Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (4 page)

“We can stop
them,” Tristan said after several bombs hit the town with loud
explosions, shaking the ground under us. Dirt fell from the ceiling
and walls.

Owen’s
sapphire-blue eyes squinted. “It’ll take a minute to
power up the shield.”

“I meant
we
.”
Tristan looked at me, and I nodded.

“Stay here,”
I ordered Vanessa and Dorian.

Tristan, Owen, and I
flashed outside, and we all raised our palms to the sky as more
planes flew overhead and more bombs fell. We used our powers to stop
three from slamming into the village and turned them toward the sea.
But we’d barely rerouted them when more came. It took almost
every ounce of energy I had to keep them from hitting the island.
Then finally, they began to ricochet in midair like the spells had
done earlier.

“
We can shield
against those!
” Charlotte whooped into my mind, and I let
out the air I’d held trapped in my lungs at the sound of her
“voice.”

Owen joined his mother
and the other mages who’d survived and strengthened the shield
over the town. Unable to hit us anymore, the jets banked away and
flew off. Dozens of columns of black smoke rose into the air from the
main street in town and more in the residential district. My stomach
sank at the thought of Amadis lives lost. I felt the grief spreading
from people’s minds at the heartache right before them, but we
still hadn’t given them the all clear to come out from their
shelters.

“Take cover,
Alexis,” Owen said. “We don’t know if it’s
over.”

Tristan took my hand
and flashed us back to the dungeons.

“Is it over?”
Vanessa asked.

“Can I go back to
my room?” Dorian demanded.

“We don’t
know yet,” I said, and I gave Dorian the mom-eye for his
rudeness. “And you can go back when we say you can go back.”

He rolled his eyes and
diverted his attention to Sasha, who had shrunk some, but remained
alert.

We sat in the cold,
dank cell for hours. The Daemoni mind signatures hadn’t slipped
completely out of range—they remained close enough for me to
feel them, but not close enough to hear their thoughts and plans. I
wouldn’t give the green light to my people until I knew we were
safe.

“
Alexis
,”
Charlotte mind-spoke to me from where she and the other mages
continued powering the shield from the main room above us. “
Chandra
just called. She’s been trying to reach you. One of her
villages in India has been bombed, too.
”

My stomach sank. A
little while later, another, similar report came in on Char’s
phone, this one from Jelani in Africa. One by one, Rina’s
council members checked in, delivering the same news over and over.
The Daemoni, using the Normans, had bombed dozens of our villages and
colonies around the world.

And I couldn’t do
anything about it. I was stuck here in the dungeons, but even if I
weren’t, what could I have done? The attacks had stopped hours
ago, so all I could do now was to tell them to stay undercover and
keep safe.

“I feel like I’m
telling everyone to just squat down like sitting ducks, when we
should be fighting back. What kind of leader am I?”

“You’ve
told them exactly what Rina would have,” Tristan said, trying
to assure me. But it only irked me.

I shook my head as I
paced the cell. “No. We have to do more. We won’t survive
if we’re always on the defensive. We’re stronger than
this. We have to fight back.”

Finally, the Daemoni
mind signatures retreated completely, and after having Owen return
the shield to cover the entire island, I gave the all clear. We
popped outside, and my stomach sank at the sight.

In contrast to the
stunning sunset on the water, the destruction was heartrending.

The main street from
the council hall to the pier at the other end housed the business
district. Most of the village’s suppliers of goods and services
lined the cobblestone street, and those buildings closest to shore
had been completely annihilated—the only supplier of mage
reagents on the island, the Blood Bank where we donated blood for our
vamps, and one of the three pubs. Other structures, like the
blacksmith shop, had suffered major damage. Several homes had also,
and two were destroyed altogether.

We had three fatalities
on the island, and I supposed we were lucky with such a small number,
but my heart shrank at more losses and more funerals. Dozens of
people had been injured, several badly. Fortunately, most of them
could heal themselves, and the mages who couldn’t drank a
healing potion made from vampire blood. It wasn’t perfect and
didn’t completely eliminate their pain, but it helped speed the
healing process.

Owen, Charlotte, and
the rest of the mages did their best to put homes and businesses back
together, but some parts had been completely disintegrated or burnt
to ashes and others damaged beyond repair, returning none of the
structures to how they’d been before the attack. We had to make
the decision to destroy two more business buildings and three
homes—one of them Char’s—because they weren’t
safe for anyone to be near. She’d been able to retrieve some of
her belongings, but most everything she’d owned had been
destroyed by fire from the bombs.

As everyone came
together to help each other, I fielded calls from around the world.
The Amadis had lost hundreds of people. The Daemoni had flattened
entire villages. Each casualty report felt like a punch to my
stomach, leaving me breathless and my body trembling.

Not until the quiet
hours between midnight and dawn were we able to return to the
matriarch’s mansion to assess the damage there. My stomach
knotted itself once we decided our people were taken care of and we
could go. I feared the extent of the destruction of the beautiful
marble and stone structure that had been here for millennia. We
didn’t know its true age because it had already been standing
when Cassandra found it over two thousand years ago, as if waiting
for her discovery. If Charlotte’s house hadn’t just been
demolished, I would have suggested we stayed there for the night so
we could see the bad news in the light of morning. Not that the
darkness would affect our vision. It just seemed that the sight we
would see would be more dreadful in the night.

My breath caught when
we appeared in front of it.

“Wow,” I
breathed. “It’s completely fine.”

At least, the
matriarch’s mansion
appeared
to be intact and unharmed
from the outside. Several ancient cypress trees had been destroyed
around the building, huge craters were left in the ground right next
to the foundation, and bomb shrapnel was scattered over the earth.
The nearby training gym had been obliterated to no more than a pile
of broken stone. But the mansion itself stood in all its splendor,
entirely unscathed.

“It’s
protected by the Angels,” Ophelia said matter-of-factly. The
centuries-old witch had just appeared right next to me, startling me.
She gave me a smile, her face crinkling under the deep creases lining
her skin, and then she bustled inside, ready to get back to work. If
the children in the village hadn’t needed her care and cooking
so badly, she likely would have been here hours ago. Once she
disappeared into the dark foyer, her voice carried out to us. “Oh,
dear.”

Since everyone on my
team except Char had been staying at the mansion, they’d all
come back with Tristan, Dorian, and me. Char did, too. She obviously
needed a place to stay now. We hurried inside after Ophelia, who
continued moving throughout the first floor, sighing and repeating,
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

Although the exterior
hadn’t so much as a scratch, the interior proved to be a bit of
a different story. Shards of glass and various broken items littered
the floors of every room—vases, lanterns, pictures, books, and
antique knickknacks that had fallen from their places on shelves and
the walls. A few pieces of smaller and lighter furniture lay on their
sides. When Mom and I had lived in California many years ago, we’d
survived a bad earthquake. The impact of the bombs right outside had
caused similar damage inside the mansion.

“What a mess,”
Ophelia said as she traveled through the dining room where we all
stood, waving her hand and putting things back right. “Easy
enough to fix, though.”

Blossom, Charlotte, and
Owen helped her make the repairs while Tristan and I followed Dorian
upstairs to his room. He was about to slam the door when Tristan
caught it.

“Next time I say
to do something, don’t ignore me and don’t argue with
me,” I said to Dorian as Tristan and I stood in his doorway.
I’d waited to discipline him until we were in private, but he
still scowled at us.

“I don’t
like you in my head like that,” he answered, his tone not too
kind as he watched his toe scuffing at the stone floor.

“Well, too bad.
It works, and it’s a lot faster than a cell phone.”

“It’s
weird.”

“Everything’s
weird about our life, but that’s what it is—
our
life. Deal with it.”

He looked up at me
through his lashes and sneered. “Why are you on my case?”

“Because you need
to listen to your mother when she calls you,” Tristan said.

“You could have
been killed,” I added.

He rolled his eyes. “I
came, didn’t I?”

“Watch your tone,
young man,” Tristan warned.

“Don’t talk
to me like that,” I said at the same time. “And don’t
roll your eyes at us!”

Gosh, we sounded like
typical parents for once. A little taste of normalcy was always nice,
except not when reprimanding our snotty teenager who wasn’t
really a teenager. Dorian lifted his head to look at each of us, and
then let out a grunt and started to turn away.

Tristan took a step
inside the room, right up to Dorian, crossed his arms over his chest,
and glared down at our son. Dorian’s eyes grew wide, and then
he finally showed some kind of respect … and maybe fear, too,
as he backed down, dropping his shoulders and his challenging glare.

“Sorry,” he
muttered as he stared at the floor.

Tristan clamped a hand
on Dorian’s shoulder. “Listen to your mother.”

“Yes, sir. I
promise.”

We stood there in
silence for another moment before Tristan and I left him for our own
suite. We hadn’t quite reached it at the end of the hall when
Dorian’s door slammed shut. I let out a sigh. Whether he stayed
with us or went to the Daemoni, I was losing my baby.

“Good call on
pulling the shield off the mansion,” Tristan said as we picked
up the few things that had fallen in our suite.

“If I’d
known it would have survived like this, I would have done it much
sooner.” I stood on my toes, reaching above my head to rehang
the curtain over the door to the balcony. “In fact, we
shouldn’t even waste the mages’ energy in keeping it
shielded now. What if the Daemoni attack again?”

“Exactly.”
Tristan came up behind me, easily set the curtain rod in its place,
and then slid his arms around my waist. “Nobody will allow you
to be unshielded.”

“Or you. You’re
just as important as me,” I reminded him.

“Not quite.”

“You’re my
second.”

“But I’m
replaceable. You are not.”

I turned in his arms
and glared up at him as I lifted my hand to his ear and squeezed it.
“Don’t you ever say that again! You most certainly are
not
replaceable.”

His eyes tightened as
he suppressed a full-out wince. “Maybe not to you, but to the
rest of the Amadis, I am.”

“Don’t
underestimate your value, Mr. Knight.” I lifted onto my toes to
place my lips only an inch from his. “Without you, I’m
useless, and they all know it.”

He bent down to close
that last bit of space and pressed his mouth to mine. The tingle that
spread over my skin as our mouths moved together and our tongues met
was most welcome, exciting yet calming after this terrible day. His
hands caressing my back gave me a feeling of security, and I relaxed
into his arms, ignoring the pull on my mind.

“
Alexis
!”
Vanessa yelled into my head, her persistence breaking through.

I groaned as Tristan
continued kissing me.
A little privacy, please?

“
Um, sorry,
but there’s something you need to see on TV.
”

I sighed and pulled
away.
Again? Can’t it wait?

“
Oh, I’m
sure it’ll be on in the morning, but you probably want to know
about it now.
”

On our way down.
I looked up at Tristan with a frown. “I guess there’s
more for us to see on the news.”

Tristan and I went back
downstairs and found everyone in the theater-style seats in the media
room, their eyes glued to the multiple screens hanging on the wall.
Apparently all but one television had survived the bombing. The TVs
showed the same press conference being translated for the stations
around the world we were tuned into. The English version’s
volume was turned up so we could hear some representative of the
United States government who stood behind a pedestal with an American
flag on it. Across the bottom of the screen scrolled the words, “Are
we on the verge of World War III? Leaders around the world believe
so.” The lady on the screen with the salt-and-pepper hair
wasn’t the president or vice president or anyone I recognized,
but based on the lies she spewed, I’d bet she was Daemoni or in
their back pocket. Tristan and I stood behind the occupied chairs and
watched.

“It is true that
there have been several airstrikes around the world,” the woman
spoke into the microphone as cameras flashed from the press. “These
creatures
need to be stopped. They have ravaged our streets
and killed hundreds of thousands of people in every corner of the
globe in less than a day.”