Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (16 page)

“No,”
Tristan and I answered at the same time.

“You can’t
carry all of us at once,” Charlotte said, more kindly.

“No, but I can
probably take two at a time. And Sasha could help.” At the
mention of her name, the lykora’s little, white dog’s
snout poked out of the top of Dorian’s jacket.

“It’s too
dangerous,” I said.

“Uncle Owen can
shield me, right?”

Owen shook his head.
“Not if you get too far away from me.”

“Then you stay
with me.”

“Absolutely not,”
I said. “I don’t care if Owen shields you. It’s too
dangerous!”

“But—”

“No, Dorian,”
Tristan said firmly. “It’s not a viable option. It will
take too long, and there are too many risks involved.”

“I was just
trying to help,” he muttered as he kicked at the snow and sent
a rock underneath flying.

“And we
appreciate it,” Blossom said. “Very much. But your dad
knows the best solution.”

“And that’s
not it.” I turned to look at Tristan, who gazed off into the
distance. “So what is our solution?”

“There’s
nothing around here for hundreds of miles. Trust me, I know. Only a
few villages of indigenous people, most of them Shamans.”

“Great,” I
muttered.

“They’re
mages,” Blossom said. “Not all are evil.”

“No, but most
around here are Daemoni,” Vanessa said. “Any Amadis would
be in hiding.”

“So what should
we do, Tristan?” I asked, starting to feel the hopelessness of
our situation.

“I think we can
flash,” he answered, surprising all of us. He turned back to
face our group. “This is the Daemoni’s kingdom. Why would
they prevent flashing here? They need to get in and out, close to
Hades. We have about six hundred miles between here and any
resemblance of civilization, eight hundred to decent transportation.
Our only other option is to hike it, and I don’t think we’ll
all last.”

He nodded toward
Dorian, whose lips were already turning blue. His whole body shook
from the below freezing temperature. We hadn’t expected to find
ourselves in winter conditions in the beginning of October, so he
wore only a light coat over a t-shirt and jeans on his legs.

“Owen,” I
hissed. “Can’t you do something?”

“I’m so
sorry, Dorian!” Blossom squealed, and she waved her hand toward
the man-boy. He immediately stopped shivering. “The spell won’t
last forever in this cold, though. I’ve already had to redo my
own since we’ve been standing here.”

“Looks like
flashing is our only option,” Char said.

Nobody liked the idea
or the risks that came with it, but we couldn’t argue with
Tristan. He knew this place better than any of us, except maybe
Vanessa. She hadn’t come up with any other solutions, though,
so apparently flashing was it.

“We’re
going to a small village outside of Vorkuta,” Tristan said. “I
don’t think it’ll be safe to flash once we get there.
We’ll make our way to Vorkuta’s train station, which will
take us to Moscow and the rest of civilized society so we can get
back on track. If we get trapped and separated anywhere along the
way, we meet in Prague.”

“There’s an
old hotel two blocks from the safe house in old town Praha.”
Solomon’s eyes cut to me when my brow furrowed with confusion.
“Praha is Czech for Prague,” he clarified. “The
hotel looks abandoned from the outside. Meet there.”

“You vamps are
charged up with mage blood?” Charlotte asked, and both Solomon
and Vanessa nodded, meaning they’d be able to flash. “I’ll
help Sheree. Blossom, you can help Jax?”

“Of course.”
She moved closer against him—if that were possible. I noticed
her lips beginning to pale. The cold was becoming too much for her
again.

“I’ll take
Dorian and lead Alexis,” Tristan said. “Owen and Vanessa,
follow our trail, and the rest of you follow in suit. We’re
good?”

Everyone nodded, but
only after a moment of hesitation. Blossom’s eyes grew round
and huge, and she gnawed on her lip.

Solomon,
I said,
only to him. His dark gaze darted over to me.
Lead Blossom and
Jax. If we get separated, I don’t know what they’d do on
their own.

Except for a night on
Amadis Island when Rina gave her blessing to search for Dorian last
March, Blossom had never been out of the United States until a month
ago, when we traveled through a portal from Virginia to England. Jax
wasn’t much the world traveler himself, having spent several
decades isolated in the Australian Outback.

Solomon nodded and
stepped over to Blossom’s side. “
I’ll take care
of them
.”

Tristan blew out a hard
breath, gripped Dorian’s forearm, and slid his other hand into
mine. “Let’s do this.”

He gave my hand a
squeeze before flashing and taking me with him. We arrived on the
side of a mountain in the middle of a blizzard. As soon as everyone
else appeared, he flashed again. After the first couple of times, we
had to take breaks for the less magical among us. The pauses lasted
only about five to ten minutes at first, but then we came close to
the only civilization we’d seen so far—a drab city of
featureless buildings that all looked the same except for their paint
colors of dulled blue, orange, green, and yellow. A greenish smog
hung over the city, and even the freshly fallen snow wasn’t
quite white, but more of a pale pink. Tristan called the city
Norilsk, a mining town, evidenced by the plumes of smoke rising from
stacks on the other side of the city. Also a Daemoni-controlled area
that we needed to vacate immediately. After the back-to-back flash,
our breaks grew longer, becoming twenty and thirty minutes each. Even
the vampires were languishing, using all of this power in the
daytime.

“One more flash
to go,” Tristan said after our current break had stretched into
nearly an hour.

We stood on the edge of
a lake or bay, and although we followed the sun, daylight was quickly
disappearing—the days were short this far north. In a few
weeks, there would be an endless stretch of nothing but night. At
least, it would feel endless to me. I didn’t know how people
could stand living this far north, with no sun for weeks on end. And
even though the cold didn’t really bother me, I still preferred
the warmth of the sun and sand between my toes, not snow clumping to
my boots.

“We’ve made
it this far,” Charlotte said.

Yes, we’d made it
this far, but each flash had been a heart-stopping, breath-holding
moment of fear and uncertainty. Not until we all popped into sight
could I feel the slightest bit of relief. Then we’d have to do
it all over again, the bottom of my stomach falling out each time.
Would this be the time we got caught?
The question echoed in
everyone’s minds right before a flash.

“One more time,”
Blossom muttered, her arms looped around Jax’s and Solomon’s,
holding tightly to both. “We can do this.”

She didn’t sound
as confident as she probably wished she did, making it apparent she
tried to convince herself more than anyone.

“You’re
doing great, Blossom,” I said. “Soon we’ll be in
more interesting areas with much better scenery.”

She gave a weak laugh.
“Yeah, this hasn’t exactly been the kind of international
getaway I’d always dreamed about.”

Well, that wasn’t
going to change. We weren’t exactly on vacation, after all. But
moving farther west meant we’d be closer to civilization and
farther away from Hades. Although, I didn’t know if that really
meant we’d be much safer, with the way the world was quickly
going to hell. It was up to us to stop it from getting there, though,
so regardless of scenery and the hell we headed toward, we had to
keep moving.

“Okay, one more
time,” I said. “And then we can rest.”

“Yes,”
Tristan said. “We’ll take a long break until the middle
of the night. I promise.”

We flashed to the side
of another mountain, with what looked like a city in the far
distance. Thick, dark clouds hung overhead, threatening a snowstorm
that could begin any minute, and giving an earlier than usual
twilight. Even as we stood there, taking in our surroundings, the
lights of the city began to blink on.

Tristan tilted his head
downward. “We’ll find shelter down there.”

I followed his gaze to
the bottom of the mountain and focused on what looked like a tiny
village directly below us.

“You want to go
into a town?” I fixed in on the mind signatures below. Only a
couple dozen, from what I could tell from here. “With Normans?”

“Just because
they’re Normans doesn’t mean it’s safe,”
Charlotte pointed out.

“They’ll
just call the Daemoni like the ones in Italy,” Blossom said.

“We need to rest,
right?” Tristan asked. “I was here two years ago, and
half the town was empty then. I doubt there’s been a surge of
population, meaning there are vacant buildings to hide in for a few
hours.”

Big, fat snowflakes
began to fall while the darkness of night quickly slithered over us.
Dorian started shivering again, and I pulled him close to me,
wrapping my arms around him and trying to share my body heat.

“I’ll keep
us shielded and cloaked,” Owen said. “We need to take
cover. This storm looks ugly.”

About a mile outside of
town, we crept into an old barn to hide out for the night while we
scoped the area for any danger. As soon as all of us had gathered
inside, though, the horses began neighing loudly, the cows mooed, the
pigs snorted and chuffed, and some chickens squawked, creating quite
the ruckus.

“Sheree, change,”
I whispered to the tiger, who immediately morphed into her human
self, albeit naked. Blossom dug a set of clothes out of her
bottomless bag, but even as Sheree dressed, the animals only grew
louder. I checked on the owner’s mind, and he hadn’t
heard them yet, but he would soon, and he’d be out here any
minute.

“Do you think
it’s Sasha?” I asked.

Jax shook his bald
head. “Half of us here are their predators, and they sense the
danger. Even if we all look human, they know.”

“Stupid animals,”
Vanessa muttered as she strode over to the barn door to leave.

“Don’t take
it personally,” I said as I followed her out. “I like
bacon and steak.”

“That’s why
they’re stupid. Those Normans are more dangerous to them than
Solomon or me. And any self-respecting Were wouldn’t eat a
caged, domesticated pet.”

“Nope. No
challenge, no eat,” Sheree said from my other side as we strode
down the lane and closer to town. My head snapped toward her at the
uncharacteristic statement. I hadn’t known Sheree hunted at
all. “What? A girl’s gotta eat, and I can’t always
wait until I’m human to grab something out of the fridge.
Especially now.”

“So Bambi and
Thumper?” I asked with surprise.

“Alexis! No!”
she protested, but then said with an edge of guilt, “Well,
maybe their dads. I like turkeys, fish, and … well, don’t
tell Jax, but gator’s good, too.”

I laughed. “Sheree!”

She gave me a grin. “My
favorite’s wild boar, though.
Wild
boar. Not Babe or
Wilbur back in that barn.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t
imagine …”

“I hate to break
it to you,” Vanessa said, “but Babe and Wilbur are what
you get from the fridge.”

I stared at her now,
surprised she even knew who Babe and Wilbur were. She shrugged. “I
like animal movies. So sue me.”

“Opening a
package from the store is not the same as eating it fresh,”
Sheree said.

I wrinkled my nose at
that thought. No, definitely not the same, thank God. “So you
prefer Pumba?”

Vanessa laughed, and
Sheree groaned. “Stop it. Like I don’t feel guilty enough
as it is, you’re going to make me starve to death before I’ll
eat another animal.”

I bumped my shoulder
against her, hitting her upper arm because she stood so much taller
than me. “I’m just giving you a hard time, and I won’t
let you starve to death.”

“That looks
promising.” Vanessa lifted her chin toward a small structure
about a mile down the road. She disappeared in a blur, and then
returned a few seconds later. “It’s an abandoned cabin.
No furniture and no heat, but it’s shelter from this storm. And
no people or Daemoni, so that’s a bonus.”

The wind whipped and
howled around us, blowing snow in our faces as we moved toward the
cabin. The weaker of our group, including Dorian and Blossom, pushed
against the harsh gusts with their heads down and their arms held
closely to their chests. With their Warlock bodies built a little
tougher, Owen and Charlotte weren’t hunched over, but they
weren’t a whole lot better off, either. As soon as we gathered
inside the one-room cabin, Tristan pulled a cabinet off the wall and
lit it on fire, providing some much needed heat and light. Everyone
but Solomon and Vanessa gathered around it.

We hadn’t
expected to be so far removed from civilization when we left, so we
didn’t have much food with us. Dorian had the biggest stash of
packaged crackers and snacks that we all shared. Except Solomon and
Vanessa, of course.

“The things I do
for you,” Owen said as he gritted his teeth while dragging the
edge of one of Tristan’s knives over his forearm.

“You know it’s
better for us both when I do it.” Vanessa licked the tip of her
fang. Owen glared at her with a brow lifted. The rest of us
suppressed a knowing laugh. A vampire’s bite only hurt at first
pierce, and then it became bliss … nearly orgasmic. Owen’s
face flushed a deep red and his jaw muscle twitched as he held his
arm over a brown plastic cup that had held potato chips a few minutes
ago.

“You get the
cup,” he said with a half-snarl.

Charlotte used another
container to supply Solomon with his own meal. Between the blood and
the darkness outside, he and Vanessa quickly became hyped up. Sheree
and Jax seemed pretty energetic, too. So those four took turns
guarding the perimeter of the cabin while the rest of us grabbed some
rest.