Faith (Soul Savers Book 7)

by Kristie Cook

  I threw my hardened wing out at him, but he caught the released feathers in his hand. “That won’t work twice.”

  At the same time, the razor edges of my feathers cut partially through the bars.

  Lucas’s eyes blazed bright red, and his head jerked as his smile dropped away. “We can’t have that now.”

  He lifted his hand toward me, and blinding pain pierced into my head. A siren’s scream accompanied it, and my hands grasped at my scalp. An invisible weight pressed onto my shoulders, forcing me downward. My knees buckled, and I groaned as I went down, all the way to my stomach. I could hear nothing. See nothing. Only feel the rough edges of lava rock scoring into my chest and the blaring pain in my head.

  But even that was incomparable to the agony that ripped across my shoulder. Down my back. A blistering slice through my flesh. Throbbing pain into my shoulder blades and spine. The feeling of raw nerves exposed to the air.

  Blackness overtaking me.

  I came to gasping for a breath. I felt as though I hadn’t breathed in days. The acrid air of Hell burned my throat and lungs, but I couldn’t help gulping it in. I still couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear.

  The ground under me quaked. I struggled to push myself up to my hands and knees. The sensation of being lifted in an elevator followed. I scrabbled to my feet and lunged forward. Iron bars caught me. I felt my way around the circle of bars, none of them damaged anymore from my wings. I was still entrapped, rising into the air in some realm of Hell.

  And my wings—my shield, my weapon—were gone.

  The ground stopped moving. I remained in total blackness. Total silence.

  Until the screams began.

  A familiar voice.

  A sound I couldn’t live with.

  The agonized shrieks of my wife somewhere in the far distance rose into a crescendo and swirled around me.

  Engulfed me.

  Chapter 28

  Wails filled my mind and ears when I regained consciousness. My own, I thought at first, but as I became more aware, I realized mine mixed with other voices. Cries of intense pain and grief assaulted me from all sides before I could even open my eyes. But peeling them apart against the seal of dried tears made no difference. I could see nothing, smell nothing, and taste nothing. I could only hear and feel the unending torment.

  I’d thought the pain of my wings breaking out for the first time had been bad, but that didn’t compare to the feeling in my back now. Curled into a ball over my thighs, in the same position I’d awoken, I tried to move my wings, but only felt air against raw flesh. I reached behind me with my hands, pulling my sore skin too tight to bear, and found nothing.

  My wings had been severed. Removed. Amputated.

  Only jagged, filleted flesh remained. My throat tightened, and tears brimmed and fell. I might have hated them at first, but they’d become a part of me. A very special part of me. A gift from the Angels. And now my beautiful, powerful wings were gone.

  My quiet cries turned into sobs. The other voices joined in, making me quickly forget my own pain as theirs flooded over me, into me. The misery of lost and damned souls here in Hell combined with the eternal misery inside of me from all the people I’d disappointed, hurt, even killed—Lilith, Kali, Rina, Mom, Solomon, the soldiers in the warehouse, and the children on the train. My team. Everyone at The Loft. Everyone on the battlefield above. Dorian and Tristan. Their screams drilled through my soul, perforating it. And then came Stacey’s and Bree’s and the voices of countless other faeries who I hadn’t been able to save.

  After a moment, I realized not all of those voices were in my head. They were in my ears. I opened my mind, searching for signatures. No Dorian or Lucas. Tristan’s was gone, too, and I momentarily became distracted as I worried about what happened to him and Dorian. Had Tristan escaped? Had he been able to take Dorian with him? Or had Lucas or Satan captured them both?

  “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 thund
er 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.

&n
bsp; 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 someone important only to you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You sacrifice your own flesh and blood, your daughters and grandson, for your own benefit.”

  The side of his mouth lifted in a sneer as his eyes flitted to my abdomen. “Isn’t that what you do, too?”

  My nostrils flared, but I didn’t respond.

  “You’re so predictable.” He scratched his temple with the tip of the knife before casually pointing it at my face. “You fell for my bait so easily. I knew you’d be stupid enough to come after Dorian. Selfish enough to give up all of humanity to save one boy.” He grinned when my eyes widened. “Oh, yes, I knew of the life you carry inside you. That you were the one I needed, after all. The boy was nothing but a decoy. You’ve made this so easy.”

  Tristan growled and rumbled and made all kinds of noise as he seemed to be trying to break through the bars.