Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (36 page)

“I was …
trying to … heal myself …”

The sounds of boots
marching on pavement and heavy wheels rolling over anything in its
path approached.

“We need to get
out of here,” Char said. “Owen?”

“Where are we
going?”

Tristan told everyone
his idea as he slid his arms under Sheree. “Just get us on
campus, and we’ll get Sheree somewhere safe where we can heal
her.”

Owen rubbed his hands
together and slowly pulled them apart to create the portal. Only,
nothing happened. Usually we could see the air tremble and then the
scene of the other side would gradually begin to show itself. Owen
pressed his lips into a line, shook his head, then clasped his hands
together again and tried once more. Still nothing.

His shoulders slumped,
and his hands dropped to his sides. “I can’t do it. It’s
been too much too fast. I need some recovery time. I’m sorry.”

Nobody could blame
him—he’d done so much for us in the last twelve hours,
saving our butts many times. But we couldn’t flash, and now we
couldn’t portal. The van was useless, and no way could we all
ride on the motorcycles. Not that Sheree, or Noah, for that matter,
could make the ride.

“We only have one
option,” Tristan said. “Find a place to hide.”

“There’s a
motel a half-block back,” Vanessa said. “Not exactly
five-star, but—”

“It’ll
work,” I replied.

When we managed to
break into the first room, I questioned whether I said that too soon.
Some kind of rodent scuttled into the far corner, and I swore the
entire floor rippled with movement. A crunch under Tristan’s
boot with his first step inside confirmed the infestation of
cockroaches.

“Oh, that’s
just nasty,” Char said, but with a few magical twists and
thrusts of her hands, the room was cleaned up. Maybe not
hospital-quality, but better than being on the streets. Especially as
the SWAT team, or whatever they were, approached.

Tristan laid Sheree
onto one of the double beds, and Jax dropped Noah on the other one.
Noah’s head lolled to the side on the orange quilted bedspread
and he let out a quiet moan, but he otherwise remained unconscious. I
stayed nearby, ready to act if and when he finally came to, while
Tristan tried to inspect Sheree’s injury as best as he could in
the darkness with Vanessa standing by. She’d once said she’d
studied medicine for a while out of sheer boredom, but it didn’t
hold her interest long enough for her to earn a degree. She knew
enough, though, to help Tristan if he needed her.

Meanwhile, Char used
her magic to cut doorways through the walls, connecting several rooms
together, which she and Blossom cleaned up one by one. Sonya took the
girls to one of them. After standing in the corner for a few minutes
watching his dad, Dorian sulked off to another room. Owen followed
him, and I hoped both were headed to catch some needed sleep.

Tristan looked at me
and tapped his finger to his temple. Once again, I tried to push
through the block in my mind, but whatever Jeana or Merrick had done,
they’d done it well. I could only pick up on a few words
Tristan tried to convey. They were all I needed. “
Lodged
,”
“
spine
,” “
another
,” and “
bleed
out
.”

Heal her!
I
ordered him, not knowing if he could hear me. Even when he shook his
head, I didn’t know if he responded to my words or to the look
on my face, which had to be one of anguish and desperation. I rushed
over to Sheree’s side.

“I’m so
cold,” she whispered. “I’m … dying …
aren’t I?”

“No,” I
barked out. “You won’t die. That’s an order from
your matriarch.”

She gave me a faint
smile. “You’re so bossy.”

Her eyes fluttered
closed, and she passed out. Tristan and I moved to the corner of the
room.

“What are we
going to do?” I asked him. Tears stung my eyes at the thought
of losing Sheree. She’d been my first convert, and I’d
almost killed her then. She’d become a friend and a special
addition to the Amadis with a heart bigger and warmer than anyone I
knew. I owed her so much. “We have to save her.”

“I don’t
know if a fully trained medical team in the most advanced operating
room could save her,” Tristan said quietly. “Did you
understand what I said?”

“Telepathically?
No. My head’s still broken. But we’re
more
than a
Norman medical team, Tristan. Surely between you, Vanessa, and Sonya,
there’s enough healing powers to help her, and she has her
own.”

He shook his head. “I
don’t think so,
ma lykita
. It’s impossible to tell
without the right equipment, but I think the bullet is lodged very
close to her spinal cord. Too close for me to even try to remove it.
There’s another one, though, a little higher. All I can see is
the entry point, so it could be somewhere in her kidney or liver.
Even her heart. She could be bleeding out internally. I closed up the
wounds to stop the external bleeding, but I don’t know if she
can heal past this, Lex.”

I rubbed the back of my
neck as I stared at her sleeping body, blinking against the tears,
then squatted down and leaned against the wall. My heart ached so
badly. How could I cope with another loss? How could any of us? Our
morale was slowly deteriorating, and this would make it plummet. All
because of the fucking Daemoni and their damned soldiers.

I dropped my head into
my hands and pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes. I felt so
helpless. So hopeless.

So powerless.

Here I was, supposed to
be the matriarch of a powerful society that served as the Angels’
army on Earth. But my society had to disband in order for the
individuals to survive. My warriors still fought, but we were losing
every battle and likely the war. And the Angels we served? They
seemed to have forgotten we even existed, abandoning us when we
needed them most. No messages of wisdom and direction came from them.
They’d said they’d always be near. They’d promised
I would never be alone. But I sure as hell felt alone.

Except for gunfire in
the far distance, the rest of the night passed uneventfully. Sheree
made it through, but she wasn’t doing too well. If the first
hours were the most critical, though, maybe, just maybe she’d
make it. I awoke to the gray morning light seeping under the curtains
and Noah stirring. Tristan immediately awoke, too. We’d
apparently dozed off as we leaned against the wall and each other.

Noah sat up in the far
bed, his face contorted and his eyes glowing red. He sniffed the air,
and his nostrils flared.

“Amadis,”
he growled.

Tristan and I both
sprang to our feet, and he instantly paralyzed Noah before he did
anything threatening.

“Easy, Noah,”
I said calmly. His eyes swung to me and narrowed. “Do you
remember why you’re here?”

He looked around the
room, and when his gaze returned to me, he seemed to be more confused
than anything else.

“I mean with us,”
I said. “We cut the stone out of you, remember? You wanted me
to do it so they couldn’t control you anymore.”

“What? You want a
cookie for it?” he snarled, although his eyes showed a tiny
hint of gratitude.

“Actually, I’m
really hoping you might want to convert.”

He barked out a laugh.
“You’re as stupid as Kali said, aren’t you?”

I stepped closer to
him, trusting Tristan’s hold on him. “I’ve felt
hope in you, Noah. Especially when you saw Rina and Mom—your
mother and twin sister. You still have feelings for them.”

“Yeah. It’s
called hatred.”

“Hatred is a
feeling. A pretty passionate one, at that.” I tilted my head.
“But I don’t think that’s what you really feel for
them. What you really feel is love, isn’t it? But maybe you
don’t remember what it feels like.”

“And maybe I
don’t
want
to remember what it feels like.” His
upper lip curled. “What does it matter what I feel for them?
They’re dead.”

He probably meant the
reminder to hurt me, but I heard the undertone in his voice. I was
onto him. “Except I think you
do
want to remember. You
miss love—feeling it, having it. Know what else I think? I
think you don’t really want
to be Daemoni, do you?
Whatever choice you made so long ago, you regret it. I can feel that
in you.”

He rolled his eyes away
from me. “Fuck off,” he muttered.

“I can help you,
Noah. All you have to do is ask.” I held my hand up, palm
facing him. His eyes darted back to me, filled with fear and anxiety,
and his body twitched and convulsed against Tristan’s power.

“Leave me alone,
you Amadis whore,” he growled.

His body flew backward,
and the back of his head slammed against the wall with a crack. He
lost consciousness again.

“Tristan!”
I said with a gasp.

“Nobody talks to
my wife like that,” he replied simply.

Owen came running into
the room with Dorian on his heels.

“What’s
going on?” Owen asked. He eyed Noah who was plastered against
the wall. “Need some help?”

“Nope,”
Tristan said. “We’re good. Unless you can make a portal
now and get us out of this rathole.”

Owen rubbed a hand over
his stomach. “Just need some food first. And everyone to wake
up.”

Tristan nodded his head
toward Noah. “Let’s take him to his own room before he
hurts someone, and bind him up nice and tight. Then we’ll find
food.”

He flicked his hand,
and Noah’s body came away from the wall, hovering over the
floor. He came to again, snarling and snapping like a wild animal as
he tried to fight against Tristan’s hold. Owen led the way as
Tristan directed Noah out of the room. Dorian looked at me with wide
eyes and his brow lifted. I held my arm out to him to hug him. He
slipped past me and dropped on the bed.

“You should let
him go,” he said as he stared at the floor.

“We can’t
just let him go.” I plopped down next to him. “We can’t
take the chance. Especially if there’s any possibility he’ll
convert.”

“He won’t,
though. He
can’t
.”

“We don’t
know that for sure. There’s hope for him.”

“It doesn’t
matter.”

I ducked my head down
to get a good look at his downturned face. “How do you know?”

He scowled at the
floor, as if it had committed some personal offense against him. His
hands twisted together in his lap, and he scuffed the toe of his shoe
into the threadbare carpet.

“I just know,”
he said, and he bolted up and out of the room.

Everyone but Sheree
awoke when Tristan and Owen returned with a few measly packages of
crackers and beef jerky they’d found stuffed in a desk drawer
in the motel office. The looters who’d broken into all the
vending machines apparently hadn’t thought to look there. The
food wasn’t much once split between all of us, but it at least
took the edge off of the hunger. Being the strongest out of all of
us, Tristan and I offered up some blood for the vampires. Vanessa
grinned like the Cheshire cat when I held my wrist out to her,
knowing the powerful rush she was about to receive. Sonya, however,
wasn’t prepared for it, nor had any tolerance, so only a couple
of drops of Tristan’s blood had her chomping at the bit like an
abused pit bull ready for a fight.

“Let’s fuck
some Daemoni up!” she said with the growly enthusiasm of a pro
wrestler as she bounced on the balls of her feet and punched at the
air. Apparently she didn’t realize how close she stood to the
wall or her strength, but her fist pushed right through the plaster.
She yanked her hand free and laughed.

I closed my hands over
hers, trying to calm her down. “We’re going to look for
A.K.’s Angels, remember?”

“Okay. Cool.”
She nodded, though she couldn’t keep still. “But if we
see any Daemoni, I’m gonna fu—”

“Yeah, okay, we
know,” I said.

With our bodies
somewhat rested and our bellies not quite empty anymore, we gathered
together in Sheree’s room. After taking a bathroom door off its
hinges, we used sheets to strap Sheree to it, trying to keep her as
still as possible. She woke up when we first moved her and passed out
again as soon as she was strapped to the door. Tristan used his power
to move Noah into the room against his will.

“Sonya and Jax,
carry Sheree,” Char said. “Tristan and Vanessa, you
better grab Noah. Going through the portal may interfere with your
hold on him.”

Once we were ready,
Owen made the portal with no problems, and we stepped through, onto
the street in front of the entrance to the university’s campus.
As soon as we did, arrows soared through the air at us from the
school’s direction. Everyone dropped to the ground, the
stronger of us covering Sheree and the Normans. Tristan, the mages,
and I used our powers to bat the arrows away. At least this time they
weren’t bullets. Which probably meant these weren’t
soldiers.

“We have more,”
a man called from somewhere right behind the gray brick wall of the
gate to campus. “All covered in silver.”

“Silver won’t
hurt us,” Tristan said.

“Liar,” a
female voice yelled. “We’ve watched many of you die from
it. You’re next.”

More arrows shot at us.
They bounced off the shield one of the mages created, and Vanessa
sprang up and blurred away. A second later, she stood behind the
gate, holding a Norman by the neck in each hand—a girl and a
guy. We all stood, leaving Sheree on the ground. Jax held a tight
grip on Noah.

“How many more
are there?” Vanessa demanded.

“Enough to kill
you,” the girl spat.

The guy, looking to be
around thirty years old, with black hair and a crooked nose, seemed
somewhat familiar to me as he stared at Vanessa, but I couldn’t
place him.