. Owen and Char sprinted across the mansion’s lawn
with Sheree right behind them. I gasped in horror as her body
launched forward in the air, her spine arching backward as if she’d
been hit, but then she burst into tiger form and bounded for us.

Jax slammed the door
after her. I watched through the window as the soldiers and the mages
turned their attention to the mansion, blasting at it continuously
until it was demolished completely and couldn’t be rebuilt by
magic. The ice on the were-cats dripped as they began to thaw.

“There’s
the van and enough bikes to get us out of here if we pair up,”
Tristan said, and I spun away from the window to see what he meant. A
bullet pierced through the glass and soared over my head. We all
dropped to the floor as more gunfire blasted into the garage. “Let’s
go!”

Tristan and Jax shoved
Noah’s unconscious body into the back of the van, and Sheree,
still a tiger, climbed in to guard him. Sonya hopped into the back,
too, and the Norman girls huddled together on the center seat.
Blossom claimed the driver’s side and had the van started
before Jax had even hopped into the passenger seat. I ordered Dorian
to ride with Charlotte, and the rest of us jumped on the motorcycles.
Owen and Charlotte cloaked and shielded us, I grabbed hold of
Tristan’s waist, and he blasted the garage door open. Blossom
pealed through it, and the rest of us followed, barely escaping
before the garage’s roof collapsed.

Because Owen and Char
had us under a single cloak and shield rather than separate ones for
each vehicle, we had to ride close together as a group. At least
there was no traffic to dodge on the roads because the other drivers
couldn’t see us. We had no plan and Blossom only knew the area
from when we’d searched for Dorian, so she followed the same
main streets we’d traveled then, taking us closer to
Washington, D.C. Eventually, Tristan sped up and around the van to
take the lead, pulling in front before he moved too far ahead to keep
us hidden. I tried to break through the block in my head so we could
communicate and form a plan without stopping, but the best I could do
was pick up a stray thought here and there from any of them, like a
crappy radio unable to tune into a specific station.

“Where should we
go?” I asked Tristan.

We passed a shopping
plaza where a handful of people ran in and out of stores, carrying
what looked like old-fashioned torches to light their way as they
scavenged for goods.

“Any idea where
your fans might hideout? Any clues in your books?”

I wracked my brain,
trying to remember everything about the stories, the characters, and
the settings. Writing those books felt like a whole other lifetime.
It really had been a different life then.

“When the human’s
in danger, there’s the part where the vamp tells him the safest
place for him to hide would be a convent, monastery, or a religious
boarding school. A church, if nothing else.”

Headlights and
flashlights shone ahead of us, pointed in our direction. Armed
soldiers marched toward us, accompanied by a Hummer and a tank. A
freakin’ tank! Down Main-Street Suburbia! Although they
couldn’t see us, Tristan leaned the bike into a left turn,
taking us away from what would probably be a bloodbath between the
looters and the so-called militia police. I’d thought things
would be different here in the States than they’d been in
Europe and that coming home would bring a sense of familiarity and
peace. But nothing familiar remained in this world anymore, even in
these places where I’d lived before. And definitely no sense of
peace.

After ensuring our
group had stayed with us, Tristan stayed silent for a few minutes,
and I assumed he contemplated what I told him. “Thinking about
your readers’ age group,” he finally said, “there’s
one place I’d expect them to go.”

“Where’s
that?” I asked, because I could think of many options with all
of the churches and private schools in the area. Did he plan to visit
each one, hoping to find the A.K.’s Angels group? “The
National Cathedral is the most well-known, but too many politicians
and government officials would probably go there. If there were any
good ones left …”

“Right. I don’t
see a group like A.K.’s Angels going there. Your younger
readers would be in college now, right, like Heather? Or close to
that age, like Sonya or the two cousins? And there happens to be a
Jesuit-Catholic university that fits your suggestion perfectly.”

I knew exactly which
one he meant. “Oh, you’re right. Good thinking!”

“From what I know
of the campus and the school, it should be considered sacred grounds.
And it would have everything these people would need.”

“True. But is it
far enough from the Capitol? From all of the military bases around
here? You know they’re all controlled by Lucas.”

“The cell in
London made their new home right across the street from Parliament.
They stayed to help people.”

The squawk of braking
tires on asphalt stopped me from replying, and I looked over my
shoulder. The black van swerved all over the road, and Blossom’s
face blanched white as snow as she tried to regain control. Tristan
turned us to the side and hopped the curb to the sidewalk before she
ran over us. The van spun as though on ice, leaned too much to the
outside, and flipped on its side. The grinding of metal against road
screeched through the night until the van finally came to a stop when
the back end plowed into a light post with a definitive crunch. My
head snapped to the right to make sure Dorian and the others were
okay before I sprang off the bike and ran for the van.

Jax crawled out through
his window first and helped Blossom who was already bawling.

“Are you okay?”
I yelled.

“I’m so
sorry!” she cried, obviously shaken, but physically okay. “I
was worried about Sheree and turned to look at her but then I almost
ran over Tristan and Alexis so I tried to avoid them by swerving and
hitting the brakes, but that sent me into a tailspin and now,
ohmygod, are the girls okay? Is everyone okay?”

Vanessa yanked the side
door completely off the van and threw it behind her, while Charlotte
jumped onto the vehicle’s side to help Sonya, Heather, Teal,
and Teah out.

“Sheree and Noah
are stuck in the back,” Char said with her body half in and
half out of the van. “I can’t get to them.”

“Hang on,”
Tristan said from the rear at the light post, and he shoved on the
van’s back end. The vehicle stayed attached to the post,
pulling the entire street lamp with it as it skidded across the
pavement several yards. He grasped hold of the post, and I ran to the
van and gave it another push as he jerked the pole out of the
bumper’s grip. The metal pole clanged on the ground when he
tossed it aside, and a loud creak and crack followed as I pulled open
the scrunched up back doors.

“Oh, no,” I
gasped.

Noah lay crumpled up
against the side window that now pressed against the street, and
Sheree’s naked and bloody body was sprawled out on top of him.

“I’m afraid
to move her,” I said, backing out of the van, my heart growing
heavy. “Tristan …”

He pushed past me and
gently lifted her out of the vehicle.

“Blossom, do you
have clothes for her?” I asked. The girl deserved some dignity.

Blossom shook her head.
“I don’t have my bag.”

“There’s a
blanket up front,” Heather said, and she jogged around the van.

The vehicle moaned as
she climbed onto it, but a moment later she returned with a black,
wool blanket. I wrapped it around Sheree the best I could before
Tristan laid her on the street. Her brows pushed together, and her
closed eyes winced.

“Anything
broken?” I asked her while Tristan and Jax pulled Noah from the
wreckage.

“I … don’t
… think so,” she whispered. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Just my lower spine. Can’t feel my legs very well.”

“What!”

“She was shot,
Alexis,” Blossom said tearfully from behind me. “That’s
what started all this.”

Tristan gently pulled
the blanket back and turned Sheree to her side to inspect her back.
He frowned, looked at me, and gave a small shake of his head.

“She changed back
to human, and that’s when Sonya noticed,” Heather said.

“The blood
started really gushing then,” Sonya clarified. “I guess
her tiger scent masked it before.”