by Kristie Cook
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, march
ing 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.”
His brows scrunched together. Sadness filled his eyes. “That’s it? Only in us?”
I flinched. “Only? That’s always been enough. We’ve survived everything we’ve been faced with—your years away with the Daemoni, the trial against you and us as a couple, what Kali did to you, Dorian’s kidnapping—we’ve survived it all because of our love. We escaped Hell because of our love, Tristan. Because of you and me. Our love has always been enough. Until now …”
“But it still is. Because it’s more than just you and me, Lex. It always has been.”
Tears pooled, threatening to spill over the rims as I shook my head. “No. In the end, it’s only been us. Nobody else cares. Not the Angels. Not God.”
“The Angels brought us out of Hell, Alexis. We didn’t do that.”
“Not the second time. They wanted me to leave you there! I went back for you, Tristan. Bree and me. I got us out of there.” I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat as I still fought back the tears. The next words came out as a whisper. “I could only save us, though. Not Bree or the rest of the faeries. And now, not the Amadis or the Normans. Maybe not even our son. We’re not enough. I’m not enough.”
His eyes held mine as they pierced even further into my heart, into my soul, as though searching for some underlying belief I wasn’t voicing. But I’d put it all out there. Exactly how I felt. Exactly what I knew. Ugly dark stains and all.
With a sad sigh, he pulled me closer to him and pressed his lips against my forehead for a long moment. Then he backed away, holding me at arm’s reach. When he spoke, his voice held more torment than it had when he’d found my body buried in the marble remnants of the Jefferson Memorial.
“Alexis, my love, as long as you believe everything we’ve accomplished has been on our own, without any help, you’re just as arrogant as Lucas. You’ll never be better than him or the Ancients or Lucifer himself.”
Chapter 23
I blinked, speechless.
“I love you more than life,” he continued, “but I no longer recognize your soul.”
My mouth fell open. I snapped it shut, but my jaw went slack again as I stared at him, opening and closing my mouth like a fish as no words came. My heart felt as though he’d physically shoved his hand into my chest cavity, grasped it in his fist, and wrenched it around. The dam broke, and the tears that had been threatening finally spilled.
“What do you want me to do?” I cried. “I can’t change any of this!”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Lex. You don’t have to change any of this. It’s not up to you. All you have to do is believe. Put your faith in the right place. If you could see what we see …” His gaze lifted, sweeping over the mountaintops around us. “You would know. You only have to change your own heart.”
“Let go and let God?” I asked skeptically. “That’s what you’re telling me will win this war?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
I blinked against the tears. Easier said than done. I could so easily say it if the words alone would bring us victory. But it’s one thing to say everything had been handed over to God, or anyone else, and an entirely different thing to live that way. Nearly impossible. Decisions still had to be made. We still had to take action and move forward. We had responsibilities and people depending on us. The world in fact! Wouldn’t it be nice to simply let go?
We all had those moments where we wanted to throw our papers in the air and say, “Fuck this shit,” letting the pages fall as they may. Letting someone else take over. But not too many people could actually leave them there. Most would stare at the pieces for a moment with a brief sense of freedom, but then realize what they’d done. Panic because of everything at stake. “Just kidding!” they’d say as they scrambled to pick up the pieces and regain control.
That was me. I’d become a control freak. Feeling responsible for the future of the entire world would do that to you. I wanted so much to believe someone had our backs. I wanted to trust God and hand everything over to Him so badly that I physically hurt inside, as though my heart and soul were twisting up and shriveling in on each other. But the thought of letting go and risking everything, everyone, created a paralyzing fear.
“If only I could,” I whispered.
Tristan pressed his fingers to the rise of my breast, over my heart, over the stone that connected us. “Feel for it. I know it’s in there.”
He leaned in and brushed his lips across my forehead again before swooping down to join Owen, Char, and the others below. The plans they made—following what Mom and Rina had instructed—drifted up to my ears as I floated in the sky, still reeling from his words. I thought I’d felt alone before, when Mom and Rina had died and left me to lead the Amadis, but I hadn’t known true loneliness then. I’d had Tristan. And Dorian. Owen, my sister, my best friend, and the rest of my team.
Now I had no one. Because nobody else truly understood the weight I carried.
Whatever they saw, whatever they thought they knew was lost on me. Because still, all I could see before us was defeat and death. The true end of the world. How much longer before Lucas opened the Gates to Hell? Before Satan joined the Earthly realm? Not much, I knew, because there was no way we could stop him. Not when that army of a million or more surrounded him, while only thousands had gathered under me. Not when he had dozens of sorcerers and countless Demons with their black magic, while we had Owen, Charlotte, and a few dozen warlocks with a fraction of their power and the inability to use any kind of dark powers.
Tristan led those below into formation, and they began their march around the mountain to the valley. My team followed behind him, then the Amadis, then Sasha’s super-soldiers with the r
est of the Normans after them. Tristan motioned a hand signal, and a third of the army branched off to march to the mountain to the east of the valley, another third—which included Tristan and the rest of my team—headed for the west side, and the last third stayed on this mountain to the south. What was he thinking? I soared down to Tristan’s side.
“What are you doing?” I demanded as I fell into pace next to him.
“You know,” he said without pause.
I did know. I just couldn’t believe it.
“Tristan! How can you do this?” I swept my arms around at the landscape surrounding us. “You of all people know what a stupid maneuver this is. Our tiny army is split up. We don’t have enough troops or firepower to be surrounding the enemy like this. We’ll have mountains at our backs, and nowhere to fall back for retreat. You know more than anybody what a bad plan this is. You taught me!”
He stared straight forward, not looking at me. “And you of all people know these are the orders we’ve been given.”
I blew out a breath of exasperation and threw my hands into the air.
“So you’re just going to follow them in blind …” I trailed off, knowing his answer.
His eyes cut sideways at me. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
A multitude of emotions slammed into me. Most of all, that deep-seated, debilitating fear.
Tristan spoke into my mind, his voice softer. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, ma lykita. We’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to do. Please believe that, because they’re following me for the moment, but you’ll have to give the final order.”
I turned around, walking backwards, as my eyes traveled over our measly army spreading itself thin across the mountainsides. Stupid. So incredibly stupid. What were Mom and Rina thinking? My gaze lifted, as though I expected to see them in the sky, even when I knew I wouldn’t. Instead, I found a swarm of bodies soaring right for us.
Tristan! Up!
He glanced up as they flew over us. I spun back around, and everyone stopped marching as the figures dropped into the clearing in front of our group, one at a time like birds landing. But these were no birds.