Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (27 page)

She had me at bath.

Although, her idea of a
bath was quite a loose definition—a soup pot of cold water and
a washrag. At least a second pitcher had been provided to wash my
hair. Except for Dorian, who crashed out on a cot, we’d already
caught enough sleep to be wide-awake when everyone else returned to
bed. Everyone but Kristen.

“I’ll sleep
when my sister returns,” she said as she led us down the hall
to a room that served as the cafeteria. It apparently had been an
employee break room in the not-too-distant past.

“I can’t
sleep either,” said a girl’s voice behind us.

“Same with me,”
said another. “I mean, A.K. Emerson’s really here!”

I looked over my
shoulder to find several people following us and suppressed a sigh.
I’d never liked the attention when I’d lived as A.K.
Emerson and still didn’t like it now, but this went beyond
being embarrassing. It was also very humbling. These people had come
together because of their love of my books … and that love
just might have saved their lives and many others’. I’d
never believed it until now, but Rina and her council just might have
been right about my stories.

Kristen lit a lantern
in the dining room and set it at the center of one of the round
tables, but we hadn’t even sat down when two knocks, a pause,
and then five more echoed down the stairs and through the hall.
Kristen ran for the door, and a few moments later, hushed voices
traveled to our ears, followed by Kristen and two others, a guy and a
girl. The girl let out a strange little squealing noise and clapped
her hand over her mouth.

“Oh gosh, I can’t
believe it,” she said, her words muffled behind her palm. “It’s
really you!”

“I’m going
out,” Kristen announced, ignoring the girl and turning back for
the door.

“Wait,” I
called out. “By yourself?”

“I have to find
Ammi.”

“You’re not
Ammi?” Tristan asked the girl who still stared at me with huge
eyes behind square glasses. Her gaze finally pulled away when she
realized he spoke to her, and when she looked at him, her face
flushed the color of a ruby grapefruit.

She shook her head, and
as though she just remembered herself, her hand dropped from her
mouth, her expression sliding from surprise to despair with it. “We
lost her and the others.”

“We thought we’d
lost Kristen, too,” the guy said as he pulled a knit cap off
his head and bunched it in his hands. “We hadn’t realized
she didn’t run away with us when those vampires attacked those
people. We thought it was too late for them, and we heard someone
crying for help, so we ran off. I guess Kristen hadn’t followed
us. Maybe she’d seen you guys or something. And then, we got in
a fight with more bloodsuckers—”

“Wait. You fought
vampires
?” I asked, not sure whether to be impressed or
to yell at them for their stupidity.

He nodded. “We
thought we ran them off, but then our whole group except us was gone.
One second, they were next to us. The next, they weren’t.”

Tristan and I exchanged
a glance, and he gave me a nod.

“Solomon and
Char, you better go with Kristen,” I said, and they took off
after the girl.

“You shouldn’t
be out there in the middle of the night,” I told the other
two—and anyone else who happened to be listening—while I
dropped into a seat. “That’s when they
hunt
.”

The girl’s blue
eyes widened again as she moved farther into the room and sat down at
the table next to ours, facing us.

“It’s
really you,” she whispered.

“Somebody had to
look for survivors after tonight’s bombings, though,” the
guy said. He stuck his hat in his back pocket, and then reached his
hand out toward me. “Terrence. That’s Olivia. I guess
you’re
the
A.K.”

“Alexis.” I
shook his hand, and then he went around our group, learning
everyone’s names while introducing himself and Olivia. Tristan,
Blossom, Sheree, and Jax joined me at the table. The others who’d
followed us from the main room into the dining room leaned against
tables and the wall, staring on in sleepy fascination.

“You didn’t
find any survivors?” Sheree asked.

Terrence pushed a hand
through his longish, dark blond hair. “Everyone’s dead or
gone, it seems. Except the ones in the camps.”

“The person we
thought we heard?” Olivia spoke up. “There was nobody
there.”

“You were
deceived,” Tristan muttered.

“Wot?” the
girl asked.

“That’s
what they do,” Jax said bitterly. “They trick you, pull
you in, and then go in for the attack.”

I winced at his
bluntness.

Olivia gasped. “Do
you think they got our friends?”

“Chances are …
yes,” Vanessa said matter-of-factly.

“Maybe more of us
should go out and search,” Owen suggested, looking at me.

I nodded my permission
before dropping my face into my hands.

“Why on earth
would you try to fight vampires?” Blossom asked. “
How?
”

“With silver, of
course.” Olivia’s voice notched up an octave with
excitement. I looked up at her in disbelief, and she gave me a small
grin. “Just like in your books. We’ve been plundering
when we’re out, finding as much silver as we can.”

“Do you have
weapons?” Jax asked.

Terrence and Olivia
both flashed some kind of large gun under their coats.

“Are those
paintball guns?” Tristan asked with an undertone probably only
I noticed. One that subtly said,
Are you serious?!

“Not many guns in
England,” Terrence said. “Not ones that work. But we’re
legally allowed to have paintball guns, and that’s what we
found. We melted down silver and coated the paintballs in it.”

“Huh,”
Tristan muttered, and I knew that sound, too. He was slightly
impressed.

“We have knives,
too,” Olivia said. “We’ve raided the stores and the
museums. Found a whole bunch hidden in Westminster Abbey. That’s
where Kristen found her fab sword.”

I suppressed an
inappropriate snicker. What would Solomon have done when he found out
the secret stash of weapons in the abbey had been pilfered? I,
personally, could only be proud of these guys for their boldness in
stealing them.

“Do you know how
to use them?” I asked.

Olivia grimaced. “A
little. But we’re just nerds. Everything we know is from books,
the telly and films, and video games. Terrence and some of the guys
we’ve brought in have taught us a tad bit, though.”

“Thanks to your
books, we know how to recognize the bad guys,” the girl in the
corner said. “We know not to be fooled by their beauty or
charm, and to look for red eyes.”

“The Daemoni
don’t always have red eyes,” Sheree said.

“The who?”

My books, of course,
didn’t call the “bad guys” the Daemoni. When I
wrote them, I knew the word, but associated it with Satanic
worshippers and the like. I’d had no idea the creatures in my
books made up the Daemoni … or the Amadis. So we explained to
the group, which grew as morning approached, who the Daemoni were and
who we were.

“So hold on,
you’re all supernaturals?” Terrence asked.

Sheree and Jax both let
their fangs and claws out.

“Whoa,”
Olivia breathed as she stared at them. “But you’re good.”

It wasn’t a
question.

“Right. We’re
the Amadis. We’re the good guys,” Sheree confirmed after
retracting her fangs.

“Our purpose is
to protect you and the rest of the humans from the Daemoni,” I
said.

“But you’re
not,” a woman accused from the corner. She was in her early
thirties with a baby on her hip. “You let them attack the first
time, and now they run around like they own the world. They’re
probably behind this worldwide war.”

Tristan nodded. “You’re
right. They greatly outnumber and out-power us. It doesn’t mean
we’re not doing everything we can. It hasn’t helped that
the majority of humans have been turned against us.”

“They’re
turned against the Daemoni, too,” Terrence said. “They
were anyway. When we could still get the news, the Americans were
really fighting back. I don’t know if it did them much good,
though.”

Probably not
, I
thought, but didn’t say aloud. No need to lower spirits any
more than they already were.

“We need to get
more humans on our side,” someone said.

Olivia turned her head
to look over the shoulder at the speaker. “There aren’t
many left that we can get to. They’re all dead or locked up. Or
turned into evil creatures themselves.”

Several people reacted
to this with noises of disgust.

“Who would have
thought,” Terrence mused out loud, “that the apocalypse
would come by vampires and werewolves?”

Everyone at my table
looked over at him.

“The apocalypse?”
Blossom asked.

“Obviously,”
he said. “That’s what everyone’s saying. The
horsemen are coming down on us, meting out God’s punishment.”
He shrugged. “It’s a theory. Conquest, War, Famine, and
Death? We’ve got them all now. Last we heard, anyway, before
shit hit the fan.”

“Those evil
creatures showed themselves and conquered the humans,” someone
else in the room said. The voice coming from behind me sounded older,
and I turned to find a woman with a gray bun making tea. I hadn’t
noticed her come in. Besides the woman with the baby, she was by far
the oldest we’d seen here so far. “We already have World
War III. People rioted and hoarded food before, and since there’s
no electricity, there won’t be food processed, packaged, and
sold anymore. Who knows if there are even farmers left to grow it? So
there’s your famine.”

“And people are
dying everywhere,” Olivia whispered.

“That man on the
telly?” a girl piped up from the door. “The one who said
you
were the bad guys? He sure looked like the Antichrist to
me!”

Several people murmured
in agreement, but I chuckled. Yeah, I supposed Lucas could be seen as
the Antichrist. You couldn’t get any more anti-God than him.

Another young woman
joined in. “Me wee granny always said everyone in today’s
generation were antichrists because we didn’t go to church
anymore and did all sorts of immoral things.”

“But there’s
been war, famine, disease, and death forever,” Blossom said.

“Every generation
has been able to point out signs of the end of the world,”
Sheree agreed.

“But nobody’s
seen it until now, right?” Terrence asked. “What would
you call that out there? Looks rather apocalyptic to me.” He
chuckled, but the sound came hollow with little humor. “And
here we thought the zombie apocalypse would get us before God did.”

I frowned at his words.
Zombies weren’t completely omitted from this picture he’d
painted in my mind. This image of the end of the world. Was that what
this was?
Were
we witnessing the end of times? If so, I needed
a word with my mother and the rest of my ancestors. They could have
warned me! They could have taken me with them. Why did I have to be
the one left behind to deal with this horror? I’d been left
here alone with evil trying to reign the world, and maybe there was a
reason for it—because it was all hopeless in the end anyway,
and I belonged here, not in the Heavens of the Otherworld. Was that
what Mom had meant?

The conversation became
a din in my mind as I contemplated this, my heart sinking as the
minutes passed. Thank God Vanessa and Solomon’s mind signatures
came within range, along with a Norman. Owen, Charlotte, and Kristen
came in right behind them. Anxiety enveloped all of them, and I
jumped from my seat and rushed for the door to the outside world,
clearing the steps five at a time.

“Tell me what’s
wrong with her,” Kristen said frantically after the door banged
against the wall.

Vanessa had apparently
thrown it open, and Solomon carried a limp body in his arms. The
warlocks and Kristen followed after. My gaze jumped from face to face
of my team members.

“
She’s
been turned
,” Vanessa said. My eyes shot back to her. “
I
can smell the vamp’s blood in her.
”

Ammi?
I asked,
and she gave me the slightest of nods.
Kristen doesn’t know?

“
Not yet, but
she will soon.
”

I nodded. We had to
tell her.

“Where can we
take her?” I asked. “Where do you take the sick or the
hurt?”

“Is she going to
be okay?”

I clenched my jaw. “We
need a private room. Where can we take her?”

Kristen pushed her way
through. “This way.”

She hurried down the
hall, and Solomon followed after, with the rest of us on his heels.
The Normans fell into step behind us, but once we reached a small
office with a couch and Tristan and I joined the ones who had been
out, Charlotte shut the door and muffled the room. Solomon laid the
girl on the couch, and Kristen dropped to the floor next to her,
taking her sister’s hands in between her own.

“Tell me what’s
wrong with her,” Kristen said. “She looks dead. Her chest
doesn’t even move. But you said she’s not?”

She shifted to glare up
at us. Knowing I needed to be the one to do this, I crouched down
beside her.

“She’s been
turned, Kristen,” I said softly.

Her eyes about jumped
out of her head. “She’s … one of
them
?”
She shook her head violently. “A vampire? No. She can’t
be like them. Alexis, do something.
Please.
She can’t
handle something like this. She’s too sweet and kind!”

I gently laid my hand
on her arm. “We will. We can.”

“You can turn her
back?”

I cringed. “No,
I’m sorry. But we
can
save her. We can make sure she’s
not like them. She’s going to wake up with a crazy-insatiable
thirst, but we can help her stay good.”