Unholy Torment

by Kristie Cook

  I turned to the others. “I say we have to check it out.”

  Tristan nodded. “He’s right about the tunnels under there. They connect all the important buildings and sites. The Daemoni have been focused on those for ages. Lucas had me studying them all the time.”

  “Victor and me, too,” Vanessa said. “But Lucas had never gained access to them before.”

  “We know he can now, though,” I said. “He’s probably sitting in the damn Oval Office this minute, telling the president what to do.”

  “Or having him turned,” Vanessa muttered, the bitterness of her own turning leaking through her tone.

  “When are we going?” I asked.

  Tristan’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Tomorrow, late afternoon. Gives us time to rest up and regenerate. We’ll scope it out in daylight and watch for the Daemoni to leave for their nightly hunt. I don’t know how much security they’ll really have in place since they’re pretty much in control anyway.”

  “Except they know we’re close,” Owen pointed out.

  “I don’t think we should all go,” I said. “Blossom and Jax will want to stay with Sheree and the norms, just in case something happens. They prefer helping like that.”

  “I’m not so sure Jax does, but he’ll stick with Blossom regardless,” Tristan said. “Charlotte, are you willing to stay behind? Keep this place locked down?”

  She grimaced. “I’d rather not. I’m one of your strongest fighters.”

  “Which is why we need you here,” Tristan said. “If the Daemoni know we’re here and then we show up there, they’ll know this place is vulnerable.”

  “They haven’t attacked these people yet. It’s sacred,” I reminded him.

  “They can still shoot spells and fire inside from beyond the line,” Owen said.

  “And they didn’t know these people had any ties to us before,” Tristan countered. “Now they do. Now they know this place and the people here are our weakness. They need a shield.”

  Char pressed her lips together and blew air out of her nose. “Fine. I’ll stay. Blossom and I will shield it.”

  “Can you keep an eye out on Dorian, too?” I asked. “I’m worried about him.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “So it’s the four of us?”

  “Three of us,” Tristan corrected. “Owen, Vanessa, and me. You can keep an eye on Dorian yourself.”

  “Hey!” I protested. He glanced down at my abdomen. I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “Don’t you even go there.”

  “Lex—”

  “Don’t Lex me. I’m going with you. You need me and my mind.”

  His brows lifted as his gaze locked on mine. “You’re broken, remember?”

  I frowned. “Not completely. And maybe my power will come back.”

  “You’ll need more than three of you,” Noah said.

  “Shut up,” everyone but me replied at the same time.

  “You’re not leaving me here, Tristan. I swore to my people I would not cower and hide. That I would be out there, like everyone else. That I would not send anyone off to do what I would not do myself.”

  “You weren’t pregnant then,” Char said unhelpfully. “You probably should—” She cut herself off when I gave her a death-glare, and she sighed. “You’re as stubborn as your mother, you know that? But you’re the matriarch. If you think it’s best for the Amadis and humanity for you to go, by all means, go.”

  I scowled as I considered this very valid point, but then made up my mind. If we didn’t succeed in disconnecting the Summoned and the Norman soldiers from Lucas, we’d never have a chance of defeating him. There would be no Amadis or humanity to worry about. No future for a baby. I was one of our strongest fighters, and we needed all we could get, especially if Char stayed here, where she was needed more than I was.

  “We each have our role to play,” I said. “Mine is to be a warrior. And I will be there to cut those stones out.”

  I looked to each one of them, challenging them, but nobody argued with me further.

  “I’m going to let the others know, including Carlie,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you.” Tristan looked at Owen. “You’re good here, Scarecrow?”

  Owen rubbed his stomach. “Just bring me some grub.”

  Char stayed with her son and Vanessa, in case Noah decided to give them a hard time. I told Tristan about Dorian’s attitude as we crossed back over to campus.

  “He obviously knows who Noah is,” I said. “He knows what’s expected of him in the future. Kali probably brainwashed him while she had him, and now he thinks he has no choice.”

  Tristan took my hand into his. “We don’t know what the future holds anymore, ma lykita. The best we can do right now is to take one day at a time. And for the rest of today and tomorrow morning, I say we try to have a little peace as a family.”

  We didn’t know where to look for Dorian, but our noses and stomachs led us to the cafeteria. He wasn’t there and didn’t show up while we each ate a bowl of pasta from a can, but when we stepped outside, Tristan lifted his chin as he gazed across the quad. Dorian sat on the ground, leaning against a tree trunk and playing with Sasha, who ran through the fallen leaves. We descended the stairs to join him.

  “Alexis!”

  I turned to Carlie jogging across the greenway, her blond ponytail bobbing behind her head. She panted as she ran up. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Is Sheree okay?” I asked immediately.

  She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “She is for now. We did what we could, and the rest is up to her. Does she . . . you know . . . heal fast? Is that true about her . . . kind?”

  I nodded. “Depending on the injury, yeah.”

  “Then she might make it.”

  I blew out a breath of relief. “Thank you!”

  “Hey, Carlie. I don’t know if you remember me—”

  Carlie burst into laughter as she stared at Tristan’s outstretched hand. “Are you serious? It’s been a long time, and I’ve met a lot of people, but Tristan, you don’t exactly have a forgettable face.”

  He looked at me as though he didn’t understand. Yeah, right.

  “Uh, anyway,” he said, “what do you know about what’s happened? Anything about the rest of the city? Like the Mall?”

  “The Mall’s infested with zombies,” James said from behind us.

  I choked down a gag just at the sound of his voice. Of all the people to emerge from the past, why him? Tristan took my hand, squeezing it harder than usual.

  “How do you know this douche canoe?” he asked me under his breath, only loud enough for me to hear. I giggled. I’d never heard him use that word before. “Learned it from Dorian. It fits.”

  I nodded. “Remember how I had a hard time trusting you in the beginning? This asshole is one of many reasons why. That crooked nose of his is from my fist.”

  He chuckled. “Ah. I remember the story now. Good girl.”

  “Zombies, huh?” I asked, turning toward James and wishing someone else could give us this crucial information, but he seemed to be our only choice. Him and a couple of other hunters standing with him, all dressed in black cargo pants, black t-shirts, and black combat boots, with weapons hanging on their backs and belts.

  “Something like that,” said one of his friends, a black guy. “They ain’t alive, that’s for sure. But they ain’t dead, because they move around, mostly just wanderin’ around like they’re drunk. Until they smell fresh meat. Then they get all worked up.”

  I cut my eyes sideways to look at Tristan and spoke under my breath again. “I thought the outbreaks were limited to the other side of the world.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “What else is going on out there?” I asked the others.

  “Pretty much hell,” James said.

  I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. Or slam my fist into his face again.

  “We need details,” Tristan said.
“We have a mission, and the more we know, the better.”

  Carlie stared at us with huge blue eyes. “You want to go out there?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” I said. “It’s something only we can do.”

  “I bet we can handle it.” James smirked. “Better than you. You seem to have a soft spot for the supes. Besides, what are you going to do? Punch them?”

  My hand balled into a fist, ready to remind him of the power in said punch, which was even more than it had been last time his nose had met my fist. Instead, I threw a bolt of electricity at his feet, making him jump backwards. Carlie gasped and covered her mouth with her palm.

  “You are going out there, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice muffled behind her hand.

  “We have to. It’s the whole reason we’re even here.”

  She pressed her lips together as she studied me, and then she grabbed my hand.

  “Come with me.” She tugged me along as she headed toward the big building at the front of campus.

  James and the other hunters didn’t follow, thank the Angels.

  “I can’t stand being around him,” Carlie said as she led Tristan and me inside the arched doorway. We went up some wide steps, turned a corner, then entered an enclosed stairwell. “Some of the hunters are okay, but he and his friends are dicks. Unfortunately, he seems to think he’s in charge. Did you date him or something?”

  “Hell no! He wanted something, though, that I wouldn’t give. When he pushed it, I punched him.”

  Carlie laughed. “Good for you!”

  I shrugged. “It was a long time ago, but he hasn’t changed. Maybe grown worse.”

  We continued climbing the steps to the top of the stairwell. She took us through the door, a short ways down the top floor hall, and through another door that led outside. Four columns surrounded us with more steps. I looked up as we climbed, into the bottom of a huge bell, its clapper looking like a long, bulbous tongue. When we reached the top of the clock tower, Carlie turned to look out.

  “I thought you should see this,” she said.

  I followed her gaze and gasped at the view of the city spread out before me. What should have been a beautiful landscape of trees in autumn and interesting architecture broke my heart and soul with the utter destruction.

  Buildings were demolished or only half-standing. Several pillars of black smoke rose to the sky all around the city. The top of the Washington Monument in the distance ended at jagged edges instead of its normal point. Cars and buses littered the streets, some in the middle of the roads, many with their doors hanging open. The tops of some trees had been broken off, and others were only blackened trunks, their leaves and branches fried.

  And dead bodies lay scattered everywhere.

  Legs and other body parts protruded from underneath fallen buildings. Charred corpses lay in the ashes of burning piles of rubbish. And mounds of bodies were piled on street corners, as though waiting for the trash service to collect them. Bile rose in my throat, and my eyes watered.

  Buildings that hadn’t been destroyed suffered broken windows with half their contents spilling out, what looters had left behind. Were they really even looters anymore or scavengers simply trying to feed themselves? Whoever they’d been, they were long gone now. The only living beings roaming the streets were Daemoni and military. From what we could see from here, the humans were locked up in a camp like the one in London—another Norman farm, about halfway between here and the National Mall.

  “I . . .” I shook my head, unable to form words in my shock. “What happened? What do you know?”

  Carlie pressed her lips together as she gazed out at the devastating scene in front of us. “I was here, working the night shift as the surgeon on call when the evil creatures attacked. All of the injuries coming in . . . it was insane. And what the people were saying? I mean, the news had been reporting all day on what was happening everywhere else, but you just don’t think it’ll happen to you, you know?” She sighed. “People locked themselves up in their homes, which didn’t do a lot of good if the monsters really wanted in, but they backed off a little. Like they’d swooped in for their shock-and-awe and then knew they had us by the balls. My sister called me when the news showed that part about you being the head of all this. She just couldn’t believe it. She knew I’d known you before, and I told her I couldn’t believe it either. That’s when she started talking to the others about this A.K.’s Angels idea. When the bombs started dropping, the phones went out, and I didn’t hear from her again. I was so scared.”

  “Bombs dropped here, too?” I saw the destruction before me, but I just couldn’t believe it.

  “It was horrible, Alexis. You don’t think it can happen here. I mean, when it comes to bombs and war, this city is the number one place the military’s supposed to protect, right? But there were no F16s scaring off the planes that came in, even when they entered the no-fly zone. There weren’t any land-to-air missiles being shot off to destroy the bombs in midair. It’s like the government and military abandoned the rest of the city, leaving us for dead.”

  “No warnings?” Tristan asked. “Nobody fighting back?”

  She hunched her shoulders as she crossed her arms over her stomach. “The news was all over the place with bombings and assassinations and war breaking out everywhere. I had a hard time keeping track of everything going on. It was like the civilized world fell into a free-for-all street brawl.” She shook her head, the ends of her ponytail whisking over her neck. “There were militias here trying to make sure we were protected, but our president and leaders kept saying everything was under control. Whatever the hell that means. Does that look like everything was under control?”

  Despair colored her tone, and her bottom lip trembled with emotion. I put an arm around her shoulders. She sighed.

  “After the bombings, there was no power, no water, no phones. Nothing. We went from capitol of the free world to a third-world country in days. Chaos broke out. Looters were everywhere. Ex-military guys tried to settle things down, but people fought back, and then the so-called real military came in and killed them! Their former comrades and civilians alike.” She paused to take another deep breath and shook her head again. “The monsters sat back and watched as humans killed each other over a carton of milk or a loaf of bread. Some people formed gangs to protect themselves against others, and their fights were deadlier than ever. But then people began leaving in droves, running for the hills, I guess. I stayed, still hoping to find my sister.”

  “Did you?” I asked, bracing for more bad news.

  She nodded. “Yeah, she showed up here a week ago, with about thirty friends and neighbors, calling themselves A.K.’s Angels. She knew to come here because of the holy grounds. She’d learned that from your books. I’d noticed the vampires and other monsters wouldn’t come on campus, but didn’t know why.” She glanced at me and blushed. “I hadn’t had time to read your books yet, with med school and everything.”

  “I’d say you had more important reading to do.”

  She chuckled, the sound flat and hollow. “Did I? If I’d read your books instead of medical textbooks, I might have saved more lives than I ever will as a surgeon. I could’ve tried to keep everyone here. But the entire campus cleared out the day after the monsters attacked, running for families and home. They would have survived here. They most likely didn’t out there.” Her voice had become watery, and she paused to suck in a ragged breath. “Do you know the last we heard anything, a quarter of the world’s population had been killed? They estimated another quarter had been infected and turned into those monsters. And look out there.” She waved at the city before us, where cars should have been clogging the roads and people crowding the sidewalks—live people, not corpses. “Anyone left is in those camps or have gone underground, except for the few here or in the gangs. One-fourth of humans dead. Gone. Wiped out. Just like it says in the Bible. I can’t wrap my mind around that many people. And pretty much everyone I know is included
in that. My sister’s the only family I know who’s still alive. The rest probably died trying to get out of here.”

  “We have people out there who could have helped them,” Tristan said.

  “Did you ever see any good creatures?” I asked. “Supernaturals like us, trying to help?”

  She stuffed her hands into her pockets. “I did at first. That’s how I knew my sister was right about everything she believed. But the humans went after them, especially the gangs. They killed some, but I think the rest just bolted.”

  My heart shriveled at the thought of some of my people dying out there in the streets before me. Murdered when they’d only been trying to save lives and souls. And where were the rest? Had any escaped? Did any work covertly, still trying to help, or had they all given up?

  “It’s not safe out there, Alexis,” Carlie said as she turned for the steps. “No matter what special things you can do. It’s not safe anywhere. Some people here think help is coming, but it’s not. There’s nobody left to help us. We stayed to find survivors and give them a safe place, but there are none of those left. Now we stay because there’s nowhere to go. We have enough food to last us another week or so, and then what? We become one of them?” She blew out a heavy breath. “Supernatural or human, they’re all monsters out there.”

  She descended the stairs, disappearing from sight. I turned back to the view before us. Besides the destruction and weird emptiness, which were bad enough in themselves, the sight was marred by strange symbols everywhere. Burnt into grass. Spray-painted on buildings and streets. Smeared in blood. Ugly lines that I couldn’t interpret, but nevertheless made the hairs on my arms stand up.

  “Dark magic sigils and signs of the devil,” Tristan said. “Symbols calling out to Satan.”

  And they were everywhere.

  Lucas and his Daemoni owned this city. And who knew where else? How long had they been infiltrating, worming their ways in like the snakes they were? How far did they plan to go still? The Satanic symbols sent my body into a full shudder.