Unholy Torment

by Kristie Cook

  The weirdest part of the whole situation, though, was what brought Vanessa to this room: A few dozen men, dressed in various styles of clothes from jeans and t-shirts to thousand-dollar suits, standing in perfectly lined rows and staring glassy-eyed at the front of the room. They all appeared to be in their early to mid-twenties, most with various shades of brown and reddish-brown hair, although a few blonds were mixed in, many with dark eyes and olive-toned skin. Enough shared features to show that they were not only related to each other and Noah, but also to me.

  We’d found the Summoned and their offspring.

  Vanessa stepped farther into the room and snapped her fingers in front of the face of the man closest to us. He showed no reaction. I’d expected them to attack us on Lucas’s orders the instant we arrived, but they only stood there, still as statues. Would this really be so easy? I doubted it.

  As if in response to my silent inquiry, a man’s head turned toward me, and he gave me a creepy grin that didn’t reach his glazed eyes. Then he looked forward again while his lips moved, as though he spoke, but no sound came. Suddenly, gunfire erupted on a monitor close to him. My eyes to flew to it. The people on the screen screamed and some tried to run, but they were all gunned down, eventually falling into a bloody mass of bodies.

  I clamped my hand over my mouth before I screamed, too.

  “Thought you’d like that little demonstration,” a familiar female voice said from between two of the Summoned where she’d appeared from thin air.

  The two men didn’t move as Jeana, dressed in her dominatrix costume, pushed her way past them. A moment later, Merrick showed himself, too. Sasha jumped from my jacket and grew to stand nearly a foot taller than me before her paws even hit the ground. Her wings sprouted from her back, her stripes came out, and her upper lip curled away from her fangs.

  “Oh, good. She’s exactly why we brought you here,” Jeana said as she appraised the lykora.

  “Shit,” we all muttered under our collective breath. This had all been a trap for Sasha?

  “Yes, shit for you, but not for us,” Jeana sing-songed as she swaggered back and forth in front of Sasha, as though inspecting the lykora like she planned to make an offer of purchase. Except Jeana wouldn’t bother with an offer. That wasn’t who she was. She would simply take.

  “So you finally pulled your two brain cells together and figured out Lucas’s secret sauce?” I asked, trying to mask my fear for the lykora—and the world—behind snark.

  Jeana laughed. “Oh, child, we’ve always known his secret. Do you really think we’re as stupid as Kali and tried to overtake Lucas? He’s our master. He’ll soon be our Lord. That whole interrogation skit was a ruse. What we really needed to know then was the extent of the connection between the lykora and the Norman soldiers, and we learned when she was shot how they all felt her pain. That’s a weakness as long as we don’t have possession of the mutt. So thank you for making this special delivery. Maybe if you’d played London a little smarter and handed the lykora over then, the last matriarch-whore’s vampire mate would still be around.”

  At the mention of Rina and Solomon, anger blossomed within me, and I lunged at her. She dropped her arms to her sides, splayed out her hands, and I froze in place as intense power jolted through me. Only for a moment, though, before it began streaming the other way. She’d created a connection that sucked the electrical energy from my body and straight into hers, locking my muscles up. I tried to push her off with a shove of my Amadis power, but she easily dismissed it with a wave of her hand. Tristan moved between us to block her access to me, severing the connection, and he lifted his hand, raising Jeana up with it. But Merrick shot a spell at Tristan, blasting him into the wall. Cracks splintered across the plaster, and a screen fell and shattered on the floor. Several of the Summoned sons suddenly sprang into action, and chaos erupted.

  While Merrick and Jeana plastered themselves against the wall and controlled some of the men to move in front of them in a protective half-circle, they apparently ordered others to divvy up and attack us. They didn’t use any powers, only fists and feet as they punched and kicked. Tristan had anticipated this, although we’d expected Lucas to be the one controlling them, and we’d agreed that we didn’t want to hurt the Summoned. They’d hopefully be on our side soon. So I only fought back enough to minimize the blows that landed on my body.

  Jeana and Merrick were our real targets.

  I couldn’t use my electric power, though, because they’d only latch onto it and charge their own magic with the energy. So while swinging my arms and legs to parry the Summoned’s attacks, I gathered my Amadis power within me and created a bubble of energy, letting it expand within my body. And then I pushed it outward in an explosion of power. The wave hit the Summoned closest to me, knocking them off their feet. The ones in front of Merrick and Jeana fell, too.

  Owen took the opportunity and shot a spell at Merrick, but the sorcerer shoved it back at him, sending Owen flying into one of the Summoned. Spells and powers started flying, most deflected into the floor and walls. Another screen exploded with impact. With no real powers but her body, Vanessa launched herself at Merrick, but he already flew for Sasha. The lykora snapped and bit at him, crunching her jaw around his arm. He blasted a spell that not only sent her flying, but everyone else in the room, too. I crashed into the wall, and my head banged against the corner of a screen, but the gash that it left healed up right away.

  Merrick and Jeana stood in the center of the room. Everyone else jumped to their feet. The Summoned sprang at us, but Tristan, Owen, and I swished our hands all at the same time, throwing them back, away from us, as we advanced on the sorcerers. My glare remained on Jeana, specifically. I drew my dagger, still concealed, and lifted it for the throw. The sorceress twisted her hands in front of her and pulled them to her hip, as though yanking on a rope. My energy flowed like a river out to her, bringing me to my knees in a nanosecond. Tristan twisted his hand, and the sorceress flew back several feet, but she stopped herself in midair with her own magic, her hold on me never loosening. Using the bit of strength I could hold on to, I threw the dagger, thumbing the amethyst at the last moment to reveal the blade before it arced end-over-end in the air and drove into Jeana’s shoulder right above her heart. She fell to the floor on her ass.

  The energy drain stopped, and my mind exploded, clearing out what felt like cotton stuffing clogging my brain. I hadn’t noticed the filling in my head until everyone’s thoughts came loud and clear, the onslaught momentarily blacking out my physical surroundings. Hundreds of dots of mind signatures in the distance filled my head, but when I tried to latch on to most of those in the room, their thoughts came up blank. But I had no problem hearing Jeana’s and Merrick’s, which I shared with Tristan, Owen, and Vanessa.

  Owen and Merrick had continued trading spells back and forth, Owen holding his own, but Merrick was about to let one go that aimed for me rather than the warlock. Owen shot a spell at him first, while Tristan full on charged at him like a pissed off bull.

  I did my own charging, right toward Jeana who tried once again to pull on my energy. The silver blade still protruding from her shoulder weakened her, though. At the same time she tried to suck me dry, she ordered the Summoned to attack again. Focused solely on Jeana, I absently punched at the men who lunged at me, knocking them away, as I pushed my other powers against Jeana, blocking her pull as I ran for her. Vanessa blurred over to the sorceress, looped her arm around Jeana’s neck, and locked her in a chokehold for me. I plowed into the bitch with my left palm lifted and shoved Amadis power into her as hard as I could. Her body arched and convulsed against Vanessa, and she screamed obscenities at me, yelling over the sounds of Tristan and Owen fighting with Merrick and the Summoned.

  Then Jeana fell suddenly silent, and she gave me an agony-filled grin before looking up to the Summoned standing closest to her and giving him a slight nod. I picked up on no exchange of thoughts, but she somehow communicated with him.

&n
bsp; Gunfire erupted on the screen right behind her. Normans and Amadis slumped to the ground.

  “Stop!” I shouted, and everyone in the room froze, presumably under Tristan’s power.

  “You can’t stop them,” Merrick said, his voice full of glee, and another Summoned’s lips moved, followed by more shooting and Normans and Amadis dropping execution style. I shared a thought with Vanessa, her fangs slid fully out, and she pierced them into Jeana’s throat, drawing a trickle of blood. Merrick let out a sound of disinterest. “Even if you kill us, Lucas will take over.”

  More gunfire. My stomach lurched as another group was mowed down by the Norman super-soldiers. My eyes stung as my gaze bounced between the three screens showing piles of dead bodies and soldiers standing there, just staring, with no understanding or awareness of what they’d done to their fellow humans. About thirty or so more monitors still displayed small crowds begging for their lives. Jeana and Merrick—and if not them, Lucas—would keep going until they’d all been executed, or we gave them Sasha. And probably our own lives, too. We needed to stop them. But how?

  “You could kill the controllers here,” Jeana suggested, her tone snide as she guessed at my thoughts. I certainly wasn’t sharing them with her. She flicked her hand toward the Summoned and their offspring. “But I imagine there’s still hope for some of them. Isn’t that what you’re always looking for?”

  “Not that it would matter much,” Merrick added. “With the lykora’s blood in them, Lucas still has those soldiers’ loyalty.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. The soldiers seemed to be more loyal to Sasha than Lucas, which could be our advantage when the time came. But first, we had to address the Summoned and their offspring. And killing them wasn’t an option. We weren’t here just to save the Normans, but to save the Summoned, as well. Not only did we plan to protect their souls from damnation when we figured out how to break the curse, but we also hoped they would fight with us, helping us to win this war.

  “Of course, you could kill Sasha,” Jeana purred, and my heart immediately recoiled at the thought. I glared at her with pure hatred. “That’s the name Dorian gave the mutt, right? If you kill her, the soldiers will immediately go down, too.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her.

  “Like we said before, she’s their weakness,” Merrick said. “But can you do it? That’s the question.”

  Jeana stared at me with a smirk on her lips and excitement alight in her dark eyes, igniting the red glow of the Daemoni. I didn’t think it possible, but this little bitch held more darkness in her soul than Kali ever dreamed of. It pulsed out of her in waves that rippled over me . . . into me. If she couldn’t drain me of my power, she would fill me with her own black energy.

  “Those are your options, poppet,” she said, her voice dark and gravelly. “What ever are you going to do?”

  I stared at her for a long moment before returning her smirk as my mind ran through all the things I’d wanted to do to her from the moment she dared to touch my son. I did share those thoughts with her.

  “Those are not our only options,” Tristan mind-spoke to me. I nodded, knowing he was right, and Jeana’s brows furrowed. I closed off my mind from hers at the same time Norman soldiers shot down another group.

  Let’s end this, I growled into my team’s heads. Before anyone else dies. Jeana’s and Merrick’s souls are black. There is no hope. Vanessa and Owen, put the controllers to sleep. Tristan, you can have Merrick, but I get this bitch.

  Vanessa released the sorceress and blurred around the room, and before they could react, the Summoned and their offspring fell unconscious as Owen raced to catch them and lay them on the floor. Jeana’s mouth fell open with shock at first, and then her eyes filled with panic. I didn’t pay attention to what Tristan did to Merrick, but based on the sounds of the sorcerer’s wails, I knew he suffered terrifically. I had my own evil wretch to take care of.

  I narrowed my eyes, lifted one corner of my mouth in a half-smile, and lunged at Jeana’s paralyzed body. She cried out when I yanked my dagger out of her shoulder and tried to mumble a spell at me, but I swung around and kicked her in the face. Her head snapped to the side, and her teeth smashed together, shutting her up. Before she could try another spell, I threw myself at her again, my dagger pointed at her heart. But I didn’t stab her with it. Instead, I fisted the hilt and drew the sharp tip through her skin, gritting my teeth against her siren screams of pain as I twisted and pulled artfully. Blood filled the lines between the flesh and spilled over the edges, leaving a trail over the curve of her breasts and into her blouse. When I finished my etching, I paused for a brief moment to admire my artwork. Unfortunately, too much blood flowed through my crude rendition of the Amadis symbol carved into her chest.

  With Jeana’s body trembling under mine, but her eyes hard as steel, I held my palm over the crimson engraving and shoved Amadis power through the open wound. Along with it, I used my other hand to push the full strength of my electrical energy into her, charging her higher than her body could handle. Dark purple blotches bloomed over her skin and smoke rose, accompanied by the acrid odor of burning hair and flesh. Merrick’s cries fell silent. Jeana’s eyes widened at the sight of his dead body that fell next to her and fear overcame her mind. Along with revenge.

  You wish, I thought. But you won’t have that chance.

  At the same moment I aimed my dagger at her heart, her hand twitched, then lifted against Tristan’s hold on her. She flipped it up, exposing her palm to me. If she was asking for help or showing surrender, it was too little too late. I felt not one smidgen of sincere hope for her soul. I plunged my blade into her, and simultaneously, her fingers folded and squeezed into a tight fist.

  I keeled over in pain.

  It felt as though her hand had been in my very uterus when she squeezed it. My belly tightened and cramped, sending waves of agony throughout my torso and legs. At the same time, the ice pick slammed into my mind again, so hard I saw lights flashing before my eyes. But with gasping breaths, I pushed beyond the pain and focused, collecting all of my Amadis power into a ball and ramming it into her until the life left her eyes.

  The pain in my belly lessened, but I instinctively pressed my hand against it as though I could hold it together and keep everything inside, while I freed my dagger from Jeana’s corpse and stumbled for the closest Summoned son.

  “We have to get the stones out,” I said through a clenched jaw.

  My whole lower body ached and burned as I dropped to the floor and dug my knife into the man’s chest, searching for the stone. The tip of the blade found the solid piece, and I twisted it out. He remained unconscious as his skin healed up, but his heart held a steady rhythm in his chest, so I crawled over to the next man. Vanessa, Owen, and Tristan each went to work. By the time I reached my sixth or seventh one, the others began to stir. I watched this one’s face as I popped the stone out, finding it even more familiar than the others. My mind flashed back to Tristan’s house in Cape Heron, darkened because of the hurricane blowing outside.

  “Edmund,” I whispered.

  His eyes flew open, glowing bright red. “Hello, sweetheart.”

  Faster than I could react, his hands clamped around my neck and squeezed. I swung my fists at him, slicing his arms and chest more than once with the silver blade, but he barely reacted. He began to rise from the floor, lifting me by the throat as I choked, trying to grab air. A streak of someone blurred at us, whether Tristan or Vanessa I didn’t know, and Edmund dropped to the floor again, bringing me down with him. I crashed to my knees while slamming Amadis power into him until he fell unconscious.

  Tristan grabbed me by the waist and lifted me to my feet. I wobbled at first, my body still aching from whatever Jeana had done to me in her final seconds, and I glanced around the room. All of the controllers had been freed, many of them waking and looking around with confusion in their eyes. Some sprang to their feet right away, crouching into fighting stances.

  “Amadi
s,” one man hissed.

  “Do you want to join us?” I asked, my voice heavy yet hopeful.

  He laughed maniacally. “Never! But it wouldn’t matter if I did. We can’t convert.”

  He sprang into the air and flew straight toward me. Tristan waved his hand, and he soared across the room and smashed into the tower of stacking chairs. Others attacked, too, but they moved slowly, having spent too much time under Lucas’s control. An arm to the throat by Vanessa, an easy blocking spell by Owen, or a wave of Tristan’s hand stopped every single one. Sasha growled and snapped at them, holding them off. I could barely stand there, hunched over, my arms crossed over my belly as wetness seeped under my leather pants.

  One of the screens on the wall caught my attention, distracting me from thoughts I didn’t want to explore yet anyway. The Norman super-soldiers simply stood on their sides of the monitors, their guns hanging from their hands at their sides. Chandra slowly approached them, and they didn’t react, but remained still like powered-down robots. Others followed behind her. She nodded, and then began to remove one of the soldier’s stones, and other Amadis there did the same. The scene played out similarly on all of the screens, some of the norms joining in to cut the stones out.

  “We did it,” I murmured, trying to grasp onto the hope of what this meant.

  Realizing they couldn’t fight us—and most looking like they didn’t even want to—the Summoned and their offspring in the room ran out of the door and up the stairs. All except those who still remained unconscious.

  “Wait!” I yelled at the last one to leave. “Let us help you!”

  He stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder. “Impossible.”

  With that one word, he disappeared.