Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) (31 page)

“There are a lot
of military and ex-military who probably want nothing more,”
Char added.

I paced a few times
across the room and back, pushing my hands through my hair that still
needed a good washing. I finally turned toward Tristan.

“So what are we
going to do? Do you have a plan?” I asked. “How would we
even pull all of these people together?”

He held up a hand.
“Slow down. The Daemoni aren’t making any immediate
moves, are they? Anything we know about?”

“Nothing Vanessa
and I have seen,” Owen said.

“I’ve
noticed nothing,” Robin said.

“Alexis and I
didn’t see anything either,” Tristan said. “They’re
just lazing about, complacent in their victory. They have no reason
to be planning anything if they think they’ve won.”

“Except Lucas—”
I started, but Tristan looked at me and gave a small shake of his
head.

“
We’ll
talk about his plans with your council
,” he silently said
to me as his eyes drifted to Robin.

But if she’s a
messenger and can tell others …

He gave me a slight nod
this time.

“The Daemoni
aren’t going anywhere, so we have time to create a strategy,”
he said aloud. “Alexis and I have just learned a few short
hours ago that we’re not the only ones left to fight them. So
we’ll discuss and come up with a plan. Robin, are you making
rounds to all of these groups you’ve found?”

She nodded. “This
is the second time I’ve been here. I can come back when I have
more news.”

“We should
probably get regular check-ins.” Tristan glanced at me.

“Right,” I
said, reassuming my leadership role. “I’d like you to
come back every week.”

“Actually, every
two or three weeks would be better,” she said. “That
gives me time for longer trips. I’d really like to find out
more about Asia and Europe.”

I pressed my lips
together, wondering if she was really trying to challenge me again.
If she’d been faking her whole apology.

“There are ways
for you to communicate with the other groups, though,” she said
quickly, before I could open my mouth. “The big ones like yours
have amateur radio, like you do here.”

I looked over to
Charlotte, and she nodded her confirmation. “Ham radio.”

“This is actually
why I stopped by this time.” Robin dug her hand into her back
jeans pocket and pulled out a small piece of folded paper. “Here’s
the code for the frequencies. They change them every four hours in
this order—” she tapped the paper in one place and then
in another “—and then when they get through those,
they’ll go in this order. See the pattern?”

Tristan glanced over at
the paper. “I see it.”

Robin turned back to
me. “So, Ms. Alexis, you can receive news that way if there’s
anything to report before I can return.”

“Okay,” I
said with a nod. “Every three weeks, I’d like to see you
here with a full report of what you’ve found and who else
you’ve reported our news to.”

“Anything to tell
the others this time?” she asked, glancing at my belly. “Or
did I imagine the comment about hormones?”

“You imagined
it.” Tristan answered before I could open my mouth. Robin
looked at him with a sharply arched brow. “We don’t want
the Daemoni to know, so it’s better to keep it under wraps for
now. Can we trust you with that?”

She peered at him with
her birdy eyes for a moment longer. “Of course,” she
finally said. “But the news would really help with morale.”

Her tone and her
history with us made me suspicious, but today she showed a different
side to herself, so I tried to do the same and be nice. “Robin,
I was pregnant before, and I lost the baby. Since my mom’s the
only Amadis daughter to have a child after the Ang’dora, we
have no guarantees. There’s a good possibility I could lose
this one, too. I don’t want to get everybody’s hopes up
and then have them decimated. Let’s wait, okay?”

“Of course, Ms.
Alexis.” She bowed her head for a moment.

“For now, we want
Normans trained as much as possible,” Tristan said. “Spread
the word that they need to at least be able to defend themselves
against the Daemoni and Demons.”

“Does anybody
know how to fight the Demons?” Sheree asked.

“From what we’ve
seen, they seem very interested in finding fresher bodies than the
ones Lucas provided,” Vanessa said. “And the ones who
don’t have human bodies would like to have them. I have no idea
why, but that’s what we’ve noticed.”

“If you cut off
their heads, they disappear,” I offered. “That’s
about all we know for now. Some seem to have a lot of power,
though—more magic than a sorcerer—but most are all about
brute force.”

“I don’t
think Normans will be able to get close enough to defeat them,”
Tristan said. “They just need to make sure they don’t
allow the Demons to enter their bodies. They react to silver, so
using it might be enough for the humans to get away.”

“The hunters are
researching other ways,” Owen said. “Legends and myths.
Holy water burns them, but not severely enough to make a lasting
difference. Plus it makes them angry as heck, so better to conserve
the water.”

Robin dipped her head.
“The hunters in Oklahoma said the Demons react to verses from
the Bible, or anything about Jesus being a savior. It makes them
angry, like the holy water does, but it also wears on them, draining
them of energy. Simply repeating the Lord’s Prayer can give
Normans time to escape.”

“Of course, we
need to keep the Normans away from the Daemoni and the Demons so they
don’t
have
to fight them,” I said. “We want
them trained and prepared, but not actually fighting.”

“The Amadis,
however, need to be prepared,” Tristan said. “When the
time comes, we’ll need everyone who’s physically able to
fight.”

“I’ll
spread the word,” Robin promised.

“Do me a favor,”
I said. “Keep your eyes open for Dorian. Whoever you talk
to—make sure everyone’s looking for him. I’ve
received a message from the Angels—” I stopped, unable to
flat-out lie that they’d told us to stop Dorian, and glanced at
Tristan. “We just need to know where he is. Let us know
immediately.”

She nodded again. “I’ll
keep an eye out for him.”

“You know where
the dining room is,” Charlotte said to her. “Get yourself
some food, and you can use the same room you slept in last time to
grab some shut-eye before dark. I’ll have numbers for you to
share before you leave.”

Robin strode for the
door.

“Thank you,”
I said, stopping her as her hand grasped the knob. “And if I
don’t see you—be careful out there.”

Her auburn brows
knitted together, but then she gave me a small smile. “God is
with me. I have faith in His plan, whatever it is. That’s all
we need, right?”

I frowned as she left
and shut the door behind her. As soon as she did, Char muffled the
room, and my team immediately began lobbing the questions at Tristan
and me. We told them everything we’d already told Owen and
Vanessa, once again keeping out the part about going to Hell. But we
did tell them what the Demon in Africa had confided about Lucas and
Dorian, and that Mom, Rina, and Cassandra had confirmed it. Although,
I called them the Angels to simplify the explanation. They might have
thought us crazy for talking to the dead otherwise.

“So we need to
stop Dorian,” Owen said.

I also might have
failed to mention that we were told to let him go. But I couldn’t
bring myself to correct Owen. Apparently, neither could Tristan,
because he didn’t say anything either.

“But you don’t
know where the lad is,” Jax said, “which creates a gnarly
problem.”

“Except
you
can look for him,” Vanessa said, leaning back in her chair and
crossing her long, leather-clad legs at the ankles.

“Yeah, you forgot
to mention something.” Owen lifted his arms out to his side and
gave them a quick flap.

I threw an annoyed look
at him before Tristan and I stepped to the front of the room and
revealed our wings. They received the reaction I’d
expected—gasps and
whoas
and a
holy shit
from
Charlotte. My team sprang from their seats, even Sheree, to inspect
them more closely.

“They don’t
mean we can easily search and rescue Dorian, though,” I said as
they stood around us, poked, and prodded, jumping back when we
automatically reacted with a twitch of a feather. “We’ve
already scoured half of the world, and I never found his mind
signature. He’s likely heavily shielded and cloaked. If Robin
or her people saw him, it would be by accident. The were-birds may be
the only animals in the sky, but they’re a lot less conspicuous
than we are.”

I didn’t know if
my team heard me at all through their infatuation with our wings. I
hid mine to take away the distraction, and Tristan did, too.

“And you can make
them disappear,” Blossom noted. “Too cool.”

“The Angels gave
you those?” Sheree asked after hobbling back to her seat.

“I guess,”
I said. “I don’t really know. We were, uh, knocked out at
the Jefferson Memorial in D.C., and we woke up with the wings …”

I trailed off. We were
about to be caught in one of the many holes in our story because we’d
woken up in different places, at different times. And the only reason
we’d even survived was because of the faeries. Although I had
no idea how we’d be able to save the fae, I wanted to tell my
team about them, including what happened to Bree. And that meant
telling my team about going to Hell and Tristan getting stuck there.

“Why are your
wings dark if they’re from the Angels?” Blossom asked.

“How did you get
out of D.C. before it was destroyed?” Vanessa added.

“And what were
you doing for the first couple of months before you started searching
for life?” Charlotte wondered.

Tristan and I exchanged
a look.

They’re my
team
, I told him.
We should probably tell them everything
.

He pressed his lips
together, but gave me the tiniest nod. “
They need the full
story to do their jobs of advising and supporting
.”

So after blowing out a
full breath, I said, “Hold on. There’s more to what
happened to us.”

And we divulged the
rest. All of it, from my death that sent my soul to Heaven, how I
ended up in Hell, and how Tristan let the Demon take his soul there
because that’s where I was, to my waking up in the faeries’
cave in the middle of the North Atlantic, Bree’s help in taking
me back to Hell to rescue Tristan, and what happened to the faeries.

“And Heaven
wasn’t the last we’ve seen of Mom, Rina, and Cassandra,”
I finished, deciding that since we’d come this far, we needed
to tell them everything. I couldn’t ask them to act against the
Angels’ wishes when they’d been led to believe they were
doing the opposite. Otherwise, how could I blame Rina and Mom for
their half-truths and omissions if I did the same? “They came
to us in Morocco and said we aren’t supposed to stop Dorian,
but I do need to stop Lucas.”

Several silent seconds
ticked by as my team absorbed all of this.

“Well, that makes
more sense,” Char finally said. “Rina knew Dorian had a
purpose.”

“To open the
Gates of Hell?” I snapped.

She shook her blond
head. “There’s more to it, Alexis. If that’s what
they want, there’s a reason for it.”

“How do we stop
Lucas without stopping Dorian?” Blossom asked, which was
exactly my question. The question I’d been asking myself and
Tristan since the day Mom, Rina, and Cassandra had told us this in
Africa.

“We don’t,”
I said, which had been my answer to myself every time. “I’ve
let my son down too many times. His heart and soul are still good. If
he knew what’s going to happen when he goes to Lucas, he
wouldn’t be doing this, and I won’t let him have to live
with the consequences for the rest of his life. I
have
to stop
him. And that will stop Lucas.”

Thankfully, nobody
argued with me. Perhaps because all of them except Sheree felt guilty
that Dorian wasn’t with us this very minute.

“But we have to
find him first,” Tristan said, breaking the silence.

“Have you been to
Hades?” Vanessa asked.

I pressed my palms to
my eyes. This day felt never-ending, and the more we talked and
shared, the more I realized we were still in the same place as we
were yesterday or several weeks ago when we’d been standing on
the beach in Morocco. “We were told not to. Not yet. The Angels
want me to build my army first.”

Charlotte lifted her
hands in the air. “Then that’s what we do.”

And I supposed we
were
in a different place than we were yesterday or two months ago. Not
just physically, but in regards to our situation. Before, I’d
thought there was no hope for an army. That Tristan and I would have
to stop Dorian—and Lucas—by ourselves. At least now we’d
have some help with saving our son. And possibly the world.

Then I remembered the
numbers we’d discussed only a short time ago and knew there was
no way we’d be able to win. I wanted to protect the millions of
Norman and Amadis souls we’d learned were still alive, but
drawing them into a war would be the opposite of protecting them. Yet
… there was no doubt that bringing Dorian back to our side
would ignite a battle until the end.

I’d thought
before that nobody’s soul was more valuable than anybody
else’s, but how many would I have to risk to save Dorian?

After discussing our
options, I reluctantly agreed that we’d wait for news from
Robin before Tristan and I defied the Angels’ wishes and went
to Hades to find our son. After all, as soon as Dorian made the move
to officially join Lucas and the Daemoni, we’d surely find out.
As the matriarchs had suggested, Lucas would make a point of us
knowing, wanting us to watch as he made a big ordeal out of Dorian
handing himself over, and we could act then. In the meantime, as long
as everything was quiet, Dorian must have been hiding out somewhere,
probably under somebody’s protection. Every time I thought of
him as my little boy out in the world by himself, tucked away
somewhere and scared to death, I had to remind myself that he was
none of that. He’d known what he was doing when he left.