Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (12 page)

The other book lay open
on my lap. The symbols in it had also stopped coming. I placed my
elbows on my knees and dropped my head into my hands.

“I know nothing
more than I did before,” I muttered. Nothing useful, anyway. I
still felt as lost as ever. “I have no answers. No preparation.
Nothing to equip me for this awful task you’ve put in front of
me. How could you choose me without preparing me?”

“
Oh, He has
been preparing you, child. But know that He does not choose the
prepared and the equipped. He prepares and equips the ones He has
chosen. And you have been chosen.”
Cassandra’s voice,
I was sure. It sounded clearer than it had the other times, when it
seemed like Rina and Mom were in the background.

“What does that
mean? How does that help me now? We’re at war, and I don’t
have the slightest inkling of what to do.” I lifted the book—my
new book with the messages from the Angels—up in the air.
“Please tell me!”

“
The Angels
only send messages when you need them. They only interfere when
necessary.
”

I groaned with
frustration. Rina had told me this numerous times, but I certainly
felt like there had never been a more appropriate need for them to
talk to me. To give me direction. To interfere and set us on the
right course of action.

But since they didn’t
…

Realization dawned on
me. The Angels interfered when I, and my people, would not be making
the right decision. When we would act when we shouldn’t, or not
act when we should. So if they didn’t have anything to tell me,
any new direction to give me, that could only mean one thing.

Our plans were on the
right track. We’d been making the best decisions so far. And
now, my team needed to leave the island and pursue our mission of
finding the Summoned and their offspring so we could begin to end
this war. And possibly end the Daemoni—or at least Lucas.

As I finished accepting
this epiphany, new lines scrolled on the page: “We are always
here with you.”

And with that, the book
began shrinking in my hand until it became the size of a pearl, a
little glowing ball sitting in my palm. Then it disappeared
completely, as though dissolving into my skin. I could only hope that
meant that wherever I went, I had access to the book and the Angels’
messages.

Because it was time to
leave the island and go to war.

“Are you sure you
want to take this risk?” Galina asked through the
teleconference device sitting on my desk.

The core of my team who
had been with us throughout the search for Dorian were the only
souls, besides Solomon, who remained on Amadis Island, all of us
confined to the shelter of the protected mansion. We gathered in my
office now, huddled around my desk with the other council members on
a conference call. We were back to planning our war strategy after
being interrupted the other day.

I glanced over at
Tristan, who sat next to me and gave me a slight nod. He and I had
already discussed our thoughts and ideas several times and, to some
extent, with those in the room, and we were all together on this. I
had to be the one to give the directives to the rest of the council,
though. We would show Tristan had worked with me in the formulation
of the plans because they would trust him, his experience, and his
ability for strategic thinking, but they had to see that
I
gave
the orders. I bit my lip at the irony of this compared to the orders
about to come out of my mouth.

With my fingers tightly
woven together, I pressed my palms into my stomach, as though I could
calm the butterflies within. It had been one thing to discuss these
plans with Tristan and my closest friends. Giving orders to the
council felt entirely different. More real. I was matriarch. Ruler.
Leader. I still grappled with that reality while planning a
war
.
A real-life, people-will-kill-and-many-will-die war. It was no longer
an abstract idea. We no longer simply talked about plans like we had
only two days ago. We were actually preparing to execute. When this
meeting came to a close, people would be following my orders that
could cause them to kill others and to be killed.

At the same time, the
orders I’d be giving would be empowering them to make these
same kinds of decisions themselves. They would have the same
responsibilities and burdens. But, although the council members and
the leaders under them might make the wrong choices, the consequences
all came back on me. I would ultimately be held accountable. I was
all right with that. I just had to trust my people. That was the hard
part.

But the only way we
could win.

“Yes, we
must
take the risk,” I finally said in answer to Galina’s
question. “Lucas expects one of two things from us. He thinks
we’ll either fall apart with the loss of our matriarch, or
we’ll run into a head-on fight. He believes and hopes for the
latter. He
wants
me to fight him. That’s what he’s
wanted from me since the beginning. That’s why he killed my
mother—” I paused to swallow, my throat dry and thick,
before I could go on. “—to spark a desire for vengeance.
He expects me to lead you straight into a war he’s sure we
can’t win. He expects to annihilate the Amadis right away, and
if we survive, he thinks Tristan and I will give in and bow down to
him. That’s his plan. Or to kill us all, including Tristan and
me. Either way, he wins.”

Tristan gave my thigh a
squeeze and leaned forward. “Jumping right into war is our most
dangerous option. We are not in a situation to defeat the Daemoni
right now, when they have the Normans turned against us. Until we can
take the Normans out of the equation, going to war now is like taking
on a two-headed snake.”

“We won’t
fight the Normans,” Sheree pointed out.

“Of course not,”
Tristan said. “Which means we’d be battling only one head
although both would be striking at us.”

“And their heads
are about a hundred times bigger than ours,” Charlotte said.

Tristan nodded. “That’s
a setup for defeat if I ever saw one, and we all know charging
headfirst into a war we cannot win is stupid at best and deadly at
worst.”

“Except as Owen
is known to say, good always wins,” Chandra said.

“Because good is
smart and knows when to play,” Tristan countered.

“I did say that,
just this morning,” Owen admitted from his perch on the end of
my desk. “And Tristan’s right. We’ll win, but that
doesn’t mean we should be stupid.”

“So we’re
going to be smart by letting Lucas have his way with the Normans?”
Minh asked, doubt clearly lacing her tone.

“We’re
going to let him
think
he’s having his way,” I
corrected. “It’s all part of the plan. Tristan, explain.”

“We want Lucas to
think the Amadis has self-destructed,” he said. “We want
him—and the Normans in his pocket—to believe they’ve
already defeated us with their bombings. He knows there’s been
some internal rumblings thanks to Kali, who planted plenty of seeds
of doubt within the Amadis.”

“He thinks we’re
weak,” Owen chimed in again. “Kali did everything she
could to disrupt the Amadis from the inside, and Lucas knows this.”

“Exactly,”
Tristan said. “He already knows there’s a lack of trust
in my character, in Alexis’s leadership abilities, and in many
of our loyalties among the Amadis.”

“He’s
pushed every single button of mine he can think of,” I said,
“because he wants to see what I will do as matriarch. He wants
to see how I’ll react, because he thinks I’ll either fail
by getting everyone killed or by leading you right into his darkness.
He pretty much said so that night at Whitby Abbey.”

“He wanted you to
react that night,” Vanessa said. “The hope was written
all over his face.”

“Yes, he did,”
I said quietly. “Which was exactly why I didn’t.”

I knew why I hadn’t
reacted to Lucas’s abhorrent actions that night—why I’d
run to my mother’s side instead of after him. What kept me up
at night was the part right before then, when I remained frozen to
the ground while the bullets slammed into her body. I’d never
be able to overcome the guilt for not using my powers to stop them in
midair. Of course, it had happened so fast, and both Char and Owen
had been down, meaning the shield around Mom had been fallen, too,
but I hadn’t realized that. I hadn’t known how vulnerable
she’d been. Those were excuses, though. Bottom line: I hadn’t
been fast enough in my thoughts or my actions.

How would I ever be
enough for the Amadis and the human race?

“That may be the
same reason he set the Daemoni loose on the Normans,” Minh
said. “To force you into a reaction. Into war.”

My heart grew even
heavier than it had already been. “Possibly.”

“No, not
possibly,” Vanessa said. “He would have done it anyway.
You heard him—his plans have been in motion with the Normans
for years. He didn’t know things would go down the way they did
at the abbey. Only Kali knew Katerina and Sophia would show up, and
only Owen knew you, Tristan, and the rest of us were coming. Lucas
has had wet dreams about that kind of perfect storm, so when he saw
the opportunity that night, he took it. But the rest of this, with
the Normans? It would have happened even if that night hadn’t
gone down the way it did. Maybe not so soon, but it wouldn’t
have been long. He’s been planning it forever and put the
wheels in motion long ago.”

“And that’s
exactly why I won’t react now either,” I said, feeling a
bit of relief with Vanessa’s theory. “He’s had time
to pull all of this together. We’re not going to go off
willy-nilly into his fight.”

“You just said
two days ago that we’re going to war,” Chandra said.

“Oh, we are,”
I said. “Trust me. We’re going to war. Just not in the
way Lucas expects.”

“Explain what
that means,” Minh said.

I looked at Tristan,
who’d masterminded this plan, and he nodded.

“He expects
Alexis to be angry and full of wrath, like she was when Dorian was
taken,” he said. “He knows she has me and some of you
others who have experience, but he thinks she’ll be impatient
and too worried about the Normans. He expects her to be emotional and
impulsive, throwing us all into his war.”

“Or since you
didn’t react then, he may think that’s your new game,”
Galina countered. “He may already know you’re planning
not to retaliate. Maybe we should strike hard and fast after all.”

“No. He thinks he
knows me,” I said. “I could see it in his eyes that
night. He expected me to attack him in a rage, and since I didn’t,
he doesn’t think I’ll be able to hang on to control for
long. The mission the other night probably reinforced these beliefs
in his mind. He surely thinks I gave in to the need for vengeance
then and that I will continue to, regardless of the sacrifices. He
likes to believe I have too much of
him
in me.”

Thick silence fell for
a long moment, and I could only imagine everyone wondering the same
thing.
Did
I have too much of Lucas in me? I didn’t know
the answer to that question, which scared the hell out of me. But
that had been his real reason for testing me—to prove that I
did. That in the end, I’d turn out just like him.

“But you don’t
have his biggest faults,” Blossom said, trying to skate us over
that awkward moment.

“Arrogance and
pride,” Vanessa said.

“Exactly,”
Tristan agreed. “And that’s what we’ll be using
against him. His primary belief—what he’s counting on
more than anything—is that Alexis will fail as matriarch.
Whether it’s because she can’t lead or she can’t
stay on the good side, he expects her to eventually lose in the end.
So, we’re going to make him think she already has. That she and
I have already lost control and that the Amadis have disbanded.”

“And you ousted
those others from the council the other day as part of the plan,”
Jelani said. It wasn’t a question. He was catching on.

“Yes,”
Tristan and I said at the same time.

“There’s
already been a few small waves of blowback, but we have people making
it sound much worse than it is,” Owen said.

“Why not stage a
coup?” Galina asked. “We could make it look like you’ve
been ousted.”

Tristan answered with
the same reply he’d given me when I’d suggested the idea
days ago before we came up with this better one. “We don’t
want to show any unification among the Amadis. A coup would mean
everyone would split into two factions, but they would still have
allegiance to the overall Amadis creed. We want Lucas to believe that
all but a few so-called fanatics have given up on our cause.”

“That’s
why you had some of our soldiers go out into the Norman world when
our weakest left for refuge,” Minh said. “So it looks
like they’re all abandoning the Amadis and scattering.”

“Exactly,”
I said. “And we need to keep up this appearance. Everything
we’ll be doing is with purpose, but it can’t look that
way. It has to look the opposite. We have to convince Lucas, his
Normans, and everyone else that the Amadis has fallen apart and we’re
no longer a threat.”

“Our intelligence
teams will need to do exactly opposite of what they’ve been
doing,” Tristan said. “We need spies in the Daemoni, so
our people need to come out and show that they’re switching
sides.”

“The Daemoni will
kill them,” Chandra protested.

“Not if they go
to the right people in the right way,” Vanessa said. “They’re
supernaturals, and the Normans are turned against them. Converting to
the Daemoni appears to be their only choice if they want to be
protected. That’s how the Daemoni will see it, and the right
people will see the advantage of having Amadis in their ranks.”