by Kristie Cook
“Well … no,” I admitted as I rubbed my chin. “But you and Charlotte put up the strongest cloaks. And not all of the groups have Amadis at all, right, Robin?”
“A few don’t. The really tiny clusters of Normans. But the Amadis are out looking for them and bringing them to the larger groups that are cloaked.”
“So how many are we talking about? What are the estimates for survivors?” Tristan asked.
Robin squinted her little eyes as she appeared to be doing math in her head. “At least a couple million Normans in the Americas. So probably a few hundred million worldwide?”
I gasped audibly. “You really think so?”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this news. That was a few hundred million more than I’d thought had survived, even when Mom, Rina, and Cassandra had tried to convince me otherwise, but that meant over six billion lives had been lost. All in a matter of weeks.
“Considering what I’ve found so far, and what others have found, yes, I do,” Robin answered me.
“Does that include the Daemoni’s slaves and the Normans they’d put in the farms?” Vanessa asked.
“Farms?” Robin asked. “You mean the concentration camps?”
Vanessa nodded. “They’re using those people for food. Harvesting them.”
Robin scowled and shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. But I think tens of thousands of those Normans are alive, too.”
“And if the Daemoni were truly farming them, there might be many pregnant women under their control,” Blossom said.
“Seriously?” I asked. Wow. Just wow. Where was everyone, though?
Tristan rubbed his hand over the back of his head. “It makes sense. There are dozens of government compounds around the world that are nuclear safe. They each hold thousands of people. Then you think about all of the individual shelters like this one.”
“Brogan said he had over one-and-a-half million customers,” Char said. “Those are people who were prepared for catastrophes.”
I recalled the scenes Cassandra had shown me while I was in the Otherworld—glimpses through the veil of Normans who had survived. She hadn’t been exaggerating at all. In fact, she’d downplayed just how many people were still alive. People whose souls were worth fighting for.
And babies’ souls, too?
Of course, I’d known about the Norman farms, so I knew the Daemoni had kept some Normans somewhere. Victor had told us they were nice and safe—from the bombs, anyway. I’d figured they were the ones serving the Daemoni voluntarily now, but I hadn’t considered the possibility of babies. Of another generation who’d either be controlled by the Daemoni … or could rebuild this world.
Their future was possibly up to us. This news changed everything.
Chapter 19
“What about Amadis? How many survived?” Tristan asked, and my eyes flew to Robin.
She didn’t hesitate to count this time. “A few thousand. Maybe ten or twelve?”
“And Daemoni?” Sheree asked.
“All of them,” Vanessa muttered. “They knew it was coming.”
Robin nodded. “They were prepared. Their numbers are about the same as they were.”
“Over half a million then,” Tristan said, and my heart sank. “And they have the Demons now, too.”
“More Demons than Daemoni,” Robin reported. “Most of them are hiding in Norman skins.”
Now my heart fell through the floor. All hope that had been building in the last several hours had been dashed to nothing in mere seconds.
“There’s no way,” I murmured.
“No way for what?” Blossom asked.
“No way to beat them. Ten thousand Amadis versus over a million of them?” I shook my head.
“There are the Normans—” Vanessa started.
I looked at her with disbelief. “We’re talking the Daemoni and the Demons. I’m not putting the Normans against them. That would be asking them to commit suicide.”
“Many of them are trained,” Owen said. “The hunters, to start with. They do well against the Daemoni.”
“What?” I turned on him. “When they’re five or ten on one?”
Owen shrugged. “We could hit those numbers.”
My brow shot up. “There are that many hunters?”
“No, but we can train other Normans,” he insisted. “Look at all of the people in the Training rooms here.”
“We’re not doing that. This is our war. We’re not putting them in that situation.”
“It’s their world, too, ma lykita,” Tristan said. “Maybe they should at least get a say in it.”
“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.