Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) (36 page)

I recalled the thick
black of nothingness in Hell, and a shudder racked through me.

Demons continued
shooting out of the pit, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and
those in the Earthly realm kept on with their party. Lucas
disappeared, although I sensed him nearby in a large tent.
Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—Dorian was not in
there with him, as far as I could determine. We kept waiting for
something new to happen, to see if we could figure out what came
next, but nothing ever did. Lucas kept his thoughts guarded,
signaling that he knew I was close, so I didn’t know what
“soon” meant to him when he’d made his statement
about opening the Gates of Hell.

“This is
pointless,” I said to Tristan after a few more hours. “We
should be looking for Dorian more instead of wasting our time here.
I’m not learning anything from their minds that are drunk on
evil except that Satan is coming. Maybe we can stop—”

“
Alexis.
”
The familiar male voice sounded in my head, and it didn’t
belong to Tristan.

“Owen?” I
gasped. Tristan lifted a brow, and both of us spun on our respective
branches, searching.

“There.”
Tristan pointed to the very space on the side of the other mountain
where Mom had said to gather my people.

Apparently, I didn’t
have to gather them. They were coming all on their own.

“Oh, no!”

We flew off the tree
and swooped that way, where Owen stood in the clearing and others
were appearing out of nowhere, coming through his portal. Charlotte,
Blossom, Vanessa, a tiger I knew as Sheree, Jax in human form, Sonya,
Alys, and Brogan … and more people pouring through the
opening. Dozens at first, but the crowd quickly grew into hundreds of
Amadis. Then Owen disappeared for a moment before coming through a
new opening, bringing more bodies, and then he disappeared once
again.

Tristan and I landed on
the ridge above them so we could see both them and the Daemoni. When
they saw our wings spread out, people below gasped, and murmurs
floated over the crowd, which continued to grow. And not only with
Amadis. I spotted Heather, Teah, Teal, and other Normans at the
front, and then Kristen, Olivia, and more from the London cell of
A.K.’s Angels came through a new portal, followed by Ammi and
Terrence, two vampires who could still be considered newborns.

Our people talked
excitedly among themselves as they gathered into groups, climbed
trees, and perched themselves on boulders.

This is bad.
I
glanced over at the valley where the Daemoni continued their
celebration while yet more Demons flew from the pit of fire.
So
bad
.

“Guess we know
what Rina meant when she said the wheels were in motion,”
Tristan said. “Apparently, your army was already on its way.”

“On their way to
their deaths,” I muttered. “What are we going to do?”

“I’d say
we’re going to battle.” Although he didn’t yell the
words, he didn’t quite whisper them, either.

A cheer rose up among
the crowd—those with inhuman senses apparently having heard
Tristan’s declaration. They were insane. Anger grew within me
bigger and louder than them, filling my ears with the flow of my own
hot blood. I launched myself into the air. Which only made them cheer
louder. I flew a circle around them—a tight circle because,
although more came through the portals, my army was not very large.
Not large at all.

As my circle brought me
to face Lucas’s Demons across the valley, a boulder of emotions
slammed into my chest, taking my breath. The extreme difference in
sizes between the two armies was terrifying. I swooped back to face
my people, and rather than a growing crowd, I found only dead bodies
littered over the clearing, crimson staining the snow.
NO!
I
mentally screamed to myself as I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened
them again, the crowd below me had returned to normal, psyching
themselves up for battle. But every time I looked at the Daemoni and
back at my people, mine were all dead.

Visions like I’d
had before. Premonitions, no doubt.

What were you
thinking, bringing them here?
I silently yelled at Owen who
seemed to have finished creating the dozens of portals.

“
Following
orders
,” he replied simply.

Not mine!

“
No. Theirs.
”

Whose?
I dropped
down next to him, my fists on my hips and my eyes hard as I glared at
him.
I give the orders, Owen. You’re sworn to obey me, and I
do
not
want this.

He leaned his head back
and stared at the sky. “
But they do. And I’m sworn to
them over you.
”

Although I knew nothing
was there, my gaze swept upward anyway.
The clouds, Owen? The
stars behind them? What the hell is wrong with you?

“
Funny. What
the hell is wrong
you
? The Angels, Alexis. The Heavenly Host.
Whatever you want to call them. You know, those people we work for?
”

I ignored his sarcasm.
The
Angels
told you to bring these people to their deaths?
Or do you mean Rina and Mom?

He looked over at me
with hands rested low on his hips. “
Did you see them? We
didn’t exactly get a visit. Just a … feeling
.”

I grabbed my head with
both hands and my fingers tangled into my hair.
You came here on a
freakin’
feeling
?

“
Yep. Right
here.
” He spread his hand out over his stomach. “
In
the gut. We all had it. And it looks like we were right to follow
it.
”

I stared at him, my jaw
clenching. My fists balled, shaking with the need to punch him.

Send them back!

“
No. We’re
here to fight and to win.
”

We’re going to
die. Not even your shields can protect us against the black magic
over there. We will lose.

His lips curled up in a
confident, almost cocky grin. “
Don’t you know?
Good always wins.
”

And he gave me a wink.
A wink!

I returned it with a
blank stare, feeling the same as I had one of the very first times
he’d stated that to me—standing on the porch of the beach
house in the Keys when I’d learned exactly what the Daemoni
were and that they’d declared Provocation against my people.
The words had felt like a slap in the face then, when I’d
believed the Daemoni had already won because they had Tristan. The
sting felt just as real now.

You’ve lost
your fucking mind, Owen. We’ve lost before we’ve begun.
Thousands compared to their hundreds of thousands. Fifty of them for
each one of us.

Gasps and murmurs broke
out over the crowd, voices filled with excitement rather than
concern. Fingers pointed in various directions as whispers were
exchanged. What was wrong with them? They acted like they were at a
party! Even my team chatted giddily. They’d all drunk the
Kool-Aid.

Owen glanced around at
the mountainsides and then his neck craned as though he tried to peek
at the Daemoni’s camps in the valley, but there was no way he
could see them from here. Then he gave me a casual shrug. “Nah.
We’ll be fine.”

Tristan dropped down
beside me, and they fist bumped. Fist bumped! What was wrong with
them? A deadly battle loomed over us, and they acted like we’d
already won. As though blood wouldn’t be shed and lives lost.
Anger, frustration, and most of all fear for these people rushed
through my veins. My head snapped backward when a Demon soared over
us.

“We need to get
out of here. Lucas’s minion just spotted us.”

“We need to wait
for our orders,” Tristan said.

I spun to face him. “I
just gave orders!”

“But
you
aren’t following
our
orders.”

My rage teetered on the
edge of an explosion as my team gathered closer. I glared at each of
their faces in turn, and they all stared back.

“We can do this,
Princess,” Jax said as he rubbed his hand over his bald head.

“It’s
what
we do,” Owen agreed.

“Win or lose, we
have to try,” Blossom said from Jax’s side before giving
me an encouraging smile.

Owen chuckled. “Oh,
we’ll win.”

“Damn straight,”
Vanessa said.

Charlotte placed a hand
on my shoulder, the weight noticeable, discomforting. “The only
true failure, Alexis, is not trying at all.”

While everyone else had
sounded like a cheerleading squad, the truth of her words knifed into
me, digging into the dark spots on my heart and soul. The blemishes
of my previous failures, of my time in Hell. Without a word, I sprang
into the air, flying up and away from them before I lost it.

As I soared away, I
heard Sheree’s voice in my head, although she was in her tiger
form, thinking something about a mustard seed.

With a growl, I shot
into the sky, my wings tight against my body, making me into a
missile. I didn’t have to read minds to see and feel the hope
and excitement gurgling within everyone below me, and I couldn’t
believe how thrilled they seemed to be about the massacre they
apparently wanted so badly. Their own massacre.

Tristan followed me,
mentally yelling at me to stop, but I ignored him. I flew a larger
circle around the valley, and again I saw my people dead on the
battlefield, but only for a moment. My mind showing me what was about
to come. A future I couldn’t prevent if I wanted to stop Lucas.

“Ma lykita,
you’re letting your emotions rule
.”

I halted, bringing
myself vertical as I hovered over my people hundreds of feet below.
Tristan hung in the air in front of me, his wings spread wide, and
light dancing in his eyes. Not sparks or flames, like they used to
hold, but the light of hope.

“No,” I
refuted through gritted teeth. “I’m trying very hard
not
to let them rule, because if they did, my council would be the only
ones slaughtered, and everyone else would be headed home. But then,
we wouldn’t be able to stop Lucas or save Dorian, so either
way, I lose.”

“Alexis.”

“What, Tristan?
What am I supposed to do? Watch them die on the battlefield? Or wait
for Satan to have his way?”

His mouth turned down
into a frown, and he let out a breath that sounded so sad, my heart
faltered. The hope that had been all over his face a moment ago had
disappeared. “My love, I wish you would only believe.”

“Believe in
what?” I flicked my hand toward the Daemoni and Demons who were
already celebrating. “I believe what I see, and I see our
imminent annihilation.”

“And that’s
your problem. You believe only with your eyes anymore.”

I opened my mouth,
about to argue, but movement beyond him stopped me. Coming over the
mountain behind our people, a sizeable beast with wings flew close to
the ground with figures much larger than the average Norman man
marching behind. The crunches of their boots on snow carried over to
us and white plumes billowed up behind their feet as they continued
pouring over the top of the ridge, hundreds, then thousands of them.
The ground trembled, shaking the tops of the trees and sending small
piles of snow sliding down the mountainside.

My chest tightened even
more. “They’re going to cause an avalanche.”

“Our people are
fine,” Tristan said confidently.

I shook my head slowly,
not believing what I saw with my eyes or felt with my own mind. All
of those oversized men, marching in military form, were Normans.
Norman super-soldiers.

I peered at the figure
flying in front of them that I thought at first had been a new-to-me
kind of Demon. “
Sasha?
”

A wolf the size of an
elephant, her fur white as snow with stark black stripes like a
tiger’s, flew toward us with wings several times the size of
mine. She circled around us, giving a dip of her head before dropping
back down to the men she’d brought.
Her
men, loyal to
her above anyone else, much to Lucas’s chagrin. She’d led
the Norman super-soldiers here, to fight for us now that they were no
longer controlled by Lucas or the Summoned sons.

The last time I’d
seen the
lykora
, she’d been chasing a Demon away from
the Jefferson Memorial the night Hell arrived on Earth. I’d
tried hard to believe she’d made it, but since we’d never
found her, I had only assumed the worst and mourned her like I had
the rest of my team. But she’d survived.

Just like everyone
else.

“Is this supposed
to convince me?” I asked nobody in particular as I turned in
the air. “Because it doesn’t. Just thousands more who
have marched to their deaths.”

“Alexis.”
Tristan flew right up to me and braced his hands against my face.
“You’re outnumbered.”

“Exactly.”

“I mean by your
own people. They want to fight. They know they can win. They know we
have the Angels on our side. But you’re not helping.”

Tears pricked my eyes.
“I don’t know what to do, Tristan. I can’t help the
fear I feel knowing that either way, their lives are at risk. All
those people … so many, but not enough …”

“No, not enough
people.” His eyes, full of love but hard with certainty, bored
into mine. “But enough Angels to win. If you could only see
them.”

I blinked back the
sting in my eyes. “All I see is death below me. All I feel is
the truth of our defeat. I’m going to fail them again, Tristan.
The Angels entrusted me to lead us to victory, but there’s no
way. I can’t do this.
We
can’t do this.”

“But
they
can. Please,
ma lykita
, I beg you to feel the truth. In here.”
He pressed a hand to my chest. “Where is your faith?”

I closed my hands over
his, folding my fingers to hold him tightly. “In us, Tristan,”
I whispered. “My faith has always been in us. In you and me. In
our love.”