Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) (35 page)

“Look at all of
them,” I said to Mom and Rina. “And there are tens of
thousands more coming. Hundreds of thousands of them, not including
the Demons. There’s no way we can stand up to them.”

“Gather your
Amadis. Your Norman armies, too,” Rina said.

“
What?
You
can’t expect me to bring the Normans into this. That’s a
death sentence for them.” For all of us, really.

“The Norman
militaries
want
to fight,” Mom replied, “and they
deserve the opportunity to go to war as they’re trained to do.
They’ve watched the Daemoni slaughter their loved ones, their
friends, and neighbors. They’ve lost their communities. The
very people they’ve sworn to protect. As a warrior, you know
what that means.”

“But
we’re
supposed to protect
them
.”

“You are to
protect their souls, darling,” Rina clarified.

“So sending them
to their graves is okay as long as their souls are safeguarded from
evil?” The question was rhetorical. I already knew their
answer—they’d told me before that was exactly how it was.
“It’s not their war, though!”

“You’re
wrong, honey. It’s always been their war.”

Rina nodded. “More
than their lives are at stake if Lucas brings Satan to the
surface—their very souls are.”

“They’re
right.” Tristan shrugged when I looked at him. “The
Daemoni were always after the Normans’ souls, long before the
Amadis even existed.”

“Yes,” Rina
said. “The Angels only interfere in the Norman world when
necessary. They started the Amadis because they needed an army on
Earth to assist and protect the Normans.”

“But that’s
all we’ve ever been,” Mom concluded. “The Amadis
may be the Angels’ army, but we are the Normans’
soldiers, fighting in their war on Earth while the Angels fight for
their souls in the Otherworld. Things have changed and will continue
to change until this battle is over. But what hasn’t changed is
that this
is
the Normans’ war just as much as—or
more than—it is ours.”

Holding on to the
branch above me, I leaned back and stared at the thick, dark clouds
growing in the night sky as I contemplated their point. What they
said made sense and the truth rang through me, but …

“I can’t do
it,” I told them. “I’m sorry, but I can’t in
good conscience lead them into this battle. I don’t even want
to bring the Amadis into it.”

“You can, and you
will,” Rina said. “How do you say? The wheels are already
moving?”

Tristan straightened
up. “What do you mean?”

“It is time,”
Rina replied simply.

“The Amadis and
the Norman armies are already coming together under your leadership,”
Mom said, and she pointed to a snow-covered meadow at the backside of
the mountain perpendicular to us. A clearing the Daemoni wouldn’t
be able to see from the valley—but Demons and were-birds could
see fine from the sky. “You will gather them right there.”

I waited for her to
continue, but she didn’t. “And then what?”

“You will know,”
Rina said.

I turned back toward
them and stared with my mouth half-open. Their dark eyes were full of
an unfathomable depth of wisdom, shining on me with assurance.

“You want me to
bring my little army of ten thousand Amadis, join them with maybe
fifty thousand Normans, if there are even that many, and what? Hang
out until the Daemoni attack? Or wait. You probably want us to march
into the valley first and then just stand there, facing
that
.”
I flicked my hand toward the Daemoni camps in the distance.

Rina bowed her head.
“This is what you must do.”

“That’s
absurd!”

“Trust us,
Alexis,” Mom said. “Follow our instructions, obey the
Angels, and you
will
defeat Lucas.”

I let out a dark
chuckle. “This is ludicrous. What’s the rest of the plan,
Mom? Give me
something
other than this insanity. Something for
me and my troops to believe in.”

“That
is
the
plan, honey. That is all we know. Follow it, and you will be
victorious.”

“And what about
Dorian?”

Something flickered in
her eyes, and the corners of her lips twitched, but she censored any
true emotion. “Let him serve his purpose, and always remember,
he
decides the fate of his soul. Nobody else.”

“It is time.”
Rina tilted her head in another bow. “Remember, Alexis. Believe
in what you cannot see with your eyes, what you do not know in your
mind, but nonetheless feel in your heart and soul.”

And with that, they
disappeared.

I turned toward Tristan
who leaned against the trunk with a confident glint in his eyes.

“Do you have any
idea what the hell that was supposed to mean?” I demanded.

One side of his mouth
quirked up. “Somebody has a plan, but hasn’t revealed it
yet.”

“Well, that’s
freakin’ helpful.” I hopped up to the next branch to try
to gain a better view of the surrounding area. The pace of the
Daemoni coming this way seemed to have increased—both in their
speed and their numbers. “So what’s
your
plan?
Because theirs sucks.”

“My plan is to
follow theirs.”

“You can’t
be serious.” I looked over my shoulder and down at him. He
appeared to be completely serious.

“First of all,
they’re our commanders. You may be the leader of the army here
on Earth, but we serve the Angels. We obey their orders.”

“Orders that will
get us all slaughtered?”

He straightened up and
stepped away from the trunk. He rested his arms on another branch in
front of him, putting his head nearly level with mine. “I’m
sorry,
ma lykita
, but I have no other plan. You’re
right. We’ll be severely outnumbered and out-powered. I see no
other solutions except retreating, which is not an option if we want
to stop Lucas and save Dorian. We’ll
have
to trust that
there’s more to their plan. You heard them—it’s the
only way we’ll win.”

“There must be
something else.” I scowled as I wedged myself between branches
and watched the Daemoni and Demons below, trying to figure out why
they came here to this particular place. What were they doing? Were
they also preparing for war? But why would they be? As far as they
were concerned, they had their victory. I reached out for a couple of
minds in range and recoiled at the evil thoughts filling them.
Thankfully, they weren’t completely clear, fuzzed over by
inebriation. They matched the sounds that traveled up the mountain to
our ears—songs and cheers, noises of celebration.

“I’m not
learning anything here,” I finally told Tristan after we
watched for a while. “I don’t really want to, but we’ll
have to move closer to get any good intelligence to take back.”

“Our best
intelligence came from Rina and Sophia,” he replied. “They
told us everything we need to know.”

I rolled my eyes.
“Everything they said is ridiculous. If I can even bring myself
to obey their orders, I won’t be the blind leading the blind
into this.”

I ran along the branch
until I could launch myself into the air without catching my wings on
spindly branches and icicles. I shot straight up, higher than the
Demons flew, although their attention remained focused downward.
Tristan followed me as I moved closer to the center of the valley,
while remaining high and on the western fringe. As though they’d
purposefully built their camps this way, a wide circle in the heart
of the valley remained clear of everything but snow. The main thought
I could grasp among them echoed Rina’s words. “
It’s
time
” rippled over the Daemoni below as they began to crowd
toward the expanse in the middle.

Tristan and I hovered
about halfway up the mountain above them, watching as the crowd began
to part directly across the clearing from us. The mind signature
approaching the center elicited an involuntary growl from my throat,
but when I couldn’t find the mind that I thought would be with
him, foreboding and hope battled within me. Where was Dorian? Had he
changed his mind and escaped? Or was he being held captive somewhere,
such as with the Ancients? Was he nearby and cloaked, or was he
soaring away to safety, perhaps even looking for Tristan and me?

We should look for
Dorian
, I told Tristan at the same time Lucas produced a ball of
orange fire between his palms. Curiosity froze me in place. He spread
his hands wide, growing the flames until they surrounded him, and
then he rose a few feet above the ground, floating like he had when
he’d cornered us at the Capitol building.

“What the hell?”
I breathed.

Lucas’s voice
boomed over the valley. “Indeed. It is time, my faithful
children.”

He glided over the snow
to the center of the clearing, and with a flourish, lifted his arms
upward. Underneath him, the snow and ground began falling inward, at
first in a tight circle, as though a drain had opened in a tub. The
spiral grew quickly, though, sucking away the earth and snow, and
within minutes, a sinkhole at least fifty feet in diameter yawned
open like a gaping mouth. Lucas, still wrapped in a fireball,
swooshed around the sinkhole, corkscrewing down into its pit, and
then zoomed upward. The entire space filled with fire.

The Daemoni cheered
before their voices fell into a low chant, and they stomped their
feet in rhythm. Shaman continued beating their drums, and caught up
in the excitement, Weres began transforming, the wolves howling a
background chorus.

“The Ancients are
coming,” Lucas said, his voice reverberating across the valley
floor and up the mountains. “Soon, our lord will be here. For
now, let us welcome the rest of our brethren who have been trapped in
the Otherworld for millennia too long.”

The orchestra of
voices, stomps, drums, and howls grew louder as Lucas lifted his arms
again, like a conductor signaling the crescendo. The wind suddenly
picked up, whooshing against my ears and knocking me off-balance as
it blew in every direction, but mostly upward. Lightning cracked
across the sky, illuminating low, dark gray clouds. Snowflakes the
size of saucers began to fall over the valley, sizzling in the pit of
fire, where the flames grew larger and jumped higher. An orange glow
lit up the area nearly bright as day, reflecting off the thousands of
faces and the sides of the snow-covered mountains.

A large and dark object
shot out of the pit, high into the air before soaring across the
valley and slamming into a mountainside. The chunk of black ice
shattered, the sound resonating across the land, and a Demon burst
out of it. Many more followed at quick and regular intervals, as
though shot out of a cannon from the bottom of the pit, like the
fireworks that blast several balls into the air, one right after the
other. They all careened into the surrounding mountains and exploded,
freeing the Demons inside.

Dozens of them.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

“The veil has
dropped,” Lucas yelled over the ruckus. “Soon, we open
the Gates to Hell.”

My heart
thundered against my ribs. “Oh my God.”

I turned in midair to
face Tristan, but a large body soared toward us in my peripheral
vision. Tristan grabbed my hand and took off. Like rockets shooting
through the air, we flew toward the south end of the valley, back to
where we’d been before when Mom and Rina spoke with us. I’d
called their instructions absurd then. I’d had no idea just how
ludicrous and dangerous they really were.

Whether it grew bored
or had been called back, the Demon that had been chasing us turned
away and returned toward the fire pit that resembled too much for my
liking the lake of fire in Hell. No other Demons chased after us. Not
even Lucas paid us any attention, though surely he was aware of our
presence. He obviously didn’t care about us anymore. He didn’t
need to.

Tristan and I flew wide
circles around the area, searching for Dorian, but when I couldn’t
find his signature, we assumed he was cloaked. So we returned to the
same tree we’d been in before and watched the ceremony or
celebration or whatever you’d call the horror playing out below
in the valley. The hours stretched into the next day, I thought,
although it was hard to tell because the sun never rose.

“It’s too
late in the year for constant darkness,” Tristan murmured at
one point. “There should be several hours of daylight by now.”

“So they’re
doing this?” I glanced up at the starless sky where huge, low
clouds hung.

He did, too. “The
pending storm wouldn’t make it this dark.”

“There’s
hardly any smoke rising from the fire pit,” I noted.

He looked down at me
with dark eyes. “It’s the evil energy rising from Hell,
blocking out the light.”