Faith (Soul Savers Book 7) (41 page)

“Alexis,”
Bree’s voice called out from a distance. Except it wasn’t
really far away. No, it was very near, my slow brain decided.

“Bree?” I
gasped as I sat up for the first time, blinking against the utter
blackness. Faeries’ minds had always been unreachable for me,
so I hadn’t sensed her. I blindly reached my hands out in the
direction of her voice, but I felt nothing. “Where are you?”

“We’re over
here.” A British accent.

“Stacey?”

Feeling disoriented by
the blindness, I dropped forward, my hands landing on a bumpy, coarse
surface. The same floor my knees rested on. I didn’t dare try
to stand up and walk in the darkness, so I crawled forward, toward
their voices.

“Yes, it’s
me, but you can’t get to us.”

“Don’t try,
or you’ll fall off the edge,” Bree warned.

“Where are we?”
I asked as my palm landed on said edge, my fingers folding over the
sharp roughness of it. It felt like some kind of rock. I slid my
hands to the side, twisting my body as I did. I bit back the pain in
my back and shoulders as I felt my way around a circular surface.

“Hell,”
Bree deadpanned as I stretched my legs behind me to get an idea of
the diameter of the circle I lay on. I’d barely extended my
legs fully when the toes of my boots dropped off the edge, so not
quite five feet across. I flattened myself all the way, inched
forward as far as I dared, and reached my arms down, searching for a
floor, or anything, beneath, but my hands only swung in the air. So I
was on a circular platform, at least a few feet off the ground, but
probably more.

“How high up?”
I asked as I pushed myself to my feet and gingerly rose to stand. I
had to stretch my arms out as a sense of vertigo waved over me.

“Don’t
know,” Stacey replied.

“Higher than us,”
said her friend, Debbie. I gasped at her voice, not realizing she was
here, too. “Baby Cakes and I are down here.”

“All y’all
are higher than us,” a new voice, with a Southern twang, added.
It came from the opposite side of my platform than where Bree,
Stacey, Debbie, and Baby Cakes seemed to be, and somewhat below. “But
we have no inklin’ of just how high.”

I blinked again, then
squinted, but nothing came into focus. “Lisa? Is that you? Are
all the faeries here?”

“Me and Jessica
are over here,” said the faerie I remembered from Tennessee
with the blue hair. Jessica was her sister. They’d been the
ones who’d given us Sasha, and also who’d demanded I
capture Kali’s soul after they supposedly kept an eye on Owen
for me. I had a feeling they’d kept certain other body parts on
Owen, and they’d still lost him. But they’d also helped
us during Tristan’s trial, so I didn’t completely dislike
the sisters. “And yeah, all of us who have ever helped the
Amadis or the Angels are here. Other creatures, too. Some have been
stuck here for centuries and millennia!”

“Stacey told me
about the fae, and I saw …” I trailed off, my throat
going dry at the memory of Bree being captured. “You’ve
been here this long?”

“We have no way
to escape,” Bree said.

“Did they …”
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “Did they
cut off your wings?”

Several sounds of
horror echoed across the space.

“No! But the bars
are iron,” Stacey replied as though that were obvious.

“We’re
allergic to iron,” Jessica quickly added.

“What bars?”
I asked. “I don’t have any. Just empty air surrounds me,
I think.”

Stacey let out a peep
of excitement. “And you have wings!”

My eyes burned with
fresh tears. “No. They’re gone. Someone cut them off.
With Hellfire, I assume.”

All of the faeries,
including many who I hadn’t heard until now, gasped or
whimpered, feeling my pain.

“Then we must be
pretty high up,” Bree concluded with resignation. “He
wouldn’t make it easy for you to escape.”

“I don’t
reckon you try to jump to find out.” Lisa may have intended to
lighten the mood with snark, but only sadness filled her voice as it
carried up to me.

A loud sound like
thunder suddenly clapped and rumbled around us. The faeries squeaked,
and I jumped back. I hadn’t realized how close to the edge I
was until the heel of my boot found no support. I held my breath as
the edge under my foot crumbled away, and I strained to listen, but
never heard the pieces land on anything below. I didn’t know if
that truly meant anything—if it gave an indication of just how
far I’d fall or if it was only an illusion—but I wasn’t
about to take any chances.

I shuffled forward,
kneeled down in what I hoped was the middle of my platform and opened
my mind, trying again to find any mind signatures. Instead, only the
misery and pain of eternal suffering filled my brain. I had no idea
if Tristan, Dorian, or Lucas was anywhere nearby or even alive.

“I can’t
find Tristan,” I told the faeries, in case they cared. In case
they hoped as much as I did that he was going to save us.

“Did you try your
stone?” Bree asked.

“Oh!” I
slipped my hand under my leather vest and pressed my fingers to the
stone implanted in my skin, over my heart. It immediately warmed. “I
feel him, but I don’t know where.”

“Maybe he’ll
feel you.” A hint of hope laced Bree’s words.

Another thunderous
sound, and then the floor beneath me began shaking and moving.

I sprawled forward,
grasping the rim of the platform with my hands and trying to gain
purchase with my toes, but the edges crumbled away as though I’d
been on sand the whole time. My heart jumped into my throat and my
stomach disappeared with the sensation of falling.

“Bree!” I
yelled.

“What’s
happening?” she called back, her voice growing distant as I
fell away from her and the rest of the faeries.

The platform continued
disintegrating as I plummeted, forcing me back to my knees, and then
crouching on the balls of my feet. Then it was completely gone, and I
was falling with no wings to save me. My heart tried to fly out of my
mouth as I screamed again.

But only a moment
later, I landed with a hard thud on rocky ground.

I’d barely pushed
myself to a half-crouch when the prickly feeling of something huge
falling toward me shot a shiver down my spine. I dropped to my knees
and covered my head. Something large shook the ground all around me
as a loud clanging sound rang through the air, echoing off of distant
walls. And bright light suddenly flooded over me, easily piercing
through the cracks of my arms and hands that covered my face.

I peeked through.
Vertical lines as thick as pine-tree trunks surrounded me, blocking
some of the light. Where was I? It almost looked like the fiery pit
in the valley, surrounded by trees. I slowly lifted my head and
blinked. The light wasn’t really painfully bright, but had only
seemed that way after so long in pure darkness. My eyes quickly
adjusted. No, not outside. Not on Earth at all.

Still in Hell. Locked
in a cell.

The iron bars
surrounded me in a circle about six feet across, and a roof was
overhead. The lake of fire glowed in the near distance, silhouetting
a figure standing about ten yards away by a stone table. And lying
perfectly still on the dais, as though dead, was my son.

“Dorian,” I
whispered as I ran for the bars. The skin of my palms sizzled as soon
as I wrapped my hands around them, as though the bars were coated in
acid. I jerked back and tried shaking off the burn while reaching out
for my son’s mind.
Dorian.

His signature remained
blank, but at least its current flowed in my mind and hadn’t
been snuffed out completely. The figure beside him, of course, was
Lucas, tugging at his white goatee with one hand while studying me
with icy eyes. I reached out for Tristan’s mind signature, but
didn’t find it. The stone in my chest remained warm, though, so
he must have been nearby. Hopefully waiting for the opportunity to
rescue us.

Lucas sauntered a few
feet closer to me, holding a dagger about ten inches long and
twirling its point against his fingertip. “I thought you might
want to watch. But you’re not the only one.”

He did a weird little
dance backward as a horrendous sound clamored through the cavern. I
dropped to my knees and covered my ears, hoping the cell’s roof
would hold against whatever fell from above. The crashing sound of
metal on stone sounded several feet away from me, but when I looked,
I could see nothing.

But I felt him.

Tristan!

“
Alexis.
”
His lovely mental voice came with a silent sigh of relief. But then
alarm filled him as he saw Dorian on the stone dais.

“Now that you two
are taken care of, it really is time,” Lucas said as he
swaggered over to Dorian, to the far side of the table so I could
easily see him. His eyes held mine as he lifted the knife over
Dorian’s chest.

I couldn’t
breathe. I couldn’t hear anything but my heart pounding against
my ribs, or see anything but my little boy, so vulnerable. Caught up
in a world and a situation that was no fault of his own, yet here he
was, about to die for it. He didn’t look like my little boy
anymore, his large body practically grown up as it was, but he would
always be my baby. And I couldn’t lose him.

Lucas’s hand
plunged.

“No!” I
yelled, and the knife stilled, only an inch above Dorian’s
body. “Take me instead.”

Lucas cocked his head
to the side and lifted a brow. “You would do that? Sacrifice
yourself for this man-child who belongs to me now? Who means nothing
to the Amadis or the world above?”

I swallowed hard,
trying to loosen the lump in my throat. Although he stared at me
curiously, waiting for an answer, it probably didn’t matter to
Lucas what it was. He believed Dorian to be our youngest, which
apparently meant his blood would open Earth to Satan. Perhaps letting
Lucas proceed would have been the easiest and most obvious decision
that would save the world. But what would he do when Dorian’s
blood didn’t work? He’d never let me out of here alive
anyway. And I couldn’t let my son die, especially in vain.

But my life aside,
could I let these babies I carried die in his place? They were also
my children. Either way, I’d be sacrificing one of my own,
perhaps two. How could a mother make such a decision?

“
Alexis, no!
You’re doing it again.
” Anger and fear shook
Tristan’s voice. “
You’re jumping without
thinking.
”

But that was the thing
I realized in that moment I saw the knife moving toward my son’s
heart. What became clearer now. Blurting out my self-sacrifice wasn’t
my first impulsive move of the night. The moment I dove into the
fiery pit after Dorian was.

The moment I’d
chosen faith over logic.

And wasn’t that
what I’d done all those times before? I’d hurled myself
into some dangerous situations without thinking of the consequences,
but I’d always done them because I thought they were the
right
things to do at the time. And I believed God protected the right
thing, even if we didn’t agree with the outcomes. He knew best.
Every time I’d jumped in, I’d believed in God’s
will.

Just as I did now.

Because letting my son
die for no reason was not the right thing to do. I was no God, and he
was no Jesus. Dorian’s sacrifice already broke the curse, but
his death would not save humanity nor the Amadis or the Daemoni. I
thought of the Normans and my people fighting in the Earthly realm,
and my heart swelled to near bursting with love for them. For my
family, my friends, for those I’d never met. Even for the
Daemoni, because I knew deep down that their souls couldn’t all
be damned. Many could still be saved, even those who’d been
born and entrenched in evil. We’d seen that ourselves in the
Conversion Center at The Loft with people like Molita. But this …
what was happening right now … No good could come from
Dorian’s death.

Perhaps throwing these
babies under the knife wasn’t the right thing to do, either,
and putting us in Dorian’s place was probably the most
illogical decision I would ever make. More absurd than leading my
people and the Normans into that battle, that’s for sure. But
that’s what all of this was about. What would save the world.
What they’d been telling me to do all along.

Choosing faith over
logic. Depending on what I saw with my eyes less, and following what
I felt in my heart and soul more.

Feeling this truth made
the decision easy.

“Yes,” I
finally answered Lucas, ready to spew the words that would convince
him to take me and release Dorian. But before I could tell him that
Dorian was not our youngest, I was already on the table, face up.
Magical, invisible bindings dug into my skin as they held me in place
against the cold stone, my arms pinned against my sides and my legs
tightly bound together. Only my head could move.

“
NO!
”
Tristan’s voice boomed across the spacious cavern, shaking the
ground and everything else.

Pieces of dust fell
from above, into my eyes and mouth. I sputtered them out and turned
my head to see him. He banged his fists against the bars of his cell
that was just like mine, producing a deafening racket. Next to him,
in the cell I’d just occupied, was our son, his body lying on
the ground, still motionless.

Trust me, Tristan
,
I said, but didn’t know if he heard me over the clamor he
created.

“You are no
different than me.” Lucas’s ice-cold voice came from my
other side, and I rolled my head on the hard stone table to look him
in the eye.

“I’m
nothing
like you.”

“Of course, you
are. You sacrifice all of humanity for something that is important
only to you. For some
one
important only to you.”