Torment (Soul Savers Book 6) (33 page)

“We all have
them,” she said, and the other girls showed off theirs.

“They have them
in London, too.” I shook my head. “I can’t
believe—”

“Wait,”
Sonya said, stopping me, “you found the London group? A.K.’s
Angels?”

“They were the
ones who told us to come here,” I replied.

“What are you
doing back in Cape Heron, anyway?” Tristan asked.

“Who would have
thought, right?” Heather said. She looked around the small
apartment we had piled into, her nose wrinkled. “We used to
live here with our asshole dad. Our mom …”

She bit her lip.

“She didn’t
make it,” Sonya finished for her, and my heart broke for them.
“She was showing a condo at Fort Myers Beach the night the
Daemoni came out. If I’d known, I could have protected her.”

I slid my arm back over
her shoulders. “Their evil is not your fault. Not anymore.”

She nodded, her only
reply.

“What brought you
here?” Tristan asked again.

“The Amadis all
left Captiva,” Heather said. “They said the war was
starting, but Sonya wouldn’t leave me.”

“Some of them
started acting really weird, talking about converting to the Daemoni,
and no way would I take Heather into such chaos, so we stayed behind.
When we saw Lucas smack-talking lies about you on TV, we knew what we
could do to help. We got online on the forums and helped start A.K.’s
Angels,” Sonya said. “Teah and Teal had been here on
vacation, and got stuck. They found us on the forums, too, so we
picked them up.”

“Thank God,”
Teal breathed. “We would have been dead if we’d tried to
go home.”

“This was
supposed to be our meeting place for lots of people,” Heather
said.

“Where are they?”
I asked, knowing another body couldn’t possibly fit in this
apartment now that we’d arrived.

“Some took off.
Others …” Sonya frowned. “It’s been really
hard here, Alexis. We expected part of our group to be back three
days ago. We were going to give them one more day, and then we were
gonna take off.”

“Where did they
go?” Owen asked. Sonya looked at him as if realizing for the
first time that he stood among us. Her lips twitched with a smile,
but then she saw Vanessa and looked away.

“Looking for
survivors. And food. There was a lot of gunfire the other night,
though. I’ve been out searching, but haven’t found them.
I didn’t want to get too far away, in case the gangs came back
here.”

“Gangs?”
Blossom asked.

“Yeah,”
Heather said. “The gangs have been worse than any supernaturals
around here. They come in and loot all the businesses and houses,
stealing our food and anything else we need. That’s why a bunch
of our people left. We had this whole apartment building full of
A.K.’s Angels, and now they’re all gone.”

“All except us,”
Teah said as she plopped down by the box-table. She looked at a can
of food longingly, and then her gaze swept over us.

“Go ahead and
eat,” I encouraged. “We’re all good.”

“Mom,”
Dorian said quietly from the back of our group.

I rolled my eyes. “You
just ate, Dorian.”

“Dorian?”
Heather asked, pushing her way through to him. “Oh my God! Look
at you!”

She clapped a hand over
her mouth, and her face flushed a bright pink. Then she threw her
arms around him.

“I’m so
glad you’re okay! I’d been so worried about you,”
she cried.

His return hug appeared
awkward at first, but they eventually must have remembered that
they’d been each other’s best friends for a while, and
they both relaxed. They went off to a corner of the kitchen together,
jabbering away as they caught up with each other.

I looked at Tristan.
“What do you think?”

“I think we
should look for their friends, then we’ll take off.”

I nodded my agreement.

The scene greeting me
when we opened the door about knocked me to my knees. The apartment
building sat on the corner of a side road that intersected with Fifth
Street, the main business district of the town. Looking a little to
the right from here, I could see all the way down Fifth until it
ended at the beach and the Gulf of Mexico. Immediately to the left of
the apartment building, a residential area of low-income housing
spread out. This part of town had been occupied by some elderly who’d
lived in Cape Heron for decades, but mostly by the blue-collar
service personnel who’d served the snowbirds and tourists at
the restaurants, bars, shops, and hotels.

Everywhere I looked,
windows were broken out, and some doors hung ajar from their hinges.
Cars sat abandoned on the side of the road, some with jags of glass
shards where their windows and windshields used to be. An older model
truck was completely burnt out, nothing more than a shell, and a VW
Bug sat crumpled into the trunk of an oak tree, its driver side door
still open. One business’ picture window had been boarded up
with plywood with the words “No Food or Water”
spray-painted in big red letters on it. Next to it, another piece of
plywood said, “We stoled theres and its gone” with an
arrow pointing to the first one and a crude image of a hand with the
middle finger sticking up.

My heart grew heavier
and heavier as I made my way down Fifth Street toward the block where
the Book Nook, Mom’s bookstore, had once been. Over ten years
had passed since I’d walked this same road, and so much had
changed, yet much had stayed the same. At least, it appeared that had
been the case up until the last few weeks.

The October afternoon
sun beat down on me and glared off the windows and metal lampposts as
it had back then when my life was really just getting started. The
row of bars and restaurants, including Mario’s Pizza, still
stood where they had then. Another block down, the shops
started—clothing boutiques, antique shops, novelty stores, art
galleries … at one time, a bookstore. If people strolled the
sidewalks and cars crept slowly down the street, honking at me to get
out of the way … if windows weren’t knocked out and
doors unhinged … this place would be exactly as I remembered.
Maybe there had been some fresh coats of paint added since then, but
no significant alterations.

I, however, was not the
same.

I’d been a girl
then. Naïve, hopeful, ignorant. A little cynical about my own
life, but optimistic about the world in general. I’d seen and
experienced a lot in some ways, but Mom had kept me sheltered from
certain parts of life. Especially
our
parts—the Amadis,
the Daemoni, the fact that supernatural beings existed, that evil
walked the world in human-like form. I had hopes and dreams like any
other girl with plans for a future that included a career, a family,
and true love.

Now, I was still naïve
and ignorant in way too many ways, but definitely not that same girl.
I had true love, a family, and a career, but none of it had happened
the way I’d planned. I’d lost my love for seven years,
given birth to a boy who should have never been born the way he was
and whose life would always be in danger, and had somehow become
leader of a society of creatures that went beyond human
understanding. I had no more hope for my life or the world in
general. Survival was the best I could offer now. I was no longer
that little girl.

I was a soldier. A
warrior.

A killer.

Last time I walked this
street, I skipped along in shorts and flip-flops, on my way to help
Mom and Owen at the store, or to meet Tristan at Mario’s where
I’d thrown a dart at him or at the coffee shop where he’d
first called me Sexy Lexi. As I passed that shop now, the memories of
innocence, hope, and excitement of first love washed over me …
and drained away when I caught my reflection in the window.

No, I most certainly
was not the girl I’d been back then. My face might have
appeared to be the same age, but now I was a woman, wearing fighting
leathers with a dagger on my hip and a knife in my combat boot. A
variety of lethal powers sizzled at my fingertips, and my fist alone
could kill somebody.

I stopped and inhaled a
deep breath before turning to my right, toward the place where Mom’s
store had once stood. Even it looked the same, somehow, with the big
picture window Heather and Sonya’s sperm donor had run his car
through. I walked over to it and held my hand to the glass, focused
on my reflection at first, but then on the interior of the store. Not
much had been ransacked here. I supposed looters had no use for
books.

Tristan came up behind
me and peered inside, too.

“I thought the
Daemoni blew this place up,” I said.

“That’s
what we had to tell you so you wouldn’t be tempted to come back
here,” Owen answered from behind me. “Looks like
someone’s kept the old Book Nook running since then. At least,
before now ….”

I turned on him. “Mom’s
place?”

He pressed his lips
together, and I didn’t wait for more of an answer. I ran. One
block north and three blocks west. I came to a halt where the
driveway met the sidewalk—at about the same place Tristan would
stop the bike to let me off.

Mom’s cottage.

A traditional
Florida-style home from the middle of the last century sitting on a
block of others just like it. Ancient banyan and oak trees stood in
front of most of the houses, but not Mom’s, allowing me an
unobstructed view of the front porch, where Tristan had given me
numerous goodnight kisses. Where Mom had tried to stop us from seeing
each other.

My heart seized, aching
with the memories of her in this place. She’d loved it so much,
along with her bookstore. Why couldn’t life have stayed like it
had been then? So simple, it had seemed. A bright and shiny slice of
time compared to today’s darkness. And now Mom was gone. In
fact, everyone in this town was apparently gone.

The silence was eerie.

Part of me wanted to go
inside, but I was afraid of what I might find. More memories of Mom
and life as it could never be again? Or the bodies of whatever
Normans had moved in when we left?

I turned for the beach
instead. Tristan took my hand, and we walked in silence under the
canopy of leaves until the road ended. We crossed the little
boardwalk, and finally sound filled the air as waves crashed on the
sand and seagulls cawed at each other. We walked out on the beach to
our favorite spot. Sat down in our favorite position—Tristan
behind me, my back pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped around
me, and his chin resting on my shoulder. We watched the sun lower
over the horizon, spraying golds, oranges, and peaches against the
clouds, the light blue sky, and the water.

“It’s like
this little piece of the world has been left untouched,” I said
quietly.

“I’m sure
much of the world has been,” Tristan said. “We’ve
only seen the bad parts so far.”

“We can only
hope.” The phrase sounded empty, as hollow as the little bit of
hope I held on to.

“Do you know the
exact spot we’re sitting in?” he whispered against my
ear, sending chills over my skin.

I couldn’t help
my smile. “I will never forget our first kiss.”

I twisted around, just
like I had that October evening so many years ago, and when he leaned
in and brushed his lips against mine, I let out a zap of electricity.
On purpose now, unlike the first time. He pulled back and grinned
before coming in again for a real kiss.

“As long as we
can do that, we always have hope,” he murmured once we pulled
apart.

“Everyone’s
probably looking for us, since I can’t—” I twirled
my finger by my temple. “Since I’m broken.”

“I can hear them
from here, and you’re right.”

We reluctantly stood up
and hurried back toward downtown. My whole team, who was supposed to
have been looking for Heather and Sonya’s friends, were
searching the area for us. We took the brunt of a few evil eyes when
we returned.

“There’s
absolutely nobody in this town,” Vanessa said as we walked back
to the apartment building. “No life, no smell of fear on the
air, no heartbeats anywhere.”

“Nope. Nobody,”
Sheree agreed.

“Unless they come
back,” Heather said.

She stood in front of
the door of their first floor apartment, rubbing her hands over her
upper arms. Since the sun had set, a light chill had come in on the
air. With Sasha at his feet, Dorian leaned against the doorjamb next
to Heather, standing at about the same height and no longer looking
ten years her junior. I wondered if he remembered telling me that he
wanted to marry her someday, back when he was a typical boy with a
crush on his babysitter. Did he still feel that way? He stood with
his body turned toward her, as if to say yes, but his eyes and face
spoke differently. They were filled with a darkness, a sorrow that no
boy his age should know. I wanted nothing more than to hug him, to
comfort him, to take him back to his innocence, to the childhood
stolen from him when it had barely begun.

“The gangs?”
Charlotte asked, yanking me back to reality.

“Yeah,”
Teah said. “There are still plenty of places for them to loot,
and there hasn’t been enough of us to fight them off anymore.”

“We should
probably just get out of here,” I said. “What do you
think, Tristan?”

He nodded. “We
need to do what we came for.”

“Do you want to
come with us?” I asked the four remaining members of this cell
of A.K.’s Angels.

They looked at each
other and shrugged.

“Where are you
going?” Teah asked.

“Like it matters.
We can’t hide out here anymore,” Teal said. “The
question is
how
.”

“Northern
Virginia,” I answered.

“Oh! The D.C.
cell,” Heather said excitedly.

“Would you happen
to know where to find them?” Tristan asked.